Peoria Civic Center

Civic Center FY2008 Budget

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You may remember that I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Peoria Civic Center to get a copy of their “itemized budget.” Here’s the response I received from them in today’s mail:

PDF Link PCCA FY2008 Budget (PDF, 1.3M, 35 pages)

Actually, I got it in a nifty blue report cover with colorful dividing tabs. One page is even in color. What you will see, though, is a black and white PDF copy of it with the dividers removed (however, if you use the “bookmarks” feature on Adobe Acrobat, you can see where the divisions were and what they are titled).

The original information the Civic Center Authority gave the City Council included:

  • Budget Highlights
  • Statement of Income
  • Schedule of Events
  • Capital Expenditures Budget

The information I received today has all of that, plus this information:

  • Budget Ordinance
  • Budget Narrative by Shaun Schoonover, Director of Finance
  • Statement of Cash Flows
  • Indirect Expenses
  • Capital Expenditures Budget [Detail]
  • Fiscal Year 2008 Business Plan Narrative

It certainly is more detail than was disclosed before–especially the “Indirect Expenses” page. Take a look at it and let me know what you think. Have they come clean and vindicated themselves?

Peoria Police

Cameras don’t cow mob violence

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Peoria LogoIn the “Police and Courts” section of the Journal Star today (couldn’t find it online to link to it), there’s this story:

Customers at Peoria store attacked by about 12 men

PEORIA — A group of about a dozen men attacked three customers at an East Bluff convenient store with metal poles and a bottle Wednesday night, according to police and witnesses at the scene.

Three young men were inside the Short Stop Food Mart, 1302 E. Frye Ave., about 10:05 p.m. when the group rushed inside and began beating two of the the three, a witness said. During the fight a display of candy and food near the cash register was knocked over and bits of glass were left upon the floor.

The third victim, believed to be the youngest of the trio, ran to the back of the store and was reportedly unharmed. After the brawl, the dozen or so men left the store and drove off in two vehicles in unknown directions. Police and witnesses said the two older victims suffered what appeared to be nonlife-threatening injuries.

This story caught my eye because it’s one of only two locations in Peoria where police surveillance cameras have been deployed. In fact, if you click here, you can see a live picture of the Short Stop Food Mart. These cameras are supposed to deter crime and assist the police in solving any crimes that might occur.

I don’t think anyone expected that all crime would stop once the cameras went up, but now that there has been some blatant violence right in front of one of them, I wonder how the camera will play into the investigation of this crime. It apparently isn’t sharp enough to help officers know exactly how many perpetrators there were (“A group of about a dozen men…”), or which direction they made their getaway (the men “drove off in two vehicles in unknown directions“). Another question is, was police response any quicker because of the camera?

General News

I’ve been hyphenated

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Maybe I’m just sheltered, but last night was the first time I had heard white people seriously described as “European-Americans” (although I’ve heard it before in jest). The term was used several times by District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton at the joint city council and school board meeting.

“European-American” is not listed on the U.S. Census, but I did find an interesting article about the term on (where else?) Wikipedia. Perhaps it’s a common designation in educational research and literature.

I’m sure there are wonderful arguments for this particular appellation, but I’d prefer not to be hyphenated. There were a few days right after 9/11/01 when all the hyphens were gone, and we were all simply Americans, united as one people. That’s the way it should be.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

Meeting of the minds reveals division

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The Peoria City Council and District 150 Board of Education met at Valeska-Hinton School Tuesday evening to reopen the lines of communication that had become strained over the past seven years. It’s easy to see why — the two bodies are working from different philosophies of school design.

District 150

First, we’ll look at District 150’s point of view. School Board President David Gorenz and District Superintendent Ken Hinton kicked off the meeting by giving a “State of the District” address. In the course of that presentation, it was explained that the single biggest challenge the school district has right now is poverty. Seventy percent of the students in District 150 are considered to be at poverty level, and that’s just the overall number. Some schools have a poverty rate over 90%, leading Gorenz to observe that our schools are more segregated today than they’ve ever been — not racially, but economically.

Furthermore, there is a strong negative correlation between poverty and achievement; i.e., as poverty goes up, achievement goes down. This was compellingly illustrated using a scatter chart.

The School Board concludes that the course of action they need to take is to “strive to eliminate high-poverty schools.” They want to accomplish that by offering “school choice” within the district through the use of larger magnet schools. Each school would have a “strong core curriculum with specialized programs at individual schools.” Specialized programs are things like math/science/technology, fine arts, Edison, career tech, university lab, and language studies. Parents would have the choice of sending one child to the school that specializes in Fine Arts, and another to an Edison school, etc.

