Monthly Archives: July 2006

City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

Source: Carver Lumber asks STB to keep Kellar Branch

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On April 25, the Surface Transportation Board ruled that the city couldn’t tear up the Kellar Branch for at least another 90 days so Carver Lumber had time to evaluate the service they receive from Central Illinois Railway (CIRY) over the new western spur. Carver and CIRY were expected to report back to the STB at the end of that time, and that time has come.

It’s not posted on the STB’s website yet, but I’ve heard from a reliable source that Carver has submitted their report, and it’s not a good one. Their freight costs have doubled and their service has deteriorated, thus they want service via the Kellar Branch restored. I’ll have more specifics to report once I see the actual filing.

It’s unlikely that the STB would side with the city after getting such a report from an active shipper. This could be the death knell for the city’s plans to replace the Kellar Branch rail line with a hiking/biking trail. On the other hand, Pioneer Railcorp has had a standing offer for the past two years to help build a trail next to the rail line in exchange for letting them purchase or lease the Kellar Branch.

If the city were smart, they’d take Pioneer’s deal now, before the STB’s decision. Selling or leasing the line would provide some much-needed cash to a city looking at big budget holes, plus they would still get their beloved trail to boot. What do they have to lose?

City of Peoria

The city’s proposal to District 150

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You may remember I said I wasn’t going to comment on the city’s proposal until I was able to get all the details instead of just some sketchy reports. Well, I now have a copy of the letter that was sent to the district, signed by Bob Manning and Mayor Jim Ardis. You can read it here (PDF file): City’s proposal to District 150.

The most impressive part of the letter is the last page — the one that shows all the money and other assistance the city already gives to District 150. Remember, District 150 is its own taxing body and the city isn’t obligated to give them any money — not one penny — yet they receive or benefit from $311,105 from the city’s operating fund (truancy officers, crossing guards), $575,000 from the city’s capital fund, and $236,000 from the Southtown TIF (Valeska Hinton School). Total: $1,122,105.

In the city’s proposal, the city would provide another half-million dollars for property acquisition on one condition: the new school for the Woodruff attendance area is built at the current Glen Oak School site. Coupled with the $1 million the district still has budgeted for property acquisition and their ability to sell the properties they’ve already purchased by the park, that should be more than enough money, even if they have to acquire some of the homes for 10-20% over market value.

That’s one heck of a deal. It would be very foolish for the school board to turn it down, considering they could stand to lose more than just $500,000 for property acquisition.

The city is in a budget crunch. There are two fire houses in Peoria that are understaffed, and the police force could use some boosting, especially given the increase in crime lately. That $300,000 a year from the operating fund that goes to the school district is going to be a mighty tempting target for the chopping block, especially if the school district continues to treat the city as an adversary instead of an ally.

There’s a lot to be said for the argument that the city should just play hardball instead of trying to woo the school district with more cash. But I think this deal is a good one, nevertheless. The city is taking the high road — trying to work with the school board, show their willingness to compromise, and put their money where their mouth is.  It shows a good faith effort to work things out amicably.

If the school board rebuffs the city, it will make it just that much easier for the city to balance its budget, and that much harder for the district to balance theirs.

Blogosphere

SJ-R contemplates breaking news via blogs

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Dave Bakke of the State Journal Register (Springfield) lists several news stories that were first reported in blogs, and then asks, “How long before it happens in Springfield?”

He doesn’t answer that question directly, but he does speculate on why Springfield’s bloggers haven’t broken a “big Springfield story” yet: “[M]ost are not geared for it. The majority are in an opinion, humor or entertainment mode.”

In Peoria, it’s different. We have quite a few newsy blogs, and while I can’t think of a “big” Peoria story the was first reported by a blogger, I can think of several little ones. Even I have had an occasion where I was the first to report on a Peoria story, and I’m certainly no insider.

So, I’ll leave you with a couple of questions: Why does Peoria have more newsy bloggers than our state capital does? And can you think of any “big Peoria stories” that were first reported on local blogs before the Peoria media picked them up?

City of Peoria, Peoria Fire Department, Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Police

Journal Star: Better to burn to death than be murdered

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Does that headline sound silly to you? Me too. But the Journal Star’s editorial Tuesday argues just that. Instead of fully staffing Fire Station 11, we should spend that money on police protection, they said. “Firefighting and other emergency response are important, but every penny spent on reopening Fire Station 11 is one that won’t go to added police protection.”

