Monthly Archives: January 2010

Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star gets a little smaller

14 Comments

Sunday’s Journal Star brings news of “a few changes.” There’s no longer a separate business section in Sunday’s paper, so they’ve moved Paul Gordon’s column into section A and axed the Wall Street Journal content. In the comics section, they’re discontinuing “Hi & Lois,” “Hagar the Horrible,” “Prince Valiant,” and “Comics for Kids,” all of which produce new strips every week. They’re keeping the “Peanuts” reruns from the 80s, though. With the elimination of the KidzBuzz page, that cuts the comics section to four pages.

They’re also discontinuing the “Faith & Values” page, the “Pet World” column by Steve Dale, and Joan Lloyd’s column. Lloyd’s column will be replaced with a column called “Shoestring Living” (apropos, don’t you think?) by Chicago freelance writer Molly Logan Anderson.

Subscription rates were raised in October, and just last month the paper laid off 11 employees including Sports editor Bill Liesse, Statehouse bureau reporter Adriana Colindres, and State editor Lisa Coon. Now they’re cutting a little more content, probably to save on newsprint costs.

2010 Election, General News

Chicago Tribune wants a revolution

4 Comments

The editors of the Chicago Tribune have an interesting take on why we keep electing the same leaders in Illinois:

Evidently, it’s Stockholm syndrome, the tendency of some hostages to bond with their captors. How else to explain Illinoisans’ habit of re-electing lawmakers who chronically spend and borrow billions more than taxpayers supply? The result: huge debts and unfunded obligations that will make this an unaffordable state for employers and workers to build a future.

They want us to snap out of it and clean house in the next election. And they’re running a series of editorials aimed at convincing voters to do just that. The first one — “A call to arms” — ran last Sunday, December 27. Today’s editorial is “Splurge. Borrow. Repeat.” While they’re obviously talking about state government, I think this can be applied to other levels of government as well — specifically in regards to fiscal irresponsibility:

If you enjoy the political culture as is — with the next corruption scandal never far off and with your public officials borrowing future generations into penury in order to prop up today’s treacherously uncontrolled spending — then you should support candidates who’ll protect the status quo. If, however, the failure of too many politicians to make urgently needed reforms infuriates you, then reach for a broom.

We hope you’re among the millions who are infuriated. And we hope you’ll reach for that broom.

Politicians at all levels of government are addicted to debt. The City of Peoria paid almost 11 cents of every dollar toward debt service in 2009 — a percentage that will go up in 2010 as the city cuts operational costs while simultaneously taking on more long-term debt. The next City Council election is in 2011 when all the at-large council representatives come up for reelection.

Pantagraph, Peoria Journal Star

Pantagraph fed up with offensive comments

10 Comments

The Bloomington Pantagraph has disabled the comments section of their site all weekend because of rampant incivility and personal attacks. In a letter to their readers originally posted December 30, 2009, editor Mark Pickering stated that comments have too often been “offensive and devoid of civility, the worst of which include personal attacks and/or assertions that have nothing to do with the story.”

The ban on commenting over the weekend is intended to be a “cooling off period” and a wake-up call to readers, reminding them “that the reason comments are allowed in the first place is to foster a ‘spirit of community involvement and conversation.'” The comments sections will be turned back on January 4, 2010. Pickering warns, however, “Continued abuse of our standards could lead to further restrictions.”

This once again begs the question: Should newspapers allow comments in the first place? The argument has been made by many that they shouldn’t (here’s one excellent treatment). I tend to agree. Let blogs be blogs, and newspapers be newspapers. The comments on the Journal Star’s website are often just as bad as the Pantagraph’s; I don’t believe it would be any kind of loss if they removed the comments section entirely.

Speaking of the Journal Star: I find it funny that they simply printed the Associated Press report of the Pantagraph’s decision instead of writing an original report on it. I guess when you’re short-staffed, AP coverage of local stories is a godsend.

General News

Novel idea: Accountable development

2 Comments

The Associated Press has published an article (sent to me by alert reader and frequent commenter “anp”) about how municipalities are starting to hold companies more accountable for the tax incentives they take.

As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough workers, that lay them off or that close up shop. At the same time, they’re sharpening new incentive deals, leaving no doubt what is expected of companies and what will happen if they don’t deliver.

They call these “clawback” (or “recapture”) provisions, and such a provision sure would have come in handy had it been written into the MidTown Plaza agreement. Instead, Peoria gave away the store and is left holding the bag. A recent Journal Star article states that MidTown Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district “has an annual $351,000 bill but doesn’t bring in the property and sales tax revenue to cover expenses.”

The AP article gives several examples of successful clawback provisions in other cities. Here’s one:

[In DeKalb, Ill.,] Target Corp. got abatements from the city, county, school district and other taxing bodies after promising at least 500 jobs at a local distribution center.

So when the company came up 66 workers short in 2009, Target got word its next tax bill would be jumping almost $600,000 — more than half of which goes to the local school district, where teachers and programs have been cut as coffers dried up.

Even better news is that there is no evidence that these kinds of provisions “scare off other employers,” according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First. Incidentally, the website for Good Jobs First is fantastic. If you do nothing else, read A Beginner’s Guide to Accountable Development.

