Distance and income leave some neighborhoods hungry for good food BY BILL KNIGHT The need is chicken-or-egg. And meat and fruit . . . . Neighborhoods need full-service groceries for consumers to shop for healthy food, but businesses need customer…
Susan B. Anthony, born 196 years ago this month, certainly didn’t need others to speak for her. But she had a knack for making allies from throughout the progressive movements of the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. So when…
Many young adults piled up huge student debt to get college degrees enabling them to pay off loans but face a slowly recovering job market. On the other side of the career spectrum, retirees worry that fixed incomes won’t be…
If it’s a tag-team match between Hitler, Stalin and the Boogeyman on one side, and Santa, Jesus and Bernie Sanders on the other, I stand with the latter trio. “Ho! Ho! Huh?” you say? The connection is socialism. I don’t…
It’s jarring when reality thumps wishful thinking. But “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” as it’s said. (Maybe the central Illinois equivalent is, “If wishes were caterpillars, butterflies would come.”) Anyway, the Peoria economy seems to be crying, “My…
Taxpayers who feel they already underwrite hotels, retailers or private development through publicly funded incentives or financing may lump in hospitals as businesses at the trough. Although hospitals are appreciated and respected institutions that provide communities with health care and…
Hospitals soothe pain and save lives, which is advertised by Peoria’s well-known medical centers. A less familiar facility is Kindred Hospital on Romeo B. Garrett Avenue, the community’s only for-profit hospital, which some may mistakenly think is where seriously ill…
Imagine sitting in your bathroom. Now imagine staying there. For more than a year. That’s how long some 30 percent of Illinois inmates are in solitary confinement, concedes the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Another 10 percent suffers such isolation…
By BILL KNIGHT As Peoria’s City-County Citizen Leadership Academy starts this month with help from neighborhood activists, two recent studies seem to indicate a struggling Peoria and the need for strong neighborhoods to be the backbones of cities. The new…
Between now and Sept. 10, when the special election for the 18th Congressional seat will be decided, candidates Darin LaHood and Rob Mellon will be campaigning throughout the 19 downstate counties. In the low-turnout July 7 primary, LaHood won…
