Category Archives: City of Peoria

Caterpillar, City of Peoria, Museum Block

Bryant continues to make case for museum

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I got my latest issue of Illinois Business Issues, and I have to say that it looks really good. It’s now full-color, and all the whole thing has been reformatted and updated. Kudos to the folks at Peoria Magazines for a fine makeover.

If only the museum folks would do the same with their plans for the Peoria Regional Museum. Instead, we have yet another article from W. Michael Bryant on why building the museum is critical.

It has been well communicated by Caterpillar that the Visitors’ Center will not be built on the Sears Block without the Peoria Riverfront Museum being built alongside—the company’s vision is that the combination of these two will be spectacular. To that end, Caterpillar has committed $51 million toward its Visitors’ Center and the Riverfront Museum. Without question, we as a community must do everything possible to match Caterpillar’s commitment.

…We must demonstrate our commitment that the future of Caterpillar should remain in Peoria. We will never get another opportunity to partner with Caterpillar like this again—we cannot afford to lose it!

Translation: Heed the dire warning, peasants. If you don’t give your tribute money to this project, you will offend the gods.

This sounds like a veiled threat to me. The implication is that if we don’t want to build the proposed, poorly-planned, overpriced museum, then we will somehow be demonstrating our non-commitment to “the future of Caterpillar…in Peoria.” Hogwash. Peorians can both affirm our desire for Cat to stay and reject a museum development proposal that is flawed and needs revision.

It’s worth noting that Cat hasn’t made any threats. All they’ve said is that they won’t build their visitors center if the museum isn’t built next to it. Fair enough. But they haven’t said that building or not building the museum would have any impact on their “future…in Peoria.” It’s the museum officials that are making that leap.

This article tells me that the museum folks are getting desperate. They obviously don’t feel that the museum can be sold to the public on its own merits, or else they wouldn’t need to resort to this kind of breathless rhetoric about the future of Peoria’s largest employer.

If we have to be motivated by fear to hand over our money to this project, then the project isn’t worth it.

City of Peoria

Question of the Day

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The City of Peoria is working on revitalizing the area now known as “Sheridan Triangle.” That’s the portion of Sheridan Road bounded by Hanssler to the north and McClure to the south. Some of the businesses in that area include Dudley’s (ice cream stand), Craig Upholstery, Whitey’s Tip Top Tap, and the Sports Page. One large business that moved out was Lippman’s furniture store.

Some of the things the City has been doing to revitalize the area: giving the area “enterprise zone” status, implementing a facade improvement program where the city helps pay part of the cost of beautifying the public face of the business, and improving the streetscape to make it more pedestrian friendly and new urban.

So, my question is — and this is the “question of the day” — what kind of store(s) does this area of town need? What should be established in these empty storefronts? I’m especially interested in hearing from those who may live near this district, but anyone can feel free to give their opinion as to what kind of store(s) should be established in this area.

City of Peoria

City launches on-line budget questionnaire

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From a press release:

The Mayor and City Council are seeking public input into the 2009 budget. In previous years, public comment was limited, at least formally, to the night that the budget was adopted. This year, the Council has made it a priority to educate citizens on the budget and seek their priorities, thoughts and ideas.

Two open houses are being held on August 4th: 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Expo Gardens and 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. at the Peoria City/County Health Department. These open houses are designed to allow citizens to drop in, learn more about the budget, and talk with Council Members and City staff. Attendees will also be asked to complete a brief questionnaire that will gather input about budget priorities, revenue sources and cost-saving ideas.

For those citizens who cannot attend one of the open houses, an on-line questionnaire is available at www.peoriabudget.com. This questionnaire will be open from August 1 through August 10. The website will also contain information about the City’s budget, revenue sources, staffing levels and operating indicators so that visitors can be well informed about the process.

Staff will compile the answers from both the paper and on-line versions and present a summary to the City Council at their September 9 meeting.

