Category Archives: City reporting

Food pantries always need help, not just at the holidays

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Last fall I started hearing rumblings about food pantries in Springfield running low on food long before Thanksgiving hit. In October I began chatting with some of the local pantries, and sure enough, supplies were running low, even as the need was going up as people struggled with the realities of a recession. The result was this story and a lesson learned — food pantries can use our help all year long, not just during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. In addition to the story, I compiled a list of all the food pantries in Springfield and the surrounding counties so readers could at a glance find a pantry to help. I also included tips for organizing a food drive.

Supplies tight at local food pantries

Oct. 26, 2009

On Friday, some shelves at Kumler Outreach Ministries’ food pantry on Springfield’s north end were empty.

There was no canned fruit, spaghetti noodles, chili, or pork and beans. There were four jars of peanut butter, some jelly, several bags of corn flakes and Ramen noodles, loaves of bread and a few heads of cabbage, as well as some other supplies. The freezer was stocked with bags of frozen corn, individually wrapped tilapia filets and other foods.

Tight food supplies have become the rule, not the exception, all around central Illinois. Food-pantry coordinators say they are seeing more new faces in a tough economy and are concerned about their ability to help.

Some report donations are down, while others say contributions are steady. But they all say the number of people needing food is on the rise, and that means pantries must stretch limited resources.

Pantry staffs say they are working hard to find the best bargains on food, seeking out more donations from individuals and companies, and sometimes not filling a needy family’s grocery bag quite as full, just to make sure there is enough to go around.

“There is no doubt in my mind that until they get jobs in this area, it’s going to continue,” said Rebecca Eaton, administrator of the Jacksonville Area Community Food Center, which operates a food pantry from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Between Oct. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2009, the Jacksonville pantry served about 7,700 people compared to 6,600 and 5,600 the previous two years. On Friday, the pantry provided food for 15 families, of which five were new clients.

“It does that almost every day. It’s just getting crazier and crazier,” Eaton said. “We try to help the poor, the working poor and everybody in between, above or below. We just don’t want to see people go hungry.”

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Family loses two children in camping accident

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g113174fbc28d95f0ae6407413ae63595bbdd35a31a0097 g03e04b6e23c35f751b7d49af205d9a870f5e4cba05a51f The camping accident that killed two young Springfield children in July 2008 is by far the most tragic, emotion-filled story I’ve ever covered. It took all I had to report on this accident, primarily because my two boys were the same ages as the Stuebs children.

I wrote a series of stories about what happened — straight-line winds knocked over a tree onto the Stuebs family’s camping tents, killing two of their children — and cried my way through all of them. As a result of the news coverage, people from all over began donating money and having fund-raisers to help the family with medical bills. The response was overwhelming.

I think everyone was shocked by what happened to the family and realized the same thing could happen to any of us and our loved ones at any time. There wasn’t much else people could do to help in this terribly helpless situation, so they prayed and donated whatever they could, hoping it might help ease the parents’ pain.

Family in shock waits to see if daughter will live / Funeral plans for son on hold while parents try to cope
July 23, 2008

Four-year-old Dustin Stuebs loved his new Spiderman shoes, riding his bicycle and going to school on the bus. He had reached the age where his personality was taking shape, family members said Tuesday.

The Springfield preschooler’s life was cut short Monday morning when an oak tree fell on his tent during a storm and crushed him. Dustin and his family were camping near the Quad Cities.

“He was just starting to blossom into his own person, and you could see his unique character. He was daddy’s little boy. He was attached to his dad. He’d be the type who would hang onto your leg as you walked around,” said Dustin’s uncle, Dale Logerquist.

Dustin was pronounced dead at 7:55 a.m. Monday at Genesis Medical Center, Illini campus, in Silvis, where he was rushed by ambulance after emergency workers used chain saws to free him from beneath the 18-inch-diameter tree.

Rock Island County Coroner Sharon Anderson said Stuebs died of hypovolemic shock due to crushing injuries to his abdomen and legs.

There was no autopsy, but an inquest will be scheduled.

The Stuebs family, including parents Jason and Christina and seven children, are regular campers but were on their first trip to the Indian Trails Resort in Colona. The family’s children are Danielle, 12; Madison, 10; Dyantae, 9; Hannah, 7; Dustin, 4; Jacob, 1; and Savannah, 9 months.

All members of the family suffered injuries, according to Logerquist and his sister, Judy Smith. Savannah remains hospitalized at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria with life-threatening head injuries, including brain swelling. She was in the same tent as Dustin when the tree fell.

At best, family members said, she will be hospitalized six to eight weeks but possibly longer.

“I am just beside myself. I’m hoping in the next 24, 48 hours we’ll know more,” Smith said.

Madison suffered severe facial fractures that may require reconstructive surgery. She was in a second tent with Danielle, who already had run to the family’s vehicle, but the tree fell just as Madison was at the entrance of the tent getting ready to run. Branches struck her in the face, the family said. She also was still hospitalized Tuesday, though her injuries were not as severe as Savannah’s and Dustin’s.

Hannah suffered scrapes on her leg, and Dyantae has back pain when he walks or stands up, according to family.

The family and others at the resort apparently had no warning that the fast-moving storm was approaching. It hit just before daybreak, and most campers had left the day before, so the grounds were somewhat deserted. Jason and Christina heard no warning sirens, Logerquist said, and they woke only after the downpour began.

The family, which regularly went camping because it was something fun they could do together, arrived at Indian Trails Resort on Friday and was going to stay through the week. The children had been enjoying riding their bikes and playing.

Dustin caught his first fish Sunday and had been having fun that evening capturing frogs — “He was so excited,” Smith said.

The family split up into two tents. Danielle and Madison slept in a red, yellow and blue tent, while the rest of the family slept in a larger tent nearby.

The storm, which National Weather Service meteorologists since have identified as a rare “derecho” event involving straight-line winds, blew into the campground about 6:15 a.m. A resort worker reportedly scoured the property in an effort to warn campers of the impending storm. It is unclear if he made it to the Stuebs’ site.

Jason Stuebs, realizing the severity of the storm and the danger the family was in, began rousing everyone and ushering them to the family’s vehicle for safety. In the midst of that, the oak tree fell, narrowly missing the girls’ tent but landing directly on top of the larger tent and trapping some of the family members inside.

It landed on top of Dustin Stuebs’ midsection, crushing him. It also crushed the family’s dog, Minnie, killing it.

Jason Stuebs called 911 on his cell phone, and emergency personnel were at the scene within minutes, according to Logerquist and Smith.

Their campsite was down a hill, there was an opening at the base of the hill, and the lake was just beyond their site. Family members now wonder if their location prevented them from hearing any warning sirens that might have been sounding in the distance or feeling the strong winds picking up.

It took rescuers an hour to remove the tree from on top of Dustin, a preschooler at Ball Charter.

The family is devastated by the loss of Dustin and the unknowns surrounding Savannah’s condition and recovery.

Jason Stuebs has worked at the Avenue Thrift Shop at 719 W. Jefferson St. for 14 years. He does not have medical insurance, and he recently became the family’s sole provider when Christina quit her cleaning business so she could start nursing school next month.

Three of the family’s children are foster children. All the children who were not hospitalized are staying with family members while Jason and Christina stay at the hospital in Peoria with Savannah and Madison.

Funeral arrangements for Dustin are pending. Jason and Christina are beside themselves and have not been able to turn their attention to that task, according to Logerquist, Smith and other family members who are doing all they can to help.

Meanwhile, they are trying to come to grips with and make sense of the tragedy.

“We went up there (to the campsite) to clean up, and the inside of that tree was rotted,” Logerquist said. “The odds are probably better than winning the lottery. But this isn’t luck here.”

Straight-line winds powerful as F1 tornado
 July 23, 2008

Straight-line winds of 90 to 100 mph, about the equivalent of an F1 tornado, are what blew a rotting oak tree over onto the Stuebs’ family tent, killing 4-year-old Dustin Stuebs.

Meterologists at the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities since have identified the storm as a rare “derecho” event. A derecho is a long-lived windstorm associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms affecting a wide area.

“Derecho” is a Spanish word for “direct” or “straight ahead.”

Derechos are most common May through August and typically occur in the Midwest from the upper Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley, as well as in an area from the mid-Mississippi Valley into the southern Plains.

Dan Kelly, a meteorologist with the NWS in Lincoln, said derechos happen once a year or 18 months.

“A squall line is a lot more common. We probably get six or seven of those per year. A derecho is actually a more intense squall line, longer lasting and a little bigger, so it’s a bigger squall line,” he said.

Monday’s storm produced extreme winds that damaged an area 20 to 40 miles wide, causing downed trees and power lines. Power was knocked out to more than 130,000 residents in the Quad Cities.
Springfield baby hurt in storm remains in critical condition
July 25, 2008

A Springfield baby badly injured during a windstorm Monday at the family’s campsite near the Quad Cities remained in critical condition at a Peoria hospital on Thursday as her family began making funeral plans for her 4-year-old brother.

Savannah Stuebs, 9 months, has severe swelling of her brain, which apparently is complicated by a bruised lung doctors discovered during a CAT scan.

“Things are probably not getting better; however, they’re not getting worse,” said Savannah’s uncle, Dale Logerquist.

He said doctors believe the bruised lung is causing stress on her body that in turn is producing the fluid. They fear the girl’s lung could collapse.

“She is 100 percent on life support, not because she needs it, but because it’s easier on the body,” he said. “… She looks like a little beach ball right now. She’s so swollen because of all the IVs and everything. She’s retaining so much fluid right now.”

Savannah’s parents, Jason and Christina Stuebs, have not left OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, where the girl is hospitalized. Family members in Springfield have been helping them make funeral arrangements for their son, Dustin, who was killed when a wind-blown tree fell on the family’s tent at the Indian Trails Resort in Colona.

Jason, Christina, Dustin, Savannah and another child were sleeping in one tent, while two other daughters were sleeping in a second tent. The tree narrowly missed the daughters’ tent, but it landed on the larger one, crushing Dustin and causing Savannah’s life-threatening injuries.

