Links are via the Journal Star. The snarky commentary is my own:

We’re one step toward an involuntary county-wide tax to pay for a regional museum no one wants to pay for voluntarily. All it needs is approval from the House of representatives and the governor. Aaron Schock and David Leitch are already on board. I [...]

The links are via the Journal Star. The snarky commentary is my own:

Reporter John Sharp turned in a nice package of articles on the Warehouse District. The main story details how the area — just southwest of what we consider “downtown Peoria” — has evolved from a industrial and distribution center based on railroads to [...]

Note: This is a post from yesterday, but I bumped it up a bit.
Wanna hear what goes on in Springfield? The intrepid radio reporter Dave Dahl sent me an mp3 file of the Illinois House debating whether or not there should be an opportunity to raise taxes county-wide to pay a $15 appropriation for the [...]

Here’s some links to keep readers amused as I look for a guest for Sunday’s radio show about litter:
From Chef Kevin’s site, this email he received about the downtown museum:
 ”…seems to me if they can’t do the marketing and promotions to raise enough money to BUILD the museum, why should anyone expect they’d be able [...]

From the Journal Star:
A plan to set aside $12 million in state funding for the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum took another step forward Thursday, when the House of Representatives approved it.
The vote was 80-23.
Suddenly, that deliberately deceptive poll conducted by the county makes sense. You know the one that claimed a majority of respondents favored [...]

C.J. Summers took a look at the figures, and it turns out that the pro-museum push poll conducted by the County of Peoria actually found that at no time, under no circumstance mentioned, do voters support any kind of tax increase to pay for the regional museum that Caterpillar and other movers and shakers want [...]

State Rep. David Leitch thinks there’s a good chance the state will come through with $12 million in state money (READ: Money taken from taxpayers) for the Peoria Riverfront Museum.
The cash would be included in the Capital Development Fund for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and would have to go to a capital project.
You [...]

Apparently, we are supposed to read this article and come away with the conclusion that earmarks — which is the government and media’s new work for “pork barrel spending” — are good. Without earmarks, we might now have wonderful things that the uber-museum in downtown Peoria
The reality, however, is that anyone who’s been paying attention [...]

PeoriaIllinoisan says he’s sitting on his hands even though he’s got “fireballs coming out of my fingertips.”
Gee, could it be that PI, a big booster of the  Peoria Playhouse Children’s Museum, is just a tad POed at the headline above today’s Journal Star article: “Children’s museum funding drags.” Caterpillar has just announced that it will [...]

Links via the Journal Star, unless noted:

Once again, evil railroad tracks have lured someone into the path of an oncoming locomotive device. This time, it’s a pickup track that collided with a track sweeper.
Speaking of rail, blogger C.J. Summers blisters the Journal Star for its illogical opposition to running the Rock Island Trail next to [...]

The downtown museum backers asked the Peoria County Board to give them $24 million. That’s $24 million in taxpayer dollars. They can’t talk ordinary donors to cough it up voluntarily, so they want every single taxpayer in the county to pay up involuntarily. Seriously.
If the board says “no,” that might very well mean the end [...]

Today’s news links via the Journal Star:

At first, you have to wonder how stupid a former police officer has to be to try to solicit an undercover officer. Then you realize he was fired for misconduct, so the guy obviously lacks impulse control, as do the vast majority of criminals. The reader comments on this [...]

Just a moment ago, I received the following e-mail from Kathleen Woith:
We heard you, so the Peoria Museum Partners Invite Community to Help Choose Name from New Options
Peoria, IL, September 29, 2006 – Think no one cares what a museum is named? Not so, judging from the responses when the Museum Collaboration Partners asked for [...]

The committee that’s running the naming contest for the new downtown Peoria museum decided to wait until next week to let us in on what choices voters will have. My two cents: These these names were decided by a committee, I’m not expecting anything remotely sensible. The place is going to be a financial [...]

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have stories about the name-the-museum fiasco.
Feh.
Thanks, museum geeks. You’ve just turned Peoria into a laughing stock. I hope you’re happy.
It’s time for the City of Peoria to intervene. The whole project depends on money from Peoria taxpayers. So that means the taxpayers have naming rights. The Peoria City [...]