City of Peoria

New Peoria logo forum to be held

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From a press release:

The City of Peoria will hold a community forum on June 2, 2008, at 6:00 p.m., to give the community the opportunity to have input about a new logo for our City. The forum will be held at the Peoria Civic Center in Room 220.

Our objective is to develop an overall identity theme linked to the City itself, and to provide consistency and clarity in the way the City communicates with the public through its graphics, signage, advertising, and marketing. The common theme and graphic image would better define and communicate the City’s assets and benefits of its programs and services.

The Mayor and City Council Members believe that an important aspect of designing a new logo is having input from the entire community. The City wants to know what you think. We want to know what you believe are the important qualities about our City and the things we should consider when the logo is designed.

We have also designed a web survey that we encourage you to take prior to the June 2nd forum. It will only take a few minutes to complete and will provide us with important information to use in the designing of the new logo. The web link is http://logopeoria.com/.

The forum is open to the community and everyone is encouraged to attend.

The City Council approved funding for the design of a new City logo in March, 2008.

City of Peoria, Streets

Signs or Designs?

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Speeding carsThe city’s Traffic Commission is considering lowering the speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour in residential neighborhoods and subdivisions. The cost would be about $200,000 to purchase new signs.

It’s hard to argue against a 25-mph speed limit in residential areas. I don’t have any objection to lowering the speed limit, provided the cost can be spread out by phasing in the changes over a few years. It certainly would be safer, assuming people actually drive slower. The arguments against this effort is that people will ignore the signs (like they do now, it’s argued), thus it won’t be the most effective use of $200,000. They may have a point.

I believe the speeding problem is systemic, and that’s why signs are believed to have little or no effect. To really get people to slow down, some fundamental changes in road design are needed.

When you build a road that has wide, multiple traffic lanes capable of accommodating speeds of 40 or 50 miles per hour, guess what you’re going to get? That’s right: people driving 40 or 50 miles per hour. It doesn’t matter what the sign says; people are going to drive up to the limit that’s comfortable given the road’s design.

Take Knoxville between War Memorial Drive and downtown, for instance: Five lanes (most of the way), 35-mph speed limit. And do you ever see anyone driving 35 miles per hour? Sure you do — you can’t miss them. They’re the ones getting passed by the rest of the motorists who are doing at least 45, if not 50.

This is true in residential areas as well. If you have wide collector streets that can easily handle 40- to 45-mph traffic, that’s what you’re going to see, despite the speed limit signs saying 30 or 25. The roads are wide in the mistaken belief that wide streets equal safer streets. But the inverse is actually true: narrower streets produce naturally lower speeds and end up being safer.

This is the theory behind “road diets.” You can read about it in this PDF report by Dan Burden and Peter Lagerwey. They write:

Nationwide, engineers are putting roads on “diets,” helping them lose lanes and width. In the process formerly “fat” streets often become leaner, safer, and more efficient. They become multi-modal and more productive. In many cases these former “warrior” roadways are tamed and turned into “angels.”

Often these changed roads set the stage for millions or megamillions of dollars in new commercial and residential development. The change can increase value of existing properties. In some cases costs of reconstructing roadways are repaid in as little as one year through increased sales tax or property tax
revenue.

The “Road Diets” report focuses on reducing arterial roadways. However, narrower streets (in concert with other calming measures, such as on-street parking) have been shown to reduce speeds and make roadways safer in general, as this report from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) shows.

To effect change in this area, the city’s subdivision ordinance would need to be amended, since that is where the design standards for street widths and on-street parking are codified (Municipal Code, Appendix A, Article V, Part I). Until changes are made to the way we build our roads, speeding is going to continue to be a problem, no matter how many signs we put up.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Library plans taking shape

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Lincoln Branch of Peoria Public LibraryThe Library Board is ready to ask the City Council next Tuesday to approve the sale of $35 million in bonds to pay for upgrades to Peoria’s library system, including building a new branch in far north Peoria.

You may have heard the library’s director Ed Szynaka on the radio recently giving an update on where the library is in the process. It’s been a long year. The library has completed the programming phase of the process, and now they’re working on negotiating a site for the north branch. Negotiations will be more meaningful if they are able to talk real money, which is why they want the council to okay the bond issuance.

I got a chance to talk to Gary Sandberg, City Council liaison to the Library Board for this project. Everyone knows the library board had a couple of missteps early in the process, but Gary got them to agree to go through a deliberate and open process.

