Daily Archives: February 26, 2008

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code

Sheridan Triangle streetscape improvement meeting March 5

6 Comments

News release from the City of Peoria:

Peoria LogoThe City of Peoria will host a public open house at Columbia Middle School, 2612 North Bootz Avenue on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The purpose of this open house is for the public to review the scope of a study and master plan to implement a streetscape improvement project for the Form District known as the Sheridan Triangle Business District, and to provide input to the public master plan process. The intent of the project is to revitalize the character of the streets in the study area to create urban, pedestrian-friendly streets through narrower travel lanes, wider sidewalks and a tree canopy, as well as other improvements to be determined through this public master plan process.

For further information, please contact Scott Reeise, Civil Engineer, at 494-8801 or sreeise@ci.peoria.il.us.

Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum survey being done by Peoria County (UPDATED)

11 Comments

If you get a call from an automated poll asking your opinion on the Peoria Riverfront Museum, it’s not a call from museum officials, but rather Peoria County. Several readers reported they were getting calls about this, so I put up a post about it. I received this comment explaining the whole thing, which I’m reprinting here so no one misses it:

Hello CJ. I appreciate you and your readers taking an interest in the recent Riverfront Museum Survey. This survey was not conducted by “Museum folks,” but rather by Peoria County Government. Peoria County was approached last year to spend $24 million tax payer dollars to fund the museum project. The only way Peoria County may raise these proceeds is by creating a museum district funded by property taxes or to get legislative authorization for a sales tax. For either, we would need to ask the voters by including a referendum on the ballot.

We decided to take a proactive approach by asking voters before placing the referendum on the ballot. We are very much interested in the results because the results provide guidance for how we should proceed. By conducting this poll, our intention is not to generate more interest in the museum but rather to gauge how much interest our citizens currently have in spending $24 million of their collective dollars to support the museum.

In response to two of your readers’ comments regarding the abrupt conclusion to the survey should a respondent select “no” (or number 2) as to whether he or she feels the museum would be beneficial to the region, both the County Administrator and I approved the survey by taking it via phone several times ourselves. When a respondent selects “no,” the recording says “Thank you for your time. I appreciate your participation.” We believe if a citizen does not feel the museum is beneficial, he or she would not support a tax increase to fund the museum; therefore, by eliciting a negative reply, we had the information we needed from the respondent and did not want to unnecessarily take more of the individual’s time.

It was also respondents’ time that became the deciding factor as to whether we included “undecided” and “none of the above” in the same response. We did debate whether to offer these two replies together or separately, but when you take into consideration our citizens’ busy lifestyles and our appreciation for them taking time out of those schedules to reply to a phone survey, we did not desire to lengthen the survey unnecessarily.

Peoria County’s three possible options as far as tax increases to fund the museum are those we included in the survey: property tax increase for Peoria County property owners, regional property tax increase, or sales tax increase for Peoria County. On the advice of the survey administrator, the County Administrator and I agreed that if someone was “undecided” he or she would be more likely to vote against a tax increase (in any form) than for a tax increase were the question to appear on a ballot. Hence, more often than not, “undecided” would prove to be the same response as “none of the above” and would only serve to unnecessarily lengthen the survey if offered as a separate option. We also felt limiting the options to four rather than five was prudent considering the complexity of each option.

Again CJ, Peoria County Government does appreciate your interest in the Riverfront Museum survey. We value your input and that of your readers. Once we get and share the results with the County Board we will be more than happy to share those results with you. Please feel free to contact me regarding the survey: Jenny Zinkel, Director of Strategic Communications, jzinkel@peoriacounty.org. Thank you.

Many thanks to Jenny Zinkel for setting the record straight.

UPDATE: I received some additional information about the poll:

County Administration decided to conduct a phone survey, but a similar question regarding a tax increase to support museum funding was also included on a mail survey randomly sent to 3000 households in Peoria County. Residents have until March 3 to remit the mail survey. We expect to have results of that survey April 7; the results will then be made public.

Communication Express conducted the phone survey. It was completed yesterday [Monday] and we received results today [Tuesday]. Once we make the results known to the County Board, we will release those results to the public. By week’s end, the whole board will have been notified of the results; I anticipate sending a press release on Monday. The results will be used as guidance for the board when deciding whether to put a referendum on the ballot.

