Two St. Louis men were arrested last month after being seen operating video cameras in the vicinity of City Water, Light and Power’s coal-fired generating station. Turns out they were filming ducks on Lake Springfield, but hey, you can’t be too careful these days, right? You can be too careful about some things and not […]
Fletcher Farrar
Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .
Posted inOpinion
Enough trash talk
If talk picked up trash, Mayor Tim Davlin would have the town clean by now. All year he has been talking to neighborhood associations about his big plans to reform Springfield’s municipal waste system. This summer he convened a series of meetings with landlords and neighborhood activists. I attended as a representative of The Springfield […]
Posted inOpinion
Schools need courageous politics
Conventional wisdom in Illinois says that politicians who take politically difficult positions are doomed to defeat, but the late Paul Simon always challenged that. “It is not true,” he boomed back to me not so long ago, after I had voiced the cynical view. He said if you’re honest with voters and make a case […]
Posted inOpinion
Closing the gap
When the federal district court issued its Springfield consent decree in 1974, it aimed at the achievement gap but missed. Because racially segregated schools were unequal, integration was proposed as a remedy. Busing was the blunt instrument employed to equal things up, and it helped. School buildings were integrated and resources were improved, but the […]
