All posts by C. J. Summers

I am a fourth-generation Peorian, married with three children.
Radio

Smart City Radio

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Awhile back, my friend Beth Akeson told me about a public radio show called Smart City. It’s not broadcast on our local public radio affiliates (although I’ve recently put in a request for it at WCBU), but it is available on the internet:


Join host Carol Coletta for a look at the trends and ideas shaping our cities. Only on public radio.

As you can see, the synopsis/tag-line for the show is, “Join host Carol Coletta for a look at the trends and ideas shaping our cities.” It’s an interview show, so there are always interesting guests with thought-provoking points of view. Throw it on your iPod and take a listen — I think you’ll find it interesting.

I’m hooked. I’ve been putting past shows on my mp3 player and listening to them in the car. Especially interesting to me recently is an interview she did with Heywood Sanders called “Are Convention Centers a Silver Bullet?” and her interview with Andres Duany, who put together the Heart of Peoria Plan in 2002.

I think all civic-center-expansion and convention-hotel supporters should listen to the Heywood Sanders interview. His points are worth consideration.

2008 Campaign, City of Peoria, Weather

New snow plan has unintended consequences

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It all looks good on paper:

The City of Peoria has not established a “Bare pavement” policy for each and every roadway. Bare pavement will dramatically increase our costs as well as negative environmental impacts. If a citizen will drive carefully for a few blocks to a roadway with a higher level of service, travel throughout Peoria can be made easier and safer. Balancing levels of service to user volumes is the most efficient use of Peoria’s tax dollars and minimizes damage to the environment.

The plan was executed to the letter this year, which resulted in excellent driving on primary routes and treacherous driving on residential streets. Many residential streets are a solid sheet of ice, but Public Works and the City Council are evidently okay with that level of “service.”

What the snow plan didn’t take into account was the effect this would have on service vehicles, like garbage trucks. Many residents haven’t had garbage pickup for two weeks now — an inconvenience any time of year, but certainly around Christmas when there is a lot of extra garbage. Here’s the latest press release from the city:

In response to the icy conditions on roads and alleys, Waste Management has suspended residential and commercial collection for today. Collections will resume tomorrow, Saturday, December 27th, for the routes scheduled for collection today.

The icy conditions on roads and alleys are due in no small part to the city’s planned neglect of them, per the snow plan. The icy conditions are so bad that even the city’s snow plows are having trouble getting through neighborhoods now. Here’s another press release:

City crews are treating residential areas with a sand/salt mix to increase traction. Progress is delayed due to most inclines, that will force the salt truck to back up the street to prevent sliding.

If the snow plows can’t get through without sliding, how well do you think the average motorist is able to navigate these streets to get to “a roadway with a higher level of service”? Snow plows, garbage trucks, even Journal Star delivery has been delayed due to the icy conditions.

My guess is that the snow plan was designed to handle snow, but not ice like we’ve had this year. Maybe the city should reevaluate the snow plan in light of these developments and establish an “ice plan” for the future.

Museum Block, Nation/World, Peoria County

Did anybody not see this coming?

17 Comments

From today’s Journal Star:

Museum backers hope the federal economic stimulus plan includes $4 million to construct an underground parking garage for the Downtown project.

Of course they do. Especially with Mr. LaHood as Secretary of Transportation, they probably feel pretty confident they’ll get that money, too. Nevermind the fact that we don’t need any additional parking for this project. Nevermind the fact that they haven’t raised their goal in private or public funding, indicating that there is not sufficient local support for this project. The latest spin on the project is to call it a “stimulus project,” designed to stimulate the local economy:

[Brad] McMillan said an agreement with museum representatives and Caterpillar – which wants to construct a $41 million visitors center next to the Downtown museum – said “100 percent” of jobs generated from the construction of the facility would come from “local construction” and trades.

“This could mean a lot of work during a tough economic time span,” McMillan said.

In order for the project to go forward, of course, Peoria residents would have to approve a .25% increase in the local sales tax. So, you see, a higher sales tax will be a good thing for the economy, because it will create 250 construction jobs. Let’s see, $24,000,000 in higher sales taxes, plus $4,000,000 in federal stimulus money, that’s $28 million for 250 jobs, or $112,000 per job.

So now, not only is this project an exercise in inefficient land use, it can also be poster child for inefficient use of public funds.

Museum Block, Peoria County

County carrying museum-backers’ water

30 Comments

The Journal Star has published the specific wording of the telephone poll recently completed by Peoria County regarding the proposed downtown museum:

The Peoria Riverfront Museum will enhance educational opportunities for all of central Illinois. The museum will house collections, a state-of-the-art planetarium, and an IMAX theater. The adjacent Caterpillar Visitor’s Center will welcome visitors from around the world. The project will create 250 union construction jobs, and upon completion will generate nearly $14 million annually to our local economy. The museum project is 86 percent funded.

This is practically the textbook definition of a push poll, which is inappropriate in general, but especially when perpetrated by the County government.