The other children were injured but not as seriously as Dustin and Savannah.
Jason Stuebs, who has worked at a local not-for-profit thrift store for 14 years, has no medical insurance and was the family’s sole income.

Dustin’s funeral visitation will be Thursday, July 31, and burial will be the next day. Services will be at Calvary Temple, and arrangements still are being finalized, Logerquist said.

Dustin was a preschooler at Ball Charter School. The principal, teachers and parents there are organizing a fundraiser set for Aug. 17 at the Field House on Sangamon Avenue.

Also, Sam Alkhayyat, owner of Mariah’s Restaurant, 3317 Robbins Road, has organized an open house-style fundraiser from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2.

Alkhayyat is seeking items for a silent auction, and he can be reached at 622-7600. Every dime raised will go to the family, he said.

Logerquist said numerous people from the Springfield area have been traveling to Peoria to try to visit the family. He cautioned that because of Savannah’s delicate state, there can be no visitors other than her parents in her room and no flowers, cards, food or stuffed animals.

Anyone wanting to send cards, letters and well-wishes can send them to A-Plus Pack and Ship, 2112 S. MacArthur Blvd., which is owned by Logerquist.

Meanwhile, donations for the family to assist with medical, travel, lodging and funeral costs can be made at any Marine Bank location in Springfield. Checks can be made out to “Stuebs Family Benefit.” They can be mailed to Marine Bank, 3050 Wabash Ave., Springfield, IL 62704.
Brain injuries seem severe, permanent for baby hit by tree
July 26, 2008

The family of 9-month-old Savannah Stuebs, struck by a tree while camping earlier this week, learned Friday that her brain injury is more extensive than they realized.

The Springfield girl’s uncle, Dale Logerquist, said her family is taking things day by day, but doctors have warned them that Savannah appears to have severe and permanent brain damage. Another stent was placed in her skull to relieve swelling, but it continues to be a problem.

Savannah is being treated at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Funeral arrangements are pending for her 4-year-old brother, Dustin Stuebs, a preschooler at Ball Charter School who was in the same tent as Savannah. Visitation is Thursday at Calvary Temple with funeral services the following day.

A rotted oak tree fell on the children’s tent during a violent windstorm that swept through the family’s campsite at the Indian Trails Resort in Colona near the Quad Cities on Monday morning.

The entire Stuebs family was on their first camping trip to the Colona resort. Parents Jason and Christina were sleeping in one tent with their children Dustin, Savannah, 9-year-old Dyantae, 7-year-old Hannah and 1-year-old Jacob. Their other two children, Danielle, 12, and Madison, 10, were sleeping in a second tent.

The tree narrowly missed the girls’ tent but landed on top of the larger tent.

What you can do to help:

* Give blood. Logerquist said Savannah has received a great deal of blood, and anyone who wants to help can give blood at the local donation center.
* Make a financial donation. Contributions to assist the family with funeral, medical, travel and lodging expenses are being accepted at any Marine Bank location. Checks can be made out to “Stuebs Family Benefit.” Anyone who wishes to mail a check to the fund can send it to Marine Bank, 3050 Wabash Ave., Springfield, IL 62704.
Jason Stuebs, who has worked at a local not-for-profit thrift store for 14 years, has no medical insurance and was the family’s sole income.
* Send a card. Letters, cards and well-wishes can be sent to the Stuebs family in care of A-Plus Pack and Ship, 2112 S. MacArthur Blvd., Springfield, IL 62704.
* Attend a fundraiser. Two have been scheduled so far — one from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, at Mariah’s Restaurant, 3317 Robbins Road, and another Sunday, Aug. 17, at the Field House Pizza and Pub, 3211 Sangamon Ave., organized by Ball Charter employees and parents.
Silent-auction items are being sought for both fundraisers. Call Mariah’s owner Sam Alkhayyat at 622-7600 or Ball Charter parent Steve Rockford at 525-0847 to donate items or services.

Baby injured in camping accident dies at Peoria hospital
July 28, 2008

The Springfield baby who was injured last week when a tree fell on her tent died Sunday at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Savannah Stuebs, 9 months, died at 8:52 p.m. in the hospital’s intensive care unit, Peoria County Coroner Johnna Ingersoll said.

She had been on life support, and her family made the decision to turn off the machines because doctors discovered extensive irreversible damage to her brain, her uncle, Dale Logerquist, told The State Journal-Register on Sunday.

Savannah was injured July 21 while camping with her family near the Quad Cities. She suffered head-injuries when an 18-inch diameter tree fell on the family tent. Her 4-year-old brother, Dustin Stuebs, was also killed in the accident.

Justin died the night of the accident after he was rushed to a hospital in Silvis.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Savannah Stuebs to be buried with her brother / Family loses second child injured in storm at campground
July 28, 2008

Savannah Stuebs, the 9-month-old Springfield girl who suffered fatal head injuries last week in a camping accident, will be buried Friday with her 4-year-old brother, Dustin, who was killed in the same accident.

Savannah died Sunday night at a Peoria hospital.

Her parents, Jason and Christina Stuebs, decided to remove her from life support after doctors determined during surgery Saturday that her brain was severely and irreversibly damaged.

The Stuebs donated a valve from Savannah’s heart to another child, said her uncle, Dale Logerquist.

“She’s going to live on in another child, which is good,” he said.

Visitation for Dustin and Savannah will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Calvary Temple, 1730 W. Jefferson St. It is open to the public. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Friday at Calvary, with burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery.

“It makes you realize that all the problems that we had a week and a day ago are so pale and so relatively insignificant to what really in this world matters. Why worry about the little things?” Logerquist said.

“I hear people that live to be 100 saying don’t worry about the little things. It’s just so, so true. Everybody should take the moment now and kiss their kids because you don’t know what tomorrow holds.”

The accident happened at daybreak July 21 at the Indian Trails Resort in Colona near the Quad Cities. It was the Stuebs family’s first trip to that particular campground.

A storm with straight-line winds of up to 100 mph blew into the campground and pushed an 18-inch-diameter oak tree over onto one of the family’s two tents.

Jason, Christina, Dustin, Savannah and three other children — 9-year-old Dyantae, 7-year-old Hannah and 1-year-old Jacob — had been sleeping in the tent the tree fell on. Two daughters, Danielle, 12, and Madison, 10, were sleeping in a second tent a few feet away.

All the children suffered injuries of some sort, but Dustin and Savannah were the most seriously hurt. Dustin’s abdomen and legs were crushed, and he died more than two hours later at the hospital.

Madison suffered facial fractures that may require reconstructive surgery, and the other children had pain, cuts and scratches. The family’s dog, Minnie, also was crushed and died beneath the tree.

CWLP plant explosion

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I will never let my good friend and colleague Amanda Reavy forget how I filled in for her the night of Nov. 10, 2007.

It started out as a routine night in the newsroom. Mike Kienzler, who was the dayside Metro editor, was filling in for someone as well.

The first sign something was up: the lights flickered. Then came the 911 dispatcher’s voice over the police scanner — there’d been reports of an explosion at the City Water, Light and Power plant. I packed up my stuff and sped over to Stevenson Drive, calling my husband at home to tell him what was being reported and urging him to get out candles and matches just in case.

The first thing I saw near the power plant was lots of flashing emergency vehicle lights. But the thing I’ll always remember most vividly was what I heard. It sounded like a huge, loud jet engine was whining over the plant.

No one was injured in the explosion, thank goodness.

Explosion at CWLP / No injuries reported, but damage appears severe
Nov. 11, 2007

City Water, Light and Power’s main power plant was severely damaged Saturday night by a series of explosions and a spectacular fire.

The blast – one large explosion followed by about a dozen smaller ones – occurred about 6:50 p.m. No one was injured, and the oil- and wind-fed fire was extinguished by 10 p.m.

“There is a lot of damage,” said Jay Bartlett, chief utilities engineer for CWLP. He estimated it will amount to “in the many millions of dollars.

“This was a very, very significant shockwave that came from this explosion,” Bartlett said.

However, he said, ” power plants are fixable. Our concern always is nobody’s hurt.”

“We’re lucky,” he said. “We’re blessed.”

The city late Saturday was operating with electricity produced by CWLP’s auxiliary generators and power purchased off the nationwide grid. Aside from brief and isolated outages early in the evening, officials said, customers should see no effects from the explosion and fire.

The explosion took place in a brick building that houses the Dallman 1, 2 and 3 generators, the city’s main sources of electricity,

Bartlett said the first and largest explosion was caused by an electrical failure in an undetermined component, apparently located between the Dallman 1 generator and a “stepup transformer” – a unit that converts electricity from 20,000 to 69,000 volts – that caught fire.

He ruled out coal dust as a cause, as some officials had speculated early in the evening, but said engineers remained unsure late Saturday exactly what sparked the original blast.

Springfield Fire Department spokesman Bob Reside said a large section of an exterior brick wall on the building’s fourth floor collapsed into the interior of the building during the fire.

“This just shows how dangerous this has gotten because of damage to the structure,” Reside said. “We have to expect further collapse.”

The fire was fueled by oil leaking from damaged and blazing power transformers and boosted by a 15-mph wind that gusted up to 24 mph.

“Transformers contain oil, and it is burning and has spilled out of the transformers,” Reside said at about 8:30 p.m.

Eleven employees were inside the plant when the explosions occurred, but all evacuated safely. Bartlett lauded the employees for protecting and removing equipment after the blast.

There was no danger to the public from chemical fumes, and the fire posed no threat to nearby businesses or residences, Reside said.

Witnesses reported one large explosion, followed by 10 to 15 smaller ones. The explosion was followed by a steam release from the power plant, which many who heard it compared to the sound made by a jet engine.

The Dallman 1 unit, which was operating when the explosion occurred, suffered the most damage. Dallman 3, CWLP’s single biggest unit, continued to operate for about 90 minutes after the explosion, until it was shut down to protect firefighters. Officials expect to know today when it can be restarted. Dallman 2 already was out of service for scheduled maintenance.

CWLP has a variety of other generators, but officials said late Saturday they will use whatever power is cheapest at any one point, whether it’s produced in Springfield or has to be purchased from elsewhere, until CWLP’s situation stabilizes.

