Monthly Archives: April 2005

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Journal Star and the Water Buyout

You gotta love the Journal Star’s editorial today about the water buyout (read it here).  Essentially, their strategy is to vote it down for now, then use the next five years to figure out a way to get the appraisal system to come up with the same figure the city wants to pay for the water company.  Once that’s accomplished, push it through again.  Should be able to own it by 2008 that way.
 
Nice strategy, but perhaps a little too overt.  I wonder why they’re tipping their hand….
 
The funniest part of the story was this line, though:  “And did we mention that four out of five voters in the recent referendum told the city not to buy? The council should not ignore that advice.”
 
Ha ha!!  No, no, by all means, don’t ignore it now — wait five years and then ignore it!

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1. The I-74 Overhaul

Yes, of course this would be number one.  I’m not denying that the expressway needed some improvements.  Some of those exit ramps were very dangerous and needed to be reconstructed. 
 
But isn’t this overhaul a bit excessive?  I mean, do we really need six to eight lanes of traffic through Peoria? 
 
It’s almost like they said, “hey, what needs to be done to improve I-74 through Peoria?” 
 
And someone answered, “well, we need to fix those short ramps — especially that dangerous one by the bridge.” 
 
“Yeah, yeah, good!  Anything else?” 
 
“Well, it would really help traffic flow to put in a new interchange at Sterling by the mall.”
 
“Excellent, yes, that would be a good idea.  Anything else?”
 
“Hmmm…. no, not really….”
 
“Okay, well, what do we estimate that will cost?”
 
“We figure about $200 million.”
 
[Furrowed brow] “Well, we’ve got $460 million appropriated…  we’re going to have to come up with some more upgrades.  What else can we do?”
 
“Well… uh…. we could add more lanes — and a tunnel — and, and, let’s see how many roads and ramps we can get to intersect at Knoxville — that would be fun!”
 
And away it went!

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9 Most Irritating Traffic Situations in Peoria

9.  Mt. Hawley Road between Knoxville and Giles Lane.  Why does the city let the school completely close the road during the entire school day?  Isn’t that a bit of overkill, considering they have a flashing light and a crossing guard?  Besides, are the kids trapsing back and forth across the street every minute of the school day?  If they’re only crossing between classes, why not just close the road for five minutes each hour during the switch? 
 
8.  Glen Oak at OSF.  Why can’t you go straight south here and intersect with Knoxville?  Why, when you’re almost to the Knoxville intersection, do you have to turn right and go through an OSF maze, then work your way back?
 
7.  Speed humps on Prospect Road between Peoria Heights and Knoxville.  Give me a break.  Can you see this happening in the first district?  What a waste of taxpayer money for a bunch of rich crybabies.  There are worse problems in this city than someone going a breakneck 40 mph past your mansion.
 
6.  Sheridan Village entrance on Sheridan Road.  If you’re traveling north on Sheridan and want to turn left into Sheridan Village, there’s a blinking red arrow, which everyone knows is the same as a stop sign.  You stop, check for on-coming traffic, and then proceed through the intersection if it is safe.  But, surprise!  This blinking red arrow will, without warning, turn into a solid red arrow, which means that you have to stop until you receive a green arrow.  While the light is a solid red, the exiting traffic from the Sheridan Village parking lot has a green light.  So, you drive up to the light, see that it’s a blinking red arrow, and stop.  You see that the cars exiting Sheridan Village are stopped, and you see that on-coming traffic is far enough away that you can proceed safely through the intersection, so you start to go.  But suddenly, the cars exiting SV start through the intersection at the same time — you slam on the brakes thinking they’re running a red light, but surprise!  You’re the one who ran the red light.  It changed to a solid red arrow while you were looking at the on-coming traffic.  Sucker!
 
5.  People who don’t know how to navigate four-way stops.  I was behind someone today who apparently was never going to go until there were no other cars at the other stop signs.  Or he may have thought everyone was supposed to go one at a time in clockwise fashion, and got confused when cars traveling opposite each other went through the intersection at the same time.
 
4.  People who don’t know how to merge into traffic.  This is legendary, but must be included on the list.  One more time, people:  you don’t slow down on merge ramps and stop at the end of them, waiting for an opening to pull out into traffic.  If they wanted you to do that, they would have made it a T-intersection.  To use a merge lane, you speed up to the highway speed and gradually blend into the traffic.  Hence the word “merge.”  Look it up. 
 
3.  People who don’t know how to let other people merge into traffic.  It should just be common courtesy that if you’re in the right lane and you see someone preparing to merge into your lane, move over to the left lane.  I can’t tell you how many times I have to slow down in a merge lane because some numbskull is pacing me in the right lane when there’s absolutely no one to his left. 
 
