City Council, City of Peoria

Essential Services First

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The City Council passed a budget that didn’t raise property taxes.

There’s been another murder in Peoria, bringing the total for 2006 to 18… so far:

This is the city’s 18th homicide of 2006, besting a 13-year-old record 17 in 1993. Of this year’s slayings, 11 remain unsolved.

But the City Council passed a budget that didn’t raise property taxes.

We still have an understaffed fire department. Although they’ve moved personnel and equipment from Fire Station 13 over the Fire Station 11 temporarily, there’s no overall increase in personnel or equipment, and some have argued that the city is actually less protected as a result.

But the City Council passed a budget that didn’t raise property taxes.

We can’t seem to get our snow plowed adequately or in a timely manner. As a result, we’ve had to deal with washboard streets and the schools had to close for three days even though there was an intervening weekend.

But the City Council passed a budget that didn’t raise property taxes.

We still have a regressive tax known as the $6 garbage “fee.” This so-called garbage fee actually goes to fund police and is collected on our water bills. We pay handsomely for Illinois American to collect this fee for the city. And it’s one of the two main reasons there was a big turnover on the council last election. And now we’ve also raised the building fees which may cause some to wonder if we’re trying to discourage economic growth in Peoria.

But the City Council passed a budget that didn’t raise property taxes.

Gary Sandberg said it best last night: “Our [the Council’s] job is not to balance the budget without a tax increase.” The Council’s job is to provide essential services like public safety and street/infrastructure maintenance. That’s what we thought we were getting with the “new” council. Instead, we got a council that, it could be argued, considers “holding the line on property taxes” to be the highest public good.

I’m not arguing for higher taxes, per se. What I’m arguing for is the city to fully fund basic public services before they fund anything else — like the Gateway building, for instance. The Gateway building is not an essential service. It’s nice. I like the Gateway building. If the city has a plethora of funds and the citizens want that service, I have no problem with it. But to have this service (and others) funded while at the same time we can’t fully staff our fire stations is about as ridiculous — and irresponsible — as it gets.

I’m sorry to be so harsh, but this budget was a cop out. The tough decisions were dodged. The apple cart was not upset. It’s more of the same. I thought the voters last election made it clear we wanted something different.

There’s another election coming up when we’ll have the opportunity to elect five at-large members of the council. Remember this budget. And remember these three words: essential services first.

City Council, City of Peoria, Kellar Branch, Peoria Park District

CIRY move catches city by surprise; Pioneer offer still on table

6 Comments

I e-mailed City Counsel Randy Ray about the surprising move by Central Illinois Railroad Company yesterday. I wanted to know what the City’s response was, and he had this to say:

We will be happy to share the City’s position with you after it is developed and after the City Council has had an opportunity to consider it. We’ll be happy to share any STB filings.

So, it’s pretty clear that city staff and the council did not see this coming. Pioneer, whom I mentioned would still be interested in running the Kellar Branch instead of CIRY, also wrote the city today: “PIRY’s [Pioneer Railcorp’s] offer to buy and share the ROW [railroad right-of-way] is still open. Does the City want to talk?”

If the City and the Park District really want a trail, they will do what they should have done in the first place — take Pioneer up on their offer. The Park District will get assistance in building a trail side-by-side with the rail line, and the City will get a cool half-million dollars to help them with their new budget. Oh, and the City will also get competent rail service on the Kellar Branch and no more runaway trains.

I’ve e-mailed the Park District to hear their take on the news, but it caught them by surprise as well, so they’ll need a little time to develop a statement. I’ll let you know what it is as soon as I hear.

One last note: David P. Jordan has posted over on Billy Dennis’s blog that another potential rail user in Pioneer Park is “possibly the paper bag manufacturer that is interested in buying the Peoria Plastics building.” I hadn’t heard of that one — it’s not the one I said I couldn’t disclose. So that means there are potentially three more rail users in addition to Carver Lumber and O’Brien Steel. Total potential: 5 businesses.

