Daily Archives: March 21, 2006

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Council roundup: Put on a happy façade

6 Comments

This picture wasn’t shown in the council chambers tonight, but it could have been. This is a picture of my late grandmother’s business, Merchant’s Cafe, in the late 1960s. It was located on Sheridan Road, near Loucks, and that’s the area being targeted by the city’s new façade improvement program.

As a part of commercial revitalization, City staff has partnered with property and business owners on North Sheridan to develop a Facade Improvement Program in order to improve the area’s physical characteristics through the enhancement of the aesthetics and attractiveness of the commercial properties. These improvements will increase the community pride of the adjacent neighborhoods and encourage business recruitment and expansion in the area.

Much like councilman Manning’s initiative along Prospect Road, councilwoman Van Auken deserves kudos for her work on putting this program together. She enlisted the help of five Bradley University students for marketing this initiative — three of whom were in the council chambers tonight — which is a brilliant way to give students real-life experience and save the city some money.

Not that the city isn’t putting any money into this initiative. On the contrary, $100,000 was allocated for the Program. They will pay 50% of the total cost of improvements to each property or $20,000, whichever is less. It warms my heart to see the city spending money in the older neighborhoods to revitalize these neighborhood centers, just like the Heart of Peoria Plan directs.

If you’ve seen this stretch of properties, you’ve seen that it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. In fact, in the picture above, just to the right of Merchant’s Cafe is a business called Florence’s Beauty Shop. If you go by that shop today, you’ll see that store front looks almost exactly the same 35 years later, the faded paint being the only difference.

This is a perfect location to enact the Heart of Peoria Plan. Narrow the road a bit and add diagonal parking. Update the façades and sidewalks. The neighborhoods surrounding these businesses are stable. This area could be easily revitalized and draw new businesses to this corridor.

Not surprisingly, the motion passed unanimously. I expect Whitey’s Tap will be the first business to take advantage of the new program.

City Council, City of Peoria, Renaissance Park, Southtown

Council roundup: Hospitals withdraw Southtown bid

3 Comments

Several weeks ago, a couple of area hospitals stared down Select Medical of Pennsylvania’s plan to put a long-term acute-care hospital on the last unsold parcel of Southtown.  At that time, they said they were looking to locate a similar establishment in Renaissance Park.  Then, several days ago, they shocked Peoria by considering the possibility of locating on the same parcel in Southtown instead of Ren Park.

Tonight, they withdrew their proposed option agreement on the Southtown property.  Why?  Who knows?  Hopefully, the Journal Star will have more details tomorrow.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools, Renaissance Park

Council roundup: We have an understanding

The city council approved a “memorandum of understanding” between the Renaissance Park Commission and District 150 school board “in order to research and develop a project proposal for a math, science and technology academy for Renaissance Park.”

This was an easy thing to vote on, frankly, since there is no financial obligation to any of the parties involved. It just says that they’re all in agreement on the goal. There was a lot of love to go around, and only one minor controversy.

That controversy was the last three words of the action requested: “for Renaissance Park.” Gary Sandberg objected to this wording because he felt it was a “hard boundary” that was unnecessary. He suggested that Peoria Central High School would be a good location to house a math/science academy, even though it’s not within the boundaries of Renaissance Park.

Van Auken amended her motion to strike the last three words of the action requested, and the motion passed unanimously.

Grayeb had a good point during the discussion of this item. He cautioned against focusing too much on science and technology in the younger grades because grade school children need a more balanced, liberal education, including history, social studies/government, literature, handwriting, etc. He felt the upper grades were the time to gear curriculum more heavily toward math, science and technology.

And, he had a little zing for the Journal Star. He intoned through his usual Tuesday-night grimace, “We have an excellent school district despite cartoons that appear in our monopoly newspaper.” Ha! Look out, Journal Star — he may ask the council to look into buying out the city’s newspaper of record. It’s owned by out-of-state investors, you know.

Just before the council voted, Gulley expressed concern about the school being built within Ren Park. Apparently he fell asleep during the first 15 minutes of the discussion when the council addressed that issue. Even the usually unflappable Ardis sounded exasperated as he explained to Gulley the council already talked about that, and quickly called for the vote.

City Council

Council Roundup: New car wash approved for Sterling Ave.

On the consent agenda, a portion of the agenda that is believed to be items of little controversy but consistently has items removed from it each council meeting, there was an item to approve a special use permit to allow a new car wash in the 3100 block of Sterling.

At-large councilman Chuck Grayeb was indignant that it was included in the consent agenda.  When he asked why it wasn’t a separate item, City Manager Randy Oliver replied that in staff meeting he was told no one on the council objected to it and there was no public opposition.  Apparently Grayeb missed that meeting.