2.  People who refuse to stop when they clearly are supposed to.  This covers a whole bunch of infractions that I didn’t want to split up into separate beefs.  But you’ve seen them — the green arrow is turning yellow, then red, but the people keep on turning.  They follow the last car like they’re part of a funeral procession and entitled to go through even though they no longer have an arrow.  Sometimes two or three cars will do this.  Same for running red lights.  They see the car in front of them enter the intersection on a yellow light, so they follow, even though when they enter the intersection, the light is red.  There are many variations of this.
 
And the number one most irritating traffic situation is….  see next post…..

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He’s Here!

No sooner had I sent my last message, then my wife went into labor.  Our son was born at 4:50 a.m. today (April 17).  So, no blogging for now….  I’ll get back to it in a couple of days!

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Thanks to the Peoria Pundit!

Many thanks to Bill Dennis for his post on about my new blog.  That was very kind!  His site was my inspiration for starting my own.  It just looked like fun.
 
Thanks to everyone else who welcomed me, too.  I’ve enjoyed all the Peoria blogs I’ve been reading recently!
 
I should mention that in my bio it says that I have three children — which is true — however, the third one is still in utero and due to be born anytime now (he was due Thursday).  So, if I suddenly fall silent, it’s because I’m in the hospital with my wife welcoming my son into the world.  My other two children are daughters, so we’re excited about having our first boy!

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Nude Dancing Advocates Keep Writing

The Journal Star has been getting a lot of letters to the editor berating Sandra Fritz and the Citizens for Community Values because they sponsored an advisory referendum asking whether nude dancing should be banned in Peoria (over 60% of voters voted in favor of a ban). 
 
The argument generally is along the lines of “I don’t personally go to strip clubs, of course, but Fritz and her group are trying to limit other people’s freedom and she shouldn’t be telling others how to live their lives,” “no one is forcing anyone to go to a strip club,” “the first amendment guarantees the right to nude dancing,” etc., etc. 
 
The problem is, the Supreme Court has consistently found in favor of municipalities who restrict or ban nude dancing, finding that these kinds of laws do not violate the first amendment to the Constitution (e.g., Barnes v. Glen Theatre, City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M.).  It’s a legitimate right of a community to uphold moral standards and protect the community against secondary effects of sexually-oriented businesses (such as prostitution, sexual assaults, and other criminal activity).  Thus, the panicky, strip-club non-attenders-yet-principled-defenders can rest easy knowing that curtailing nude dancing won’t infringe on their right to write letters to the editor.
 
And, I’m just curious… when are we going to hear from the strip-club supporters who actually go to strip clubs?  Surely they’re not too ashamed to speak for themselves in the debate.

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Peoria Chiefs On A Roll

Chiefs lose again tonight, 14-2 against Wisconsin.

Sure am glad they brought in the Cubs affiliate…. All that winning the last couple years was a real drag. This is more like it!

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Yeah, that was me

In case you’re wondering if I was the “Chris Summers” mentioned in Phil Luciano’s column today, yes, that was me. He did a really good job on the article. The “pal” I was out with was my wife and two other couples from our church, but he didn’t know that. Still, it was kinda funny — I’ve been calling my wife “pal” all day, and she’s been calling me “buddy.”

My wife called Flat Top Grill to let them know about the problem with the sales tax, but they didn’t believe her and were rather condescending toward her over the phone. So, that’s when I wrote to Phil. Funny how they changed their tune when the media called. It’s too bad they didn’t just listen to their customers. They could’ve saved themselves the embarrassment and a $2,000 charitable donation. Not that we wanted to embarrass them — we just wanted them to charge the right amount of sales tax, and didn’t know who else to call since they wouldn’t listen to us.

But, I have to give them credit for that donation nonetheless. That was a really classy thing to do. And, really, they have good food and good service. I’d go back, but I’m afraid they’ll recognize me. 🙂 I recommend it to anyone else, though.

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Disgruntled Cardinals Fan

Well, the Peoria Chiefs baseball team has switched affiliations from the Cardinals to the Cubs this year. You can tell they’re a Cubs affiliate now because they lost their season opener, their home opener, and last night they made four errors.

I don’t understand why, when you’ve got a franchise that won the Midwest League a couple years ago and was in the playoffs last year, you would want to switch affiliations. It was only about four years ago that Albert Pujols was playing in Peoria. Do they really think that being a Cubs affiliate will bring more people to the ballpark?

Maybe they’re right. We’ll see. Cubs fans do show a propensity to root for their team even if they never win a game, a pennant, or a series. So maybe that will rub off on Chiefs fans. It will certainly take the pressure off, if they can draw a crowd without having to win anymore.