Archive for July, 2008
July 31st, 2008
The 2008 Miss Ogle County Fair Queen, Taryn Pfeiffer, would answer that question with one word: everything.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Ogle County,” she asked the crowd at her coronation, “what would this world be like if everyone had your attitude?”
That’s a show-stopping question. With a tweak the question becomes even more important: What would this world be like if everyone had your attitude in tough times?” I think it’s tough times that call out our real attitudes. Except for the “black holes,” those people for whom nothing is ever good enough and for whom wallowing in self-pity is a joy, most of us have great attitudes in good times. We smile, we share happiness and we plan for wonderful futures. In good times, everything is possible.
Bad times? Not so much. I believe there are two kinds of brains: the one that’s paralyzed in bad times, and the one that’s energized. Note, I did not say “enjoys bad times.” Energized in bad times. There’s a huge difference.
The brain that’s energized in bad times figures out ways, not to survive, but to thrive. The energized brain faces adversity head on, acknowledges it with respect and then wrestles it to the ground, turning adversity into a challenge to innovate, to grow personally and professionally, a chance to, as Star Trek used to say, “go where no one has gone before.”
These are tough times. Political, social, financial upheaval around the world, and so close to home that there can’t be more than a handful who aren’t affected in some way. These are not good times and there is no place for baseless Pollyanna attitudes. Denying the bad times or covering them over with sweet lies perpetuates distrust and cynicism.
These are times that demand a brain energized not paralyzed. Think about Ms. Pfeiffer’s question: What would the world be like if everyone had your attitude?
July 29th, 2008
Prediction: Rockford home values will increase. That’s Rockford, as in “city of.” It might also include homes located, oh, say, 10 miles, from Rockford’s city limits. Maybe 20 if gas prices don’t get much higher.
Anyone watching demographic trends can make that prediction; the signs have been there for two decades, although maybe not so visible as they are now. Mark my words, though, within a decade, homeowners with a City of Rockford ZIP code or nearby are going to be very, very glad they pay city taxes. Oh, and we are all going to be pleased as punch we live in a “second tier city, near-but-not-part-of a major metropolitan area like Chicago. Finally, Rockford (and the Rock River Valley) are going to get some respect.
There are half a dozen trends to support my prediction: (1) increasing commuting costs, whether to work, school, entertainment or shopping; (2) existing infrastructure, like roads, building and airports; (3) existing tax-supported services, like fire, police, garbage, water, sewer, snow plowing; (4) easy access to education, health care, government and jobs; (5) cost and quality of living; and, ta-da, (6) aging baby boomers eager to downsize.
In short, living in Rockford — and liking it — will be the “done thing” as we head into the 2010s, and that’s going to protect and boost property values.
I wrote about this back in the middle 1990s when Rockford’s school desegregation lawsuit was the top headline. At the time, some folks were hyperventilating about getting the heck out of Rockford, moving anywhere but here, and lauding the wonders of houses in open spaces with no property taxes. I wrote then that the time would come when the bill would come due: volunteer firefighters replaced with paid ones; skyrocketing costs to retro-fit infrastructures; schools packed to the walls and trailers out back; governments scrambling to find cash to cover the uncontrolled growth. Meanwhile, Rockford already had all those things in place.
Add now the cost of commuting and the recognition by boomers with aches and pains that make mowing a three-acre lawn unpleasant, and, now, it seems darn smart to have a house that’s less than 15 minutes from everything one needs, and whose lawn is manageable with a pair of scissors.
Despite the current challenges, transforming Rockford into the next decade’s vibrant regional center is well underway and has been for two decades at least. It hasn’t always been easy to see the successes, but they are there (think airport, think downtown revitalization, think extended bus routes, think stabilizing of tax rates and the ending of the deseg suit, think Coronado and the park district, think MetroCentre).
We can pooh-pooh all this, and many will. But those six trends are solidly in place. It’s tough out there now, but there’s hope for the future.
