The polls are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Please go out and vote, and encourage your friends and family to vote.
And please take Scott Janz’s advice and vote “No” on the public facilities sales tax referendum.
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Negative campaigning plays in Second District
Over the weekend, city council candidate Curphy Smith sent this mailer to residents in the second district. It can only be characterized as a negative campaign piece. It sets forth in detail all the ways incumbent Barbara Van Auken broke her campaign promises, with some personal attacks thrown in for good measure.
This mailer was regrettable, especially considering Smith had, up to that point, run a pretty positive campaign. While I think the piece makes some valid criticisms of Van Auken, it steps over the line a little too much. Specifically:
- Overall, the piece reads as a response to the unsigned anti-Curphy flyer that was distributed to neighborhoods surrounding Bradley. In fact, an image of the flyer appears on page 3 of Curphy’s mailer, and Curphy attributes the flyer to Van Auken’s campaign.
“Only one week before Election Day, Barbara Van Auken sent out an alarmist flyer urging people to vote on 7th,” the Smith mailer says. However, as I reported in a previous post, Van Auken denies any knowledge of the flyer, and says it was not authorized by her campaign. Unless Smith’s campaign has some sort of proof that it came from Van Auken, they shouldn’t be accusing her of sending it.
- The mailer heavily criticizes Van Auken’s success in building a new arbor at Rebecca and Main street completely at city expense. While pointing out that Van Auken didn’t fulfill her promise to repeal the $6 per month garbage fee, the mailer states, “She had other ideas to spend the money to make her look good as a council member — such as her monumental and extravagant arbor.”
Construction of the arbor was a one-time cost of $143,287.66. The garbage fee brings in approximately $2.3 million in revenue annually. Was the arbor expense extravagant? One could argue that it was. But one cannot argue that it would have been more than a drop in the bucket to fill the revenue hole if the garbage tax were eliminated. A better criticism would have been that, in 2006, the council considered replacing the garbage fee by raising the city’s portion of property taxes 14 cents per $100 valuation. They didn’t, opting instead to approve a budget that didn’t raise taxes and left the garbage tax in place. Van Auken voted in favor of that budget.
- The mailer also makes this allegation: “People who have had to deal with Barbara Van Auken over the years invariably describe her as ‘vindictive,’ ‘mean,’ ‘divisive,’ and ‘abrasive.'” This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to voters. It’s a personal attack. It’s hyperbole (“invariably”?). And it’s unnecessary. There is sufficient reason to vote against her without resorting to name-calling. It just makes Smith appear mean-spirited. That’s unfortunate because, in my dealings with Smith, I had not found him to be mean-spirited.
In my opinion, this piece wasn’t necessary. Van Auken had brought enough bad press on herself, and the Journal Star had endorsed Smith. The unsigned anti-Curphy flyer was already counterbalanced by the release of embarrassing police reports and video of Van Auken from last September. The candidates themselves had successfully distanced themselves from these negative attacks on each other.
On the other hand, negative campaigning has a long and often successful history. I guess Smith’s campaign will just have to hope the tactic doesn’t backfire on them as voters head to the polls today.
Peoria Chronicle Endorsements — Mayor: Ardis, Treasurer: Shadid
Two other races on the ballot Tuesday are for Mayor of Peoria and Peoria City Treasurer. Here are my endorsements for each of these:
- Mayor of Peoria: Jim Ardis — Running against incumbent Mayor Ardis is local activist General Parker. Unfortunately, under current state law, Parker is ineligible to serve if elected. Thus, for all practical purposes, Ardis is running unopposed. He is endorsed.
- City Treasurer: Gary Shadid — City Treasurer Reginald Willis is retiring and two candidates are vying to succeed him: Fifth District Councilman Patrick Nichting and local CPA Gary Shadid. Nichting offers little more than his fifth district representation as experience, whereas Shadid has been a CPA since 1983 and has experience in governmental accounting and auditing. Shadid is the more qualified of the two. He is endorsed.
Peoria parents and teachers to protest school closings at tonight’s School Board meeting
You can read all the details on Billy and Diane’s blog.
Peoria Chronicle Endorsements — Peoria City Council: Smith, Akeson, Irving
All the City of Peoria district representative positions are up for election Tuesday, but only three are contested. First District Councilman Clyde Gulley and Fourth District Councilman Bill Spears are unopposed. Here are my endorsements for the other three offices:
- Second District: Curphy Smith — When incumbent Barbara Van Auken ran for office four years ago, she promised to have a more inclusive leadership style than her predecessor, Marcella Teplitz. Regrettably, that has not come to pass. Secrecy on the council has gotten worse, and Van Auken is right in the thick of it. From the Marriott Hotel plan to spend $40 million that was kept secret from the public until the eleventh hour and passed nearly unanimously, to plans for cutting the city’s budget deficit that were kept secret even from other council members, Van Auken has not distinguished herself as “inclusive.” Her other campaign promises — restoring Fire Station 11 to “full service” and eliminating the $6 per month garbage fee — have also gone unfulfilled, although Van Auken supporters will point out that she followed the advice of the Fire Chief on the former issue. She said she supported the Renaissance Park plan, but after doing a traffic study on Main Street, she asked for no funding in 2009 to actually make improvements. It should come as no surprise that some of her biggest supporters also favor no changes to Main Street.