Fire and police protection are both among the most essential, basic services a city can provide, and their funding comes pretty much exclusively from the city. So police and fire protection should not be pitted against each other for funding. Something is wrong in a city that can’t fully staff their fire stations and provide adequate police protection at the same time.

There must be other places where the city could cut truly unnecessary spending. (Fire protection is not what I would call “unnecessary.”)

This may sound like sour grapes, but the more I think about it, the more I question the money the city spends on District 150. Think about it. The school district is its own taxing body, and the city has gained nothing by trying to cooperate with the school board, so why are we sending them over a million dollars a year in operating, capital, and debt service support? The fire and police departments can’t tax the public directly for their needs, so it would seem to me that the city’s money would be better spent on fire and police instead of the school board.

If we have to start picking and choosing, I don’t know how the city could responsibly cut fire protection while still spending money on a school district that is essentially double-dipping our tax dollars.

Television, The Peoria Chronicle

Well, that was . . . terrifying

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Whew. I appreciated the opportunity to be interviewed on TV, but boy am I glad that’s over! I was so nervous. I feel so much more comfortable writing, where I can meticulously craft exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it — rewriting several times in the process.

I was impressed by how nice everyone was to me. I was impressed because, if I were they, I would have been totally annoyed with someone like me hanging around. They took the time to answer my questions and let me stick around and watch them produce the 10:00 news. I was interested in that because, of course, I do a little bit of TV production in my job at Grace Presbyterian. Their production is much faster-paced than ours, which is to be expected since they don’t spend a lot of on-air time praying, and we don’t spend any on-air time giving the weather or lottery numbers.

Surprises:

  • Mac and Mike wear real suits; Lee Hall just wears the jacket, tie, and shorts.
  • All the news personalities edit their own news clips.
  • Gary Sandberg is a fan of mine!
  • Jenny Li really is even cuter in person than she is on TV.
  • Neither Mac nor Mike get to decide which stories run or in what order (I always thought the anchor got that privilege). The producer makes those decisions.

I asked Mike if they were going to interview any anonymous bloggers, and he mentioned that one may be “coming out” on the air in the future. That made me raise an eyebrow….

Thanks to everyone who watched tonight. And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program.

Blogosphere

Civil Discourse on the Web

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I had lunch today with Kevin Reynen, who is going to be leaving Bradley University to take a job with the University of Nevada, Reno. He’s going to be “working with the graduate students and faculty at UNR’s [Journalism] School to create a next generation news ‘portal’ for the Lake Tahoe area. The idea of the project is to convert the ‘people formally known as the audience’ into content contributors.”

In other words, he’s trying to create a blog-like site where citizen journalists and professional journalists would be treated as equals, each posting stories (either “letter to the editor”-type or researched reports) and having an on-line conversation about those stories. Sounds like a fun job — and a beautiful place to live!

Kevin and I don’t always agree on things (like the Kellar Branch issue or Muni Wi-Fi), but we can still be friends and discuss things without insulting each other. Unfortunately, on blogs and especially with anonymity, you can easily end up with verbal slug fests like, say, this argument on Bill’s site. Thus, one of Kevin’s biggest hurdles in his project at UNR is going to be figuring out a way to promote civil discourse without any heavy-handed moderating/censoring. People aren’t going to want to blog and have any meaningful conversations if there’s always someone in there doing nothing but making fun of their points of view, or insinuating they’re on drugs.

The problem is magnified in Kevin’s case because what he’s promoting is not just people being able to comment on posts like they do here on the Chronicle, but to write the posts themselves. So, for instance, imagine my site being open to Bill, Polly, Eyebrows, Vonster, Tony, Anon E. Mouse, et al., to write any post they want and have it show up on my front page. I think you can see the potential for that to turn into a cyberspace version of “Lord of the Flies” pretty quickly.

Kevin suggested some form of collaborative filtering, like Reddit’s “karma” system. There, each user gets to vote on each post by either promoting or demoting it (moving it closer to the top or further to the bottom of the page). “When a particular item is promoted or demoted, the user who posted it is either rewarded or punished — a system of editorial karma. In the same way that popular submissions are voted to the top, the individuals who post them get increases in karma.” Those with more karma have a better reputation and thus, presumably, will be read more, while those without karma will be ignored and hopefully go away.

