Blogosphere

Civil Discourse on the Web

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I had lunch today with Kevin Reynen, who is going to be leaving Bradley University to take a job with the University of Nevada, Reno. He’s going to be “working with the graduate students and faculty at UNR’s [Journalism] School to create a next generation news ‘portal’ for the Lake Tahoe area. The idea of the project is to convert the ‘people formally known as the audience’ into content contributors.”

In other words, he’s trying to create a blog-like site where citizen journalists and professional journalists would be treated as equals, each posting stories (either “letter to the editor”-type or researched reports) and having an on-line conversation about those stories. Sounds like a fun job — and a beautiful place to live!

Kevin and I don’t always agree on things (like the Kellar Branch issue or Muni Wi-Fi), but we can still be friends and discuss things without insulting each other. Unfortunately, on blogs and especially with anonymity, you can easily end up with verbal slug fests like, say, this argument on Bill’s site. Thus, one of Kevin’s biggest hurdles in his project at UNR is going to be figuring out a way to promote civil discourse without any heavy-handed moderating/censoring. People aren’t going to want to blog and have any meaningful conversations if there’s always someone in there doing nothing but making fun of their points of view, or insinuating they’re on drugs.

The problem is magnified in Kevin’s case because what he’s promoting is not just people being able to comment on posts like they do here on the Chronicle, but to write the posts themselves. So, for instance, imagine my site being open to Bill, Polly, Eyebrows, Vonster, Tony, Anon E. Mouse, et al., to write any post they want and have it show up on my front page. I think you can see the potential for that to turn into a cyberspace version of “Lord of the Flies” pretty quickly.

Kevin suggested some form of collaborative filtering, like Reddit’s “karma” system. There, each user gets to vote on each post by either promoting or demoting it (moving it closer to the top or further to the bottom of the page). “When a particular item is promoted or demoted, the user who posted it is either rewarded or punished — a system of editorial karma. In the same way that popular submissions are voted to the top, the individuals who post them get increases in karma.” Those with more karma have a better reputation and thus, presumably, will be read more, while those without karma will be ignored and hopefully go away.

The karma system sounds good, but it might be over the heads of less tech-savvy users. Yet that’s the only technological solution I can envision. So I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to Kevin. I really don’t know a way to make people be polite or understand where “the line” is that they’re not supposed to cross. It seems to me that there would have to be a moderator, no matter how you look at it.

But then I thought maybe some of you, dear readers, would be able to offer Kevin some better insights. Any ideas on how to promote civil discourse and meaningful conversations without making people feel overly-moderated or censored?

Heart of Peoria Plan, Peoria Public Schools

District 150 tries to co-opt Heart of Peoria Plan

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One thing I didn’t mention in my previous post about last night’s school board meeting was the sudden use of New Urbanist rhetoric when talking about the Glen Oak Park site for a new school. One school board member suggested narrowing Prospect and putting diagonal parking in front of the new school to improve safety and reduce the need for such a large parking lot, which is not a bad idea in a “when-life-gives-you-lemons-make-lemonade” sort of way. Another board member went so far as to say that Andres Duany himself recommends putting schools on the periphery of a neighborhood. Duany is the author of the Heart of Peoria Plan, which (if the board would read the plan) actually advocates renovating the current school buildings.

In one sense, it’s encouraging that the Heart of Peoria Plan is on the district’s radar now. But on the other hand, they seem to be trying to co-opt it for their own purposes. Instead of a plain reading, they’re trying to manipulate the plan to fit their preconceived idea of where the school should be sited. When the plan clearly contradicts their ideas, they look to the larger body of New Urbanist writings to look for justification for their plan.

City of Peoria, Peoria Public Schools

School Board sets table for rebuff of city plan

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The District 150 School Board didn’t vote on the city’s proposal tonight to build a new school at Wisconsin and Frye, but the outcome is just short of certain: forget it.

School Design and Construction Committee members Guy Cahill (also district treasurer) and Marty Collier (Cat-employed architect) gave a short presentation, then took questions from the school board, some of which they answered immediately but most of which they plan to report back next week.

During the presentation, Cahill raised questions about the city’s land acquisition assessment; he said the city expects to acquire homes in the Glen Oak School area at market value (three times the assessed value), whereas the school board estimated higher than market value rates. He also raised questions about the “geometry of the site,” saying it “may or may not lend itself to what ultimately is planned.” He wants to have an educational expert compare and contrast the two sites for suitability, and he has questions about what all the city will be paying for — specifically, he wants to compare what the city paid for in the Valeska-Hinton agreement with what is being proposed now.

Collier reported on what’s coming out of the workshops he’s conducting with the School Design and Construction Committee. He said first of all that, since it’s going to be a “community school,” it’s going to need to be designed differently than a standard elementary school. Because of the mix of uses, the space will need to be “distributed widely” — in other words, it should be one-story instead of multi-story. This creates “segmentation” that keeps very young children from comingling with older children, and keeps the children separated from the “community” part of the school that would include a health clinic, for instance. He also mentioned there would need to be quite a bit of space devoted to (you guessed it) parking and bus queueing.

