Monthly Archives: September 2009

General News

Miscellaneous

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Just a few miscellaneous things of note:

  • The City’s Planning and Growth Department is considering combining the Planning Commission (PC) and Zoning Commission (ZC). The PC considered it at their September 16 meeting, and the ZC is going to discuss it at their October 1 meeting. The ZC agenda gives this explanation for the request:

    Request by Staff that the Zoning Commission discuss the merits of combining the Planning Commission and Zoning Commission and determine if there is potential to create more efficient service delivery. This request is being made due to the potential reduction of a part-time position in the Planning and Growth Management Department, which represents an estimated 20 hours per week of duties. Those responsibilities would be re-assigned to existing staff reducing staff support to both commissions.

    The ZC meets at 3:00 p.m. Thursday in City Council chambers.

  • Speaking of the Zoning Commission, they are also scheduled on Thursday to consider allowing cell phone towers to be erected at Expo Gardens, Columbia Middle School, and near Von Steuben Middle School. However, the Journal Star says this item “will be postponed as officials representing AT&T Mobility gather more information requested by the city’s Department of Planning & Growth Management. The commission will be asked to take up the matter during its Nov. 5 meeting.”
  • I’ve been seeing ads for OSF St. Francis Medical Center lately that say they OSF is “preferred 2 to 1” over all the other hospitals in the area. If you go to their website, they will even show you the survey results with colorful little graphs. It reminded me of Maggie Mahar’s film “Money-Driven Medicine,” which I saw on the PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal.” She talks about the differences between “consumer-driven” and “patient-centered” health care. One of the things she mentions is why competition among hospitals doesn’t improve health care:

    Typically, 4 or 5 hospitals within a 5 mile, 10 mile, 15 mile radius will all buy the same technology because they’re competing with each other…. One time Dr. Donald Berwick called a hospital in Texas and said, “We’ve heard you have a very good procedure for treating a particular disease. We’d like to learn more about your protocol so other hospitals can use it.” And the hospital said, “We can’t tell you that. It’s a competitive advantage in our market that we’re better at treating this disease and it is very lucrative. So this is proprietary information.”

    …A physician takes an oath to put his patient’s interests ahead of his own. A corporation is legally bound to put its shareholders’ interests first. And this is part of the inherent conflict between health care as a business, part of our economy, and health care as a public good and part of our society. Health care has become a growth industry. That means higher health care bills. That means more and more middle class people cannot afford health care in this country.

    It’s a thought-provoking film. It’s enough to make me look at those OSF ads in a different light. It makes me wonder why a fundamentally charitable institution like a hospital would want to compare itself to other hospitals. I mean, can you imagine St. Jude stating it was preferred 2 to 1 over the Salvation Army and Easter Seals? It’s a very strange marketing campaign.

City of Peoria

Hullinger to retire Nov. 6

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The City of Peoria’s Economic Development Director Craig Hullinger announced yesterday that he will be retiring, effective November 6. He explains his reasons for leaving on his department’s blog:

I believe that I have successfully met my goal of “Leaving my City a better place than I found it.” … The Mayor’s latest budget message of September 15, 2009 makes it clear that the City must make further substantial budget cuts. The City needs to cut expenses and senior staff. I will be 62 this year. I retired from the Marine Corps last year as a Colonel. It makes sense for both the City and me to retire. I will remain in Peoria (and Sarasota in the winter), and start a small part time economic development and planning consulting firm, continuing to help communities revitalize their older neighborhoods. And I will keep working to help improve the City and region.

His resume is posted online. I asked Craig about rumors that he would be rehired by the city as a consultant (a la District 150). He replied, “The City would be a great client. I plan to only work part time, targeting 1/2 time. I did propose to the City to continue to work for 25K a year to help close some developing development deals such as in Warehouse, Eagle View, and HIZ, but no response yet. The City is very busy with the budget crisis, and saving my salary and overhead will help. But I will help out with or without a consulting contract. I think most people want to see the Heart of Peoria successfully redevelop. And I live in the HOP [Heart of Peoria], and want it to succeed whether I am working for pay or not.”

