Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools

While Peoria waits for anonymous donors, other cities look at alternative Promise funding

Peoria isn’t the only city jumping on the Kalamazoo Promise bandwagon. The Kalamazoo Gazette reports that “there’s now a Ventura Promise in California, and talk of a Newton Promise in Iowa, a Peoria Promise in Illinois and a Promise-type program for Hammond, Ind.”

As you may remember, the money for the Kalamazoo Promise came from an anonymous group of private citizens. Mayor Ardis wants the “Peoria Promise” funded the same way, but so far there’s been no indication any anonymous donors have come forward. Other cities are considering different funding scenarios (emphasis mine below):

The Ventura Promise is a community-college scholarship program for lower-income families. Under the program, announced this month, the Ventura College Foundation will pay a year’s tuition for high school graduates and General Educational Development certificate holders from families with household incomes up to $50,000.

The version proposed by Hammond, Ind., Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. would be funded by casino revenues and limited to children of homeowners.

In Newton, Iowa, economic-development leaders are pushing for a scholarship program funded through a local sales tax that voters approved Tuesday. City leaders said the tax would not be used to create The Newton Promise this fiscal year but have not ruled out creating such a program down the road.

I personally think the Kalamazoo Promise is fantastic, and I’d love to see it work here in Peoria. However, as the Journal Star points out today, Peoria is being tapped for an awful lot of funding for other projects right now (e.g., museum, Ren Park, zoo, schools), so perhaps the timing is a bit off to ask for large philanthropic donations.

So, if the donations don’t come through, what should the city do? Options:

    1. Find alternative funding, like other communities
    2. Continue to wait for anonymous donors
    3. Speak of it no more and hope no one remembers

    I vote for #2. The last thing Peoria needs is more taxes — sales taxes in particular — so option #1 is out. But I don’t want to see the idea just be forgotten either. I think the idea is good enough that it’s worth keeping the challenge out there for a while, even if the chances of funding seem slim at present.