The questions from the board members were far from neutral or evenhanded. A lot of them were worded negatively: e.g., “what sports fields would be eliminated if we went with the Glen Oak School site?” “What programs will be lost by going to a smaller footprint?” It was pretty obvious the only purpose of their questions was to get information that will help them build a case against the current school site and for the park site.

There were a couple of interesting points, however. New board member Debbie Wolfmeyer stressed that, in comparing the two sites, the school board should only consider the land the district will actually own — which would be ten acres at the park site or ten acres at the school site — because the district will have no control over the land the park district owns, even though it’s adjacent to the proposed site. For instance, she brought up that the park already plans to replace one of the ball diamonds for a parking lot, so there’s no guarantees the other ball diamond will be there forever.

Also, new board president David Gorentz said, “The building plan and site plan should be driven by the programmatic plan. Until you have a program plan, you don’t know how much space you really need.” Since the program plan won’t be completed until this Wednesday, and the school board announced their selection of the park site back in March, I found Dr. Gorentz’s statement to be a tacit admission that the school board has been going about site selection completely backwards.

The bottom line is, the school board will rebuff the city’s offer and build the new school at Glen Oak Park like they planned all along. It’s in the cards.

City of Peoria, Renaissance Park

One World Café to expand with a little help from the city

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One World Café, established in 1994 at the corner of Main and University, recently purchased the former Lagron-Miller building to their immediate east and is trying to secure financing to expand their restaurant:

Their expansion plans include the relocation of the kitchen and upgrade of appliances, reconfiguration of the dining room to increase customer capacity, creation of a separate smoking friendly dining room/bar, improvements to a privately owned parking lot and a modification to the building’s façade to conform to the proposed Renaissance Park design guidelines.

They also want to add more staff — 8 full-time and 6 part-time employees — to meet the demands of the increased customer capacity.

They’re on the city council’s agenda for Tuesday because they want to borrow money from the city’s Business Development Fund (BDF). According to the Request for Council Action, the BDF’s purpose is to provide “a secondary or ‘gap’ financing source for local businesses,” especially those in the city’s Enterprise Zone.

One World owners Husam and Salam Eid (brothers) are putting $47,200 of private equity toward the expansion and have secured a $372,000 loan from Princeville State Bank. But with the project cost estimated to be $519,200, they’re $100,000 short. That’s where the city’s BDF loan comes in.

“The BDF is a separate and dedicated account, whose sole purpose is to provide secondary financing to local companies.” In this case, the city would loan One World $100,000 at 4.25% interest for 5 years. It’s a good deal for One World and a good deal for the city — more private investment in Renaissance Park and increased employment.

As a side note, did you catch the “smoking friendly dining room/bar” in their plans? Some people think business owners shouldn’t be allowed to permit smoking on their own property.

City of Bloomington, Town of Normal

Hey Bloomington, hurry to Peoria! Gas is only $2.96/gal. here!

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This is a pretty funny story from today’s Pantagraph — especially the comments section. Apparently, a rumor got started in Bloomington-Normal yesterday that gas prices outside of the twin cities, from Champaign to Peoria, were up to $4 per gallon! So, everyone was rushing to the gas stations to fill up at $2.96 per gallon before their gas prices rose as well.

What do you want to bet some enterprising gas station owner started the rumor? Don’t these people have any friends in Peoria that they could call and check?

My favorite comment, no doubt referring to Bloomington-Normal’s recent ban on smoking at restaurants: “B/N is so big on banning things these days, how about a ban on raising gas prices? Now THERE’S a ban I’d support!”

Arbor District, Bradley University, City of Peoria

Bradley’s 1991 Plan an interesting read

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Bradley UniversityBradley University first filed an Official Development Plan (ODP) in 1991 when the city created the N1 (Institutional) zoning designation. Since then, it has been amended four times, expanding their institutional boundaries each time, but the balance of the plan is still in effect. The largest addition was the St. James apartments east of campus.

There are several things that are notable about the university’s ODP, which you can read in its entirety by clicking here (1.71M PDF).

NEIGHBORHOOD COLLABORATION

First, there was considerable collaboration between Bradley and the surrounding neighborhoods. An institutional planning committee was established through the West Bluff Council, which included representatives from Bradley-West (Arbor District), Moss-Bradley, and the Uplands neighborhoods, as well as representatives from Bradley University.

This process of collaboration was praised throughout the document, such as these statements:

The Committee frequently acknowledged that the University will not be as prominent an institution, nor will the Neighborhood maintain or improve its character, without cooperation and consideration of the needs of each other.

The University is furthermore committed to continue to exchange information and have open dialogue with Neighborhood representatives which will hopefully lead to further improvements toward resolving quality of life issues.

The document concluded by saying the process “reaffirmed the need for ongoing dialogue between the Neighborhoods and the University.” I wonder at what point the university decided to start stonewalling the neighbors until they’d acquired a critical mass of properties in the area where they wanted to expand?

PARKING UNDER ELMWOOD?