UPDATE: Here is the response I received from Bonnie Noble, Peoria Park District Director: “Thanks for your inquiry and interest. Randy Oliver and I have been in contact about CIRY’s new request. We are in communication with a number of people to work through all of this so that we all can be winners. When I have something definitive, I or Dave Wheeler will be back to you.”

City of Peoria, Kellar Branch

BREAKING NEWS: CIRY mutinies, fires city attorney, withdraws request to close Kellar Branch

14 Comments

Is the Kellar Branch saved? It might be. Efforts to try to convert it to a bike trail have been dealt a serious blow.

Central Illinois Railroad Co. (CIRY), the City of Peoria’s operator for the Kellar Branch and western spur, has cooperated with the City since 2005 in seeking to close down the Kellar Branch so it could be turned into a hiking trail through town.

In a stunning reversal, CIRY at 4 p.m. Tuesday, December 5, filed with the Surface Transportation Board to withdraw its discontinuance request (i.e., its request to discontinue service over the Kellar Branch). Furthermore, whereas the City and CIRY had been using the same attorney (Thomas F. McFarland), the latest filing informs the STB that CIRY has a new attorney (John Heffner, Washington, DC) representing them.

Why the reversal? The filing states that CIRY “now wishes to withdraw the above-captioned discontinuance petition in view of new business opportunities on the line” (emphasis mine).

That’s right, there are at least two new businesses locating along the Kellar Branch that may be interested in having rail service. Along with Carver Lumber, that brings the total to three, and no doubt more businesses will locate on the line if the threat of closure is removed.

One of the potential new businesses is Globe Energy which recently purchased the building at 1610 Altorfer Drive. They provide large building energy efficiency equipment and service for Caterpillar and others. The other potential new business I’m not at liberty to divulge at this time.

However, CIRY further states, “Accordingly, CIRY will continue to provide service over this line as if it had never filed any discontinuance request.” That will be a problem. First, it could be argued that their contract with the City to serve the Kellar Branch expired when the western spur began operations. Second, even if they could prove their old contract was still in force, they would be in breach of it (again) — this time for not cooperating with the city to close the Kellar Branch. And third, the last time they tried to take a shipment up the Kellar Branch they had a runaway train, and that has made the City leery of their performance, though not leery enough to take any legal action against them to date.

What will happen next? Will the City sue CIRY for breach of contract? If so, it will be a first. They didn’t sue CIRY when they endangered the lives of Peorians with their runaway train. They didn’t sue CIRY when they didn’t provide rail service to Carver Lumber, even though they were in breach of contract then. It sure would be a slap in the face to residents and businesses if the only time they sued CIRY was when they actually wanted to start serving Carver Lumber, et. al., safely via the most cost effective route.

Will the City file an adverse continuance with the STB to throw CIRY off the Kellar Branch like they did with Pioneer and try to find yet another carrier that will cooperate with their ill-advised and increasingly futile attempts to turn the Kellar into a hiking trail?

Or will the City finally come to its senses and put an end to this nonsense once and for all and forget trying to convert this line to a trail?

Of course Pioneer Railcorp will continue its fight to be the carrier on the Kellar Branch.

Stay tuned for more twists and turns!

City of Peoria

Sell the Gateway Building

8 Comments

I just read over at Billy Dennis’s blog that the city spends $169,900 per year to operate and maintain the Gateway Building downtown.

I say sell it. Sell it to a private investor. If the city is looking for money to save, this is as good of a place as any to start. A few hundred thousand here and a few hundred thousand there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. This is nothing more than a banquet hall. Since when is it the city’s responsibility to provide a banquet hall for the citizens of Peoria?

Sell it.

Sell It!

