It’s that time of year when students start to think about going back to school. After paying for the steep cost of tuition at colleges and universities, many students and parents are often confronted with another high-priced expense: textbooks. The price of textbooks and other materials needed for courses is rising rapidly, and many students are not able to keep up with the costs. The average first-time student at a four-year public university spent $898 on textbooks during the 2003-04 year, according the Governmental Accountability Office, and the Illinois Board of Higher Education found that students attending public universities and colleges spent an average of $735 to $891 on textbooks in 2006. Spending nearly $900 worth of textbooks each semester causes a great deal of angst and confusion among students and parents, and everyone involved wants to find a solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you seen the new signs yet? They’re bright blue and white with a big eye staring out at you with the word WARNING at the top. At the bottom, it promises to watch out for crime/criminals! Wow! What’s that about? Actually, they’re the new Neighborhood Watch signs. And, the reason for the change is to improve visibility. The old signs, if you remember, were orange and black and featured “Boris the Bad Guy.” They were hard to see and too wordy and many of them faded over the years. These new signs informs those passing through your neighborhood that it has an active watch group. It’s a word of warning to would-be criminals that they’re being watched!

Back in January 2006, Officer Darrell Fuchs, community relations officer and Steve Fairbanks, the Neighborhood Development Specialist collaborated to plan for the “revitalization of neighborhood watch.”

What kind of questions to you ask yourself about your own neighborhood? Do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Are you interested in making your neighborhood feel safer? What can you, an average individual citizen, do about it? Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is the season for concerts. Whether it’s large touring festivals, big name acts, or reunited bands, tickets for these shows can become quite expensive. High ticket prices may cause some potential concert goers to opt out, but those who are willing to shell out the big bucks are in for a surprise when the end cost for a ticket may be up to 50 percent higher than face value. A vast majority of tickets are subject to various fees and charges, making already soaring ticket prices even higher. The main culprit of this practice is Ticketmaster, who is the most common and pervasive dealer of tickets in the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

Joan Hickman isn’t specifically asking people for their money or their time, although she’d welcome the opportunity to put both to good use, but she’d really like it if people would donate their used cell phones to Friendship House in Peoria. Joan, who also goes by Joanie, is a devoted, enthusiastic supporter of Friendship House and she knows they need a new roof. Roofs are expensive, about $150,000, she says, for the large building located at 800 NE Madison in Peoria. While she doesn’t have the resources for the new roof, she does have a genuine desire to do what she can to help the not-for-profit agency. And she’s hoping to do it one cell phone at a time.

CUTLINE: Joan Hickman

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By Jackie Nelson

Chief Settingsgaard, Peoria’s newest police chief, has had a rough year. The wave of homicides in Peoria has left residents shaken. Early in the year, Peoria’s murder rate has swiftly climbed to eleven homicides already this year.

Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard said Peorians should not fear what appears to be a rise in crime. “There are no more shootings than there were last year, the lethality has increased, not the shooting rate,” said Settingsgaard in a telephone interview on May 25.

He also attributed much of the violence to gang and drug related activity. He reiterated “[Looking] over the eight homicides this year, and I would comfortably say that more than half of them are attributable to gangs and/or drugs. Some of the remaining may be indirectly related but it is difficult to say with surety.”

Many Peoria residents may feel that the surge in homicides is indicative of a crime wave. However, statistics of crime in Peoria tell a different story. In the early months of 2007, violent crimes and property crimes were down 20%. Also, the chances of being killed in a homicide in Peoria are 1 in 14,113.

These numbers seem encouraging, unless one finds themselves or someone close to them a victim. Chief Settingsgaard has also been working to prevent crime.

Upon his arrival Settingsgaard set new schedules to better reflect the police needs in the city. He created overlapping shifts during the busiest hours, between 5 p.m. and 12 a.m. He also revived the Gang Unit, putting officers in positions to monitor activity as well as recognize known gang members.

The previous system for identifying gang members relied on ‘street names.’ The new system, which is accessible to all officers via in-car computers, identifies known gang members by their street name, real name, physical description, and identifying marks such as scars of tattoos. An officer can enter any piece of information and be instantly presented with name, address, description and criminal record.

Settingsgaard is hoping that be being able to identify known gang members and where gangs are concentrated he will be better able to saturate these areas with patrolmen and women thus reducing crime.

Peorians should feel safer knowing that Chief Settingsgaard and his officers are working hard to make Peoria a safer place. When looking at comparable cities, Peoria’s homicide rate of 14 in 2006 was below that of rate in Toledo with 28, Wichita with 29, Fort Wane with 25, but above that of Springfield IL with 5.

PJS political gossips Jennifer Davis and Molly Parker apparently were ticked off because Congressman Ray LaHood was not available when they tried to contact him relative to his interest in replacing the departed Bradley University president David Broski. Media types love to report, “He was not available and did not return our phone calls.” Well hello.

 Others have a life you know besides waiting for the phone to ring from the media. PJS reporter Claire Jellick did the same to Bill O’Brien, who was defeated for Peoria school board. O’Brien was out of town, he reports, when she apparently tried to contact him. So when Jellick wrote about O’Brien’s recount effort, she ended with the same disclaimer. Here’s a suggestion for the media. Just say, “Efforts to contact (name of person) were not successful.” Wouldn’t that be more appropriate?

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Even as President Bush in June vetoed Congress’ bill funding embryonic stem-cell research, a new study circulated showing that 61% of Americans support such research – just one of many positions that contradict the conventional wisdom that Americans are fundamentally conservative.

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A big black insect, two inches long, with intense red eyes, landed on my hand and brazenly buzzed as I was giving a customer her change. It was the “Return To Pimiteoui Pow-wow” and I was collecting admissions. This newly arrived critter made it appear that I was actually trying to hand him to her, along with a couple of dollars. She didn’t seem particularly surprised. “Oh, another of those locusts.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bear with me. This is still a column about media and politics in the ol’ River City. I’ve been doing this for several years now, and I think I’ve earned the right to digress a bit and devote just a few paragraphs to the most media-saturated non-news story of this decade. And I promise, before I’m done, I will mention a few things about Peoria.

I was driving home from work last night listening to the Jim Bohannon show on WMBD 1470-AM, and Jimbo was asking/pontificating about Paris Hilton. He wanted someone to explain to him why Paris is a celebrity, because she has no talent other than being somewhat ‘more easy’ on the eyes. It was a slap at the media for making her a celebrity and for the public for being fascinated with her life. Read the rest of this entry »