Animal Control, City of Peoria, Peoria County

Animal Control services move to County tomorrow

1 Comment

Just before 5:00 today, I received the following press release from Alma Brown, Communications Manager for the City of Peoria, regarding animal control services:

Control of Animal services will officially be in the hands of Peoria County as of May 1, 2010. The City of Peoria will maintain responsibility for animal nuisance calls such as barking dogs, wildlife complaints and the removal of dead animals. If your furry friend is a bit too aggressive towards other people consider giving it the best cbd oil for dogs.

Citizens with inquiries about animal control issues can call PeoriaCARES at (309) 494-2273 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. After hours, please call our Emergency Communications Center at (309) 674-3131.

Attached, please find a matrix detailing specific types of calls and service level responsibilities.

The City Council has entered into an agreement with Peoria County to provide base level services that will total $77,027 in 2011 and $102,703 in 2012 and 2013 for animal control. This move by the City Council will save tax payers $150,000 in next year’s budget. Base level services include the following:

Type of Animal Protection Service Base Level
Peoria County is mandated by Statute to provide certain animal control and protection services. The services in bold are mandated and provided at no additional cost.
Public Safety Require rabies vaccination and registration
Quarantine biting animals
Require animal bites to be reported
Make determination of dangerous animals

  • Prohibit animals at large
  • Impound animals for attacking or intimidating people or other animals
  • Impound animals for damaging property
  • Investigate inhumane treatment of animals
  • Investigate animal cruelty
Nuisance Abatement
  • Require animals to have a collar and tag
  • Prohibit abandonment of owned animals
  • Confine female dogs and cats in heat
  • Impound animals that cause unsanitary, dangerous, or offensive conditions
  • Impound animals that chase vehicles
  • Provide multiple pet license program
Animal Welfare Reimburse livestock owners if animal (i.e. dog) kills livestock

  • Provide spay and neuter education
  • Provide public education on appropriate animal care
  • Vaccinate animals to prevent disease
  • Impound loose, stray, or abandoned animals
  • Quarantine sick animals
Animal Shelter Offer animal adoption
Microchip animals being adopted or redeemed to owner
Euthanize unredeemed, unadopted, or unplaced animals

  • Impound and redeem loose animals to owner
  • Terminate and autopsy wild animals that bite
  • Spay and neuter animals being adopted
  • Euthanize diseased or injured animals
City of Peoria, General News, Peoria Area CVB, Peoria Civic Center

Civic Center rates the No. 1 reason conventions skip Peoria

40 Comments

Why do organizations skip Peoria and choose other cities to host their conventions?

The reasons were revealed by Sami Qureshi on WTVP’s public affairs program “At Issue” Thursday night. He should know. He’s the Holiday Inn City Centre’s General Manager, President of the Heart of Illinois Hospitality Association, and Secretary/Treasurer of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. He’s talked to convention organizers and read the PACVB’s lost business surveys.

Based on those primary sources, Qureshi says the number one reason Peoria is bypassed is because of the Peoria Civic Center’s rate structure. The number two reason is limited air service. The main reason is not, he says, due to a lack of quality hotel rooms.

Gary Matthews, the hotel developer who hopes to turn the Pere Marquette into a Marriott and connect it to the Civic Center with the help of $37 million in municipal (i.e., taxpayer-backed) bonds, disagreed with Qureshi. Matthews said that Marriott officials told him the Peoria Civic Center’s rates are perfectly fine. Qureshi countered that he wasn’t stating his opinion, but is just repeating what actual organizers who actually said “no” to Peoria had told him.

Qureshi and Matthews were on “At Issue” along with Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis and Holiday Inn City Centre owner Bruce Kinseth to talk about the “Wonderful Development” and its ramifications. There was also a prerecorded clip of Mark Twain Hotel owner and former Peoria mayor Lowell “Bud” Grieves explaining his alternative proposal. The episode will be replayed Sunday at 4:30 p.m. on WTVP, channel 47.