I thought at first that I couldn’t make it to one of the open houses, assuming they were both in the evening. Upon closer inspection, I realized that one of the open houses was in the morning! So, I just wanted to point out to anyone who may have skimmed that part like I did, the open house at Expo Gardens is from 10 a.m. to noon.

Yeah, I know, how could I have missed it, right? Well, sometimes when you get a lot of press releases, you just don’t pay close enough attention. 🙂

City Council, City of Peoria

City wants your input on the 2009 budget

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From a press release:

As the City Council begins another year of budget planning, we want to start the process by reaching out to the citizens of Peoria for input on where they would like to see their tax dollars invested.

Mayor Jim Ardis said, “It is vital that citizens have a voice in how their tax dollars are invested. The members of City Council and I are encouraging citizens to give their input at the beginning of the budget process so that their needs and vision are taken into consideration.”

Two open houses have been scheduled to allow the community the opportunity to share their ideas on the 2009 budget. Both meetings are on Monday, August 4, 2008, and are scheduled at two different times to accommodate more schedules. Citizens can drop in during those time periods.

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 Noon
Exposition Gardens
1601 W. Northmoor Road
Peoria, IL 61614

5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p. m.
Peoria City/County Health Department
2116 N. Sheridan Road
Peoria, Illinois 61604

These meetings will give citizens the opportunity to review the operating and capital budgets, ask City Council and staff questions, and give your input on priorities and suggestions.

City of Peoria, General News

News about downed trees and branches

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From the City of Peoria:

City and Park District crews are currently removing down trees and branches from the roadway. Many times power lines will be taken down with tree branches. Please use caution when moving branches around your home.

Waste Management will be picking up yard waste from the storm with the daily pick up throughout the City. Please remember all material must be bagged or bundled and should be easily handled by one person.

City Council, City of Peoria, Zoning Commission

Zoning Commission wants to move meetings to 3 p.m.

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The Zoning Commission is asking the City Council to move the commission’s meetings to 3 p.m. the first Thursday of each month. Since January, the commission has been meeting at 6 p.m.

This comes as no surprise. Up until January of this year, the Zoning Commission met at 1 p.m. the first Thursday of each month, and they really didn’t want to change. In fact, two commission members threatened to quit if the council changed the meeting time. Those turned out to be empty threats as no one resigned.

The purpose of changing the schedule was to allow more participation from residents who are not able to attend Zoning Commission meetings in the middle of the day because they’re working. Now, the Zoning Commission is saying that attendance is not any different than it was before, and that having the meetings earlier would save the city money in overtime/comp time pay. They offer no hard numbers.

I don’t see how a 3 p.m. meeting is going to be any easier for the first-shift working public to attend than a 1 p.m. meeting. And I would be interested to see some empirical evidence for the commission’s contention that “attendance was always based on whether the topic on the agenda was controversial or not” and that “controversial topics brought out more people whether the meetings were held in the afternoon or in the evening.”

It will be interesting to see the council’s reaction to this request.

City Council, City of Peoria

Snow Response Plan calls for staff increase, fleet upgrade

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It’s hard to think about things like snow removal when it’s been in the 90s and humid outside lately. But this is the best time to be talking about it — well in advance of the next snow storm.

On the city council agenda tomorrow is a plan to add staff and upgrade the city’s truck fleet in order to improve what they call “snow response.” Recommendations for change include:

  • Due to growth, the number of snow routes needs to be increased to add one additional route;
  • A slight reconfiguration of the routes on the north side of the City to address the many new areas;
  • The new plan also eliminates what are currently called “secondary” snow routes. (This will allow
    staff to more quickly complete efforts on the major streets during a snow storm, and move into the
    residential streets faster.)
  • Based on the additional route and a review of current staffing levels, the Administration is
    requesting a change in staffing for the Streets & Sewers Division to reduce our reliance on
    “Temporary” workers and move back to using a full complement of full-time staff. This change will
    add 22 full-time employees.
  • A fourth PW [Public Works] Supervisor is also requested, to help monitor the snow response program. In the summer months, this new Supervisor will be able to relieve the Manager from direct oversight of the Seal Coat program.
    • The annual cost for the staff changes is estimated at about $226,000 based on the current
      pay levels. There are several reasons cited for this recommendation in the attached presentation.
  • Staff developed a schedule for accelerating the purchase of trucks to meet their expected useful life (attached) and is recommending an increase in the annual level for truck replacement from about $250,000 in our Capital Fund to about $642,000 (and this amount needs to increase annually for inflation). Since we are behind in our upgrades to the truck fleet, we will need to buy ten (10) trucks in 2009, nine (9) trucks in 2010, and six (6) trucks in 2011 . The schedule shows a need to find additional funds or borrow on a short term basis for these three years in addition to the increased Capital Fund support. The attached spreadsheet provides a summary of this analysis for consideration.
    • The equipment used for snow removal was also evaluated as a part of the program review. There are forty-three (43) trucks used for fighting snow and ice storms. It is estimated that the larger trucks last only about nine years before they become unreliable, and costs for maintenance start to increase to the point where their replacement is more cost-efficient. The smaller trucks only last about seven years. Based on these estimates the City needs to be buying about 5 to 6 trucks annually to keep up with this rate of deterioration. We have only been buying two or three, as funds are made available.

The financial impact is estimated to be $226,000 per year for the additional staffing, $392,000 for fleet upgrades in the current budget, plus a lot of borrowing in future years for more vehicle replacement ($510,000 in 2009, $696,000 in 2010, and $412,000 in 2011).

Why hire so many permanent full-time workers? According to the study that was done, it was determined that the current process of hiring temporary workers is not effective. The presentation attached to the council request states that temporary workers “lack experience,” “don’t know routes as well,” “need more supervision,” and “are paid more than full time staff.” In addition, the “current staffing level provides no back-up.”

It should come as no surprise that more staff is necessary to handle public works needs in a city that continues to increase in size (and continues to add miles of inefficient curvilinear streets). There’s an annexation request on the city council agenda nearly every week, and I have yet to see one defeated. As the city continues to grow, expect other departments to request an increase in staff and equipment as well.

Perhaps the next Six Sigma project could be a process for evaluating annexation requests on a cost-revenue basis. The city currently does no such evaluation, choosing to look only at the potential revenues (increased tax base) and ignore the additional public works and public safety costs.

City of Peoria, General News

DNA rarity estimates under fire

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They call it the CSI effect — “the phenomenon of popular television shows such as the CSI franchise raising crime victims’ and jury members’ real-world expectations of forensic science, especially crime scene investigation and DNA testing.” But today, the Los Angeles Times reports that the FBI’s real-world rarity estimates of DNA matches may be unrealistic as well:

State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona’s DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.

The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white. […]

No one knows precisely how rare DNA profiles are. The odds presented in court are the FBI’s best estimates.

The article is basically about how Troyer’s discovery in 2001 has led to several other states — including Illinois — querying their DNA databases to see how unique their samples are. And that has led the FBI to try to stop those states from doing these database queries. The FBI says the states’ results are misleading; the states say that the FBI is trying to hide evidence that their rarity estimates are flawed. For example:

In July 2006, after Chicago-area defense attorneys sought a database search on behalf of a murder suspect, the FBI’s Callaghan held a telephone conference with Illinois crime lab officials.

The topic was “how to fight this,” according to lab officials’ summary of the conversation, which later became part of the court record. […]

A week later, the judge ordered the search. Lawyers for the lab then took the matter to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing in part that Illinois could lose its access to the federal DNA database. The high court refused to block the search.

The result: 903 pairs of profiles matching at nine or more loci in a database of about 220,000. [Emphasis added]

State officials obtained a court order to prevent distribution of the results. The Times obtained them from a scientist who works closely with the FBI.

