All posts by C. J. Summers

I am a fourth-generation Peorian, married with three children.
State of Illinois

Ryan’s a crook and a creep

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I see former governor George Ryan is back in the news. Seems a number of death row inmates he pardoned are now suing a group Chicago police officers claiming that Ryan’s pardon proves their innocence. So, the defendants want Ryan to testify as to why he pardoned them. That seems reasonable — his pardon is the lynchpin of the case.

So, what is Ryan doing? Claiming “executive privelege.”

Huh. Gee, thanks, guv’nuh. Is this your way of sticking in to the system that convicted you for your licenses-for-bribes scheme? Do you have nightmares about those kids who died because your little fundraising plan? I would think the least (and I mean the least) you could do for penance is cooperate with the court.

I hope they lock you up and throw away the key.

City Council, City of Peoria

City staff wants their unauthorized practice codified

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As I explained in a previous post, the multi-billion dollar company American Financial Realty Trust (through their subsidiary First States Investors) recently bought the National City Bank building downtown (the old Commercial Bank building). That bank has a pedestrian walkway and underground vaults that encroach on the public way. Therefore, the city is supposed to be collecting ten cents per square foot on that encroachment annually.

Action was deferred last week while the staff answered some questions from the council. Those answers were released today. I’d like to simply look at the whole request and comment as I go:

First States Investors 4500 LLC, as the new owners of the National City Bank Building at 301 SW Adams, seeks the City of Peoria’s permission to continue using the pedestrian walkway and underground storage vaults on the property. Since both the walkway and the storage vaults are encroachments upon the public way, the buyer is seeking assurances that the City of Peoria will allow the continued use of the property. The buyer and seller were concerned that any refusal by the City of Peoria to allow the continued use and enjoyment of the encroachments would prevent the fullest utilization of the property and would require the parties to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the sale.

This part is completely reasonable. They want to be able to continue using the pedestrian walkway and underground vaults. The city can easily provide them assurances regarding this request. It’s the next part that defies logic:

Though § 26-111 of the Municipal Code, provides that a building owner pay .10/square foot as an annual fee for any encroachment upon the public way, the City of Peoria has not collected such a fee for a number of years.

Why not? That question was not answered in this new communication from staff. It’s apparent that nobody authorized the staff to stop collecting these fees. They just stopped, and now they want to use their negligence or deliberate unauthorized action to justify the continuation of that policy:

It would be unreasonable to begin collecting same relative to this transaction given the number of years the encroachments have existed.

No, what’s unreasonable is that staff has failed to do their job and are now shamelessly flaunting it.

The language of the ordinance provides for the building owners to provide proof of adequate public liability and property damage insurance prior to commencing any reconstruction, repair or other maintenance of the encroachments. Additionally, the Directors of Public Works and Inspections must authorize and monitor any repairs or reconstruction of the encroachments such that the City of Peoria is assured that the integrity of the public way is maintained.

Of course they should provide insurance for their own encroachment. The fee isn’t assessed to cover that. As far as the directors of Public Works and Inspections authorizing and monitoring any repairs or reconstruction, I think it’s fair to ask if they’ve been doing that, or if such monitoring also ceased “a number of years” ago.

The encroachment square footage, according to the Assessor’s Office, is 750 s.f. over the alley and 848 s.f. under the alley. If the annual fee were collected on this property, it would amount to $159.80. The land and building value is more than $4,000,000 and the City is receiving tax revenue on same. We believe collection stopped in the 1980’s.

The implication seems to be here that the amount is so small in comparison to the property tax revenue the city gets that it’s not worth collecting. Hogwash. The city collects lots of petty fines from businesses that pay plenty of property taxes to the city. The city by rights should charge them for the fees they haven’t paid since “the 1980’s.” That’s over $4,000 for the past 26 years.

Perhaps the most comical part of this is that according to this request, the company buying the bank building hasn’t even asked to get out of the fee — the only thing they’ve asked for is assurance that they can continue using the walkway and vaults; i.e., that the city won’t make them tear them out ala Peoria Heights vs. Alexis. Why city staff is insisting that the city stop collecting fees is a mystery.

But if that’s really what they want, then Patrick Nichting is right: they should include an amendment to the municipal code that repeals this fee. If a multi-billion dollar company shouldn’t have to pay it, then certainly no one else should.

