Category Archives: Peoria County

2010 Election, Blogosphere, General News, Museum Block, Peoria County, Peoria Public Schools, Peoria Times-Observer

Saturday must-see links

Leave a comment

If you haven’t already seen these this week, you’ll want to check them out:

  • Outside the Horseshoe for January 26, 2010, from WCBU 89.9 FM radio. Tanya Koonce has a conversation with Peoria County Administrator Patrick Urich, Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons, and County Board Members Andrew Rand (Dist. 4) and Stephen Morris (Dist. 10) about the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum project. What we can deduce from the conversation here is that, at least in the county’s perception, Lakeview Museum is trying to dominate and control the project. I suspect their perception is true; Caterpillar had similar problems working with Lakeview which led to their decision years ago to put their visitor center in a separate building instead of sharing space in the museum.

  • Blacktop Reform from DeWayne Bartels of the Peoria Times-Observer. You may be surprised to learn that the next time you want to get your driveway blacktopped, you’ll have to pay a lot more money and have fewer contractors from which to choose. The County Board is trying to run non-union blacktop paving contractors out of town. Let this be a lesson to current and future Board members: do your homework before you vote!

  • School Board Member Laura Petelle’s thoughts on the final candidate for District 150’s New Superintendent. She wants to assure everyone that the process this time was “far different and more comprehensive” than the past. In other words, they did a better job of vetting the candidates than the board that hired Kay Royster did. That should give residents some comfort.

  • Racism alleged within the Peoria County Democratic Central Committee. Rachael Parker is a sitting Peoria Board of Education member running for a seat on the Peoria County Board, and her campaign manager and communications director sent out a press release accusing local Democrats of being racist. They also questioned why the Peoria Journal Star did not interview Parker. I’m wondering how the Journal Star got a quote from Parker for their January 15 story if they didn’t interview her.

Happy reading/listening!

2010 Election, City of Peoria, Comcast, Peoria County, Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools, Traffic

Blogging Bits and Pieces

28 Comments

Here are some odds and ends that I just don’t feel like writing a whole post about:

  • It looks like District 150 has just about settled on a new superintendent, and her name is Grenita Lathan. She’s currently the “interim deputy superintendent at California’s San Diego Unified Schools.” Other than that I don’t know much about her, and there’s surprisingly little on Google, Lexis-Nexis, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, or any number of additional sources I checked. Oh, there are some snippets here and there. You can see some interview footage with her here. Commenters on another post have several links to quotes and information they find troublesome. Some have already passed judgment. I’m kind of old-fashioned, though. I like to wait until someone actually screws up before I start criticizing them. From what I’ve heard, the first thing she wants to do is purge the administration of unnecessary and ineffective administrators. I certainly can’t complain about that.

  • John Vespa was not endorsed by the Journal Star to succeed his brother as the 10th Judicial Circuit judge. The reason they give for passing him over is that “Vespa fell below the 65 passing grade” on something called the bar poll “and is ‘not recommended.'” They say the bar poll (where responses are anonymous) is “controversial,” but they evidently believe it. Not surprisingly, the Vespa campaign begs to differ. They report: “To understand the relevance of the bar poll … it is important to look at … the number of people participating. There are 911 lawyers in the Circuit that are eligible to participate in the poll, according to the ARDC website. Of those 911, there were only 152 that registered an opinion. (16.3%) The majority of those 152 felt John met the requirements of the office. Of course John would expect to have some legitimate detractors, particularly given the fact that half of his practice is devoted to criminal defense. In fact, it would be troubling if he did not. (All of his opponents practice for the most part, civil law only).” As the Journal Star would say, “Voters can make of that what they will.”

  • One of my readers recently told me about this site called “How We Drive” — and specifically, this post on “Parking Availability Bias.” Very cool site full of interesting information.

  • The “religious group” that the city is considering to operate the public access channels on Comcast’s cable system is called GPS-TV, and is located in Washington, Illinois. Here’s their website.

  • You can download a transcript (PDF format) of Mayor Ardis’s State of the City address here. Of course, the biggest announcement of the speech was this: “I have spoken at some length with County Board Chairman Tom O’Neill and we are prepared to put together a group that will be charged with exploring the opportunity to move Peoria City?County towards combined municipal government.” It will be interesting to see what recommendations that group makes in the future. Will it just be combining certain functions, or a total UNIGOV proposal?
Caterpillar, Museum Block, Peoria County

CAT bullying County on museum

51 Comments

Peoria County Board Member Merle Widmer is reporting that Caterpillar sent a threatening letter regarding the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM) to all County Board members demanding “a positive response from the Peoria County Board by February 12, 2010.” The letter, signed by CEO Jim Owens and CEO-elect Douglas R. Oberhelman, went on to say, “Failure to move forward in a responsive manner will result in Caterpillar withdrawing its funding for a PRM and termination of our plans to move forward with the Caterpillar Visitor Center.”

