Israel

Olmert defends Israel’s “proportional” attack

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The Times Online (London) has published an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that is as billed: a full and frank exchange. I was especially impressed with his answer to the reporter’s question about “proportionality.”

Q: But there is a sense in the world, and you must be aware of it, of lack of “proportionality”. Many people question how after two soldiers kidnapped and eight killed by Hezbollah we are now seeing upwards of 400 dead and rising in Lebanon. How can such an initial incident justify such a huge response from Israel?

A: I think that you are missing a major part. The war started not only by killing eight Israeli soldiers and abducting two but by shooting Katyusha and other rockets on the northern cities of Israel on that same morning. Indiscriminately.

Now we know that for years Hezbollah – assisted by Iran – built an infrastructure of a very significant volume in the south part of Lebanon to be used against Israeli people. The most obvious, simple, way to describe it to the average British person is: can you imagine seven million British citizens sitting for 22 days in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham in Newcastle, in Brighton and in other cities? Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads? What would have been the British reaction to that? Do you know of a country that would have responded to such a brutal attack on its citizens softer than Israel did? Based on my knowledge of history no country in Europe would have responded in such a restrained manner as Israel did.

I don’t want now to draw comparisons [but] one could ask the question what precisely did the European forces [do] in Kosovo 10 years ago. How many innocent civilians were killed in Kosovo 10 years ago? We can draw on and on these comparisons.

What are we talking about? More than a million Israelis are sitting 22 days in shelters because of the fear of terrorists. In every single case…that we kill an uninvolved civilian in Lebanon, we consider it as a failure for Israel. And you know how many Israelis raise their voices as a result of this? And they don’t have to because we feel that we failed when we killed uninvolved people.

The difference between us and Hezbollah is that when we kill innocent people we consider it a failure, when they kill innocent people they consider it a success.

Tell me, who are they aiming at when they shoot already 2800 rockets on Haifa, Hanariya, Akko, Sefat, Afula and the rest of the places, if not to kill innocent people? So I’m sorry for every individual that was killed that was not involved.

And by the way, how do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed? How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They don’t wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians. We didn’t attack any of the Christian quarters of Beirut. We didn’t attack any of the Christian residential areas in any part of Lebanon. We attacked only those areas where they had the Katyusha launchers, where they had the missile launchers, where they had the command positions of Hezbollah, where they had the storage houses, the logistic centres and so on and so forth.

So the fact that people were killed there who were not dressed in uniforms doesn’t mean that they were innocent civilians. There were Hezbollah people, they are the terrorists. Did you ever see terrorists dressed with military uniforms like we have in our army? No.

“Katyusha” refers to multiple rocket launchers first built by the Soviets during WWII and “able to deliver a devastating amount of explosives to an area target in a short period of time, although with low accuracy,” according to Wikipedia.

To paraphrase Olmert for American audiences, one could say, can you imagine seven million American citizens sitting for 22 days in Chicago, New York, Dallas, and in other cities?  “Twenty two days in shelters because a terrorist organisation was shooting rockets and missiles on their heads?”  What would have been the American reaction to that?икони

Kellar Branch

Lease loophole could save Kellar Branch

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The City of Peoria entered into a lease agreement with the Peoria Park District in 2002 that would allow them, if and when the Surface Transportation Board approves the discontinuance of service, to turn the Kellar Branch into a hiking/biking trail. I didn’t even realize that there was a lease agreement until recently.

The good news is that it’s still possible to retain rail service under this contract. Section 4.2 specifically states:

4.2 Possible Reactivation of Rail Service. The Park District acknowledges that its lease of the PPD Project Site is subject to possible future reconstruction and reactivation of the right-of-way for rail service. In the event that subsequent to the commencement date, the City determines that it will apply to the Surface Transportation Board (or any successor government agency) for authority to reconstruct and reactivate rail service on all or a portion of the right of way described on Exhibit 1 attached hereto, the City agrees to provide the Park District with written notice of its intention to make such an application to the Surface Transportation Board at least 180 days prior to date of filing of such an application with the Surface Transportation Board. In the event that the Surface Transportation Board would then authorize the reconstruction and reactivation of rail service on all or a portion of the right of way described on Exhibit 1 attached hereto, the City agrees to pay to the Park District the then current fair market value of the PPD Improvements which would be destroyed, removed or taken out of service due to the reactivation of rail service.