The survey cost was $1367.47. 1009 households participated in the survey: 504 within the City of Peoria, 505 in Peoria County, outside Peoria City limits.

Museum Block

Is museum taking a poll or telemarketing?

4 Comments

I’ve received several reports from readers that the Peoria Riverfront Museum folks are conducting a poll:

It was automated about how I felt about the new museum. As soon as I answered “no” (by pressing 2) on if this project was worthy of Peoria, it hung up on me. –Emtronics

I just got the same phone call from “Susan Anderson” with the same result- hung up after pressing 2 for no. I had debated pressing 1, just to see if they asked any further questions TikTok for business. –Septboy

After listening to all the great things this museum will bring to Peoria my wife graciously pressed 1, which was ‘in support.’ We then were given three different taxing options. I waited to see if “press 4?” would be for none of the above. “Press 4” turned out to be “undecided OR none of the above.” Not, press 4 for undecided and press 5 for none of the above… We hung up. –PeoriaIllinoisan

One reader called it a “push poll.” According to Wikipedia, “In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted, and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda … masquerading as a poll.”

Anyone else have an encounter with the museum poll that they’d like to add? Do you think it’s a legitimate attempt to gauge public opinion, or do you think it’s a push poll? I haven’t gotten the call. I’m sure my number has been specifically blacklisted. 😛

CityLink

Another dissatisfied CityLink customer

2 Comments

Another dissatisfied CityLink customer wrote a letter to the editor today:

The Peoria bus system needs an overhaul. […] We need more cross-town busing, buses that run more often, on time, and Sunday buses.

Citizens young and old should not have to wait long periods in the snow, rain, sleet and cold in order to get to work and/or appointments.

This letter-writer is right on target. I have experienced similar dissatisfaction with the city’s bus service; perhaps you remember this post:

I decided to try taking the bus. It was scheduled to arrive about five minutes to nine, so I started to the bus stop at a quarter till. It doesn’t take but maybe four minutes to walk to the bus stop, and I can see the intersection while I’m walking to it. Before I’ve walked for even two minutes, I see the bus go by. It came early — almost ten minutes early. Since it was a Saturday, the buses only run once an hour.

Or this one from last June:

First, bus travel is very slow. Part of the reason is that buses are pretty infrequent. They come only once every half hour during peak times, and once an hour during non-peak times. Plus, nine times out of ten you have to ride to the bus station first and transfer buses. Although the bus lines intersect elsewhere in town, there’s no easy way to transfer buses at these intersections. So unless you live on the same route as your destination, you have to ride to the transfer center first, which can add considerable time to your trip.

Second, many of the bus stops have no bench or shelter. If buses are going to be as infrequent as they are, every bus stop should at least have a bench. I doubt there are many elderly who would or could stand for half an hour to an hour waiting for a bus. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen any elderly riding the bus. Ideally, each bus stop would also offer a shelter and a map of the various routes so the uninitiated can figure out what route they’re on and how to get to where they’re going.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticing. CityLink recently got a new general manager, Tom Lucek, who has over 25 years experience in mass transit. Here’s hoping he brings some much-needed reform to the city’s bus system.

General News

Study finds depression drugs no better than placebo

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You know those anti-depression drugs like Zoloft and Prozac? A new study finds that they “work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression,” according to an article published today in The Times (London):

The study, by Irving Kirsch, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull, is the first to examine both published and unpublished evidence of the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which account for 16 million NHS prescriptions a year. It suggests that the effectiveness of the drugs may have been exaggerated in the past by drugs companies cherry-picking the best results for publication.

The study was published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and is titled “Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.” Their published conclusion is, “Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.”

Why does this matter? Because there are serious side effects to SSRIs, not the least of which can be suicidal or homicidal thoughts. Karen McCarron had just come off anti-depressants when she killed her autistic daughter, and NIU shooter Steve Kazmierczak had stopped taking Prozac a couple weeks before he killed five people and himself. There are lots of other examples.

The argument has been that the benefits of SSRIs outweigh the risks. But this study calls into question the efficacy of these anti-depression drugs, which undermines that argument. If SSRIs are no better than a placebo for most patients, then, as the researchers concluded, “there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective.”