Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'
May 14th, 2008
As part of Chuck Sweeney’s assignment of this project, we requested Rockford city audits back to 1980. I’m about 2 percent into the data and already one statistic jumped out at me.
In 1980, 48 percent of the city’s local tax revenue came from property taxes — $9,920,816 in property taxes out of $20,590,060 in total taxes collecte — and 45 percent of the taxes came from retail sale. So shoppers were almost equally supporting city services.
By 2005, the most recent data available, property owners now shoulder much more of the burden. In 2005, the city collected $83,796,845 in local taxes. Of that, $47,010,384 came from property taxes or 56 percent. The city brought in $23,378,788 in sales taxes or 28 percent.
Another interesting note, though of little relevance, is that Rockford Mayor Robert McGaw had a salary of $27,000 while police chief Del Peterson was being paid $40,238.
May 13th, 2008
Really, altho we’re focusing on Rockford in this series, the Forest City isn’t all that different from hundreds of cities throughout the nation — not just the Midwest. We are in a fundamental economic shift in the world, in which America will assume a much lesser role in the world economy.
We have all grown up at an unusual time in history, when America has been seen as the world’s essential nation. That increasingly is no longer true, as we’ve sold off our manufacturing industries and are borrowing money from foreign “sovereign funds” to maintain a lifestyle that is unsustainable over the long run.
When a nation doesn’t manufacture, it becomes a colony of the nation’s that do.
May 8th, 2008
A study released this week by sociology staff and students at Rock Valley College reveals interesting perceptions of our hometown. RVC says the phone survey of 450 people reflects the population. Keep in mind is that the survey was done in February 2007, before the economy sunk and gas prices reached for the sky.
Some results: 54% think crime here is no worse than other cities this size. That’s down from 69% in ‘97.
63% said the city’s economy was progressing, down from 72%.
Here’s a surprise: 39% said education in the city is better than it’s been in the past few years. That’s still low, as Prof. Jerry Crane pointed out, but it’s up from 21% in ‘97, perhaps because the deseg suit still was going on then.
And, the ones I’m most interested in for this 180 Degrees project:
73% said the city has improved its arts and leisure offereings, down from 81%.
47% said public/private agencies support arts adequately; down from 73%.
58% said our arts/leisure programs are as good as other cities out size, down from 68%.
Crane said some of the survey results are supported by facts; others are not. But the perception, right or wrong, is a powerful influence on a community.
May 6th, 2008
We all know Rockford is a great place to raise a family. It’s a generous community, a church-going community, place you can round up volunteers for a worthy cause quicker than the weather changes in April.
But, how much fun is our region? Are you, and/or your family, happy with the arts-entertainment-cultural-recreation scene in the Rock River Valley? Has that part of our lifestyle gotten better, or worse, in the past 30 years.
We know NAT went off the map but look what happened at the Coronado, and the MetroCentre, and Burpee, and Discovery Center, to name a few success stories. Or, are you not impressed?
I’m interested in your view of our after-work life in Rockford, and your attitude about the city? Optimistic? Pessimistic? Sure nothing will ever change? Convinced we’re on the brink of a renaissance?
Please share your thoughts with me at gnikolai@rrstar.com or 815-987-1337. Leave a message if I’m not available, with your name and number, please.
Thanks.
May 2nd, 2008
Here the video opening that Brian Rieder, the WREX guru worked up for us. Brian was really great to work with. I hope we didn’t kill him with last minute changes. In fact, I notice one small problem. Watch the video and see if you can see it.[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/W3ysGfPbP_M” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]If you can’t find the defect, click on the second video which was a first attempt and the inspiration for the icon we used for the series.[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/riEaQRRJjt0″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
April 30th, 2008
The last few days have been all about putting dozens of pieces in place for the project launch on the Web site and in the newspaper. We’re selecting photos, creating a map and timeline, editing stories and videos and writing headlines.
By the time we’re done, more than two dozen talented journalists will have had their hands on some piece of this project launch. It’s creative teamwork and that feels good.
April 30th, 2008
Hi, I’m Chuck Sweeny, political editor of the Rockford Register Star, or rrstar.com if you prefer. Listen up:
Rockford adapts.