Since the park district has not done any improvements yet, this is the perfect time to reactivate rail service and renegotiate for a side-by-side rail/trail compromise. Why should the city lease this right of way to the park district for a paltry $1 per year for 99 years when it could sell it to Pioneer Industrial Railway for over $500,000 or negotiate a profitable long-term lease for rail service — especially since Pioneer’s offer to help build a side-by-side trail is still on the table?

Compare this lease agreement with Pioneer’s offer and tell me if the city is being fiscally responsible if they don’t reverse this course of action. This isn’t an either-or proposition, it’s a both-and solution. If they take Pioneer’s offer (and remember, Guy Brenkman is no longer in the picture, so there’s no personal axe to grind anymore), they get rail service, competitive access to Pioneer Park and Growth Cell 2, and the park district’s beloved bike trail. What do they have to lose?

Blogosphere

Me and Mrs. McGee

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Unconscionably, I missed the big TV event last night. I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch it live because we were having company, but I had every intention of taping it. Alas, I forgot. I listened to it on WEEK’s website this morning (the video was so jumpy, I gave up trying to watch it).

I did remember the big party afterwards, so I headed over to the Castle Patio Inn to celebrate the big unveiling. And there, I met Laura Petelle (aka “Eyebrows McGee”) and her husband, Garth Madison. We had a nice chat about how lawyers can defend people they know are guilty, how old we all were when MTV came on the air (the bar TV was tuned to VH1 which was showing the first day of MTV to celebrate their 25th anniversary), and other sundry topics. My only embarrassment was that I kept forgetting her real name. She finally gave me her card.

I felt kind of bad for Mrs. McGee, however, since I was the only one (other than her husband, obviously) to show up to her big party. Where were all you people??? 🙂

Anyway, it was very nice meeting you, Laura and Garth. My wife and I will be having you over for supper sometime soon — we’re checking our calendar (oh, and you have to promise not to make fun of our garden). In the meantime, see you online!

Kellar Branch

DOT Rail going out of business?

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According to a filing with the Surface Transportation Board, DOT Rail Services (Granville, Ill.) is selling “substantially all of [its] assets,” including Central Illinois Railroad Co. (CIRY), to Central Illinois Railroad Holdings, LLC (Willow Springs, Ill.) for approximately $3 million in cash.

CIRY is the carrier the city chose to replace Pioneer Industrial Railway on the Kellar Branch. Details of the transaction, as well as what impact (if any) this will have on the Kellar Branch saga, are unknown at this time.

Peoria Public Schools

District 150 plans get more expensive every day

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There are two stories in the Journal Star today about District 150 that are curious.

The first one says that the Glen Oak School site isn’t big enough to accommodate all the programs that a building committee recommended. Of course, those recommendations were based on a 15-acre site: according to the district’s Q & A piece, question 13, the “public input, community partner input, educator expertise input, and design expertise input” all based their analysis of programming needs “on a generic, 15-acre site as presented during Workshop 4.” So it should come as no suprise that programs designed to fill 15 acres won’t fit into a smaller area. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Thus, the rhetoric regarding the Glen Oak School site is that certain things will need to be “cut” or “sacrificed.” But this is misleading. It’s like a kid having a Ford Focus and telling his dad he wants a GT, then when his father offers to help him buy a Mustang instead, he complains about all the “sacrifices” he’d have to make to drop from a GT to a Mustang. Give me a break. The site the city offered is three times the size of the current Glen Oak School and provides more than enough space at a more reasonable cost.