He showed me how they developed criteria for what features a new library site would need, and then went out and found sites that met the criteria to varying degrees. They put all that data in a matrix and ranked the sites by how well they met the criteria. The most favored site before this process (old K’s Merchandise building) came in third or fourth. The top two sites identified, as mentioned in the paper today, were the old Festival Foods store on Knoxville in Northpoint shopping center, and a greenfield site just north of Route 6 on the west side of Allen Road, behind the new Sud car dealership. I was pleased to see the sites were selected on a rational and objective basis.

But that’s not the end of the story. Next comes cost. Just because a site meets the criteria doesn’t mean that a fair price will be able to be negotiated for it. The asking price for the Festival Foods site is approximately $4 million. The Sud site is $5.50 per square foot developed (i.e., with roads, utilities, etc. built out to the property line). The Library Board will be trying to negotiate a lower price. The more they have to spend for land, the less they have to spend on construction.

The Festival Foods site is terribly overpriced. In fact, the owner of Festival Foods reportedly had been asking a little less than $2 million for the site before the library showed interest. It has certainly sat vacant long enough while other big box stores have been passing it by, searching for greener pastures (literally) farther north. Fortunately, they’re not the only site the library is considering.

This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I would prefer a standalone building for this project, which in this case would most likely mean a greenfield development on the Sud property. The reason is that this is a civic building, and the architecture of civic buildings is symbolic. It symbolizes the civilization of a city. When you put a library in a strip mall, it says something about your community’s values, or at least about how much your community values (a) libraries, and (b) civic architecture.

Look at the other libraries in the system. Consider the Lincoln Branch. Here, you have a Carnegie library building proudly placed in the middle of a civic square. It’s inspiring and set apart from the surrounding architecture. You know immediately that this is someplace special. It’s not a title loan place or a pizza joint. It’s a civic building. It is important. The architecture and setting reinforce that importance.

Now I realize that not every library is going to look like a Carnegie library building. That’s not my point. My point is that it’s distinguishable. The McClure branch, which is more modest architecturally, is nevertheless a distinguishable and inspiring civic building. That’s what we should be shooting for in the north end, too.

The paper says the cost of the bonds to homeowners would be “about $50 per $100,000 of assessed property value a year.” That may be, or it may be lower. Because of the way the economy is, the city may be able to get an even lower rate for the bonds; instead of $0.15 per $100 assessed value, it may only be $0.13, in which case the cost to taxpayers would only be about $43 per $100,000 of assessed property a year.

Also, it should be noted that the $35 million in bonds isn’t just for a new north branch. Only about $11 million is going toward that. The $35 million is also going to triple the size of the Lincoln branch (they’re going to build a large addition), completely remodel the Main branch (also close to $11 million), and expand the Lakeview branch as well.

*Lincoln branch picture courtesy of PeoriaIllinoisan, via his Name This Peoria Landmark blog.

Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star gets new online look

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If you look up the Journal Star’s website today, you’ll notice something different. They have completely revamped it. It now looks like other Gatehouse Media newspaper websites, like the Galesburg Register-Mail.

It looks nice. It’s got a good, clean layout, good multimedia features, and is easy to navigate. It also loads faster. In short, all the things the Journal Star said would happen, happened.

My only complaint, though minor, is that I used to be able to easily look at an index of all the stories for a particular day by typing in something like “pjstar.com/stories/052008” — this would give me all the stories for May 20, 2008. You could put any recent date in and get all the stories from that day. I don’t see any way to do something similar on this new site. Perhaps that won’t be necessary with this new layout anyway.

Check it out and see what you think.

Peoria Public Schools

School Board should get used to hearing from parents

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Peoria Public Schools logoThe District 150 Board of Education again listened to parents express their grievances about the decision to shorten the school day by 45 minutes. The school board should get used to hearing these comments; they can expect to hear them at every meeting until this ill-advised decision is rescinded.

Superintendent Ken Hinton had the first word as he informed the board he would be meeting with parents to talk about alternatives:

[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Hinton.mp3]

That meeting will take place Thursday. Ideally, this would be all it takes to get the district to reverse the decision. If this does the trick, I’ll be ecstatic, presuming the shock doesn’t kill me.

Hinton is hanging his hat on the idea of providing a common prep period for teachers. The thing is, he never explains how or why that is tied to shortening the school day. It’s a red herring. I thought it was funny when he talked about the “highest producing countries” (presumably producing well-educated students) having “three important aspects” of their success. He only mentioned one: common prep time. What are the other two? Something tells me one of them is longer academic learning time.

Notable quotes from Hinton’s speech: “My mind is always open.” “I’m more than open.”

