General News

Reza Aslan to speak in Peoria April 29

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From my inbox:

On Thursday, April 29, the Peoria Area World Affairs Council will host Reza Aslan, the internationally acclaimed author and media consultant on issues of religion and politics. The author will sign copies of his books, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age.

Since the attacks of 9/11 on the United States, news of terrorism and the fighting between religious factions, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, have given more weight to Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations.” According to Reza Aslan, this is not the case.

“What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West,” writes in his book, No god but God. “The West is merely a bystander — an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.”

Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, Abraham’s Vision, an interfaith peace organization, and PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world.

The presentation on April 29 will begin at 5:00 pm with a reception and book-signing at Barrack’s Cater Inn, 1224 Pioneer Parkway in Peoria. Dinner will be served at 6:00 pm, followed by Aslan’s presentation. Tickets for the dinner and presentation are $35 for the general public, and $15 for the presentation only. Discounts are available.

For more information, please contact the Peoria Area World Affairs Council, (309) 677-2454 or www.pawac.org.

City Council, City of Peoria

Firefly failure prompts City to hire outside counsel

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According to a Request for Council Action on Tuesday’s City Council agenda, “Firefly’s bankruptcy filing, and the City’s and County’s guarantee of a loan from National City (now PNC) Bank to Firefly have given rise to a complex legal situation. It has been deemed advisable to retain outside counsel with experience in this type of complex bankruptcy.”

The request asks the Council to approve hiring Thomas O’Neal of the law firm Westervelt, Johnson, Nicoll & Keller for $255 per hour. Here’s your trivia fact for the day: Tom O’Neal sought to fill a judicial vacancy on the Third District Appellate Court in 2006 after the retirement of Judge Kent Slater of Macomb, but lost the Democratic primary. He’s also been recognized by the state and county for his pro bono legal representation of the poor.

City Council, City of Peoria

Council retreat rescheduled for May 5

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The Peoria City Council retreat was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 24, but was rescheduled at the request of City Manager Scott Moore. “I had asked the Council to consider rescheduling the retreat due to several of their colleagues having a conflict and would not be attending the session,” Moore explained. “I felt it would be important that all the Council members attend the session to weigh in on the budget and establish key strategies for staff and I to work on this upcoming budget season.”

So the new date is Wednesday, May 5, according to Moore. The time has not yet been announced, but weeknight special meetings usually start at or around 5 p.m. Presumably the agenda will be similar to the one released for Saturday’s meeting:

ITEM NO. 1 WELCOME – Mayor Ardis and City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 2 MACRO-TRENDS – Dr. Aaron Buchko

ITEM NO. 3 CITY TRENDS – City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 4 CONFRONTING THE “BRUTAL REALITIES” – Dr. Aaron Buchko

ITEM NO. 5 BREAKOUT #1 – Key Strategic Issues

ITEM NO. 6 BREAKOUT #2 – Addressing the Issues: Guidelines

ITEM NO. 7 BREAKOUT #3 – Addressing the Issues: Action Items

BREAK

ITEM NO. 8 STRATEGIC ISSUES: Priorities, Policies, and Budget Implications

ITEM NO. 9 CITY/COUNCIL DISCUSSION – Budgetary Issues

ITEM NO. 10 WRAP UP and NEXT STEPS – Mayor Ardis and City Manager Scott Moore

ITEM NO. 11 ADJOURNMENT

Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools

Mayoral appointment of school board members has big hurdle

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Never waste a good scandal. On the heels of today’s District 150 embarrassment — Mary Davis’s indictment — the Journal Star is reporting that Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis is thinking about exploring how he could have more influence over the district by appointing school board members:

He says he’s looking at larger cities such as Chicago, New York and Boston for inspiration to initiate change here that would intertwine his job as mayor with the decision-making of the school district. […] “It’s an interesting concept that I believe is worthy for some consideration,” Ardis continued. “From what I’ve read, the mayors who have been in the position to do that have seen success. It’s something I’m interested in. And I think the community is interested in learning more about it, too.”

Whether or not you think this is a good idea, it may be a moot point. Despite the relatively simple process the paper describes for changing the way school board members are chosen — “To enact such a change would require a public referendum or legislation approved by the General Assembly” — in reality it will be much more difficult.