He turned out to be the only one who was against it.  His concern was that the car wash would be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but would only be supervised from 9-5 each day.  He believes that, based on other car washes he’s approved in the past, loud music and other detriments to nearby residents will result.

The item passed, 10-1.

City of Peoria, Renaissance Park

Council Roundup: Ren Park marketing elicits most discussion

1 Comment

The Ren Park Commission got approval to hire Converse Marketing for “various initiatives” to market the area. This resulted in no small amount of discussion regarding what should be included in that marketing material. The adjacent neighborhoods didn’t specifically enter into the discussion, as Monday’s Word on the Street column suggested.

It was kind of funny. First-district councilman Clyde Gulley complained that the marketing pieces were limited to areas within the Ren Park boundaries, but then second-district councilwoman Barbara Van Auken pointed out that Gulley was invited to present his concerns to the commission and never showed, use social media to get sales. Then at-large councilman Gary Sandberg pointed out that areas outside of the Ren Park boundaries in fact are included in the Ren Park marketing materials. Gulley, not one to let the facts confuse him, continued to complain about the same thing and voted against the item.

Sandberg also voted against the item, although I never could figure out why exactly. At-large councilman George Jacob was the last dissenting vote. He wasn’t against this marketing per se, but felt that the council needed to have a more comprehensive approach to marketing — that they weren’t spending limited tax dollars in the most strategic way.

Still, the motion passed 8-3. I was taking notes during the meeting and, just for fun, I’ve included them here for those of you who like stream-of-consciousness blogging. Just click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below.

Continue reading Council Roundup: Ren Park marketing elicits most discussion →

Bradley University, City Council

Happy Bradley Week

The City Council this evening unanimously declared that this week is Peoria Bradley Week in honor of the Braves’ advance to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.

Mayor Ardis also issued a friendly challenge to the mayor of Memphis that we’ll be hearing more about tomorrow.  Instead of betting Memphis a pizza in Peoria that Bradley will win Thursday, Ardis wants to set up a competition between Peoria and Memphis to see who can raise the most money for St. Jude.  The more money that can be raised for charity, the better.  I like the way Ardis looks for these kinds of opportunities.

Elections

Report: New Voting Machines

4 Comments

I used one of the new voting machines today after work. I found the machine itself easy to use, and don’t have any complaints about it. It was actually quite intuitive. I imagine that older people and others who aren’t as computer-literate as I might take a little longer to have a good comfort-level with this new machine. But, overall, I don’t think there’s much of a learning curve.

I don’t know if this is the way my new precinct has always been or if this has to do with the new machines, but I noticed that the line went pretty slowly. There were only maybe four to six people there to vote, but it took about 15 minutes to go through the line. It never took me more than 5 minutes to vote at my old precinct, under the old system. Anyone else experience delays compared to past primaries?

I still maintain that there was nothing wrong with the old system, and that this was a case of solving a problem that didn’t exist.

Elections, Peoria Journal Star

JS really shines when it comes to election coverage

Have you ever gone to a political candidate’s website? Usually, they’re terrible. Oh, they’re good if your goal is to give money to their campaign — it’s easy to find your way to the contribution page. But if you’re looking for information — detailed information — on what they plan to do if elected, forget it. If they have anything, it’s usually little more than platitudes: improve schools, stop corruption, create jobs. All the candidates want to do those things.

In contrast, go to the Journal Star’s election guide, and there you’ll find a wealth of information on the candidates. For governor, there are video clips of the Journal Star’s interview with each candidate. There are links to many other election resources, too. But my favorite part is the questionnaire. The Journal Star mailed questionnaires to each candidate in contested races and published their answers. I find these to be the most valuable.

First of all, the questions are very good — no softball questions here. And secondly, you get a feel for what’s really important to each candidate. Some have long, detailed answers on one or two questions, then gloss over the other ones; that says something about their priorities. Others are flippant, almost like they don’t take the questionnaire seriously; and that says something about the value they put on communicating with the public.

For example, Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy Martin answers a question about school funding by simply saying, ” This is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. I would press the legislature to consider alternatives.” Wow, thanks for that insight, Andy. I had no idea it was so complex. Glad to see your “plan” is to push this one off on the legislature.

I was most disappointed to see that 2nd-district school board candidate (and incumbent) Garrie Allen didn’t even bother to fill out his questionnaire. I wasn’t especially impressed with his opponent and was leaning toward voting for him until I saw that. Why should I vote for him when he doesn’t have time or think it’s important to answer a few questions for the public?

But I digress. My point here is that the Journal Star consistently does an excellent job at election coverage. I’ve been voting since 1988 and have found the Journal Star’s election guide to always be one of the best sources, if not the best source, of detailed information on the candidates’ positions.  It’s an invaluable service, and I think they should be highly commended for it.

And if you haven’t gotten out to vote yet, the polls are still open as of this writing. Check out the Journal Star’s election guide and then do your civic duty.