Here are some other comments from concerned parents and teachers:

Mimi McDonald:
[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-McDonald.mp3]

Diane Vespa:
[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Vespa.mp3]

Terry Knapp:
[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Knapp.mp3]

Bill Luthy:
[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Luthy.mp3]

Hedy Elliott-Gardner:
[audio:https://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Elliott-Gardner.mp3]

My favorite quote of the night was from Elliott-Gardner, who is a teacher at Garfield school. After Superintendent Hinton’s big speech about the research-supported importance of common prep time for teachers, Elliott-Gardner reminded the board that Loucks-Edison has had common prep time for teachers for the past ten years, and the school board voted to close it.

As far as research goes, I’d like to submit this 2007 report from the American Educational Research Association for your consideration. Citing peer-reviewed, published studies, it has this to say:

Research on instructional time has consistently found that extended time has the most powerful impact on learning in schools serving low-performing students.

Don’t be fooled. Cutting the day by 45 minutes does not simply remove dead allocated time. It removes academic learning time. It reduces fine arts education. It’s a bad decision and needs to be reversed.

2008 Campaign

Darin LaHood pizza party at Agatucci’s

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From a press release:

Mayor Ardis, City Leaders Hosting Free Pizza Party Featuring State’s Attorney Candidate Darin LaHood
Crime in City to be among topics for discussion
at Agatucci’s on Thursday evening

Peoria, IL – Darin LaHood, candidate for Peoria County State’s Attorney, is the featured guest this Thursday (May 22) at Agatucci’s Restaurant (2607 N. University) from 5-8 p.m. Mayor Jim Ardis and seven members of the Peoria City Council are organizing the event designed to open dialogue between Peorians and the City’s elected leadership on issues related to crime and how that affects area employment, education and quality of life. LaHood is considered by many in the community to be the candidate for State’s Attorney who understands individual community members’ perspectives on such issues and is open to continued discussions and working together to find solutions.

“Peoria is fortunate to have a very diverse and accessible leadership on its City Council,” said LaHood. “I believe that when it comes to fighting crime in our community there are some weak spots, the State’s Attorney’s office among those. For Peoria to grow and flourish as a community, we must continue to elect individuals who know their constituencies, who don’t shy away from frank discussions about our problems and who aggressively want to work for solutions.”

In addition to Mayor Ardis, seven Peoria City Council Members are listed as organizers of this community outreach event, including: Gary Sandberg, Eric Turner, Patrick Nichting, Bob Manning, George Jacob, Ryan Spain and Jim Montelongo. All Peorians with concerns about the community are encouraged to attend some portion of the evening.

Darin LaHood, 39, was born and raised in Peoria. He is a former Chief Terrorism and Federal Prosecutor who served four years with U.S. Department of Justice in Las Vegas, Nevada. LaHood was also an Assistant State’s Attorney in both Tazewell and Cook counties. LaHood and his wife Kristen returned home to Peoria in 2005 to raise their three children: McKay, Luke, and Teddy. LaHood currently practices law with the firm of Miller, Hall, & Triggs. Darin and Kristen are active in numerous Peoria charitable and civic organizations and are members of St. Vincent de Paul Church. Visit www.DarinLaHood.com to learn more about the candidate, volunteer opportunities, or to contribute to the campaign.

Gary Sandberg, Peoria Public Library

Why do you think he keeps getting elected?

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The Journal Star is shocked — shocked! — that at-large city councilman Gary Sandberg has been helpful as the city’s library liaison. The headline today is “Library’s unlikely advocate: Sandberg.” Ed Szynaka, director of the library, is quoted as saying:

“But he’s gone above and beyond his role as the council liaison. He hasn’t missed one meeting. He’s well-prepared and we’ve benefited greatly from his extensive knowledge of the process.”

And Frank Gold, chairman of the library board’s building subcommittee, added:

“I think differently about Gary than I did at the beginning,” Gold said. “He coached us back from our initial misstep and has been a strong supporter of the project. He’s been nothing but helpful.”

Well-prepared, extensive knowledge, commitment to basic services… who doesn’t know this about Gary? Why is this a big surprise — so big, in fact, that it merits a front-page, above-the-fold headline? Apparently the confusion comes because the newspaper and others don’t see libraries as a basic service; they see them as a “quality-of-life” amenity.

The most surprising thing to me was not that Gary was helpful and prepared, but that Gary evidently allowed himself to be interviewed by the Journal Star. Gary’s had a pretty well-known feud with the paper, and hasn’t granted an interview with them for years.

