From a press release:
Peoria County Board member Brad Harding will be offering an amendment at the Thursday, September 9, 2010 monthly Peoria County Board meeting to place the museum bond referendum on the February or April ballot by a direct vote of the Peoria County Board.
The passage of the new bonding instruments offers this is an alternative to gathering 9,849 petition signatures which is the other way offered by the August 2010 affirmative Peoria County Board meeting vote.
I wonder if a majority of the Board will support giving a voice to the citizens of Peoria County.
UPDATE: Assistant State’s Attorney Bill Atkins says Harding cannot offer an amendment tonight. Here is his e-mail to Brad:
The public hearings for the bond issues for Bel-wood and the museum project are not action items for the County Board. These are opportunities for the public to be heard concerning these matters, not opportunities for Board Members to offer their own views of what should be done. Offering amendments to the actions previously taken by the Board on each of these items would be a violation of the Open Meetings Act because no action item has been placed on the agenda and notice has not been given to the public. Since 48 hours public notice must be given for action to be taken it is impossible to properly notice your proposed amendments for tonight’s meeting.
Even if your proposed amendments complied with the Open Meetings Act, I don’t think they are authorized by law. Backdoor referenda are a possibility for each of these bonds and if a sufficient number of citizens want a referendum on either or both of these bonds, then they can petition for such a referendum. The County Board has to be specifically authorized by law to place a binding referendum on the ballot and I am not aware of any law that would authorize such a referendum at this point in the process of authorizing these two bond issues.
William W. P. Atkins
Chief Civil Assistant State’s Attorney
Peoria County Courthouse
324 Main Street
Peoria IL 61602
You wonder.What a hoot! Other than Merle possably 2nd it it will die a quick death.
At least when it dies, a bunch of County Board members will be on record for endorsing the bait n switch and silencing the public.
Anyone willing to bet against Martin’s prediction? If so, I’ll take that bet!
The horse has left the barn, behind the cart it might be, but it’s gone. The intention is to be commended but you can only beat the dead horse left behind so long….please use your effort for the next wrong you might be able to actually make right….
I wonder if the pro-museum people believe enough in their project to put this on the ballot and take the chance that they will get the majority vote again. Do they really have that much guts? Are they really that dedicated to their project that they would risk it? Do they believe really believe that it will be the success they have been touting to take the risk with the public again? I DARE them to do it.
@outsidethebox – I hope you don’t own a business, because here’s the argument you’re effectively making:
Let’s say you’re a product developer of Brand X. Brand X has a new candy bar that they’ve been testing, and it’s a pretty sweet candy bar. It’s going to be made of the finest chocolate with the highest quality sugar and caramel and each bar is going to be about a foot long. The idea tested well in the market, so you go ahead and come up with a prototype. You expect to have a lot of investors, but so far only a few have come forward, but you aren’t too worried.
However, the scope of this new product roll-out has gone up a bit, so you need to convince the 15-person company board to give you more money. So you make a great PowerPoint presentation and really do a great job selling the product to the board and guarantee them that you have other investors lined up to help get this new candy bar off the ground. A few board members are skeptical, but the board nevertheless votes narrowly (8-7) to get your project the extra funding to proceed.
As time goes on though, the candy bar design and testing haven’t been doing so well. The investors aren’t coming through as expected. You’ve had to downgrade your new candy bars to a smaller size, and now there’s word that you might have to settle for a lower quality sugar to make the candy bar work. You know that, essentially, sweetener is sweetener, but the Board and the general public can tell the difference between real sugar and a cut-rate alternative. In fact, you’ve heard some of the board members start to have doubts about what they signed off on, and some members of the board go so far as to have concerns about whether or not you fudged the numbers a bit on some of the investor’s applications. And you’ve already spent about 10% of your product budget so far.
So now your options are:
(1) Go back to the drawing board: suspend the current product development and try to redesign the product to make it more appealing and go from there;
(2) Be up front with the board about the shortcomings so far and have them re-vote on their decision to keep funding the new product; or
(3) Say “quality be damned” and go ahead and blow through the remaining 90% of your funding on a potentially cut-rate product.
Options 1 and 2 are what we, the concerned residents who are pushing for the ballot initiative, are choosing with this museum project. Option 3 is what the PRM, County, and City governments are effectively doing.
