Quote of the Day

May 25, 2008 C. J. Summers 5 Comments

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

–President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address,
January 20, 1981

Blogosphere, Radio

Ahl leaving WCBU, Peoria

May 23, 2008 C. J. Summers 2 Comments

Intrepid news director at WCBU 89.9 FM, Jonathan Ahl, has announced he will be leaving WCBU and the Peoria area to pursue another job opportunity. He hasn’t revealed where he’s going yet, but will keep us all updated on his blog.

It’s an exciting time for the Ahl family, but a huge loss to Peoria. Jonathan’s experience and professionalism have earned him a lot of well-deserved respect, and his absence from the local news media will leave an awfully big hole. I also consider Jonathan a friend, and so I’m sad on a personal level that he won’t be in the area anymore, and yet excited for him as he takes this new opportunity. Of course, he waited until after I made my annual pledge to the station to tell me he was leaving.

All my best to Jonathan, Anita, Tommy, and Lily.

Museum Block

Museum officials erase “Peoria”

May 23, 2008 C. J. Summers 35 Comments

In 2006, over 5,000 people participated in a poll to name the museum proposed for the old Sears block. Over 2,500 — over fifty percent — of those participants voted for “Peoria Riverfront Museum.” That would not be a big deal if there were only two names on the ballot, but there were five. In a five-way race, “Peoria Riverfront Museum” captured over half the total votes. It wasn’t a plurality; it was a majority.

There was no small amount of controversy over the naming of the museum. You may recall that the museum officials at first trotted out a series of ridiculous names (like “ExploraSphere” and “AMAZEum”), that were met with scorn by the public. None of their original batch of names had “Peoria” in the title because it supposedly “didn’t test well.” Yet, when public pressure was put on the museum folks to reconsider, the name that got the most votes was “Peoria Riverfront Museum.”

Now WCBU’s Jonathan Ahl reports that museum officials have decided that the public’s choice for a name is “too long,” so they will be shortening it to “Riverfront Museum.”

Too long? Based on what? It’s shorter than “Discovery Depot Children’s Museum” and even “Galesburg Railroad Museum.” What about the “WonderLab Museum of Health, Science & Technology” in Bloomington? Or the “Metropolitan Museum of Art” in New York? Or the “Museum of Science and Industry” in Chicago? Do they seriously expect us to believe that “Peoria Riverfront Museum” is too long?

And even if it were too long, why take “Peoria” out of the name? Why not shorten it to “Peoria Museum”? My guess is the real reason they want to strip “Peoria” out of the name to make it easier for them to pitch it as a “regional” musuem, and thus (they hope) get surrounding cities and corporations to donate.

The problem is not the name. The problem is the design and the cost. Rather than changing the plans to a more urban design — which would be easier and less expensive to build, and which Peorians wanted in the first place — they’re going to change the name. That name was the only thing on which the public got what it wanted. And now it’s gone, too.

Of course, they still want your tax money regardless.

Peoria Public Schools

Parents present alternatives to shortening school day

May 22, 2008 C. J. Summers 28 Comments

Four parents representing the District 150 Watch group met today with Peoria Public Schools Superintendent Ken Hinton to present their alternatives to shortening the school day. You can read their recommendations here (6-page PDF file).

The document was put together as the result of a lot of collaboration, but was ultimately written by Chris Setti, a Whittier Primary School parent and Six Sigma Black Belt for the City of Peoria. It’s respectful, well-documented, positive and constructive. It presents several ways that the Board of Education could provide additional common prep time for teachers as well as cut expenses, all without shortening the school day.

Of course, no decisions were made yet as a result of this meeting. Hinton is meeting with PTO presidents and primary school principals right now, presumably to hear their concerns. If you haven’t already, please write to your school board representatives and ask them to reverse their decision to cut the school day; encourage them to take seriously the alternatives presented to Mr. Hinton today.

Here is the contact information for all District 150 Board of Education members:

David Gorenz
President (Dist. 3)
(309) 688-2824
david.gorenz@psd150.org

Martha M. Ross
Vice-President (Dist. 1)
(309) 674-2574
martha.ross@psd150.org

Linda Butler
(Dist. 2)
(309) 688-7912
linda.butler@psd150.org

Rachael A. Parker
(Dist. 2)
(309) 688-5990
rachael.parker@psd150.org

Mary Spangler
(Dist. 3)
(309) 691-1752
mary.spangler@psd150.org

Jim Stowell
(Dist. 3)
(309) 692-4128
jim.stowell@psd150.org

Debbie Wolfmeyer
(Dist. 3)
(309) 681-9567
debbie.wolfmeyer@psd150.org

To e-mail all board members at once, click here.

City of Peoria

New Peoria logo forum to be held

May 21, 2008 C. J. Summers 23 Comments

From a press release:

The City of Peoria will hold a community forum on June 2, 2008, at 6:00 p.m., to give the community the opportunity to have input about a new logo for our City. The forum will be held at the Peoria Civic Center in Room 220.

