All posts by C. J. Summers

I am a fourth-generation Peorian, married with three children.
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Happy Independence Day!

CREDIT: “U.S. Capitol paintings. Signing of the Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbull in U.S. Capitol, detail II.” By Horydczak, Theodor, ca. 1890-1971, photographer. From Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydczak, 1923-1959 Created/published ca. 1920-ca. 1950. LC-H8-CT-C01-063 DLC Part of Theodor Horydczak Collection (Library of Congress) Horydczak, Theodor, ca. 1890-1971. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Bradley University, Ray LaHood

Logic apparently not a job qualification

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Ray LaHoodAccording to the Journal Star, Ray LaHood is still contemplating applying for a job for which finalists have already been chosen:

“I’m still considering the decision,” said LaHood, a Peoria Republican.

Asked how that could be, given that the search committee has selected its finalists to be interviewed shortly at an out-of-town location, LaHood responded, “I just told you where I’m at with it.”

Presumably, LaHood is also still considering a gubernatorial run for 2006. I wonder what he’ll decide?

Kellar Branch

Oh my Darling, oh my Darling, oh my Darling, CIRY

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Kellar Branch RailroadBack in February, former mayor Dick Carver came to Peoria (at taxpayer expense) to talk about options for the future of the Kellar Branch, including which railroad company would be the better rail carrier: Pioneer Industrial Railroad or Central Illinois Railroad Company. The president and general counsel for Pioneer showed up at the meetings, but no one from Central Illinois Rail bothered to make the trek down from Granville, Illinois. I also addressed the council at the time with what I thought was a well-reasoned argument in favor of the rail carrier who had provided better, safer service (Pioneer).

Nevertheless, the City chose Central Illinois Railroad, in no small part because of Dick Carver’s comments. One comment in particular (summarized below from the Feb. 13 council minutes) was especially swaying to the council:

Mr. Carver said he felt that Mr. John Darling, President of Central Illinois Rail Company, had a good relationship with the Union Pacific Railroad. He said Mr. Darling committed himself to making service more reliable, and more frequent, with a reasonable cost.

You see, without the Kellar Branch in operation, the western connection is only accessible from the Union Pacific line, so a good working relationship with UP (among other things) is essential if shippers on the western connection are ever going to get something close to a competitive rate.

John Darling, President of Central Illinois Rail, was the man of the hour that night, even though he wasn’t there at the meeting. Dick Carver talked him up, explained what a great working relationship the guy had with UP, etc. He wouldn’t come right out and say that Darling/CIRY was a better choice than Pioneer, but he might as well have. The implication was clear. So the council voted to get a contract with CIRY based on that recommendation and the promise of John Darling.

Fast-forward five months: The city is still unable to reach an agreement on a new contract with CIRY, and guess what? John Darling is no longer the president of Central Illinois Railroad. Randy Ray informed at least one councilman today, “Mr. Darling has left. Their new Chief Operating Officer is Jack Stolarczyk.”

Now that their pretense for choosing CIRY over Pioneer (Darling) is “lost and gone forever,” will they say “dreadful sorry, CIRY” and drop them in favor of Pioneer?

I think we all know the answer to that.

CityLink

Park ‘n Ride into the past, I guess

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I thought I might ride CityLink’s Park ‘n Ride service to see the fireworks at Glen Oak Park tonight. My wife and I did that last year and it seemed to work relatively well. So I wanted to get some info on where they would be picking up people and how much the fares were.

First stop, the website:

Park and Ride

If you can’t read it, it says this:

Park-N-Ride Services Hotline
Call 679-8333 For Recorded Schedules, updated regularly

There are no June Park & Ride and Special Events

Please check back to see more upcoming events in July

Okay, so their website is a little out of date. I’ll try calling the hotline. I kid you not, this is the entire recording, verbatim, recorded by me today, July 3, 2007, at 6:00 p.m.:

[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/CityLink1.mp3]

Wow, thanks CityLink for your “regularly updated” Park ‘n Ride hotline! Now I know just where and when to catch the bus for events that happened in November and December of last year! Just one more thing, where do I find your time machine?

I think it’s funny that the telephone “hotline” is even more out of date than the website. And it’s even funnier that the recording cuts off at the end — indicating to me that even when this was originally recorded, it was only marginally helpful.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more comical, I tried pressing “0” for an operator. Guess what?

[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/CityLink2.mp3]

Looks like we’ll be driving.

Museum Block

More details come out about museum changes

21 Comments

Jennifer Davis has been doing some digging and came up with these specific changes:

…shrinking the building by about 15,000 square feet and doing away with both the reflecting pool and the large metal sphere enclosed in glass, which held the planetarium. Further, though it will look like a two-story building in places, the second floor will house mechanicals and no longer be accessible to visitors. The retail space along Water Street also will be put off for now. The planetarium still will exist, but in a silo-looking structure.