The explosion will have no effect on construction of the city’s $500 million new power plant being built elsewhere on the CWLP complex at Lake Springfield, Bartlett said.

Several suburban fire departments were called to staff Springfield fire stations while city firefighters responded to the CWLP incident. The Sherman and Chatham departments sent aerial trucks to the power plant after a city truck experienced mechanical problems.

Reside called the jet-like sound of steam being released a normal process for the power plant.

“It’s still producing steam,” Reside said of the power plant during an 8:30 p.m. briefing. “Because it’s not being used for generation … it gets vented out so that the boiler doesn’t explode.”

The fire department had plans in place to handle an emergency at the plant, he said, and the response was “textbook.”

“Actually, it’s going very well, other than unforeseen breakdowns and so forth,” he said.

A hazardous materials team responded, as did the Citizens Emergency Response Team. The American Red Cross provided drinks and food for emergency workers.

Dozens of CWLP employees also came to the plant to help if needed.

Police detoured motorists away from the area of Dirksen Parkway, Taylor Avenue and Stevenson Drive during the incident, and interstate off-ramps were closed near CWLP.

While the damage was serious, Bartlett described the ultimate financial impact to CWLP as low.

“This plant’s insured,” he said. “We’ll certainly have some deductibles to pick up.”

Witnesses report large explosion, many smaller ones
Nov. 11, 2007

Residents, restaurant diners, shoppers and hotel lodgers across Springfield’s southeast side were startled Saturday evening by a thunderous explosion, followed by about a dozen smaller blasts.

If that wasn’t enough, lights all over the city began flickering within moments. And then came the overpowering jet-like sound of steam being released from a stack at City Water, Light and Power’s electric generating station at Lake Springfield.

The odor of hot electricity mixed with coal dust as smoke from the fire inside the plant drifted for miles.

Micki Dickerson, who was at the nearby Capital City Shopping Center on Dirksen Parkway, said the first explosion “sounded like the loudest thunder you ever heard – it shook the windows and the building.”

“The first explosion was real loud and the second almost as loud. We went outside, and then it sounded like gunfire – boom, boom, boom. Then it stopped for a second and started right back up,” she said.

Then she started hearing the sound of the steam release.

“Now, it sounds like you’re standing too close to a jet,” she said shortly after the blast. “It’s still going on. You can’t hear the sirens for the sounds of the power plant.”

Tammy Brown, who lives on South 13th Street, e-mailed The State Journal-Register to say, “The entire back half of my house vibrated at ten ’til 7. It felt like something hit the house.”

“Then I heard a long series of what sounded like gunshots. At least a minute or so in length. I thought a house in my neighborhood was on fire or had been damaged,” she wrote.

Brown likewise reported a sound like “an airplane engine” as steam was released from the plant.

City officials did not brief reporters about what happened until 8:30 p.m., so speculation ran rampant on radio airwaves and among residents about what was going on.

Many people apparently were concerned about the possibility of toxic gases being released by the explosion, and others wanted to know if they should expect to lose power during the night.

Ozkan Dogan, manager of the Hampton Inn, 3185 S. Dirksen Parkway, a few blocks from the power plant, said everyone at the hotel felt the explosions. A short time later, he saw smoke drifting across the sky and heard ambulances and other emergency vehicles converging on the area.

“We tried to keep people calm,” he said, noting that some student groups were staying at the hotel.

He said employees checked The State Journal-Register’s Web site for updates, and he walked across the street to a hotel closer to the power plant to see if they needed a place to evacuate their guests. He said his main goal was to keep Hampton Inn guests abreast of what was happening.

“They just came down here, and we told them to be calm and we would inform them as we got information,” he said.

Dave and Sharon Painter of Springfield were eating at Smokey Bones Barbeque and Grill, 2600 S. Dirksen Parkway, shortly before 7 p.m.

“We heard and then felt a big explosion, then the lights flickered,” they said. “There was an electrical burning smell coming into the restaurant.”

Carl and Marge Wilson, who live on Saxony Road, walked over to the Capital City Shopping Center to watch the commotion from the parking lot and to wait for word about what happened.

“I was cooking and heard a big boom,” said Marge Wilson. “My husband looked out the door and said, ‘Wait ’til you see this …’”

Carl Wilson added: “It sounded like a bomb went off.”

Lake will remain closed / Saturday’s explosion at CWLP plant left asbestos-laden debris
Nov. 12, 2007

Lake Springfield will be closed to boaters indefinitely while officials assess damage at the city’s power plant and start to clean up asbestos-laden debris around the site of Saturday night’s explosion.

Some oil was flushed onto the lake during the firefighting effort, and officials want to keep boats from disturbing the water while cleanup is under way, they said Sunday.

City Water, Light and Power officials said Environmental Protection Agency tests for finished water quality from Lake Springfield, taken Sunday, indicated the water is clean and safe to drink.

Environmental contractors have been at the blast site, isolating and removing oil in the dam area of Lake Springfield. Additional tests on finished water quality are scheduled for today.

The cause of the explosion, which rocked the city about 6:50 p.m. Saturday, remains under investigation. No one was injured.

Mayor Tim Davlin on Sunday said the cost to repair the Dallman generating facility, where the blast took place, will be in the tens of millions of dollars.

“Our new power plant (scheduled for completion in 2010) will probably be fully functional before even this is functional. That tells you the magnitude of what’s happened out there,” he said. “We’re basically going to start from scratch in a lot of different areas. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, and it’s going to be one expensive proposition when we’re finished.”

Jay Bartlett, CWLP’s chief utilities engineer, said the damage is extensive. Several walls are missing. Shrapnel punctured the roof and structural steel in the building. The turbine generator housed in the building was destroyed, as was a step-up transformer on the outside of the building. The transformer that feeds the unit and a multitude of other electrical apparatus and wiring also were destroyed.

Davlin thanked other communities for coming to the assistance of Springfield during the ordeal and said the city is lucky no one was injured or killed in the accident.

There were 11 workers at the plant at the time of the explosion. Davlin said one man was 15 feet away and several others were seconds away from being seriously injured or killed.

“This is a magnitude that probably none of us are going to realize the real expense for quite some time. It’s unbelievable. On any other given day, had it been 7 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon, there probably could have been 20 people that would have been either injured or killed right where this happened,” he said.

Davlin said progress reports on the cleanup and the investigation will be spotty, though an update will be provided to aldermen at Wednesday evening’s city council utilities committee meeting.

Bartlett and CWLP general manager Todd Renfrow provided additional information about the explosion and about the cleanup efforts.

Officials have created an investigation team of CWLP engineers and firefighters to try to determine what caused the blast.

Davlin already has been asked to sign an emergency order releasing $3 million to $4 million to cover the early costs of cleanup and asbestos and oil removal and to secure the building.

As of 7 a.m. Sunday, structural engineers were at the plant assessing the damage to the building, and they determined the entire structure was not compromised. One major concern, however, is that some walls will have to be taken down, and there is a potential for frozen pipes.

“We have to get the walls that have been damaged down and then have some type of enclosure and be able to put heat in the building. There are many, many miles of lines in there, especially water lines,” Renfrow said.

CWLP on Sunday was generating 100 percent of the city’s electricity.

The Dallman 1 generator was severely damaged and will be out of commission for some time. Dallman 3 – the biggest generator CWLP owns – should be back in operation after some cleanup work, possibly in about a week, Bartlett said.

Dallman 2 is shut down for scheduled maintenance.

Because of the asbestos release, everyone going into the site must wear masks and protective clothing.

The oil that seeped into the lake was the result of firefighting efforts.

“(Saturday) night what was burning was oil. The fire department obviously was hitting it with a huge deluge of water and foam to get the fire under control,” Bartlett said. “That rinsed some oil. We have retaining systems that grab some of it, most of it, but a little bit unfortunately escaped just due to the volume of water that was out there. There’s no more oil leaking.”

Bartlett said there was no immediate indication whether human error or mechanical failure was to blame for the blast. He said the investigation should shed some light on that.

“I expect mechanical failure, but we are ruling out nothing,” he said.

Seeking answers after blast? ‘Tough,’ says mayor
Nov. 12, 2007

“Tough.”

That was Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin’s response Sunday when pressed about why it took officials two hours Saturday to release information to the public about the power plant explosions and possible dangers to the community.

Tough?

“It’s the best we could do. Tough,” Davlin reiterated.

Davlin and other officials had little information themselves early in the incident, they said, and their top priorities were quelling the power plant fire and making sure City Water, Light and Power workers and firefighters were safe.

People all over the city felt the rumble of the explosions, saw their lights flicker, heard the jet-engine-like whine of steam being released from CWLP smokestacks, smelled the odor of coal and heat, and wondered about the clouds of smoke drifting over the town.

During that two-hour void of information, citizens were calling media outlets, looking for news about what happened. Tourists at hotels logged onto the Internet seeking details.

They wanted to know if there were toxins in the air, if they should expect to lose power to their homes and businesses, if they should worry about the noise of the steam release and if they needed to evacuate. They also wondered if anyone had been hurt and when could they expect to learn more.

No preliminary information – even a simple confirmation there had been an explosion at the power plant and that more information would be forthcoming – was communicated to newsrooms in the city, and no one in a position to know what had happened could be reached on cell phones. Reporters who tried to reach the power plant were shooed from location to location as they tried to find out what was going on.

The first information was provided by a Springfield Fire Department spokesman about 8:30 p.m. The Springfield Police Department also provided a little information at that time about its role, which mainly had to do with street closures.

City Water, Light and Power officials finally held a briefing at 9:30 p.m. The mayor’s office released no details at all.

Prior to those briefings, what information was available came mainly from conversations among police, fire and other emergency agencies broadcast on radio scanners. For instance, scanner traffic was the first source to reveal that no one had been killed or injured.

The State Journal-Register posted its first Web bulletin on www.sj-r.com about 15 minutes after the first blast. The Web site was updated about a half-dozen times between then and the first briefings. Most of the early updates were based on scanner traffic, along with telephoned or e-mailed reports from readers.

The newspaper Web site was updated several more times as the briefings took place, and the full story – the same account that appeared in Sunday’s newspaper – was posted shortly before midnight.