The bullies are back, and they want action.

You may recall that this isn’t the first time that Caterpillar has strong-armed community members to support the museum. In December 2008, they sent letters to the all the county school districts asking them not to put a tax referendum on the ballot that would have provided desperately-needed funds to the cash-strapped rural districts who don’t have access to the Public Building Commission. Why? Because it would have jeopardized passage of the museum tax referendum which was slated to be on the same ballot.

So the school districts lost out on education funding, and the museum referendum passed, raising the sales tax a quarter of a percent. Even after all that, the museum group was still unable to raise the remaining private funds they needed, despite promises from museum supporters that the shortfall would be easy to make up once the referendum passed. The County Board had the audacity to insist the museum group keep their word and raise the remaining money before starting construction, which has delayed the project considerably. Also contributing to the delay has been an apparent inability to agree on the makeup of the new museum’s board and operational bylaws.

Now Big Yellow has turned its muscle on the County Board, giving them an ultimatum. The county needs to move forward — presumably with a contract between the County, City, and Lakeview — by February or else Cat withdraws all its funding and its plans to build a visitors center. If the deal falls through, who will get the blame according to Cat? The county! Yes, it’s all their fault the museum can’t get its act together, I guess. Cat even included this little gem in their letter: “Delays (by the county) have cost our community $5 million dollars in New Market Tax Credits.” Et tu, Feles? After all the county has done for you? After successfully shepherding through a tax increase in the middle of a recession that will contribute $37.5 million to the cause, you’re going to throw them under the bus for your failed attempt to secure more taxpayer money? There’s gratitude for you.

Well, the bullying is already paying off. Just a couple hours after Widmer published his post on the matter, he received an e-mail informing him that “all misunderstandings have been cleared up and the collaboration contract will soon be ready for the County Board vote.” It looks like Peoria taxpayers’ milk money will be dutifully handed over by the deadline.

Check Merle’s blog for the latest news.

Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum board agreement reached

11 Comments

The Journal Star is reporting that an agreement has been made between Peoria County and the Museum Collaboration Group on who will run will the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum.

The agreement reached Monday – after the two sides appeared stalemated on Friday – calls for a governing board of between 17 and 22 people, according to [County Administrator Patrick] Urich. A minority of the members – eight, nine or 10, depending on the final size of the board – would be representatives of one of the five agencies that constitute the museum collaborative group. […] A majority of the board would be residents of the county unaffiliated with any group in the museum collaborative group. There would be no representative from county government.

Also:

Urich said the exact relationship between the museum board of directors and the county will be spelled out in the by-laws. The county would own the building, but the board would operate the museum.

And:

“We would be looking for the best and the brightest from the community for a seat on the board,” Urich said.

Here’s how this will work in practice: A bunch of people who are politically connected (the main requirement for being considered “best and brightest” in Peoria), but know nothing about how to operate a museum, will be appointed to the museum board. They will all look to the Lakeview appointees as the “experts” on museums, and vote in accordance with their recommendations. Eventually, they’ll get busy with other things and stop coming to a majority of the meetings — just enough will show up to maintain a quorum. At that point, the majority of those who actually attend will be Museum Collaboration Group members. Their meetings will not be open to the public. Poor decisions will continue to be made, leading to chronic underfunding problems, requiring tax revenue for operations. The project will be determined to be “too big to fail,” given its huge initial cost and prominent placement on the riverfront, so tax money will be diverted to keeping it afloat in perpetuity. It will draw the same number of annual visitors as the current Lakeview Museum by year three, at which point plans will be drawn up to expand the museum (at taxpayer expense, of course) so it can draw more visitors. Peoria County voters will approve more funding.

Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum still stalled, but parking lot progresses

14 Comments

From the Journal Star:

With the allocation of $140,000 in engineering fees for the Peoria Riverfront Museum, the Peoria County Board is moving forward with the $77 million project even as issues of just who will run the place, and how, remain unresolved.

That’s right, they’re going to do an environmental assessment and engineering review of the proposed parking lot design. This is a parking lot that all studies have shown isn’t necessary in the first place. But here they are, getting ready to build it, despite a lack of funds for the museum building itself.

On the bright side, several county board members are getting frustrated with the museum group. Whereas Merle Widmer used to be the only dissenting vote on museum matters, these latest actions have seen five board members vote nay. All we need are four more to switch sides and we can finally put a stake through this ill-conceived plan.

Peoria County

Why not request special prosecutor in McCoy case?