Peoria Journal Star

Casual Comment

Note to Journal Star:  I know you’re new to the whole blog scene, so it’s understandable that you would call Molly Parker’s collection of posts a “web blog” on your front page.  However, you should know that this is incorrect.  “Blog” is short for “web log,” so you should either call it a “web log” or “blog,” but not “web blog.”

I also know you probably don’t consider blogs reliable authorities on what they call themselves, so I’ll quote the AP Stylebook:

blog  Internet jargon; if used, explain that it means Web log or Web journal.

Keep blogging, though.  It’s a nice addition to your site.

City of Peoria

Toward a Smokeless Society

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Sangamon County is the latest municipality to succumb to the anti-smoking police. According to the State Journal-Register:

The Sangamon County Board, by an unusually narrow vote of 16 to 13, approved on Tuesday a comprehensive workplace [including bars and restaurants] smoking ban that is set to go into effect the same day as Springfield’s – Sept. 17.

Activists are ramping up efforts to foist such a ban on Peoria, too. Of course, no one is forced to patronize or work in bars or restaurants against their will, and in fact there are quite a large number of restaurants that are already smoke-free by choice. That doesn’t stop anti-smoking activists from trying to restrict private property rights so that all bars and restaurants are non-smoking by law.

It seems obvioius to me that the real goal of these organizations is to make smoking itself illegal. If that’s the case, then there are other ways to go about that than stomping on private property rights. Fight to have the FDA regulate nicotine as the drug it is. Or fight for a constitutional amendment prohibiting smoking. But as long as it is still legal to smoke, and it’s still legal for people to assemble, then it should still be legal for said assembly to smoke ’em if they got ’em.

Incidentally, the smoking gun (ha ha) in the anti-smokers’ arsenal is a number of scientific studies they use to back up their claims regarding the health hazards of environmental tobacco smoke (also known as “ETS,” “second-hand smoke,” or “passive smoke”). I think it’s fair to question those studies, or at least anti-smokers’ use of those studies, in light of this article from Junkscience.com.

[Full disclosure: I am a non-smoker; never smoked anything my entire life, although I did hand out real cigars when my son was born.]

City Council, City of Peoria

Council Roundup 8/8/06

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The council meeting was relatively short, mostly because a good number of items were deferred. Although, I have to give credit to Mayor Ardis for reining in debates — after watching several council meetings since he took over as mayor, I’ve noticed that he stresses brevity and tries to cut off debate once the council members start repeating themselves.

The council questioned staff regarding why fees have not been collected on banks that encroach on the public way, and deferred approval until they get some answers. Staff was also asked to report how much money the city has been losing because of this practice. Councilman Nichting made an excellent point as well — if the staff comes back in two weeks proposing the council continue to not collect these fees, they should bring back a request to change the municipal code so that it conforms to the city’s practices.

Councilman Nichting actually had two — count ’em, two — excellent points last night. He also questioned why the Peoria Civic Center (PCC) is giving part of their hotel tax (part of the “H” in “HRA”) to the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (PACVB). The PACVB works on behalf of the entire tri-county area, yet only City of Peoria hotels pay HRA taxes. So the whole tri-county benefits, but the funding is coming disproportionately from Peoria hotels. Good catch. That item was deferred two weeks.

A day after the school board voted unanimously to support historic landmark status for Irving Primary School, the city council voted unanimously to make it official. The designation protects the building from demolition and the exterior from modification. The inside can be renovated and repartitioned, however, to accommodate alternative uses.

Gary Sandberg asked why the Nebraska overpass on I-74 wasn’t finished yet. IDOT officials had promised the council it would be completed in June of this year, and it’s still not open. Breaking that connection, in concert with the other I-74 construction and closures, has meant longer response times for emergency vehicles and greater inconvenience for Peoria motorists who have to drive further to get across town at a time when gas prices are soaring. Not a big deal if it were only closed for a few months, but it’s been over a year and a half now. Why isn’t it completed?

In addition to this, there were a few other notable items of business and some interesting citizen requests to address the council, which have been ably reported by Jennifer Davis in today’s Journal Star.

