Note: People who come to this site for news, opinion and/or the occasional eye candy can just skip right past this post, which all about house cleaning issues.
It’s no secret, obviously. I’ve been tinkering a bit. The header image is no longer a picture of the Illinois River, but something akin to a newspaper’s front [...]

As Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis mentioned last night, Firefly Energy was named a co-winner in the energy category in 2007’s The Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards. Firefly won for its innovative carbon-graphite foam lead acid battery for commercial and military applications. The other winner was Los Alamos National Laboratory for its process that uses [...]

Some random notes and observations following last night’s council meeting:

One of the best things about liveblogging is that once the council meeting is over, I’m essentially done with it. I don’t feel the need to rush home and beat my competitors by getting a post “on the air” so to speak.
Mayor Jim Ardis denied after [...]

I was going to try liveblogging tonight’s city council meeting from the chat room. The trouble was that as soon as I started to post, some knucklehead was starting posting nonsense letters.
So, I went to my control panel and made of use the chat room’s “Ban this IP address” feature. It worked. But it worked [...]

Item 10: Rezoning 921 W. Hampshire Road.
Motion deny approved.
Unfinished business, fleet maintenance.
Councilman Gary Sandberg, says denial not only about cost. City not meeting requirements in own Request For Proposals (RFP)? Oliver says he’s not aware of this email. Performance standards of city as not as high as what they were asking bidders to meet. Are [...]

The council now speaks on the 4 a.m. liquor license issue.
Sandberg: Don’t assume that because you don’t work to midnight, that others don’t. Prior to 1983, 4 a.m. liquor license went all the way down to Persimmon, half the distance we are looking at now, to Club Apollo. It takes police time to get from [...]

Item 8: Expanding 4 a.m. liquor license zone.
There are two proposals, one from Peoria Liquor Commission and one from Police Chief Chief Settingsgaard.
George Jacob abstains. He owns a liquor distributor, and cannot vote on any issue pertaining to liquor.
Mayor Ardis reminds those addressing the council to keep it to less than 5 minutes, not to [...]

Item 8: Springdale Cemetery budget adjustment.
Springdale will get $62.895. Manning: Fulfilling our obligation. Councilman Bills Spears: Do we have to pass? Do we have no say so over what the expenses are going to be. Manning; Ultimately, we are going to have approved over their operating budget. We should have outlaid the funds months ago. [...]

Item 5: TIF redevelopment Agreement with BEHR Peoria, Inc. Approved.
Item 6: Hiring Clifton Gunderson for auditing services. VanAuken wants to deny. Prudent to periodically get new eyes to look at the books, and put this out for bids. Oliver: No other local firms. If we do go out to bid, might not be enough time.
Turner: [...]

I’ll be using the chat room tonight.
NOTE: Chat room isn’t letting me post. I’ll be doing it here after all.
Consent agenda approved.
Item 2: Bids sale for bonds. Manning abstaining. His employer is involved in some way. Didn’t here.
City apparently has a very good bond rating, which makes it easier to pay for stuff.
Approved.
Item 3: Extension [...]

From the Bloomington Pantagraph:

A State Farm Insurance Cos. employee on Monday announced a long-shot bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Alton C. Franklin III, 52, wants to run as an independent candidate against the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. He must collect 25,000 signatures to get on the November 2008 ballot.
Franklin, a native of South [...]

The big issues are probably going to to be 4 a.m. liquor licenses, discussion (perhaps) of a residential development scheme on the riverfront. Now that Peoria City Manager Randy Oliver is dropping efforts to privatize fleet maintenance, it will hardly be discussed, except perhaps by a die-hard or two on the council. The agenda is [...]

Ex-pat Peorian and current West Coast resident Jeff Trigg sent me a note asking that I look at this story in yesterday’s Journal Star:
The key paragraphs from the article:
“Both cases involved high-ranking officials who had broken the law in Tazewell County, [Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court James] Heiple by driving away from police [...]

I don’t have cable. There’s not enough stuff on cable I want or have time to watch to justify spending the money on it. I swork second shift, leaving two days a week to watch prime time. And on those two days, I usually have something else going, usually related to this blog.
But I like [...]

NOTE: Matt Jones, a frequent commenter and Peoria Pundit critic, dropped the following missive into a comment at this post. Because of its length and the detail he provided, I thought it only fair to to make it a separate post:
As a member of the Central Committee for more than a decade or so, I [...]