Over 1,000 residents sign petitions against 45 minute cut in school day

From a press release:

Parents, teachers and concerned citizens unhappy over the shortening of the school day for most District 150 primary schools have just secured their 1001th signature on a petition requesting the District 150 Board of Education rescind their vote of May 5th. That vote shortened the primary school Day for most District 150 Schools as well as cut specialty teachers in Art Music Science and PE.

The petition Drive continues and the group feels that given time they will easily secure thousands more.

Sharon Crews, a retired Manual teacher, and one of the many that worked on the petition drive had this to say about the experience:

“Our experience today proved one thing–this group’s efforts have definitely made an impact on the public. Almost everyone who signed the petitions today already knew about the 45 minute cut in time for primary schools. Certainly, they didn’t find out from any communications from District #150. The public was aware and very ready and willing to sign against the action. This should give us all encouragement for future efforts to make the district accountable to the public. So many thanked us for putting forth this effort to fight the shortened day.”

Chris Summers, A District 150 Parent, had this to say:

“I only spent about an hour on it, and I didn’t have any trouble getting people to sign. Most of them were already aware of what was going on in D150 and were not only willing, but eager to sign the petition. I heard a lot of positive comments for what we’re trying to do; it’s been a very encouraging experience. More signatures tomorrow!”

All of the signatures are hard copy, with actual signatures. Copies of the petition and signatures will be provided to the media upon request. The group plans to present the petition to the Board of Education at their next board meeting on June 16. The 45 minute issue is expected to be on their agenda as a discussion item.

The Petition is entitled “Petition to Rescind Shortened School Day” and reads “We the undersigned support a full rescission of the shortened school day/specialty teacher reduction plan that the Peoria Public Schools Board of Education approved May 5, 2008”

Library discussion included good and bad questions

Tuesday’s city council meeting included a time of questions and answers between the city council and Peoria Public Library board. There were some good, pertinent questions asked, and then there were some that left everyone scratching their heads. Here are the highlights:

  • Mayor Ardis — The mayor didn’t actually ask any questions, but did make some opening comments. He said that the federally-mandated combined sewer overflow (CSO) project is right around the corner and will cost $100 million or more, so he is most concerned about the $35 million price tag for this library proposal. He wants to see lower-cost options presented. He also said he’s “not drinking the Kool-Aid on the 72%” of voters who approved the library referendum. Taking into account the low voter turnout, that really means that only 15% of registered voters voted in favor, and the council has a responsibility to look at the bigger picture and represent all residents whether they voted or not. My take: In his attempt to downplay the results of the library referendum, he has repudiated all election results in the process. When was the last time any candidate was elected or referendum passed by a majority of all registered voters? That’s an insurmountable and inconsistent standard. Ardis’s stronger argument was affordability of the plan, not validity of the advisory vote.
  • Barbara Van Auken — Van Auken used her time mainly to chastise the Journal Star for criticizing the council. She said all the council is doing is asking questions and making sure this is the best plan for their constituents. My take: If that were true, there would be no controversy. In fact, the council has been trying to influence the location of the proposed northern branch by questionable means. First they tried to bribe (with their votes) the library board into putting the northern branch on the site of Elliott’s strip club. When that fell through, they started actively pursuing a site near Expo Gardens and Richwoods, showing a complete disregard for the due diligence done by the library board. That’s the point of controversy. Van Auken and others on the council (and even other bloggers) misrepresent the argument when they say critics of the council were expecting a rubber-stamp approval. Everyone expects the council to provide proper oversight of the board and the process.
  • Bob Manning — Perhaps the most adversarial council member to question the board, Manning had two major objections: (1) He said the library’s plan “should be titled ‘Field of Dreams,’ or ‘If you build it, they will come.'” In other words, he thinks the library’s proposal is completely bogus. Upgrading/expanding will not draw more patrons. (2) The council’s “responsibility is looking at the bigger picture,” and that includes a $47 million airport expansion, $100+ million CSO project, $40 million in new school construction, possibly $40-50 million for a new museum, and now up to $35 million for a library expansion — all planned to be paid for through tax increases. Thus, we can’t afford the library upgrades right now. My take: Although I don’t agree with Bob, I do at least appreciate his honesty. He doesn’t like the plan or the expense. Since Manning was not one of the council members who endorsed the plan or the referendum, I think it’s fair for him to reiterate his objections to it and try to sway his fellow council members. In response to his first point, he’s stating an opinion evidently based on his belief that current trends in library usage are going to continue no matter what the library does or doesn’t do; the library’s professional consultants hold a different opinion based on their research and experience. They believe the trends can be turned around if some modernization takes place as they have seen in other communities. And in response to his second point, it doesn’t make sense for the city alone to sacrifice its needs because other taxing bodies evidently don’t look at the bigger picture. I would submit that library services are more important than the proposed museum, the new zoo (which Manning didn’t mention, but will raise the park district’s levy), and the new airport terminal. If we’re going to have to sacrifice something, let’s put some of those other projects on hold before we kill the library upgrade. (And lest you think the city has no control over those other bodies, remember that they have control over one of them — the museum. The museum contract would have to be extended by the council for that project to go forward; if the council is concerned about the tax burden, and if the only way the museum will be built is if it can access tax dollars, then the city should do the responsible thing and not extend the contract.)
  • Clyde Gulley — Gulley agrees with my assessment — that is, that the library is a priority at least equal with the other items Manning mentioned. He also really likes the plans for combining and expanding the south side library services. He wishes that the south side plan could at least be implemented, even if the north side plan is delayed or killed. My take: I agree.
  • Ryan Spain — Spain’s big hangup is the site selection for the northern branch. He believes they should have a site selected and a contract signed contingent on the issuance of bonds before the council votes on it. He also would like the Lakeview expansion piece taken out until we can see what impact the new northern branch would have on traffic at Lakeview. My take: I don’t have a problem with the proposed compromise of holding off on the Lakeview expansion until we can evaluate the impact of a northern branch; that sounds like a reasonable compromise. As for having a contract on a northern branch before the city votes on it, I think that’s kinda silly. The council could just as easily approve the bonds with $X used for the northern branch contingent on site approval. I don’t think approval of the whole plan should be held up for the sake of one part of it.
  • Patrick Nichting — Nichting had three talking points. First, he had the board state unequivocally that a final site for the northern branch had not been chosen yet (he had been getting calls from residents insisting that the library board had settled on the Festival Foods site). Second, he wanted to point out changes that had been made to the decision matrix since it was first given to the council. Evidently another plot on the Sud’s property had opened up that was the more preferred plot, so it was added to the matrix and the matrix recalculated. Third, he said that the proposed sites were so far to the northeast of the city that it would be just as far to drive there as to Lakeview from the northwest part of the city. The library board conceded that that was one of the cons of those locations. My take: I see nothing objectionable in these observations or questions. Indeed, this is exactly the type of questioning I was expecting. It goes to the heart of the issue — the criteria. The unstated but obvious point is that the library board should be considering proximity to the east and west parts of far north Peoria, not just north and south proximity.
  • Bill Spears — Spears asked how many meetings the board had with Ken Hinton, the “highest paid public servant” in Peoria. Have they had any conversations about libraries and schools interfacing? He pointed to a March 2006 article in the Journal Star that spoke of Hinton’s “dream” of seeing libraries locate close to schools. Library director Ed Szynaka responded that he has a good collaborative relationship with Mr. Hinton and that Hinton’s views have changed since March 2006. My take: What the heck was that all about? I have nothing against public officials leveraging the needs of other public bodies when spending public money. But Spears’ justification seemed to be merely the fact that Hinton is paid more than any other public official, as if that had anything to do with the price of eggs in China. It was a weird question mainly due to the way it was asked, but also because it’s a bit hypocritical. I mean, did Spears talk to Peoria’s “highest paid public servant” before voting to explore a new TIF for downtown? TIFs affect the school district more than the locations of libraries.
  • Jim Montelongo — After using the library board as a proxy to express his misgivings about the Expo Gardens site, Montelongo then asked for an analogy. What are we getting for this $35 million? Is it a Cadillac? McKenzie said we were not getting a Cadillac, but didn’t answer with a car analogy. He said we were getting a “good, modern library,” and went on to say that the board had been “extremely cost conscious” and is simply asking to “build what the city needs for the future.” Szynaka said he would use the analogy that the library today is like Caterpillar trying to sell 1960s tractors in 2008. My take: This was a good business-sense question. As Jonathan Ahl said in his remarks at the top of the council meeting, not everything is black and white; there are lots of shades of gray. Montelongo is looking for a way to lower the overall costs without defeating the purpose of the upgrade.
  • George Jacob — Jacob focused on the numbers, especially operating costs. He questions whether the library can afford the increase in operating costs that this expansion will bring, and he questions the operating cost projections provided by the library. Specifically, he pointed out that the full plan would increase the library’s overall square footage by 45-51%, yet projected only a 1.5% increase in utility costs. Szynaka and McKenzie asked for more time to answer this question because the person who crunched those numbers was not in the chamber Tuesday night and they wanted to find out how those numbers were determined before answering. However, Szynaka did mention that part of the renovation was to replace multiple old HVAC systems with more modern, efficient systems, adn that would have a big impact on the utility costs. My take: Fair questions. The library should be able to defend their numbers. If they’re not justifiable, they must be fixed before the council goes any further.
  • Gary Sandberg — Sandberg just used the library board as a proxy to answer other council members’ objections. Since he was the library’s liaison throughout the process, he already knew the answer to every question he asked.