The reason is because school board elections in Peoria are not governed by state law, but rather by a 1987 Class Action Voting Rights lawsuit settlement. That settlement did away with at-large elections of school board members, replacing it with a three-ward system and giving specific instructions on how board members would be chosen from each of those wards.

The Final Consent Decree clearly states in paragraph 4, “The Election Commission of the City of Peoria and the Peoria County Clerk are authorized and ordered to comply with the terms of this Consent Decree and to conduct elections in accordance with the terms of this Consent Decree.” It further states in paragraph 6, “This Court retains jurisdiction of this case for purposes of supervising the implementation of this Consent Decree.”

In other words, if you want to change how school board members are chosen, you’re going to have to get the new system approved by the court, and that could mean getting surviving litigants — including the school district itself — to agree to the changes. You can bet that mayoral appointment of school board members would be hotly contested.

Surely Mayor Ardis knows this challenge is out there. This same Voting Rights lawsuit settlement changed the City Council’s makeup as well. It established both the number of at-large councilmen (five instead of three) and the bullet voting system for at-large elections. At least one group has met in recent years to explore doing away with the bullet voting system in the City, but so far there has been no public action toward that goal.

Crime, Peoria Public Schools

McArdle’s Revenge: Mary Davis busted

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Via the Journal Star:

Mary C. Davis, principal at Charles Lindbergh Middle School for five years before moving into central administration in 2008 to head up all the district’s principals, was charged Friday with 16 felony counts of official misconduct and theft. … If convicted, she faces up to seven years in prison. Davis was ordered to appear in court on May 19.

She’s not convicted yet, of course, but the State’s Attorney has certainly been taking his time building his case. The prosecutor’s office began investigating her last fall after Lindbergh principal Julie McArdle was fired. McArdle alleged that she was fired out of retaliation for blowing the whistle on Davis. She subsequently sued the district over it. That suit also makes allegations against other district officials; it will be interesting to see what effect the outcome of Davis’s case has on McArdle’s.

Census 2010, City of Peoria, Peoria County

Census Update 4-23-2010

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At the official Census 2010 website, you can create a map showing the mail participation rate as of the current date. You can see the rate by county, city, all the way down to census tract, and you can compare participation rates. Here’s the status of five cities as of today:

There’s a friendly competition going on between the mayors of Peoria and Springfield to see who will get a higher participation rate. Springfield is winning, but the stakes are pretty low. The losing mayor has to wear the lapel pin of the winning mayor’s city and issue a proclamation congratulating the winning city. Big deal. If they were really serious about this, the loser would have to do something more humiliating, like have his head shaved, or be put in a dunk tank while the winning mayor pulls the lever.

Within Peoria, the participation rates are higher north of McClure, and lower south of McClure. South Peoria has a 55% to 65% response rate. Moss Bradley area: 66%. The Uplands/Arbor District/Bradley University area: 68%. The Rolling Acres area: 83%. Edgewild/Mt. Hawley area: 87%. Overall, as the image above shows, Peoria is currently has a lower response rate than they did in the 2000 Census.

The participation rate for all of Peoria County as of today is 77%, which is higher than the national participation rate of 71%.

Education, State of Illinois

“Raise my taxes!” the people cried

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I never thought I’d see the day that I’d read this in the paper: “…the crowd turned to face the Capitol and shouted ‘Raise my taxes.'”

A rally of 15,000 people from throughout the state roared in anger and frustration outside the state Capitol on Wednesday, protesting budget cuts affecting education and social services…. Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, co-sponsored legislation in the Senate calling for increasing the state income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent.

That’s right, a crowd of Illinois residents, including many from Peoria, descended on Springfield yesterday imploring lawmakers to raise their taxes — and not a little bit, either. Going from three to five percent is a 67% increase.

Raising taxes in order to maintain/increase spending is not the answer. Instead, reforms should be made to the pension system, and programs like FamilyCare/AllKids need to be means-tested. There are undoubtedly some programs that could be cut completely.

If anyone thinks that more money is the answer, look no further than the lottery. Remember that? The lottery was going to help schools! Well, they kept their promise. The proceeds from that tax on the poor did go to schools, but then they reduced other spending on schools by a commensurate amount, so it was a zero-sum bargain — an accounting trick. They found other ways to use the net increase in funds, and it wasn’t to help schools.

