Uncategorized

Hello from Kansas City

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In case you’re wondering why blogging is so light today (and will be tomorrow, too), it’s because I’m in Kansas City — well, actually Overland Park, Kansas. I couldn’t tell you ahead of time because I was coming out here for a surprise anniversary party for my aunt and uncle. They’re celebrating their 25th anniversary this month! Well, they were very surprised and a good time was had by all.

I’ll be driving back tomorrow, so it will be another light posting day. Also, the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display at Union Station in KC…. If they’re open tomorrow, I might have to take a look at that exhibit!

Feel free to consider this an “open thread” and comment on anything you want while I’m gone.

City Council

The Council returns Tuesday, Jan. 9

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The first thing on Tuesday night’s agenda is (after the proclamations) is:

INITIAL SNOW DEBRIEFING by SIX SIGMA BLACK BELT LORI DAVID from CATERPILLAR, INC. to Provide an OVERVIEW, INITIAL OPPORTUNITIES, OBSERVATIONS for IMPROVEMENTS, and the APPROACH for COMPLETING THE ASSIGNMENT.

Oh, goody. Like we need a Six Sigma black belt to figure this one out. Please tell me Ms. David is doing this service pro bono and we’re not wasting any more money on this snow fiasco. If she is being paid, perhaps they can fire Mr. Haste and take her fee out of the money they would no longer be wasting on him.

Other notable items, in no particular order:

  • Website redesign. They may hire IceCentric, LLC to redesign the city’s website for up to $45,000.

    The website seriously needs to be updated, so this is good news.

  • Sign ordinance changes. Adams Outdoor Advertising wants the City to change its sign ordinance to allow electronic off-premise billboards that can change messages every six seconds.

    Because traditional billboards just aren’t garish enough.

  • Riverfront programming. The proposed intergovernmental agreement between the City and Park District to provide programming along the Riverfront has been reduced from five years to one. Furthermore, during that one year, “additional revenue sources and cost reduction opportunities [will] be identified to move the Riverfront toward being self-sustaining.”

    Who proposed this course of action? Councilmembers Van Auken and Manning, of course. I’m still disappointed that they caved on Fire Station 11 and the garbage fee, but at least they’re taking steps to reduce expenses. It’s “little” cuts like this that eventually add up to enough money to take care of the big issues.

  • TIF Bloat. The Warehouse and Eagle View proposed TIF districts seem to be expanding all over the place. The Peoria Housing Authority wants to be in the Eagle View proposed TIF because it means they “get a better rating from the Federal government for redevelopment funds.” Some unnamed council member asked that the Warehouse District proposed TIF be extended north along MacArthur Blvd. because it “might have significant future financial impact as developers are induced to develop the area and more taxes and fees are generated.”

    Heck, let’s just make the whole city a TIF! Just think of how much development and, presumably, wealth we would have then! The council should stick with the original intent of the proposed TIF districts and only expand boundaries that fit within that intent. I hedge my statement this way because there are some boundary changes that are perfectly defensible and should be adopted (for instance, there are some parcels that were obviously omitted unintentionally). But to include PHA and additional housing is unwarranted.

If nothing gets deferred, be prepared to settle in for a long meeting.

City of Peoria

Haste makes waste

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The snow debate is back. This time the focus is on Street Department Manager David Haste. Despite his abysmal performance in the days (weeks?) following the big Dec. 1 snowstorm, Public Works Director Steve Van Winkle has seen fit to give him a whopping 4.68% merit increase, in addition to approving $5,150 in overtime pay — for a salaried employee — between Nov. 30 and Dec. 10, according to today’s Journal Star.

You really should read Elaine Hopkins entire article and see if you don’t find your blood pressure rising just a little. There’s plenty of controversy surrounding Mr. Haste:

  • “[H]e reported working 129 hours over six days, an average of 21.5 hours daily.”

    I’d like to see the guy’s time sheet to find out exactly when he slept. Are we really supposed to believe that he only slept 15 hours in six days, an average of 2 1/2 hours per day? If true, it’s no wonder the guy was making poor decisions. I’d be willing to buy one or two days with only 3 hours sleep, but 5-10 days after the event? He’s still working over 20 hours a day with no sleep? And why the heck does a salaried employee get overtime pay?