Our objective is to develop an overall identity theme linked to the City itself, and to provide consistency and clarity in the way the City communicates with the public through its graphics, signage, advertising, and marketing. The common theme and graphic image would better define and communicate the City’s assets and benefits of its programs and services.

The Mayor and City Council Members believe that an important aspect of designing a new logo is having input from the entire community. The City wants to know what you think. We want to know what you believe are the important qualities about our City and the things we should consider when the logo is designed.

We have also designed a web survey that we encourage you to take prior to the June 2nd forum. It will only take a few minutes to complete and will provide us with important information to use in the designing of the new logo. The web link is http://logopeoria.com/.

The forum is open to the community and everyone is encouraged to attend.

The City Council approved funding for the design of a new City logo in March, 2008.

City of Peoria, Streets

Signs or Designs?

May 21, 2008 C. J. Summers 18 Comments

Speeding cars The city’s Traffic Commission is considering lowering the speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour in residential neighborhoods and subdivisions. The cost would be about $200,000 to purchase new signs.

It’s hard to argue against a 25-mph speed limit in residential areas. I don’t have any objection to lowering the speed limit, provided the cost can be spread out by phasing in the changes over a few years. It certainly would be safer, assuming people actually drive slower. The arguments against this effort is that people will ignore the signs (like they do now, it’s argued), thus it won’t be the most effective use of $200,000. They may have a point.

I believe the speeding problem is systemic, and that’s why signs are believed to have little or no effect. To really get people to slow down, some fundamental changes in road design are needed.

When you build a road that has wide, multiple traffic lanes capable of accommodating speeds of 40 or 50 miles per hour, guess what you’re going to get? That’s right: people driving 40 or 50 miles per hour. It doesn’t matter what the sign says; people are going to drive up to the limit that’s comfortable given the road’s design.

Take Knoxville between War Memorial Drive and downtown, for instance: Five lanes (most of the way), 35-mph speed limit. And do you ever see anyone driving 35 miles per hour? Sure you do — you can’t miss them. They’re the ones getting passed by the rest of the motorists who are doing at least 45, if not 50.

This is true in residential areas as well. If you have wide collector streets that can easily handle 40- to 45-mph traffic, that’s what you’re going to see, despite the speed limit signs saying 30 or 25. The roads are wide in the mistaken belief that wide streets equal safer streets. But the inverse is actually true: narrower streets produce naturally lower speeds and end up being safer.

This is the theory behind “road diets.” You can read about it in this PDF report by Dan Burden and Peter Lagerwey. They write:

Nationwide, engineers are putting roads on “diets,” helping them lose lanes and width. In the process formerly “fat” streets often become leaner, safer, and more efficient. They become multi-modal and more productive. In many cases these former “warrior” roadways are tamed and turned into “angels.”

Often these changed roads set the stage for millions or megamillions of dollars in new commercial and residential development. The change can increase value of existing properties. In some cases costs of reconstructing roadways are repaid in as little as one year through increased sales tax or property tax
revenue.

The “Road Diets” report focuses on reducing arterial roadways. However, narrower streets (in concert with other calming measures, such as on-street parking) have been shown to reduce speeds and make roadways safer in general, as this report from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) shows.

To effect change in this area, the city’s subdivision ordinance would need to be amended, since that is where the design standards for street widths and on-street parking are codified (Municipal Code, Appendix A, Article V, Part I). Until changes are made to the way we build our roads, speeding is going to continue to be a problem, no matter how many signs we put up.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Library plans taking shape

May 21, 2008 C. J. Summers 10 Comments

Lincoln Branch of Peoria Public Library The Library Board is ready to ask the City Council next Tuesday to approve the sale of $35 million in bonds to pay for upgrades to Peoria’s library system, including building a new branch in far north Peoria.

You may have heard the library’s director Ed Szynaka on the radio recently giving an update on where the library is in the process. It’s been a long year. The library has completed the programming phase of the process, and now they’re working on negotiating a site for the north branch. Negotiations will be more meaningful if they are able to talk real money, which is why they want the council to okay the bond issuance.

I got a chance to talk to Gary Sandberg, City Council liaison to the Library Board for this project. Everyone knows the library board had a couple of missteps early in the process, but Gary got them to agree to go through a deliberate and open process.

He showed me how they developed criteria for what features a new library site would need, and then went out and found sites that met the criteria to varying degrees. They put all that data in a matrix and ranked the sites by how well they met the criteria. The most favored site before this process (old K’s Merchandise building) came in third or fourth. The top two sites identified, as mentioned in the paper today, were the old Festival Foods store on Knoxville in Northpoint shopping center, and a greenfield site just north of Route 6 on the west side of Allen Road, behind the new Sud car dealership. I was pleased to see the sites were selected on a rational and objective basis.

But that’s not the end of the story. Next comes cost. Just because a site meets the criteria doesn’t mean that a fair price will be able to be negotiated for it. The asking price for the Festival Foods site is approximately $4 million. The Sud site is $5.50 per square foot developed (i.e., with roads, utilities, etc. built out to the property line). The Library Board will be trying to negotiate a lower price. The more they have to spend for land, the less they have to spend on construction.

