Monthly Archives: August 2007

Arts Partners, City Council, City of Peoria, HOPC, Peoria Public Schools

Council Musings

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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.

Uncategorized

One more reason why other countries hate us

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Because of products like this one from Miles Kimball:

Motorized Ice Cream ConeMotorized Ice Cream Cone

Motorized cone does the work while you have all the fun — rotating automatically as you lick! Sturdy plastic cone lets you enjoy leisurely licking without drips or leaks. Uses 2 AA batteries (not included). Assorted colors; we’ll choose for you. 5″ high x 1 3/4″ diameter.

Who is so deplorably lazy that they can’t turn their own ice cream cone while they lick? I love the last line in the description: “Assorted colors; we’ll choose for you.” Yeah, obviously — because if you’re too lazy to turn your own cone, you’re too lazy to pick out a color.

Peoria Park District

Park District to hold historic preservation meeting August 21

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Park District LogoJust a reminder to everyone who is concerned about the preservation of history in our city’s parks, there is a public meeting coming up next Tuesday that you’ll want to attend. Here’s how the Journal Star described it in their August 6 Word on the Street column:

At an upcoming planning committee meeting, park staff will present a district-wide inventory and assessment of what they believe should be preserved. The meeting is at 4 p.m. Aug. 21 at the Glen Oak Pavilion.

Not only is the public welcome to attend that meeting, but, according to the new ordinance, the public can nominate a property to be included for landmark status, which is similar to how the city’s historic preservation ordinance works.

Maybe PeoriaIllinoisan, who’s quickly becoming an expert on historical landmarks around here, will have some nominations for landmark status.

City of Peoria, Waste Management

Peoria should incentivize recycling

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Recycle SymbolMy wife has been recycling things like newspapers, glass, and steel cans by taking them to public bins behind Kroger on Sterling or the old Festival Foods at Northpoint, or sometimes just handing the garbage to a junk removal company. But these places don’t take other recyclable items such as plastic, cardboard, phone books, or magazines. There was also a place downtown called Erlichman’s where you could drop off your phone books and magazines.

Being the good conservationist she is, my wife called Erlichman’s to find out if they or a junk removal Bakersfield service took cardboard and plastic. That’s when she found out that they had been bought out by Midland Davis Recycling, and they do take cardboard, but not plastic. That was the sort-of good news. The bad news is that they closed their Peoria store, leaving only Pekin (south of the jail) as a drop-off location.

Well, that’s a little far to drive to recycle. So, my wife called every other recycling place in Peoria, only to find out no one takes plastic, nor do they take cardboard from residents (although some would take cardboard from businesses).

So, as a last resort, she e-mailed Waste Management (WM), Peoria’s garbage service provider, with a list of questions about their recycling service. She asked what they recycle, and they responded that they recycle “all basic items.” Not helpful; she e-mailed a follow-up question to get a little more detail on what “basic items” meant. It turns out, WM recycles plastic, steel cans, newspaper, magazines, and phone books — even junk mail — but not cardboard. Ironically, the standard footer on their e-mails touted the benefits of recycling cardboard — something they don’t recycle here. When she asked why they don’t recycle cardboard, they said that was a decision made by the local drop-off point for recycling.

The e-mail also said that they pick up once a week. Not true. They pick up every other week.

It gets better: as many of you know, you have to pay extra for recycling in Peoria. Of course, garbage collection is paid for from two sources already: property taxes and the $6/month garbage fee that gets tacked on our water bills. But even with all that revenue, they’ll only dump your stuff in the landfill. If you want your stuff recycled, you have to pay an additional $3.25 per month for which they bill you directly on a quarerly basis.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Peoria was actively trying to discourage people from recycling. Other communities make recycling the priority. For instance, in Morton, recycling is a basic service, but you pay extra for regular garbage pick-up by the canful. You have to buy stickers — kind of like a postage stamp (I like to think of it as mailing your garbage to the landfill).

