Quincy construction company R.L. Brink Corp. was suspended by the Illinois Department of Transportation last week from working on road construction projects involving state funds for allegedly violating state responsible bidder requirements.

The company is accused of improperly classifying workers while bidding on construction projects in 2010 and 2011 in Brown, Adams and Hancock counties, as well as making false statements and submitting false records. Brink denies the claims.

Click here for the entire suspension notice from IDOT.

UPDATE (3 p.m. Wednesday): The amendments were not called before the committee. The committee is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. Thursday.

The Illinois House Executive Committee is scheduled to meet at 2:30 p.m. to discuss amendments to House Bill 3637. The amendments would cut revenues collected through the personal property replacement tax and distributed to various units of local government. The state distributed $1.401 billion last fiscal year.

Introduced by House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, the first amendment would divert $536 million to the Teachers’ Retirement System collected from the personal property replacement tax that school districts outside the city of Chicago would have received. Chicago Public Schools pay for the employer’s portion for teacher pensions.

The second amendment would take $982 million collected form the personal property replacement tax for all local governments except the city of Chicago, while the third amendment would divert the entire $1.4 billion money to teacher pensions.

In the state’s current fiscal year, the city was projected to receive $2.94 million while the county was projected at $1 million. Quincy Public Schools was budgeted for $4.49 million, according to projections from the Illinois Department of Revenue.

Quincy Mayor John Spring is expected to testify before the committee.

Coverage from The Herald-Whig can be found HERE.

Estimates on the revenues shared with local government and what was given in the 2011 fiscal year can be found HERE.

The Adams County Ambulance Department released its annual report Tuesday, which goes over all aspects of the department.

Some highlights include:

• The department had revenue of $2.951 million and $3.209 million in spending.

• Twenty-eight percent of patients using ambulance services provided payment through insurance or other private payments. That is a decrease from 41 percent in fiscal 2010. Among patients, 49 percent were covered by Medicare, a decrease from 53 percent a year earlier, and 13 percent were covered by Medicaid, more than doubling from 6 percent in 2010. The department received $67 for each Medicaid patient handled, much less than the cost of service.

• The introduction of a procedure called continuous positive airway pressure in March. The procedure is a method of respiratory ventilation that can be used for critically ill patients suffering from severe respiratory distress. It can eliminate the need for tracheal intubation and reduce the length of stays in critical care hospital units.

• A 25 percent increase in stroke responses, which could be attributed to a nationwide increase in stroke awareness.

• Adams County Paramedics and EMTs responded to 7,330 calls for service in 2011 with only 106 instances when it took more than 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

The demolition of the buildings on the north side of Broadway between Fourth and Fifth streets is not much of a surprise.

After the Bank of Quincy took possession of the property in October, bank officials said they were going to conduct an environmental study to see what needed to be done. Standing in the upper levels of the Kroc Center, one could see that it needed to be demolished.

Even if the property continues to remain vacant, it will look better than collapsed roofs.

No, it was not Quincyzilla who started the demolition.

The Quincy City Council will enter in executive session Monday night to “discuss ratification of Quincy Firefighters Local 63 collective negotiating agreement.”

If you recall, the city and the firefighters entered arbitration this summer to reach a new contract. The decision was announced before the council Nov. 14:

An arbitrator has ruled that Quincy firefighters should receive raises of 2 percent this year, 2.5 percent next year and 3 percent in the final year of a three-year contract that has yet to be finalized.
Quincy aldermen went into executive session for more than an hour Monday night to hear the details of the binding decision. The council made no votes after exiting the executive session.
Fire Chief Joe Henning said the raises were the only financial award firefighters received from the decision. The raises will be retroactive to April 30 when the one-year agreement with Firefighters Local 63 expired. The previous agreement had no general pay increase.

A few details were still being hashed out at the time.

Other action planned for Monday night is a resolution submitted by Alderman Mike Rein, R-4 in support of Concealed Carry. The resolution is similar to one approved by the Adams County Board in May and will be sent to Gov. Pat Quinn, Speaker of the House Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.

The resolution submitted by Alderman Mike Rein, R-5.

Nov. 21 Quincy City Council agenda

I had to hand it to these kids Saturday. I couldn’t believe how fast many of them could stack the cups.

For the record, I did attempt a 3x3x3. It wasn’t pretty.

The Lincoln Heritage Trail was dedicated Thursday in Washington Park. The trail, which traverses city streets, passes the 18 local wayside exhibits that mark areas with Lincoln significance.

Maps and brochures can be found throughout town, including the Lincoln-Douglas Debate Interpretive Center, the Villa Kathrine, City Hall, 730 Maine, Madison-Davis Bicycle Shop, 912 S. Eighth, and the Oakley-Lindsay Center.