Category: Politics

The Peotone Airport: Grab Land First, Ask Later

The ongoing follies in the Peotone Airport Saga have critics cheering and supporters groaning.

IDOT and Governor Blagojevich submitted two plans for Peotone to the FAA for review, hoping that one would be approved. This cover-all-the-bases approach incorporated the competing visions of the airport’s Congressional cheerleaders, Jerry Weller (remember him?) and Jesse Jackson, Jr., who disagree on everything from the facility’s name to the bathroom colors.

The people at the FAA sighed, shook their heads, and sent back the proposals stamped “Make Up Your Minds,” thus creating a potential delay of months, if not years, for the necessary federal go-ahead.

But this comical news has overshadowed a downright sober issue: government-sponsored intimidation of law-abiding citizens in eastern Will County who own land in the path of the bulldozers. So far, the state has spent over 23 million taxpayer dollars purchasing about 1,900 acres of land northeast of Peotone.

After getting scolded for making aggressive phone calls to owners of the remaining 2,200 acres needed for the initial build-out, IDOT has been sending letters to landowners making it clear — in a friendly, nice-guy, Midwestern kind of way — that if they can’t reach settlement on terms of sale, the government will proceed with condemnation.

That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, a wasteful, sprawling, ugly, polluting, and congestion-causing airport over 40 miles from downtown Chicago that no major airline wants is a lot more important than prime Illinois farmland, a quiet rural landscape, clean air, open space, county fairs, and the rights of individual landowners. That’s Progress in action!

Still, something just sticks in my craw about that 23 million bucks IDOT diligently has spent acquiring land. Haven’t they gotten a little ahead of themselves?

Is it just me, or have others noticed that the people in charge still haven’t decided on an official plan for the airport; still haven’t received FAA approval for that plan; still haven’t stopped arguing over who’s going to control the airport; still haven’t finished the required environmental impact studies; still haven’t gotten the backing of a single major airline; and . . . well, I hardly need go on.

Since when is it OK to take first and ask permission later? I guess things just work differently in the hallowed halls of Springfield. All I know is, that approach doesn’t jibe with my old-school Joliet upbringing. If as a teenager I had taken out my dad’s cherished ’65 Chevy for a night on the town without asking him first, well . . . you probably can imagine the unpleasant consequences. So where do our elected leaders and transportation bureaucrats get off?

Jerry, Jesse, Rod, and all your IDOT cronies — you, and this whole shameful Peotone airport fiasco, should be grounded.

This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 19 February 2007. It was the first in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois.

Who’s Funnier — Jerry Seinfeld or the Joliet City Council?

Two weeks ago my wife and I took a rare break from our humdrum lives as sleep-deprived and chore-obsessed parents of small children, and indulged ourselves in a night’s entertainment at Joliet’s historic Rialto Theatre, which for one glorious and side-splittingly hilarious evening hosted comedian Jerry Seinfeld for two high-profile performances.

The Rialto Theatre, Joliet IL, c. the late 1920s (Photo: Legends of America)

When tickets for Seinfeld’s appearance went on sale several weeks ago, the town buzzed with excitement at the prospect of the wise-cracking New Yorker gracing my hometown’s most fabulous stage. I should know, since I stood in line mighty early to get fourth row tickets for my wife’s birthday present.

Such was the overwhelming demand for the show that later that day a second performance was announced — and its tickets sold like hot cakes, too. On performance night, the Rialto brought well over 3,500 people into downtown Joliet ready to have some laughs and spend money — a fact to be noted with some measure of respect.

I should elaborate. Random readers from outside the area might harbor the mistaken impression that as the fourth-largest Illinois metropolis, Joliet possesses a vibrant downtown nightlife scene.

Shockingly, though, this is not the case. As we natives well know, about the most glitz and glamour you’ll get downtown on non-Rialto performance nights is the flashing blue light emanating in a menacing Big Brother-like fashion from the Homeland Security cameras mounted on buildings throughout the city’s central district.