General News

Randy Oliver still making news in Surprise

8 Comments

It’s been a month since former Peoria City Manager Randy Oliver was fired without cause from his job in Surprise, Arizona. When Oliver left Peoria, part of his severance agreement was that neither he nor the City could talk about why he left, including whether he resigned willingly or was asked to resign. No such gag order was included in Oliver’s walking papers from Surprise, and one council member there — Sharon Wolcott — is telling the press there exactly why she voted to terminate the City Manager after just two years:

Mr. Oliver is a good technician, but he was not the right choice to lead this effort moving forward. He possessed the technical skills to manage day-to-day affairs of an organization such as ours, but he clearly did not possess the personal skills to resist bullying from “above.” He regularly chose to take direction from a select few.

Until people who hold the title of mayor, council member and city manager understand and embrace their respective roles, lines will be crossed and a culture of discord will hamper our ability to move forward. The roles are clearly defined in ordinance. An effective manager knows how to unify differing viewpoints from a policy perspective and resist interference by a mayor or any member of the City Council.

Asking for special favors, new programs or directing staff time is a common practice at City Hall and may seem harmless enough at first. But each time a member of the council or the mayor crosses over into the management side of city government with a special request, there is a cost associated with it. There is rarely a plan to integrate these pet projects into the greater vision of the city, rather only to move it forward under the radar of the budgetary process. This can only lead to an unequal footing with individual members of the council and mayor. In short a good manager should say just say “no”.

My vote to terminate Mr. Oliver’s contract was cast after repeated attempts to counsel him about engaging in political manipulation, only to be asked to participate in the Machiavellian games. While these tactics are not illegal, they do damage to the character and fabric of the organization.

Bullying and intimidation are tactical choices, but they are not healthy strategies to achieve a goal. The health of our city, our residents and our employees heavily lies in the hands of a city manager who focuses on the people and the long-term needs of a community. Unfortunately, Mr. Oliver was not the right person for the job moving forward.

Oliver had a response to that in The Arizona Republic:

Oliver, in an e-mail to The Republic, stated that he had a choice to have his employment discussed in public or behind closed doors in executive session. He chose a public forum.

“It was my decision to have the discussion last week about my tenure in Surprise held publicly as I had nothing to hide and believe in transparency,” he wrote. “Some council members, however, now believe they must defend their actions. The proper time was during that public form when a free exchange could occur.”

He added: “I have always treated all council members equally with all getting the same information at the same time. The council needs to determine how they best work together as a cohesive unit and determine their individual roles to move the city forward. I wish them well in this endeavor.”

It should be noted that the Surprise city council voted 4-3 to terminate Oliver, showing that the council was clearly divided. Surprise Mayor Lyn Truitt was quoted in the same article criticizing Wolcott’s letter, saying her complaints against Oliver are too vague, and that the press is the wrong place to make her accusations.

Also of interest, it appears that Oliver never signed his severance deal. He was fired March 25, and hadn’t signed the deal by April 21, so at the April 22 Surprise City Council meeting, the council gave the interim city manager authorization to execute the severance agreement without Oliver signing off on it.

Peoria Public Schools

ISBE to Peoria: Psych!

6 Comments

From the Journal Star:

Grenita Lathan has been granted that needed endorsement to take the helm as superintendent at Peoria School District 150 after all.

Despite state education officials saying Tuesday the process still was taking place and they had not received the supporting documentation needed to receive her certification, the endorsement was issued Tuesday afternoon.

Is it just me, or does it look like the right hand doesn’t know know what the left hand is doing at the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE)? In yesterday’s paper, spokeswoman for the ISBE Mary Fergus was quoted as saying, “To date, Grenita Lathan has not submitted the necessary paperwork proving she’s met all the Illinois requirements for a superintendent certificate,” and District 150 spokeswoman Stacey Shangraw told the paper “Lathan submitted application materials to the state twice because they ‘lost’ the first set.”

So, to recap, Lathan sent her paperwork, and the ISBE lost it. Then Lathan sent her paperwork again, and the ISBE said they never received it. But while their spokesperson was explaining to the press that they hadn’t received Lathan’s paperwork, someone else at the ISBE was busy issuing Lathan a superintendent certificate.

As if we don’t have enough drama in Peoria, now we have the ISBE messing with us.

