Moline mayor outlines concerns about WIU after meeting left her ‘genuinely disappointed’
By Rachel Davis
Mayor Stephanie Acri released a statement Tuesday night outlining her concerns with Western Illinois University after a meeting with its president.
Here is her message in full:
Statement from Mayor Stephanie Acri
March 2nd 2021 Meeting with Western Illinois University
This afternoon, I met for a second time with Dr. Guiyou Huang, the President of Western Illinois University (WIU) to discuss its plans to engage with Moline and the Quad Cities. I hoped that WIU would bring new and innovative plans to the table. Since 2004, we have heard promises about how WIU would invest in the Quad Cities Campus and how that investment would benefit Moline. Sadly, today I was presented with a continuation of the promises that WIU has failed to deliver. I left the meeting genuinely disappointed.
WIU promised that we would have a student population of 3,000 on-campus students. Today, the Spring 2021 enrollment is 168 with just four freshmen.
WIU has engaged in a pattern and practice of turning away opportunities to grow the Quad Cities campus and expand its relations with Moliners.
+ WIU committed to the RiverTech Corridor Plan and then slowly walked away.
+ It accepted the idea of TIF funding and a developer’s investment to create residential housing for students, never promoted it, and walked away from the project.
+ WIU rejected a gift from the Robert E. Bartlett Family Foundation to construct a state of the art performing arts center on campus.
+ In 2016, WIU committed to being the state’s partner for the Procurement Technical Assistance Center for the Quad Cities region. In 2020, WIU backed out of its commitment, leaving Quad Cities businesses who rely on these technical services without a local contact to advise them on women and minority business certification, government contracts, or subcontracts to prime private contractors.
+ The Moline Foundation gave WIU a grant to develop a program to recruit high school students to pursue degrees in agriculture as a feeder program to address gaps identified by local industry leaders. After 2 years of missing various benchmarks, WIU abandoned the program, kept some money for administrative expenses and just returned more than 80% of the grant back to the Foundation.
Time and again, WIU made promises and then broke them.
Today, WIU asked for more time to make things right with Moline. I informed the president that Moline could not afford any more time to wait. As Moline looks to recover from the global pandemic’s devastating economic impact and prepare for development following completion of the I-74 Bridge project, we can’t be led down a path of broken promises for one more day. My number one concern is what is best for our community. The result needs to be a true education partner at that Campus that is as committed to our community as we will be to it and the students it serves.