  • “Haste said he and his wife were unable to find an affordable home in the Dunlap school district, though they continue to look. So Haste adopted a rental property he bought in 2000 as his residence….”

    Haste lives in Princeville, but when he was promoted to Street Department Manager, he was required by city residency requirements to become a resident of Peoria within a year (by 2004, in his case), but he wanted his teenage kids to be able to continue attending Dunlap High School.

    So, the guy owns two properties and makes $80,000/year, but he hasn’t been able to find an affordable home in the Dunlap High attendance area of Peoria in the last three years? He’s not looking very hard.

    Furthermore, he’s not convincing anyone (except Van Winkle, apparently) that he’s really living in the rental house in Peoria. It doesn’t have a stove in it, and it’s not listed as owner-occupied on the tax rolls, although there is some evidence that he may sleep there occasionally and Van Winkle claims his residency claims have been investigated. I don’t know the exact wording of the city’s residency ordinance, but if this isn’t breaking the letter of the law (and since it’s clearly not his primary residence, I don’t see how it couldn’t be), it’s certainly breaking the spirit of it.

  • “Haste said […] he has not even taken vacation he is eligible for, [and] added, ‘It’s not easy to do this (job). It’s not fun.'”

    Sounds like instead of looking for a new house in Peoria, Haste should be looking for a new job that he would enjoy. The City Manager should help him along toward that decision.

City of Peoria

Reader poll: What are “essential services”?

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I think a vast majority of Peorians agree with the phrase “essential services first.” The question really is, what services fall under the category of “essential”? Public safety would undoubtedly top the list, and public works wouldn’t be far behind. But if you were going to strip the city’s responsibilities down to the bare essentials, what would they be? Or, alternatively, what are the most non-essential things the city does — what should the city stop doing or cut completely?

Uncategorized

Quote of the Day

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Edmund Morris“Theodore Senior belonged to a class and a generation that considered politics to be a dirty business, best left, like street cleaning, to malodorous professionals.”

— Edmund Morris, describing President Theodore Roosevelt’s father’s view of politics in “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” (1979)

City Council, Elections

The Thetford Files: MidTown Plaza

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[In the time leading up to the at-large City Council election, I’ll be occasionally pulling out some pertinent data on Gale Thetford and posting it under the headline “The Thetford Files,” lest we forget why she was voted off the council.]

From the March 10, 1999, edition of the Journal Star:

The City Council narrowly approved a deal Tuesday night that will create MidTown Plaza with $5.5 million in public financing.

Third District Councilwoman Gale Thetford, sponsor of the East Bluff project, secured the minimum nine “yes” votes needed to OK the agreement with developer David Joseph. […]

“It was sweaty, but we did it,” Joseph said after the 9-2 vote, when he hugged Thetford outside council chambers.

Ewwww! While you may think the grossest part of this story is David Joseph and Gale Thetford hugging… um… well, yeah, I guess that is the grossest part. But the second grossest part is that the City paid $5.5 million to “clear the land” (including knocking down old ladies’ houses on Dechman) required to make way for this project and made the area a TIF district after rejecting their own consultant’s report that said this was a bad deal for the City. Who did they listen to instead? The developer’s consultants, of course. I’m sure they weren’t biased….

The city’s consultant (Development Strategies, Inc.) predicted, according to a Journal Star editorial on 3/9/1999, that Cub Foods “would draw 90 percent of its customers from other city grocery stores.” Joseph’s consultants (Melaniphy & Associates, Inc.; Deloitte & Touche) predicted “43 percent of revenues would come from customers living outside the city” and that Cub Foods “would draw customers from a 10-mile radius.”

Now I haven’t done a scientific study, but I defy anyone to prove the City’s consultant wrong. I would be willing to bet that 90% of the customers are not only from Peoria, but specifically from the East Bluff, especially now that Thompson’s/Sullivan’s and John Bee have closed.

