General News, Weather

Snow Day 2

5 Comments

Well, they canceled our church’s big Christmas concert last night, and they canceled it again tonight.

The problem yesterday was that people couldn’t get here through the snow. The problem tonight is that there aren’t enough places to park. The lot is cleared, but the snow had to go somewhere, and it’s all around the perimeter of the parking lot, which means a lot of the perimeter parking spaces are unusable. In addition, the residential streets have not been plowed curb-to-curb yet, so there’s no possibility of on-street parking.

Tomorrow, they’ve canceled all the worship services except for one — the 11:00 a.m. service. And whether or not we have concerts tomorrow is still up in the air. On a semi-related note, I wasn’t able to deliver the Grace Alive program to the radio and TV stations yesterday or today, so that will be a rerun of last week’s program tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.

My kids have been having a blast playing in the snow! They go out and dig and build forts and all kinds of exciting things, then come in and have hot cocoa and homemade cookies. What a life. 🙂

Happy snow day again, everyone!

City of Peoria, Form-Based Code, Heart of Peoria Plan

New LDC needs more than lip service paid to bikes

6 Comments

I mentioned before that I went on record supporting bicycle lanes and required bike racks at the last public hearing for the proposed Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria area. I was encouraged to also present my concerns in writing during the public hearing process, so I’ve now done that as well. Here is the text of my letter to the Planning and Zoning commissions:

Please enter this letter into the record at the public hearing on 29 November 2006 identified as “A PUBLIC HEARING TO AMEND THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BY INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATIVE PLAN, REGULATING PLAN, AND CHARRETTE REPORT FOR THE HEART OF PEORIA PLAN AREA.”

I have two requests for modification to the proposed Land Development Code as outlined below:

1. Include bicycle lanes in examples of street transects.

Section 6.7.1 of the proposed Land Development Code states (emphasis mine), “INTENT: The streets within the Form Districts are intended to balance the needs of all types of traffic—auto, bicycle, and pedestrian—to maximize mobility and convenience for all the citizens and users of the respective districts.” However, in the pages that follow, none of the streetspace examples or specifications show bicycle lanes.

While I recognize that not all urban thoroughfares will include bicycle lanes, such lanes should be incorporated whenever it is feasible to accommodate multimodal travel and ensure the safety of cyclists on busy roadways. Thus, it would be prudent to include in the Land Development Code examples of how bike lanes could be integrated into street design. The following graphics, reprinted from an Institute of Transportation Engineers publication, are provided as examples of what I’m proposing for inclusion:

Transect example

Bike Lane example

2. Include bicycle racks in parking requirements for businesses.

Section 6.1.4(F)(8) states that one of the goals of the parking requirements is to “incorporate convenient bicycle parking.” However, sections 6.2 through 6.5 do not specifically require parking facilities for bicycles, such as bike racks. There are many references to “vehicle parking,” but “vehicle” is not defined in section 11, and I would argue that “vehicle” is popularly understood to mean a motorized vehicle, not a bicycle.

Thus, I suggest that in sections 6.2 through 6.5, under each of the Siting requirements, subheading “Garage and Parking,” language be inserted such as “a number of off-street bicycle parking spaces shall be provided equal to the greater of two (2) spaces total or five (5) percent of the automobile parking space requirement.” The numbers and percentages may need to be adjusted; this is just an example of the type of language that would be appropriate to ensure adequate bicycle parking. For an example of bicycle parking requirements in another community, Denver’s regulations can be read on-line at http://massbike.org/bikelaw/~denver.htm.

While I have referenced just the form districts in my letter, I also think it would be a good idea to incorporate these ideas into the entire Heart of Peoria area.

Thank you for your consideration of these requests.

I’d like to say that I discovered these omissions with my own keen observational skills, but that would be untrue. They were actually brought to my attention by Mahkno and Bernie Goitein (independent of each other), so my thanks to them.

Note: The graphics I included are from the Institute of Transportation Engineers publication “Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities,” available online here.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools, Public Building Commission

For all you who love our high Peoria taxes…

5 Comments

Peoria Public Schools logo…get ready for your taxes to go up some more, courtesy of School District 150 with the cooperation of the Illinois State Legislature.

On Nov. 29, the Illinois House joined the Senate in overriding the Governor’s amendatory veto of SB2477 and allowing School District 150 to get bonding authority from the Public Building Commission for a period of five years to build new school buildings. The Governor’s veto would have required a referendum to obtain the bonding authority, but thanks to the override, the taxpayers will not get a say.

Now, instead of our tax rate going down in the next couple of years as older PBC bonds are retired, the tax rate will stay the same or possibly (likely, in my opinion) go up.

Here’s an interesting quote reported by WHOI News:

“I think the most important thing for students, parents and the people looking to relocate to the school district is their children will be in modern educational facilities that are designed for students in the 21st century,” [District 150 Treasurer] Cahill said.

Let me ask you, dear readers, are “modern educational facilities that are designed for students in the 21st century” the “most important thing” to you? Do you think it’s the most important thing for those looking to relocate? When you’re evaluating a school district, is the most important thing to you the age of the school buildings?

Or do you think student performance might be a bigger factor? Or maybe crime? Or what about good teachers? How about taxes? Do you think property taxes have an effect on where people choose to live?

Of course all those things are more important. Nobody moves into a school district because they have shiny new buildings. A building never taught a child. And taxes and student achievement are the biggest reasons people choose to live in Morton, Germantown Hills, or even East Peoria, rather than Peoria.