There was no final action taken; the question and answer time was for informational purposes only. The issue is up for action at the next council meeting, June 24.

City council gives library board the silent treatment

This week’s Word on the Street is especially snarky, and for good reason. Open government is highly valued by most voters (but not everyone), so reporters generally get miffed when government officials deliberately try to skirt the Open Meetings Act in order to conduct the public’s business in secret:

They didn’t break any rules, but definitely skirted the intent of the Open Meetings Act. There were only three councilmen, two School Board members, two District 150 administrators and two representatives from the Library Board there. Clever.

After the meeting, it was the library board president who was the most candid, reports Karen McDonald. She wasn’t surprised by that, and neither am I. I was, however, surprised by this:

When the City Council deferred the issue, it said it would be submitting questions to the Library Board. Council members came up with the now-renowned list of 49 questions, which only made it into library officials’ hands after they went searching for them. Said the Library Board’s spokeswoman, Trisha Noack, “Actually, we got our questions from the city Web site, as they were not sent to us.”

I expect better from this council. Even if official protocol didn’t dictate that the council communicate directly to the library board, common courtesy should. Whether or not the council agrees with the library board’s recommendation, they should at least treat the board with some respect. As has been pointed out by the Journal Star and others, the library board has done everything that’s been asked of them. They’ve done their due diligence. Where is the city council’s?

Why is all the artwork gone? (UPDATED)

In July 2006, downtown museum developers with city approval kicked off “Picture Museum Square.” For a fee, anyone — artists, schools, businesses, etc. — could paint one of the panels of the plywood fence surrounding the old Sears block downtown. The idea was to raise money for the museum project and make the block more attractive while waiting for construction to commence. Each panel cost $500. Many participated as several of the panels were decorated with various styles of artwork.

But it’s all gone now.

As PeoriaIllinoisan shows with his trusty camera, the plywood fence surrounding so-called Museum Square has been painted black. It’s unclear whether Caterpillar or the City painted over all the artwork. You may recall that Caterpillar recently was granted a lease by the city to use the block as an employee parking lot while their parking deck is getting some maintenance work done to it.