That kind of system rewards recycling because there’s an incentive to reduce landfill waste. In Peoria, there is an incentive to put all your recyclable items in the landfill. Meanwhile, the solid waste landfill in Edwards is filling up. WM’s contract is up in 2009 — can it be renegotiated to incentivize recycling?

City of Peoria, Traffic

More info on the Coves controversy

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The developer of the Coves at Charter Oak wants to put up a gate across a little road called Sedley that connects his new subdivision with the older Vinton Highlands subdivision. As I stated in a previous post, there was no mention in the council communication of what the “neighborhood concerns” were that would necessitate the installation of a gate to separate the subdivisions. In fact, it doesn’t even specify which neighborhood(s) had the concerns.

At the council meeting Tuesday night, Councilman Bill Spears said that it was his understanding that Vinton Highlands residents wanted it closed. Spears explained that when the annexation agreement was being negotiated, he received numerous complaints from one resident of Vinton Highlands whose property is on the dead-end portion of Sedley, and a petition with 25 Vinton Highlands signatures wanting to keep the road closed. (For the record, there are roughly 250 homes in the subdivision and the neighborhood association hasn’t met in the last three years.)

So why was the road built, you may wonder. Well, the fire department and city staff wanted there to be two access points for the purposes of fire protection, so the road was built by the developer as part of the annexation agreement. Fire Chief Tomblin admits that it would be very rare that they would have to use that access point, but it is needed in case of emergency.

Then there’s this letter from Mike Stauffer, the developer, to Bill Spears dated June 20. It states:

Thank you very much for your assistance in obtaining approval of the proposed access control gate for the north end of the Coves at Charter Oak subdivision. The existing Weaver Ridge and Vinton Highlands neighborhood associations and the future residents of the Coves will be well-served with reduced traffic and safer intersections because of this action.

So now it appears that Weaver Ridge also wanted the road blocked. That wasn’t mentioned at the council meeting Tuesday night. What difference does it make to the folks in Weaver Ridge? According to the letter, they’re concerned about traffic volume and safety at intersections. Let’s consider those for a second. Here’s a map of the area in question:

Vinton Highlands and The Coves map

The part outlined in blue is Vinton Highlands, and the red outline shows The Coves. Right in the middle of where the two meet is Sedley and where they want to put the gate. To the south, you see where The Coves’ main street, Mooring Way, intersects with Charter Oak Road. Directly south is Weaverridge. Just take a moment to get your bearings there.

Now, tell me: what traffic/safety issues are there here? Clearly none. Sedley isn’t exactly what one would call a shortcut. Nobody’s going to get from Frostwood or Big Hollow to Charter Oak or Weaverridge any quicker by wending their way through these two subdivisions. Not only that, the street isn’t currently open, so there’s no historical data to back up their assertion, nor has a traffic study been done. So that argument doesn’t wash.

Part of the problem with this issue is that the city has no set policy to use as a guide. Other neighborhoods that have gotten diverters or other obstructions installed got them in spite of the city’s regulations. So maybe this would be a good time for the city to develop a policy regarding the obstruction of public streets. Perhaps the Traffic Commission can help with that task.

The Council on Tuesday sent this issue to the Traffic Commission to be vetted. That process will include a public hearing.

Uncategorized

Electronic Billboards: What’s your opinion?

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Billboard GIFHere’s a picture of an electronic billboard that you can see at the intersection of west-bound War Memorial Drive and University Street. It looks pretty much like an old-fashioned billboard, except that the image changes instantly approximately every five seconds (I didn’t time it).

Obviously, these are going to become more and more prevalent, and there will be pressure from advertisers to continually push the envelope with how quickly they can change their images. Right now, it’s a series of static images. But it’s essentially a really big computer monitor, so you could have it do anything, technically. If the city allowed it (which they don’t), advertisers could run full-motion ads just like you’d see on TV or on a stadium scoreboard, albeit without sound.