This is an idea whose time has come. If DeKalb can do it, so can Peoria. If it’s good enough for Target, it should be good enough for local developers here in the river city. We should all demand of our council representatives that recapture provisions be written into any new developer subsidies; in fact, it should be boilerplate language. There’s no excuse for taxpayers shouldering all the risk while developers reap all the rewards of sweetheart economic development incentives.

Books, Business

Waldenbooks in Peoria to close this month

11 Comments

Waldenbooks in Peoria's Northwoods MallWaldenbooks in Northwoods Mall is closing for good this month.

Waldenbooks’ parent company Borders Group, Inc., released a statement in November 2009 that it would be closing 200 Waldenbooks stores this month in order to improve the chain’s profitability. Borders Group, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, lost $39 million the third quarter of 2009. Border Group CEO Ron Marshall explained, “Through this right-sizing, we will reduce the number of stores with operating losses, reduce our overall rent expense and lease-adjusted leverage and generate cash flow through sales and working capital reductions.”

Also closing this month are Waldenbooks stores in Aurora, Calumet City, Danville, Gurnee, Joliet, Lincolnwood, Marion, and Sterling. The Waldenbooks in Galesburg closed a year ago this month. The Borders superstore in the Shoppes at Grand Prairie is unaffected.

The history of Waldenbooks in a nutshell: In 1933, Lawrence W. Holt and Melvin T. Kafka founded a company “they believed would help people cope with the effects of the Depression. Specifically, Holt and Kafka’s new company lent popular books for three cents a day, saving people the cost of purchasing.” This sounds similar to the way we rent movies and video games today. Once cheap paperback books started being published in the 1950s, Kafka retired and Hoyt took over the company. In 1962, the company started opening retail stores — selling books instead of renting them. It was named after the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The company was acquired by a retail conglomerate called Carter Hawley Hale in 1969. It was acquired by many other companies over the years, including K-Mart, which also acquired Borders. In 1995, Borders and Waldenbooks initiated a public offering, eventually buying out K-Mart’s ownership interest.

I’m not sure when Waldenbooks opened in Northwoods Mall, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were an original tenant. It’s been there as long as I can remember. Its departure will leave Northwoods without any bookstore. The mall’s other bookstore, B. Dalton Booksellers, closed several years ago after its parent company, Barnes & Noble, built a superstore in the Glen Hollow shopping center.

Blogosphere

Peoria Anti-Pundit calling it quits

11 Comments

Randall Emert (aka the Peoria Anti-Pundit, aka Emtronics) is going to give up blogging (again). He’s stopped blogging a couple times before, only to start again, but this time he says he’s really stopping for good. He’ll be deleting his blog “very soon,” so visit it while you can.

I know how he feels. Blogging is addictive (seriously!), and I admire Randy for being able to stop. He’s been very critical of me on his blog over the years, but I don’t hold it against him. I wish him all the best.

Chamber of Commerce, City of Peoria, Peoria Mayor

State of the City Address preview

5 Comments

This year’s State of the City address will be at the Holiday Inn City Centre, 11:45 a.m., January 26. The Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce has published a video preview of the event:

Notable this year: It won’t only be the state of the city, but also the state of District 150. Interim superintendent Norm Durflinger will be presenting along with Mayor Ardis. If you want to attend, you can register here. Cost: $50 for non-members of the Chamber, $35 for members. For those of you who don’t want to spend the cash (like me), the city usually posts a copy of the speech to the city’s website immediately following the event. It’s free.

Kellar Branch

Kellar Branch a step closer to trail

4 Comments

Transportation blogger David P. Jordan has the latest on the Kellar Branch saga, which is quickly drawing to a close.

In a nutshell, Pioneer Railcorp is taking the regulatory actions needed to abandon the middle portion of the Kellar Branch rail line, which will allow the city to lease the corridor to the Peoria Park District, who will convert it to a recreational trail. These regulatory actions are being taken pursuant to an agreement Pioneer made with the City of Peoria and Central Illinois Railroad (CIRY) passed by the council last year.

Not yet answered is how much this will cost the taxpayers. Pioneer, CIRY, and Carver Lumber didn’t just wake up one morning and change their minds about rail service. Their interests were purchased through the agency of the enigmatic Kellar Branch Corridor Corporation, headed by Tom Leiter. Don’t think that cost, whatever it is, won’t get paid by the taxpayers. It will, mark my words. And the bill will come due after the line has been abandoned and converted — i.e., after the money has already been spent.

But, on the optimistic side, Peoria will finally be a recreational nirvana, drawing tourists from around the world to walk and bike between Toulon and Morton. All that tourism should easily get us out of debt and spur all kinds of development.

The Peoria Chronicle

New year, new theme

8 Comments

For 2010, I thought I’d change to a new WordPress theme. This one is called “Atahualpa” and I think it’s more readable than the old theme. Plus, it has a rotating header image, so each time you reload the page, you’ll randomly get one of five different images of Peoria. I’ll probably add more in the future.

Let me know what you think of it, and especially if you have any problems with it. You can e-mail me by clicking here.