City Council, City of Peoria

Liveblogging the City Council 4/27/2010

7 Comments

Good evening, and welcome to Peoria City Hall, Council Chambers. We’ve just said the Pledge of Allegiance and it’s time for the meeting to begin. It looks like all the council members and mayor are present. Remember that this post will be updated frequently throughout the evening, so if you’re following live, be sure to refresh your browser every so often to see the latest update.

Here’s the agenda for this evening:

Continue reading Liveblogging the City Council 4/27/2010 →

Peoria Public Schools

No wonder D150 is trying to bury public comments

117 Comments

Tonight was the last District 150 Board of Education meeting that will be televised live on Comcast’s education public access channel 17. From now on the meeting will be broadcast a week delayed — and with the public comment period excised. It’s increasingly easy to see why the district would not want this portion of the meeting on television. They want to be able to control the image of the district, the board, and the administration. But during the public comment time, a more unflattering image is often presented. And sometimes it exposes things the administration wants to keep hush-hush.

Like tonight.

Rumors of unapproved clerical raises were substantiated at tonight’s school board meeting, the Journal Star reports:

The union representing clerical workers at Peoria School District 150 is filing a grievance after learning 10 of its members in the central administration building were arbitrarily given raises in November now totaling more than an estimated $80,000, officials said Monday.

The raises were rescinded Monday, effective immediately.

Debbie Chavez, former president of Local 6099 Peoria Federation of Support Staff, which represents some 650 clerical, cafeteria and paraprofessional workers, told School Board members during public comments [emphasis added] on Monday that both the union and the School Board had been left in the dark about the raises approved by the administration, which she said boosted the pay of some by more than 50 percent.

Interim Superintendent Norm Durflinger defended the raises and said they didn’t violate the collective bargaining agreement … even though they were kept a secret from the union and the school board … even though he rescinded them effective immediately. He’s going to sit down and talk to the union about the raises … now that they know about them. Whoops.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about this scandal when the rumors first started flying on my blog. It sounded too ridiculous to be true. Imagine giving just a few clerical workers humongous raises — an $8/hour raise in one case — at the same time the district is pleading poverty, laying off teachers, closing schools, and cutting out live broadcast of the school board meetings. Nobody would be that stupid.

And yet….

If the school district were trying to destroy every last ounce of trust the public might have for them, I don’t know what more they could do than what they’re doing now.

My suggestion: Now that they’ve rescinded the raises, they should have enough money to broadcast the meetings live and in their entirety. After all, finances were the reason cited for going to a one-week-delayed, censored broadcast. Now that they can save $80,000 in five months, they should have plenty of money to restore the live feed and let the public see their representatives in action on Monday nights, right?

Amtrak, City of Peoria, Illinois Dept. of Transportation

Still on my radar: Peoria Amtrak feasibility study

12 Comments

Since 2007, Amtrak and the Illinois Department of Transportation have been studying the feasibility of establishing a Peoria-Chicago train route. The report has been constantly delayed, pushed off one or two seasons at a time. Last time I checked, it was supposed to be released last fall. I recently e-mailed Mayor Ardis to ask the status of the report. The latest estimate from his Amtrak contact is that the report will be finished and released this summer — and, Ardis added, the Amtrak representative “thought it would be favorable for us.”

Investment in new rail lines is moving ahead despite the state’s deficit problems. Before Peoria’s study was initiated, IDOT and Amtrak did a study on re-establishing service between Chicago and the Quad Cities. That report was favorable, and in January Gov. Quinn announced “$45 million in state capital funds to establish passenger rail service from Chicago to the Quad Cities. The new service will result in up to 825 new jobs, including 440 construction jobs.” Hopefully Peoria will get similar results when the Chicago-Peoria study is finally finished.

Amtrak’s ridership continues to increase in Illinois (up 10% on the Chicago-St. Louis route and up 4.1% on the Chicago-Quincy route), and yet still no train travels through greater Peoria — the third-largest metropolitan statistical area in the state.

General News

Trends in online newspaper access

1 Comment

Starting in June, The Times of London is going to start charging a subscription fee for online access to their newspaper content. Subscribers to the print edition of the paper will get complimentary online access, but web-only subscribers will have to pay £2 ($4 USD) per week. That’s roughly one-third the price of a print edition subscription.