He also has recommended having Chris Setti replace him as Economic Development Director. “Knows the City, worked in ED as our top ED Specialist, very capable guy.” Setti left the Economic Development department to become a Six Sigma blackbelt for the city. He’s now the assistant to the City Manager.

The Journal Star reports that new City Manager Scott Moore “said the position will be analyzed in the coming months as city officials examine a potential restructuring at City Hall. ‘I don’t want to do anything prematurely,’ Moore said. ‘I want to get feedback from the departments, from (Hullinger), and input from the council, so that when I’m making that decision, I’m not making it in a vacuum.'” Setti is quoted as saying, “I’m a team player. I’m willing to do whatever the city leadership thinks is best for the city.”

Bradley University

Bradley parking deck “too far” for some students, teachers

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My wife happened to pick up a copy of the Bradley Scout while walking through campus the other day, and this article on the new five-story parking deck at Main and Maplewood caught my attention:

Parking deck isn’t used to full capacity

The Main West Parking Deck is a year old, but it isn’t being used to its full capacity.

The deck, located on the corners of Main Street and Maplewood Avenue, was built in August 2008 for commuter students, faculty and staff with a valid permit, said Charmin Hibberd, director of Conference Facilities and Parking.

But Hibberd added that the deck isn’t being fully used.

She said the current construction on the Athletic Performance Arena, occurring directly next to the parking deck, is likely deterring students, faculty and staff from the area.

“People are leery of walking through there, even though there is a sidewalk and it’s safe,” Hibberd said.

She also said some students and faculty have told her they think the deck is too far from the buildings they visit most often.

The article goes on, but I couldn’t get past that last sentence. The deck is “too far from the buildings they visit most often”? What buildings are they visiting? From the parking deck to the opposite corner of campus is about a quarter of a mile. Considering the average person walks about three miles an hour, that represents a five-minute walk at most. How much closer do these students and faculty expect to be able to park? Is walking up to five minutes from your car to your class really that inconvenient? Or have college students just become so lazy and auto-dependent that they can’t travel more than a few feet on foot nowadays?

No wonder obesity is on the rise on college campuses.

General News

Katie Couric interviews Glenn Beck

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Why am I posting this? Because I know that I have some readers who are just dying to talk about Glenn Beck, health care, Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing fringe, etc., etc., but it’s pretty much off-topic in my other posts. So, here’s a post where you can take your shots. However, I would like you to watch this video first. It’s an interview with Katie Couric, and it’s relatively recent — it was put up on YouTube just five days ago. Note: it’s about 45 minutes long, so make sure you’re comfortable before you launch into it:

For those of you who don’t know, a boycott of Beck’s show is being organized by a group called Color of Change.org. According to their website:

Fox’s Glenn Beck recently said President Obama is “a racist” and has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Beck is on a campaign to convince the American public that President Obama’s agenda is about serving the needs of Black communities at White people’s expense. It’s repulsive, divisive and shouldn’t be on the air.

Join us in calling on Beck’s advertisers to stop sponsoring his show….

Our campaign has been a huge success so far. More than 270,000 of us have stood up and 62 companies have pulled their support.

Their first sentence is factual. Their second sentence is their opinion about Beck’s “agenda.” Beck, according to the interview above, says that his agenda is that he doesn’t want government to get any bigger, and that he has opposed big government from George Bush just as much as he has from Barack Obama. However, he defends his belief that Obama is racist by pointing to Obama’s membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church — a church that teaches black liberation theology — and Obama’s immediate assumption that a white police officer “acted stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates, Jr., before he even knew the details of the incident. Color of Change.org and their followers believe Beck is race baiting.