And speaking of cost, that brings us to the second story in the paper today. It turns out that expanding the scope of a project costs more money — something business people know, but apparently caught the school district by surprise.

The board’s original plan (as stated in the Master Facilities Plan) was to replace Glen Oak and White with a K-8 school; that is, it would just be a school building for kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. Somewhere between that plan and their negotiations with the Park District, the new school became a “B-8,” or “birth through eighth-grade community school,” “which means they will provide services for parents, their young children and the community.”

That means the size of the school has increased from 80,000 square feet to 120,000 square feet, which means the cost of such a school building has increased from $15 million to $21 million. The Journal Star then says, ” Where the additional money will come from is unclear.” Ah, yes, the understatement of 2006.

Comically, this all started out as the district’s attempt to save money. Remember? They were going to close these old, inefficient schools and build new, energy-efficient ones which would pay for themselves in the maintenance savings. I wonder how the change in scope from K-8 elementary school to B-8 community school affects their break-even point; that is, I wonder how many years (decades?) it will be before the supposed maintenance and efficiency cost savings exceed the cost of land acquisition and construction. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that will happen on the fifth of never.

So now we have a school district that is horribly in debt that, in an attempt to save money, has figured out a way to put itself in more debt without any visible means of funding their scheme — other than asking the taxpayers to pony up more money, which is not likely to pass.

Moving to the east side of the river looks more appealing all the time.

Uncategorized

The Bell

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The first time I met Bruce Frankel, he guessed my hat size just by looking at me. I wasn’t looking for a hat, but was impressed just the same. I had walked into The Bell men’s clothing store on Sheridan to get some new shoes (I was looking for Florsheim and they carried them), and it was Bruce that waited on me.

He couldn’t guess my shoe size, but he did measure my foot (a novelty in this age of big box stores) and got me the dress shoes I wanted. I asked him all kinds of questions about the store, and he was happy to tell me the story of how long it had been in the family, how they were originally downtown and when they moved out to the Sheridan Village area.

When I went to pay for my shoes and he saw my name on my check, he asked if I was related to an Orville Summers that used to work at the Journal Star. I was impressed with his memory — I was indeed related, Orville being my grandfather, but he had retired from the paper in 1974, over 20 years before my meeting Bruce. This was a guy who remembered his customers.

I’ve visited The Bell numerous times since then; the last thing I bought that Bruce helped me with was a black suit. He guessed my pant size, much to my chagrin. I thought he had overestimated how big I was around the waist, but it turned out I had underestimated how big I had gotten since the last time I had bought a pair of dress pants. I suppose when you’ve been in the clothing business all your life, you learn how to size people up pretty accurately. He knew his business, and I appreciated his professionalism and friendliness.

I saw in the paper this morning that Bruce passed away on Sunday, July 30, at the age of 74. My condolences to the Frankel family.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Library

Can new director breathe new life into library?

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Peoria Public LibraryThis is old news that I somehow missed a couple of weeks ago, but is worth mentioning in case you missed it, too. The Peoria Public Library is getting a new director. Edward M. Szynaka will take the reigns August 14 and earn $100,000 a year (I’m clearly in the wrong business).

Szynaka was fired as director of the Indianapolis-Marion Public Library three years ago, but Peoria library officials are satisfied that it was all political and not a reflection of Szynaka’s performance or abilities.

The new chief will have his work cut out for him here. The most recent statistical report that the library filed with City Hall shows 4% fewer people visited the city’s libraries between January and June this year than the same period in 2005. Despite the fewer visits, 5% more books are being checked out, thanks to the Bookmobile and the Lakeview branch (all other branches declined). Perhaps as a sign of the times, over 45,000 computer users have been signed up so far this year, up over 10% from this time last year.

The Journal Star reports that he oversaw a 30% increase in library usage while in Indianapolis. We’ll see if he can work the same magic here. I hope so. The library is such a wealth of information and invaluable resource to the community. I think a lot of people simply take it for granted. There’s a lot of information you won’t find on the internet, but is available at the public library.