“Paid content is the only way that we are going to see a sustainable economic model for quality journalism,” explained Times Editor James Harding.

Mr Harding added: “Saying that our journalism is worthless and dumping it free online is not a viable economic model.” Even were The Times to double its online readership over the next five years the revenue created through non-subscription means would be too low to sustain a quality newspaper, Mr Harding said.

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, added elsewhere in the article, “We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value.”

They aren’t the only ones setting up pay walls. The New York Times announced earlier this year, “Starting in January 2011, a visitor to NYTimes.com will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access.” The Financial Times has a similar setup. Those who register can get 10 articles for free every 30 days, but must pay a subscription fee of $3.59 per week for unlimited online access. The Wall Street Journal charges $1.99 per week for online access only, $2.29 per week for a print-only subscription, and $2.69 per week for both.

A recent article in the Online Journalism Review says this is the way all newspapers will eventually go because it’s the only viable business model. “You don’t get free gas from a gas station. You don’t get free meals from a restaurant,” observes the article’s author, Gerry Storch. “So why is the newspaper industry the only one in America that is expected to give its product … in its electronic version … away for free?”

“Giving away information for free on the Internet while still charging 50 cents to $1 for the print version of the paper was one of the most fundamentally flawed business decisions of the past 25 years,” says Prof. Paul J. MacArthur, who teaches public relations and journalism at Utica College. “Newspapers told their paying customers that the information truly had no value. They told their paying customers that they were suckers. Why would anyone pay 50 cents for something he or she can get for free? This poorly conceived and obviously flawed strategy has helped put the newspaper industry into its current financial condition and hastened the demise of many publications.”

I’ve been asking that same thing for years now about the Peoria Journal Star. Why should someone pay $247 per year for the paper’s content (which is continually shrinking, by the way) when they can get the same content for free online? What kind of a business plan is that?

Storch gives his prescription for the newspaper industry: “[E]xcept for the ‘Big Four’ national players, newspapers will not survive unless they 1) convert out of print and totally into the Internet, 2) confine themselves to local news and, most importantly, 3) charge for it.” Overall, I agree with this assessment. However, I don’t think they need to get out of print totally. The market for the printed newspaper will continue to shrink, but will remain at least a niche market forever.

But Storch is correct that a focus on local news — and charging for it — is a must. No one is going to buy the Journal Star for its reprinted Associated Press content. But people will buy the Journal Star for local news. You don’t get local news from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or even the Chicago Tribune. That’s the local paper’s competitive advantage, and they need to capitalize on it.

That’s the only way I can see for online newspapers to succeed in the long run. The only future for the free model is dwindling content and bankruptcy.

City Council, City of Peoria, Riverfront Village

Cost to replace Riverfront Village platform stairs: $265,617

29 Comments

The Riverfront Village platform was built in 1999 at a cost of roughly $9.5 million — $4.5 million of which was public tax money that won’t be paid off until 2018.

And yet, despite the fact that it’s only been 11 years, the stairs leading to the platform have rusted “very pre-maturely…to the point that complete replacement is necessary.” The bids are in, and the cost to replace the stairs is more than a quarter million dollars — $265,617 to be exact. Riverfront Village developers Mike Wisdom and Monte Brannan have declined to help with those costs, according to the Request for Council Action. Instead, the council communication says, “The Developers are committed to a separate improvement which will allow access to the platform and pads during periods of high water. It is hoped that the stair improvement and the alternative entry will help the businesses on the pad to prosper.”

Here we have a project that was designed precisely as a solution to the flooding problem. They knew the area floods and so they devised the raised concrete platform as the answer to that challenge. But they used materials for the steps — the part that would be under water during flooding — that evidently were not rust-resistant, and they designed no alternative entry to the platform that could be used during periods of high water. A rather staggering oversight, wouldn’t you say?

Now that the stairs are about to fall off the platform, the developers are not offering to help pay for their replacement. Instead, they’re offering to correct another design flaw, and acting as though that sort of evens the score. I don’t get it. The developers should stand behind their product and incur at least some of the cost of replacing the stairs. And the City should exercise some serious oversight of this new “alternative entry” the Developers want to build to ensure the taxpayers won’t have to replace that, too, in another eleven years.