Jennifer Davis has a nice article in the Journal Star today (Sunday) about how respect for the Peoria City Council has improved under Ardis’s leadership. I think that’s a pretty accurate statement. “Respect” is hardly a word that would describe the council under Ransburg. I have my criticisms of the council, but overall I think it’s doing a lot better than previous councils.

I’d like to make just a couple of comments on things that jumped out at me from the article:

Heart of Peoria Commission

But [General] Parker says he’s been pushing for an appointment to the city’s Heart of Peoria Commission for months. While he hasn’t talked to Ardis personally, he says he approached three different council members and even recently asked for it during public comment at a City Council meeting.

For the record, there are currently two vacancies on the commission.

Yes, and there have been two vacancies for a while. It was understandable to see them go unfilled while the future of the Heart of Peoria Commission was in limbo. Now that the council has decided to keep HOPC around, and since we’re only going to be meeting every other month, we really need a full crew. Names I have heard suggested for commissioners: General Parker (as stated in the article) and Mark Misselhorn. There may be others, but those are the ones I know have been bandied about. Considering the demographics of the Heart of Peoria Plan area, I think it would be a good idea to have more minority representation.

District 150/City of Peoria Joint Meeting

And, despite a public feud with District 150 last summer over a proposed new school at Glen Oak Park, Ardis, along with the entire City Council, has now agreed to a sit-down meeting next month with the School Board to find common solutions – the first such meeting in at least a decade.

I sincerely hope this meeting is productive, but I have my doubts. I know this has become a mantra with me, but it’s worth repeating: cooperation is not a one-way street. It’s not a give and take where the city gives and the school district takes. If the school district wants to improve relations with the city, there is no shortage of things they can do as good-faith gestures. Fixing up their properties in the Warehouse District would be a good start, as would selling the homes on Prospect that they bought at inflated prices on the speculation that they could put a school there. An apology to Bob Manning for unceremoniously cutting him off when he was addressing the school board on the issue would also be a nice gesture.

What the school district can do to help the city is provide a good education (with good test scores to show for it) in a safe environment (free not only from blatant violence, but bullying as well) and keep property taxes from rising (by not wasting money on unnecessary administrators and properties). What the city can do to help the school district is work to lower the crime rate and improve city infrastructure. If those things would happen, we would be able to attract more people to the District 150 portions of Peoria.

What’s not going to help is for the city to just give the school district money for this or that program (crossing guards, truancy center, etc.). The school district is its own taxing body, plus it recently got approval to fleece the public for more tax dollars through the Public Building Commission. The school district doesn’t give the city money to fix streets and sewers, nor should it. Neither should the city take its money and further subsidize the school district. If the city is keeping the streets safe and the roads and sidewalks repaired and the codes enforced, and if the school district is keeping the school children safe and the school buildings maintained and providing an excellent education, people will want to move here…

Arts Partners Funding

Which reminds me of another article in the Journal Star today, this one by Gary Panetta on the supposed need for the city to provide not actual arts funding, but arts advertising funding:

Should the city of Peoria use a slice of sales taxes to help publicize the local arts scene and market Peoria as an arts-friendly town?

Answer: Sure, assuming all the streets, sidewalks, and sewers are repaired, our fire stations are fully staffed, and the police force has crime under control throughout all of Peoria. Otherwise, no.

After all, if Peoria wants to become part of a high-tech future, it’s going to have to offer young professionals something beyond a place to work and sleep or a few cookie cutter movie theaters. And it should do better at increasing public access to and knowledge of arts events and organizations already here, especially for children whose daily lives don’t leave much room for arts and culture.

Let me ask you something, what’s the arts culture like in Germantown Hills? Or Dunlap? Or Metamora? Or Morton? And how much money are they spending in those communities on the arts? I’m assuming they must have lots of arts and entertainment and that the promotion of those amenities is being paid for by tens of thousands of dollars by the city halls of those towns, right? That’s why they’re growing by leaps and bounds, right?

I’m not saying that arts aren’t important; they are. But advertising them is about as far from an essential city service as you can get. People (even the coveted “young professionals”) aren’t going to move to Peoria because it’s “arts friendly” or because we give Arts Partners $100,000 to advertise the arts we have. They’re going to move to Peoria because our schools are good, crime is under control, and the infrastructure is sound. Everything else is gravy.

If the Civic Center doesn’t need that $75-100,000 in revenue, then lower the HRA tax or else use the money to provide essential services, like fixing the stormwater runoff problem in the fourth district or the $400 million combined sewer overflow project or maybe adding a couple more officers to the police force. Let’s get back to basics and stop frittering tax money on non-essentials while the essentials are suffering.