Another boondoggle, courtesy of the tireless efforts of developer-hugging Gale Thetford. In all fairness, if the City gave me $5.5 million on a silver platter, I might hug… no, no, I wouldn’t. Not even for $5.5 million.

Amtrak, City of Galesburg, City of Peoria

How about a Peoria-Quad Cities Amtrak route?

10 Comments

Amtrak LogoWhile I was on hiatus, there was an interesting editorial in the Galesburg Register-Mail suggesting a Galesburg-Peoria commuter train. John Pulliam is their business writer at the Galesburg paper (the equivalent of the Journal Star’s Paul Gordon), and he makes some good points:

Ever since Maytag and Butler abandoned the Burg, many people have been paying big bucks to commute to Alcoa and John Deere in the Quad Cities and Caterpillar in Peoria. Driving that far every day is expensive, tiring and causes you to need a new car about twice a month. Why not take the train? (Because there isn’t one.) […]

Not only could a commuter line take Galesburg workers to Peoria, but Peoria’s nearest Amtrak service is Galesburg and Normal. Not good for a metro area of about 350,000 people. I know Peorians would rather have a direct route to Chicago, but the commuter train could bring them to Galesburg, where they could catch Amtrak to Chicago and many other destinations.

I agree. But why stop there? Let’s extend it on to Normal, or even Champaign. We need a good east-west train route in Illinois.

Pulliam suggests using the BNSF rail line between Galesburg and Peoria. I wonder how amenable BNSF would be to letting Amtrak use their line and how much it would cost to upgrade it to passenger rail standards. Maybe one of my rail-enthusiast friends can give me the low-down on whether any of this wishful thinking would really be feasible.

Blogosphere, City of Peoria

There’s a new portal in town: Peoria.com

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Screenshot of Peoria.com

If you’re looking for a good Peoria portal, check out the new Peoria.com. Their site has a good, clean look and no broken links that I can find. The pages load quickly and have attractive graphics. The whole thing looks very professional.

They link to news stories equally from traditional media outlets and blogs, and they are actively seeking bloggers to provide original news and opinion for their site. There’s a forum (more like a traditional computer bulletin board than a blog), a listing of upcoming Peoria events, classified ads and job listings and a community guide. It’s pretty well-rounded.

The key is going to be keeping everything fresh and updated. How many portals have you visited that have information woefully out of date or missing completely? If they’re vigilant in keeping things relentlessly updated and complete, I think they’ll be very successful. And I wish them the best of luck.

Ray LaHood

Quick poll: Who thinks LaHood has “influence”?

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Ray LaHoodThis news happened while I was on hiatus: WHOI reported last December on a group of people who were outside Congressman Ray LaHood’s Peoria office “holding signs stating he is spending too much on local issues.” Wow! I’ve only heard about this event from WHOI — was it covered by any other media outlets?

Anyway, the news reporters decided to try to find out why LaHood was getting so local all of a sudden. One political science professor thought it was LaHood’s way of trying to “stay in touch” with his constituents. But the most interesting quote was from LaHood himself:

“People look at me as somebody that has influence and if my office and my position can influence things in a positive way in the community, I want to be a part of that.” LaHood said.

LaHood has influence? Let’s recap his success in influencing things in a positive way: He tried to play mediator in the rails-to-trails issue to no avail; he tried to play mediator in the Glen Oak School siting issue to no avail; he’s trying to get two election commissioners thrown off the commission — the results of this latest one are yet to be determined. So far, he’s batting .000.

Is this an indication of the kind of “influence” he has in Washington?

General News

Somebody call America’s Funniest Videos

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Michael Smothers reports reports on the very progressive [/sarcasm] East Peoria hiking/biking trail in today’s Journal Star:

If the weather cooperates next New Year’s Eve, revelers from Morton who choose to celebrate the occasion at a tavern here won’t need a designated driver: They can bicycle home.

At least there will be a hiking/biking trail providing that option….

All I can say is, bring out the camera crews. Watching a bunch of drunken, bicycling bar patrons would be funny enough, but watching them try to ride uphill all the way to Morton in the dark at 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day should be a real hoot!