City Council, City of Peoria, Illinois American Water

Council Roundup: Garbage tax will be collected monthly

But we won’t know for a couple of days whether monthly collection will start in May or September.  There’s some question whether Illinois American can change their billing process quickly enough to start collecting monthly in May.

The switch to a monthly fee was opposed by council members Sandberg, Van Auken, and Grayeb.  Grayeb has a deep-seated hatred for Illinois American Water Company, and he feels the company is profiting from collecting this fee for the city.  That’s why he voted against it.  Sandberg and Van Auken voted against it because it doesn’t address the root problem — as Sandberg put it, it’s “putting sugar on” a poor funding decision by the previous council; it hides a bogus tax.

City of Peoria, Peoria Park District, Peoria Public Schools

Neighbors taking preventative action to save homes

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After reading in the paper that the school board is still eyeing Morton Square Park as the possible site of a new District 150 school, neighborhood activists are not wasting any time trying to protect the park (and their homes) from unwanted intrusion. They want the park to be named an historic landmark. The Journal Star reports:

Frank Lewis, who owns property adjacent to the park and who sits on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, brought the idea to the Central Illinois Landmarks Foundation. The foundation, of which Lewis is also a member, approved supporting landmark status for the park at its meeting Monday.

Making it a landmark would stymie attempts by the park district and school district to site a school there. The funniest line, though was from park district board president Tim Cassidy, who said the park board may welcome, rather than fight, landmark status for Morton Square:

“I cannot tell you what position we’d take, because I don’t know the implications,” Cassidy said. “If one of the things driving it is the school district’s plan, we didn’t have any knowledge of it until I read it in the paper. It’s never been discussed. The request has never been made.”

This is laughable. I encourage everyone to read the District 150 Master Planning Committee Final Recommendations, dated October 11, 2005. In there, the school district  specifically states as one of their action items:

14. Engage the Peoria Park District in discussions to acquire land adjacent to or on the Morton Square and upper Glen Oak Park sites. Such discussions might include the swapping of land.

Now we know that the school board talked to the park district about the Glen Oak site in an illegal park board closed session. Are we to believe Mr. Cassidy’s assertion that he “didn’t have any knowledge of [the district’s plan] until [he] read it in the paper”? That the school board only mentioned the Glen Oak part of the plan, but not the Morton Square park portion?  Does he think we were all born yesterday?

Also in the Master Planning Committee report (emphasis mine):

Beginning in the Woodruff attendance area in Fiscal 2007 with completion by Fiscal 2009, phase-out Glen Oak Primary School and either acquire/swap land in upper Glen Oak Park or adjacent area or expand Von-Stueben campus into K-8 [ . . . ]; Alternatively a new “Glen Oak Park” campus or, a vacated administration center on the Von Stueben campus would be vacated by 2009 and re-purposed with an addition into a primary school.

Separately, property would be acquired adjacent to and/or on the Morton Square Park site. A separate replacement building would be built as funds became available with a targeted opening of Fiscal 2009. Upon completion of the new school, Kingman and Irving schools would be closed. The Glen Oak, Kingman, and Irving primary students would be re-allocated to the “Morton Square Park” and either the Glen Oak Park (preferred) or expanded Von Stueben sites.

Sounds like neighbors of Morton Square Park have plenty of cause for concern; I’d say it’s pretty clear their houses are next on the chopping block if they don’t act to protect them. Godspeed, Mr. Lewis.

State of Illinois

It’s official: George Ryan is a crook

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Like we didn’t know.  George Ryan was found guilty on all counts for racketeering.  Read all about it in the Chicago Tribune:

A federal jury convicted former Gov. George Ryan today on all charges that as secretary of state he steered state business to cronies in return for vacations, gifts and other benefits for himself and his family.

Lobbyist Lawrence Warner, a close Ryan friend, was also found guilty on all charges against him in the historic trial.

St. Louis Cardinals

Still the MVP

It’s as easy as 1-2-3 for Albert Pujols.

