“The real cure for the conflict is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate ceasefire first.”
–Iranian President Ahmadinejad,
reported by Aljazeera
He might as well have added “Sieg Heil” to the end of his statements. Anyone notice the frightening similarity between “real cure” and “final solution”? Any questions as to why Iran should not get nukes?
As reported here on Tuesday, the carrier Peoria hired to operate the Kellar Branch and western spur, Central Illinois Railroad Co. (CIRY) which is owned by DOT Rail, looks to be acquired by a mysterious company called Central Illinois Railroad Holdings, LLC.
I tried unsuccessfully to find out any information on this “Holdings” company. The document doesn’t disclose who the directors are in the company, and there’s no information on the internet about them. Making things more questionable, their address is for a third-floor suite in a building in Willow Springs, Illinois, that the West Suburban Chamber of Commerce still shows as for lease. All indications are that this LLC was created solely to acquire DOT Rail’s assets, which begs the questions “why?” and “who are the players here?”
That’s exactly what Pioneer Railcorp would like to know. In a filing yesterday with the Surface Transportation Board (STB), Pioneer seeks to at least delay the approval of this transaction until further information is disclosed. Pioneer has an interest because there is litigation pending in state court between Pioneer and CIRY, and this could be an attempt by DOT Rail to shield their assets in the event the court rules in Pioneer’s favor.
Pioneer brings up several other oddities about this transaction. For instance, the petition was submitted on CIRY letterhead, not “Central Illinois Railroad Holdings, LLC” letterhead. Yet the “Holdings” company is the petitioner. Also, the attorney who filed on behalf of “Holdings” is Melinda Sammons, the CFO of CIRY! As Pioneer succinctly put it, “This places Ms. Sammons in the position of being both the attorney for the buyer and as also having a fiduciary duty to the seller.”
I can’t help but wonder what the City of Peoria thinks of this transaction. They have an interest, too, of course. Even Pioneer points this out:
As previously noted, the Board is fully aware of the ongoing litigation surrounding CIRY, PIRY [Pioneer], and the Kellar Branch. Would Holdings’ acquisition of CIRY change that litigation? Does Holdings plan to continue pursuit of CIRY’s discontinuance once it acquires control? Would Holdings use its newfound control and ownership to actually operate the Kellar Branch? What about the Western Connection and the interchange with UP, will those continue to operate as they do today? There is absolutely no information contained in the record of this proceeding to help the Board and the public understand the answers to these questions. Yet, Holdings’ control of CIRY could completely impact or subvert the Board’s decision making process in those other proceedings.
Is the city even aware of this? It doesn’t appear they’ve filed any objection to it yet. You’d think they’d want to know who this new carrier is going to be and perhaps get some assurance from them that their contract with the city will still be honored.
This transaction gets curiouser and curiouser.
UPDATE: Central Illinois Railroad Holdings, LLC, has withdrawn their petition before the STB (today, 8/3/06). Melinda Sammons states, “It is my understanding from my discussions with Mr. [Marc] Lerner [Branch Chief in Office of Proceedings] that this filing is not required.” So, it looks like this will go through without any oversight at all, leaving us all to wonder what will happen next.
The Times Online (London) has published an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that is as billed: a full and frank exchange. I was especially impressed with his answer to the reporter’s question about “proportionality.”
Q: But there is a sense in the world, and you must be aware of it, of lack of “proportionality”. Many people question how after two soldiers kidnapped and eight killed by Hezbollah we are now seeing upwards of 400 dead and rising in Lebanon. How can such an initial incident justify such a huge response from Israel?
A: I think that you are missing a major part. The war started not only by killing eight Israeli soldiers and abducting two but by shooting Katyusha and other rockets on the northern cities of Israel on that same morning. Indiscriminately.
Now we know that for years Hezbollah – assisted by Iran – built an infrastructure of a very significant volume in the south part of Lebanon to be used against Israeli people. The most obvious, simple, way to describe it to the average British person is: can you imagine seven million British citizens sitting for 22 days in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham in Newcastle, in Brighton and in other cities? Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads? What would have been the British reaction to that? Do you know of a country that would have responded to such a brutal attack on its citizens softer than Israel did? Based on my knowledge of history no country in Europe would have responded in such a restrained manner as Israel did.
I don’t want now to draw comparisons [but] one could ask the question what precisely did the European forces [do] in Kosovo 10 years ago. How many innocent civilians were killed in Kosovo 10 years ago? We can draw on and on these comparisons.
