All posts by C. J. Summers

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

Another day, another Kellar Branch editorial

So predictable. Yesterday there was a story about the Kellar Branch in the newspaper, so today — like summer follows the spring — the Journal Star had another editorial about it.

The absurdity in this is that the city owns the track where the train cars are parked, not Pioneer Railcorp.

Actually, the absurdity is that the city bought the track in the first place to improve rail service to growth cell two. Now that they have an operator on it that is trying to do just that — in fact, he even offered to buy it from the city — they want to instead abandon it and turn the corridor into a linear park that taxpayers will be stuck maintaining forever.

He’s [Guy Brenkman, Pioneer Railcorp] become a master obstructionist, imposing his will over the desires of countless Peorians and their elected leaders.

Yeah, countless Peorians. As if we had a referendum on it or something. I’m sure that countless Peorians are in favor of it now, thanks to relentless advocacy from the city’s only major newspaper. If people knew all the facts that the Journal Star doesn’t find fit to print, they might feel differently.

It is outrageous that one man can stand in the way of a project that thousands of people (the Rock Island Trail attracts an estimated 120,000 annually) will enjoy for walking, running and biking.

Sounds like the Rock Island Trail is meeting our needs just fine, then, doesn’t it? They sure are optimistic that this trail will be immensely popular. Of course, these are the same people who predicted that over 17,000 households would be likely to join the RiverPlex. Reality: not even close.

We’d like to think that the public interest will prevail soon.

I, too, hope the public interest will prevail soon. However, I have a different view of what’s in the public interest in this case. I happen to think that bringing more manufacturing (and thus jobs, revenue, and population) to Peoria is in the public interest. I think abandoning a working rail line that runs year-round and brings revenue to the city and turning it into a park that only gets a little use in the warmer months and brings no revenue to the city is not in the public interest.

Parks are good. Turning abandoned rail lines into linear parks (like the Rock Island Trail) is a good idea. Forcibly abandoning active rail lines to the detriment of businesses that are using those lines is a terrible idea. And I just want to remind everyone that this will work to the detriment of those who use rail trainsportation in growth cell two. They will go from having access to several rail lines to only having access to one rail line. Remember from Econ 101 what happens to prices under a monopoly? But that’s the city’s solution with the UP spur they’re trying to build.

Indeed, let’s hope “that the public interest will prevail soon” — the public interest of jobs and growth instead of the empty promises of the park district.

Uncategorized

Hardees: “Skin to Win” in Fast Food

Hardees Cup

I went to Hardees today to buy a Coke and was served it in this cup, featuring Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Vanessa Lorenzo. So now their cups have suimsuit models on them, and their commercials have women (most notably Paris Hilton) feigning orgasm over Hardees burgers.

Here’s my question: when is Hardees going to jettison what final shreds of respectability they have and go all the way? I mean, we all know where this is going. Pretty soon they’re going to start painting their fast food restaurants brown, covering the windows, and putting up the “18 and older only” signs. That way they can have topless order-takers and soft porn printed on the cups. Their breakfast menu can carry the ever-popular “Smut ‘n’ Eggs” to really appeal to those 18- to 24-year-olds. And all carryout can be discreetly placed in brown paper bags.

As Hardees would say, “That’s hot.”

City of Peoria, East Bluff

East Bluff Scuffle

3 Comments

ravine68

Isn’t this a lovely neighborhood? Notice how the homes are nicely kept, the sidewalks are in good repair, and there’s a mailbox on the corner. Nice car & family, too, incidentally. It’s the kind of neighborhood you’d love to move into, isn’t it? Want to know where it is?

It’s the 500 block of East Ravine Avenue in 1968 (looking east, where it crosses New York Avenue). Oh, how things have changed in the last 37 years. I’d take a picture of it now so you could compare how it has gone downhill, but I don’t want to get jumped by thugs like the 19-year-old man who was walking in the 500 block of Ravine, refused to give five men his change and got beaten for it.

Take my word for it, it’s not a pretty neighborhood anymore, and that’s a shame. The sidewalks have been allowed to deteriorate for many years. Several houses have been razed, so the street is pockmarked with vacant lots. The houses that are left are almost all rentals and terribly run-down. For example, 512 E. Ravine — a two-story, three-bedroom house on the corner of Ravine and New York — sold for less than $5,000 in 2000, and is now valued at a paltry $36,000 for property tax purposes.

Bill Dennis points out that this is just four blocks away from the new MidTown Plaza, anchored by Cub Foods. They razed the vacant storefronts on Knoxville — and several owner-occupied homes on Dechman that were seized via eminent domain — and established a tax-increment finance (TIF) district to build it. Within a couple of years, Sullivan’s and John Bee’s supermarkets went out of business, and the word on the street is that Cub Foods isn’t doing too well either.

So, that attempt at gentrification didn’t work. We’ve voted out Thetford and others who voted for it, but the damage is already done. I don’t know what all the answers are, but I think code enforcement and infrastructure improvements (sidewalks, streetlights, etc.) would be a nice start (going on the broken-window theory).

I’d be interested in your feedback. What should we do to take neighborhoods like Ravine and turn them into attractive places to live again, like the picture above?

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Tear down White School and build… another school?

WhiteSchool.jpg

I was reading the paper the other day, and I happened to notice this article, which is mainly about putting “mini-parks” within the Med-Tech District. But toward the end of the article, it says this:

In other business, the commission discussed recent talks with Peoria School District 150 to allow for construction of a new middle school in the Med-Tech district, which would focus on math, science and technology.

A Med-Tech committee met last month with interim deputy superintendent Ken Hinton, interim superintendent Cindy Fischer and treasurer Guy Cahill to discuss the project, expected to cost about $15 million.