This would allow children from wealthier areas of town to attend school in poorer areas and vice versa. The model for this strategy is Valeska-Hinton Early Learning Center. Superintendent Hinton mentioned that there’s still a waiting list to get into that school, and that they at one time even lost their Title I funding because the level of poverty had dropped so low — even though the school is located in a high-poverty area.

City of Peoria

The council was not unanimous in their opinions. Several of them simply asked for more data and information so they could study the issue more closely. First District Councilman Clyde Gulley was in total agreement with the school board, and said that not only was Valeska-Hinton a success, but so was the development that grew up around it (the Southtown urban renewal project begun in the ’80s). He feels that it should be the model for the city to follow.

But several council members felt that neighborhood schools should be the model in the city’s older neighborhoods, and they pointed to Whittier School as the model that should be replicated. Strong neighborhood schools stabilize neighborhoods, they argued. Second District Councilwoman Barbara Van Auken explained, “We’re not going to have middle class families moving into areas without strong neighborhood schools,” and that busing kids into and out of high poverty areas of town isn’t a true solution, nor does it fit with the city’s vision for its older neighborhoods.

Mayor Jim Ardis didn’t mince any words when he said, “We acknowledge there already is school choice and one of those choices is the one to leave,” and “we need to change the choice that we’re seeing.”

My Take

The School Board never misses an opportunity to remind everyone that “it’s all about the kids.” This is usually used as a trump card during discussions to imply that all opposing opinions are merely self-interested whereas the school board is focused on the children and what’s best for them. But I question how “eliminating poverty schools,” per se, helps the children individually. It doesn’t make their parents any more involved — in fact, it could potentially mean the school is too far away for a poor parent to be able to attend parent/teacher conferences and other events. It doesn’t change the negative influences in the neighborhood where the student spends his or her non-school time. In fact, if they lose a neighborhood school because of the consolidation, the neighborhood is further destabilized, which is arguably worse for the students. On the other hand, I can see how it would help the school in the aggregate — by diluting the number of poor students in each school, you can raise overall achievement on standardized tests. But how does it help those poor children individually?

Superintendent Hinton mentioned several things the school board is doing to try to reach individual children (education geared to needs of the individual student, build upon volunteer partnerships to provide a mentor to each student, teach behavioral and social skills, etc.). These are excellent interventions that can all be done in neighborhood schools just as easily as they can be done in community magnet schools. The only advantage of the magnet schools appears to be to improve school aggregate test scores so the district can meet Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) as defined under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Next Steps

The school board and city council will be establishing two subgroups that will work on these two issues: (1) The effect of choice/magnet schools on District 150 and neighborhoods, and (2) community school sitings and facilitating community development around them.

General News

A couple of interesting reads

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A couple things I read over the weekend that are worth passing on to anyone else who would be interested:

  • The Jane Fonda Effect — This is an article on nuclear energy written by “Freakonomics” authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, and published in the New York Times. It’s pro-nuclear-energy, in case you’re wondering. Although they mention it in passing at the end, the article left me wondering whether, for all its pluses, if the bugaboo in nuclear energy is what to do with all the waste. It still seems to me that the cleaner-burning coal would be a better solution.
  • Working to Reduce Sewer Overflows to the Illinois River — If you want a clear, easy-to-read explanation of what the whole Combined Sewer Overflow, or “CSO,” problem is about, look no further than Gene Hewitt’s article in this month’s Interbusiness Issues. Well-written and informative, it left me with only one question: why can’t they just enlarge the interceptor sewer or create some sort of temporary retention area for those 28 days it overflows? I’m guessing such a thing would be too large and/or expensive to build, but it seems like the obvious answer at first blush. I’d love to see a follow-up article on what the possible solutions are, and the pros and cons of each.
Peoria Journal Star

Goodbye Jenni, Hello John

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Also from today’s Word on the Street column is the big announcement of who will replace Jenni Davis on the City Hall beat:

“Word on the Street” first appeared in the Journal Star on Oct. 11, 1999. City Hall reporter Jennifer Davis has been the column’s only constant face, but she is moving on to a new position as Lifestyles Editor for the Journal Star.

John Sharp will take her place covering the City Hall beat, and his face and voice will appear in this column shortly, joining political reporter Karen McDonald.