July 23rd, 2008
The big news in the Rockford Register Star News Tower today was the retiring of President and Publisher Fritz Jacobi, the naming of Scott Bowers as publisher, and the promotion of Tom Lasley to general manager. I am still the editor. (And to those who were rumoring or wishing that I would be gone in 60-90 days, nuts to you…)
Eight years ago, almost to the day, then-publisher Mary P. Stier told me she was headed to Des Moines and that “you will like your new publisher; the new publisher will be a better boss for you than I have been.” At the time, it was hard to accept that. MPS, as I called her, was for 10 years the best of bosses; our brains worked alike and we came to finish each other’s sentences.
Today, when I hustled back from Chicago after getting the call from Fritz, I told him MPS was right. He was a better boss for me. He made me learn and use skills I didn’t know I had, and he was a joy to be around. I’m going to miss Fritz. A lot. He made a difference in the News Tower and in this community. He did the right thing — always. Godspeed, boss. (Shameless I am: Will you invite me to the lake house now?)
But this business is like a monarchy. The king is dead; long live the king. So, along comes Scott Bowers, known to everyone in the News Tower simply as Bowers. He worked here for so long (two decades give or take a year) before going to Springfield as publisher, that we simply assumed he was the prince-in-waiting. Bowers is one of the few people I routinely said I’d be happy working for. Now I can. I give him this promise: I have always trusted you completely. I will do so now.
And, to Tom Lasley, who also has been at the RRS almost as long as I have (darn near two decades, folks), this promise: You’ve got this amazing knack for bringing over-sized egos to the table and getting them to play nice for the good of the group. Keep doing that; we’re going to be one heckuva team.
Change, goes the cliche, is always a pain. Nothing is ever as sweet as its promise, and I’m not an idiot. We face a long hard journey over the next five years, but it’s a journey we will make successfully. As I have told my staff over the past week: It’s not going to get better for a long time, and when it does, better will look nothing like today. I love this job. I believe in what we do. I believe in you. Join me on the journey.
So, for those of you whose lives are touched by the News Tower and what we do down here (and that’s 80 percent of market), I extend the same invitation: Join me on the journey. It’s going to be a blast.
July 17th, 2008
Story this morning on Register Star’s front page (was on rrstar.com yesterday): Upswing in tourism: Area visitors’ spending in 2007 the most in six years. Good news, indeed.
But the attendance numbers for the top five 2007 events struck me as odd. Odd? Wrong word. I wanted to say “lies,” but that’s a tad harsh for these worthy organizations. Think about this for a minute: The Fourth of July fireworks and related patriotic events drew 400,000 people in 2006 and again in 2007.
Now, those fireworks are popular; Joe Marino and his committee do an awesome job, but there’s no way under God’s blue sky that 400,000 people came downtown for the Fourth. Not even if we counted them twice, and probably not even if we counted each person three times.
There are 298,759 people in Winnebago County (current Census data). There are 53,531 in Boone, and another 55,011 in Ogle. If every single man, woman and child in Winnebago and Boone counties attended the Fourth stuff, there’d only be 352,290 attendees. Toss in Ogle, you get 407,301.
If you added in every living soul in Stephenson and DeKalb counties and Rock County in Wisconsin, we’re up to 717,226. If 50 percent of all those people attended, we’d still not be at the 400,000 claimed by the Fourth of July folks.
The numbers are almost as dreamlike for the others on the top four list, though they can all claim the numbers over multiple days: On the Waterfront (302,641 in 2007); the Winnebago County Fair (185,000); the Festival of Lights (150,000) and AirFest (100,000).
Crowd estimates are notoriously off the wall and without a formal ticketing-and-taking process, there’s no way to get an accurate number. So, where did these top five numbers come from?
Ah, there’s the rub: These are “self-reported” numbers. The event organizers say how many. We should have made that clear in the story, because it looks like we verified them. We didn’t. We relied on the event organizers. Come on now, guys, if you’re going to tell us what the crowds were, at least make ‘em realistic.
July 16th, 2008
“I voted for the fastest way to kill this bill,” U.S. Congressman Don Manzullo told me just now. He wanted to make absolutely sure that I — and you — understood that he was NOT voting for impeaching President George W. Bush. And, I promised him I would make that clear.
