I Wonder What Happened to the Carbondale Observer

I wonder what happened to that blog I used to read, the Carbondale Observer. I guess the author must have moved away, or maybe lost interest in Carbondale politics, right?

Wrong. I turned my primary attention to some other priorities during the last year and a half, but I’m still here and I’m still paying attention to Carbondale politics. I also spent some time serving on the Sustainability Commission, and I’m still serving on the Planning Commission.

I’ve also decided to run for City Council in 2015. If you liked my blog, you’d love having me on the Council. I think this election is winnable (otherwise I wouldn’t be running), but winning won’t be easy. If you want to help, I’d appreciate any assistance you can give.

All campaigns need at least four things: votes, volunteers, publicity, and money. If you live in Carbondale and you read and enjoyed the blog when it was active, I am asking for your vote. If you support my campaign and you want to volunteer to canvass precincts or help in any other way, that would mean a lot to me.

You can help with publicity by telling your friends and neighbors about the campaign, and by placing a yard sign in your lawn. You can also help by liking or following the campaign Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages, and sharing or retweeting updates. If you are a member of a group that has meetings, you can invite me to speak beginning in January.

What if you want to help, but you either: (1) can’t vote for me because you live outside Carbondale, (2) don’t have the time to volunteer, or (3) can’t help with publicity? Well, you can still help by donating. If you want to help finance the campaign, visit my campaign website and click the red “Make a Donation” link on the upper right part of the page.

Thank you for reading this blog over the years. I hope to earn your vote for City Council in 2015.

City Council Meeting 05/21/2013

I listened to the live stream of the May 25, 2013 city council meeting. It was one of the shortest meetings I can recall, running just one hour and thirty-eight minutes, excluding the closed session. Not much of note happened, but a brief summary and comments are below. The agenda is available on the city’s website.

Before the meeting got started, Mayor Joel Fritzler announced that citizen comments and questions would be moved to the beginning of the meeting, becoming Item 3 on the agenda. That move resulted in the numbers of other agenda items being changed. There were no citizen comments and questions.

Council then turned to the consent agenda. Council member Jane Adams requested that Item 5.5 (formerly 4.5) be pulled for discussion, and council member Don Monty requested that item 5.8 (formerly 4.8) be pulled for discussion. The remainder of the consent agenda passed unanimously.

Council then discussed Item 5.5 (formerly 4.5), appointments to boards and commissions. Council member Adams was concerned with the appointment of former council member Chris Wissmann to the Carbondale Convention and Tourism Bureau (CCTB) board of directors. Adams suggested that a sitting city council member should be appointed to that seat, since no council member currently sits on the CCTB board.

In perfect Carbondale city council style, the council proceeded to discuss a relatively simple issue for an unnecessarily long time. The final result was that the Wissmann appointment was pulled from Item 5.5 and, at a future meeting,  council will consider making a policy requiring the appointment one sitting council member to the CCTB board. The remaining board appointments in Item 5.5 passed unanimously.

Council then discussed Item 5.8 (formerly 4.8), a set of technical corrections to city code. Council member Don Monty pulled the item from the consent agenda because he was concerned that members of the public might not understand what changes council was making to city code. Members of the public can, of course, see the agenda item and the proposed changes online, which makes pulling it from the consent agenda unnecessary.

In the case of Item 5.8, the technical changes involved changing references to Title 15 of the city code. Title 15, the portion of the code dealing with zoning, recently changed. That means that references to Title 15 found elsewhere in the code might not have referred to the current Title 15. Item 5.8 updated all references to Title 15 in the code. It passed unanimously.

Council then turned to the general business agenda. Item 6.1 (formerly 5.1) was a city request to rezone the old high school practice fields on Oakland Avenue back to single family residential. The property in question had been zoned for single family residential use since 1974, even when it was in use by the high school.

In 2010, the property was zoned to PUD (Planned Unit Development) to permit the development of an assisted living facility. The developer was required to submit a final site plan within 12 months of the rezoning. No final site plan was ever submitted, the state funding that was crucial to the project never materialized, and the developer decided not to pursue the project. As a result, city staff requested that the property be returned to its former zoning. Item 6.1 passed unanimously.

The rezoning will come as a relief to residents in the vicinity, many of whom opposed the proposed development. The Northwest Carbondale Neighborhood Association (NCNA) also opposed the development, and its members and supporters will also be relieved to learn that the property has been returned to its former zoning.

Council then considered Item 6.2 (formerly 5.2), which was a discussion of official city council order. This item was the result of a set of perceived slights by Mayor Joel Fritzler to council member Lance Jack. The official order was also the subject of some discussion at the May 7 council meeting.

I’m not going to summarize the entire dispute or the discussion. The result was that council approved a resolution asking staff to draft an ordinance setting order of signature on city resolutions and commendations to alphabetical order by last name. Council member Lance Jack voted against the resolution; all other council members voted in favor.

I didn’t have strong feelings about how the order should be conducted, but I do prefer that roll calls use the same order every time. I keep track of the votes and it would be easier to do if the names were called in the same order at every meeting.