I personally love the library and visit the downtown branch frequently, mostly because of all the reference materials they have — especially newspapers on microfilm, genealogical aids, and Peoria history archives. It’s a great place to check out movies and documentaries, too. I don’t contribute much to the circulation totals since you can’t check out reference materials, but I occasionally check out a book I want to read, but don’t want to buy.

Now that my daughter is learning to read, she has just started to discover the wonder of the library’s children’s department. You gotta love borrowing — if I had to buy all those books, I’d be broke and we wouldn’t have anyplace to keep them. Thanks to the library, she has hundreds of books at her reading level to choose from, and we just return them when she’s done. It helps her learn to read and my taxes pay for it whether we use it or not, so might as well use it!

The library has a new five-year strategic plan coming out soon. Hopefully, with Szynaka’s influence, it will be just the shot in the arm needed to draw people back to the library.

Books

Mayflower

I’ve spent the weekend reading “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War” by Nathaniel Philbrick, and just finished it tonight. What an interesting history!

Mayflower Book JacketWhile it does follow the Pilgrims from Leiden to Plymouth Rock, the most interesting part of the book to me is its history of King Philip’s War (1675-1676), a war I had never studied in high school or college. Like Philbrick states in his epilogue is common, my view of American history jumps from the 1620s to the mid-1700s unaware of this conflict and its profound effect on the future of Native Americans’ way of life and English-Native relations.

Philip was the Christian name of a Native sachem, or chief, of the Pokanoket tribe. He earned the title of “king” (derisively) among the English when he claimed to be equal to King Charles (since he was the supreme ruler of his people and the Pilgrims were subjects of their king). The war started after repeated injury and disrespect to the Natives drove Philip to try and organize a pan-Indian war with the settlers.

The exploits of the daring Benjamin Church were almost beyond belief, sounding more like a screenplay for a movie than a historical narrative. For example, once when chasing Totoson, “the sachem who had attacked Dartmouth and the Clark garrison,” through a swamp, imagine what this scene must have looked like:

While the Sakonnets [Natives who fought with the English] guarded the others [prisoners], Church chased Totoson. It looked as if the sachem might escape, so Church stopped to fire his musket. Unfortunately it was a damp morning, and Church’s musket refused to go off. Seeing his opportunity, Totoson spun around and aimed his musket, but it, too, failed to fire. Once again, the chase was on.

Church momentarily lost him in the undergrowth but was soon back on the trail. They were running through some particularly dense bushes when the Indian tripped on a grapevine and fell flat on his face. Before he could get back up, church raised the barrel of his musket and killed him with a single blow to the head. But as church soon discovered, this was not Totoson. The sachem had somehow eluded Church, and filled with rage, Totoson was now coming up from behind and “flying at him like a dragon.” Just in the nick of time, the Sakonnets opened fire. The bullets came very close to killing the person they were intended to save (Church claimed “he felt the wind of them”), but they had the desired effect. Totoson abandoned his attempt to kill the English captain and escaped into the swamp.

Wow! There’s a lot of action like that related in this book, making it a fast read. I was also surprised to learn that the English didn’t yet use forks in the early 17th century, so the first Thanksgiving was eaten with the aid of only their fingers and their knives (my children would have fit right in). But the weightier matter of the book is how it only took a single generation after the establishment of peace and mutual respect between the Pilgrims and the Natives for it all to fall apart. In the end, it truly is a tragic story.

If you’re looking for a good book to add to your reading list, I would highly recommend this one.

Kellar Branch

Pioneer offers immediate relief for Carver Lumber

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Pioneer Industrial Railway (PIRY) filed a petition with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) today to provide alternative rail service to Carver Lumber over the Kellar Branch.  Pioneer argues that, since the city and Central Illinois Railroad (CIRY) are providing inadequate and overpriced service via the western connection and refuse to route cars over the Kellar Branch any longer, the STB should allow Pioneer that service instead.  The STB has the authority to make such a determination if it so chooses.