Last year’s most valuable player hit three home runs yesterday, including a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, powering the Cardinals past the Reds in a game with a see-saw lead.

The only bad thing about being so stinking good is that now pitchers will probably start pitching around him (a la Barry Bonds). Still, it’s players like Albert that make you proud to be a Cardinals fan.

Peoria Public Schools

District discipline in worse shape than its buildings

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Terry Bibo’s article in the Journal Star today is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read about District 150 (and that’s saying something). The gist of the article is that a Peoria family who had been sending their kids to Peoria Christian School decided to give District 150 a chance. So they put their kids in Glen Oak school, only to have them be bullied and discriminated against because they were white. The daughter even got threatened by a group of three girls in a restroom once. The last straw for this family was when a fourth-grader (one of the three girls in the previous restroom incident), armed with a box cutter, threatened to kill their daughter.

What’s most troubling to me is the school’s response. Bibo talked to Associate Superintendent Cindy Fischer about this situation and was told:

. . . the district has policies that were followed in each of these instances. Every one was addressed, in large part through a nationally-recognized program that teaches and reinforces appropriate behavior. District-wide, 150 has four committees exploring various aspects of discipline problems. And for this family, offering [to let their kids attend] Kingman [Primary School] is a respectable option: It is late in the year, so the district is reluctant to make any transfers. But Kingman has fewer discipline problems and several openings. Hines Primary School . . . has none.

“It certainly is our regret that we were not able to bring satisfaction to this parent,” Fischer says. “As consumers, when we’re not satisfied with one product, we go to another. I think that is what this parent has done.”

Is it just me, or does that response leave something to be desired? First of all, if the district followed all its policies and the level of hostility toward this girl escalated as a result, isn’t that an indication that the district’s policies don’t work?

And what about those policies? They’re part of a “nationally-recognized program that teaches and reinforces appropriate behavior.” Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for the principal or administrator to punish the student’s inappropriate behavior? Are we to believe that this girl didn’t know that threatening another student with a weapon was inappropriate? If that’s true, then this girl has bigger problems than a lack of positive reinforcement. She really should be in another school that specializes in problem children.

Which brings up another point. Why is it that the well-behaved students were asked to leave Glen Oak and go to Kingman? Doesn’t that reinforce the behavior of those kids doing the threatening? I mean, they wanted those white kids out of their school, and now they are. I guess they won, huh? Why aren’t the delinquent students being removed from the school (sent to remedial school, suspended, or expelled)? Are we to believe they aren’t threatening other kids — that this is an isolated incident?

They have “four committees exploring various aspects of discipline problems,” which gives me mixed feelings. In one sense, it shows that they’re acknowledging the problem and trying to do something about it. But on the other hand, is effective school discipline really such a conundrum that it takes a cadre of administrators to figure it out?

I seem to remember the kids in my grade school being reasonably well disciplined. Of course part of that discipline was getting punished for wrong behavior, up to and including corporate corporal punishment. We were so unlightened back then, weren’t we? Unenlightened, but well-behaved.

One last thing this episode points out (as if we didn’t know): District 150’s problem is not aging schools. People aren’t avoiding the district because the buildings are not energy-efficient. They’re worried about safety, discipline, and education. This is where the district needs to be spending its time and resources.

Blogosphere

I could have been the Peoria Pundit

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Really.  I had the opportunity to steal Bill Dennis’s domain name this morning when he accidentally let it expire.  Wouldn’t that have been a riot?  All of Bill’s thousands of visitors would have brought up peoriapundit.com like they usually do and — surprise! — the Chronicle would have popped up.  Imagine my hit counts!  I would have been king of the Peoria blogosphere!

For a day, anyway.  Then there would have been riots, I would have been hanged in effigy, and angry mobsters would have kidnapped me and held me hostage in a dank corner of a Kingspark Mobile Estates trailor until I transferred ownership of the domain back to Mr. Dennis.