Davlin said the city’s first priority Saturday night was ensuring that power plant employees were unharmed and that firefighters were able to safely able to do their jobs.

However, the lack of information also led to rumors – in particular, reports disseminated mainly by callers to talk radio stations – that a cloud of toxic dust and gases was hovering over southeast Springfield.

“At the time when that was happening last night, I think the main thing that was out there was there was an explosion,” Davlin said. “No one knew what was going on. No one could have said whether it happened or whether anything was toxic or not.

“We didn’t think so, but to go and make statements like that. … Last night the most important thing was just making sure the fire got knocked down.

“I take all the responsibility for not having that out. Like after the tornado or anything else, it was just everyone had a job to do last night.”

City Water, Light and Power director Todd Renfrow and chief utilities engineer Jay Bartlett said they hope to do better in the future.

“There’s always room for improvement, but I’m going to tell you (that) last night 100 percent of my time was going into trying to keep, basically, firemen safe,” Bartlett said.

“I know it’s scary. My kids were scared. They were scared when I went. They wanted to know where I was, and they knew something was going on. We understand, but we were doing the best we could.”

The lack of information Saturday night was similar to what happened during a weeklong citywide mock disaster drill in July 2005 – which, coincidentally, included a power plant explosion scenario.

During the early part of the drill, which was meant to be as realistic as possible, officials were unprepared for media inquiries. Reporters who went to event “scenes” were told to move multiple times, no spokesmen were available, and city hall held a briefing more than five hours after the initial incidents. Officials began to provide hourly updates only after reporters complained.

The city has four spokespeople: one for the mayor’s office, one for CWLP, one for the fire department and one for the police department.

Mystery snake invades Lake Springfield

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The things I learned about snakes living on the shores of Lake Springfield while reporting on this story make me want to, well, stay away from Lake Springfield.

This was a fun distraction from crime reporting. They never did find the monster snake.

Snake in the lake / Unusual sighting intrigues officials, experts
June 25, 2007

Rumor has it, there’s sssomething suspicious ssswimming in Lake Ssspringfield.

But experts don’t believe there’s any reason to be alarmed.

In April, a woman who lives near Lake Springfield snapped a very Loch Ness-quality photo of what appears to be a large, yellow-colored snake in the water near the rocky shoreline.

The photo shows the snake’s head sticking out of the water and its body beneath.

Rumors have been swirling about the photo and exactly what kind of serpent is pictured. Some have speculated it is a python, but most seem to believe it is some kind of water snake that lives in the lake.

No one else has seen the snake, or at least had the presence of mind to take a photo if they did. As a result, City Water, Light and Power officials have no way of determining if the snake is something one would expect to find in Lake Springfield, or if it is something that doesn’t belong there.

Even snake experts are puzzled, mainly because there are only two photographs and the quality of them is too poor to make a positive identification.

“It’s tough. I really can’t tell what it is,” said Chris Phillips, a snake expert with the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign. Several people have e-mailed the photos to him, and officials at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Illinois Department of Transportation have asked him for his opinion on the Lake Springfield serpent.

Phillips ruled out the common water snake that is abundant in the lake. Lake Springfield is home to numerous northern water snakes, which have light gray or tan backs, brown crossbands and light yellow bellies. They commonly are seen basking on rocks or foraging in the water.

CWLP officials on Friday said they think it might be a yellowbelly or diamondback water snake.

But Phillips said a yellowbelly water snake is unlikely because that’s a southern snake that doesn’t come north except along the Mississippi River.

A diamondback snake still is a possibility, but no one can see the snake’s dorsal pattern in the photographs to confirm it.

There is one other possibility that hasn’t been ruled out – that someone released an exotic snake into Lake Springfield.

“When I first thought it might be a water snake, then people started saying python,” Phillips said. “I wasn’t even thinking of released pets until someone brought up that possibility. The photos I saw were so blurry, it wasn’t possible to make any kind of a call, even between something like one of our native water snakes and a python.”

CWLP workers have been keeping their eyes peeled for the elusive snake.

“We aren’t concerned, but we just want to get it out of there” if it doesn’t belong in the lake, said CWLP spokesman Ray Serati.

Steve Frank, one of the city’s lake managers, said officials have not activated a full-blown search for the reptile because no one else has seen it or reported anything odd. City employees who work at the lake have been asked to document any unusual snakes.

“If it’s a large snake that we can find, we’d definitely like to get it out of there if possible. If it’s one of the regular water snakes that hang around out there, those can be difficult to find,” he said.

“There’s been no positive ID on this, so we’re just looking. We take all our calls seriously, but we don’t have a lot to go on out there.”

Michelle Bodamer Nicol, another CWLP lake manager, said the snakes that commonly live in Lake Springfield are not venomous and are nothing to be scared of.

If anyone spots a large snake that looks like the one in the photographs, they are urged to take a clear photo and send it to CWLP. Having something in the photo to determine scale would be helpful as well, officials said.

Photos can be e-mailed to michelle.nicol@cwlp.com.

Like father, like daughter

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In June 2006 I was able to profile Gerry Castles and his daughter Rikki Castles-Zajicek, the Springfield Police Department’s first father-daughter cops. My favorite quote is when Gerry told me about seeing his daughter in her uniform for the first time and he flashed back to when she used to dress up in his uniform as a child.

The photo, taken by former SJ-R intern Dave Albers, is a favorite of mine, too. I love how Gerry is all buttoned up and seasoned-looking, and Rikki is young and fresh-faced.

Like father, like daughter / Two Springfield police officers form first pairing of its kind
June 18, 2006

Springfield police officer Gerry Castles was taken aback the first time he saw his daughter, Rikki, in a police uniform.

“It was as if, ‘Why are you playing dress-up in my uniform again?’” he recalled thinking when he saw her standing with other cadets at graduation from the police training academy. “There’s just an overwhelming sense of pride. It’s really crazy. It’s strange, and I like it.”

Gerry Castles and his 25-year-old daughter, Rikki Castles-Zajicek, have the distinction of being the first father-daughter officers with the Springfield Police Department. There have been numerous fathers, sons and brothers on the force at the same time, but this is the first time the department has had a father and daughter, according to police officials.

Police work runs in the Castles family – Rikki married Springfield police officer Tim Zajicek on June 26, she has a cousin who is an officer in Idaho, and Gerry’s great-great grandfather, H. Scott Castles, was Springfield police chief in the early 1900s.

Rikki, 25, a Lutheran High School graduate, earned an associate’s degree from Springfield College in Illinois and a bachelor’s in anthropology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She was going to pursue a master’s in teaching but changed her mind.

“I think growing up around it, I never thought I wanted to do (police work). There’d always be cops around our house, and I’d think, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I wanted to do something different,” she said. “So it was a shock to me.”

Gerry, 49, a Springfield patrol officer for 12 years, works the midnight shift and is part of the department’s emergency response team and its honor-guard unit. He’s also a field-training officer.

He carries a laminated wallet-size copy of Rikki’s birth certificate with her baby photo on it in his uniform pocket.

He said Rikki initially didn’t go around telling everyone she was interested in becoming a police officer.

“I think she’s a lot like I am – if I’m going to go for something, I don’t talk to anyone about it until it’s time,” he said. “I never in my wildest dreams thought she’d go for it. We used to sit around and tell stories about work, and she’d say, ‘Stop all this cop talk.’”

Rikki said her father was excited when she told him she decided to join the force. He called her once a week while she was at the training academy to see how things were going.

“He loves his job. It’s his life. Everything is police with him, which is good,” Rikki said. “We’re very close. We’re really alike in a lot of ways.

“You wouldn’t think it, but he’s a really sensitive guy. I really respect that. A lot of things he does I don’t agree with, but I really respect his personality and his sense of humor.”

Gerry said Rikki listens to all those “cop stories” now, and he’s looking forward to patrolling with her after she finishes her field training. He said Rikki has a lot of compassion, and that will make her a good officer.

Neither is worried about family ties getting in the way of doing a good job.

“I try to convey to her, ‘You’re going to have to stand on your own merits, and there are going to be some expectations there,’” Gerry said.

Rikki said she hopes her colleagues won’t think she got her job because of her dad.

“That was my worst fear when I took the job,” she said. “People think that I’m going to ride on my dad’s accomplishments. I don’t think that at all.”

City police lose their ‘matriarch’ with a heart of gold

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It gave me great joy to be able to write a touching and well-received farewell piece about Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, who died unexpectedly in April 2006.

City police lose one of their best-known / Death ends Brenda Thompson’s long career
April 6, 2006

Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, a highly regarded member of the force for 27 years, died late Tuesday at St. John’s Hospital after a series of medical complications, friends and family members said.

Thompson, who turned 50 last month, had the highest seniority of any officer in the Springfield Police Department, based on the number of years she worked there.

She joined the force in February 1979 and worked as: a patrol officer; a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education, or DARE officer; Crime Stoppers coordinator from 1994 to 1999; crime prevention officer; and organizer of the department’s Neighborhood Watch and Beat Cop programs. She also worked in the narcotics section, was a field training officer and was a member of the department’s honor guard.

“She was kind of the matriarch of our department. What a wonderful woman,” said Sgt. Pat Ross, who knew Thompson for years.

“You can’t explain or put into words how much an individual like Brenda is going to be missed. I was asked how do you replace a Brenda Thompson. Well, you don’t. She was probably the most widely liked person down here. She just had a heart of gold. She was an outstanding officer and had inside of her all the things that keep us human.”

Thompson had been hospitalized for the past 21/2 weeks. She apparently developed some kind of blood disease around Christmas Eve, her life partner Laine Tadlock said, and a surgeon removed her spleen March 16. After that, she developed a staph infection and respiratory problems before going into full cardiac arrest March 20, Tadlock said. Thompson had been in a coma ever since.

“She was bigger than life. Loved everybody,” Tadlock said through tears. “Never had a bad day. Never met a stranger. Would give you the shirt off her back and be happy to do it and ask you if you needed anything else. She didn’t care whether you had a dime in your pocket or a million dollars, she treated you all the same.”

Tadlock, who was with Thompson for 16 years, said she was a fun, vibrant person who loved her family and her job and would spontaneously burst into song and dance.