Global Warming, Weather

Global Warming

14 Comments

I really know nothing about global warming, but there’s such an interesting discussion going on in the comments to this post that I thought it deserved its own dedicated post. Just to kick things off, I’ll reprint Eyebrows McGee’s initial comment about it:

“Global Warming” is something of a misnomer, although a general warming trend is one of its effects. A better name might be “breakdown in the planet’s ability to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide” due to loss of plant mass and burnt release of long-dead fixed-CO2 from organic matter (i.e. coal and oil) releasing unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the air at the same time as we have DRASTICALLY reduced the number of organisms available to convert it to oxygen.

If you know about plant respiration, it’s a relatively simple “math problem.” There is ONE type of organism capable of converting the earth’s sole source of external energy — the sun — into sugars, and those are the photosynthesizing plants. These same plants breathe in carbon dioxide and take up water from the soil (CO2 and H2O) and, using the sun’s energy to power the complex chemical reaction, convert the carbon dioxide and water into sugars (C6H12O11) and Oxygen (O2). (They also respire out — and clean in the process — an awful lot of our. My front-yard hackberry probably respires about 60 gallons of water per hour in the summer, cleaning it as it draws it up from the ground and uses impurities as mineral building blocks.)

Basically all energy on earth comes from the photosynthesis reaction. Animals eat plants for the sugars. Fossil fuels are “trapped” photosynthetic sugars (and the various more complex molecules that result from those reactions, or from what other organisms do with the sugars.)

If you have a little biodome with 2 trees photosynthesizing and two animals eating exactly the amount of fruit they produce and breathing exactly the amount of oxygen they create, and you kill one of those trees, CO2 in your biodome is going to skyrocket, inadequate food production will occur, and at least one of those animals is going to die. (Or they may both die, fighting for the limited resources. Or by degrading their remaining “habitat” tree until it can no longer support even one.)

If you have a giant earth biodome and you clear 1/3 of the planet’s photosynthetic material while simultaneously releasing massive quantities of STORED plant energy (fossil fuels) back into the atmosphere, you’re not only trying to support the same size (or in humanity’s case, ever-increasing) population of animals with ever-less available “air-exchangers” and “food,” but you’re now making the deficit worse by releasing stored energy the air-exchangers have to do MORE work to exchange.

There are a handful of species that produce food without photosynthesis (like fungi), but they’re pretty calorically useless to higher animals. (Mushrooms have hardly any calories.) If you want oxygen to breathe and energy to eat, you need photosynthetic plants. It’s a simple, quantifyable chemical reaction. If you decrease the “plant” side enough, one of two things will happen — animals (and their “works” — like modern fossil fuel consumption, say) will have to decrease proportionately, or organisms that do well in excess carbon dioxide will thrive and species that require current oxygen levels will die. You know which one we are.

Earth is essentially a closed system (barring the occasional asteroid, etc.). Resources are finite. Waste products can’t be “thrown away” because they have nowhere to GO. Closed system. The only outside “power source” we have is the sun, and photosynthetic plants are the only organisms that can make use of it to create food to support the rest of us.

(If you wanna really scare the crap out of yourself about “global warming” (and why modern methods of increasing crop yields are not long-term sustainable in our closed system), go read about the nitrogen imbalance. Making greener and better and higher-yield plants won’t help the problem if it “costs” more in energy to make the plants yield more calories than you get back out of them in calories.)

And of the 4 or 5 billion years Earth’s been hanging around, primitive organisms and later plants were spending an awful lot of time creating an atmosphere we could breathe and calories we can make use of!

Earth itself will recover from our depredations just fine. Organisms will doubtless evolve that can make use of our waste products. But WE can’t survive our current depredations and I’m personally fond of me.

Feel free to comment on any aspect of global warming you wish. I have one question for Eyebrows, though. For those of you who don’t know, Eyebrows McGee (aka Laura Petelle) is a lawyer but also has a theology degree. Thus, in light of her final comment, I’d be interested in hearing how her view of humankind’s demise via global warming meshes with her eschatology.