10 Comments

I was talking to my cousin over the holiday weekend. He’s a prosecutor in Indiana. I told him about the case involving Tyler McCoy and found his reaction interesting and unexpected. He asked me why the Peoria County State’s Attorney is handling this case. Normally, he said, a special prosecutor is requested to try these kinds of cases due to inherent conflicts of interest.

And in fact, that’s what other prosecutors have done in Illinois. For example, a police officer in Elgin was accused of misconduct at the beginning of this year, and the newspaper there reported:

[T]he Illinois appellate prosecutor’s office will investigate the incident to avoid a potential conflict with Kane County prosecutors, State’s Attorney John Barsanti said.

Because Kane County prosecutors work with Elgin police on a daily basis, Barsanti said he asked the department to seek another agency to investigate Chris Darr’s actions.

“Some of the witnesses are officers, and we have relationships with some of these guys,” Barsanti said. “And you don’t want to taint the way this is dealt with.”

I believe the same conditions exist here in Peoria, where the county prosecutors work with officers from the Sheriff’s department on a daily basis. Furthermore, the key witness is a fellow officer that the State’s Attorney threatened with felony charges if he didn’t testify against Tyler McCoy. Then there’s the fact that Tyler is the son of Sheriff Mike McCoy, a Republican running for reelection. State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons is a Democrat.

There appear to be more than enough potential conflicts to convince other state’s attorneys to request a special prosecutor. Why hasn’t one been requested here?

Peoria County

DUI prosecuted aggressively; murder, not so much

18 Comments

State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons has arrested Sheriff Mike McCoy’s son Tyler McCoy for DUI two months after the September incident:

State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said his case will consist mainly of observations from a motorist to stopped to assist Tyler McCoy at about 5:30 a.m. Sept. 27 as well as a deputy who responded to the crash. Absent are any field sobriety tests, Breathalyzer or blood tests, as McCoy was never asked to submit to such testing.

But the county’s top prosecutor quipped that speeders were prosecuted long before the invention of the radar gun.

So the State’s Attorney is continuing to pursue this case even in the face of scant evidence and only two witnessees — one of whom changed his story after being threatened with criminal charges by the county’s top prosecutor. But Devear Lewis, a guy who fired two guns into a crowd of people, injuring two and killing Teddy Jackson in cold blood, “struck a deal for his guilty plea to a single count of possession of a weapon by a felon.” Reason: Only two witnesses were able to pick Lewis out of a lineup, and one of them changed his story from what he originally told police.

I’m all for cops being held to the same standard of justice as the civilians they are sworn to protect. But McCoy has yet to be treated like anyone else. Not being given a Breathalyzer test at the time of the incident was extremely lenient treatment. But Lyons’ aggressive prosecution is swinging the pendulum to the other extreme. Why wasn’t Lewis prosecuted this aggressively? I would submit that Lewis is way more dangerous to society than Tyler McCoy will ever be. Why the double-standard?

In case of any issue appears contact your personal family attorney.

Peoria County

Prison escapee still at large CAUGHT! (Updated)

20 Comments

UPDATE: James Fuller, has been captured. He was found about 1:35 p.m. at 2114 N. North Street. See full report here.

### Original post follows ###

An e-mail from Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard to the City Council this morning says:

All, just wanted to let you know that as of 530 this morning, escapee Fuller has not been located. Our officers in conjunction with the county and others have continued our efforts through the night and have followed up all leads with negative results. We will continue our efforts today and I will advise If and when there is any significant news.

Yesterday, Aaron M. Cook (28) and James E. Fuller (44) escaped from the Peoria County Jail. Cook has since been recaptured. Fuller is still at large. More details on the breakout and recapture of Cook are available in this Journal Star article. Their escape was ingenious:

To make their initial escape, the inmates somehow cut a hole in the ceiling of a jail cell and carved another hole in the concrete-block roof of the facility, using a stack of books to boost themselves out. From there, they used a rope fashioned from bedsheets to rappel from the two-story-high roof to the ground.

Unlike the movie “Shawshank Redemption,” in which posters were used to hide progress in digging through a prison wall, Fuller and Cook apparently had placed the cut-away section of ceiling back in its place when they weren’t creating the hole in the concrete blocks….

[Sheriff Mike] McCoy said the men were discovered missing during breakfast. They had disguised they were gone by piling up clothing under their bed covers.

The oldest trick in the book. Here’s hoping that, unlike Shawshank Redemption, Fuller is recaptured quickly and put back in jail because, unlike Shawshank Redemption, Fuller isn’t an innocent victim kept in prison by a conniving warden. Fuller is a dangerous criminal, convicted of armed robbery and rape.

