Council changes course on SECA ‘gifts’

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Free tickets for popular events such as Ribfest are at the center of an ongoing Naperville City Council debate. | Sun Media file

Updated: November 30, 2011 12:37AM

It’s “the bonus with an onus” no longer.

Members of the Naperville City Council have rescinded a barely-2-month-old rule, one that required recipients of municipal Special Events and Cultural Amenities funding to record and report all of the free tickets and other gifts they distribute.

Council members voted 5-4 Tuesday night to repeal the policy, which was enacted in July. They instead mandated the mayor, council members and city directors keep track of all gifts received from SECA-funded organizations and report them each year in writing.

The SECA fund is bankrolled by the city’s 1 percent tax on food and beverages. SECA recipients include Ribfest, the Millennium Carillon and a host of other special events, amenities and civic groups.

Several residents, including Kathy Benson and former City Council member Richard Furstenau, protested the initial policy had saddled organizers and officials of SECA-funded groups with an unwarrented burden. Furstenau would later be echoed by others when he declared the new rule “onerous.”

Mayor A. George Pradel, who proposed annulling the policy, declared he had “a responsibility to you and the city to tell you when I get any gifts.”

“My integrity is really at issue here,” Pradel said. “Because if I don’t claim what I get ... I don’t deserve to be mayor.”

“We can’t hand it over to the SECA people,” Pradel said of the responsibility for tracking and recording tickets and other gifts.

He said he and other municipal officials should be doing so “to make sure that we’re transparent, and if we’re not, get us out of here.”

Pradel added John Schmitt, president and CEO of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, “agrees with my position” that the responsibility should fall on city officials, rather than members of SECA-funded organizations.

Council member Grant Wehrli said he agreed with Pradel’s position as far as it went, but stressed taxpayers have a right to know where their SECA dollars are going.

“I think that’s a fair and reasonable request,” Wehrli said, adding he did not believe it right for organizers of one SECA-funded group to have given away “tens of thousands of dollars in tickets” to one of the city’s most popular annual events.

Council members Judith Brodhead, Douglas Krause, Joseph McElroy and Kenn Miller joined Pradel in voting to rescind the policy. Steven Chirico, Robert Fieseler and Paul Hinterlong sided with Wehrli in opposing the change.

In other business, council members voted without comment to lengthen the hours of a downtown food vending operation. That will give Joe Hornbaker, owner of Joey’s Red Hots, another 30 minutes every morning to sell hot dogs in the downtown area.

Hornbaker typically plies his wares from a food truck stationed near Chicago Avenue and Washington Street. He does brisk business selling hot dogs to patrons of the city’s bar and nightclub scene.

City Manager Doug Krieger said Hornbaker will now be allowed to conduct business until 1:30 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until 2:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

There had been mention at a prior City Council meeting of parking issues Hornbaker was reportedly having with police, as well as his payment of the food and beverage tax.

“He currently has no pending problems with the city,” Krieger said of Hornbaker. “We’re not aware of any delinquent payments or health department problems. He’s a vendor in good standing.”