This is a little technical, but in this particular filing, Pioneer is not asking to restore service permanently on the Kellar Branch (that falls under a different petition that is still pending).  What they are asking is to provide service over the Kellar Branch in the interim — that is, until the STB rules on whether service over the Kellar Branch should be permanently discontinued.

The city contends that the Kellar Branch is in such a state of disrepair that it would take over two million dollars to fix it.  Pioneer disputes that claim and offers to repair the trackage out of its own pocket if allowed to provide immediate service to Carver by the STB.

The STB could decide on this petition any time, since it’s not contingent on the outcome of the city’s request to discontinue service over the Kellar Branch.  Their answer to this request from Pioneer might be an indication of which way they’re leaning on that larger issue.  Stay tuned.

City of Peoria, East Bluff, Peoria Park District, Peoria Public Schools

Questions and Questionable Answers

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Peoria Public Schools logoThe Journal Star provides on their website a copy of the “Questions and Answer” sheet Ken Hinton distributed at the special District 150 School Board meeting on Monday. On pages three and four, it says this:

9. What is the actual size of the property being acquired at the park site. DW

ANSWER: A total of 10.47 acres is being acquired at the Park site either by actual purchase by the School District or subject to the 99-year Intergovernmental Agreement. In addition, however, Glen Oak Park is 110 acres and all of the facilities will be available for school use subject to mutually agreed rules and regulations (scheduling, etc.) The general Park site includes such things as Centennial Playground, the theatre bandshell, baseball/softball diamonds, Children’s Museum, Zoo, soccer fields, nature areas, numerous tennis courts (some of which are currently being used by Woodruff High School) and Botanical Gardens and Conservatory.

At the Park District Board meeting tonight, East Bluff United Neighborhood Association president Marty Palmer asked the board members about that answer during the public comments period. I wasn’t personally there to hear it, but he reports to me in an e-mail that “the board denied all of the answers” to that question, and “they (board) have not talked to #150 at all since the letter of intent was signed.”

So it does appear that District 150 is (once again) jumping the gun on their site plans. Until they have an actual intergovernmental agreement (not just a letter of intent), they can’t assume all of the things they’re proposing in their question and answer document.

But there’s something else that’s questionable about their answer to this question and question 18 (“Would the city be willing to cover the cost of going to the park if the current school site is chosen”). Please bear with me as I set this up:

One of the big selling factors for the park site is that the kids will be able to utilize the park because they’ll be immediately adjacent to it. Specifically, the document mentions such things as the baseball diamonds, zoo, children’s museum, tennis courts, and botanical gardens. Has anyone looked at how far away from the park site these features are?

The land the school wants to build on is on the corner of Frye and Prospect. Even assuming the school building would sit on the farthest northeast corner of the proposed site (which would be unlikely), the approximate distances from the building to these wonderful amenities are:

Feature Distance
Baseball Diamonds 380-700 feet
Zoo 750 feet
Children’s Museum 900 feet
Tennis Courts 1000 feet
Botanical Gardens 1300 feet

For comparison, a city block in that area is about 350 feet. So, the closest baseball diamond is about a block away, and the botanical gardens are almost four blocks away — almost as far as it is from the current Glen Oak School to the park. Are we to assume that these children are going to walk from the new school building to these features?

I’ll buy the baseball diamonds. But do you really see 30-60 six-year-olds trapsing across the park to the zoo when it’s 94 degrees outside or raining? Or walking two and a half blocks to the children’s museum in the snow in 25 degree weather? Or ever walking to the botanical gardens even if it were 72 and sunny?

My point is that it’s very likely these kids are going to be loaded up on buses and driven to many of these different parts of the park anyway (which makes their question 18 moot). And if that’s the case, why can’t they do that from the current Glen Oak School site now? Obviously the cost of transportation to the park would be far less, even given the price of gas these days, than the cost of either building on the park site or creating a 10-acre campus at Wisconsin and Frye.