Having resolved to build new high school facilities it can’t pay for, the board of School District 186 is exploring several tax hike proposals that the voters won’t approve. The board’s preferred plan to bring Springfield’s public high schools into the late 20th century is likely to cost nearly a quarter-billion dollars. Some $57 million […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Going ’round and ’round:
For years the noise of vehicles colliding has been making the cats nervous around the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and Lawrence Avenue. And for years the City of Springfield and residents on Springfield’s near west side have disputed how best to reduce the number of accidents. The city’s traffic engineers, like most of their guild, […]
Posted inOpinion
Just extra money
For a day or two in late November, it was just like the old days on Wall Street — well, like 2008, anyway. The National Association of Realtors had reported that house sales had risen 10.1 percent in October, several times higher than predicted, and that sent stock prices up. Only a few days before […]
Posted inOpinion
The Illinois budget is broken
The day after Veterans Day, we were reminded of another long-running war of attrition, in which clueless elected officials have been squandering resources in ways that threaten our security over the long term. No, not the fighting in Helmand Province, but in the General Assembly. On Nov. 12 the Pew Center on the States, a […]
Posted inOpinion
All is not well forever
All but a few members of the Springfield High School Hall of Fame are not in the least bit famous in Springfield. In the English-speaking bookish community, however, one of those anointed is celebrated. Robert Stuart Fitzgerald’s reworking into English verse of the Aeneid, The Odyssey and The Iliad are not only admired but loved. […]
Posted inOpinion
Underground movements
Watching TV around Halloween — when so many rotting corpses rise from the grave to threaten the unwary that it is easy to think that it is an election year — reminded me that dead people are a waste disposal problem. Call them corruptible or call them putrescible, they rot. Frontier-era settlers learned to their […]
Posted inOpinion
My life as a guide at the Lincoln law offices
I was out of school, out of work and out of ideas when the new owners of the Tinsley Building hired me. It was 1968, and they had just restored the building at Sixth and Adams, believing it prudent to preserve the only remaining Springfield building in which Abraham Lincoln maintained a law office. The […]
Posted inOpinion
Remember to not forget
The bronze sculpture commemorating the 1908 race riots was finally dedicated this summer on Aug. 6, a century late. As all mayors must, Mayor Davlin said a few words at the ceremony in Union Square Park. “I think we also put up a monument over here,” he said, “to remind . . . current and […]
Posted inOpinion
UIS, the educational city
I complained here recently that the University of Illinois at Springfield’s recently adopted master plan will make the future UIS campus the kind of sprawly, inchoate, inefficient place that alert urban planners everywhere are abandoning. (“Stuck in the ’70s.” Sept. 3). How backward-looking, I wrote. In fact, this vision of the future UIS is not […]
Posted inOpinion
The great tradition of central Illinois oratory
The political speech in all its forms — from the stump harangue to the platform oration — figures significantly in central Illinois literature. Lincoln and Douglas are only our most famous Ciceros. William Jennings Bryan came to the attention of the nation because of his famous polemic against the gold standard delivered in Chicago at […]
Posted inOpinion
‘Great Refrigerator Roundup’ is a bad bargain
Until Springfield develops a taste for warm beer, refrigerators will continue to account (with air conditioners) for the major part of every household’s electricity bill. That’s especially true if the fridge is old. City Water, Light & Power estimates that there are 40,000 ice boxes built B.C. — Before Clinton — that are still running […]
Posted inOpinion
Three into one won’t go
To build or not to build, that is the question. The answer will depend not on the review of high school facilities needs underway at School District 186. It will be determined by the voters — appropriately, if you are concerned about democracy, inappropriately if you are concerned about education. Common sense and consultants made […]