Beyond that, I’m disappointed in Van Auken’s voting record. She has consistently voted to make exceptions to the Land Development Code that favors developers over residents. She has gotten few concessions from institutions wishing to expand, whether it be Bradley University encroaching into the Arbor District or Methodist Hospital taking over Hamilton Boulevard and inching closer to the Randolph-Roanoke District. A publicly-funded arbor is little compensation for destabilizing an older, mature neighborhood and worsening traffic issues by allowing two important thoroughfares to be vacated. She has nullified two historic preservation requests because she didn’t like the timing of the requests. She ran on a fiscally-conservative, essential-services-first platform, yet supports the proposed museum, the Marriott Hotel plan, the Civic Center expansion, and other so-called “progressive” issues.
Curphy Smith is not the ideal candidate. He doesn’t have the grasp on city issues that I would like to see. But he’s open-minded and willing to listen to both sides of an issue in an unprejudiced way. From what I’ve observed when he was an officer in the Uplands Residential Association, he was not afraid to bring controversial ideas to the table. He could have a spirited debate, but not hold a grudge against those who didn’t vote his way. Since he’s a banker, he would also bring his financial skills to the table, which will offset the loss of Bob Manning who isn’t running for reelection. The second district needs a change, and Smith has a lot of potential. He is endorsed.
- Third District: Beth Akeson — I wrote a lengthy endorsement before the primary election in support of Beth Akeson (read it here), so I’ll just reiterate my summary statement here:
Motivational speaker Joel Barker once said, “Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with vision is making a positive difference.” This is what sets Beth Akeson apart from the other candidates: She has that rare combination of action with vision. And she will make a positive difference for the citizens of Peoria, especially in the third district. […]
I sincerely believe that Beth Akeson is the candidate that will make the biggest positive difference for her district and the city at large.
- Fifth District: Dan Irving — There’s no incumbent in this race, as Patrick Nichting is pursuing the City Treasurer’s job instead. So the candidates are Dan Irving and Gloria Cassel-Fitzgerald, both of whom ran unsuccessfully in the last at-large election (coming in sixth and ninth, respectively).
I endorsed Irving in the at-large election because of “the priority he puts on core services (fire, police) and his support for older neighborhoods (through the Heart of Peoria Plan and other initiatives).” I haven’t heard him talk about those issues so much now that he’s running for fifth district, which is understandable. The Heart of Peoria Plan doesn’t cover the fifth district, and the economy is quite a bit different these days, so more focus is put on economic development.
Both candidates favor the museum tax and the $40 million subsidy for building a Marriott Hotel, even though neither of these are core services and are hardly affordable in the city’s current economic condition. That’s disappointing, but not surprising coming from the fifth district.
Cassel-Fitzgerald, just like in the at-large campaign, sounds more like she’s running for school board rather than city council. In fact, education is one of the main planks in her platform, even though the city can do little about those issues.
Overall, Irving has a better grasp on city issues. Two years later, I still find him to be informed, level-headed, and realistic in his approach. He is endorsed.
Peoria Chronicle Endorsements — Public Facility Sales Tax: No
Much has been written on this, both in my blog and at the NoMuseumTax.org website, so I won’t go through all the standard arguments again. What I would like to do briefly is respond to a few of the more common rebuttals I’ve heard.
- First, there is the rebuttal that absent this museum plan, the block will remain vacant for years to come. Museum supporters base this belief on their assertion that the block has been vacant for fifteen years, and if anyone had wanted to develop it, it would have happened by now. The premise is completely false. Sears closed their downtown store and moved to Northwoods Mall in September of 1998, which is about ten and a half years ago, not fifteen. Plans to put a history museum on the block surfaced the same year, before Sears even closed its doors. Furthermore, the City of Peoria bought the Sears block in July of 1998 — also before the store closed. The city, on the advice of the Riverfront Business District Commission, started the process of putting out requests for proposals on the site in March 2000 to see what private developers would be interested. In July 2000, they aborted that process, deciding instead to wait until a “comprehensive study of the downtown” could be completed. That study came in 2002 and is called the Heart of Peoria Plan. Yet, after the plan was completed, the City didn’t put out RFPs based on that plan, they just gave the bock to the museum in September 2003 when they signed the first redevelopment agreement. The block has been locked up ever since. This block, which has been described as the “crown jewel” of Peoria and the most valuable piece of property in downstate Illinois, will most assuredly be redeveloped if the museum proposal doesn’t pan out. Given the state of the economy, it will likely take a little time for mixed-use development to happen, but I’ll bet a lot more is built in six years of private development than has been built in the last six years while we’ve been waiting for the museum to get its act together.
