The Journal Star is reporting that Dick Versace has dropped out of the race for the 18th Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Ray LaHood.
Wow. Does this mean there will be no Democratic candidate in the race? Or will someone else be appointed to run by the Democratic party?
I’ve got the date saved on my calendar: Saturday, January 26. That’s the day the city will be bringing in Lee Einsweiler from Code Studio in Austin, Texas, to do a refresher course on the city’s new Land Development Code that he helped create. John Sharp has an article about it in the paper today:
A meeting is scheduled for Jan. 26 to bring a variety of city officials together and train them on specifics of the LDC. Members of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals, Zoning Commission, Planning Commission, Historic Preservation Commission, the Heart of Peoria Commission and Renaissance Park Commission will gather with city officials for a one-day training seminar focusing on hypothetical scenarios and decisions, using the LDC, that could emerge from them.
There’s only one crucial group missing here: the city council. I think all council members should also attend this session — especially the district council members from the first, second, and third districts. I’m hearing rumblings of more possible “exceptions” from not only the Land Development Code, but the form-based codes that were created for the Warehouse District, Sheridan-Loucks Triangle, Prospect Road Corridor, and Main Street Corridor. Not only are developers asking for exceptions, some council members are considering them.
If we make exceptions every time a developer comes and asks for it, then we’ve wasted a tremendous amount of time and money on these codes. Even if we get all the groups mentioned in Sharp’s article on board with the new codes, if the council compromises, it will be all for naught. That’s why I think it’s critical that they attend this training session.
Yes, I know they’re busy and already attend a lot of meetings. But this code affects 8,000 acres of Peoria. I think it’s important enough to warrant attendance by city decision-makers.
Late last year and early this year there was a lot of talk about IDOT and Amtrak doing a study on the feasibility of bringing passenger train service back to Peoria. At that time, it was estimated that the study would be completed by December 2007, or possibly early 2008 at the latest.
Yesterday, I e-mailed Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman George Weber to get an update on when that report would be available. He wrote, “The Peoria feasibility study will start sometime in early 2008. I don’t expect completion until Spring 2008.”
In a November e-mail to Mayor Ardis, he explained the reason the timeline had been pushed back. “Amtrak has been swamped with study requests since our success in the fall of 2006 and also has been busy responding to Federal legislative inquiries and requests for reports, hence the reason everything has been somewhat delayed.”
Peoria is in line to get its feasibility study after the Quad Cities study is completed. That study was due December 5, but has not yet been posted on the IDOT website.