Besides the racism charge, many complain that Beck is spreading lies about the proposed universal health care bill in Congress. Specifically, they say Beck is fear-mongering by linking health care reform to euthanasia and infanticide (i.e., suggesting reform would kill the elderly and infants, respectively). Beck doesn’t address that charge in the above interview, but he does say that his solution to the health care crisis is to “let the free market work,” and allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.

Glenn Beck can be heard on 1470 WMBD-AM from 9-11 a.m. weekday mornings here in Peoria.

General News

Who’s out?

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  • Brent Lonteen is out. He’s resigned as President of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. No one will say why.
  • Henry Holling is out. His job as interim City Manager ended Friday. Scott Moore takes over now.
  • EmergePeoria says that Craig Hullinger is out. However, I can get no independent verification of that. E-mails to Holling and Hullinger have gone unanswered. I have heard rumors, however, that if/when Hullinger does resign, the plan is for the city to hire him as a consultant. Sounds like a page out of the District 150 playbook to me.
  • Billy Dennis says Chuck Collins is out. No independent verification of that either. Even Billy says it’s just a rumor.
  • Summer is out. It ended a few days ago. Life goes on and the world goes ’round….
City of Peoria, Peoria Disposal Company, Waste Management

Public Works to recommend PDC for waste hauling contract

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On July 28 the city agreed to send out requests for proposals (RFPs) for a new garbage hauling contract (the current one expires at the end of the year). Only two companies submitted bids: Waste Management (the current hauler) and Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). According to a report released today from the Public Works Department:

In reviewing the responses it is clear PDC provided the best pricing in almost all categories and further discussion in this report will be based on our recommendation to award all service contracts covered by this RFP to the Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). Staff will be recommending the Alternate Proposal from PDC for consideration by City Council at the October 13, 2009 City Council meeting.

PDC’s “alternate proposal” is to provide exactly the same service we have plus citywide recycling collection, all for a $5 million flat rate. Specifically, the proposal would include these services:

  • Residential Refuse Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
  • Landscape Waste Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
  • Neighborhood drop boxes, tire disposal and dead animal service (as currently provided)
  • Condominium and City Building refuse collection (as currently provided)
  • Collection of Recyclables from curbside on a monthly basis for customers wishing to participate. A 95-gallon cart for single stream recyclables collection will be provided for a refundable deposit of $50. There would be no monthly cost for the service.

The good news is that we wouldn’t be losing any services we currently have, and we would finally get recycling collection as part of our base contract. The bad news is that recycling would only be picked up once a month, curbside only, and only from a PDC-provided wheeled cart.

For families that really get into it, recycling can account for 75% or more of their refuse. That’s going to really pile up over a month’s time. Granted, it won’t stink like garbage, but it will take more than a 95 gallon toter to hold it all. This seems less than ideal, which is why I never fail to find some dumpsters for rent near me and dispose responsibly.

There’s no reason recycling pickup couldn’t be accommodated in the alleys, especially since that’s where all the garbage and lawn waste collection is done. By requiring recycling to be curbside only, many in older neighborhoods would be precluded from even participating. Since those participating will have to use PDC-supplied 95-gallon bins, and since many older homes don’t have direct outdoor access from their garages/back yards to the front of their homes, the only way these neighbors could participate is by wheeling their bin down the alley to the side street, down the side street to the intersection, then down their own street, finally placing it in front of their house. Or, alternatively, they could wheel the 95-gallon toter through their house and down their front steps to the street. Kind of ridiculous, wouldn’t you say? There’s a reason why older neighborhoods have alleys. The city should insist that garbage haulers use them.

The PDC-provided wheeled cart is only bad in that it’s exclusive. If someone already owns a dedicated toter for recycling, they will have to plunk down another $50 (refundable though it may be) for this PDC-branded toter. It’s nice to have the toters available for use if you need one, but why force others to take one they don’t need? Are they going to tell us that they have a special, proprietary design to their toters and trucks such that only PDC toters are compatible? If we’re trying to encourage recycling, why do we want to add this entry cost? We’re not requiring everyone to fork over $50 for a toter for regular garbage.