The Festival Foods site is terribly overpriced. In fact, the owner of Festival Foods reportedly had been asking a little less than $2 million for the site before the library showed interest. It has certainly sat vacant long enough while other big box stores have been passing it by, searching for greener pastures (literally) farther north. Fortunately, they’re not the only site the library is considering.

This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I would prefer a standalone building for this project, which in this case would most likely mean a greenfield development on the Sud property. The reason is that this is a civic building, and the architecture of civic buildings is symbolic. It symbolizes the civilization of a city. When you put a library in a strip mall, it says something about your community’s values, or at least about how much your community values (a) libraries, and (b) civic architecture.

Look at the other libraries in the system. Consider the Lincoln Branch. Here, you have a Carnegie library building proudly placed in the middle of a civic square. It’s inspiring and set apart from the surrounding architecture. You know immediately that this is someplace special. It’s not a title loan place or a pizza joint. It’s a civic building. It is important. The architecture and setting reinforce that importance.

Now I realize that not every library is going to look like a Carnegie library building. That’s not my point. My point is that it’s distinguishable. The McClure branch, which is more modest architecturally, is nevertheless a distinguishable and inspiring civic building. That’s what we should be shooting for in the north end, too.

The paper says the cost of the bonds to homeowners would be “about $50 per $100,000 of assessed property value a year.” That may be, or it may be lower. Because of the way the economy is, the city may be able to get an even lower rate for the bonds; instead of $0.15 per $100 assessed value, it may only be $0.13, in which case the cost to taxpayers would only be about $43 per $100,000 of assessed property a year.

Also, it should be noted that the $35 million in bonds isn’t just for a new north branch. Only about $11 million is going toward that. The $35 million is also going to triple the size of the Lincoln branch (they’re going to build a large addition), completely remodel the Main branch (also close to $11 million), and expand the Lakeview branch as well.

*Lincoln branch picture courtesy of PeoriaIllinoisan, via his Name This Peoria Landmark blog.

Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star gets new online look

May 21, 2008 C. J. Summers 7 Comments

If you look up the Journal Star’s website today, you’ll notice something different. They have completely revamped it. It now looks like other Gatehouse Media newspaper websites, like the Galesburg Register-Mail.

It looks nice. It’s got a good, clean layout, good multimedia features, and is easy to navigate. It also loads faster. In short, all the things the Journal Star said would happen, happened.

My only complaint, though minor, is that I used to be able to easily look at an index of all the stories for a particular day by typing in something like “pjstar.com/stories/052008” — this would give me all the stories for May 20, 2008. You could put any recent date in and get all the stories from that day. I don’t see any way to do something similar on this new site. Perhaps that won’t be necessary with this new layout anyway.

Check it out and see what you think.

Peoria Public Schools

School Board should get used to hearing from parents

May 20, 2008 C. J. Summers 23 Comments

Peoria Public Schools logo The District 150 Board of Education again listened to parents express their grievances about the decision to shorten the school day by 45 minutes. The school board should get used to hearing these comments; they can expect to hear them at every meeting until this ill-advised decision is rescinded.

Superintendent Ken Hinton had the first word as he informed the board he would be meeting with parents to talk about alternatives:

[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Hinton.mp3]

That meeting will take place Thursday. Ideally, this would be all it takes to get the district to reverse the decision. If this does the trick, I’ll be ecstatic, presuming the shock doesn’t kill me.

Hinton is hanging his hat on the idea of providing a common prep period for teachers. The thing is, he never explains how or why that is tied to shortening the school day. It’s a red herring. I thought it was funny when he talked about the “highest producing countries” (presumably producing well-educated students) having “three important aspects” of their success. He only mentioned one: common prep time. What are the other two? Something tells me one of them is longer academic learning time.

Notable quotes from Hinton’s speech: “My mind is always open.” “I’m more than open.”

Here are some other comments from concerned parents and teachers:

Mimi McDonald:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-McDonald.mp3]

Diane Vespa:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Vespa.mp3]

Terry Knapp:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Knapp.mp3]

Bill Luthy:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Luthy.mp3]

Hedy Elliott-Gardner:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Elliott-Gardner.mp3]

My favorite quote of the night was from Elliott-Gardner, who is a teacher at Garfield school. After Superintendent Hinton’s big speech about the research-supported importance of common prep time for teachers, Elliott-Gardner reminded the board that Loucks-Edison has had common prep time for teachers for the past ten years, and the school board voted to close it.

As far as research goes, I’d like to submit this 2007 report from the American Educational Research Association for your consideration. Citing peer-reviewed, published studies, it has this to say:

Research on instructional time has consistently found that extended time has the most powerful impact on learning in schools serving low-performing students.

Don’t be fooled. Cutting the day by 45 minutes does not simply remove dead allocated time. It removes academic learning time. It reduces fine arts education. It’s a bad decision and needs to be reversed.

2008 Campaign

Darin LaHood pizza party at Agatucci’s

May 20, 2008 C. J. Summers Leave a comment