City of Peoria, Traffic, Weather

Snow quotes

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Here’s a little compilation of what people are saying about the streets of Peoria and the city’s efforts to remove snow:

Peoria Journal Star:

The main reason [District 150 will be closed for the third day in a row] is that sidewalks are still buried in snow, district spokeswoman Stephanie Tate said Monday. Nobody wants kids walking on the street to get to school or the nearest bus stop.

“We don’t want them walking on icy streets while cars are driving on them,” Tate said.

Peoria Illinoisan:

It took me a over friggin’ HOUR to drive the length of University from Pioneer Parkway to Main Street. An HOUR! […] Why does Peoria always seem to screw things up? Can we stop being so progressive and actually spend some cash on things like PLOWS, SIDEWALKS, FIRESTATIONS, and POLICE?

WEEK.com:

City Street and Sewer Manager David Haste says the city was prepared for the snow, but not the ice.

“If we didn’t have any traffic, we wouldn’t have the snow pack and we wouldn’t have the conditions that we have,” says Peoria City & Sewer Manager David Haste. “It was just the amount of traffic that came out right away.”

Peo Proud on Peoria Pundit:

Like others, I’m always amazed that smaller “less professionally” run towns are able to provide better basic services with less resources than we have.

I wonder how well the new GPS systems that were to be installed on each of the plow units helped/would have helped the Department in fighting the snow/ice event.

WHOI News:

The city street manager said the city was at the mercy of the storm.

“This was just a really tough snow. If it was a dry snow, the same amount we would have it cleared by now,” Haste said. “Everything cleared right down to the pavement, but it just wasn’t.”

Haste said they are going to look at how they can improve for future snow storms.

“justanobserver” on Peoria Chronicle:

Just heard an interview on WYZZ 9 p.m. news with a former city employee who said that salt was left in trucks on Friday, got wet, froze, and couldn’t be spread.

Peoria Journal Star (the whole article is good, so go read it, but here are just a couple quotes):

“The city manager sent out an e-mail saying, ‘Job well done.’ I admit I’m usually the first to agree, but not this time. I completely disagree that this was a job well done. I think it’s unacceptable,” said [Councilman John] Morris, who needed 45 minutes to get Downtown to work Monday from his home in Knollcrest. He also fielded 50 calls from upset constituents. […] And several [council members] said the issue will no doubt be discussed at today’s regular council meeting. […] As of Monday morning, [Councilman Gary] Sandberg said he had received 137 phone calls, only two of them with positive comments.

Emtronics:

Every intersection at the traffic light is an ice rink. There are no lanes to speak of and people are just driving wherever they can fit. Where are the plows and salt crews? […] Either these guys don’t know how to operate a blade and understand the physics of salting after you blade or there simply isn’t enough staff to do our streets.

Eyebrows McGee:

We’re still basically stuck in the house. I ventured out this morning for a doctor’s appointment, well over an hour before I had to be there. In 20 minutes I made it six blocks (the doctor is about six MILES away), got stuck three times (once leaving my own driveway), and lost traction completely twice.

Knight in Dragonland on Peoria Chronicle:

Court Street, the main drag through Pekin, is Illinois Route 9. It’s been nice and clear for two days now.

Conclusion: There are a lot of unhappy Peorians who think the city did a poor job of clearing the streets. Expect a protracted discussion on this at Tuesday’s council meeting. And don’t think Sandberg will miss his opportunity to ask why snow removal wasn’t done more efficiently in light of the new GPS tracking devices Public Works recently bought. He might even ask for a printed report on where all the plows have been the last three days.

