Peoria Pundit

Today’s links are via the Peoria Journal Star:

• Peoria Airport Director Ken Spirito is leaving for a job at a larger airport on the East Coast

  Spirito, 36, has been with the Peoria airport, now the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport , for three years. He oversaw plans for the $65 million air terminal that broke ground in October.

My two cents: Some of the comments to this article make note of the higher taxes Peoria residents are paying due to the additions and renovations at the airport. I’m wondering if they ever got around to installing actual telephones to let arrivals make outgoing telephone calls.

• Average homeowners will see an increase of about $90 on their tax bills going toward Peoria School District 150 next year.

  The School Board presented the tentative 2008 tax levy on Monday, requesting about $3.4 million more than last year, a 5.6 percent increase.

My two cents: Kudos to PJS reporter Dave haney for getting it. It’s not the property tax rate that causes your tax bill to go up. The amount of property taxes property owners pay is determined by the dollar amout of the levy set by local governments like the school district. The rate slides up and down to collect that amount of money. In this case, the rate did increase. But I’ve seen time and again where government decides to collect a huge increase in taxes, but the rate declines because of wild increases in property values. Incompetant reporters and editors sometimes tell readers that this is a tax decrease, when it isn’t. But Heny and his editors lede with real lede.

• School officials unveiled plans Monday for phase two of the “talent development high school,” calling for more small learning groups throughout the school [Manual High School] and partnering with area professionals in the health care, education and business sectors for work-based learning opportunities.

  “Things are going to look very different next year,” Principal Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat told the crowd.

  While student enrollment will remain similar to what it is now, plans show more of what educators call the “school-within-a-school” concept – smaller groups of teachers working with smaller groups of students in their own space; more of what’s already in place at Manual, which saw a seventh and eighth added this fall and making its ninth grade “self-contained.”

My two cents: I have several thoughts:

Manual High School was once called Manual Training High School, and was originally designed as a school that focused on vocational skills.

I seem to recall that this process began because the No child Left behind Act required changes be made if test scores indicated a lack of academic success. School officials hate the NCLB act because it supposedly punishes schools that don’t have middle and upper class students. But everyone is praising this new way ot teaching at MAnual High School. So, do the teachers and bureaucrats who are congratulating themselves for this new model have any prasise for NCLB? Not one word about it appears in this article.

• U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria, thinks it is unlikely that either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives will vote this week on a plan to bail out the beleaguered auto industry.

My two cents: This is what dot com giant Jason Calacanis says on his Twitter page about the auto industry bailout:

Obama is NUTS if he gives one penny to failed automakers like GM. those companies NEED TO FAIL. give grants to Tesla!

He has a point. From an ideological standpoint, it makes no difference which private company is getting a bailout. Why not give it to a company that’s innovating. GM has proven that it cant succeed, because it’s thinking is mired in the past. Eventually, we’re going to have to abandon fossile-fueled cars. Why not make it sooner rather than later. Easing Tesla’s credit crunch makes more sense because we’ll get more bang for the buck.