That’s why we need people like Seinfeld to come to town occasionally, jazz up the scene, and make us forget temporarily that we live in such a sleepy, quiet, middle of the road, surveillance-camera-infested place. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But now that the raucous laughter from Seinfeld’s routine has died down, we should contemplate something far less funny. With about $7 million more in reserves within the overall 2012 budget projections than previously estimated during the summer, the City Council still cut $100,000 of its support for the Rialto and $166,000 more from other local arts organizations — specifically, the Billie Limacher Bicentennial Park (which hosts community theater and other events at its indoor auditorium and outdoor stage) and the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

Consider that hundreds, if not thousands, of Rialto patrons that night went out to dinner (and/or to the casino) before or after the shows and fed generous wads of their hard-earned money to the local economy. I can testify that we enjoyed a phenomenal meal at a downtown establishment that was absolutely hopping during “wave two” of Rialto-stimulated business.

The auditorium at the Rialto (Photo: Legends of America)

Consider that instead of mocking our nightlife-challenged burg, Seinfeld took pains to declare sincerely that the Rialto is one of the most beautiful and glorious performance venues he has ever played. (And does anyone seriously think he would come to Joliet were the Rialto not here?)

Finally, consider which is funnier: a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up comedy performance, or the three-ring circus of Joliet’s ongoing 2012 budget deliberations?

This is a revised version of my regular op-ed column that appeared as “Lack of Support for Rialto No Laughing Matter” in the 10 November 2011 issue of the Joliet Herald-News (p15). The Joliet City Council continues to work on the 2012 budget, and as of Wednesday, Nov. 9th, was considering a forensic audit going back twenty years.

Can Joliet Afford To Neglect the Arts?

After a summer of disconcerting inaction on Joliet’s $23 million shortfall for 2012, budget deliberations in Joliet’s City Hall have really heated up.

Mayor Tom Giarrante’s proposed plan combines tax hikes, service cuts, pension payment restructuring, and planned negotiations with employee unions as a means of bringing down expenditures; and the Council, much to the delight of Joliet residents, has voted to raise sales and utility taxes in order to generate more revenue.

Getting an inordinate amount of attention in the local press as well as in Council deliberations, though, are potential cuts to Joliet’s less-than-lavish support of the Rialto Square Theater, the Joliet Area Historical Museum, and Bicentennial Park. The mayor proposes relatively modest decreases for these important cultural institutions, while District 1 Councilman Larry Hug advocates slashing city support entirely.

Hug’s attitude is hardly surprising. Whenever economic times get tough, public expenditures on the arts always come under the gun. But the reasoning behind these potential cutbacks is both mathematically misguided and philosophically impoverished.

Let’s do the math first. The mayor’s proposed cuts to the above arts organizations total $266,000 — less than two percent of the city’s $17 million gap in operating expenses. Giarrante’s strategy here is plainly symbolic: while such reductions are admittedly ineffectual because they’re so small, they demonstrate his willingness to make tough decisions across the board.

Ironically, the draconian “cut everything” approach espoused by Hug would not generate all that many savings, either, and could potentially hurt the local economy. Take the Rialto: eliminating its $700,000 of city support trims only four percent from that $17 million shortfall. Yet that would be potentially devastating to the Rialto’s always precarious operating budget, and thus jeopardize the $7.5 million of local economic activity it generates annually.

But let’s also think beyond mere numbers. What would Joliet be like without Bicentennial Park’s music concerts, dramatic productions, and cultural festivals? Without the rich perspective on the our area’s culture and history provided by the much-lauded Historical Museum?

How would the otherwise depressing and downtrodden downtown landscape look without the glitz, energy, and architectural pizazz of the iconic Rialto, Joliet’s only serious venue for nationally-renowned live entertainment?

