Chuck’s Sunday column: Airport plan will be the usual Blago comedy of errors

Add comment March 9th, 2008

The state of Illinois, “Public Official A” Rod Blagojevich still presiding, is stepping up efforts to build what I’m calling George Ryan Intergalactic Cowport, in honor of the previous Public Official A. The $1.5 billion airfield is to be mired in the bean fields near the dynamic twin cities of Peotone and Beecher.

Given Blagojevich’s track record of delivering on his past promises, I predict that if this airport ever gets built, it will wind up somewhere south of Olney. The error will go undetected for a year, until it is exposed by a blogger in Monee. Peotone leaders will be outraged. To calm them down, Blagojevich will call a news conference and vow to find another $1.5 billion to make things right.

“I was shocked to learn that this vitally needed airport was built more than 200 miles from where it was supposed to go,” Blagojevich will tell the Peotoners. Then, he’ll be a man and ’fess up to his goof. OK, I lied.

“The mistake was made by a couple of inept staffers of mine, both of whom have been fired, stripped of their state pensions and dispatched to waterboarding summer camp at Guantanamo Bay,” Blagojevich will say.

The real shocker: When news sleuths from the Pocahontas World Clarion Star Gazette Journal & Horseshoe Toss.com go looking for the airport, they search every last cornfield from Decatur to Cairo. After months of aerial and ground surveillance, the reporters turn up nothing but an abandoned garage in West Frankfort, where a small, faded sign in the window reads:
“Peotone Enterprises. A. Rezko, agent.”

Whatever it is they’re doing to make West Middle School an orderly place, it’s not working. The school district’s central command triumvirate of Steve Katz, Tom Hoffman and Linda Hernandez should dream up something else, because they’ve flunked the discipline exam at West.

Fights break out without warning. Perpetrators aren’t afraid to wallop the adults — including cops — who try to stop them. Hernandez, the superintendent, went to West and gave a speech and told the children to behave. When she left, a fight broke out.
Central command’s response was to send in some administrators to restore order.

But on Thursday, two girls started fighting each other, and a 15-year-old boy nearly decked the principal. (What’s a 15-year-old doing in a school that stops in eighth grade?)

Given the ongoing chaos, this isn’t the time for more administrators. It’s time for the SWAT team.

Well, maybe that’s overly dramatic, but for the time being at least, West should have eight police officers, maybe more, walking the halls and parking lots in pairs. They need to stop kids who are roaming the halls and take them to the office to be escorted back to class. If that doesn’t work, charge the kids with truancy violations.

If the school district won’t request common sense security measures, Mayor Larry Morrissey and Police Chief Chet Epperson should order the increased police presence at West, which is in the city of Rockford.

Sure, these are short-term measures. West hasn’t been under complete control since Mike Golden retired as principal several years ago. But no lasting solutions can even be considered while a small number of junior hoodlums are allowed to run roughshod over the majority of students who are in school to learn something.

Reach Political Editor Chuck Sweeny at 815-987-1372 or cssweeny@rrstar.com.

Pothole City. What can we do?

4 comments March 2nd, 2008

There’s a whole lot of noise being made about North Alpine Road’s potholes.

Folks, there are huge potholes all over the area that are worse than North Alpine. Have you been on West Riverside between North Main and the bridge? Yikes!

Kishwaukee Street is a lunar surface.

And the Whitman Street/North Second Street interchange is littered with hubcaps! I counted at least 8 on one particularly holy stretch.

20th Street between Charles and Broadway was awful, but the city did a patch job that took out the worst holes.

I’m not in the road business, but I think we could alleviate the problem with future  projects if we used  standards that require thicker surfaces, relied more on concrete,  and had a plan to tar cracks in the pavement throughout the temperate months,  before they can develop into potholes the next winter.

Will HRC be the Comeback Kid II?

Add comment March 2nd, 2008

My only prediction for Tuesday’s primary elections is this: John McCain will clinch the GOP nomination.

As for the Democrats, it’s anyone’s guess. But anyone who has counted Hillary Clinton out should count again: she just might become the Comeback Kid II. It’s not a prediction, just a hunch.

(Comback Kid I was Bill.)

Legislators may be skeptical of funding new Cole Hall at NIU

Add comment March 2nd, 2008

My hunch is that legislators in Springfield are going to back off that boneheaded plan of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (I know, which one?) and Northern Illinois University to replace Cole Hall with a state-of-the-art, $40 million classroom building, which according to state Sen. Brad Burzynski, R-Clare, could cost $60 million when the bonds are repaid over 20 years.

Burzynski was asked by the governor to introduce a funding bill and he said he would. But when I heard Burzynski in a radio interview on Friday, he seemed to be be a little more cautious about  the plan.

Cole Hall, you remember, was the scene of mass murder on Feb. 14. Five students died and the gunman killed himself.

There have been plenty of comments on this plan, and all have been negative. Every lawmaker has a list of projects that need to be done. Every state university has a backlog of deferred maintenance on buildings that are often much older than Cole Hall, built in 1968.

1968 is not “old,” by the way. Most of Rockford’s schools were built before 1968. Lincoln Middle School, for instance, dates back to the 1920s, and it’s still going strong.

NIU might be better advised to remodel the lecture room where the killings occurred and reopen the building in the fall.

What, politicians who don’t argue?

Add comment March 2nd, 2008

Last week we had the first meeting of the Register Star’s 2008 Voter Panel. I’ve done these many times before, and once again I’ve heard people who say they want real change. They may not know exactly what that should be, but they don’t think anything’s getting done in Washington. They want consensus among our leaders.

Problem with that is, we have an adversarial system designed to slow down the political process, to avoid the mistakes of rushing into policies and practices that seem good on the surface, but which can be disastrous down the road.

So, the “Rodney King” approach, (can’t we all just get along?) probably isn’t the best one for a country as big and diverse as the U.S.A.

Our argumentative system developed a country that hasn’t done badly over the years.