- Second, there’s the rebuttal that any development on the block will require a public subsidy, so why not just give it to the museum? I won’t dispute that some public subsidy will be needed, if for no other reason than that the council has set a precedent of handing out subsidies like candy. The question is how much of a subsidy, and how much of a return for that subsidy can we expect? This sales tax is only the latest in a long list of subsidies the museum has already been given. They’re being leased the land — which is estimated to cost several million dollars alone — for $1 a year. They’re in a tax increment financing (TIF) district. They’ve been promised no small amount of public infrastructure improvements around the block, most notably on Water Street. And the City of Peoria is going to own, operate, and maintain the underground parking deck once it’s built. Then there are all the state and federal funds the museum has received. Yet on top of all that, they want $40 million more in public subsidy from the county. And this is for a private, not-for-profit business that will charge admission and pay no property or sales taxes itself. If the city were to give the land to a private developer along with the existing TIF incentive, I bet that would be enough subsidy without having to tap the taxpayers for $40 million extra in bonds. Plus, we’d increase the property tax base and bring in sales tax to boot.
- Third, there’s the Civic Center rebuttal. It sounds like this: “Can you imagine Peoria without the Civic Center? It was built in hard economic times, too, and now look at what an asset it is to the community! This is our generation’s ‘Civic Center’ moment.” The problem with this argument is that our generation has already had its “Civic Center moment.” Our generation just borrowed and spent $55 million to expand the Civic Center, plus we’re spending another $40 million to put an attached hotel next to it. That’s a total of $95 million in public investment. This was also supposed to stimulate our economy and make us a tourist destination. How quickly that’s been forgotten. How many “Civic Center moments” can we afford? Think about it. At the same time supporters want us to raise taxes for an “education and entertainment” complex, the city is talking about laying off police officers and cutting road maintenance in half, and our local school district is closing schools right and left. What’s wrong with this picture?
Finally, the idea that a “yes” vote will somehow prove that Peoria “believes in itself” is nothing more than touchy-feely marketing spin. Peoria believes in itself. Look around. Peoria has all kinds of educational and entertainment opportunities: the recently expanded Glen Oak Zoo, Wildlife Prairie State Park, the Peoria Civic Center, multiple movie theaters, Cornstock Theater, Peoria Players, Peoria Chiefs baseball, Bradley basketball, Rivermen hockey, Peoria Pirates indoor football, and yes, even Lakeview Museum. Many of these have been done with large amounts of public investment. To chastise taxpayers as uninterested in quality of life issues if they reject this latest tax after all the money they’ve poured into these projects is an insult to Peoria’s residents.
Don’t be fooled. A “no” vote on the sales tax is an honorable vote. It reflects not only fiscal responsibility, but also faith in the community — faith that we can do better, that we can be patient in achieving our vision, and that we can work together to build a better block for all Peorians.
State’s Attorney weighs in on David Kennedy
In a previous post, I talked about David Kennedy and his unorthodox methods of fighting crime in urban areas. Police Chief Settingsgaard told me that he has “a team being trained by Kennedy and his staff.” At the same time, I wrote to the State’s Attorney’s office to see what they thought of Kennedy’s methods. I recently received this reply from Kevin Lyons:
Dear C.J.:
In reply to your inquiry about David Kennedy, I am, indeed, familiar with him and this topic. In fact, four Peorians (including a prosecutor from my office and a Peoria police officer) recently returned from Raleigh, NC, following a three day training conference on details of the High Point Project. Recreating the High Point (NC) Project in some cities has met with great success; in others, uh, not so much. But I felt it worthy enough to take a look to see if we may want to embrace this effort and achieve some success for three targeted areas within the city (sorry, but I can’t share with you the neighborhoods that have been designated for this).
These four people will soon complete two more sessions before the ‘project’ here begins. I don’t know whether it will work but I do know that entire generations are lost to the buying and selling of mind-twisting drugs and that changing an entrenched culture will only be accomplished by impacting whole neighborhoods and not just a person here, a person there.
Perhaps it’s because David Kennedy and I are both 50ish and have watched drugs give the grave to friends and neighbors for more than 30 years. Perhaps it’s because we have watched battles being lost for years when waged against criminal drug sales in America. Perhaps the High Point Project makes a little sense because countless other projects do not. We’ll see.
It is interesting, C.J., that you and I were both piqued by this particular approach because, at first blush, this would never be my style…rolling the videotape to the offender and his family and then giving him a free pass. It will be a time intensive task that will take a lot of time by authorities. Then again, as prosecutors say – “there is never enough time…unless you’re serving it.”
