Today’s news: Ubi es Mea?
Links via the Journal Star:
The City of Peoria is considering paying people to live close to where they work. It’s supposed to be based on a similar program in Quincy. Meanwhile, a member of the Peoria School Board wants to give our property tax breaks to teachers who live in the poorer sections of town. If this catches on, city’s will have to offer a bribe to get anyone to live in them. Which is pretty much what they have to do to get businesses to stay. And look how well that’s working.
As expected, Prairie Farms is going to apply for a sales tax exemption to expand it’s facility on North University north of Nebraska Avenue.
Illinois Central College has a new fight song. And its student housing is full. Oh, joy. Since ICC now measures success in how much it resembles a four-year university, everyone involved must be absolutely overjoyed. Maybe one day, central Illinois will get its low-cost, no-frills, non-nonsense commuter-based community college back.
Spanky came back to Peoria to sing. Can Dan Fogelberg be far behind?
Peoria is just another Jena waiting to happen, says Don Jackson, the head of the Peoria NAACP. Why? Because prosecutors have the audacity prosecute black people. And because Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard fired a black guy for stealing.I’ll leave it to experts — or at least those more familiar with firefighting — to explain why Limestone firefighters left the scene of a relatively small fire only to have to return three hours later to find the house totally ablaze.
This is Pam Adams column in a nutshell: District 150 school board members and administrators are geniuses, Peoria City Council members are ignorant dolts who need to be educated. Adams actually had the nerve to lecture Barbara Van Auken about Whittier School. Van Auken can’t go five minutes in public without talking about Whittier, I’m pretty sure she’s familiar with how the place operates. Like Pam, I want the two groups to have a second date. This time, the city can lecture the administrators about New Urbanism and sustainable neighborhoods and why the middle class is leaving.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
You’re being unduly harsh on ICC again. Oh, no, 750 students out of 13,000 from an 8-county area live on campus rather than finding similar housing much farther away from campus in East Peoria where there is no adequate student housing!
And what are these frills of which you speak?
Mark my words, Eyebrows: One day, we’ll wake up and discover that they will want to rename ICC to “Central Illinois University,” to the detriment of it’s original mission.
Or maybe I’m paranoid.
One of the two.
Fiefdoms are wont to expand and ICC is certainly a fiefdom.
I’ll go with the latter rather than the former.
BTW, it is “Jena” not “Jenna”
I wonder where I got “Jenna?”
Oh, well …
I would love to walk to work, however I don’t want to walk alone after dark in Peoria and in the winter it is dark before it is quittin’ time. Walk to Work needs the buddy system.
Suggestion for Bean Counter – maybe you could partner up and walk with Smith & Wesson.
Mouse, is it you who always tells me that 66MPH is “illegal”? I think carrying a gun around is a tad more dangerous and, oh btw, also illegal in this state. Pickin’ and choosin’ which laws to ignore, are we?
BJ – it was a J-O-K-E.
Although I do support the concept of concealed-carry, that isn’t the law in this State.