Daily Archives: September 22, 2006

Peoria Park District

Trial date set for Park District’s Open Meetings Act violation

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Park District LogoWhen the Peoria Park District (PPD) met in executive session to discuss partnering with District 150 on a new location for a school building for the Woodruff attendance area, they violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA). Only if they were discussing a sale price for land could they make such plans away from the public eye. That’s the gist of the suit being brought against the PPD by neighborhood activists Karrie Alms and Sarah Partridge.

Alms reports that their attorney recently went before Peoria County Chief Judge John Barra “to see if our original complaint could be amended to capture the new admissions of the PPD deleting the tapes from the March 8, 2006 PPD Executive Board Meeting. Judge Barra moved that our complaint was so amended. In addition, a trial date has been set for 7 December 2006.”

Their attorney is William Shay of Howard & Howard. He says the deletion of the March 8 closed session tape is a separate violation of the OMA; the Act states that the tape must be retained for at least 18 months after the meeting.

There’s not a lot of litigation over OMA violations, Shay said, because there’s not much in it for the complainant. Typically, by the time one of these cases makes it through the courts, it’s a moot point because either the public body has subsequently ratified any questionable actions in open session, or the plans have already been carried out (for instance, in this case, it could be decided after the school district has already broken ground).

If the Park District is found guilty of violating the OMA, Alms and Partridge could be awarded their attorneys fees, but that’s it for damages. As far as what relief they can get from a successful suit, they are asking for three things: (a) declaration that the PPD did, in fact, violate the OMA, (b) admonishment by the judge for said violation, and (c) prohibition of the PPD from having any further discussions with District 150 regarding sharing Glen Oak Park land. Of those, (c) seems to be the least likely outcome, but is a legal remedy under the OMA if a judge would choose to impose it.

Even if Alms and Partridge get the first two outcomes and nothing more, it will still send a strong message to the PPD not to play fast and loose with the Open Meetings Act. Shay would like to see that strong message sent to all public bodies — that we all have a right to hear public business discussed in public.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

City to D150: Thanks, but no thanks

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At a joint press conference today, the City officially responded to District 150’s counterproposal regarding the site of a new school for the Woodruff attendance area: “We respectfully decline.” Bob Manning explained that there was really very little room for negotiation to begin with.

“From day one, we put together our best-faith effort,” Manning said, referring to the City’s offer of $500,000 in property acquisition costs if the school board would build the replacement school at Frye and Wisconsin, site of the current Glen Oak Primary School. He added the City wouldn’t be making any further counterproposals.

It’s practically certain that the school district will now continue their pursuit of building the school at the corner of Prospect and Frye, adjacent to Glen Oak Park, and resume acquiring that property. But Ken Hinton, District 150 Superintendent, wouldn’t confirm that. He said he didn’t have the authority to make that statement because it’s a school board decision.

Mayor Ardis didn’t want today’s events to be characterized as “talks breaking down,” but rather that “we’ve agreed to disagree” and are moving forward. In fact, the catchphrase for the press conference was that both parties are “moving forward.”

“The important question is, ‘Where are we going?'” Hinton retorted when asked if it was easy for him to speak of moving forward when the district got everything it wanted. He called the school siting debate “a learning experience,” called attention to all the other ways the school board and City are working together, and stressed the school board and City have the same goal — to work together to provide the best education we can for the children of this community.

When asked if the city would cut any funding they currenly provide to District 150, Manning responded that there would be “no retaliatory strikes.” George Jacob congratulated Manning on his leadership on this issue and stressed that the City’s and community’s concern is rebuilding neighborhoods, and they would like to partner with District 150 and other governmental bodies (PHA, neighborhood associations, etc.) in the future in that effort.

My take: It was clear to City officials that the school district has no interest in compromising, so they figured it’s not worth pursuing any further. I hate to say “I told you so,” but I did predict this would be the outcome way back on July 17. It was clear from day one that the school district had no intention of seriously considering the city’s offer. One wonders why it took them two whole months (Manning gave them the City’s offer July 15) to respond.

I appreciated the conciliatory tone of the press conference, but let’s be honest — there is a rift between the city and the school district. Even though there may not be any “retaliatory strikes,” I believe that school projects are not going to be as high a priority now when it comes to budget-cutting time for the city. If the police department needs more officers on the street and there’s no money in the budget to hire more officers, do you think the truancy officers on loan to the school district might get reassigned? You bet.

So, while I’m sure there will be no capricious cutting of the city’s support for District 150, I don’t see the school board getting the level of cooperation and funding that they would have if they’d cooperated with the city on this school siting project.

But hey, the school district apparently doesn’t need money anyway, right? I mean, the whole premise of closing schools was to shutter the buildings and sell them, saving $500,000 per building according to their Master Facilities Plan. Yet when they closed Blaine-Sumner Middle School, they didn’t sell it or save a half-million dollars. They retrofitted it with air conditioning and turned it into an office building for the district’s special education workers. What about the health/safety problems? What about the asbestos? What about the $500,000 they need to save, which is the whole reason they’re closing buildings in the first place?

District 150 continues to lose credibility, and now they’re probably going to lose funding, too. If only their commitment to solvency and cooperation were as strong as their commitment to putting a suburban-style school at Glen Oak Park.

City of Peoria, Traffic

$10M price tag, other excuses highly questionable

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The Journal Star reported on the last public meeting about changing Adams and Jefferson streets downtown from one-way to two-way. It’s clear that Public Works Director Steve Van Winkle doesn’t want to change them (why, I don’t know). He had an engineer from IDOT figure out the cost of switching, and supposedly it’s over $10 million.

I’d like to see the itemized bill for that one. Methinks the price is a bit inflated, perhaps because of the part of this quote I’ve emphasized:

Traffic officials also talked about the possibility of having one-way streets Downtown but having traffic going two-way just outside of Downtown. IDOT estimated the cost, which included changing traffic signals, changing signs and buying land, at more than $10 million.

“Buying land”? And just why would we need to buy land when Peoria already owns a right-of-way that handled two-way traffic in the first place?

But that’s not all — if their prices don’t scare you, perhaps their accident statistics will:

According to statistics from the Illinois Department of Transportation, the one-mile stretch of Adams Street that is two way south of U.S. Route 150 has a higher accident rate than the one-way sections of Adams and Jefferson Avenue that are just south of it.

The two-way stretch of road had 8.5 crashes per million vehicle miles driven, compared to 5 and 5.2 crashes per million vehicle miles on the one-way streets.

“There’s more crashes on the two-way section,” said Eric Therkildsen, a program development engineer with IDOT.

Ah, statistics. How do you suppose they were able to prove causality based on this correlation? How were they able to isolate the traffic-direction variable and determine this was the one and only reason crashes were up on one-way streets? Do you think things like visibility; the number of intersections, business entrances, employees; or the amount of traffic volume varied at all between these two stretches? And what was the time period for these data? The two-way section includes the intersection of routes 150 and 24 — are there a disproportionate number of accidents at that major intersection that could skew the results?

When the Public Works director is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at an idea to make it go away, it’s probably not going to happen. You can’t fight city hall, and I doubt there is anyone obsessed enough with converting streets to two-way that will fund his or her own feasibility study. So, it will likely die until such time as we get a Public Works director who is more open-minded.