Peoria Pundit

http://www.centercoin.com/images/50states/2003/il_quarter.gifThe other
day, I noticed the commemorative quarter for the state of Michigan.
Their choice was — get ready for this — an outline of the state of
Michigan.

The mind boggles at the creativity.

Do I detect a committee decision here? Is this the design that /least/
offended everyone?

At least they’re not like Ohio, which claims credit for the Wright
Brothers’ first powered flight — /which happened in North Carolina./

I like Illinois’ design. It pictures a young Abraham Lincoln astride the
state. Some would argue that we already have coins and bills with
Lincoln’s image. I say go with your starters. What other choice did we
have? A shoebox stuffed with cash?

Well, we’re off to Haiti
.

I’m still waiting for someone to explain how this protects American
lives (other than those Americans still over there despite instructions
to leave).

Is Haiti harboring terrorists? I doubt Osama is hiding in a spider hole
over there.

Do we want to get in the business of surpressing what appears to be
popular unrest?

How is what is happening there any different than the violence that can
be found in parts of Africa, Asia or South America?

Anyone who thinks this is going to make us loved by those who have
previously accused us of ingnoring mostly black nations is a fool. The
Democrats who wondered why we’re so unconcerned about black lives in
Haiti will not cut Bush any slack in two weeks when the first Americans
start to die there.

It’s going to be an international force. Yeah. Right. Anyone think
France is going to put precious French lives in harms way for anyone
else is a fool. The United States will do all the heavy lifting.

We’re the world’s policemen now.

Somehow, I dont think that having armed Marines patrolling the streets
will magically end the corruption and poverty that made Haiti such a
mess in the first place. In other words, as soon as we leave — provided
Bush even has an exit strategy — the cycle starts all over again.

From the Journal Star: Civic Center hotel among ideas

While offering up no details, Peoria City Manager Randy Oliver admitted Friday that “there has been some interest in attaching a hotel to the Civic Center.”

“Anytime you have a convention center and there’s not a hotel immediately attached to it, there is some interest by some people to create a convention center hotel,” Oliver said Friday. “We’re open to entertaining any and all proposals.”

The comments come on the heels of leaked reports that owners of the Hotel Pere Marquette are seeking substantial city funds and other local monies for an extensive renovation. A city source has told the Journal Star that the request is for $1 million a year in city tax dollars for the next 20 years for operation of the historic Downtown hotel, as well as a $6 million loan from the city for renovations.

The city loan would be paid back through hotel profits, but it would not be guaranteed unless those profits emerge, the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The proposal also reportedly includes a combined $6 million gift from Caterpillar Inc. and the Peoria Civic Federation, a private group of top area CEO’s.

Caterpillar and the Civic Federation officials have both denied they’ve been approached with any such deal.

There doesn’t seem to be much support. Here:

“I will say that the proposal they provided, in my opinion, was not in the best interest of the city of Peoria nor was it in the best interest of the taxpayers,” Oliver said, adding he doesn’t believe that discussions to help the Pere Marquette are very far slong.

And here:

Meanwhile, some City Council members are upset that the media are informing them of negotiations with the hotel.

At-large Councilman Eric Turner says the various proposals should be discussed by the entire council in executive session.

“There are private investors in this community who I have talked to (Friday) that said they are willing to look at options for the Pere,” Turner added. “They’re very serious. I have a proposal. So, it’s out there. It’s just a matter of us beginning the discussion.”

At-large Councilman John Morris said the media’s involvement “makes it difficult for me to take any of these (proposals) seriously until we have a formal proposal. My principal concern is for the health and vitality of Downtown Peoria and that we’re looking at all the options. I want to protect the current taxpayers’ investments.”

Translation: “Cursed media! I’ll vote for anything that takes taxpayer money and puts into the hands of developers! But I won’t get the chance if you keep interfering!”

And Ransburg is still trying conduct secret meetings on the whole thing:

Mayor Dave Ransburg, who has been criticized by some council members for not involving them in the debate, said again Friday that “there’s no plan.”

