Wood River City Council Meeting
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WOOD RIVER – City Councilman Bill Dettmers has accused Wood River city officials of making unauthorized payments under Tax Increment Financing (TIF) agreements and much more.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Dettmers requested that a special meeting be held next Monday, Feb. 24, 2025 for the purpose of discussing an independent investigation and forensic audit of the City of Wood River.
“The purpose of the request will be for four different things: unauthorized distributions; failure to enforce contracts, ordinances, and policies; unauthorized disclosure of confidential information; and public documents storage and retrieval,” Dettmers said.
“Unfortunately, the city has been making one if not more unauthorized payments to entities, and this has to do with the TIF,” he continued. “Based upon the information I have, it’s quite possible that more payments have been made that were not authorized.”
Dettmers cited previous TIF agreements he voted against, claiming certain conditions of the agreements were not met. He also alleged sections of previous contracts were altered without the council’s permission, among many other policies and procedures that were allegedly not followed.
In a debate that ensued with Dettmers, Councilman Jeremy Plank said the city has actually been over-complicating the TIF process for small business owners.
“The idea’s to make it simpler – we want small businesses to have a simple process that’s understandable,” Plank said. “We should be more flexible. We don’t need extra micromanagement from the city’s level – if they provide the documentation that they paid for those capital expenditures, we should be good.
“Why are we putting extra stuff on there? Why are we being heavy-handed as government? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Plank concluded. “We should be simple, and we should be pro-business, not anti-business.”
A full recording of the Feb. 18, 2025 Wood River City Council meeting is available at the top of this story or on Riverbender.com/video.
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