Fingers crossed. Thanks for your inquiry.
KEVIN W. LYONS
Peoria County State’s Attorney
My thanks to Mr. Lyons for responding and sharing his thoughts on this topic. It will be interesting to see how these methods work here in Peoria.
Museum presenter accuses me of spreading misinformation
Thursday night was a strange night for the museum presenters. During the question and answer time, museum representative Brad McMillan was explaining what the admission price might be for the proposed IMAX, which was something like $30 for a family of four. Then he said — to my surprise — that it wouldn’t be $60 “like C. J. Summers has suggested.” Brad went on to say he was “tired” of opponents “spreading misinformation” about the project.
“Misinformation”? Why is he mentioning my name in his answer to the question? And where did I say it was going to be $60 for a family of four to visit the Peoria Riverfront Museum’s IMAX? I did have a post about my family’s trip to the IMAX at the Putnam Museum. In it, I said:
The [Putnam] IMAX was not showing any big Hollywood shows, but they did have some short educational films. We took in the double-feature of “Mystery of the Nile” and “Under the Sea 3D.” Admission price for the two approximately 45-minute films was $14 for adults and $10 for children. So for my family — two adults and three children — the total admission cost was $58. And of course no movie is complete without some popcorn and soft drinks. That set us back another $20 or so.
So, first I’d like to point out that my family is not a family of four, but a family of five. Secondly, I clearly stated that we saw a double-feature of educational films that were approximately 45-minutes each. And third, I said they weren’t showing any big Hollywood shows. And the price came to $58. Here’s the receipt:
You’ll have to take my word for the price of the popcorn and soft drinks; I didn’t get a receipt for that.
Later in the post, I said, “What the $17 [average annual cost per resident of the sales tax] doesn’t include is the price of actually patronizing the museum, which can be costly, especially if you have a large family. Just going to a couple of educational movies cost my family nearly $80. If we had wanted to visit the museum’s galleries, it would have cost even more.”
Now, if I had a family of four, and if we had only gone to see one educational film, and if we hadn’t gotten any concessions, then yes, the price would have been $30 (2 adults x $8.50 = $17, 2 kids x $6.50 = $13, $17+$13=$30), according to the Putnam museum website. I’ve never suggested otherwise. I was simply recounting my experience. For my family of five, seeing a double feature with concessions, it was nearly $80. Fact.
I think it was completely inappropriate for McMillan to call me out by name in a public meeting and imply that I was spreading misinformation about the cost of attending an IMAX theater, especially when that allegation itself was misinformation!
It’s pretty sad that the museum folks think reports of my family’s day trip might negatively affect their campaign — especially after they’ve spent over $600,000 on signs, literature, and advertising to get out their message.
Third District race heats up, too
Following the revelation that the Build the Block campaign had their campaign literature printed out of state, it was revealed that third district candidate Tim Riggenbach did the same thing. Beth Akeson called a press conference today to reiterate her commitment to supporting third district businesses:
Museum odds and ends
I’ve gone to several town hall meetings regarding the sales tax referendum, so I’m familiar with the presentations now, and I’ve heard a lot of the same questions. But at last night’s town hall meeting at Northwoods Community Church, I actually learned some new things. Not all of these items are new information — some of it I probably should have known already — but they were all new to me:
First of all, I found out that the Caterpillar Experience will not have free admission for the general public. Mark Johnson of Caterpillar explained that employees/retirees of Caterpillar and their guests will get in free. But if you don’t want to hit up your Cat friends to get you in, or if you’re a tourist/visitor from outside the Peoria area, you’ll be paying $5 for adults and $2.50 for children under 12. I was very surprised to learn this, especially in light of my recent trip to Moline to visit the John Deere Pavilion, which is free for everyone.
Second, it was stated last night that the City of Peoria will own and operate the underground parking deck, and that the parking will not be free. Mr. Johnson stated that the City theoretically could offer free parking, but that they would probably charge the same rate as other City-owned parking decks. Just what the City needs — another money-losing parking deck. It’s worth pointing out that the museum could also offer free parking to their patrons. All they need to do is validate parking tickets and then pay their patrons’ parking fees for them. It’s also worth noting that patrons of Lakeview currently have free parking at the existing Lakeview campus.
Finally, it was stated that — if the referendum passes and the museum is built — the Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM) would take over ownership of the historic houses currently owned by the Peoria Historical Society. I don’t see how the PRM could afford to own, operate, and maintain those historic houses when the county doesn’t feel PRM has adequate funds budgeted for capital maintenance on the museum building. Living in a 105-year-old house myself, I can tell you first hand that maintenance is not cheap, especially if you want to maintain the historical integrity of the structure.
There were a couple other notable items from last night’s town hall meeting, but I’ll save that for another post.