The lease agreement specifically states that the outside of the fence is the City’s responsibility to maintain, and that additional artwork can be painted there, although Caterpillar has the right to approve the artwork first:

5.5 … In addition, the City shall maintain the exterior of the existing fence surrounding the Premises. The City shall have the right to grant additional licenses to community groups to paint or attach artwork or graphics to the exterior of the fence surrounding the Premises, provided that Caterpillar shall have the right, in the exercise of its reasonable judgment, to approve all such artwork and graphics. The attachment of such artwork and graphics shall not negatively impact Caterpillar’s use of the Premises.

I’ve written to Interim City Manager Henry Holling asking for an explanation for the painting over of the artwork. I’ll update this post with his response when I receive it. I agree with PeoriaIllinoisan: inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE (6/10): Here’s the response I received from Henry Holling:

Mr. Summers, the fence painting was worked out between the Museum Group and Caterpillar. The artwork was not painted over, it was removed for future use.
Thanks for your inquiry.

Also, the Journal Star has an article today about plans for the fence. I’m glad to hear they didn’t paint over the artwork.

Prominent blogger defends subjective, secretive plans to squander taxpayer money

It’s not every day that a blogger comes right out and scoffs at objective, public processes for spending taxpayer money. But one prominent blogger has done just that. Billy Dennis says that making decisions via an objective, rational process is ludicrous and will result in poor decisions, like the failed “New Coke” formula.

That’s right. An open process like the one the library board has employed for more than the past year — including over 40 public meetings and an advisory referendum — is worthy of scorn by Mr. Dennis. In contrast, a closed-door summit between the city and school district, “held at the District 150 administrative offices with only a few elected members of each board so that the press and public could be excluded from the meeting,” is worthy of applause! The site near Expo Gardens was already publicly considered against objective criteria and discarded. For personal reasons not fully disclosed, the site is now being resurrected and pursued by the council, but behind closed doors.

I’m sure you’re wondering why Billy would take such a strange stance — against transparency, for special interest interference. For one thing, he thinks it’s good policy. Since council members are elected and answer to the people, he thinks that gives them carte blanche to discard any and all processes, no matter how well-researched or documented, in order to pursue their own personal pet projects. After all, if the people don’t like it, they’ll just vote that person out of office… after the money’s been squandered, unfortunately.

Another reason Billy stands up for arbitrary decision-making: he believes it might save $8-10 million. It has a great ring to it, doesn’t it? “Saving” $8-10 million? Where does that figure come from? Has it been verified? And are we really “saving”?

The figure comes from Mayor Ardis. The Peoria Times-Observer reported: “Ardis said closing the Lakeview Branch could potentially trim $8 to $10 million off the price tag of the library’s expansion and renovation project, projected at $35 million.” See, if they build a new library at Expo Gardens, less than two miles from Lakeview, there would be no need to keep the Lakeview branch open. Closing that branch, and thus not sinking any money into expanding or renovating it, would drop the price of the library’s renewal plans to $25-27 million (at least, by the Mayor’s calculations); hence, the $8-10 million in savings.

To my knowledge, neither the Mayor nor anyone else has released any detail on how they arrived at that figure. Not knowing the sale price of the land by Expo (it’s not for sale), the environmental clean-up costs, or a host of other variables, I don’t know how the figure could be verified.

As far as whether it’s “saving” anything, that’s kind of a backwards way of looking at things. If I say I’m going to spend $25,000 on a car, and then I decide to buy a $15,000 car instead, did I just save $10,000? No. I spent $15,000. Now, suppose the $25,000 car could seat six people, so my family of five could fit comfortably, but the $15,000 car only seats four. Have I made a wise decision to spend $10,000 less when the car I bought doesn’t meet the needs of my family?

This library upgrade works the same way. A new northern branch will cost about $11 million to construct, based on the experts at BCA (the library consulting firm that’s been working on this project who have a pretty good track record estimating library construction). Wherever we put it, it’s going to cost around $11 million. The question we have to ask ourselves is where the wisest place is to build the new branch. If we spend $11 million to build it in the wrong place, was that a wise use of that money? Is that being fiscally responsible?