So, the school district that is $19 million in the hole — so broke they have to close schools — is now thinking of building a new school in the Med-Tech District for $15 million? But wait, it gets better:

There has been talk about locating a new school at the site of the current White Middle School, which is being considered for closing.

So, they want to close White School (ostensibly to save money), tear it down (expensive), then build another school on that site that will cost $15 million. This is their plan. Let’s go over it again: (1) Close schools to save $19 million, (2) tear down one of them, (3) build new school on the same site for $15 million.

Does this make any sense whatsoever to anyone? I mean, I must be missing something. Someone, please tell me what I’m missing here.

Dick Durbin

As long as we’re comparing….

Goebbels.jpgDurbin.jpg

Since Sen. Durbin has compared America’s treatment of prisoners with the Nazis’ treatment of prisoners, I think it’s only fitting that we compare Sen. Durbin’s propaganda to that of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels’.

Ridiculous, you say? Yes, but sadly, it’s no more ridiculous or reprehensible than Sen. Durbin’s comments. Senator, it’s time to stop defending yourself and apologize.

Update: Durbin said Friday: “I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.”

I just love defensive “apologies” that put the blame on others’ response instead of one’s inappropriate actions. So, let me get this straight, Mr. Durbin: when you said Gitmo was like a Nazi prison camp, you meant that in the most respectful, admirable way toward our troops, eh?

Unfortunately, this is the closest thing to an apology that we’ll get.

City Council, City of Peoria, Insight Communications

Council wants your thoughts on cable TV

9 Comments

Councilman Turner wants the council to hear from you regarding cable television. The city’s franchise agreement with Insight is ending next year, and Turner thinks Insight’s service leaves something to be desired. Several other council members chimed in with concerns about everything from high prices to service responsiveness. So, the motion to hire an attorney to negotiate a new franchise agreement was amended: in addition to hiring the attorney, the council will hold neighborhood meetings to find out how the public feels about their cable service.

Councilman Morris brought up a good point, too — technology has changed dramatically in the past twenty years, and technological change isn’t getting any slower, so we probably shouldn’t renew for twenty more years. In fact, Randy Ray has already indicated he’s hoping for a shorter term. Morris also pointed out that Insight doesn’t just offer cable TV anymore, but also internet access and even phone service in some communities. How will a new franchise agreement affect these additional services, if at all?

Also, we know what the city wants to get out of a new agreement, but what does Insight want? I’m going to go out on a limb (ha ha) and guess a lower franchise fee. The city used to collect 10% of their (then GE Cablevision’s) adjusted gross revenue until the FCC decreed in April 1981 that franchise authorities couldn’t collect more than 5%. The franchise fee now is still 5% of Insight’s adjusted gross revenue, payable monthly. Back in 1986, they (UA Cablesystems at that time) tried to get Peoria County to agree to a 3% rate, but the County told them if they wouldn’t give them the same 5% they gave the city, they could remove their equipment and get the heck out of town. So UA backed down and passed the higher cost on to the subscribers.

My guess is they will argue that they face increased competition from satellite providers like Dish Network who don’t have to pay local fees, and need to have the franchise fee lowered so they can keep their prices competitive. I expect they’ll ask for 3% or less.

I’ll look forward to hearing the public input. What’s important to you? How do you feel about Insight’s service? What do you think needs to be included in the next franchise agreement?

* * * * * * * * * * * *

And now for a little history, for those who might be interested:

Peoria has only negotiated two cable franchise agreements. The first one was awarded in 1966 to General Electric (GE) Cablevision for twenty years. At that time, cable television was a hotly debated topic locally and nationally. Broadcast stations didn’t like it, worrying that bringing in stations from other cities would draw viewers away and hurt their ad revenue. The FCC muddled through all kinds of different regulations, worried that pay TV would “siphon off all the good programming from free TV.” Thus, even though the franchise was awarded in 1966, GE didn’t start offering cable television until 1972 because, until then, the FCC prohibited cable companies from piping in channels from other cities (e.g., Chicago). GE figured people wouldn’t pay for exactly the same stations they can get for free over the air, so they waited until they could offer extra channels like WGN.

The franchise agreement was transferred from GE to UA Cablesystems. They renewed in 1986 — that’s the second and last franchise agreement Peoria negotiated. I got a copy of it through a Freedom of Information Act request, and I converted it to digital form — as long as you have Adobe Acrobat Reader ver. 5.0 or greater, you can read it here. What do you think? Are they living up to their agreement?

The agreement is somewhat entertaining to me, just because of how much times have changed since 1986. Consider, for instance, what you remember about 1986. I was a sophomore in high school then, and not many people had personal computers compared to today. It was the year of the Challenger disaster, as well as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Reagan was president. We were watching Ferris Bueler’s Day Off and Family Ties while listening to Take On Me by A-ha on KZ-93. The cable franchise agreement looks like it was typed up on a typewriter instead of a computer (it probably was). At that time, the city wanted the cable system to have a capacity of a whopping thirty channels initially — and they wrote in the agreement that they wanted it upgraded to 52 channels after ten years.

In September 1986, UA Cablesystems was bought out by Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI). It was TCI Cable for about twelve years. Then in October 1998, TCI merged with AT&T Consumer Services (ACS). But, it wasn’t long before the franchise was transferred to Insight (December 2000). Insight is now the ninth largest cable operation in the U.S., with 1.3 million subscribers in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. They brought in over $269 million in the first quarter of 2005. Their home office is in New York.

So they have ample capital for waging war on franchise agreements. Galesburg also uses Insight for their cable provider. If this article from The Zephyr is at all accurate in describing their negotiations (I have no way of verifying it, so I can’t vouch for it), then Randy Ray and his new cable attorney better be on their toes whenever the contract comes back from New York with revisions.