Some Peoria residents expressed doubt and distrust as to how the city will spend funds from the Southtown TIF District at a town hall meeting Thursday night.
Many residents feel the city has misspent funds ever since the Southtown Tax Increment Finance District was established in 1978.
The Southtown TIF expires in 2013.
Among many suggestions, most people at the meeting agreed TIF funds should be spent to help reopen the George Washington Carver Center.
"We're going to make it work, because we need it," says The Carver Center's Second Vice President Ronda Guyton. "The services that we have and provide are needed so we have to re-open and people realize that. So if you noticed the applause we got, because they miss Carver Center, it's not about basketball. We serve so many other areas."
Guyton says the plan is to reopen the center this April.
That may be right in time for the community center to receive some of the estimated $2.6 million left in the TIF funds.