“Even when she was sick and on the stretcher going to surgery. She was so looking forward to having her spleen out. She was on the stretcher and going, ‘Woo-hoo! Let’s get this over with so I can get on with my life,’” Tadlock recalled.

“She came out of surgery, and while in recovery, there was a guy next to her who was giving the nurses fits and trying to climb out of the bed. She was lying there and said, ‘Don’t make me come over there,’ and telling the nurses, ‘I’ll be right there to help you.’

“When I was waiting for her in her room when she came back from recovery, you could hear her in the hallway all the way back to her room talking and carrying on.”

Thompson was eligible for retirement but loved her job so much she wanted to stay on at least three more years. She always had a tale to tell about work.

“She’d come home and tell stories about stuff. She was going to write a book. She even had the title – ‘A Day in Blue.’ It was going to be all of her stories about being on the police force,” Tadlock said.

Kevin Keen, a retired Springfield police sergeant who was Thompson’s supervisor in the crime prevention unit, said she was instrumental in improving the Neighborhood Watch program and getting more residents involved in it.

“Anybody who knew Brenda knew of her outgoing personality. She had a bubbly attitude and could make anybody smile on their worst day. Armed with that enthusiasm, she was able to get anybody who might not want to be involved in the program interested. Many parts of town that didn’t have it before now have it because of her enthusiasm,” he said.

Thompson, who lived in a log home on six acres, loved animals and gardening and recently had begun dabbling in welding art. She also had the ability to pick up nearly any musical instrument – including the piano, banjo, violin, guitar and dulcimer – and play it by ear. She was adept at construction and carpentry work and loved children.

“She was a big kid herself,” Tadlock said.

Thompson donated her kidneys and pancreas, and her family requested that her kidneys to go children if possible.

Thompson’s friends are invited to a remembrance reception from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Staab-Polk Funeral Home in Chatham. Her wishes were for a gathering for family and friends to look at photographs, share their favorite or “most annoying” memories of her and talk about all the fun they all had, Tadlock said.

In lieu of flowers, her family is requesting that donations be made to the Animal Protective League because her cat, Wally, was adopted from there and because she loved all animals.

“Wally would sleep right next to her every night with his head on her hand, and they’d have breakfast every morning together before she left for work,” Tadlock said.

“I’m going to miss her presence. She often said that people would talk to her about having everlasting life. She would say, ‘But I have heaven on earth, heaven is right here.’”

Fleet weak – SPD mechanics on the job

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One behind-the-scenes aspects of the Springfield Police Department is its mechanics. A police official back in 2005 suggested I do a story on the state of the department’s patrol cars. Floors were rusting out, engines had a huge number of miles on them and interiors were falling apart.

In tough economic times, replacing police patrol cars is nearly impossible for local governments. Springfield was supposed to have a five-year plan for rotating cars in and out, but it had not adhered to the plan. At the time of this story, the department had not gotten new patrol cars in five years.

I spent an afternoon at the department’s garage and was struck by how hard the mechanics work and how creative they could be with replacing parts and making do with what was on hand.

Fleet weak / Police mechanics forced to improvise to keep aging cars on road
Oct. 3, 2005

If you can imagine a flock of buzzards picking at a pile of bones, then it’s not much of a stretch to visualize what the Springfield Police Department’s mechanics do every day.

A row of seven retired Chevrolet Caprices and Ford Crown Victorias are lined up in a corner of the garage property on Singer Avenue. They’re squad cars that, just since June, have been deemed no longer safe for officers to drive, primarily because of rust problems.

They will be joined by five more by March, mechanics estimate.

The cars are dead in terms of their usefulness to patrol officers. They have rusty floorboards and body mounts, leaky trunks and failing engines. Their job now is to provide a pool of parts – everything from engines, doors and steering columns right down to light bulbs, radio knobs and seats – for mechanics who are doing all they can to keep the department’s fleet of aging patrol cars running in the safest, yet most economical, manner possible.

“It’s like a small little scrap yard back there some days,” said Dave Lawler, assistant superintendent for fleet maintenance at the police department. “We try and cut down on the expense as far as trying to buy new parts to put in old cars. We estimate a savings of $1,500 to $2,000 each month by using used parts.”

The Springfield Police Department has 250 vehicles in its inventory, of which 94 (38 percent) have more than 90,000 miles. Most of those – 68, to be exact – have more than 100,000 miles.

The fleet is aging quickly; 157 of the vehicles are models from 1994 to 1999. And as the cars continue to age, the pool of available used parts continues to shrink because those that are still out there, whether they’re part of the department’s fleet or sitting in a scrap yard someplace, are wearing out or getting wrecked at the same rate.

“We’re to the point where we’ve been keeping a lot of these cars alive through cannibalized parts,” said deputy chief Pat Fogleman, who heads the department’s administrative services division. “The problem is, our supply of cannibalized parts is drying up fast.”

The problem is going to worsen unless the city can come up with enough money to enable the department to begin buying 50 to 60 new cars each year and rotating the same number out of use. The department just received 10 new 2006 Crown Victorias at a final cost of $24,635 each after being equipped with lights, sirens, antennas and other necessities.

Previous five-year plans for the department have called for replacing patrol cars every four years, which is an accepted standard among police agencies and mechanics.

The last time the department got a significant number of new vehicles was in 2000, when the city bought 45 cars.

The department has numerous Crown Victorias, many of which have a problem with rusty frames. Their Chevrolets from 1994 have problems with rusty floorboards and body mounts. During the current budget year alone, the department has had to retire 10 cars because of rusty frames, Fogleman said.

In June, an officer was driving a 1996 Crown Victoria patrol car with 101,000 miles on it when the ball joint flew off. The officer lost control and hit a utility pole. He wasn’t injured, but officials are concerned about the possibilities.

“That’s the guys’ office for eight hours a day. If you were in a beater car with knobs breaking off, a radio that doesn’t work, maybe the window rolls down, maybe it doesn’t…” Fogleman said. “I think the guys understand times are tough. I don’t think a lot of people understand the abuse these vehicles go through.”

Patrol cars frequently are left idling while officers respond to calls or block off traffic, primarily because the lights and other equipment would quickly drain the batteries if the engines were turned off. An hour of idling is the equivalent of 33 miles of wear on a car, Lawler said.

Officers also often rapidly accelerate from a dead stop and/or quickly brake while speeding to a call. The equipment they carry on their belts – guns, handcuffs, pepper spray – has been known to rip the seat fabric.

The cars are driven every day in all kinds of weather. Water gets thrown up onto the underside of the cars, causing them to rust through and allowing water to seep into the trunks.

In at least one case, the front floorboard of a car rusted completely through, exposing carpet to the catalytic converter and melting the carpet.

Some squad cars use large amounts of oil between oil changes. One car used 33 quarts of oil, not counting oil changes, during a six-month period. Others were recorded as using 17, 22 and 23 additional quarts, respectively, during the same time frame.

Some cars – 25 of them, shared by all three shifts – are used as take-home vehicles, and some argue that mileage on those cars could be curtailed if officers weren’t allowed to drive them off duty. Fogleman said quite the opposite is true – take-home cars aren’t driven nearly as much as those used round-the-clock.

“The off-duty mileage really is a small part of the whole mileage thing,” he said. “We have found that the cars are much better maintained and last longer because ‘It’s mine, I can be held accountable for it.’ If you drive a fleet car, you park it at the end of the shift, and you don’t really care.”

Lawler said the best thing that could happen is the city would get in the habit of purchasing a group of new cars every year.

“Fifty cars right now would be a big help,” he said.

In the meantime, the department’s mechanics – perhaps “magicians” is a better description – will forge on. They will continue stockpiling used speedometer clusters, brackets, outside mirrors and flywheels. They will prepare for the next time they’re forced to fabricate a floorboard or trunk out of an old street sign. And they will remember that there likely will come another day when they must completely overhaul a patrol car with new doors, a new engine and a new rear axle.

“We have people who are willing to understand the importance of the savings,” Lawler said. “They’ve gone the extra mile in getting the cars back out on the road. We’ve done a lot of different things to try to save as much as we can.”

Black and blue: The history of black Springfield police officers

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My editor in 2005 asked me to research and write about the history of black officers in the Springfield Police Department. The assignment stemmed from ongoing claims of racial discrimination and bias within the department and the civil lawsuits stemming from those allegations.

I spent no less than six months researching the topic. I pored through reels of microfilm of old city newspapers, picked up books on the history of the city, spent hours at the Sangamon Valley Collection and interviewed several retired and current black officers.

Black and Blue / African-American officers struggling with racial divisions in the Springfield Police Department is nothing new.
Sept. 4, 2005

Ask Harry Draper about his 25 years with the Springfield Police Department, and he’ll regale you for hours with tales of solved murder cases, department politics and officer shenanigans.

He’ll reach into his front pants pocket and show you the badge he still carries around, even though he’s been retired since 1981.

His eyes get a little misty when he recalls the day in 1963 when he was the only black officer chosen to guard Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke at an AFL-CIO convention at the Illinois State Armory.

But not all of Draper’s memories are fond ones. When he joined the police force, even though the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum, racism was overt and accepted among Springfield officers. Many black officers agree that the discrimination they experienced was far worse among their colleagues than anything they came across in the community.

At one time, black officers patrolled only in black areas of town and on the old “Levee,” the city’s red-light district downtown, and they did so on foot. Black detectives worked only on cases involving black suspects or victims. Promotions were few and far between.

Continue reading →

City refuses to disclose hiring data

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In 2004, the city of Springfield claimed to be making strides in hiring more minority employees; however, it refused to provide the documentation to back up the claim, even though it was submitted to a governmental agency.

When the city did finally release the reports, they were heavily redacted — in spite of a state attorney general’s directive that the reports are considered public record. I wrote a series of stories about the issue and attempts to obtain the documents through FOIA.

City declines to reveal gender, racial data / County judge to decide if reasoning is right
Sept. 3, 2004

The city of Springfield has declined to make public data it compiles every other year for the federal government about the gender and racial makeup of the city workforce, saying it amounts to confidential personnel information.

It will be up to a Sangamon County judge to decide if that reasoning is right.