Ironically, as I’m typing this, a city plow just went down my street. Hey, are they spying on me? Not that I’m paranoid, but seriously, who’s tapping my phone? 😉

City of Peoria, Traffic, Weather

Urban sprawl strikes again

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Here’s an interesting little tidbit from the Fall 2005 issue of River City Review, the City’s newsletter:

The City of Peoria has 355 cul-de-sacs and 238 dead-end streets which are the most time-consuming to plow. It takes an average of 35 minutes to clear a cul-de-sac of snow. This is eight times longer than it takes to plow a through street of the same size. Cul-de-sacs are more difficult because of the limited space to dump snow without burying driveways, mailboxes, streetlights, and fire hydrants. The ever-increasing number of cul-de-sacs in newer subdivisions multiplies the amount of time to clear non-routed streets in Peoria.

There are other downfalls to cul-de-sacs. They’re not well-regarded in New Urbanist literature. For instance, here’s part of a critique from Heart-of-Peoria-Plan-author Andres Duany’s book “Suburban Nation,” p. 116:

CUL-DE-SAC KIDS

Perhaps the most worrisome [lifestyle imposed by contemporary suburban development] is the situation facing the children of suburbia. In one of the great ironies of our era, the cul-de-sac suburbs, originally conceived as youth’s great playground, are proving to be less than ideal for America’s young.

That suburban life may be bad for children comes as a surprise. After all, most families move to the suburbs precisely because they think it will be “good for the children.” What do they mean by that? Better suburban schools — a phenomenon peculiar to the United States — are good for children. Big, safe, grassy fields to play on are also good for them. What is not so good for children, however, is the complete loss of autonomy they suffer in suburbia. In this environment where all activities are segregated and distances are measured on the odometer, a child’s personal mobility extends no farther than the edge of the subdivision. Even the local softball field often exists beyond the child’s independent reach.

The result is a new phenomenon: the “cul-de-sac kid,” the child who lives as a prisoner of a thoroughly safe and unchallenging environment. While this state of affairs may be acceptable, even desirable, through about age five, what of the next ten or twelve years? Dependent always on some adult to drive them around, children and adolescents are unable to practice at becoming adults. They cannot run so simple a household errand as picking up a carton of milk. They cannot bicycle to the toy store and spend their money on their own. They cannot drop in on their mother at work. Most cannot walk to school. Even pickup baseball games are a thing of the past, with parents now required to arrange car-pooling with near-military precision, to transport the children at the appointed times.

The problem with cul-de-sacs is that they all exit onto collector roads which in turn exit onto arterial streets. Think of the neighborhood off of War Memorial at Montello. It’s a beautiful neighborhood of residential houses on dead-end streets, but if you want to go shopping or see a movie, there’s no way for children to get there safely by walking or bicycling because the only access is Route 150. Any children or adolescents living there must rely on their parents to drive them everywhere.

And, now we learn that cul-de-sacs are a huge drain on city resources in the winter because of the time it takes to clear them of snow. Older parts of the city that are on a grid pattern of through-streets take only an eighth of the time to clear. Just one more example of the efficiency of urban living.

City of Peoria, Traffic, Weather

How well did Peoria handle the snow?

7 Comments

Immediately after the storm, I was pretty impressed with the city’s response. In fact, I’ve been kind of defending them to some people who have been more critical. I mentioned the fact that snowstorms this big are uncommon (the last one was in 1999), so it’s unrealistic to expect the city to maintain the manpower and equipment for a storm of this size when it happens so infrequently and the budget is so tight. Also, my alley was plowed (a single pass) within 24 hours of the storm, which made me happy and allowed me to get into work Saturday.

But now it’s Monday — day three following the storm — and there hasn’t been any precipitation or even much wind the last few days. I was out last night and the roads, while plowed and passable, were still horrendous. You couldn’t travel along University much over 15 mph (although there were plenty of idiots who tried and were fishtailing all over the place), and most of the roads were packed down snow and ice with lots of pits and ruts. Road conditions were so bad that District 150 canceled school again today.