My congratulations to both Jenni and John on their new posts. I’ll miss seeing Jenni at the city council meetings and reading her excellent reports, but I’m happy she’s gotten a promotion at the paper. As for John, I wish him the best of luck as he works to get up to speed on his new assignment.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

City Council and School Board to meet

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AgreementAs I was reading the Word on the Street column this morning, it reminded me that there’s an historic meeting coming up tomorrow night. The Peoria City Council and the District 150 School Board will sit down and try to establish a more positive working relationship. Here’s the official notice and agenda:

NOTICE AND AGENDA

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT A SPECIAL JOINT MEETING OF THE PEORIA PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT #150 SCHOOL BOARD AND THE CITY COUNCIL OF PEORIA, ILLINOIS, WILL BE HELD ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2007, BEGINNING AT 6:00 P.M. AT VALESKA HINTON EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION CENTER, 800 W. FIFTH AVENUE, PEORIA, ILLINOIS, AS FOLLOWS:

ROLL CALL

INVOCATION & PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

INTRODUCTION Dr. David Gorenz, President, of District #150 School Board and Mayor Jim Ardis

ITEM NO. 1 Presentation and Discussion Regarding State of the District, Vision for Our Future, and Ideas to Address Goals.

ADJOURNMENT

Exciting stuff, huh? It will be interesting to hear the presentations from each side. In the past, the school board has asked the city for money and support while simultaneously telling the city to butt out whenever they made any suggestions or requests of the school board. Hopefully, this will open up a new chapter of true cooperation — one where the school board does some giving and not just taking.

Blogosphere, League of Women Voters, Radio, Television

Media panel enlightening

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I was part of a panel hosted by the League of Women Voters this morning. The topic was “the role of the media in a democracy.” Since I was a participant, I didn’t take notes or anything, but Elaine Hopkins did, and her report is here.

One of the most interesting discussions to me came about when one of the audience members asked why TV and radio news broadcasts do not air editorials. I’ve long wondered the same thing. At the Journal Star, of course, they have an editorial page, and the writers give the viewpoint of the paper itself. But television and radio news broadcasters don’t do that. Why not? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know the position of the news editors at all the media outlets?

The answer each of the participants gave was pretty much the same: editorials hurt ratings and lower the credibility of the newscasts. If they posit their opinion on the news of the day, they at worst alienate some viewers/listeners, and at best make their viewers/listeners suspicious of their news coverage. As a follow-up, I asked if they thought that was the case at the Journal Star — did the fact that they give an editorial viewpoint hurt their credibility, in the TV and radio panelists’ view. Answer: yes.

Jonathan Ahl from WCBU-FM stated that it also limits their ability to do their jobs. He told of how he had sat next to four successive Journal Star reporters at City Hall over the years and had witnessed all of them get shunned by mayors and council members — not because of their reporting, but because of the newspaper’s editorial positions. In the end, he said, it’s the reader who gets short-changed. He said he wasn’t willing to limit his ability to get a story by including editorials on the station. He would rather present the information as fair and balanced as possible and let the listeners form their own opinions.

Jody Davis, news director of WMBD-TV, gave examples of how ratings dipped on Sinclair Broadcasting-owned channels when they used to carry right-wing editorial comments from Sinclair officials. Even the bosses at Sinclair recognized the trend and quietly discontinued the editorials. Thus, broadcasters see a lot of potential for editorials to hurt ratings, and little if any value in them.

The morning ended on a somewhat depressing note for me, as I hung around after the meeting and heard about how low morale is at the Journal Star now that Gatehouse has taken over. Many seasoned reporters have left, benefits have been cut, and staff positions are going unfilled. Basically, the newsroom is being slashed through attrition. Jenni Davis moved from the City Hall beat to Lifestyles editor, and they’re not hiring anyone to fill her position. Instead, they’re going to replace her with one of the business reporters. Now there will be two instead of three business reporters; one more position eliminated.

Gatehouse is cutting costs on little things, too. They won’t buy antibacterial liquid soap for the bathrooms anymore, nor will they buy Post-It Notes. That kind of nitpicking at the budget is the sign of a company in serious financial trouble. They’ve overextended themselves by buying so many newspapers, and now they’re trying to cover the cost of their debt any way they can, from cutting staff to business supplies. There is no joy at the paper right now. And that’s sad.

Arts Partners, City of Peoria

ArtsPartners makes its case for public funding

ArtsPartners LogoCouncilmen Bob Manning and Ryan Spain listened to ArtsPartners representatives make the case for continued public funding of their organization this morning at City Hall. Although the meeting was called by the mayor, he did not attend. Instead, Dr. Peter Couri led the meeting.

Couri gave a brief history of ArtsPartners and then turned it over to others in attendance to give their views on the importance of continued funding.

Julie Russell, past president of ArtsPartners, distributed an official statement (PDF) that answers many of the objections that have been raised. One point she stressed was that ArtsPartners relies largely on city subsidy so as not to compete for donations with other arts groups.

