Kudos to Journal Star on some great reporting

A couple pieces worth reading, if you haven’t already:

  • Investigative Report on Overtime: With the city facing a budget deficit of $10-12 million, everything is under scrutiny, and that certainly includes the city’s largest expense: salaries. So kudos to the Journal Star — and specifically John Sharp — for the in-depth analysis of overtime expenses in the police and fire departments. All angles of the story were covered between the main article and numerous sidebars.

    I thought it was interesting that the police union would rather see property taxes raised than take a pay freeze, considering almost half the force lives outside of Peoria and would be unaffected by a tax hike. It was also interesting to read that Mayor Ardis is threatening the police department with layoffs if they don’t voluntarily freeze their wages.

  • Local Media Beat: Steve Tarter’s weekly column keeps us up to date on what’s happening in local TV and radio. His article this Sunday included some great news: Fort Wayne weatherman Jason Meyers is going away.

    A grievance filed by Channel 25 employees over displacement of station personnel by using the aforementioned Fort Wayne weatherman for weekend weather on the station’s local-news show was upheld by an arbitrator last week.

    The news is the last bastion for local programming on commercial television, and here’s WEEK outsourcing the weatherman — roughly one third of the local newscast — after they already obliterated WHOI’s independent news team. It’s sad that local content has sunk to such a low.

8 thoughts on “Kudos to Journal Star on some great reporting”

  1. CJ’s comments are an indication that “old media” can do a few things right. Is it possible that Billy Dennis maight give the Journal Star its due on this one?
    If police overtime pay could in fact be reformed and the city’s budget for salaries somehow reduced as a consequence of such reform, would the “basic services” bloggers be willing to cut a little more slack to projects such as the museum and the Marriott hotel? Just a thought.

  2. Steve J.,

    I don’t remember you chiming in very much [if at all] prior to the museum tax vote. Did I say “museum tax vote?” I’m sorry, I meant ‘facilities’ tax………..

    The arguments against the museuem were sound. Despite having years to get this project of the ground, the museum group was never able to achieve their funding goals. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even come close! Every major funding effort failed miserably. They all but told the ‘public’ they would never have to depend on tax dollars to make this ‘dream’ of theirs a reality! They are still short a few million dollars and CAT has been having second thoughts.

    Yes, it came down to a vote. Now the tax is in place and the museum group is busy trying to figure out where the rest of the money will come from. I will say this, many of you consider this some sort of ‘victory for democracy,’ but remember…. the vote barely passed. Half the people of Peoria County DID NOT support the tax [or the museum?].

    I am more than willing to give you a little slack here, but I am not willing to give a project that will cost us millions with absolutely no return a little slack. Apparently half the county felt the same way. I am also thinking that many of the people who supported this project at first are now having second thoughts.

    The ‘lets build it and see what happens’ mentality has been the downfall of this city for the last couple decades.

  3. Steve J — I give plenty of slack to proposed projects. If you reread my posts on the museum issue, for instance, you’ll notice that I wasn’t against the museum per se, but rather the proposed implementation. I even made suggestions on how to improve the project in a way I could support.

    The Marriott deal, however, is fundamentally flawed, for reasons I’ve already expressed above (and I know how you don’t like it when I repeat myself). 🙂

  4. “Half the people of Peoria County DID NOT support the tax [or the museum?]. ”

    Actually many more than half did not support the tax… because only a very small percentage of eligible voters voted FOR it. What was it 11%?

  5. The article missed one very important aspect of the overtime the PD is paying out. While a lot of overtime is taken voluntarily, many officers who would not work overtime are ordered in to work doubles, on their days off and such as the department is so short handed. Officers cannot refuse an order in and often have to cancel plans, trips or family events to comply with those orders. Patrol officers, the ones on the beat, take the brunt of the order ins as its the most vital shift to staff, but the shift that is cannibalized for manpower in special units first. So it is always staffed as a skeleton crew…bare minimum. Hence when an officer gets sick, injured, or takes a vacation day, another officer HAS to work in his place whether voluntary or not. Vacations officers can plan for and usually staffed voluntarily in advance. Sick days, or injuries are often unexpected and officers who are on their days off or already working are ordered in against their will. This creates more stress for those officers and we are seeing the result with more complaints against the police. The 3 officers Kevin Lyons accused of crimes were patrol officers from different shifts. Those officers were placed on unpaid administrative leave and had to be replaced with overtime officers. So instead of paying 3 officers 50k a year to patrol their district, the city has to pay 75k a year for officers on overtime to replace them. So instead of $150,000 in regular pay for 3 officers, the city must pay $225,000 in overtime to cover. You would think its only $125,000 in overtime, but when those officers are aquitted or found not guilty, the city MUST reimburst them for the time they lost, their attorney fees, and likely, potential overtime they were not allowed to work. And thats only if they are off work for 1 year. If the trial carries on, you could see those numbers double or triple…and the city cannot replace them since they have senority and are still counted in the PDS staffing numbers. They cannot be terminated from the job unless they are convicted per contract with the city. I don’t think the city has truely taken these numbers into consideration for next year yet either.

  6. RE: WEEK – what ever happened to operating in the public interest, convenience and necessity?

  7. Profits!

    With deregulation and the reclassification of news as entertainment, most media outlets have been bought up by huge corporate interests with an eye only on the profitability of any particular “cell” in the company.

    WMBD-AM is a better example. Not only did it sell off 14 or 15 hours of its daily programming to Fox, it runs so many commercials during its own programs that it is difficult to tell if the advertisements are interrupting the program or the program interrupting the advertisements. And of course, radio does “live” promotions all the time so you can’t tell the difference between program and advertisement… Sleep comfort beds, geo thermal heaters, gold investments, life lock, etc

    Network TV has gone from showing 53 minute programs with 7 minutes per hour of advertisements to 40-43 minute programs with 17-20 minutes of advertisements.

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