Yet, conversely, I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal reports that streets in East Peoria and Pekin are clear and easily driveable, and I believe school is in session in those communities today. So, if that’s true, why is Peoria still such a mess? The excuse I’m hearing more than anything is that public works crews were slowed by a number of stuck and abandoned cars on the roads. For instance, here’s what Mayor Ardis said in today’s “Word on the Street” column:

“I’d say the biggest part of the problem – they told people not to go out Friday unless absolutely necessary and some people still went out and got stuck. Then the plows can’t get around them.”

So, does that mean no one went out and got stuck in East Peoria or Pekin this past weekend? Here’s another excuse:

Also, Ardis said he was getting some complaints about Knoxville Avenue not being clear.

“People scream about Knoxville, but they should know it’s a state road. That’s not part of our thing,” said Ardis, adding he’s sure the state was doing the best it could given the circumstances.

But Route 24 is also maintained by the state, and I’ve heard that that route specifically is clearer across the river than it is in Peoria. So, the state did a better job of clearing their routes across the river than they did here?

In fairness, I haven’t been across the river to see these roads for myself, so I could be the victim of “bad intelligence,” as they say in the military. However, if the information I’ve been hearing is true, I have a feeling the City of Peoria is going to catch a lot of flack in the coming days — maybe even at tomorrow’s council meeting.

City of Peoria, Traffic

Dunlap resident whines about traveling through Peoria

25 Comments

Here’s a humorous little nugget from the Journal Star Forum today:

New Urbanism making it tougher on Peoria drivers

The Journal Star has often touted Greater Peoria as a 15-minute city, where getting around town is so much easier than in Chicagoland. That claim has been eroded by selfishness and the New Urbanism nonsense.

Years ago, the Peoria Public Works Department was proud of the fact that Knoxville Avenue traffic lights were timed so motorists could go the speed limit and not hit a red light all the way to Downtown. Have you tried to drive Knoxville, from the northern city limits to Downtown, lately? See how many red lights you get to wait at.

North Prospect Road drivers are assaulted by speed humps. Prospect south of War Memorial Drive has driving lanes taken away. Do motorists enjoy following those slow drivers now that they cannot get around them?

May I also mention the closing of old Big Hollow Road to eliminate another route to Glen Hollow shopping? Are motorists appreciative of all of the traffic lights on Sterling? Peoria traffic is looking more like that of a Chicago suburb. Now the city of Peoria wants to take U.S. Highway 24 and narrow it.

New Urbanism is the latest fad that is being used as an excuse to make older parts of Peoria less driver-friendly, in spite of millions invested by IDOT to help motorists, not hinder them.

John Doering
Dunlap

Mr. Doering decries “selfishness,” yet goes on to contend that he personally (or, at best, automobile drivers in general) should never be inconvenienced. Stoplights, pedestrian safety, neighborhood quality of life — all should bow before this mighty Dunlap motorist who wishes to breeze into and out of Peoria without ever having to stop or slow down. Ah, the picture of selflessness and altruism, no?

By the way, IDOT’s mission is not, as Mr. Doering says, to “help motorists.” It is, “to provide safe, cost-effective transportation for Illinois in ways that enhance quality of life, promote economic prosperity, and demonstrate respect for our environment,” according to their website. In other words, it should benefit all people, not just automobile drivers. When planning transportation solutions, IDOT considers the needs and concerns of residents, homeowners, businesses, advocates, and other stakeholders — not just automobile drivers.

And why the New-Urbanism bashing? Of the annoyances he lists, only the proposed narrowing of Washington street was the direct result of New-Urbanist planning. Speed humps went in on Prospect because residents were sick and tired of motorists speeding through their neighborhood. Big Hollow was closed because the Union Pacific bridge was falling apart and needed to be removed. The traffic lights on Sterling and elsewhere certainly have nothing to do with New Urbanism. And while Washington may be narrowed, I-74 was just widened considerably so those (like Mr. Doering) who want to bypass Peoria at high speeds can do so more easily.

So, in the spirit of hospitality, all I have to say to Mr. Doering is, “would you like some cheese with your whine?”