According to the report from Public Works, PDC also provided the cost of providing this same service except that they would pick up recycling and landscape waste on an every-other-week basis. The cost of that solution is $6,186,664.27 ($1,186,664.27 more than the plan outlined above). I don’t understand why this costs so much more. Maybe it will be explained at the council meeting. It seems to me the more expensive plan actually requires fewer collection trips. Think about it:

$5M Plan   $6.1M Plan
4 landscape waste collections per month   2 landscape waste collections per month
+ 1 recycling collection per month + 2 recycling collections per month
= 5 total collections = 4 total collections

“Ah,” you say, “but landscape waste is only collected from the third Monday in March through the third Friday in December, whereas recycling is collected year-round!” Okay, let’s look at the whole year:

$5M Plan   $6.1M Plan
40 landscape waste collections per year   20 landscape waste collections per year
+ 12 recycling collections per year + 24 recycling collections per year
= 52 total collections = 44 total collections

Where is the added cost? Of course, this is probably a futile exercise, because my guess is most of the council members will not go for lawn waste pickup every other week anyway (the lawn waste bags start getting soggy after a while). But it does raise a fair question about how they came up with the amounts quoted.

Bottom line: The proposed contract is better than what we have now at a reasonable cost. The council should try to work out the flaws mentioned above while still keeping costs low.

Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools

Ardis asks Sec. Duncan for help for D150

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Arne DuncanFrom the Journal Star:

Mayor Jim Ardis said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is pledging his department’s assistance to help Peoria turn around its schools…. Ardis, along with Lee Graves, CEO and president of ELM Group, and former state Sen. George Shadid made a whirlwind visit to Washington, D.C., this week, meeting with Duncan, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools who once served under CEO Paul Vallas….

There’s no easy answer, Ardis admitted, noting that Duncan believed it will take a combination of Race to the Top, strong emphasis on charter schools and performance-based teaching as well as more municipal involvement to get poorly performing school districts headed in the right direction….

Ardis said he wanted to find out what’s available and what Duncan would recommend for improving school performance.

“We haven’t seen any movement by this board or past boards to go out on their own initiative to speak to with the secretary of education, or anyone else,” he said.

A couple things about this story:

First, kudos to Mayor Ardis for taking initiative and doing what he can to help District 150. It’s unfortunate that his past efforts (to bring in Paul Vallas for some consulting advice) have been rebuffed by District 150 administrators and board members. The district should be welcoming the mayor’s overtures.

Second, Secretary Duncan’s reported response is interesting: “…it will take a combination of Race to the Top [additional federal funds allocated to school districts through state governors], strong emphasis on charter schools and performance-based teaching [emphasis added] as well as more municipal involvement to get poorly performing school districts headed in the right direction….” Doesn’t this sound like the Secretary is implicitly suggesting union-busting? Performance-based teaching is a repudiation of the tenure system, and charter schools can hire teachers who are not union represented.

Well, as it turns out, teachers are catching the same vibe. In a speech to the National Education Association (NEA) in July, Education Week reported that Duncan said “[t]eachers’ unions must be willing to reconsider seniority provisions, rework tenure provisions, and work with districts to create fair ways of incorporating student-achievement growth in teacher evaluation and compensation.” As you might expect, this wasn’t well-received by teachers:

Delegates applauded Mr. Duncan’s calls for continued federal funding for education, better training for administrators, and for improved teacher-mentoring experiences. But in an indication of the challenges that the federal government will face as it pushes for reforms to compensation and evaluation, they booed and hissed through those parts of Mr. Duncan’s address.

Booed and hissed! And here I thought incivility was invented by Rep. Joe Wilson just a few weeks ago. Imagine teachers booing and hissing (the hissing is what really gets me) the Secretary of Education during a speech. One more quote from the Education Week article: “‘Quite frankly, merit pay is union-busting,’ said another delegate, to applause from her peers.”