What do they mean it will “generate nearly $14 million annually to our local economy”? How do they figure that? According to a September 8, 2008, Journal Star article, “The annual operating budget [for the Peoria Regional Museum] is pegged at $4 million.” Where’s the other $10 million being generated? To just throw that out there as a fact is inappropriate; at best it should have read that “developers predict” it will generate $14 million annually or some other such clarification.

And the last line is really over the top. It states that “The museum project is 86 percent funded.” This is patently false. According to the Build the Block website, $73.7 million has been raised to date out of $119.4 million. That’s 61.7%. The overall funding for the project is divided into “public funding” and “private funding.” The “private funding” portion is reportedly at 86% ($67 million out of their $78 million goal). But this poll is about the public funding portion. It’s misleading to represent the “the museum project” — which can only be interpreted as the entire museum project, given that there is no context that would indicate otherwise — as “86% funded.” Even if the private funding were at 100% of their goal, the overall project would still only be 71% funded.

The bigger problem is that the county is doing this polling (at public expense) for one purpose: to develop wording for the referendum question that will make it most likely to gain the favor of voters. That means they’re actively advocating for a “yes” vote on the museum tax referendum and using public funds to do it. As Billy Dennis points out in his blog, that’s illegal. 10 ILCS 5/9-25.1(b) states, in part, “No public funds shall be used to urge any elector to vote for or against any candidate or proposition, or be appropriated for political or campaign purposes to any candidate or political organization.”

Why is the County carrying the museum’s water?

Museum Block, Peoria County, State Legislation

Museum tax strategy revealed in latest telephone poll

73 Comments

Regular commentator Mahkno has left a most interesting comment on the Peoria Pundit website that I’m going to shamelessly steal and quote in its entirety here:

Museum folks ran a very push orientated poll this eve. Had a good 30 second to full minute intro about how great the education benefits would be, how much revenue it would bring in (14 million), how many jobs it would create ([250] union jobs), its 86% paid for so far, and how low a burden it would be (25 cents per…).

Would you support a sales tax increase? Mmm no.

What if it were tied to other public service like firefighting and police? Mmmm… no.

What if the tax were only temporary, to expire at some point? LOL… Civic Center? … MMmmm No…

Done.

The statute under which this tax referendum falls is called the “Special County Retailers’ Occupation Tax For Public Safety, Public Facilities, or Transportation” (Sec. 5-1006.5). This statute has been around a while, actually, except that it used to be just for public safety and transportation. The legislature recently amended it to include “public facilities” for the expressed purpose of helping the museum project go forward.

Since the tax can cover not only facilities, but safety and transportation too, it looks like the county and museum officials are contemplating a common political strategy. It happens all the time in Congress. For instance, say you have a pork-barrel project that doesn’t stand a chance of getting through Congress on a pure up-or-down vote. What do you do? You put it in, say, a veterans hospital bill as an earmark. That way, in order to vote against the pork, representatives have to vote against veterans. No one wants to vote against veterans (and certainly no one wants to be on record as voting against veterans), so the bill passes, pork and all. Voila!

The county is at least contemplating the same strategy here. They have an unpopular sales tax referendum for an unpopular museum project, so how do they get residents to vote for it? Of course! Pair it with something people will be reluctant to vote against — like public safety! Who wants to vote against firefighters or police officers? Then they can market it as a public-safety tax instead of what it really is — a museum-funding tax.

Expect the museum-backers to pull out all the stops in this campaign. They’ve already started behind-the-scenes efforts to silence their critics (like me) through intimidation tactics. I suppose I should be flattered that my little blog is perceived as such a big threat.

Peoria Mayor

Ardis vs. Ardis

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“My leadership, a new generation of leadership, will be open, not closed; inclusive, not reserved for the select few; and bottom-up, not top-down.”
–January 18, 2005, at a news conference laying out his platform during his first mayoral election campaign.

“Everyone on the council has received briefings on this project for months as we’ve progressed down this line. This isn’t something that just hit our desks last week.”
–December 15, 2008, at a City Council meeting, explaining why we needn’t be worried about the council spending $40 million of our tax money on a private hotel a mere 72 hours after the project was officially revealed to the public. No opportunity for public input was provided, despite the project having been in the works behind closed doors “for months.”

Here’s one more quote — this one is from the September 20, 2004, “Word on the Street” column by Jennifer Davis:

“It frightens me that asking public officials to get input from the people who put us here frightens you,” at-large Councilman Jim Ardis in response to Civic Center Authority Board member Jane Converse at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Rumor is there is definite fear among Civic Center board members about public hearings on the proposed $55 million redevelopment of the Civic Center, especially letting the public weigh in on continued commitment of hotel, restaurant and amusement taxes as a revenue stream.

Mayor Ardis, you once felt like I and many of your constituents feel now. Excluded. Marginalized. Left out of the process in the spending of our tax dollars. You once fought for the kind of transparency I and many of your constituents want now — the opportunity to voice our concerns and be listened to. You promised us a “new generation of leadership” in 2005, but I’m still seeing closed-door, top-down leadership.