Oh, sure, life would go on. The garbage would be picked up (on the street, not in the alley), sewage would be processed (in most neighborhoods, anyway, though not necessarily the Ridgewood area on the city’s East Side), and the lights would stay on in City Hall. But a culturally-impoverished existence in which the arts are devalued and unfunded is neither desirable nor acceptable in a city of our size and aspirations.

The question we should be asking, then, is not how much we can slash and burn the already paltry public support of our cornerstone arts organizations and cherished cultural institutions. It’s rather this: what kind of city do we want to live in?

This article was published in the Wednesday, 5 October 2011 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. Information about Joliet’s 2012 budget can be accessed at the city’s official website, which lists links to various budget reports and proposals.

Time To Lock Down on Joliet Budget Talks

Ever since last April’s elections, I’ve been waiting for some blockbuster news to come out of City Hall in downtown Joliet. Now it’s late July, and though the outside temperature has been in the 90s, things are mighty cool in the city’s governmental chambers. So cool, in fact, one might think all’s well in the land of casinos, racetracks, and intermodal shipping container transfer centers.

But this deafening silence from Joliet’s leadership worries me a tad. I can’t help but wonder what we’ve been doing about that teensy little $27 million budget deficit projection for 2012.

Sure, there’s been some encouraging news from other quarters. Just last week Joliet scored a $820,000 grant from the Illinois EPA for upgrading its sewage infrastructure in order to significantly reduce the amount of untreated waste we routinely dump into the Des Plaines River. As an enthusiastic proponent of minimizing combined sewage overflow events, I’m sincerely impressed.

Also laudable is State Senator Wilhelmi’s recent tour of the Joliet Correctional Facility with a bevy of high-ranking state officials, an effort to underscore the need for preserving one of Joliet’s key historical and architectural assets. It’s possible to imagine Joliet someday making some tourism industry hay, Alcatraz-style, from its uneasy international reputation as a prison town.

The old Joliet Prison, shuttered since 2002 (photo courtesy of Joliet Herald-News)

There’s only one little hitch: raising the tens of millions necessary to secure and restore the monumental but crumbling limestone structure. By comparison, breaking out of jail is child’s play.

The subject of money leads me back to that $27 million deficit looming in front of us.

Again, it’s been almost four months since the April election. Our fiscal clock is ticking very loudly. Where is the budget crisis mitigation plan from our City Council? What is Mayor Giarrante doing to lead this critical effort?

I have a couple of friendly suggestions for City Manager Tom Thanas, whose job surely must be one of the most stressful in Will County. First, reassign the brilliant technocrat who wrote that blockbuster EPA wastewater grant to plugging the leaks in the city’s budget, which surely could use some re-engineering.

Secondly, get in touch with Senator Wilhelmi and see if you can hold a special budget meeting in the old Joliet Prison, where the peeling paint, rusting cell bars, and weed-filled exercise yards are evocative symbols of neglect and decay — and a grim foreshadowing of the city’s future if we cannot put our fiscal house in order.

Perhaps such a setting will impart the proper sense of seriousness and urgency the situation demands. And if some of Joliet’s well-compensated police officers could patrol the grounds to make sure that no Councilman or Councilwoman escapes until an initial plan is hammered out, all the better.

This column was written as an op-ed piece for the Joliet Herald-News‘ 29 July 2011 edition and published as “When Will Joliet Officials Deal with $27 Million Deficit?“. After my column’s deadline last week, HN reporter Bob Okon wrote on July 27th that the Joliet City Council had again rescheduled its summer budget meeting for Monday, August 1st, which is a regularly-scheduled “pre-council” meeting that has a public comment period scheduled at the end. Read HN reporter Cindy Cain’s coverage of that meeting, which announced that the projected deficit for 2012 isnow $23 million and floats various possibilities for reducing the city’s expenditures.

The Council’s regular meetings are on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month at 6:30pm. For more information, check the City of Joliet’s website.