April 17 election

PEORIA -- Only four days until April 17, an important local election.

How to choose between the many candidates?

At the candidate forums – I have attended three – the contenders speak in generalities and stress their family connections. (Married for 35 years, four children. Lifelong resident. Attended local schools.) These are worthless criteria.

How do they stand on the issues? Can they think clearly? Are they subject to outside pressure? Can they stand up to the powerful when necessary?

Do they blindly follow religious or free market ideology when these ideas are harmful to people?

When they’re asked serious questions by the audience they often duck.

At an early, pre-primary League of Women Voters forum, city council candidates were asked about their support for the Kellar recreational trail. Only seven said ‘yes.’

Four said ‘no’ and one changed her mind at the end of the meeting. She lost in the primary. The rest didn't know how to answer.

Of those who survived the primary, Ryan Spain, who answered 'no' now says he supports the trail, but Gary Sandberg continues to oppose it.

In fact, Sandberg is the only candidate of the 10 in the city council race still opposing the trail. That’s too bad, but a victory for common sense and high level persuasion on the others.

Otherwise Sandberg is a knowledgeable council member, often a lone voice of clarity on many issues.

Meanwhile Spain hooked up with Mayor Jim Ardis on April 11 for an unannounced and unconventional campaign event, which he afterwards said he plans to pay for. (See story below.)

At that event, and at an April 12 candidates meeting, audience members asked sharp questions and mostly got mushy answers. But not always.

An Uplands resident asked about environmental issues, and why Peoria lacks a strong recycling program.

With candor, Sandberg responded, “we had an opportunity to hire a (garbage collections) firm with recycling. We went with the known commodity (Waste Management) because of the good old boy network.”

Patti Sterling-Polk then added, “Peoria is always 10 to 15 years behind.”

Eric Turner then said, “you’ve got to get six votes. Everybody’s got their own agenda.”

George Jacob chimed in, “environmental issues are important but the budget is tight.”

Let’s translate these answers: real recycling is impossible in Peoria because the good old boys don’t want to pay for it. End of story.

But the evening mostly was devoted to crime in Peoria, how it drives out middle class families, and what can be done to reverse that and “stabilize” (their pet word) inner city neighborhoods.

Nobody discussed the elephant in the room: the poverty that drives the crime and the bad school test scores.

Some candidates fell into the trap of thinking that if only the neighborhoods can be beautified, the middle classes will return.

Instead they might look at what creates that poverty: the relentless war on Peoria’s poor by police, the city itself, landlords, payday loan joints, government agencies such as the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, even the lawyers and the courts, all of whom hassle the poor, rob them of money and keep them in poverty.

If you don’t believe me, stroll through the courthouse.

When 70 percent of the children in Peoria School District 150 are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price lunches, their families face constant financial stress.

A car that won’t start, a $300 city fine for a petty infraction, an investigation by the DCFS, a misdemeanor arrest, any of these can throw a household into turmoil leading to lost jobs, family stress and eviction. District 150 pupils move around constantly, educators know. It even has a name: the mobility rate.

People have been jailed in Peoria for ignoring a summons issued for letting a pet run loose. What is that costing taxpayers? Nobody talks about these issues.

Without good jobs these people will never be homeowners, but they must live somewhere.

In the alternative, if Peoria wants cheap labor to fuel its restaurants and stores, affordable housing and transportation are imperative. Nobody talks about these issues either.

Most candidates speak from the middle-class, business perspective of how to keep taxes low and attract “young professionals” especially “families” to the older neighborhoods.

What about singles? Older people?

Elsewhere cities are using tax credits to rehab elegant older buildings in the inner cities to become affordable housing for seniors. White School comes to mind.

The April issue of the AARP Bulletin describes a school in Indiana rehabbed this way under the title “Living in Affordable Elegance.”

Perhaps Peoria candidates lack imagination. The candidates are too busy playing to prejudices (married, four children, livelong resident, young professionals ) to spend time researching real options to improve the town.

This doesn’t mean people should not vote on April 17.

Voting shows the powers-that-be that democracy still matters, even if the candidates are flawed.

It’s like selecting an apple from a basket. Maybe it has a slight bruise but it’s redder than the rest. You hope it won’t contain a worm, and you can't begin to predict how it will taste.

--Elaine Hopkins

PrairieCelt comments:

That was a good piece you posted today - long overdue. I just don't see the city or the school district facing the real problem here - poverty. The city is not doing enough to attract new business and provide incentives or partnerships to revitalize older neighborhoods, and the school district is not educating the kids - they don't even know how to educate children of poverty (let's tell it like it is). I was very disappointed that the HOP plan didn't address revitalization in the two areas where it is most needed - southtown and the near north side. Why? We can only hope the plan does not send an inadvertent message to the mostly minority residents of those areas - that they do not matter. If that is how the plan is received, it could be a very troubled summer in the inner city.

I am getting tired of hearing that vocational ed is the great panacea - where will all these voc ed kids find jobs? Cat doesn't have many anymore, and Pabst, Walker's and IH are gone. And how does putting the under-performing children of poverty into voc ed deal with their inability to read and do math? I just don't buy it . . .

I'm also tired of hearing demands for the police to get tougher, especially with the kids. It might be an interesting experiment for the PPD to try some prevention strategies and relationship building with some of the children of poverty. Why is the answer to everything to "criminalize"? The "get tough on crime" philosophy is no different than treating cancer with a band aid - it gets us no closer to curing the problem.

New topic - are you following the saga of Terry Beachler on the Chronicle? If you haven't, check it out. Fascinating - over 70 comments posted so far (including more than one by me). One thing for sure - a great many people do not hold the PPD in high regard. The city has a real problem there - one they don't want to deal with. It will be interesting to see just how much influence the blogosphere has on local politics, especially this close to an election.

Speaking of the election, that "political dialog call" you received is pretty strange. You're right - it was a campaign strategy; if it wasn't, all of the city council candidates would have been included. Then it would have had more of the characteristics of a candidate forum, not just a "tele-" version.

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