This is, said Don in a call to me at home, a complicated process and, while there are at least two ways to get that bill killed, voting “yes” was the fastest way to do so. As I told the Congressman, my earlier blog post was not a comment on impeaching Bush, but, instead a reflection on the Congressman’s strong Constitutional foundations. He accepted that, and in turn, I wanted to make sure you understood as well.
One of the complicated pros and cons of Web work — and especially with a short post meant only to comment on a single issue — is that the post can be seriously misleading and then it can take on a life of its own. I apologize for a post that out of context could be and probably was misread as my saying Manzullo voted to impeach the president. He did not. Period.
I heard from our newsroom editors that Register Star political editor Chuck Sweeny is talking with Don and will have a more detailed explainer of the vote and what it means in tomorrow’s newspaper. Knowing Chuck’s ability to take complicated subjects and make them understandable, his piece will be one of the first I read tomorrow. I suggest you join me.
July 16th, 2008
Years ago when I first met then-candidate, now Congressman Don Manzullo, I was pretty sure there’d be disagreements. Don’s a lot more conservative than I am on social issues, although we’ve been in sync over the decade-plus on many of the economic issues. And, then we started talking about the Constitution. Don made it clear then, and he has been consistent since that he’s going to defend the Constitution — and there are times when doing so makes him appear to be a rip-snorting leftwinger. I knew then that there’d be times when Don would vote his head and heart and not his politics. He did that this week when he broke with the Republicans and became one of a handful of GOPers to support Dennis Kucinich’s impeachment bill.
That’s Don Manzullo paying more attention to protecting the Constitution than playing politics. I admire him for that. He’s done it before, several times, but the one I believe is among his best moments is when he told the editorial board shortly after voting for the then-brand-new Patriot’s Act that he would never do so again because he feared what its implementation would do to the fundamental rights of the U.S. Constitution.
As this impeachment bill story plays out, there will be those who will talk the politics of Republicans supporting a bill that might have implications for the president and vice president. I have no doubt politics plays into it. But, I’m confident Don Manzullo was thinking less about politics and a lot more about protecting your rights, mine and his with a strong Constitution. Thanks, Don.
July 11th, 2008
Dead trees paid for my childhood and my education. My dad was a forester and dead trees paid the bills. Dead trees run through the Register Star press every night to make the newspaper you get on your doorstep. My husband is a forester; so are all three of my brothers. I love dead trees that serve a purpose: wood working, logs for the fire, house building, news print…
I do not, however, love dead trees that fall on power lines and interrupt my electricity, nor the ones that fall on houses, cars and across roads. Dead trees in the country are one thing; dead trees in the city another matter altogether. And, Rockford has a lot of dead trees.
I drive Spring Creek Road to work every day and on Sundays for church. It’s clear that between homeowners and the city public works folks, not a lot of effort is going into maintaining trees. There are dead trees by the dozens, almost-dead trees by the hundreds, and stressed trees by the thousands. One doesn’t notice them so much in the winter, but in full-blown summer, those dead and almost dead trees are skeletons among the leaves. And, those trees are going to come down on power lines, across the road and on someone’s house. For sure. Not a chance they will miss.
In fact, one rainy Sunday a month ago, one of those stressed (not dead mind you) trees just flopped itself across Spring Creek minutes before we reached it.
So, who has to do something? Start with the homeowner: If the trees are on your property, you’re responsible. Cut them down. Take care of them. Whatever it takes because they’re your job. Then, to the city: You need a city forester or someone totally committed to trees. You used to have one and I won’t get all involved in the politics of this, but without someone who knows trees — with the authority and the budget to manage them well — the Forest City won’t be more than Dead Tree Town.
July 3rd, 2008
Dump and ditch… That’s what I call posting a blog item that may get a flurry of reaction, then not coming back to it for a few days. I’m going to do that right now, although maybe I might decide to blog rather than spend my holiday playing golf and grilling with family. Not.