“I think it’s inappropriate to share anybody’s proposal,” Ransburg said. *”I don’t want to design whatever we do in public.”*

Of course not. First, they have to get the plan together, map out a strategy to sell the idea, make sure all the players (i.e. beneficiaries) are on the the same page and are using the appropriate buzz words, then bring it up for a vote so it can be rubber stamped before opposition can build. THAT is how politics is done in Peoria.

And the Journal Star finds some backbone on today’s editorial page. They express some misgivings about spending taxpayer money to keep a privately owned, luxury hotel open. They better be careful; they come close to approaching common sense. When the guy who is supposed to update their Web page wakes up from his nap and actually posts the editorial, I’ll try to post a link to it.

*NOTE:* Speaking of the JS editorial board, it actually had the
nerve to chastise Ransburg and the council for not backing the referendum to eliminate the Peoria Election Commission and consolidate city elections services with the Peoria County Clerk’s office. It’s all about efficiencies, they said. Funny how the editorial didn’t mention that a very good case has been made that the consolidation could mean a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city’s budget.

dave randburg,peoria civic center,pere marquette

Notice how efficiency doesn’t matter when the spending is for a JS pet project like the downtown museum of Peoria history.

Anna Nicole Smith and Danny DeVito clown around during the Los
Angeles Lakers’s game against the Sacramento Kings on Thursday, Feb.
26, 2004, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo).

Geeze, those puppies weigh more than Danny does.

Imagine the conservation Danny had with wife, actress Rhea Perlman,
after she saw this photo.

“But honey, we were just clowning around! That’s why I had my face
buried between her enormous breasts.”

Mr. DeVito is going to be sleeping on the couch tonight.

And then there’s this one:

Oh, boy. He’ll be sleeping in the doghouse.

Maybe he can blame it on being under the influence of Janet Jackson’s boob.

? ABC News: Martha Stewart Judge Drops Securities Fraud Charge

/The judge in the Martha Stewart trial threw out securities fraud
charges against the trendsetter on Friday, saying prosecutors had
failed to present sufficient evidence to allow the jury to decide
the matter.
Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, still face
charges that they lied to investigators looking into the celebrity
businesswoman’s suspicious sale of ImClone Systems Inc. stock in
December 2001. Stewart also still faces charges of obstruction of
justice and making false statements./

The talking heads on CNN say this is the most serious of the charges
against Stewart, and are based in part on the legal theory that
maintaining her innocence was in fact an attempt to influence the price
of her stock.

Kudos to Jennifer Davis and Matt Buedel for two great articles.

Journal Star: Downtown hotel seeks city money

Owners of the Hotel Pere Marquette want $1 million a year in city tax dollars for the next 20 years for operation of the historic hotel, as well as a $6 million loan from the city for renovations, a city source said Thursday.

The city loan would be paid back through hotel profits, but it would not be guaranteed unless those profits emerge, said the city source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The proposal also reportedly includes a combined $6 million gift from Caterpillar Inc. and the Peoria Civic Federation, a private group of the area’s top CEOs.

City Manager Randy Oliver would not confirm details of the hotel’s proposal Thursday but said terms within it were “unacceptable,” though the city may be willing to work out a deal.

“The Pere Marquette made a proposal, and I think it would be up to them to say what that proposal consisted of,” Oliver said.

Neither Ron Samples, vice president of TransAmerican Investment Properties Inc., which owns the hotel, nor hotel manager Bill Carter could be reached for
comment Thursday

I’m willing to bet that a most of the Peoria City Council members who voted for closing Fire Station 11 will be enthusiastically in favor of this. After all, why waste money providing essential city services when you can bail out the owners of a luxury hotel.

And on a related note:

Journal Star: Civic Center panel may have violated Open Meetings Act

The Civic Center Authority may have violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act on Thursday by discussing financial options for the Hotel Pere Marquette in private, according to a Springfield attorney who specializes in media law.