So, my question is, what’s your opinion of these kinds of signs? What should the limits be? Are they too limited now? Are they not limited enough? Do you think they’re too bright or not bright enough?

City Council, City of Peoria

City mechanics offer alternative plan to outsourcing manager position

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The city’s mechanics are not happy with efforts to outsource their department. Who would be? No one wants to lose their job, especially when they’ve put down roots in a community and have been working for the city for a long time. But on the other side of the equation, you have a city that simply can’t afford to maintain such a large staff overall and needs to look for places to cut costs. It’s a no-win situation no matter how you look at it.

But now the mechanics are upset about something else. The current Fleet Services Manager is retiring, and the city doesn’t have a succession plan for that position. So, until they can hire a replacement, they need to have a manager for the interim. The city put the position out to bid instead of hiring from within. That prompted the mechanics to write this letter to Mayor Ardis:

Dear Mayor Ardis,

It has come to our attention that a bid has been sent out to take over the position of Fleet Services Manager. This is the position that Mr. Mike Caruso currently holds. We believe we have a more than qualified person to take his position on an interim basis until a permanent replacement is found. We believe Tom Satterfield is deserving of this position. Tom Satterfield has thirty years experience as a mechanic in the city garage. He has more than adequate experience to assume the position for three months until the subcontracting issue is resolved or a permanent person is hired.

It is our understanding that the city manager is in favor of paying an outside contractor approximately $27,000 to take over this position. An alternative plan was discussed in which Tom Satterfield would be made a super crew chief in which there would be a percentage added to his base pay. This increase to his pay in the same three month span would significantly save the taxpayers money. It is difficult for us to accept the idea of working for a manager fiom First Vehicle Service who is not here to benefit the garage or its dedicated employees. It appears as the old saying goes you are placing a “fox in the hen house”.

Since the issue of outsourcing was introduced to us in March, the employees and their families have been on a constant emotional roller coaster and much undeserved stress. We pride ourselves on being dedicated employees and taxpayers of Peoria. For example, the mechanics have had the opportunity to move out of the City of Peoria, instead we have chosen to raise our families in the City of Peoria. In fact, most of the mechanics live within five miles of the shop.

Issues such as the one we are discussing on Tuesday August 14,2007 beg us to ask ourselves this question. WHY? Why replace dedicated, long term, community-oriented taxpayers with “TOTAL STRANGERS”?

In closing we would especially like to thank Mr. Spain for taking the time to come to our garage and get a first hand look at what we are all about and to talk face to face with the employees who will be greatly affected by your decision. We would also like to thank the council members who have supported us through this very difficult issue and look forward to your continued support.

Sincerely,
City of Peoria Mechanics

Several of the city mechanics were at the meeting Tuesday night, ready to speak to this issue, but it was — surprise! — deferred for two weeks. During discussion, however, the city manager did address the mechanics’ letter. He stated that he was concerned that if you had one union position supervising other union positions, such a scenario would lack oversight controls. That statement elicited groans from the mechanics in attendance.

Other council members felt that it would be easier and cheaper to simply ask the current manager to stay on a few more months until a permanent replacement could be found.

Crime

State’s attorney says Campbell didn’t intend to kill anyone

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Here’s an interesting story from the Journal Star. State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons talks about Rakiem Campbell, the 15-year-old who threw the brick off the overpass, and the reason he was charged with a more serious crime than the Bradley students who started the house fire on Laura that killed Danny Dahlquist (emphasis mine):

[The college prank] differs, [Lyons] said, from an incident last month where a 15-year-old boy threw a patio block off an interstate overpass, killing a passing motorist. In that case, the prosecutor noted, the boy probably didn’t mean to kill anyone but the fact that he threw a block and meant to hit a car made a big difference.

Did you see that phrase? “The boy probably didn’t mean to kill anyone.” That’s not first-degree murder. That’s involuntary manslaughter. According to 720 ILCS 5/9?3 (emphasis mine):

A person who unintentionally kills an individual without lawful justification commits involuntary manslaughter if his acts whether lawful or unlawful which cause the death are such as are likely to cause death or great bodily harm to some individual, and he performs them recklessly….