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that people would ask to have their taxes raised. After all, they voted for an increase in their sales taxes here locally in the middle of a recession to pay for a non-essential boondoggle. I guess it really is better here — residents have money to burn.

City of Peoria, Streets

Main Street improvement plans moving ahead

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Earlier this month I published a memo from Public Works Director Dave Barber to Second District Council Person Barbara Van Auken outlining four options for improving safety along the West Main corridor east of University Street. The Bradley Scout has since published an update with some interesting information:

…Van Auken said Option 4 from the memorandum has been selected, and city council will not vote about it unless the issue becomes much more costly. She said the decision was up to those who use the area, which includes the West Bluff Council, area businesses and Bradley.

The selected option includes lowering the speed from 30 to 25 miles per hour from Bourland Avenue to University Street and painting three and five feet buffer zones between sidewalks and the road.

“This is a way to get people to start thinking about stopping driving so close to the curb,” Van Auken said. “Ideally what we want to do is expand the sidewalk wider in that area, but we don’t have the money for it right now.”

So the changes can be made without any vote from the City Council (I find this somewhat surprising), and the plan is to move ahead with implementing Option 4, which looks like this:

As you can see, one east-bound lane of Main Street is being removed, and the remaining lanes are being shifted slightly to the south, moving traffic away from the sidewalks on both the north and south sides of the street. No on-street parking is being added between University and Underhill (shown above), but there will be some parking added to the north side of the street between Underhill and Bourland. Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph for these two blocks is the weakest part of this plan, as it will have no practical effect. If the speed limit is 30 east of Bourland and west of University, the odds of someone slowing down for 700 feet is nil.

But I’m glad some action is finally going to be taken to start making Main Street pedestrian-friendly. Getting cars further away from the curb and eventually widening the sidewalks is a small step in the right direction. It has long been suggested that an easy and cheap way to begin is by simply restriping the roadway, and that appears to be what they’re finally going to do. The changes are being made thanks to a state grant of $48,491. (This is the new trend — we use state money for basic City services, and we use City debt to subsidize private development.)

There’s a lot more that needs to be done, but this is a good start.

Peoria Public Schools

District 150 continues to improvise plans for Lincoln, Central

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From the Journal Star:

Questions about eliminating four classrooms from an estimated $14 million to $17 million addition at Lincoln Middle School have led District 150 officials to step back and ask whether they should take up the project at all.

The plan was to build an addition onto Lincoln Middle School in order to transform it into a “birth through eighth” school, absorbing the students from the shuttered Kingman and Irving primary schools. Now the District 150 board wants to change or possibly eliminate that addition and use the funds to make more improvements to Peoria High School, which will be absorbing most of the students from Woodruff High School, which closes this Spring. There’s just one problem:

About $30 million in bonds have been sold, contracts signed and property deeded from District 150 to the Public Building Commission two months ago for about $24 million worth of work at Lincoln and Peoria High School. Both projects are expected to get under way this year.

So, this discussion is being held at the 11th hour — after the PBC approved the original plan, sold the bonds, and acquired the land. In other words, it may be too late to do anything about it.

This is what happens when you don’t have a clear plan and you’re working under a deadline to spend millions of dollars. The District 150 Board and former Superintendent Hinton had a five-year window of opportunity to use Public Building Commission money, and during that time they had trouble deciding on a plan. They vacillated on closing a high school for most of that time, finally voting to close it because the PBC supposedly required it in order to get the remaining $30 million available. That caused them to scramble to cobble together a plan to use that $30 million at the last minute. Now they’re having second thoughts about that plan.

Millions in taxpayer money about to be spent, primary school children wondering where they’re going to go to school next year, and the District is still trying to improvise a plan.

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC

What do Peoria, Denver, and Miami have in common?

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They’ve all won the 2010 Driehaus Award:

You are invited to join Mayor Jim Ardis for a news conference on April 20, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. to announce that the City of Peoria is one of three winners of the prestigious 2010 Driehaus Award for excellence in form-based coding from the Form-Based Code Institute. The other two winning cities are Miami, Florida, and Denver, Colorado. The news conference will be held at 601 SW Water Street at the corner of Water and Walnut Streets, adjacent to Kelleher’s Pub, which is the site currently being renovated for the corporate offices for Water Street Solutions. The award will be presented on May 20, 2010, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)-18 Conference.

I received this invitation because I’m a former Heart of Peoria Commission member.