What are we talking about? More than a million Israelis are sitting 22 days in shelters because of the fear of terrorists. In every single case…that we kill an uninvolved civilian in Lebanon, we consider it as a failure for Israel. And you know how many Israelis raise their voices as a result of this? And they don’t have to because we feel that we failed when we killed uninvolved people.
The difference between us and Hezbollah is that when we kill innocent people we consider it a failure, when they kill innocent people they consider it a success.
Tell me, who are they aiming at when they shoot already 2800 rockets on Haifa, Hanariya, Akko, Sefat, Afula and the rest of the places, if not to kill innocent people? So I’m sorry for every individual that was killed that was not involved.
And by the way, how do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed? How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They don’t wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians. We didn’t attack any of the Christian quarters of Beirut. We didn’t attack any of the Christian residential areas in any part of Lebanon. We attacked only those areas where they had the Katyusha launchers, where they had the missile launchers, where they had the command positions of Hezbollah, where they had the storage houses, the logistic centres and so on and so forth.
So the fact that people were killed there who were not dressed in uniforms doesn’t mean that they were innocent civilians. There were Hezbollah people, they are the terrorists. Did you ever see terrorists dressed with military uniforms like we have in our army? No.
“Katyusha” refers to multiple rocket launchers first built by the Soviets during WWII and “able to deliver a devastating amount of explosives to an area target in a short period of time, although with low accuracy,” according to Wikipedia.
To paraphrase Olmert for American audiences, one could say, can you imagine seven million American citizens sitting for 22 days in Chicago, New York, Dallas, and in other cities? “Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads?” What would have been the American reaction to that?икони
The City of Peoria entered into a lease agreement with the Peoria Park District in 2002 that would allow them, if and when the Surface Transportation Board approves the discontinuance of service, to turn the Kellar Branch into a hiking/biking trail. I didn’t even realize that there was a lease agreement until recently.
The good news is that it’s still possible to retain rail service under this contract. Section 4.2 specifically states:
4.2 Possible Reactivation of Rail Service. The Park District acknowledges that its lease of the PPD Project Site is subject to possible future reconstruction and reactivation of the right-of-way for rail service. In the event that subsequent to the commencement date, the City determines that it will apply to the Surface Transportation Board (or any successor government agency) for authority to reconstruct and reactivate rail service on all or a portion of the right of way described on Exhibit 1 attached hereto, the City agrees to provide the Park District with written notice of its intention to make such an application to the Surface Transportation Board at least 180 days prior to date of filing of such an application with the Surface Transportation Board. In the event that the Surface Transportation Board would then authorize the reconstruction and reactivation of rail service on all or a portion of the right of way described on Exhibit 1 attached hereto, the City agrees to pay to the Park District the then current fair market value of the PPD Improvements which would be destroyed, removed or taken out of service due to the reactivation of rail service.
Since the park district has not done any improvements yet, this is the perfect time to reactivate rail service and renegotiate for a side-by-side rail/trail compromise. Why should the city lease this right of way to the park district for a paltry $1 per year for 99 years when it could sell it to Pioneer Industrial Railway for over $500,000 or negotiate a profitable long-term lease for rail service — especially since Pioneer’s offer to help build a side-by-side trail is still on the table?
Compare this lease agreement with Pioneer’s offer and tell me if the city is being fiscally responsible if they don’t reverse this course of action. This isn’t an either-or proposition, it’s a both-and solution. If they take Pioneer’s offer (and remember, Guy Brenkman is no longer in the picture, so there’s no personal axe to grind anymore), they get rail service, competitive access to Pioneer Park and Growth Cell 2, and the park district’s beloved bike trail. What do they have to lose?
Unconscionably, I missed the big TV event last night. I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch it live because we were having company, but I had every intention of taping it. Alas, I forgot. I listened to it on WEEK’s website this morning (the video was so jumpy, I gave up trying to watch it).
I did remember the big party afterwards, so I headed over to the Castle Patio Inn to celebrate the big unveiling. And there, I met Laura Petelle (aka “Eyebrows McGee”) and her husband, Garth Madison. We had a nice chat about how lawyers can defend people they know are guilty, how old we all were when MTV came on the air (the bar TV was tuned to VH1 which was showing the first day of MTV to celebrate their 25th anniversary), and other sundry topics. My only embarrassment was that I kept forgetting her real name. She finally gave me her card.