Ask yourself how the 2005 Ardis would have felt about the way the 2008 Ardis handled the hotel deal. How would you have felt if the mayor then would have told the public, like you did on November 10 at a City Council meeting, that “no development plans have been presented to City Hall” when the mayor had actually been discussing development plans “for months”? How would the 2005 Ardis have felt about public officials leaving the public entirely out of the process of spending $40 million of their money?

I like you, Mayor Ardis. I think you’ve done a lot of good things for the city. I even think the hotel deal has a lot of good points, frankly. But Dave Ransburg had a lot of good ideas, too. He couldn’t sell a lot of them because he lost the confidence of the people by going down the dead-end road of secrecy and exclusion. You ran against him because of it. Please don’t follow him down that road. Have faith in your constituents. If you think they made a smart choice in electing you, consider them intelligent enough to be included in public discourse.

Show us the 2005 Ardis again. You know — the one we elected.

Nation/World, Ray LaHood

Transportation Secretary LaHood? Say it ain’t so!

26 Comments

The first time I read the Journal Star’s breaking news article on retiring Congressman Ray LaHood being chosen by President-elect Obama for U.S. Secretary of Transportation, it was all about LaHood being a “moderate” Republican, able to reach across the aisle, yada yada yada, and his being a personal friend of Rahm Emanuel. Conspicuously absent from the article: anything on LaHood’s knowledge of or position on transportation issues.

Now the article has been changed considerably. Gone is any reference to Rahm Emanuel. Included now are quotes from Phil Hare and Glenn Poshard on what a hard worker LaHood is, and how he’s so non-partisan. The only comment about LaHood’s transportation prowess comes from Poshard, who is summarized as saying “LaHood has a comprehensive grasp of the needs of the state and need for a massive infrastructure overhaul nationwide.”

Oh really?

LaHood is getting high marks in some blogs and news reports for breaking with President Bush and voting for the Passenger Rail Investment Act and the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act. However, we here in central Illinois know that his support of rail transportation only goes so far.

In 2004, he didn’t support high-speed rail in Illinois (along the Chicago-Bloomington-St. Louis route) because he said it was too expensive and rural residents were against it. The expense? Nearly $200 million for track and equipment upgrades. Yet he then turned around and supported (nay, fought for) a $499 million project to upgrade I-74 through Peoria and East Peoria, providing us with ten times the capacity we need and literally walling off urban neighborhoods.

Then, just last year, LaHood pooh-poohed the idea of Amtrak extending service to Peoria. We should be happy with bus service to Bloomington to catch a train, he told WCBU at the time. Real progressive there, Ray. This was before the Amtrak-IDOT feasibility study was even started. He simply made up his mind that Peoria shouldn’t have passenger train service.

And LaHood, like most local leaders, tried to broker a deal between rail companies and the Peoria Park District to kill freight rail service on the Kellar Branch so it could be turned into a linear park. Short-sighted again. Less freight rail means more trucks on the roads, which means more wear and tear on our streets and highways and more greenhouse gases in the air.

According to the USDOT website, “The Office of the Secretary (OST) oversees the formulation of national transportation policy and promotes intermodal transportation.” “Intermodal” — that means “interconnectivity between various types (modes) of transportation.” LaHood’s policies in Peoria have only favored one mode — the motor vehicle. Because of that, I find him a surprising and disheartening choice for Transportation Secretary, especially when Joe Biden promised that an Obama-Biden administration would be “the most train-friendly administration ever.”

The Peoria Chronicle

Site issues

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There have been some problems with the site today, you may have noticed. My hosting account was temporarily suspended due to excessive CPU usage. I’ve optimized my SQL databases and deactivated a couple of plugins, so the site is back up now and (hopefully) will run a little quicker.

One of the plugins I deactivated was the one that puts a toolbar on the comments section. For those of you who liked that feature, I’m sorry I can’t support it anymore (maybe a better plugin will come out sometime that allows the same functionality). For the rest of you, you’ll be happy to know that you can put in your own HTML codes again (like blockquote — a long-standing favorite).

Thanks, everyone!

2009 Campaign

General Parker running for mayor; Curphy Smith running for Second District

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I don’t have a full list of candidates yet, but I did find out about two new candidates today:

General Parker is running against incumbent Jim Ardis for Mayor. General’s wife Rachael Parker works for the city in the Economic Development department and sits on the Peoria Public Schools Board of Education. Parker was also interested in serving on the Heart of Peoria Commission, but he can’t do that anymore, of course.

Curphy Smith is running against incumbent Barbara Van Auken for the Second District city council seat. Curphy is currently serving on the Traffic Commission.

Also, Gary Shadid will be running against Patrick Nichting for the Peoria City Treasurer position being vacated by the retiring Reginald Willis.

UPDATE: Here’s the Journal Star article with a full list of candidates.