If the prosecutor is admitting that “the boy probably didn’t mean to kill anyone,” then shouldn’t he have charged the boy with involuntary manslaughter and let it be adjudicated through the juvenile court system?

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

Nichting wants to work on the railroad

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Engineer NichtingPatrick Nichting evidently wants the city to go into the railroad business.

First, some quick background: The council decided Tuesday to sign a temporary agreement with Central Illinois Railroad Company (CIRY) that would officially authorize them to traverse an 1,800-foot connecting track between the western spur and the Kellar Branch. The city is still trying to negotiate a new contract with CIRY, but talks have been fruitless so far.

So, during discussion of this item, Councilman Nichting asked several questions of Corporation Counsel Randy Ray. He asked what would happen after the 120-day temporary agreement expired. Ray answered that we would either have a new operating agreement (contract) or council could decide to go in a different direction. Nichting asked if an option was to make a deal with another rail carrier (someone other than CIRY). Ray said yes. So far, so good.

Then came the zinger. Nichting asked if that rail carrier could be the City of Peoria itself — that is, could the city provide rail service over the line instead of hiring a short line rail operator to handle it. Ray said that would be perfectly legal.

So, let me see if I have this straight: Nichting — a guy who is a strong supporter of outsourcing the fleet management function of the city — wants to start providing rail service in house? Gee, that would only cost somewhere between one and two million dollars just for the engine. Sounds like a brilliant plan. We can fuel it with all that money the city has to burn.

I honestly don’t understand this grudge that council members are holding against Pioneer Railcorp. You may recall that Pioneer has offered to buy the Kellar Branch and western connection for $750,000 or agree to a long-term lease on the line. In other words, they would pay the city money to operate the line, as opposed to Nichting’s plan where the city would have to expend considerable funds to operate the line themselves.

Apparently the council and city staff are willing to forgive CIRY for absolutely any indiscretion no matter how egregious, but will forever spite Pioneer. They won’t accept Pioneer’s apology for filing a SLAPP suit against their critics ten years ago, but they will reward the unapologetic CIRY for endangering the public with a runaway train just two years ago. They hate Pioneer because its founder Guy Brenkman is an unlikable, surly fellow, but they won’t hold it against CIRY that its founder is in prison after he was caught trying to hire someone to murder his wife and girlfriend. They castigate Pioneer for fulfilling its contract with the city and upholding its obligation to the Surface Transportation Board, but they won’t take any action against CIRY for not fulfilling its contact with the city, causing Carver Lumber’s sixty-year-old local business to suffer.

I’ve said it before, and this suggestion from Nichting just confirms it once again. This is no longer about wanting to build a trail. This has become an anti-rail, anti-Pioneer, anti-Carver-Lumber crusade, and the crusaders won’t be satisfied until the rail line is torn out and Pioneer and Carver Lumber are run out of our “business-friendly” town. We’re already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorney fees related solely to the Kellar Branch issue, and we’ve already built a $2 million doomed-to-fail connecting track to the west, and now one council member is implying we should pay millions more to get our own rail equipment and personnel just to do whatever it takes at any expense to keep Pioneer off the line.

Is this really the best use — or even a justifiable use — of the city’s funds? Is this fiscal responsibility?

Sell the line. Stop wasting money. Find a different route for the trail.

City Council, City of Peoria

Council roundup: Deferred

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Almost all noteworthy business of the council was deferred tonight. The Coves controversy was sent to the Traffic Commission to be vetted. The Orchard District ornamental lighting issue was split into a policy issue and a specific request, both of which were deferred until a later, unspecified date. The museum square proposal was deferred until August 28. They did, however, extend the enterprise zone to include Prairie Farms on University, just north of Nebraska.

It was a night of many deferrals, yet it still lasted until after 9:30. Lord help us when they actually discuss the issues. Grab your pillow.