That closed-door discussion with City Manager Randy Oliver included a recent proposal made by the Pere Marquette, said the authority’s liaison to the City Council, at-large Councilman Chuck Grayeb, who also attended.

The Downtown hotel reportedly has asked for $1 million per year in hotel, restaurant and amusement (HRA) tax dollars – which now repay bonds used to build the Civic Center – and a $6 million loan from the city that would be repaid only if improvements to the historic building turn a profit.

The proposal also includes a $6 million joint gift from Caterpillar Inc. and the Peoria Civic Federation, a group of area CEOs that includes Civic Center Authority chairman Dan Daly.

Though an executive session had been scheduled Thursday, its intent was not specified on the agenda. Before the meeting, however, Daly said it was to discuss “land acquisition,” one of the exemptions allowed under public meeting regulations.

“They have no reason to go into closed session” to discuss the proposed Pere Marquette deal, attorney Don Craven said afterward. The Civic Center Authority “is not giving money to the Pere; the city (would be). And, first of all, giving money to the Pere is not an exemption within the Open Meetings Act.”

HRA tax money is passed to the Civic Center through the city in an intergovernmental agreement. The Civic Center has no authority to route those funds to a separate entity. But even if it did, Craven said that would not allow the closed-door talks./

Here is the kicker:

Craven said a formal complaint would have to be made to determine what was said in the executive session and whether the discussion
was illegal.

Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said his office would investigate the possible violation if someone present at the meeting verified what topics were broached in executive session.

So, the complaint must be filed who by someone who actually met behind closed doors. My reading of this is that unless someone who actually
violated the law files a complaint, there would be no prosecution. Terrific. That’s Illinois politics for you.

Crap! Crap! Crap!

I’ve had the damn thing only two months and now my car, a 1991 Chevy
Lumina, is down for the count. It started stalling on me at stop lights
yesterday. It also acted like it had no oil pressure. I intended to take
it in for a tune up tomorrow under the obviously erroneous assumption I
could nurse it to work and back at least once.

Wrong. It won’t turn over and makes a clicking noise when I try. It
sound like a chain slipping. I don’t have the faintest idea. It has
plenty of oil, coolant, etc.

It’s a used car, bought as-is. I still have four payments to make on the
damn thing.

Once again, life hand me a crap sandwich.

From Rhetorica Network :

/Writing teachers often advise students to avoid cliches — those
tired old expressions (such as “tired old expressions”) that rob
writing of it vigor. Clich?s are as old as the hills and as boring
as watching paint dry./

Heh.

/To strip away the clich?s would require, to some extent, the
stripping away of master narratives — perhaps the most important of
the structural biases of journalism. And without those, the press
has very little story to tell. Clich?s compact the narrative into
easily-digested bits. And those bits may be strung together into
discoursive patterns that reporters and editors understand as news
dramatically told.

One might even argue that avoiding clich?s is tantamount to avoiding
“objectivity.” Journalism relates and creates socio-political
realities as, perhaps, the most important discoursive practice in
the noetic field. What do we get as news when reporters move beyond
the standard ways of knowing that they mirror and create?/

I don’t know. Good writers have trained themselves to avoid clich?s like
the plague. Talking the stigma away from using them would be sort of
like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Notice how these clich?s convey /exactly/ what I meant to say? Yes,
clich?s denote a certain unoriginality. But what they lack in
creativity, they make up for in clarity and brevity. Are we writing to
impress ourselves and our peers, or are we writing to benefit the readers?

Once again, Dr. Cline stimulates thinking about the business.

Will copy desks start letting them slip back into their newspapers?
Don’t hold your breath.

… that this project /won’t/ include “temporary” HRA taxes?

Journal Star: Pere renovation coming soon

Details of a “joint effort” to extensively renovate the Hotel PereMarquette could be released in a few weeks, one of the hotel’sowners said Wednesday.

“We met with Caterpillar a couple weeks ago and scheduled to meetwith them again in another two weeks. And at that meeting, we should have more detail on renovation work,” said Ron Samples, vicepresident of TransAmerican Investment Properties Inc.