I felt kind of bad for Mrs. McGee, however, since I was the only one (other than her husband, obviously) to show up to her big party. Where were all you people??? 🙂
Anyway, it was very nice meeting you, Laura and Garth. My wife and I will be having you over for supper sometime soon — we’re checking our calendar (oh, and you have to promise not to make fun of our garden). In the meantime, see you online!
According to a filing with the Surface Transportation Board, DOT Rail Services (Granville, Ill.) is selling “substantially all of [its] assets,” including Central Illinois Railroad Co. (CIRY), to Central Illinois Railroad Holdings, LLC (Willow Springs, Ill.) for approximately $3 million in cash.
CIRY is the carrier the city chose to replace Pioneer Industrial Railway on the Kellar Branch. Details of the transaction, as well as what impact (if any) this will have on the Kellar Branch saga, are unknown at this time.
There are two stories in the Journal Star today about District 150 that are curious.
The first one says that the Glen Oak School site isn’t big enough to accommodate all the programs that a building committee recommended. Of course, those recommendations were based on a 15-acre site: according to the district’s Q & A piece, question 13, the “public input, community partner input, educator expertise input, and design expertise input” all based their analysis of programming needs “on a generic, 15-acre site as presented during Workshop 4.” So it should come as no suprise that programs designed to fill 15 acres won’t fit into a smaller area. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Thus, the rhetoric regarding the Glen Oak School site is that certain things will need to be “cut” or “sacrificed.” But this is misleading. It’s like a kid having a Ford Focus and telling his dad he wants a GT, then when his father offers to help him buy a Mustang instead, he complains about all the “sacrifices” he’d have to make to drop from a GT to a Mustang. Give me a break. The site the city offered is three times the size of the current Glen Oak School and provides more than enough space at a more reasonable cost.
And speaking of cost, that brings us to the second story in the paper today. It turns out that expanding the scope of a project costs more money — something business people know, but apparently caught the school district by surprise.
The board’s original plan (as stated in the Master Facilities Plan) was to replace Glen Oak and White with a K-8 school; that is, it would just be a school building for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. Somewhere between that plan and their negotiations with the Park District, the new school became a “B-8,” or “birth through eighth-grade community school,” “which means they will provide services for parents, their young children and the community.”
That means the size of the school has increased from 80,000 square feet to 120,000 square feet, which means the cost of such a school building has increased from $15 million to $21 million. The Journal Star then says, ” Where the additional money will come from is unclear.” Ah, yes, the understatement of 2006.
Comically, this all started out as the district’s attempt to save money. Remember? They were going to close these old, inefficient schools and build new, energy-efficient ones which would pay for themselves in the maintenance savings. I wonder how the change in scope from K-8 elementary school to B-8 community school affects their break-even point; that is, I wonder how many years (decades?) it will be before the supposed maintenance and efficiency cost savings exceed the cost of land acquisition and construction. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that will happen on the fifth of never.
So now we have a school district that is horribly in debt that, in an attempt to save money, has figured out a way to put itself in more debt without any visible means of funding their scheme — other than asking the taxpayers to pony up more money, which is not likely to pass.
Moving to the east side of the river looks more appealing all the time.
The first time I met Bruce Frankel, he guessed my hat size just by looking at me. I wasn’t looking for a hat, but was impressed just the same. I had walked into The Bell men’s clothing store on Sheridan to get some new shoes (I was looking for Florsheim and they carried them), and it was Bruce that waited on me.
He couldn’t guess my shoe size, but he did measure my foot (a novelty in this age of big box stores) and got me the dress shoes I wanted. I asked him all kinds of questions about the store, and he was happy to tell me the story of how long it had been in the family, how they were originally downtown and when they moved out to the Sheridan Village area.
When I went to pay for my shoes and he saw my name on my check, he asked if I was related to an Orville Summers that used to work at the Journal Star. I was impressed with his memory — I was indeed related, Orville being my grandfather, but he had retired from the paper in 1974, over 20 years before my meeting Bruce. This was a guy who remembered his customers.
I’ve visited The Bell numerous times since then; the last thing I bought that Bruce helped me with was a black suit. He guessed my pant size, much to my chagrin. I thought he had overestimated how big I was around the waist, but it turned out I had underestimated how big I had gotten since the last time I had bought a pair of dress pants. I suppose when you’ve been in the clothing business all your life, you learn how to size people up pretty accurately. He knew his business, and I appreciated his professionalism and friendliness.
I saw in the paper this morning that Bruce passed away on Sunday, July 30, at the age of 74. My condolences to the Frankel family.