Personally, before full-scale construction starts on this project, I want to make pretty darn sure that we’ve covered all our bases instead of just admitting defeat so soon.
Sterling, you left out
#4 “We never said those things about our ingredents, costs or size” That is what some people want you to think.
#5 Let’s change who will be responsable for our money if we fail.
“Those who lament that Peoria has many problems should not complain so loudly when future-oriented volunteers bring forth projects to improve the quality of life for residents and make Peoria a more attractive destination for visitors.” – Jim Bateman, Editorial, Journal Star.
Sounds like a loud, abusive parent talking down to a frightened, timid child.
How typical of a group when they realize [and they have for some time] that they don’t have a leg to stand on. I have yet to hear one argument in favor of this project that makes sense, isn’t based COMPLETELY on conjecture and speculation, hasn’t been sugar-coated,or hasn’t just been an outright lie.
We “complainers” “lament” while all those hard working volunteers slave away….all for the betterment of Peoria………?!?!?
I for one, would like to apologize to those FEW volunteers, who may have sincerely believed in this project at one time, but found that working under stiffs like Jim Bateman was far more than they bargained for.
Interesting. For those who support the museum, the argument has boiled down to a “you are either for us or against us” scenario. Sounds like desperation to me….
This is the same States Attorney that would do nada to the Peoria Park District when they violated the OMA. Funny. Seems if you are connected you get action (or no action).
Here’s another idea for those of you with enough time to investigate. Has the City of Peoria actually issued a building permit for any of this? My understanding at least, is that nothing of this magnitude can be built in the City without a Building Permit, perhaps more than one will be required. There ought to be at least one member of this “MAGEFM – Museum Ain’t Good Enough for Me” group that has the power and linkage to check with staff at City Hall to find out the answer to this question.
Jim Bateman?
Same “volunteer” who doesn’t return phone calls askng about the “false” after school programs in which he has been involved over the years and what happened to all the money his organizations got from grants. Community Builders received at least $160,000 as reported in the JS.
All calls to Community Builders have been forwarded to Bradley over the past two years. JS reporter, Dave Haney reports today, “BU, D150 projects bear fruit”. Haney writes that “a new community garden at Garfield where seeds will soon be sown. This is just the tip opf the iceberg of what’s called full service community schools.”
Gardens in Mid September?? Flower bulbs possibly.
Haney also writes about programs taking root at Manual and the new Harrison School. The computers have been there for at least 4 years and “baby sitting” is a program?
Hope thes programs have better success than the ones I’ve been following over the years including the “beautiful”??? garden hyped this summer at Harrison Homes which I visited.
Bruce Marston of Workforce Development, said the people involved in after-school activities are Bateman, Sandy Burke, Dr. Jack Gilligan, Michelle Anderson, Curt Fenton, Dr. Cindy Fischer, and Juie Schifeling of Bradley.
On 8/14/04, the JSEB wrote, “Make better use of schools as neighborhood center” saying that “If local leaders can’t find a way to maximize the impact of schools, then it is a tremendous waste of resources to have these already substantial public investments and to have their doors often locked, their classrooms and gyms often empty, on nights and weekends and in the summer.”
Marston tells of Computer Training and Baby-Sitting projects at Manual as after school sucessful projects. May I say much more was promised over many years, (a major kick-off was started under Ken Hinton in 2005, the JSEB reprted on 12/23/05 that schools would be open “24/7”, but enthusiasm soon fizzled apparently for lack of leadership) leaders have been trying to get adults and kids involved in after school activities.
I started a free summer tennis program back in 1994 which ran for a number of years. The PPD later agreed to take it over and the program still continues today. I believe.
Only programs I could find over the years were computers at Manual and some poorly run Boys and Girls Club “actitives” at Trewyn. On one visit to Trewyn, I asked an adult sitting reading a newspaper, while semi-chaos prevailed among the grade school aged kids, if he was a volunteer. He said, “no, I work for Community Builders.”
Hmm.
I know it feels good to give money for causes but it appears few “givers” ever go see how there money is being spent.
One school I know of has good after-school programs. Charter Oak, a well run school with a super principal. Garfield also claims success on after-school programs over the past three years with more plans underway. Good news to hear.