City attorney Jenifer Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin refused to disclose the data, which was requested Aug. 23 by the legal assistant to Benton attorney Courtney Cox, who represents black police officers suing the city for racial discrimination.

The assistant, Judy Carson, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking “copies of all documents in the possession of the City of Springfield which reflect the race, gender and/or national origin of current and/or past employees … including all EEO reports, Labor Force Analysis and EEO Utilization Analysis for each period for which such records have been kept.”

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission oversees a variety of employer surveys. Cities with more than 100 employees are required to submit on odd numbered years information about workforce composition, including a breakout of gender, race and ethnicity.

The data is plugged into each of several occupational categories, including officials and administrators, professionals, technicians, protective service, paraprofessional, administrative support, skilled/craft and service/maintenance. Every employee has to be counted in one of those categories. The EEOC then compiles that information into different reports that it distributes.

Johnson declined Carson’s request on Aug. 25, citing 5ILCS140/7(1)(b)(ii) of the state FOIA regulations. That particular section exempts “personnel files and personal information maintained with respect to employees, appointees or elected officials of any public body or applicants for those positions.”

Carson appealed the denial to Davlin a day later. The FOIA indicates appeals must be submitted to the head of the public body that denied the request – in this case, the mayor.

Davlin sent a letter to Carson Wednesday, denying the appeal.

“Your request was denied because it pertained to personnel information with respect to current or past employees of the city. A public body has the right to deny a FOIA request for this reason, and it appears the statute was properly followed in denying your request,” the letter reads.

Cox has responded by filing suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court, which is the next step in the appeals process. The suit asks for the city to supply the documents requested, as well as reimbursement for costs and attorney’s fees.

Johnson was unavailable for comment Thursday. City spokesman Ernie Slottag, contacted at home Thursday evening, explained the reasoning behind declining to release the data.

“The information that makes up the EEO reports comes from personnel records, and because the personnel records are confidential and exempt, our legal counsel has determined that reports generated from these exempt records are also exempt,” he said, adding that he believes there is case law supporting the city.

Cox said he would not have filed the suit if he didn’t feel the data was public information.

“Clearly, if I was asking for a person’s private personnel records, those would definitely be excluded. These are not personnel records by any stretch of the imagination. They are documents filed with the federal government, and that other communities release without any question,” he said.

Jennifer Kaplan, an EEOC spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said the commission does not release cities’ reports. Whether a municipality is required to make its reports public would be up to local sunshine laws, she said.

Cox apparently is not the only one seeking the data. Members of the mayor’s Race Relations Task Force had requested it previously and also were denied.

However, at a special meeting Thursday, the city did provide the information to the task force. Reporters from The State Journal-Register and the Illinois Times, as well as a citizen attending the meeting, were asked to leave the room so the task force could be given the information.

The panel cited discussion of personnel matters in closing the meeting to the public, but two of its members expressed concern about how the matter was being handled.

“I’m intrigued because for years now we have discussed numbers relative to the police and fire departments. If those are OK, then why are the other numbers not?” asked task force member Dan Stout.

Another member, Bob Blackwell, indicated the group would try not to close the meeting any longer than necessary “because we are not real comfortable with having to ask you all to leave.”
City will release data on work force / Race, gender figures have been withheld
Sept. 16, 2004

Previously withheld data about the race and gender makeup of Springfield’s city work force will be released by the end of the week, city attorney Jenifer Johnson said Wednesday.

The city is releasing the information compiled for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the direction of aldermen, not because of pressure from the news media or a lawsuit filed by an attorney who represents Springfield’s black police officers, she added.

Assistant Illinois attorney general Terry Mutchler contacted Johnson on Wednesday to say the agency considers the EEOC data public record and to discuss a northern Illinois appellate court ruling Johnson has cited in declining to release it.

Johnson has argued that making the information public could violate some employees’ right to privacy.

According to a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, Mutchler sent the city a letter saying that the EEOC filings should be released and noting that the city had agreed to do that. The letter was faxed and mailed to the city Wednesday.

The city, however, will release the data in a repackaged format; an employee breakdown by job category will not be included so as not to reveal any personal information. Johnson said she will create a form that contains the data, which is based on the city’s most recent EEOC filing.

She said the form she will release is consistent with what the city’s position has been all along. She said she and Mutchler agreed that what the city intends to release is OK.

“That’s all along why the city has objected to releasing the document in whole, because there is personally identifiable information. I understand no one has asked for names – the document doesn’t have names – but based on the breakdown by job category, it’s easy to personally identify employees,” Johnson said, adding that she is comfortable with the legal advice she and her assistants have rendered on the issue.

“The city certainly has no objection to releasing the general statistical information. Our concern all along has been protecting the privacy of our employees, which the case law indicates we should do.”

Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin have declined to release the actual EEOC filing, saying it reveals personal information about city employees, particularly those who work in one-person offices.

Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, confirmed Wednesday that the agency considers release of the EEOC report a matter of public information.

“It is our view that the information being sought in this instance is public record. The FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request sought gender and racial statistics that the city is required to keep. It is not an invasion of personal privacy to release that statistical information,” she said.

“It could be an invasion of personal privacy to release personal identifiers, such as name and race together; however, the report is public record, and the statistical information should be released.”

The State Journal-Register, after learning earlier this month that city officials did not intend to release the data, contacted the attorney general’s office to find out whether the EEOC filing is considered public information. The newspaper has filed a Freedom of Information request for the data.

A legal assistant to Courtney Cox, the southern Illinois attorney who is representing a group of black police officers who are suing the city for racial discrimination, also asked for the information in a FOI request.

Johnson denied the request. It was appealed to Davlin, who also denied it. Cox then filed suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court. The case is pending.

Cox could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

Johnson, in declining to release the data, cited a 1990 ruling, known as CBS v. Cecil Partee. The ruling noted that providing the names and races together of governmental employees could constitute an invasion of privacy. CBS had sought information including names and races of all Cook County assistant state’s attorneys, as well as names, positions, dates of hire and salaries for a host of other employees.

The ruling does not preclude municipalities from releasing EEOC filings, only race and names together. In some cases, officials legally can release the forms and black out any sensitive information.

At the Sept. 7 Springfield City Council meeting, aldermen asked that the information be released.

The attorney general oversees enforcement of the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires certain types of public records be accessible to provide “full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those representing them.”

The act allows for some exemptions, such as personnel files, personal information, documents revealing the identity of people who file complaints, information that deprives a person of a fair trial or impartial hearing and records that could endanger the safety of police officers.
Hiring report to be heavily edited / State AG’s office tells city it’s all public information
Sept. 17, 2004

The city of Springfield plans to release two documents today regarding the race and gender makeup of its work force – a heavily edited copy of its most recent EEOC report and a summary of its contents.

An attorney who requested the data isn’t satisfied, though, saying he’d rather see the entire report “than what they want to create to pass out.”

Releasing the 33-page federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filing, even with much of the information blacked out, marks the second change in two days in the city’s position that it would not make the report public. Officials have said it contains confidential personnel information.

The Illinois attorney general’s office, which oversees enforcement of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, maintains the document is public information and urged the city to release it, according to a letter assistant attorney general Terry Mutchler sent the city on Wednesday.

The report includes a breakdown of the city’s work force by job category, salary range, race and gender. It contains only aggregate data, not employees’ names or other identifiers.

However, city attorney Jenifer Johnson said Thursday that releasing the complete EEOC report would allow someone to cross-reference it with other information the city makes public and potentially identify the race of some employees. According to the Freedom of Information Act, the names, positions, salaries and dates of hire of governmental employees are public information.

Allowing the public to see the structure of the document will enable people to understand the specific nature of the information the city is required to provide, as well as why it could potentially violate employees’ privacy, Johnson said.

She created a summary of the race and gender information contained in the report, and that will accompany the EEOC filing when it is released today. The summary will not include an employee breakdown by job category.

“The fact that this (EEOC) document doesn’t have names specifically attached to it to me is really irrelevant considering how substantially these categories are broken down, because anyone who cared would be able to match that up in many, many cases,” Johnson said.

State law does not require the city to create a summary of the information, but Johnson said she did it to satisfy questions about the race and gender makeup of the city’s work force. Aldermen at the Sept. 7 city council meeting requested that such a summary be prepared.

The EEOC information became an issue recently after Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin declined to release it to the attorney representing Springfield’s black police officers in a discrimination lawsuit against the city.

The attorney, Courtney Cox, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents, but Johnson and Davlin rejected it.

Cox has since filed suit against the city, and that case is pending. The State Journal-Register also has filed a FOI request for the information.

Johnson cited a 1990 Illinois appellate court case as support for her decision to deny release of the EEOC reports. In that case, known as CBS v. Cecil Partee, the court said that providing the names and races together of governmental employees could constitute an invasion of privacy. CBS had sought information, including names and races of all Cook County assistant state’s attorneys, as well as names, positions, dates of hire and salaries for a host of other employees.

However, the ruling indicates the state’s attorney’s office did release its EEOC filings to CBS, and the court took no exception to that.

Neither Cox nor the newspaper has asked the city to reveal names of city employees together with their races.

The State Journal-Register, after learning earlier this month that city officials did not intend to release the data, asked the attorney general’s office whether the EEOC filing is public information.

Mutchler’s letter to the city says that “aggregate numbers without containing personal identifying information for each employee generally would not constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Moreover, a public body is required under the Act to separate the exempt from the non-exempt information and disclose the non-exempt information, in this case, names, if they are specifically coupled with race identifiers.”

The letter also indicates the Cook County case is not applicable in this situation.

Mutchler said Johnson called her Thursday to ask for additional advice regarding whether the original EEOC document needed to be provided with the summary. Johnson later sent Mutchler a letter indicating the city’s 2003 EEOC document contains personally identifying information and that under her reading of the Cook County case, the information is exempt from disclosure. It also says the city will release the report after redacting all identifying information, “which unfortunately is almost the entire document.”

Davlin has said he feared that an employee might sue the city for releasing the report and that he hoped someone would take the city to court so a judge could say definitively whether the filings should be made public.

Cox said Thursday that he believes the city is still hiding information.