George Brown, Department of Theatre Arts Chair at Bradley University, stated that he believed the funding was not only necessary, it wasn’t enough. He cited a report released by Americans for the Arts in May of this year (titled “Arts and Economic Prosperity“) which states, “the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year — $63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences.” He argued that the arts don’t just provide “quality of life” in Peoria, but have economic impact as well.

Brent Lonteen, Executive Director of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (PACVB), explained that PACVB does not rely exclusively on city funding, but is a member-based organization. Nevertheless, they allow any arts group affilitated with ArtsPartners to utilize PACVB services because they recognize the arts community is struggling financially. He said the suggestion to combine PACVB with ArtsPartners did not originate with the bureau, but that they are willing to help in any way the city and/or ArtsPartners would request.

Manning explained that the reason for the meeting was to explore whether giving $75,000 to ArtsPartners is the best way to leverage those funds, or if there might be a better way, such as giving funding to arts groups directly. He also said there was some confusion over whether this was originally meant to be a permanent subsidy or simply seed money to get ArtsPartners established.

Spain was a strong supporter of continued funding, saying he thought the work of ArtsPartners was critical to the economic health of the community.

Several different funding ideas were suggested. One was combining ArtsPartners with the PACVB; another was to bring it under the Heartland Partnership umbrella. Another attendee suggested establishing a Public Arts Commission and funding it directly from the city budget (similar to the way the Municipal Band is funded) instead of receiving funding through HRA taxes.

The meeting lasted about an hour. ArtsPartners Executive Director Suzette Boulais attended but did not speak during the meeting. The city council will decide whether and how to continue funding ArtsPartners at their October 9 meeting.

East Bluff, North Valley, Peoria Public Schools

Neighbors spar over school sites

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Terry Larson at District 150 ForumI attended the first of four public forums hosted by District 150 last night. This one was held at Woodruff High School. The school board is trying to convince the public that they’re listening and seriously considering public input in the siting of a new school for the Woodruff attendance area.

And that is indeed “a new school” — singular. District officials said last night that there is funding to build only one new school. That school will replace Glen Oak, Kingman, and Irving primary schools, and White middle school. That covers the east bluff and the north valley, and basically sets up a scenario in which neighborhoods will be competing against each other for the new school.

Generally speaking, those who live on the bluff want the school to be up on the bluff. Those in the valley want the school to be in the valley. Some suggested putting the school near Woodruff and Lincoln schools, saying it’s the most centrally-located site for those above and below the bluff, but others insisted it would not be a good idea to mix Kindergarteners and high school seniors on the same campus.

East bluff residents are still divided between the current Glen Oak School site and the now-defunct Glen Oak Park site. Terry Larson (pictured above) presented 400 signatures from people wanting the school adjacent to the park, and several other people in attendance spoke in favor of the park site. That brought objections from other neighbors, who pointed out that the ground rules specifically stated that the Glen Oak Park site was off the table, and didn’t feel it was appropriate to be arguing for/against a site that is specifically excluded from consideration. Their complaints fell on deaf ears, however, as both the facilitator Brad McMillan and school board president David Gorenz encouraged all neighbors to speak freely on any site they wanted, claiming they wanted to “welcome all comments.”

But it soon became clear that not all comments were welcome. When people started suggesting the school board build two smaller schools (one on the bluff and one in the valley) instead of one large school, McMillan chastised the crowd, saying that they should be “realistic” since the school board had already said there is only funding to build one school. It’s unclear why he didn’t feel it equally unrealistic to suggest a site that has been officially blackballed by the park district and completely out of the school board’s control.

Those who live in the valley suggested the Morton Square Park site and the current Kingman school site.

Most people spoke off the cuff, but a few had prepared their presentations in advance. Terry Larson, whom I’ve already mentioned, was one. Another was Mike Standish, 1515 NE Perry, who put together a PowerPoint presentation with Aaron Moore advocating the Woodruff/Lincoln site. Roberta Parks spoke on behalf of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce and said the school board should consider sites that have “better spin-off potential” or potential for economic development around the new school, both residential and commercial. Steve Katlack, 709 E. Frye, put together a handout that advocated the current Glen Oak School site, and addressed all of the school board’s stated criteria for site selection.

The next meeting will take place at Irving Primary School on Thursday, Sept. 27. After that, there will be meetings at Von Steuben on Oct. 4 and Glen Oak on Oct. 18. A final report will be prepared by Nov. 9, which the school board will deliberate on Nov. 19. A final decision will be made by Dec. 3, and that decision will be announced on Dec. 17.