The Sound of Music City, Ill.
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The above link may be down at times due to bandwidth issues. The PDF is also available in multiple JPEG images to the left that are in thumbnail view.
The Perry County Board of Commissioners Thursday approved a bid for County property casualty and general liability insurance coverage, beginning Dec. 1, 2008. The board voted in a 2 to 3 vote to keep the current Ill. Counties Risk Management insurance for $366,678. Three total bids were presented to the board. ICRMT was the highest of the three. The lowest of the three was presented by Arthur-Galleger Insurance, for $239,572, but required a three year commitment to the plan.
When the figures were presented to the board, Doug Bishop read a letter that was sent to him that strongly criticized the Arthur-Galleger bid. Josh Scheer, a licensed attorney of Arthur-Galleger, later contacted the Du Quoin Evening Call and claimed that the letter was from a Jeff Webber, a representative of ICRMT.
No citations were made during the reading of the letter, and when Commissioner Kelly asked who it came from, the response was that they did not know. Commissioner Kelly sought out additional insurance bids since September looking for a lower premium to help ease the problems from meeting payroll.
The Board also appointed Jeffrey Robinson, Carol Hamilton and Bobby Kelly to the Board of Review for the 2008 assessment year.
Raffle licenses were approved for the SIU PTA Program, DMS Eighth Grade Boosters and Ducks Unlimited.
The Board also took the first step, of many steps, to bring something great to Perry County, and southern Illinois as a whole. The Board approved a pre-funding project and re-development agreement with the Toney Watkins Company to set the baseline for future agreements for a project called the "Music City Convention Destination Resort."
The Toney Watkins Company is a company founded by Anthony B. Watkins and has been operating since Jan. 2005. The company has departments dedicated to developing education, entertainment, consumer products, internet services and media networks.
In an area just northeast of Cutler, blueprints have been drawn out for a large 5,000-6,000 acre resort deemed "Music City."
In the diagram to the XXXX, Music City itself is pictured in the green. Built with circular infrastructure around a convention center, the circle will be divided up into eight different pieces, much like a piece of pie. Each slice of Music City will feature a different style of music, such as rock, jazz or classical. Each section will have its own theater for concerts.
In the yellow, the resort has mapped out the place of its own power and waste water treatment. The idea behind the project is to allow the resort to be self sufficient and not to draw down nearby resources.
All visitors will arrive at the entrance checkpoint, the tan area. Large parking lots and hotels will be made available at the entrance.
Surrounding Music City will be a large number of attractions, theme parks and recreational activities. Examples of such are golf courses, motor sports, ski sports and amusement parks such as Raptor Mountain and Cyberworld.
Unfortunately, Music City at this point is just the plans an idea. The project has a large number of hurdles to jump over, first of which is state legislation.
The project is planned to make use of TIF and such similar agreements, however, state law at this time does not allow the use of those agreements in areas where Music City is planned to be built. Since one of the goals of Music City is to expand employment and county development, no relocation is planned.
But the laws effecting the Music City project are on their way to changing. A bill in the Ill. House (House Bill 45-85) was passed on to the Senate, where it was slightly amended, and then on to the Conference Committee where Speaker Madigan also made changes to the bill and sent it back to the Rules Committee in the Senate and the House. The bill will be brought up again in mid November. Should the bill not pass then, it will be worked on and reintroduced in January.
Should the legislation regarding those agreements change as planned, the pre-agreements with Toney Watkins Company would make available to the project a $50,000 funding account for fees for work and will keep the account fully funded.
A larger version of the blueprint can be viewed online at duquoin.com. A full copy of the 26 page document regarding the project is also available on the site in pdf format.
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