Naturally, a majority of the other council members, who have had no problem imposing/maintaining the garbage tax fee that’s almost universally opposed, are reticent to impose a tax that 72% of voters approved in a non-binding referendum.

Peoria Public Schools

School Board showdown tonight

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Just a reminder about the school board meeting tonight from an e-mail from Diane Vespa:

Dear Friends,

There will be a meeting of the District 150 School Board [Monday] evening. At this meeting we will make an official request that they place on the agenda for the next board meeting of June 2 a vote to RESCIND the shortened school day and the reduction of specialty teachers.

Please join us and show your support for the parents, teachers and members of the community who have OPPOSED this harmful decision. This board meeting will once again take place at 6:30 pm at the District office located at 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave, Peoria.

We invite you to say a few words to the board, or simply support us through your presence.

We will also be handing out petitions. We invite all parents & concerned members of the community to secure a copy, reproduce it as needed, and start collecting signatures and phone numbers from members of the community that join with us in OPPOSING this decision. The phone numbers will be a great asset should a peaceful demonstration become necessary.

Please forward or cut and paste this e-mail to anyone who can help.

As you know, our children’s primary school education is the cornerstone of their entire educational future. I thank you in advance for your continued support and willingness to take up this cause on behalf of the area’s children.

Sincerely,
Diane Vespa

Uncategorized

A perfect weekend

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I didn’t do any blogging this weekend because I was busy enjoying the beautiful weather.

Saturday was the Uplands’ big neighborhood garage sale, so we spent a fair amount of time bargain-hunting (picked up a backpack for my youngest daughter and a big suitcase for a trip we’ll be taking later this year). We put the kids in a wagon and walked around the neighborhood, talked to neighbors, and had a good time. We even walked over to Avanti’s for lunch.

Sunday we went on the West Bluff Grand Tour of Homes. Our daughters were at their friend’s birthday party a good portion of the afternoon, so we just had our son with us. We made it to five of the six homes, and they were beautiful. My favorite was, of course, the Easton House, now home to Converse Marketing.

Outside one of the homes, Spotted Cow had an ice cream stand set up, and who do you think was serving ice cream? None other than Frank Abnour himself. Outside another home a young enterprising neighbor had set up a lemonade stand and was also selling cookies. Smart kid.

How was your weekend?

Peoria Public Schools

Hinton tips his hand: No plans to “backpedal”

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City-School-Board liaison Bill Collier is an optimist. When he met with parents and educators this past Monday, he gave everyone hope:

Mr. Collier insisted that we “had the Admins attention” and that they were willing to put options on the table.

Things were looking up when it was announced that District 150 Administration was willing to meet with parents and other concerned parties later this month. But that hope was dampened today with the publication of this article from the Journal Star:

“I will tell you up front it is all contingent upon the teachers using that time effectively,” Hinton said, noting there are no plans for the district to backpedal on the issue. Whether Hinton could sway any opponents remains to be seen.

So, this meeting isn’t about any kind of negotiation or placing options on the table. It’s about Hinton trying to persuade opponents of the benefits of cutting 45 minutes off of each school day.

His argument, as explained in the paper, goes like this: Every teacher has to receive a 45-minute “preparation period” because that’s required in their contract. Currently, “during this time, scattered throughout the day, students are shuttled to another classroom, usually for art, science, music or physical education. Those classes could see some minutes shaved.”

More “arts integration” also would take place, meaning different courses would be blended. Schools would have the equivalent of two full-time “specialists” and decide on their own what to maintain and where to cut.

Those specialized teachers – except P.E. – will go to the classroom and all teachers will get their prep time before school begins.

Hinton said that’s where the big gains come, with common planning time in the morning, the professional development and teacher collaboration at all grades – virtually impossible now. Contact time with teachers will not change, he said.

See, this is semantics. He’s distinguishing between “specialists” and “teachers.” The “specialist” time will be cut, but “contact time with teachers will not change.” I’m sorry, but if the “specialist” is teaching my child art, music, and physical education, I call that person a “teacher.” It doesn’t matter to me whether they are contractually or legally considered a “teacher” by District 150 standards. They’re teaching my children, and their contact time is most assuredly being cut.

It shouldn’t be. Art, music, and P. E. are not things that should be relegated to extra-curricular activities. These are an important part of a child’s education. They should be retained.

I think it’s fair to wonder what good this meeting is going to do between Hinton and the newly-formed District 150 Watch group, but it will be good for the group to meet with him anyway so they can say they tried. Call me pessimistic, but I’ve seen this song and dance before. I predict the parents will be rebuffed once again, and then things will really start to get ugly.