The City Council should shoot this down with both barrels. As far as I’m concerned, the museum group has proven that this cannot be a successful venture at its current size, and I don’t mean just the size of the building. I also mean the size of the project (combining multiple museums into one in an ever-decreasing space) and the size of the land (taking all that prime real estate away from public development that would produce tax revenue for the city for an 80,000 square foot building).

If the museum group wants to continue to try to stuff five or six museums/halls-of-fame into an 80,000-square-foot building, I suppose that’s their prerogative. But there’s no way the council should allow them to continue squatting on two-thirds of the former Sears block to do it. Give them a smaller portion of the block, and open the rest of it to private development — preferably a mix of retail and residential, in keeping with the principles of New Urbanism.

City Council, City of Peoria, Museum Block

Honey, I shrunk the museum

20 Comments

Shrinking museumI hear tell the museum folks are wanting to modify their agreement with the city to make the proposed museum even smaller than it already is. It may come before the council on July 10.

My sources say they want to reduce the gross floor area from 96,000 to 80,000 square feet. I wonder what that will do to the display space. Considering they were only going to have about 70,000 square feet of display space before, this reduction could potentially leave less than 60,000 square feet for the public.

And, of course, a reduction of square footage demands architectural changes to accommodate the smaller space. No word yet on what those changes will be, although I’m still hearing rumors that it will involve reducing or eliminating the second floor.

I would suggest that they follow the sage advice of philosopher C. S. Lewis: “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

City Council, City of Peoria

Council to citizens: be quiet

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Minute MinderThe council is installing something new this week for Peoria citizens: a timer. Those pesky citizens take up a lot of the council’s time on Tuesday nights, so in addition to reducing by half the number of opportunities to address the council (the council’s now meeting only twice a month instead of four times), they’re also going to start strictly enforcing the five-minute rule when citizens take to the microphone.

To facilitate the new rules, they need to buy a timer. But not just any timer:

The $2,675 electronic timer is supposed to tell citizens when their allotted five minutes to address the council is up. The timers – one mounted on the public lectern, one on the back wall and two behind the mayor’s desk – will use green, yellow and red lights to guide speakers on how much time they have remaining.

A $2,675 timer? Are you kidding me? The timer pictured above can accomplish the same thing for only $7.99 from Bed Bath and Beyond. For $14.99, you can get a digital timer that will allow you to have your one-minute warning beep, if that’s important.

That’s not all. The council is also going to require that anyone wishing to address the council fill out a card — before the meeting — in order to be recognized. Since there are fewer meetings, they will undoubtedly be longer. So now we’re going to require citizens to get down to City Hall before 6:15 to fill out a card and then sit in council chambers for the whole meeting, which may go until 10:00, just so they can speak for five minutes at the end and, presumably, get cut off if they speak too long.

Now tell me this isn’t an effort to try to discourage citizen comments.

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC

HOPC meeting to be continued Friday

The Heart of Peoria Commission last Friday started working on our proposed work plan for 2007-2008. We will be finishing our work plan at another special meeting this Friday at 8 a.m., in the conference room in the Planning & Growth department. The meeting is open to the public, as always.

So far, the commission has expressed interest in focusing on implementing New Urbanism principles in transportation and the public space, continuing to assist with the implementation of the Land Development Code and the four Form Districts, and developing marketing materials for the Heart of Peoria Plan area to generate interest in reinvestment. These are subject to change and/or further refinement at this Friday’s meeting.

When the work plan is completed, it will be submitted to the City Council for consideration during their July 24 meeting. They’ll decide at that time whether to keep and fund the commission, or decommission us.

City of Peoria

Special assessment projects update

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Since writing my post about how slowly a particular special assessment project took to be completed, City Manager Randy Oliver wrote me to explain how the special assessment process works:

Special Assessments are funded as money becomes available. Unfortunately during the 2001-2003 budget crunch little of no funds were budgeted by Special Assessment. Projects are funded on a first-in first-out basis. This is the reason for the delay on West Melbourne.

I wrote back to ask a couple of follow-up questions and received this response:

City Council Budgeted $1.1M in 2005, $1.2M in 2006 and $1.2M in 2007. At the end of 2007 unfunded Special Assessments will be $1.725. This represents 3 projects (W. Wagner Lane Sidewalk, N. Easton Pace curb and W. Ridge Road curb and ornamental street lights). The projects are from 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively. If funding would have remained at the 2005,2006 and 2007 levels in 2000, 2001 and 2002 things would have been fine. Unfortunately that was not the case. Please note that the City also did not buy many if any replacement vehicles or equipment in those lean years. The Fleet is almost back to the proper level.

So there you go. There had been no money budgeted by the city council for special assessments, which is why the project got delayed. Still funded by the council during the lean years: parking deck subsidies and the Gateway building. Priorities, you know.