“Instead of turning (the EEOC report) over, now they want to create their own forms,” he said. “I think it’s more reliable to see what they’ve turned in and told the federal government than what they want to create to pass out. I want to look at what they’re going to present, but I doubt it will persuade me not to pursue the Freedom of Information suit to obtain the actual original documents.”

Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards, who has pushed for the report’s release, said he, too, is disappointed with the Davlin administration.

“They said we were going to do things different and we were going to be open and we were going to be this and we were going to be that. It looks like the same old deal to me,” he said. “The people of the community have the right to know what their government is doing. These behind-closed-doors, backroom dealings – no wonder we’re getting sued all the time.”

7.1% minorities in city jobs / Compared with 20% of Springfield’s population

Sept. 18, 2004

Minorities are underrepresented in the city of Springfield’s work force, according to data released Friday.

Non-whites make up 7.1 percent of the overall work force, while they account for about 20 percent of Springfield’s population, according to 2000 Census figures.

The head of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called the numbers “an embarrassment,” while the chairman of the mayor’s own race relations task force criticized the city for its lack of openness in the matter.

After initially refusing to release the information, the city provided The State Journal-Register with a summary of its 2003 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEO-4 filing, along with a heavily edited copy of the actual report.

The newspaper asked for the data in a Freedom of Information Act request on Sept. 7, the same day aldermen requested that it be made public.

The summary, put together by city attorney Jenifer Johnson, is a spreadsheet of repackaged information from the report. It includes EEOC “job functions” but gives no indication of the departments employees work in; the number of employees in each job function; and a breakout of the number of white men and women, black men and women and men and women from “other” ethnic groups who work in each job function.

The 33-page EEOC report, which the city must file every other year, was based on employees of the city between July 2002 and June 2003. Mayor Tim Davlin took office in April 2003.

Johnson said she blacked out any information on the report she believed would allow the public to identify individual employees. In refusing to release the entire contents, city officials said doing so could violate workers’ right to privacy, because anyone who viewed it might be able to determine a particular employee’s race.

But not only does the EEOC filing not include names for the city’s 1,586 employees, there is no explanation of the racial categories jobs into which jobs are slotted. The report identifies workers by general “job categories” – administration, professionals, technicians, protective services, paraprofessional, administrative support, skilled craft and service/maintenance. It includes eight salary ranges within each category and then lists the number of men or women in racial categories identified only as “B” through “K.”

Minorities are concentrated in relatively few jobs, based on the city’s data. The highest percentage, 30.9, work in “public welfare” jobs.

City officials, contacted through a spokeswoman late Friday afternoon, just after the report was released, refused to provide further explanation of what is considered a “public welfare” job, saying that could violate employees’ privacy. The city has no public welfare department.

The city’s data shows 15.4 percent of minorities work in “financial administration” positions, 14.3 work in “other” jobs, and 11.5 work in jobs pertaining to “streets and highways.”

Baker Siddiquee, chairman of the Mayor’s Task Force on Race Relations, said the committee has been asking the city for the EEOC data for about six months. At the group’s Sept. 2 meeting, they were allowed to view a summary of the data, broken down by department, but were not allowed to keep it, make notes or copy it.

He said the group has become increasingly frustrated by the city’s reluctance to share the information. Members sought the data so they could begin talking to various departments with good minority-hire numbers to find out what they are doing to diversify and share that information with other departments.

“Our group openly expressed they are not happy (with the lack of information from the city),” Siddiquee said. “I think that for us, we’re puzzled because we’re already discussing the low representation in two departments – police and fire – so what difference does it make if there are two or three other departments on the same list?…

“Openness is critical. If we are to have any impact as the mayor’s task force, the first thing is information and openness. We are advisory to the mayor. If we cannot reach the administration and provide our advice, then what is the role of this so-called task force?”

Rudy Davenport, president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP, described the city’s minority employment numbers as “dismal.”

“The black total is only 6.8 percent in the entire city (work force). Actually, we are at about 13 percent of the population, so you can see the city really hasn’t made a great deal of progress. They haven’t made any, really,” said Davenport, who noted that he and the NAACP have never had access to racial and gender data for all city employees.

“Certainly, I can see why they would not want it released. It’s an embarrassment to the city. It’s an embarrassment that we allow things to get to the state where this is reflected as such. It really does not bode well, I would think, for the city as far as being the land of Lincoln and the image we want to project.”

Davenport said NAACP members have discussed the city’s reluctance to release the data and believe it reflects poorly on the administration, especially once the Illinois attorney general’s office confirmed the data could be released. He said members became suspicious of the city’s motives.

Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards said the numbers indicate the city has too few minority employees. He asked why other city departments have not been pressed to hire minorities, while a great deal of emphasis has been placed on police and fire department hiring.

“All these politicians and all these people who’ve been pushing the numbers on the police and fire department, I think they’ve got a lot to explain because all these exempt jobs and all these other jobs that are non-testing positions haven’t been filled with minorities and women,” he said.

“I’ve always said our (fire) department should reflect he makeup of our community. I think that should hold true for all departments at the city.”

According to the city’s summary, the “fire” job function – presumably firefighters – has the least number of minorities at 2.2 percent.

Courtney Cox, the attorney representing several black police officers in a discrimination lawsuit against the city, sought the EEOC data in a FOIA request that was rejected by the city. He has since filed suit for the information. He said Thursday he didn’t believe the city’s summary would be adequate for his purposes and said he would rather see the entire unedited EEOC report “than what they want to create to pass out.”

The Illinois attorney general’s office, which oversees enforcement of the state FOI Act, maintains the EEOC filings are public information and urged the city to release them, according to a letter assistant attorney general Terry Mutchler sent the city earlier this week.

Davlin has said he fears an employee might sue the city for releasing the report and that he hopes someone will take the city to court so a judge can rule whether the filings should be made public.

In a statement the city released Friday afternoon, Johnson reiterated the data was being released only because aldermen requested it.

“This in no way changes our position that requests for a specific breakdown of positions not be allowed under FOIA,” she said. “We stand by our earlier determination and are anxiously awaiting further clarification from the courts.”

Davlin mum on number of minority hires / Mayor fears threat of lawsuit
Sept. 22, 2004

Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin was unable to say how many minorities he’s hired since taking office last year, but he believes his numbers are considerably higher than those of previous administrations.

Davlin, following Tuesday’s Springfield City Council meeting, indicated he was reluctant to put in writing how many non-whites he has hired out of fear of being sued.

“That’s my only concern,” he said, “not to please the press, but to make sure the city of Springfield does not have a lawsuit where we pay out a monetary claim to anyone, because we do not have the money.”

The Davlin administration on Friday – after being prodded by the press, aldermen and others – released a summary that shows the city has a 7.1 percent minority hire rate. The summary was based on information compiled for a mandatory federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report the city filed in 2003.

Davlin said the minority hire numbers should be compared to the number of non-whites in Springfield’s work force, not the city’s minority population as a whole.

City officials and local leaders in the past have talked about having the city government’s work force reflect the makeup of the community, which is 20 percent minorities, according to 2000 Census data.

Davlin instead cited a 2004 report compiled by the Illinois Department of Labor that shows Springfield’s “total civilian work force” in 2002 included 7,809 minorities. That’s 7.2 percent of the available labor force, according to the report.

He said comparing the city’s minority hire numbers to the labor report data is more appropriate than comparing the numbers to the city’s total minority population.

“To say that our goal is 20 percent because that’s the population, that would far exceed anything that the labor statistics would ever say is possible,” he said, adding that removing police and fire positions from the equation shows the city has an 8.6 percent minority hire rate.

The mayor said he met Monday with representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to make sure “they understood the numbers and make sure that we know how to compare things.”

“It just shows that when you release raw numbers, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to be able to understand what those numbers are,” he said.

The 33-page EEOC report, which the city must file every other year, was based on employees of the city between July 2002 and June 2003. Davlin took office in April 2003.

He said his administration is working hard to recruit more minorities to work for the city.

“I think we’re doing things that have never been done previously. We’re committing police officers to be full-time recruiters, taking someone off the streets where we now have to make up for that in other ways,” he said. “The recruiting we’re doing at the fire department and everything we’ve done in conjunction with the NAACP and the Urban League … I think it’s important to note that we’re doing everything we possibly can and things that have never been done in previous administrations.”

Davlin also deflected the notion that some community members believe his administration has something to hide, given its reluctance to release the minority data.

“So far, to date, I’ve never had one person complain to me that we’re trying to hide anything. I think what I hear are positive things, that what I’m trying to do is protect the city of Springfield from future lawsuits,” he said. “My job is to protect the city of Springfield, and sometimes you’ve just got to take a little heat in doing that.”

Davlin also took a swipe at Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards, who has criticized him for not hiring enough minorities. Davlin called Edwards’ statements “hypocritical,” saying he hired 20 white male firefighters during his tenure as fire chief between March 2001 and October 2002.

“He’s the one who’s actually responsible for these low numbers … and never doing anything at all, never putting a firefighter out recruiting and putting resources in a different area. Yet he’s the hypocrite saying we’re doing such a bad thing,” Davlin said.

“I inherited those numbers under this administration. But how hypocritical can you be when the numbers are his responsibility?”

Edwards said he was the first fire chief to put together a recruitment team made up of minorities, women and white firefighters and that he put the current fire department recruiter, Mark Dyment, in that position. He said he took several other steps to recruit minority firefighter candidates to the department, and noted that the fire chief does not hire firefighters, it’s human resources and the mayor who do.

“I think, as usual, the mayor’s talking out of one side of his mouth politically and doesn’t know what he’s talking about out the other side of his mouth,” Edwards said.

“If the mayor really wants to talk about his record, let’s talk about who he has hired and who he has let go. If you just look at the small cadre of people he’s hired, you’ll find a great disparity,”

In other business Tuesday, aldermen approved spending $2,000 for the public health department to rent the Prairie Capital Convention Center on Oct. 23 for a “drive-through flu shot clinic.”

Anyone seeking a flu vaccination will be able to drive through the center and receive a shot without leaving their vehicle. The clinic will take place between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., and health department officials expect to give out at least 500 vaccinations. Health department director Ray Cooke said he has never heard of another public health department conducting such a clinic.