Billy evidently thinks so. He’s admitted that it doesn’t matter to him where the new branch is built, which is tantamount to saying he doesn’t care whether the city council squanders $11 million or not. He’ll just be happy that the council “saved” $8-10 million, even if $11 million is wasted in the process.

Library answers the City

If you haven’t already seen them, you can read the library’s answers to the City’s questions here (large PDF file). It’s over 40 pages long, so I’m not going to paste the text into this blog entry like I did for the questions. I did like this answer, though:

There is a desire to achieve the goals arrived at after extensive study by expert consultants and input from the Peoria public, including over 45 public meetings, and web, in-house and mail comments. However, since building a consolidated branch at Exposition Gardens does not address those goals, we set aside this idea after applying the same tests we did to all other sites. One of the main goals of our building program is to be sure that we are not just doing a temporary fix on our libraries but building for the future.

Here you can see an example of what I said in my previous post. They got public input, they utilized expert consultants, and they ran the Expo Gardens site through an objective criteria. It’s also nice to see that the library is thinking about long-term solutions and not temporary fixes. That way, they won’t have to come back asking for more money in just a few years.

It will be interesting to hear the discussion that ensues Tuesday night at the council meeting.

The problem with the library “process”

I can see that I’m not making myself clear regarding what I find objectionable about recent events surrounding the library. Some people seem to think that I advocate no council oversight of the library board or that I think the advisory referendum should be taken as binding the council to every jot and tittle of the library board’s recommendation. Not so.

Let me try to explain my concerns (hopefully) better.

I believe that decisions like this one regarding library expansion should be made rationally and objectively, with real public participation and consideration of the needs of all stakeholders. I believe the library board has, to the best of their ability, done that. They have done their planning openly, had public meetings, included people in their strategic planning from all stakeholders (planning & growth department, chamber of commerce, school administration, etc.), and established an objective criteria for evaluating locations for a northern branch.

The library board ran all potential sites for a northern branch through their criteria and let the chips fall where they may. They looked at things like cost of acquisition, size, proximity to patrons, etc. The board’s initial preferred site — K’s Merchandise — did not make the cut. The board was surprised to find that the Sud’s property and the old Festival Foods were the top two sites, based on their objective criteria. That’s why they made the recommendation they did.

Contrast that with the city council. The council has no criteria for objectively choosing a site. Nor have they held any public meetings to get input from the community. The first site they floated was Elliott’s strip club on University. That was done behind the scenes in an attempt to influence the board with the promise of extra votes.

When that was shot down, the council suggested Expo Gardens. A meeting was hastily put together with representatives of the city, school board, and library board. The city is no doubt preparing its case for this site to present during the question and answer time with the library board that’s been added to the end of Tuesday’s council meeting.

Here’s the problem I have with this “process.” It’s not a process. It’s council members with pet projects or special interests using the library for their purposes instead of establishing a criteria and making objective and rational decisions based on that criteria. Nichting would like to see Elliott’s run out of the north end of town — that would be good for his constituents and it would be good for his district — so he suggests putting the library there. Spears has big plans for making the area around Expo Gardens into a family-friendly place for recreation and entertainment, so he suggests putting the library there.

Well, guess what? You can defend almost any site on that basis. Why not put a library in one of the form districts in the Heart of Peoria area? It would be a neighborhood anchor and spur redevelopment in those areas, it would be walkable, and I could come up with a hundred other benefits if I wanted. You probably can think of a lot of reasons putting a library near your neighborhood would be good, too. That’s not a reasonable or sufficient way to decide where the library is to be sited.

If the council has legitimate questions regarding the criteria the library used, I think it’s reasonable to discuss modifying that criteria — at an open meeting, with public/stakeholder input. Then, once everyone agrees on the criteria, go out and look at potential sites again, including any for which a council member has an affinity, and run them all through the criteria and may the best site win.

That’s what I’m advocating. Does that make it clearer?