City Council, City of Peoria, Insight Communications, Television

Will Peoria’s new cable franchise agreement be moot?

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Peoria is in the process of renewing a franchise agreement with Insight Communications. The city has been through this twice before (for a history of cable franchise agreements in Peoria, see my previous post on the topic), so you’d think this is pretty mundane stuff.

Not so. You may surprised to learn that franchise agreements are a hot topic across the nation because of a newcomer to the video-distribution market: phone companies. Yes, telecommunications giants like AT&T and Verizon are spending lots of money upgrading their infrastructure to offer not just better broadband internet access, but cable television. Many believe this new competition will help stabilize cable prices, which are increasing at twice the rate of inflation according to the Consumers Union.

The problem is, these phone companies don’t like negotiating unique cable franchise agreements with each municipality across the fruited plain (like the cable companies have to do). So they’ve been working very hard to do an end run around local municipalities by pushing for statewide franchise agreements. They’ve already succeeded in getting franchise agreements with Texas, Virginia, and our Hoosier neighbors to the east.

So successful they’ve been, phone companies are ready to trump both municipalities and states by pushing for a national franchise agreement. That’s right, legislation was introduced last year in the nation’s capital that would radically change the Telecommunications Act: S.1349/H.R.3146 (“Video Choice Act”), and S.1504 (“Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act”). And this year, a bill will be introduced in the House called the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006.” These bills are all designed to take franchising authority out of the hands of cities and states.

There are a couple of groups against — in fact, incensed by — this action: cities and cable companies.

Cities don’t like the idea of losing local control. Franchise agreements offer numerous benefits to communities, such as: compensation for the use of public rights of way (e.g., utility poles, easements); mandates on customer service responsiveness; accessibility for public, educational, and governmental (PEG) purposes (e.g., channels 17 and 22 in Peoria); and requirements to serve the whole city (non-discrimination of service). That’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea. These agreements are beneficial to cities.

Cable companies don’t like the idea of these phone behemoths being treated as start-ups and given preferential treatment. They’re not buying the sob story from phone giants that it’s just so hard to negotiate all these individual franchise agreements when cable companies have managed to do it for 40 years. Plus, Verizon already has cable franchise agreements covering over two million households, so they don’t seem to be hampered too badly.

What does all this mean for Peoria? At this point, I can’t find any pending Illinois state legislation that would change the franchising process for municipalities, so there’s no threat on that front (correct me if I’m wrong). But if phone companies are successful in their lobbying efforts for national franchise agreements, it would render all Peoria’s current cable negotiations moot, and it could mean more expense to broadcast the city council meetings or the loss of PEG access altogether.

City Council, City of Peoria, Illinois American Water

It’s very clear… the garbage tax is here to stay…

I got all hopeful this week when I saw the city council agenda included an item on the garbage tax fee. Could it finally be that the council is going to do away with this not-so-hidden tax on Peoria residents?

Don’t be ridiculous. They’re just going to change the collection of it from $24 three times a year to $6 a month. Illinois American Water charges the city 80 cents per bill to collect this fee on behalf of the city, which is why the city was “only” collecting it three times a year. Now the water company has agreed to charge 20 cents per bill, allowing the city to collect the fee monthly at no additional cost.

There are a couple ways of looking at this. On the one hand, it will be nice having the fee spread out, I guess. On the other hand, it’s a little too nice — a little too hidden. This fee is outrageous in a city that collects as much in property taxes, HRA taxes, gas taxes, and miscellaneous fees as Peoria does. Not to mention the fact that even with all that income, they can’t fully staff all their fire stations.

It’s good for us all to have that three-time-per-year reminder of how outrageous it is so that we’ll keep the pressure on the council to get rid of it. The garbage tax fee was one of the reasons we ousted the old mayor and two council representatives last election. It’s a regressive tax, and it’s a double tax since garbage collection is supposed to be covered under our property taxes already. The “new” council should be looking for ways to get rid of the fee, not ways to make it more palatable for residents.