So the school board keeping the tax rate up while simultaneously focusing all their energy on issues with no correlation to student achievement (i.e., new school buildings) is only going to exacerbate the district’s problems.

Peoria Public Schools

They’ve got a point

7 Comments

District 150 teachers have given notice they may strike as early as Dec. 12. Why? The Journal Star reports:

The sticking point is pay. The district has proposed a “hard” wage freeze for the first year of a multiple-year contract, meaning there would be no raise to the base pay and no pay increases for gains in experience or education. The union, however, is proposing a soft freeze, which means there would be pay increases for experience and education but no raise to the base pay.

This is the same district that is planning on giving two administrators each roughly a $30,000/yr. raise. How is it that they can afford to give exorbitant raises to administrators but are destitute to give teachers a raise even when they gain experience and education? The district can’t have it both ways.

City of Peoria, Weather

Snowed in

7 Comments

Looks like I get a day off.

Believe it or not, I actually tried to get out this morning. I got halfway out of the garage before getting stuck in the drifting snow. I was able to dig out of that and get back in the garage. Now if anyone asks, I don’t have to resort to speculation about whether I could have gotten out.

I’m not looking forward to shoveling.

I guess the good news is that it looks like I’ll get a chance to do some blogging this morning. If the newspaper is here, it’s buried under a foot or more of drifting snow. I think I’ll stick to the on-line version today.

Happy snow day, everyone!

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan, HOPC, The Peoria Chronicle

Community announcements and Chronicle hiatus

14 Comments

It’s just about December, and that means that work duties will be dominating my time. You may remember from last year that each December the church where I work (Grace Presbyterian) puts on a big Christmas concert called “Grace Family Christmas,” and I spend the time between the actual concerts (Nov. 30-Dec. 3) and Christmas Eve editing the concert footage to show on WEEK, channel 25, at 10:30 p.m. Christmas Eve and 12:00 p.m. (noon) Christmas Day. That takes up so much of my time that any free time I have outside of that I spend with my family, and that leaves no time for blogging.

Some things that are upcoming that I want to remind everyone about:

  • Tuesday night (11/28) at the council meeting, the Heart of Peoria Commission will be presenting their position paper on the Glen Oak School siting issue.
  • The next two Wednesday nights (11/29 and 12/6) are the last two public hearings scheduled for 2006 on the Land Development Code for the Heart of Peoria area.
  • Dec. 13 is the Park Board meeting where they will be discussing whether or not to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with the school district to allow them to share Glen Oak Park land for a new school building.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d just like to say once again how much I appreciate you, the readers of this blog. And a special thanks to those of you who take the time to comment — whether it’s to encourage me, disagree with me, or offer constructive criticism, or whatever. The best part of the blog, for me, is the feedback I get and the discussions we have.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and I’ll see if I can’t squeeze in some time to post a couple times this month. You know how it goes… If there’s some big local news story (say, if the STB hands down a decision on the Kellar Branch between now and Christmas), I won’t be able to contain myself and I’ll have to put something on the blog about it. But other than that, it will be pretty quiet around the Chronicle until after Christmas. While I’m out, please check out the other fine blogs that I have listed on the sidebar.

Happy holidays, everyone!
C. J. Summers

Television

Late to The Office party

7 Comments

Office CastYes, I know it’s in its third season and it’s won an Emmy, but I had never seen an episode of NBC’s comedy show “The Office” until about a week ago. And now I’m addicted to it.

It’s not that friends hadn’t told me about it before. The lead singer of my old band even told me about it once — said it reminded him of when we used to work together for the same company. It does. But I just never got around to watching it until another one of my friends sat me down and made me watch an episode. Well, that was all it took. I had to see them all, then.

It is hilarious! If anyone is looking for a Christmas gift to get me this year, seasons 1 & 2 are out on DVD. The pranks that Jim plays on Dwight are classic. My favorite is the one where he put all of Dwight’s office supplies in the vending machine and then gave him a sack full of nickels so he could get them back. And, of course, how can anyone not love watching the beautiful Jenna Fischer?

Jenna Fischer

In terms of productivity, “The Office” reminds me most of my time at now-defunct Foster & Gallagher. I worked in the customer service department for their Magazine Marketplace division back in the late 80s and early 90s. I would answer letters and phone calls from people who bought magazines thinking it would increase their chances of winning the big sweepstakes, then cancel them when they didn’t win. I have a list of about 50 different ways our customers spelled the word “cancel.” Most common misspelling: “cancle.”

Well, F&G wasn’t doing real well, and often we would have stretches when very few people contacted us. But they didn’t lay us off during those times, so we had a lot of free time on our hands. The customer service department operated on a team concept. There were two or three (can’t remember now) suites of six agents, plus a team leader and assistant team leader. One Christmas when we were especially slow (and by that, I mean absolutely no one called or wrote us practically the whole month of December), our team decided to decorate our suite as Whoville, and we’d all dress up as Whos. Our team leader was the Grinch, and our assistant team leader was his dog.

We were very productive. We made banners, played the soundtrack to the show on a portable tape deck, brought in lots of treats — including green Rice Krispie treats. I think I have a picture of it somewhere. Hard to believe we actually got paid for that… although we didn’t get paid much, come to think of it.

“The Office” is on NBC Thursday nights at 7:30 CT.