Museum Block, Peoria County

Museum odds and ends (UPDATED)

35 Comments
  • From the Wall Street Journal: “Ten Things Museums Won’t Tell You.” Number 7: “Our priceless treasures are languishing in storage.” Number 9: “You think our building is ugly; we say it’s one of a kind.”
  • The County is still hashing out a redevelopment agreement with the Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM), the City of Peoria, and Caterpillar. I received a draft copy anonymously through the mail. One of the items: “PRM will commence construction of the Project if and when all conditions precedent are satisfied, including receipt of funds equal to the entire Project Budget, plus a project contingency in a to be determined amount.” Another interesting provision states that once PRM is up and running, Lakeview Museum will cease to exist. I’ll post a copy of the document this evening.
  • So, how much is the entire “Project Budget” and how much in funding has been received? According to an October 22 letter to the County, the total project budget is $79,486,662. The total pledged dollars: $73,285,140. Since then, the state has passed a bill (still waiting for the governor’s signature, I believe) allocating $5 million in additional funds to the museum, which would bring that total up to $78,285,140. That leaves a remaining funding gap of $1,201,522. However, most interesting is this statement (emphasis mine): “The total amount collected for the project to this point is $14,244,543.”
  • Merle Widmer has his own update on the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum.

UPDATE: As promised, PDF Link here is the document.

City of Peoria, Peoria County

Sigma Nu suit against Van Auken, Rand and Ruckriegel dismissed

32 Comments

On October 1, Associate Judge Katherine Gorman dismissed without prejudice the trespassing lawsuit brought against Second District Council Member Barbara Van Auken, District 4 County Board Representative Andrew Rand, and City Historic Preservation Commissioner Sid Ruckriegel by the Sigma Nu Fraternity and Caleb Matheny.

While the ruling allows 28 days for the complaint to be refiled, attorneys representing Sigma Nu and Matheny stated Monday that they will not pursue the matter further.

“We have consulted with our clients and they have elected to not amend the complaint within the 28 day period,” Attorney Jeffrey R. Hall stated. “Since the lawsuit was filed, they met with Bradley University officials and have become satisfied with the results of that meeting. While they filed a lawsuit to speak out against the unexplained behavior and trespass of private property on the part of Ms. Van Auken, Mr. Rand, and Mr. Ruckreigel, they feel satisfied with the dialogue that resulted with University and City officials.”

When asked for her reaction to the ruling, Van Auken said, “I think the actions here speak for themselves.” Rand and Ruckriegel could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit stemmed from an incident that occurred in the early morning hours of September 20, 2008. Van Auken was attending a dinner party when she received a call from a constituent complaining about noise coming from the Sigma Nu Fraternity, 1300 W. Fredonia Ave. At about 12:30 a.m., Van Auken, Rand, and Ruckriegel walked over to the fraternity and confronted the students. Alleging that Van Auken was drunk and trespassing, fraternity members called the Peoria Police on her. Van Auken was not ticketed, but then-president of Sigma Nu, Caleb Matheny, was given a citation for violating the city’s noise ordinance. The citation was later dismissed.

In March 2009, a little more than five months after the incident, Sigma Nu and Matheny filed suit for trespassing, and alleged that Van Auken abused her power as a council member. The suit was filed during the heart of Van Auken’s reelection campaign to the City Council. Despite the negative publicity, including the release of an embarrassing video clip of the incident, Van Auken easily won reelection. Lawyers for Sigma Nu said at the time that the lawsuit was not political, and the delay in filing was due to the city being uncooperative in providing information requested through the Freedom of Information Act.

Circuit Judge Stephen Kouri recused himself from the case; no reason was given. The case was then assigned to Associate Judge Katherine Gorman. Gorman disclosed at a September 21 hearing that she had a connection to Rand. Court documents did not specify what that connection was, but Hall stated that, “based on what she [Gorman] related in court on the record, that her husband has served on a committee of some sort with Mr. Rand in the past.” Gorman’s husband is Dr. Jim Hubler, an emergency medicine physician at OSF St. Francis Medical Center. Rand is the Executive Director of Advanced Medical Transport, the city’s ambulance provider. The hearing was continued until October 1 to allow time for the plaintiffs to confer with their clients on the matter. It appears that the connection was a non-issue, as no objection was filed.

Hall believes the outcome was a positive one for his clients: “Even though the lawsuit was dismissed, we feel the process has benefited the Gentlemen of Sigma Nu, Caleb Matheny, and all Bradley students because they finally were allowed to have a voice. And, we can confidently say that Ms. Van Auken, Mr. Rand, & Mr. Ruckriegel will not set foot on Sigma Nu’s property without first obtaining permission from this point on.”