Peoria Pundit

C.J. Summers has been attending meetings and doing good work on the Main Street Commons issue. Basically, some developers want to turn the former Walgreens at the corner of Bourland and West Main Street into a condominium project catering to Bradley students. In order to do the project as envisioned, they are going to seen some zoning variances.

As is usually the case with these sorts of things, the project as originally described back when the developers brought it up isn’t exactly what is appearing on paper. The neighbors are opposed — well, some of them — and don;t want the variances to be granted.

C.J. doesn’t like some of the variances and says the project should be changed. That didn’t happen and he’s ticked off.

It passed the Zoning Commission with next to no deliberation. Marj Klise was the only “no” vote. One of the commissioners said that provisions in the Land Development Code were “open to interpretation” — which is to say, meaningless. That was enlightening.

Yes, it certainly was enlightening.

I think it shows we don’t need zoning codes. Everyone thinks that is we don’t have a cadre of anal-retentive zoning  inspectors running all over the place, enforcing the ruless, the city will become an a nightmare. One example I am constantly given when I make this argument is that pig farms will up next to private homes.

The horror, the horror.

Actually folks, no one wants to put a pig farm next to your home. However, someone MAY may want to open a mom-and-pop store on your block, because thy think they can make a buck doing it. Zoning the city government’s way of saying: “No, you should try to make a buck HERE, where our developer pal has built a strip mall.”

Yes, some people will complain about having a store on your block will ruin property values.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t wish they didn’t have to drive a mile from their house to buy a friggin’ half-gallon of milk at a store owned by a corporation.

Another thing zoning codes usually do is keep little old ladies from building a fence in their yard, or hassle property owners about the size of their awnings. Zoning codes almost never stand in the way of developers, as this example shows.

So, I propose that — as an experiment — the city simply does away with zoning rules for about one year. We’ll see if any pig farms and rendering plants go up next to the castles on Grand View Drive. I strongly suspect there will be a building boom. And the general ugliness will be at the exact same level, as will the agitation neighbors feel when the eyesore they have gotten used to is replaced with the unknown.

Merle Widmer wants to know if Aaron Schock and the stimulus package will be used to bail out the museum project.

I find these non-priority requests in the process of being authorized by a Republican who is always hammering the Democrats for giving away our tax dollars as being more than interesting. I’m still waiting for the announcement of x-millions coming from the stimulus bill or some other bill, all taxpayers dollars, coming to Peoria to bail out the $17 million or more the Peoria Riverfront Museum shortfall.

Now, now, Merle. When other Congressman do it, it’s pork. When our guy does it, it’s called bringing home our fair share.

There’s a form on this Website that lets people send me information from their computers without using email. It’s called a contact form. I didn’t cost me a dime, and I think it took 10 minutes to configure.

You would think the City of Peoria Website would have something similar that let people make requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act without having to:

1. Download an Adobe .pdf. file.
2. Print the page
3. Fill it out.
4. Put in in an envelope and put a stamp on it.
5. Mail it.

But then, they might get more FOIA requests.

Journal Star military affairs reporter Andy Kravetz isn’t one to let “it’s the weekend” get in the way of getting us information about two Central Illinoisans who were killed by a roadside explosive device in Afghanistan.

I agree with Randy, who is a bit upset at politicians who imply that workers for the United States Postal Service aren’t as hardworking as their their equivalents in the private sector.

Randy is right and the politician is wrong.

It is quite simply impossible for there to be private sector equivalents, because federal law prevents anyone from offering a service that competes with first class mail.

I once wrote a column about USPS employee who threatened to have a young girl arrested if he caught her leaving notes in her friend’s mailboxes. From the response, you would have thought I advocated bank robbery as a way of life. Let anyone put a private message into a mailbox — even a grade-schooler hand-delivering party invitations to classmates — and the entire system will collapse, and then some poor schmuck in the wilds of Wyoming won’t get his bills on time. Whatever.

But I agree that the postal service is still important. Just the other day, I left my house without an umbrella. It was raining, and instead of walking all the way back up to my apartment, I just grabbed a handful of the junk mail that collects in my mailbox and used it to cover my bald head while I walked down the driveway to my car.

So never let it be said that we don’t need the mail.