Aug 30
John and Cindy Barnhart bought an abandoned 7-acre farm southeast of Oregon and began growing vegetables on it. Open for business four years now and certified organic, Barnhart’s Stone Corner Farm Market is certainly about the land and the food, but it’s also about stewardship of a singular piece of local history.
Photography by Janet Fawcett. 
Read the rest of this entry
Aug 28
In (dis)honor of the looming property tax deadline, I am watching the Bollywood movie “Lagaan” again this weekend. Read the rest of this entry
Aug 28
“Human services organizations should not be cut from funding”, by the Editorial Board of the Northern Star, Friday, August 28, 2009
Cartoon A
Theme A
Persuasion A
Accuracy of Price Tag on Sidewalk from Nowhere to Nowhere B+ (Well, look what they have to use for a source!)
Knowledge of How City Budget/TIF Works C (Could improve with more studying!)
Aug 28
This month’s Expenditures of Distinction are brought to you by the August 24 agenda packet except for one expenditure from July 27.
Expenditures of Distinction — Disdain Division
$353 for Blackberries for I&T (p. 99)
$17,000 to Re:New DeKalb (p. 154) in administrative fees for two Architectural Improvement projects Read the rest of this entry
Aug 27
Congrats to our firefighters on reversing the lay offs!
I decided I would keep running the DeKalb Rescue Me Now blog anyway because the Fire and Police Departments seem below a skating rink, a sidewalk from nowhere to nowhere, the brick building mania, spending TIF money like drunken gamblers, and the airport in priorities. When is the skating rink going to save a life? When will the airport have enough land so that the city can stop buying more of it?
I just added a couple of links on CPTED.
Aug 25
City Council’s most damaging flaw is its low overall level of intellectual curiosity. Between the grandstanding and the gotchas and the preening and pomposity, there is little time or inclination left for understanding the fundamental shifts necessary for our continued well-being, much less prosperity. Whatever energy might have been devoted to real study of big-picture issues is instead spent at scrutiny of minutiae and potshots at the individuals who understand, care, and represent the struggling DeKalbite best.
Mac McIntyre expressed the only compassion to be witnessed in Council Chambers last night. He set real people of DeKalb — the foreclosed-upon, the unemployed, the underemployed — against the next extravagance contemplated for the downtown. The cognitive dissonance must have caused instant, painful hissing of synapses, for, instead of mirroring and applying the compassion, the response was defensive and dismissive.
And, even with hard numbers in front of them, Council continues to miss the point. Read the rest of this entry
Aug 25
For the record, I was not the first person to bring up the “make whole” agreement between the schools and the city over TIF.
Here are some links, newest first:
“Adapt, improvize… probably not,” January 14, 2009
“District 428: Defining Moment in Local History,” January 9, 2009
January 27, 2008 letter to the editor from Tom Teresinski
April 22, 2003 Chronicle article
April 30, 2003 Chronicle article
June 29, 2003 Chronicle article
Aug 23
From Monday’s City Council meeting agenda:
2) RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DEKALB, ILLINOIS TO EXECUTE A VARIANCE AGREEMENT TO THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT WITH THE DEKALB INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIREFIGHTERS, LOCAL 1236, AFL-CIO FOR THE PERIOD OF JULY 1, 2008 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2011.
The City and IAFF Local 1236 have reached a tentative agreement. As part of this agreement, IAFF members agree to an eleven month wage freeze in year one and a six month wage freeze in year two during the remaining two years of the agreement. Members also agree to waive their carrying fee compensation through the term of the contract. In return, the City agrees to offer reinstatement to the three laid off firefighters and to hire an additional recently vacant position. The City also agrees that any firefighter that retires on or before September 5, 2009 shall be eligible for health insurance premiums that were in effect prior to June 29, 2009 but shall be subject to any changes that may occur in the future. Additionally, the City agrees not to lay-off or furlough any Union member through the term of the current contract (June 30, 2011). The terms of this variance agreement will result in approximately $350,000 in savings over the remaining two years of the agreement. Please direct questions about this item to Assistant City Manager Rudy Espiritu.
L. REPORTS – COMMUNICATIONS
M. RECESS FOR CLOSED SESSION
DeKalb needed to save $500,000 citywide this year. Does the two-year agreement help them meet this milepost? Has anybody done the math? Bueller?
Aug 22
The second Choose 2 Reuse event is today at the old Sawyer building at 5th and Lincoln. If you have things to give away, drop them off between 6-8 a.m. Start browsing mode at 8 a.m. It goes until 4.
For an extra-large item such as a piece of furniture you can’t carry in by yourself, place a photo of it on an index card or flyer for display. Add contact information so those who are interested can make arrangements with you for pickup. (In desperation I will be bringing in some of my cucumber overflow, and after all this rain there may be one or two I have to treat this way. ;-D)
Aug 21
This was going to be about why the City Council should hold DeKalb Area Convention & Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) accountable for its $50,000 annual allocation. It’s still about that, but also counters a story being floated in some circles today about how Re:New DeKalb nobly requested their $45,000 allocation come from TIF this year instead of the General Fund so Council could have the option to restore social services funding.
This is utter hogwash. Re:New’s funding wasn’t supposed to come from the General Fund. It was supposed to come from the Economic Development Fund, funded by the hotel-motel tax. This was set up last year after the Financial Advisory Committee recommended to earmark certain revenues for certain purposes.
What it’s really about is a screw up, and the inability of this city to live within its means. Read the rest of this entry