While there are no funding commitments yet, Samples said “it will bea joint effort. We can’t do it on our own. We need some help from the community.”

It’s unclear if that joint effort includes public money.

Mayor Dave Ransburg and others, including Civic Center Authority Chairman Dan Daly, have discussed how to help the historic Downtown hotel. Ideas have ranged from using city hotel, restaurant and amusement (HRA) tax revenue, to federal historical tax credits, to tax-increment financing, among other suggestions.

Caterpillar Inc. is playing a behind-the-scenes role in pushing for renovations, according to letters between hotel owners and the city.

Also:

Although the hotel’s manager Bill Carter has disputed that the Pere Marquette is struggling financially, the company hasn’t been able to pay all its bills.

“We have been concerned for some time that the hotel would not be able to meet these obligations due to the severe economic depression of the Downtown Peoria hotel market,” Samples wrote in the same October letter to Dave Dobson, the city’s economic development director.

“As you know, the hotel has defaulted on four of its bond payments,and Caterpillar was required to make these payments under its creditenhancement” as a guarantor of the bonds.

In that letter, Samples was asking to extend the loan and that “$500,000 additional rent be waived by the city and in lieu we are allowed to fund a capital improvement program.”

Discussions to help the hotel have been very private – something that concerns At-large City Councilman Chuck Grayeb since there reportedly has been talk of using city tax dollars.

Grayeb, the council’s liaison to the Civic Center, is upset that the mayor has repeatedly met with select Civic Center Authority members about this without including him.

I remember that more than 20 years ago, they promoted the Peoria Civic Center by saying that the hotel, restaurant and amusement taxes needed
to fund construction of the PCC were going to end once it was built.

Now, they are using HRA to fund renovations and upkeep, and every other group in Peoria wants to get their hands on some of that money.

If the hotel wants to exist as a privately, for-profit venture, it needs to do just that: without dipping into the public treasury.

If there Pere Marquette cannot survive without taxpayer subsidies, let it die. Tear it down and build a Radisson or something.

*UPDATE:*

WMBD 1470-AM: Whither the Pere?

It’s still unknown how much public involvement, if any, would come in a plan to help the Hotel Pere Marquette. Mayor Dave Ransburg, while saying there is currently no plan, also says a proposal is four to six weeks away. He explains it this way: “It’s just likebeing in the third trimester of having a baby. We’re closer now to having the baby than we were when you first started talking about it. But we don’t know the due date yet.”

Ransburg says the Pere is a full-service hotel with a high overhead and should not try to compete on price with limited-service competitors.

? /Journal Star/: LST could dock in Peoria

/A local businessman said he’s willing to give a rent-free dock
space to a not-for-profit group seeking a permanent location for a
one-of-a kind World War II ship.

Alex Grieves, owner of the Spirit of Peoria, said he’s trying to
sell the Katie Hooper and believes that location would be a perfect
fit for the LST 325, an amphibious Navy ship that delivered soldiers
to Normandy on D-Day.

“I wouldn’t charge any rent, and it would be a tremendous asset to
our riverfront,” he said.

But Grieves said he believes a proposal would need to come from the
city of Peoria or the Convention and Visitors Bureau. “I think it’s
a win-win. I just can’t believe someone’s not jumping all over it.”

Up the Illinois River in LaSalle County, workers built 157 Landing
Ship Tanks in Seneca and sailed them down past Peoria. The 325,
though commissioned elsewhere, is believed to be the last operating
LST in the world and is the only one in the United States.

Jim Bartlett, chief engineer on the ship now dubbed the LST Ship
Memorial, said the group’s six-member board sent requests for
proposals to nine cities./

Provided this doesn’t become a city taxpayer funded project, I’m all in
favor of the idea. It would be a wonderful attraction to accompany the
history of Peoria museum the muckety-mucks are planing for the former
Sears block.

P.S. — I’ll give the /Journal Star/ two days to run an editorial using
this story to promote the museum.