So, my guess is that District 150 will have a similar reaction. They will likely embrace efforts to capture more federal dollars through the Race to the Top Fund, but efforts to implement performance-based teaching initiatives will be rebuffed in teacher contract negotiations. Realistically, that would mean Peoria would receive no benefit because the Race to the Top dollars are tied to just the kinds of reforms teachers unions find objectionable. As for charter schools, the only one proposed recently — the Math, Science, and Technology Academy — has yet to have its charter authorized by District 150.

However, teachers will be happy to hear that Duncan is no fan of No Child Left Behind. Here’s his assessment, according to a recent report from ABC News:

“It unfairly labeled many schools as failures even when they were making progress,” he said. “It places too much emphasis on raw test scores rather than student growth. And it is overly prescriptive in some ways while it is too blunt an instrument of reform in others.

“But the biggest problem with NCLB,” he added, “is that it doesn’t encourage high learning standards. In fact, it inadvertently encourages states to lower them. The net effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids they are succeeding when they are not.”

That’s certainly been true in District 150, as recent changes to the district’s grading scale can attest.

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 9/22/2009

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It’s Tuesday evening, and time for another Peoria City Council meeting. I’m coming to you live from Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. I’ll be updating this post throughout the evening, so refresh often.

Absent tonight are Mayor Ardis and 5th District councilman Dan Irving. Mayor Pro Tem is At-Large councilman Eric Turner.

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 9/22/2009 →

Peoria Public Schools

Surprise! Shuttering high school may not save as much as we thought

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Here’s part of Laura Petelle’s rationale for voting to close a high school:

These planned 43 staff reductions will total approximately $2.7 million in savings. [emphasis added]

An additional $800,000-$900,000 in savings may be realized by shuttering a building for the year and not paying operating costs (operating costs are somewhat, but not astronomically, higher at Woodruff than at Peoria High).

These are lower-end estimates. [emphasis added] There may be more job cuts to be found, and there may be more savings from those initial 43 cuts. May.

Now, I’m not trying to pick on Laura. Lord knows she does her homework. She did more due diligence and was more transparent about her justification than any other board member now or in recent memory.

But imagine my surprise last night when I heard on the news that closing a high school would save “$1.5 to $2.7 million.” I could hardly believe my ears. I wasn’t home to watch the meeting, but I taped it, so I pulled out the tape of the meeting and, sure enough, there was Superintendent Ken Hinton saying that closing Woodruff would save “$1.5 to $2.7 million.”

I’ve been following this issue pretty closely lately, and I can tell you that I never heard an estimate lower than $2.7 million. Maybe they said it before, since I don’t hear everything. But I don’t remember it. And considering that Laura — who’s on the board — said that $2.7 million was a “lower-end estimate” just a week before the vote, I’m inclined to say that this new range of figures is brand new information, brought forth at the last moment from Mr. Hinton.

This raises several questions, none of which are very comfortable:

  1. How are these numbers derived? That’s a huge range. The difference between $1.5 and $2.7 million is $1.2 million.
  2. Why can’t the administration narrow down the savings more than that? Was it not based on 43 staff reductions as Laura’s blog post stated? What has changed?
  3. Is this an indication that Mr. Hinton has already started spending the projected savings (i.e., begun making plans to keep teachers/administrators on the payroll for other purposes), and is trying to mask it by lowering the savings estimate for closing the school?
  4. Would board members have been as inclined to close a school if they knew the savings might only be $1.5 million, or would they have looked for other cuts that total that amount (canceling the Edison contract gets you half way there instantly, for example)?
  5. Why wasn’t this new savings range made available sooner? Were the board members informed of the change in estimates before Hinton’s report Monday night?

This is the reason citizens don’t believe any numbers that come out of 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave. It always appears that the numbers are either (a) pulled out of a hat, or (b) deliberately manipulated to elicit the vote the administration desires. Or both.

Here’s one more question: Is anyone going to tabulate the actual savings next year after all is said and done to see if it matches the estimates? Considering they haven’t done that for any other school closing, my guess would be “no.”