Peoria Public Schools

District 150 slowly coming back to reality

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Despite some ridiculous quotes in this story about last night’s school board meeting, I actually found it somewhat encouraging. The school district is at least acknowledging that there is a limit to the amount of money it can realistically spend, even if it is for the worthy goal of children’s education.

New board president David Gorentz is quoted as saying, “My concern is that we might spend more money in a few schools and really have that be the ideal design, but is that really the best for 15,000 students in District 150?” Good question. I would say, no.

If these buildings are really as inadequate as we’ve been told by the school board, and are really hampering the children’s education, then it would be irresponsible to put all the construction money into one or two schools while the other four or so are left in a state of disrepair. I think the school board is slowly coming to the realization that they can dream up what they believe is the perfect learning environment, but in the end, it takes money — money they don’t have — to accomplish it. Compromise will have to be made.

But compromise is always talked about in the gravest of terms. To wit (emphasis mine):

Education consultant Judy Helm said the schools could be reduced to a square footage similar to original estimates but at a significant cost to kids’ education.

That sounds ominous. We don’t want to jeopardize the kids’ education…. But, what specifically would have to be cut?

The district would have to forgo the concept of a community library and a health clinic, eliminate teacher planning areas, eliminate “integrated learning areas” for kids, reduce the size of classrooms, reduce the lunch room size and eliminate all classrooms for community/parent education, Helm said. These cuts would reduce the square footage to about 93,000.

Read over that list again. Do these items really represent a “significant cost to kids’ education”? Since when is a community health clinic or the size of the lunch room vital to a child’s education, for instance? Some of those things are easy to eliminate. (I’m not sure what “teacher planning areas” are in a grade school where teachers have their own rooms; do they need a separate “planning area”? I’m open to correction on that one.)

The biggest problem is the transformation of these facilities from replacement elementary schools to “community schools.” Most of the items Helm lists are a direct result of this shift. Since “community schools” are not part of the documented Master Facilities Plan, the district should either follow the plan or revise it — if they choose the latter, they should re-crunch the numbers to see if they can afford such an aggressive plan. I bet they can’t, and it looks like the school board is coming to that same conclusion, albeit slowly.

City of Peoria, Museum Block, Peoria Journal Star

Luciano is right about museum

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In a move sure to make his bosses unhappy, Phil Luciano wrote a scathing column criticizing the city’s plans for a new downtown museum. He doesn’t think it will be much of a draw:

Think of it this way: Peoria is about the same size as Allentown, Pa.; Evansville, Ind.; and Waterbury, Conn. Would you pack up the kids, gas up the van and head to any of those places to drink in their rich history?

I think Phil makes a good point. But I don’t think having a downtown museum is the problem per se — it’s the scale of the project. Why is the whole Sears block going to be devoted to the museum? Isn’t that putting all our eggs in one basket? What happens if the city’s tourism projections don’t pan out? Aren’t we left with a multi-million dollar millstone?

This is why, as I’ve argued before, it would be better to make the museum square more densely developed, as all our handsomely-paid consultants have been telling the city for years. Add retail, restaurants, and especially a residential component. By including private development on that block, the city collects property and sales tax revenues to offset the costs of maintaining and managing a museum on part of that parcel.

Plus, if people are living, shopping, and eating down there, the block will be buzzing around the clock throughout the week and weekends. Without those components, the block after 5:00 and on weekends will look exactly as it does now before a single brick has been laid: a black hole.

In short, I think there is enough interest in Peoria and its history to support a museum, but not a “museum square.” Scale it back and allow private development.

City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

How much does it cost to rehab Kellar rail line?

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On July 24, the City of Peoria stated in a filing with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) that, according to a 2000 estimate from IDOT, it would cost approximately $2,015,469 to rehabilitate just 6.29 miles of the Kellar Branch rail line.

On August 2, just a week and a half later, the City of Peoria stated in a filing with the STB that, according to a 2006 Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) inspection report, it would only take $50,000 to rehabilitate 8 miles of the Kellar Branch rail line.

That’s a difference of about $1,965,469.

It sounds like the city is not only not putting forth a good-faith effort to provide Carver Lumber the level of service they promised, but is also reporting outdated and misleading estimates to the STB to make the track rehabilitation costs sound worse than they really are.