Recall from the earlier quote that the FBI’s odds of two people sharing the same nine out of 13 loci on their DNA is 1 in 113 billion. Yet, when the database of only 220,000 samples was queried, “903 pairs of profiles matching at nine or more loci” were found. That’s 1 out of 244.

Statisticians have many explanations for this phenomenon, and the FBI stands by their estimates. Bruce Weir from the University of Washington offers this explanation (PDF file). On the other hand, he’s also quoted in the article as saying “these assumptions should be tested empirically in the national database system. ‘Instead of saying we predict there will be a match, let’s open it up and look.'”

That sounds like a reasonable request, since so much weight is given to DNA evidence. We want to be sure that it’s as reliable as possible, and rarity estimates neither understated nor overstated.

City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, Traffic

Sheridan Triangle progress encouraging

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This past Wednesday, July 16, I attended the public meeting/open house on the Sheridan Triangle Roadway Enhancement project. All the project team members were in attendance:

  • Scott Reeise, City of Peoria representative
  • Eric Bachman, Farnsworth Group project manager
  • Keith Covington, Third Coast Design urban designer
  • Lee Jones, Third Coast Design urban designer
  • George Ghareeb, Terra Engineering public coordinator
  • Phil Allyn, Farnsworth Group traffic engineer
  • Bruce Brown, Farnsworth Group landscape/streetscape architect

Second district councilmember Barbara Van Auken was also there to kick things off and introduce everyone. Unfortunately, not a lot of residents or business owners were in attendance — maybe ten at the most. I’m not sure when the immediate neighbors were notified of the meeting, but I heard about it on Wednesday in the early afternoon. If others were notified that late, it’s no wonder it wasn’t better attended.

Nevertheless, the material presented was very encouraging. The plan that’s coming together is almost exactly what the neighbors and business owners who attended the Farrell/Madden charrette in 2006 said they wanted. Here are the materials that were distributed:

Sheridan Triangle Flyer
Sheridan Triangle PowerPoint Slides
Sheridan Triangle Alternatives B and C

In past, non-public meetings, there were other options put forth, including one for a roundabout at the intersection of Loucks, Gift, and Sheridan. Now, everything has been narrowed down to two alternatives, which were presented in detail at the meeting. After the meeting, participants filled out questionnaires asking which alternative they preferred, as well as other questions about what they liked and didn’t like about each alternative.

I tried out the video function of my new digital camera that night and was able to capture five minutes of the presentation. (I decided to do this just on a whim, so I didn’t have a tripod with me. Thus, if you’re prone to seasickness, you may not want to watch this video — not the steadiest shot. I could only get five minutes because I only have a 1GB memory card, and I had other pictures on it already. Also, I added a plugin to my site so that I can play videos directly from the Chronicle without having to go through YouTube!) The speaker is Keith Covington. He’s just finished explaining that the only difference between alternatives B and C is the treatment of the Sheridan/Loucks/Gift intersection:

[flashvideo filename=https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Video/Keith_Covington.flv /]

I prefer alternative C. It will do the best job of calming traffic, and is the least disruptive to existing businesses. It provides a beautiful terminus for Loucks when traveling from either direction. And it’s more pedestrian friendly, since two streets will be at right angles at the intersection, providing shorter crosswalks. From talking to other attendees after the event, it sounds like that’s what they preferred as well.

In all cases, the plans took into account a balanced use of the corridor. Sidewalks are wider. Street trees, pedestrian-scale lighting, and on-street parking provide a buffer between motor vehicle and pedestrian/bicycle traffic. Bus pull-offs and shelters are provided. It’s consistent with the Heart of Peoria Plan and the Form Based Code.

Kudos to the project team and all who have been working to improve this area. Hopefully this project will be fully funded when the budget is set for the next fiscal year.