He’s not in “Dragonland” (Pekin) anymore, but that won’t keep Matt Weidman from blogging. Now located in Wyatt Earp’s home town of Monmouth, Matt has started a new blog called “Blogging Forgottonia.”
I have to admit, I thought “Forgottonia” was a generic appellation, but it turns out that it refers specifically to the western part of Illinois, according to Wikipedia.
Welcome back, Mr. Weidman!
A couple pieces worth reading, if you haven’t already:
I thought it was interesting that the police union would rather see property taxes raised than take a pay freeze, considering almost half the force lives outside of Peoria and would be unaffected by a tax hike. It was also interesting to read that Mayor Ardis is threatening the police department with layoffs if they don’t voluntarily freeze their wages.
A grievance filed by Channel 25 employees over displacement of station personnel by using the aforementioned Fort Wayne weatherman for weekend weather on the station’s local-news show was upheld by an arbitrator last week.
The news is the last bastion for local programming on commercial television, and here’s WEEK outsourcing the weatherman — roughly one third of the local newscast — after they already obliterated WHOI’s independent news team. It’s sad that local content has sunk to such a low.
We’re all enjoying the calm before the storm. We’ve heard the warnings — the city council is going to have to make some deep cuts in order to close the $10-12 million budget gap. They’re trying to plug the gap without raising taxes. That means the cuts will have to be made “with a chainsaw, not a scalpel,” and will be “bloody,” to quote the mayor and another council member.
Yet, at the same time, the council had absolutely no trouble raising taxes to collect $40 million for a private developer. Think about that — they raised the sales tax (granted, for an area restricted to downtown — the so-called “Hospitality Improvement Zone”). They will collect money from that sales tax, and they will hand it over to Gary Matthews, a private citizen and developer, so he can build a huge hotel addition to the Pere Marquette. Matthews will, in turn, give the lion’s share of that money to Al Zuccarini for the properties he owns on the block shared by the Pere.
So, at the same time that the council is talking about cutting police officers, eliminating raises for employees, cutting back on code enforcement and road maintenance, and other draconian cuts in public services, they’re giving $40 million to Gary Matthews for a private development. At the same time the council is unwilling to even consider raising taxes for public services, they had no problem raising taxes to benefit a private development. In fact, they approved that deal with nary any discussion and absolutely no public input!
The council wants concessions from everyone — except in the area of developer welfare. The one area that primarily benefits only a handful of people gets a free pass, while those areas that affect everyone in the city get the axe.
And my question is: Where’s the outrage? Do Peorians really not care? Do they think this is good public policy? Do they really think that we’re spending too much on public services and not enough on developer favors? Or are they uninformed? Do they not know this is happening? Or have they given up? Have they become jaded and numb to fiscal irresponsibility coming out of City Hall?
If this hotel deal were a good business decision, the developer would have already gotten his private financing lined up and started construction. But he hasn’t. He can’t get private financing. And you know what that means? I guarantee you it means this: He’ll be back to the city asking for more money in one form or another. Count on it.
Maybe that will be enough to wake up Peorians and cajole them into expressing outrage to their city council members. Then again, maybe not.
Hello, everyone. I’ve been in Chicago the past couple of days. Did I miss anything while I was gone?
Of course, when I say I was “in Chicago,” what I really mean is, I was in the northwest suburbs — Elk Grove Village, to be exact. I went up for some work-related training.
But while I was there, you’ll never guess what I did. I went to a Cubs game. Yep, the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Not only that, but the night I was there (Tuesday, 9/1), they won! I think just having a Cardinals fan in the house brought them good luck against another Central Division rival.
I have to admit, I really like Wrigley Field. It’s a neighborhood ballpark. It really is. You go in there, and there’s this feeling like you’re all friends, these are all your neighbors, and you’re just hanging out at the ballgame, like people might hang out at the Chiefs game here in Peoria (except that the tickets are about six times as much at Wrigley). We had great seats, too — right behind home plate, about 20 rows back.
With such a great ballpark that, thankfully, has not been torn down or abandoned yet, it’s really a shame that the Cubs organization can’t seem to field a team that’s a real contender. But on the other hand, if they ever did, then the Cubs might get more popular, and then they’d have to build a bigger, newer, fancier stadium somewhere else in Chicago, and ticket prices would go up, and… well, things just wouldn’t be the same.
Incidentally, all during the game, I kept my eye on the manual scoreboard out in center field. I watched as they updated the score on the St. Louis – Milwaukee game. The Cardinals, of course, won. Again. It’s been three years since the Cards won the World Series. It’s about time for them to bring home the trophy again.