The city started as a manufacturing center in the old water power district south of downtown. There, fast-running water from a mill race channeled off the Rock River turned gears attached to leather belts that ran machines, in the days before electricity.
Rockford built — and still builds — all kinds of things out of wood, metal, plastic and fiberglass.
Because manufacturing is essentially all we’ve ever done, we’ve gone through disastrous economic situations — 1893 was awful. More than a dozen furniture factories went bust. Luckily, P.A. Peterson rescued them in a co-op arrangement.
When the Depression hit in 1929, Rockford had its own shanty towns, one near Charles and 22nd Street, which an old Swede remembered when he returned to Rockford a few years back from Stockholm to relive memories of his youth here in the 1930s. Times were so bad here back then that the man’s immigrant family had to leave the Not-So-Promised Land and returned to the Old Country. They were not the only ones.
Rockford lost 10,000 people during the 30s, but the population began growing with the onset of World War II. After that war, the economy took off like gangbusters as Rockford’s dynamic companies, most of them home-owned, provided valuable products to the auto , machine tool and aviation industries. Baby Boomers, who grew up here in those prospeous times, tend to think that Rockford was always riding on easy street.
We hit a major speed bump in the early 80s, and the population declined 9,000 in that decade. But, back we came in the 90s, as manufacturers learned to work smarter and began to realize that “export” doesn’t mean sending products to Cincinnatti.
Now, Rockford is uneasy again, and once more is trying to find its place in the world. Unlike cities such as Dayton, Flint or Peoria, we’re not dependent totally on one company. But we are still largely a manufacturing center, and we’ve taken another big hit as competition from Asia has drained jobs away from us.
What’s the next Rockford going to look like? One thing I know for sure: We’ll become more and more integrated into greater Chicagoland. Don’t fret: That’s what’s going to save Rockford from the fates of isolated small cities like those in Iowa, which are dying because they’re not part of a huge, metropolitan area.
Like it or not, people no longer live in cities and towns. The majority of Americans live in large population blobs I call “megametros.” In one series on Rockford’s challenges, which I did back in the 1990s, I referred to our region as “The Chi-Waukee Metroplex.” I don’t like that monicker anymore; it’s too Cheesehead-heavy.
But hear this warning: Unless Rockford upgrades our public schools and adds significantly to our post secondary education opportunities, our importance to Chicagoland is going to be minimal and we’ll be left to be the distribution center kings and queens.
April 30th, 2008
Once of the challenges of a project like 180 Degrees is how to decide whether the community is making progress.
There are numbers that can easily be tracked, graduation rates, unemployment, wages, etc, but do the numbers tell the real story?
For example, the stats may say the crime rate is down, but if your garage has been broken into twice in a month you probably wouldn’t care what the numbers said, you wouldn’t feel safe.
And on graduation rates, just because a kid graduates from high school doesn’t mean that kid is ready to join the work force.
So what do you think. What is the best way to measure success?
April 29th, 2008
My role in this project is to examine Rockford’s economy since 1980. It’s no surprise, that a big theme of this story is the decline of manufacturing.
About 37 percent of the city’s workforce was involved in manufacturing in 1980, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. Today, that number hovers around 21 percent. The decline is more significant when you realize that our workforce has grown from 143,000 workers in 1980 to nearly 189,000 workers today. So manufacturing is a smaller slice of a larger pie.
National Lock, Amerock, Barber Coleman and many more factories that helped make Rockford the “Screw Capital of the World,” are gone.
Did you used to work at one of those places? Maybe you remember what it was like when unemployment in Rockford reached 25 percent in early 1983? Or maybe you survived other economic downturns in the early 1990s and in the months following 9-11. How did you do it? I’d love to hear your story. Send me an e-mail at iguerrero@rrstar.com or call me at 815-987-1371.
April 28th, 2008
Today we are pulling old photos from our archives and sending photographers out to shoot new ones. That’s for a photo gallery we’ll post online that will look at Then & Now of the city’s west side. I love to linger over photographs of years past and I know readers do, too.
We’ll start the project by talking about some of the changes on the city’s west side over the last three decades. This morning before work, I drove around the west side. I wanted to be sure the project launch stories capture the right tone. My quick reconnaissance told me they do, mostly because of Judy Emerson’s deft touch on the keyboard.
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