Marion mayor calls for ‘a new transparency’

MARION - Residents should have had the chance to vote on major city projects and spending, the city's new mayor said Tuesday.

“We should have had public referendums on the Seventh Avenue corridor project, the $12 million police station, and this $20 million bond issue,” said Allen “Snooks” Bouska during the Marion State of the City luncheon at Longbranch Convention Center.

Bouska, 66, who took office Jan. 2 with three new council members, was referring to action taken at his first full council meeting Jan. 5. The council approved a land swap for a site and up to $12 million in bonding for a station to replace the present 1983 structure. It also approved $14.2 million in bonds for ongoing street and sewer improvements, including work related to the city's Central Corridor project.

Bouska criticized that timing in his call for “a new transparency in city government.”

Bouska, a critic of the corridor proposal to shift traffic on Marion's east side from Seventh to Sixth Avenue, said city planners should instead keep most traffic on Seventh to preserve businesses there.

“There's plenty of time for all parties to come to an agreement” on a plan, said Bouska, whose family operates the Dairy Queen on Seventh Avenue.

Despite the new spending, Bouska said, “your current property tax bill in Marion is less than it was six years ago.”

Opening his 20-minute presentation with a quick recap of this year's major city projects, Bouska then donned a folded-newspaper “crazy Czech crash helmet that I'm going to use today to deflect all negative remarks.”

“A lot of you don't know anything about me,” he said. “This is what you get.”

Bouska said he'll continue to work at his family's Dairy Queen while mayor.

“Everyone will know where to find me,” he said. “I look forward to coming back here another eight times” over two terms.