The karma system sounds good, but it might be over the heads of less tech-savvy users. Yet that’s the only technological solution I can envision. So I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to Kevin. I really don’t know a way to make people be polite or understand where “the line” is that they’re not supposed to cross. It seems to me that there would have to be a moderator, no matter how you look at it.

But then I thought maybe some of you, dear readers, would be able to offer Kevin some better insights. Any ideas on how to promote civil discourse and meaningful conversations without making people feel overly-moderated or censored?

Heart of Peoria Plan, Peoria Public Schools

District 150 tries to co-opt Heart of Peoria Plan

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One thing I didn’t mention in my previous post about last night’s school board meeting was the sudden use of New Urbanist rhetoric when talking about the Glen Oak Park site for a new school. One school board member suggested narrowing Prospect and putting diagonal parking in front of the new school to improve safety and reduce the need for such a large parking lot, which is not a bad idea in a “when-life-gives-you-lemons-make-lemonade” sort of way. Another board member went so far as to say that Andres Duany himself recommends putting schools on the periphery of a neighborhood. Duany is the author of the Heart of Peoria Plan, which (if the board would read the plan) actually advocates renovating the current school buildings.

In one sense, it’s encouraging that the Heart of Peoria Plan is on the district’s radar now. But on the other hand, they seem to be trying to co-opt it for their own purposes. Instead of a plain reading, they’re trying to manipulate the plan to fit their preconceived idea of where the school should be sited. When the plan clearly contradicts their ideas, they look to the larger body of New Urbanist writings to look for justification for their plan.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

School Board sets table for rebuff of city plan

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The District 150 School Board didn’t vote on the city’s proposal tonight to build a new school at Wisconsin and Frye, but the outcome is just short of certain: forget it.

School Design and Construction Committee members Guy Cahill (also district treasurer) and Marty Collier (Cat-employed architect) gave a short presentation, then took questions from the school board, some of which they answered immediately but most of which they plan to report back next week.

During the presentation, Cahill raised questions about the city’s land acquisition assessment; he said the city expects to acquire homes in the Glen Oak School area at market value (three times the assessed value), whereas the school board estimated higher than market value rates. He also raised questions about the “geometry of the site,” saying it “may or may not lend itself to what ultimately is planned.” He wants to have an educational expert compare and contrast the two sites for suitability, and he has questions about what all the city will be paying for — specifically, he wants to compare what the city paid for in the Valeska-Hinton agreement with what is being proposed now.

Collier reported on what’s coming out of the workshops he’s conducting with the School Design and Construction Committee. He said first of all that, since it’s going to be a “community school,” it’s going to need to be designed differently than a standard elementary school. Because of the mix of uses, the space will need to be “distributed widely” — in other words, it should be one-story instead of multi-story. This creates “segmentation” that keeps very young children from comingling with older children, and keeps the children separated from the “community” part of the school that would include a health clinic, for instance. He also mentioned there would need to be quite a bit of space devoted to (you guessed it) parking and bus queueing.

The questions from the board members were far from neutral or evenhanded. A lot of them were worded negatively: e.g., “what sports fields would be eliminated if we went with the Glen Oak School site?” “What programs will be lost by going to a smaller footprint?” It was pretty obvious the only purpose of their questions was to get information that will help them build a case against the current school site and for the park site.

There were a couple of interesting points, however. New board member Debbie Wolfmeyer stressed that, in comparing the two sites, the school board should only consider the land the district will actually own — which would be ten acres at the park site or ten acres at the school site — because the district will have no control over the land the park district owns, even though it’s adjacent to the proposed site. For instance, she brought up that the park already plans to replace one of the ball diamonds for a parking lot, so there’s no guarantees the other ball diamond will be there forever.

Also, new board president David Gorentz said, “The building plan and site plan should be driven by the programmatic plan. Until you have a program plan, you don’t know how much space you really need.” Since the program plan won’t be completed until this Wednesday, and the school board announced their selection of the park site back in March, I found Dr. Gorentz’s statement to be a tacit admission that the school board has been going about site selection completely backwards.

The bottom line is, the school board will rebuff the city’s offer and build the new school at Glen Oak Park like they planned all along. It’s in the cards.