Daily Archives: February 7, 2006

City Council, Peoria Police, Traffic

Council Roundup: Jaywalking and “W. B.” Grayeb

Councilwoman Van Auken expressed appreciation for the Peoria Police and defended their enforcement of laws against jaywalking.  She suggested that if people think jaywalking laws are stupid, perhaps they should work on repealing such laws.  And that was the last sensible comment made on the subject.

Following Van Auken, several council members scoffed at the police doing their jobs by acting on citizen concerns and issuing tickets to scofflaws.  Reasons? 

There are more important crimes on which they should be focusing, one said.  Yes.  And there are more important crimes than speeding and seat belt violators, but they set up stings for those all the time.  Not compelling.

Another was concerned that it will drive pedestrians away from downtown.  I never realized that running across a busy street while dodging cars was the definition of “pedestrian friendly.”  One wonders why we bother putting up Walk/Don’t Walk signals all over town with countdowns and everything if they’re such an impediment to a pleasant pedestrian experience.  Let’s be real friendly and require pedestrians to take their lives in their hands on all busy streets!

Still another council person thought it was too heavy-handed of a response to write tickets.  I suppose they could have handed out warnings, especially since they had never enforced jaywalking before, so I’ll give them that one.

But then there was my favorite reason:  the law is too difficult to understand.  Yep.  That was one of Morris’s and Sandberg’s complaints.  I guess there are some loopholes in the jaywalking law (what law doesn’t have loopholes?), and because of that, we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, according to these two council members.  If this discussion hadn’t gotten completely ridiculous prior to this point, it crossed the line here.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any goofier, “W. B.” Grayeb chimed in.  You know what the “W. B.” stands for, don’t you?  Yep, you guessed it: “Water Buyout.”  This is the only issue Grayeb cares about anymore.  All discussions come back around to the water buyout, somehow, some way.  We got our weekly report on how RWE (did you know they’re foreign owned?) isn’t going to be selling American Water Company in pieces.

I’ll revisit “W. B.” Grayeb in a future post.

City Council

Council Roundup: The big issue that disappeared

Well, I’m sure I’ll read about this in tomorrow’s paper, but the issue I was waiting for inexplicably disappeared tonight.  Crusens had asked to deannex the former Hunts property from the City of Peoria so it could be annexed by West Peoria.  This makes sense since they’re contiguous and would most likely be used for one business, Crusen’s bar, which is located on the West Peoria side.

However, they sent a letter requesting their petition for deannexation be withdrawn.  Without any further explanation, the issue was gone.  Poof!  That didn’t stop Councilman Morris from babbling about his opposition to deannexation anyway. 

City Council

Council Roundup: Peoria loses federal funds; reduces staff

The city is two employees leaner after tonight. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reduced the amount of money it provides the City of Peoria in the form of three grants: the Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership Act grant and Emergency Shelter Grant.  The grants were reduced by 9.5%, 6%, and 0.5%, respectively.  That’s a lot of lost funding — in fact, it’s a $260,000 drop from last year, and a $903,000 drop since 2002.

That means that the city has to do something to make up for the shortfall.  They decided tonight to take several steps, including a cut in staff.  The Planning Department will lose two employees and funding for specific programs was moved around or reduced. 

Additionally, one staff position will be moved from the Equal Employment Opportunity office to the Inspection Department.  This generated quite a bit of discussion, as Councilman Gulley was opposed to it.  He questioned whether there was enough remaining staff to comply with EEO requirements.

The recommendation passed on a split vote, 6-4.

City Council

Council Roundup: Mail call — we’re demolishing your property

When the city identifies an unsafe or dangerous building in Peoria, it can move to have it demolished.  Part of that process is sending a letter to the owner of the property telling them the city is going to be tearing it down.  Up until tonight, the City of Peoria has been mailing those notices via certified mail.  After tonight’s vote, those notices will be served via regular mail.  It will save the city maybe $300 a year and shave three weeks off the demolition process. 

Not very significant, as Gary Sandberg and others pointed out.  But it’s some movement, so it passed, 6-4.  Something that didn’t come up in the council discussion, but was included in the Request for Council Action, is that this decision means Peoria will be following the State of Illinois statute on the same issue (65 ILCS 5/11-31-1).  So it’s not like Peoria is an oddball community by serving these notices via regular mail.

Ray LaHood

It brings in the pork to my district, so it’s good

Ray LaHood defends the “earmark” system in today’s Journal Star:

He said some high-profile problems with earmarking, such as the so-called “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, are projects “put in at the 11th hour by some powerful person, and nobody ever sees it before it’s voted on.” Such appropriations are “a perversion of the system,” he said.

He says later that he approves of earmarks as long as they’re done in a “transparent way” — meaning “people get to see it before they vote on it.”

Notice he doesn’t mention anything about reforming the system.  He wants to keep it in place, even if there is some abuse, because it brings in the pork.  He cites the Lincoln Presidential Library (Springfield) and a new law enforcement communications center (Lincoln) as examples of how he used earmarks to benefit Illinois.  He didn’t mention his recent earmark that gave Firefly Energy a $2.5 million military contract.

CNN recently reported (“Can this elephant be cleaned up?” by Perry Bacon Jr., Mike Allen, January 18, 2006; 7:16 p.m. EST, cnn.com, permalink gone):

Lobbyists are paid to land earmarks; Abramoff used them to get money for his tribal clients. The number of those earmarks mushroomed from close to 2,000 in a highway bill in 1998 to more than 6,000 in that bill last year. Practitioners say the boom is a major factor in the doubling of the number of lobbyists in Washington over the past five years, to almost 35,000, and Bush points to the popular practice as one of the reasons curtailing federal spending is so difficult.

Bottom line, earmarks are power. They allow congressmen to push money to their districts — sometimes benefitting specific private companies (like Firefly).  None of the senators, LaHood included, want to give that up. I understand that.

But some senators are talking about significant reform of the earmark system — beyond just getting to see the legislation before they vote on it.  Boehner, according to the CNN report, wants to “try to prevent federal dollars from going to private entities for exclusively private purposes,” for example.  Another plan “would identify the sponsors of earmarks and force members to defend them, eliminating the many mysterious entries that now bristle in the budget.”  McCain favors limits on earmarks as well.

In the Journal Star article, LaHood comes across as a defender rather than a reformer of the earmark system.  His reason:  it’s bringing home the bacon to central Illinois.  That’s not a very compelling defense when you consider every other congressman is bringing home the bacon to their states, districts, and private companies as well.  It’s a broken system, and LaHood should be working to reform it instead of defending it.