Well, not literally murder.

But he nearly killed his own career. Or, maybe not.

Here’s the problem. The Peoria City manager wanted to move some $29 million around to help pay for bonds that the city is buying to finance the Mariott Plaza project. Actually, there no Mariott in place now. Let’s just call it the Pere Marquette renovation project.

Anyway, the $29 million is sitting in the Southtown TIF redevelopment fund. Which is where it ought to be. It’s property tax money generated in the Southtown TIF. It ought to be spent on redevelopment projects in Southtown.

But Saint Patrick didn’t want to waste the money there. Oh, no. He wanted to spend the money on the Downtown project. Now, Downtown is awfully close to Southtown. But it ain’t Southtown. Southtown is populated by human beings, many of them brown or black, and mostly very poor. What humans do live Downtown are mostly white and very rich.

So Saint Patrick makes a request to the City Council for this money to be moved.

But Saint Patrick made a mistake. As with all documents urging the City Council to move the money, there is a tiny, little pro-forma question that city managers must answer. They must mark down if there are any “nenighborhood concerns” about the move.

This was put into place years ago to keep city government honest. Each decision by the council MUST take into account wishes of the residents. Once the question is answered, the council can vote the way it chooses.

But Saint Patrick wrote “none” on the form.

If that answer was correct, I wouldn’t be writing this article now. The Peoria City Council got an earful from residents living in Southtown. And they did NOT like the idea of diverting money from Southtown to Downtown. They didn’t like it one little bit.

So, the council voted down the idea. Now, we can debate whether or not the council would have voted this down had so many neighborhood people not shown up. They did.

But here is my question: Either Saint Patrick really did do his due diligence, and the people who spoke out — all of them — were horribly misinformed about what their neighborhood wants. Or, Saint Patrick really screwed the pooch.

And don’t look to Mayor Jim Ardis for any answers. He voted to NOT divert the money, which suggests he agrees with the latter assessment. But he later took to the media to defend Saint Patrick’s thinking process. Meaning he agrees with the former.

People who are active in neighborhood groups have until next elections to decide where the mayor stands. They are about a year away.

Newspapers by proxy

Some scary stuff is going on in Galesburg and Springfield. Both the Register-Mail and the State Journal-Register have seen chilling layoffs. Copy desk-workers, clerical, circulation and security staff have been fired. In Springfield, they even dumped editorial cartoonist Chris Britt.

And here is a really scary part: They are transferring copy desk duties to other cities. That’s right. Theses papers are going to be edited and laid out in another city. Like Chicago.

GateHouse also owns the Peoria Journal Star. The word is that GateHouse won’t try to make these changes here … until after the union’s contract comes up for approval.

Then, well, let’s hope the union can hold out through a long protracted battle. GateHouse is bleeding red ink. It owns millions. Far more that it can repay from the miserly amount it’s now making from their cut-to-the-bone newspapers. So it’s slashing away, knowing full well they will have to default. Not that it’s skimping on bonuses for GateHouse executives.

So, we’re going to have to deal with the very real prospect that the Journal Star is going to be edited by people who live out of the city and don’t really give a fig about the quality of any rinky-dink newspaper in Peoria.

Welcome to the state of the mainstream media.