Daily Archives: October 6, 2007

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Police

Police want 5:00 security start time at Adams Supermarket

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Adams Supermarket owner Ahmad Abud (aka Hussein Alsalahi) insisted that his South Side grocery store needed to sell liquor to be successful, and was willing to agree to a number of conditions in order to secure his liquor license. One of those conditions was having an off-duty Peoria Police officer act as a security guard from 2 p.m. to midnight.

Sales haven’t been as good as Abud thought they would be, so he’s looking at reducing costs — and one of those costs is the off-duty police officer. He wants to only have an officer working security from 8 p.m. to midnight, and he has the support of First District Councilman Clyde Gulley.

The Police Department, however, thinks that won’t be sufficient and is recommending a third option — that the police security officer start at 5 p.m. They further recommend that this be on a 12-month trial basis, and that if there’s any trouble, the full 2 p.m. to midnight condition be reinstated.

Gulley and others will complain that this is unfair because it’s not required of any other grocery stores with liquor licenses. That’s a valid complaint. But on the other hand, Abud did agree to it. If he thought it was unfair, he should have stated that early in the process, like when he appeared before the Liquor Commission initially or when his license came up for approval before the council. Since he enthusiastically agreed to the conditions, and is now trying to get out of one of them, it makes people nervous that he will continue to chip away at the conditions until his store is nothing more than a glorified liquor store.

General News

Good news for the Cubs

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My sincere condolences to the Chicago Cubs and their fans on losing the National League Division Series. I know there’s a lot of depression right now, but there is some good news, thanks to Lou Piniella’s forward-thinking strategy:

Carlos Zambrano

Carlos Zambrano is fully rested and ready for his start on Sunday.

Peoria Public Schools

Gorenz admits district can afford two schools

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Clare Jellick has written on her blog what we all knew, but that the school board wouldn’t admit before now — that the district has money to build two new schools, one on the East Bluff and one in the North Valley. They just don’t want to build two schools:

At the end of Thursday’s forum, I approached School Board president David Gorenz to talk about the available funding. He recognized that the [$40 million worth of] PBC money is out there but said the district wants to use it for “other projects throughout the district.”

And of course, since the money they get from the Public Building Commission (PBC) is available without a referendum, there’s no accountability to the taxpayers on how it’s spent. (You can thank Aaron Schock for pushing through the bill that made it possible.)

So what are these “other projects throughout the district” on which they want to spend the PBC money? Well, of the $28 million of PBC funds they’ve already requested, $21 million is for the Harrison replacement school. According to a Sept. 29 Journal Star article:

$5.2 million in PBC bonding authority will be used to update the former Social Security Administration building at 2628 N. Knoxville Ave. It will house a program for at-risk youths.

The district’s Central Office, 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave., will be renovated with $1.8 million from the PBC. [emphasis mine]

So, $1.8 million for the district’s office building. Remember that. Let’s go back to Clare’s blog for a second and look at something District Treasurer Guy Cahill has said:

The district is planning one large school at 120,000 square feet that would cost between $20 and $21 million. Two smaller schools would add at least $1.2 million to that construction budget [emphasis mine], district treasurer Guy Cahill has said.

Setting aside for a moment the folly of acquiring another building that needs over $5 million in renovation when the district already has plenty of buildings — including the old Blaine-Sumner school they recently renovated for more office space — and in fact are supposedly trying to get rid of buildings, let’s just look at their office building rehab plans. I think it’s safe to conclude that the district feels it’s more important to spend $1.8 million to fix up their office building than spend $1.2 million to build two smaller schools, which is what the parents and teachers want, what their own Master Facilities Plan called for, and which has been proven to improve student achievement.

So much for interim Associate Deputy Superintendent Fischer’s statement at the last community forum that “our students deserve the very best.” I guess they only deserve the very best of what’s left over after our administrators get their offices renovated and redecorated.