Daily Archives: April 27, 2008

Kellar Branch

Bibo gets the facts wrong on Kellar

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Terry Bibo writes an opinion column for the Journal Star, so I don’t begrudge her expressing her advocacy for converting the Kellar Branch rail line into a dedicated trail, even though I obviously disagree with her. But it does bother me when she says things like this, as if it were a fact:

Even though the Peoria Park District has money banked to make it happen, the trail has languished for years. That’s because Pioneer Rail Corp. rarely uses the railroad line but says it will one of these days. The city of Peoria hasn’t forced the issue.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

First, she makes it sound as if the Park District has money in hand, sitting in a bank somewhere for this project. What they actually have are grants for which they applied prematurely (before they had STB approval to convert the line) that are sitting in limbo, and have been for over a decade.

Secondly, the trail has not languished because of Pioneer. The trail has languished for one main reason: the Park District insists that the only option is to replace the rail line with a trail. If they would have pursued alternatives, they could have had the thing built by now. But they’re not willing to compromise with side-by-side, on-street, adjacent-to-street, or other alternatives. They’ve decided to lay siege to the rail line, willing to wait it out for as many decades as it takes to get their way — at taxpayer expense, of course.

Thirdly, Pioneer isn’t even the superficial reason the trail has been held up. You may recall that the City got Pioneer kicked off the line and replaced with Central Illinois Railroad (CIRY). CIRY was supposed to provide service to Carver Lumber via the Kellar Branch until the western connection was built, then provide comparable service via the western connection. Furthermore, they were supposed to petition the Surface Transportation Board (STB) for discontinuance of the middle portion of the Kellar Branch so it could be converted to a trail, which they did initially. But CIRY never provided service over the Kellar Branch (breach of contract), and their service via the western connection was so poor that Carver Lumber complained to the STB for relief. The STB granted that relief by reinstating Pioneer on the line. CIRY also withdrew their petition for discontinuance (also breach of contract). So if Ms. Bibo and the Journal Star are looking for a scapegoat in the rail carrier arena, they should be complaining about CIRY, not Pioneer. But you’ll never hear the truth from the Journal Star on this issue. They’ve got their boilerplate (“Pioneer is to blame for everything regarding the trail because we don’t like them”), and they’re not going to deviate from it.

Fourthly, “the City of Peoria hasn’t forced the issue”? Seriously? Are you kidding me? The City has been carrying the Park District’s and Peoria Heights’ water on this issue for 17 years. The City has spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees to force the issue. They’ve built a $2 million connecting track to try to force the issue. After a decade and a half of fighting this, they’ve finally seen the handwriting on the wall and are trying to come up with another alternative — hence, the rail/trail committee that’s looking at shared use of the corridor.

Peoria Heights, in contrast, is now trying to pick up where the City left off fighting the STB, only this time spending their own taxpayers’ money for a change. They’re going to keep tilting at windmills, and they’re going to keep wasting more time and money while not ever getting a trail built. But they’ll be praised for trying anyway, at least by Mayor Maloof and the Journal Star.

City of Peoria, Comprehensive Plan

Comprehensive planning not easy, City discovers

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A recent “Issues Update” from the city outlined the difficulty city staff is having getting participation in the Comprehensive Planning process from certain segments of the community:

COMPREHENSIVE PLAN SURVEY – PRELIMINARY RESULTS. As part of the Comprehensive Plan re-write process, the City made an online survey available to the public in order to help gauge levels of interest and importance for various public services. A copy of the preliminary report was presented in Issues Update last week. The preliminary results were presented to the Planning Commission at their April 16, 2008 meeting. During the presentation, several of the commissioners had questions related to the percentage of response from several areas and groups. Specifically, the response rate from the African-American community was significantly below the relative percentage of Peoria’s population. The response rate from the 1st Council District was also below the proportional population amount. Several steps were taken by City staff to provide direct outreach before the launch of the survey, and in anticipation of difficulty reaching some population groups. Additional outreach efforts were made as the survey results were received.

Some of these outreach efforts included:

  • Partnership with the Peoria Public Library to make computers and assistance available to anyone wanting to take the online survey in a library.
  • The placement of two of the three “Help Plan Peoria” billboards in areas of the city that were anticipated to have low response rates.
  • Direct mailings to all faith based organizations in Peoria, requesting that an encouragement be placed in bulletins or newsletters requesting participation in the survey.
  • Direct mailings to all neighborhood associations, neighborhood watch, and business watch groups encouraging them to have their association members participate in the survey.
  • Direct outreach to the Black Chamber of Commerce and the African American Contractors Association requesting that they encourage their members to participate.
  • The provision of 250 paper surveys with self addressed stamped envelopes to residents of the Southside in response from a community leader in that area.
  • A recorded telephone message from the mayor targeted to areas of low response requesting participation in the survey.
  • The placement of “Help Plan Peoria” posters on several CityLink buses.
  • Placement of ads in the Traveler Newspaper.

Despite all those efforts, survey results show only 58 of the survey takers identified themselves as living in the first district, and only 29 described themselves as African Americans.

This is the second attempt at gaining input from citizens. The first one was through a series of public meetings that were so poorly attended that the City decided to cancel the second round of meetings and instead go with the online survey. The survey saw increased participation, but only from certain groups (including a lot of people who live outside the city). So, getting citizen input appears to have been a bit of a struggle.

The Issues Update went on to say:

Although the online survey has been closed at this point, there is still ample opportunity for participation in the Comprehensive Plan process. A series of Public Hearings will begin at the May Planning Commission meeting, and will continue on a monthly basis through September or October of 2008. At each of these meetings, City staff will present recommendations to the Commission, and the Commission will accept public comment and testimony on the recommendations. Further, any resident can call the Planning Department at 494-8600 with comments related to the Comprehensive Plan and the future of Peoria, or send a comment via email to planning@ci.peoria.il.us A detailed listing of future public meetings related to the Comprehensive Plan will be distributed in a future Issues Update.

What’s surprising to me about this whole process is that no consultant — no city planning expert — was called in to help. Not that I think we need a consultant to do every little thing. But this is no little thing.

Consider that we’ve hired a consultant to do a traffic study for the west bluff. We hired a consultant to develop the Heart of Peoria Plan and write the Land Development Code, both of which covered about 8,000 acres of the city. We hired a consultant to help us with the CSO project. We had Caterpillar come in to provide Six Sigma training. We’re likely going to hire a consultant to do an engineering study for the Kellar Branch rail/trail issue.

But for the City’s Comprehensive Plan — the guiding document that will define our public policy direction on everything from land use to transportation for the whole entire city for the next 20 years — we think we don’t need any outside help for that? We have all the expertise we need in house, even though we evidently don’t have it for any of the other, comparatively smaller things I just listed? If the City can’t figure out a way to engage all the stakeholders and get adequate representation from all parts of the city, how will they be able to put together a comprehensive plan that will address the needs of the whole community?

This plan is too important to be one of the few initiatives on which we try to save money by not hiring an expert to assist us. This isn’t the Developer’s Handbook, it’s the Comprehensive Plan! The future of our City will be guided by this document. It’s imperative that we get this one right.