So, here’s the dump part: In our April market research we offered up this statement — The Register Star has made changes in the past year that have improved the newspaper — and asked respondents to choose (1) yes; changes have improved the newspaper; (2) no, the changes have not improved the newspaper; (3) don’t know.
And, what did they say? Fifty-three percent said improved (contrasted with 48 percent in 2005); 17 percent have not improved (contrasted with 24 percent in 2005). The rest said they didn’t know.
Since some readers love to tell me that “everyone thinks the changes in the paper are just terrible,” well, read the stats. Just not so.
Here’s the ditch part: I’m headed out soon for the RSO concert at Rock Valley College, so I’m not going to be hanging around to respond. Have a great Fourth of July. That celebration of our country’s freedom is EXACTLY what gives us the freedom to do just this: free speech, free press, free assembly, a religion of OUR choice not Uncle Sam’s, and the freedom to petition Uncle Sam for redress. Sounds like a great deal to me.
July 1st, 2008
Phone rings not so long after my blog post on the mayor-and-chair not telling the public that they wanted to re-do how the school board is elected. (See previous post on doing the public’s biz in public; don’t want to rehash the whole thing …)
Anyway, that call brings an interesting conundrum: What if it was the Rockforward! folks who wanted it kept secret and not the mayor-and-chair? In other words, what if I were off base in chastising the mayor-and-chair? It was just a conversation and we’ll do some more reporting to see if we can nail down the whodunit, but the question has, I think, an easy anwer: The mayor-and-chair, if they were told by Rockforward! to keep it quiet, ought to have said “Not a gonna happen. We are elected officials. We report to the voters and taxpayers. We believe in transparency. So either we hold hands and all three of us do this publicly, or we, the mayor-and-chair are gonna go do it by ourselves.”
It is, as I wrote in the previous post, well past time to work as hard at figuring out how to do the public’s business in public as we do in keeping in private. My guess is that if the mayor-and-chair refused to go along with the private sector “quiet types,” it wouldn’t take more than a couple times to open the doors and let some sunshine in.
July 1st, 2008
First some conflict of interest disclaimers: (1) my boss is plugged into the Rockfordward! Leadership Council, the RAEDC and the mayor’s education task force. He shares none of his insider information with me or News Tower journalists, nor with the editorial board. He does not know I am writing this and he may disagree; (2) I don’t speak for the editorial board. The board’s majority will weigh in later; (3) I am not opposed to an appointed school board, and have voted “yes” on it several times when it came before the editorial board. There are pros and cons worthy of exploration and under some circumstances, I might be happy with an appointed board; and (4) nothing makes me unhappier as a journalist than elected officials who think doing the public’s business in private is OK.
So, with those on the table: What in the name of heaven were Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey and Winnebago County Board Chairman Scott Christensen thinking when they SECRETLY proposed studying taking over the Rockford District 205 board and appointing its members?
OK, it wasn’t so secret since that proposal was submitted in writing with a date of June 13 to a whole bunch of community leaders and business people who are part of Rockforward! and the RAEDC, and assorted other acronyms and organizations who meet privately to decide what the rest of us will know and how our community will grow. But it was not done publicly and it was done with the expectation that all those folks would keep it to themselves.
How naive of the mayor-and-chair to not realize someone would leak the darn thing to us. And they did. And we made calls and the mayor’s staff went into “please don’t run this until we can have a press conference and if you do you will jeopardize its chances and upset people” mode.
We ran it. I never even considered not doing so. The mayor-and-chair want an appointed school board like Chicago, then they ought to stand up there and say so in a public meeting. Do that FIRST, THEN you can send your proposal to Rockfordward! seeking $50,000 in research funding.
The mayor-and-chair like these quasi-public-private organizations because they can get public figures, elected officials, decision makers and players to the same table without having an open public meeting. It started with the old Council of 100 and organizations like the Convention and Visitors Bureau and is morphing nicely with RAEDC and its Rockforward! Leadership Council.
Now, the mayor-and-chair, instead of doing the public’s school business in public at the county board meetings and the city council meetings are doing them at a Rockforward! meeting. Not so good, guys.
Read the story.