Another fascinating part of the document is their plan to solve Bradley’s long-term parking needs. They hired a consultant to assess the immediate and long-term needs and come up with solutions. The short term solution was to reconfigure existing lots (including widening Elmwood Ave.), lease space from owners of nearby lots, and better utilize on-street spaces within the institutional district. That added 305 spaces by the Fall of 1992. But the long-term solution was really interesting (emphasis mine):

Subject to further specific study and of course financing, the ultimate solution for additional parking supply appears to rest with construction of a parking structure. The proposed structure concept would lie underground from Main Street to Bradley Avenue under what is now Elmwood Avenue. The facility, which would be at least one level underground, would be accessible only from St. James (the campus entranceway). Surface parking would be retained.

In providing this solution, there is the related effect of improving parking to the central campus without encouraging additional neighborhood traffic. The plan would also allow the University to remove campus internal parking on the ODK circle (in front of Bradley Hall). Furthermore, the additional capacity of approximately 600 spaces could allow the University to vacate Fredonia Avenue for use as a pedestrian mall and also alleviate (or eliminate) the need for ancillary lot usage of the St . Mark and Newman Center lots.

Now that’s an ambitious plan, isn’t it? I wonder whatever became of it? I’m going to guess that cost was a major factor. In 1997, Bradley built an above-ground parking deck near the Global Communications Center instead. This provided an additional 690 parking spaces — almost a hundred more than the underground deck plan — and cost $4.5 million to construct.

LONG-TERM BOUNDARIES

The plan, and specifically the boundary of the N1 district, was designed to be “useful” for “at least 20-25 years.” That would be at least until 2011-2016. Now, I realize that no one in 1991 had a crystal ball, and that significant changes could have occurred between 1991 and 2006 that require the plan to be modified. But that begs the question: What has changed? Enrollment hasn’t dramatically increased.

The only thing that’s really changed is that the men’s basketball team gained nationwide recognition this year when they made it to the Sweet Sixteen. The university wants to take this opportunity to attract top-caliber athletes, and the way to do that is to have top-caliber training facilities. That means (to the university) replacing the aging Robertson Memorial Fieldhouse, which began life as a WWII airplane hangar.

But the replacement building will be larger and wipe out what little parking exists, thus the need for a new parking deck. The university wants to put that on the west side of Maplewood, where those big, historic homes stand now.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In the end, I think a lot of controversy and hard feelings could have been averted if the university would have continued their dialog with the neighborhoods instead of quietly buying up homes along Maplewood and keeping their plans a secret. They may have had to compromise — only use half of the frontage along Maplewood, for instance — but would have formed a stronger bond of trust with the surrounding neighbors.

The university’s plans, as far as I can discern them, are pretty modest as far as expansion goes. But they’ve created a climate of suspicion now that won’t be easily overcome. That’s unfortunate.

Peoria Public Schools

District 150: Funding plan depends on circumventing voters

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Peoria Public Schools logoGuy Cahill, District 150 treasurer, is quoted in today’s Journal Star saying this: “Until we can demonstrate having our fiscal house in order, I think people would legitimately have a healthy skepticism of putting more money into our coffers.”

Bingo. That’s exactly how Peorians feel. If the district were to come up with a reasonable plan to put their fiscal house in order, I think they could get public buy-in and pass a referendum. But their current plan is pie-in-the-sky, and they know voters wouldn’t pass a tax increase to pay for it.

So, what to do? Why, go around the voters, of course! That’s why they wanted the state to pass a bill that would allow the school to get funding through the Public Building Commission (PBC) instead of having to ask voters. The only trouble is, the governor saw through their little ploy and put an amendatory veto on the bill. If his veto stands, the district would have to get voter approval to use PBC funds.

The governor has said that he doesn’t want the district to raise taxes without voter approval. The district doesn’t consider its proposal as a tax increase. The governor does, spokeswoman Becky Carroll said Thursday.

See, the school district is close to paying off some old bonds. Once they’re paid off, the tax levy that was financing them would expire. The district wants to keep that tax levy in place to pay for the new bonds. Thus, the district doesn’t consider its proposal a tax increase because, under their plan, the tax levy on the new bonds wouldn’t be any higher than the tax levy on the old bonds.

But do they really expect us to buy that logic? That’s like if I gave the district a credit card and said, “okay guys, I authorize you to spend $1,000. The bill will come to me, and I’ll pay $50 per month until it’s paid off.” Then, just about the time the debt is paid off, the district decides to charge another $1,000 — without my approval — and tell me it’s not costing me any more because I’ll still only be paying $50 per month.

Cahill thinks the district should be allowed to do just that, and if they can’t, then their whole funding plan falls apart. So, in essence, District 150’s building plan is dependent on the district’s ability to avoid a public referendum to extend the tax levy (which is plainly a tax increase). That means, their plan only works if they avoid accountability to the voters.

That’s a bad plan.

Renaissance Park

Showcase of Homes this Sunday

Ren Park LogoPRESS RELEASE

Peoria, IL – The City of Peoria and the Renaissance Park Commission are coordinating a showcase of homes for sale in Renaissance Park. On Sunday, July 16th, real estate agents with listings in the area have been invited to host an open house between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. Property owners who are selling their homes without a real estate agent have also been invited to participate.

Continue reading Showcase of Homes this Sunday →