The council also OK’d several appointments to the city’s Historic Sites Commission. Davlin reappointed Nancy Evans, Patricia Doyle and Ron Ladley to the commission, along with new appointees Stephen D. Myers, Robert J. Barker and Thomas J. Cullen.

Mayor Tim Davlin reflects on first year in office

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In early 2004 I profiled Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin for an article about his first year in office.

SPRINGFIELD’S MAYOR REFLECTS: Davlin’s first year
April 4, 2004

Tim Davlin is obsessed with money.

The city’s money, that is.

Approaching the anniversary of his April 16 inauguration as mayor of the capital city, Davlin admits he has spent much of his first year consumed by financial matters – the budget, in particular, took over his life, he said.

“I really feel like about three or four Wednesdays ago, the day after the city council meeting where we passed the sales tax increase, I felt like that following day was my first day on the job,” he said Thursday.

“I felt like … literally, 10 months, 11 months into the job, I’m just starting. I’ve got a list of things I think we have accomplished along the way, but every day, it was two or three hours every day, Monday through Friday and a lot of times on Saturdays, where we just dealt with the budget.”

Davlin, a Democrat and an insurance and investment broker who previously held no political office, was elected mayor of Springfield a year ago April 1 in a come-from-behind win over Republican stalwart Tony Libri. His win was part of a statewide shift of political control from Republicans to Democrats.

The mayor and city council are officially nonpartisan.

“For the most part, he was unproven politically. He’d never been in office, never ran for any office. That was part of what the attraction was to Tim Davlin,” said Sangamon County Democratic chairman Tim Timoney.

“It was a popular name in town, a big Catholic family from Blessed Sacrament, popular in the political and business community. That made him attractive. He had a little touch of politics, but for the most part, he brought a business approach to politics. I think that’s what helped him win.”

He has faced numerous challenges his first year in office. Chief among them were healing race relations in the city and plugging a budget deficit.

Davlin, 46, earns $94,132 as mayor of Springfield. The job is pretty much what he’d anticipated when he decided to run for election, “but then just even a little more hectic, to just a little more higher power than maybe what I’d anticipated,” he said.

“The surprises that come are usually small. A lot of times you don’t anticipate things. There are little problems, and then some are bigger problems that happen. But for the most part when I took over, we knew.”

Davlin’s key advisers have included his brother, Kevin Davlin, who is treasurer of the mayor’s campaign fund, as well as Todd Renfrow, whom the mayor named to head City Water, Light and Power. Renfrow, a former Democratic county chairman and former head of the city’s public works department, worked on Davlin’s campaign.

Davlin tried to push a plan early on that would have placed control of both CWLP and the public works department under Renfrow, but aldermen resisted that idea.

One of the big surprises, Davlin said, was learning that what he thought coming in was a $1 million budget deficit actually was actually much larger.

“I believe I understand the budget more than probably anybody else in the whole world understands it – where money’s coming in and where it’s going,” he said. “I watch sales tax revenues every day. But I constantly have to be on the lookout for ways to save money.”

One of his campaign promises was that he would run the city like a business, and he claims he has stuck to that promise, eliminating what he saw as unnecessary or redundant jobs, proposing unpopular cuts to city services when faced with a budget deficit, reorganizing the structure of offices and jobs and settling a costly federal discrimination lawsuit against the city.

But he has taken some heat for his approach to running the city, particularly when in January he announced a plan to eliminate 20 police and 13 firefighter jobs, as well as some city services, to balance the city’s budget. Some accused him of presenting a sky-is-falling plan as a political maneuver designed to force aldermen to propose a tax increase so he wouldn’t have to.

“It was the end of the line. The sky was falling and it absolutely was as real as could be,” Davlin said. “I had no idea when I took over a year ago how bad the situation was. It was very real. I can argue with anybody all day long, but until they sit in this chair, they wouldn’t know how real it is.”

Aldermen, in a party-line vote, voted in early March to increase the city’s sales tax from 1 percent to 1.5 percent. However, it will only be in effect for two years, at which point aldermen can vote to “sunset” the tax or keep it in place.

Davlin, who already is anticipating a deficit of at least $3.9 million for fiscal year 2007, said he is not convinced the city will be able to sunset the tax, pointing to needed capital improvements such as replacing police cars and firetrucks, as well as building a new public works garage at an estimated cost of at least $2.5 million.

“Do we sunset it, or do we want to spend any money on capital (improvements)? That’s what it’s going to come down to. It’s going to be interesting because it’s going to come at a time right before the next election,” he said.

Despite the months he spent reorganizing the city and engaging in budget talks, Davlin can tick off numerous things he and his staff have accomplished: Negotiating a contract with city police officers who’d been without one for more than two years; naming an educational liaison to bridge services between the local government and city schools; taking steps to build an east-side community center; starting a task force on homelessness; making the north branch of Lincoln Library accessible to the disabled; and distributing thousands of dollars in grant money to agencies for housing and services for low-income residents.

Last week, he announced a citywide beautification plan called Springfield Gateway Green.

And he decided to distribute $700,000 in surplus downtown TIF (tax increment financing) money to local taxing bodies, including the Springfield School District, which is experiencing budget problems of its own.

Also last week, he announced an out-of-court settlement with former police officer Renatta Frazier, who sued the city in federal court charging racial discrimination and a hostile work environment. Davlin said he handled 100 percent of the negotiations on the city’s behalf.

Courtney Cox, Frazier’s Benton attorney, told The State Journal-Register on Tuesday that he does not believe the Davlin administration is committed to resolving racial issues within city government.

Cox also represents six black officers – five current and one recently retired – who have filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city. He said what has happened to the black officers is symptomatic of a larger problem.

“Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like (city officials) do not want to resolve the larger problem and continue to fight to preserve the status quo, which is unacceptable,” Cox said.

Davlin pointed out he has assembled a recruitment committee made up of employees from the police and fire departments, city legal staffers and the NAACP. The Black Guardians, which represents most black police officers, also was invited to join the committee but has not responded to the offer, Davlin said.

“My gosh, it would be so great if all of a sudden the next class of police or fire came in here and we were able to hire 20 or 25 percent (minorities). You’ve got to have the numbers come first. You have 150 people and if you have four or five minorities come in, what are the chances?” he said.

In addition to the pending lawsuit over racial issues at the police department, Davlin’s administration has been criticized for not being aggressive enough in hiring minorities for other city jobs. Expectations were high that minority issues such as east-side projects would be a priority after Davlin received critical minority support in his election bid.

Davlin hired Ken Crutcher, who is black, as the city’s budget director – a position the mayor said he considers the city’s No. 2 job.

He also hired a black woman, Letitia Dewith-Anderson, to be chief of staff, only to later rename the position “executive assistant.” The move was criticized by many in the black community, who saw it as a demotion and a breach of trust. Dewith-Anderson quit the job in January but declined at the time to say why.

Davlin said he and Dewith-Anderson still talk and she has offered advice to different departments since leaving.

“I think it was made a lot bigger than what it was. She left on her own accord, and I can’t put a gun to her head and say, ‘Letitia, you need to stay.’ You can’t do that,” he said, noting that he never intended Dewith-Anderson to have the same role as former chief of staff Brian McFadden, who worked for former mayor Karen Hasara.

“My management skill is nothing like those two. Chief of staff is chief of staff, and I made the mistake from the beginning of calling it that when in essence it never was,” he said.

Davlin said he is working to rebuild trust between the city and the black community. He also said he is committed to Hasara’s goal of achieving 15 percent minority staffing on the police and fire departments.

“I campaigned on it. I talk about it. And don’t think I’m not reminded every day by the community that a certain segment of this society has not had its fair share of city employees,” he said.

Some aldermen also have been critical of the mayor, saying he does not keep them informed about the things he’s working on or major developments in city government.

Ward 5 Ald. Joe Bartolomucci said he would like to see better communication between Davlin and the rest of the aldermen.

“I don’t think it’s right when you’re sitting on one of the committees and you have to read about something that happens that directly deals with your committee in the press or get word of it on the radio or television. That’s happened more than once,” said Bartolomucci, who, like the mayor, was elected last April.

Bartolomucci, a Republican, also said he believes Davlin has succumbed to political pressure too many times.

“He made some mistakes, I thought, in the first three to six months. I thought I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m a freshman alderman and he’s a brand new mayor with no public office experience. I thought he’d really sharpen his skills as the leader of this community,” he said.

“It seems like he’s more worried about re-election in three years than being a leader. I think we’ve seen that in the budget process where instead of coming out front and really putting together an innovative, problem-solving budget, he came out with a very simplistic budget and really threw it in the laps of the aldermen and said, ‘Here, you fix it.’ ”

County Democratic chairman Timoney said the aldermen sometimes force the mayor to be more political than he would like to be.

“He’s tried to have a business approach to running city government, but sometimes it comes down to a five-to-five vote just based on politics, not on what’s best for the city. The Republicans are going to try to force him to cast the tie-breaking vote on a number of controversial issues just so they can use it against him in three years, such as the sales tax,” he said.

Timoney said Davlin is largely responsible for revitalizing the local Democratic Party.

“The Republicans aren’t used to the Democrats having some power in Sangamon County. Pretty much now we’re at a level playing field; they’ve been used to having an unlevel playing field where they’ve had all the power and control,” he said.

“I think his only weakness is possibly the political side of it because he’s not a politician. Some things he might look at from more of a business approach than a political approach. … Sometimes the business approach is better than the political approach; sometimes it’s not.”

Davlin said he has two priorities for his second year in office: city beautification and economic development.

“Number 1, I want to clean this town up. This town is dirty, in my opinion. I want it to look like downtown Chicago. Beautification to me is so important,” he said, noting that he is working to put a stop to fly dumping.

“I think everything is on the drawing board, from giving (garbage pickup) to one company to sectoring the city, put it on our tax bill, put it on our property tax, put it on our utility bill. Everything’s open.”

Economic development plans include establishing a new industrial park, getting the medical district going, retaining the 183rd Fighter Wing Air National Guard base and attracting new companies to the city.

“I want to make it so we’re more business friendly so that people want to come in and develop and they’re going to look at us as opposed to going to Chatham,” he said.