Jonathan Ahl had WMBD-AM’s Dave Dahl and the Journal Star’s Jennifer Davis on WCBU’s “Outside the Horseshoe” program (listen to an .mp3 of the show) this past Tuesday to review 2006. The six top stories they identified and discussed:
- At-large Council Elections — Morris and Grayeb are not seeking reelection, so there is a lot of speculation on who might be filling those positions, and if the other three incumbents will remain.
- City Budget — No significant changes from last year, despite having a new council that was supposed to fully staff Fire Station 11 and eliminate the $6/month garbage fee.
- Snow — The city wasn’t prepared for the big December 1 snowstorm and did a poor job clearing the city streets. Ahl’s panel decided that it wasn’t any one thing that was to blame (it was a combination of factors), but the council, et. al., are looking for one scapegoat.
- Crime — 18 murders in 2006, “Target Peoria” crime forum, surveillance cameras, saturation patrols, and whatever happened to the parental-responsibility ordinance idea?
- East Bluff Replacement School — District 150 was, and still is, trying to find a 15-acre site in the East Bluff on which to build a new school to replace/consolidate Glen Oak and White schools.
- Civic Center Hotel Controversy — I have to admit, I had almost forgotten about this one. It’s been so “underground,” as Jennifer Davis said, that one wonders whether some back-room deals are being made, or if the idea is being abandoned.
After listening to the show, I have to say the panelists did a good job of covering the big stories of the past year. But there were a couple of stories I was surprised they didn’t cover: the PDC landfill controversy (granted, that was a Peoria County issue, not a city issue, but it was still a big story affecting the city) and the proposed Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria area (which I think is significant because it’s a huge step forward for the Heart of Peoria Plan, which was adopted by the council in principle, and now will have the chance to be adopted in practice).
And I think they should have had a blogger or two at the table just to round things out. Not necessarily me, although I always have fun on the show, but at least Billy Dennis who has been covering Peoria politics for the blogosphere for a number of years now. After all, it’s people like Billy and me who were named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year this year, right? 😉
Honestly, CJ, you are a better candidate for that sort of thing now. My job has me so out of the loop these days.
Don’t tell anyone I said that.
🙂
Overall, I agree with their selections on the note-worthy stories of the year. However, I think the bigger and unifying theme of all these stories is one that didn’t get enough attention – although they alluded to the fact in their discussion.
There is virtually NOTHING that distinguishes this Council from the previous one. All the campaigning, promises, and dialogue about changing how government operates, a return to basic services, etc. was just that — talk, promises and lots of hot air — but no action. Many of them tried to cover their backsides by making promises of change early next year (report back on Fire resources, report back on how to implement Water fee, etc.) – but it was nothing more than a delaying and face saving attempt.
What none of the new members realized until after elected, is that it’s not a simple job and tough decisions have to be made to achieve a balanced budget when resources are limited. By not carrying through on their campaign promises, in effect, they indicated support for the prior decisions that were made – no action is an action.
Councilman Grayeb accurately noted this both in October and again in December when he called many of the newly elected councilmembers (and some of the other councilmembers) for failing to live up to their commitments or even to attempt to make a difference in the budget.
Yes, that has been discouraging. I like the new members, and I still say Ardis is a vast improvement over Ransburg, but I really can’t think of any way this budget they just passed would have been any different than it would have been under the old regime. That’s unfortunate.
But I think it says more about the role of the Councilmembers as a group than it does about individuals (even though I focused on the new members). It’s not easy running a City especially when leaders don’t want to make policy but rather deal with minute administrative issues.
It also highlights the fact that even though we’re in much better shape financially then we were three and four years ago as a City, there are no simple solutions to the bigger issues facing the City. They require tough decisions – sometimes unpopular ones.
We’re in better shape in part due to the tough decisions that the previous City Council (including those “rascals” Ransburg, Thetford and Teplitz) made. While they may have suffered politically due to their votes; in hindsight, I think we’ll see they were the right decisions for the times. The Council now needs to move forward from where we are and determine if they want changes to be made – what are they willing to sacrifice (either in current services, staff, etc. or through increased taxes, fees, etc.) to accomplish it.
I’m going to have to part ways with you there, Peo Proud. I do not believe that the previous council made the “right decisions for the times” when they voted to turn the Kellar Branch into a walking path, when they decided not to fully staff Fire Station 11, when they voted for the MidTown Plaza project, or when they voted for a regressive tax known as the $6/month “garbage fee.” They did, however, make it harder on the “new council” to clean up their mess. That’s not an apology for the 2007 budget, just an acknowledgment of the problems the new council faced.
I’ll go half-way with you – sound good?
The $6 fee was a bad decision – but at the time, after eleminating over 100 positions, they still needed funds and couldn’t come up with additional cuts. This fee “raised” about $2.5 million that otherwise would have had to be generated through other fees or additional cuts. I think in hindsight, the cuts that were made have been proven to be acceptable (not necessarily good) ones – including Station 11. At the time, we couldn’t afford to continue operating as usual.
Mid-town was years before those decisions and again, was a bad one.
I do have to disagree that they made it harder on the new council. All the new council has to do, if it thinks the decision is wrong, is make the one that they felt should have been made back then. That would mean:
1) eliminating the $6 per month fee and either:
a) replacing the $2.5 million with other revenues or
b) additional cuts.
It’s not an easy choice now – or then.
Yes, replace the garbage fee with a property tax for garbage, then perhaps COP will pay less administrative costs and have more $ to start staffing fire station 11. And Gale Thetford was the ringmaster for the Midtown Plaza debacle which is another example of government holding people over a barrel to force then out akin to the recent proposed school in the park debacle. Looks like Carl’s Swap Shop went out of business over this fiasco, not sure about the other business owners as well as the toll on our community as a whole.
CJ:
Thanks for posting the right link to the year end show. It’s wrong on the WCBU site, and I can’t fix it from home. I’m out of town now, and will get to it when I return. But…
http://www.bradley.edu/irt/wcbu/audio/oths1226.MP3
…should work in the mean time.
As for your comments, I think PDC and HOP-Code stuff would have likely made the top eight or nine had we counted down that far.
I had thought for a while about having a blogger join us on the program. I ended up deciding against it mostly out of tradition. Jenny, Dave, and I have been doing the year-end show for four years now, and I like the dynamic. That said, I think there is room at the table for a fourth at our 2007 year end show, and it could likely be filled by a blogger.
Thanks much for posting a link to this year end review, however, I find it amazing that their top story for 2006 was the next Peoria City Council election, or rather who’s running and whose not and speculation about how the voters will respond to the various candidates. As reporters, it appears these three find it more interesting to engage in speculation rather than hard, solid reporting of what’s actually happened.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, Katmandu. That does seem to not be so much a 2006 story, but more of a 2007 story…. Maybe Jonathan has a defense for that one. 🙂
I dont know but why i don find such informative and profitable blogs so often,I suspect blogging world is becoming so small that we cant find such lucrative blogs like this one.