There is one other item worth noting. Mayor Fritzler’s decision in 2011 to unilaterally move citizen comments and questions to the end of the agenda was controversial when it was announced. A few people spoke in opposition to that decision and I criticized it on the blog. At the end of the meeting, the mayor announced that citizen comments and questions will be permanently moved back to the beginning of the meetings. The likely result is more citizen comments and questions.

After council comments, the city council went into closed session at 8:38.

Comments are welcome.

City Council Meeting 04/16/2013

I did listen to most of Tuesday’s city council meeting. The council approved an annual budget, which is one of the most consequential things council does all year, and yet the meeting was surprisingly civil. Most of the votes were unanimous and there was none of the bickering that has dominated some recent council meetings. Since almost every vote was unanimous, and since there is a liveblog at the Carbondaze Gazette where you can read the play-by-play, I’ll just mention a couple of items that stood out.

First, retiring council members Chris Wissmann and Corene McDaniel are both possibly going to have streets renamed for them. My understanding is that these will be honorary renamings, and the streets will officially retain their current names. Hospital Street (between University and Illinois Avenues) will become Chris Wissmann Way, and East Jackson Street east of Wall Street will become Corene McDaniel Court. These honorary renamings are subject to council approval. I don’t have strong feelings either way about this, but it is the first time in my memory that retiring council members have been so honored. As far as I am aware, there is no Steven Haynes Avenue or Mary Pohlmann Boulevard.

Second, during discussion of the Park District’s fair days request for the annual Sunset Concerts, Mayor Joel Fritzler asked why there are never fair days requests for the concerts held on the SIUC campus. The city attorney replied that SIUC was granted some leeway as part of the agreement allowing the university to be annexed into the city. Council member Don Monty pointed out that SIUC is part of the State of Illinois and, since the state is a higher unit of government, is not subject to regulation by the city. The mayor argued that SIUC should not be above the law and asked the city attorney to investigate the issue. My suspicion is that Monty is correct, but we will see.

The final and most important thing I wanted to note is that the planned revision of the city’s subdivision ordinance is now going to be handled mostly in-house. The original plan was to hire the same consultant who worked on the recent rewrite of our zoning ordinance to help rewrite the subdivision ordinance. Now the plan is for city staff to rewrite the subdivision ordinance themselves and possibly hire a consultant at the end to help tighten up the new ordinance.

This is extremely important. Along with the zoning ordinance, the subdivision ordinance controls the form of the city. There are a lot of changes that should be made to the existing ordinance, but for now I’ll point to just two. First, the current ordinance requires a minimum block length of 800 feet and a maximum of 1200 feet. This is too large. We should be looking at something in the neighborhood of 650 feet as a maximum block length, with something around 500 feet being preferred. Second, the existing subdivision ordinance features what I consider unreasonable limitations for on-street parking. We should be trying to encourage on-street parking rather than discourage it.

Comments are welcome.

Harvey, Fronabarger, and Bradshaw Elected

Here are the numbers. All the precincts are in but, as I understand it, there are enough uncounted early votes and absentee ballots to potentially change the outcome between Bradshaw and Ritzel. The likelihood is that Bradshaw has been elected, but that is not certain yet. I expect these to be the final numbers for tonight, but I will update if I get any additional information.

UPDATED: The early votes are in, the totals have been updated, and Bradshaw is elected. My understanding is that there are still some absentee ballots that have not been counted, but there are not enough to change the result. You can view all the results for Jackson County here (pdf).

Carbondale City Council

• Carolin Harvey – 942 (20.77) — Elected
• Lee Fronabarger – 773 (17.05%) — Elected
• Jessica Bradshaw – 697 (15.37%) — Elected
• Brent Ritzel – 641 (14.13%)
• Navreet Kang – 482 (10.63%)
• Jerrold Hennrich – 229 (5.05%)
• Blaine Tisdale – 177 (3.9%)
• Tony Holsey – 170 (3.75%)
• Pepper Holder – 163 (3.59%)
• Karim Abdullah – 130 (2.8%)
• William Graham – 73 (1.61%)
• Luke L. Adams, Jr. – 58 (1.28%)

Carbondale Park District

• Carl R. Flowers – 1031 (34.64%) — Elected
• Harvey Welch – 999 (33.57%) — Elected
• Kathryn Hollister – 946 (31.79%) — Elected

Carbondale Community High School District No. 165

• John Joseph Hudgins – 2045 (23.40%) — Elected
• Francis Tsung – 1889 (21.62%) — Elected
• Brian Woodard – 1754 (20.07%) — Elected
• Kathy Booziotis – 1729 (19.78%) — Elected
• William Sherwood – 1322

Murphysboro Mayor

• Will Stephens – 847 (56.96%) — Elected
• Ron Williams – 640 (43.04%)

Council Candidate Coverage Roundup

Remember to vote today, and remember to come back to this site after the polls close at 7:00 p.m. for updates on the election outcome. In the meantime, here is a roundup of all the coverage of the election and the candidates so far. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, check the links and make your choices.