Sunday, February 04, 2007

Super... uh, I mean "Big Game" Assortment

The NFL certainly has been going all out with their cracking down on people for various things. Dwyer and Michaels are apparently unable to use the "SB" words outside of a news-type atmosphere for fear of angering the NFL. I guess this is why baseball is the best sport.

Here's a Sunday morning assortment of random stuff:

-A multi-car hit and run accident on the Centennial Bridge, a disturbance at Genesis East, a man who had to be extricated from his wrecked vehicle on W. 6th, various domestic problems, and the one that will make the news, a stabbing/attempted murder of a woman in Goose Creek at about 5:15 this morning. You wouldn't guess that it was 7 below zero last night by how busy the cops were. The night before I heard a police call for kids egging cars. It was around zero at that point! Come on folks, save your tomfoolery for summer like normal lowlifes.

-Speaking of law enforcement, tomorrow is the deadline if you want to apply for one of the toughest and least recognized jobs in the field: the police dispatcher. Its a county dispatcher, but that doesn't make the job much easier. Also, I don't understand why Scott County only leaves its job openings on its website for a matter of days. I find it humorous that both the "New listing!" icon and the "Expires soon!" icon are both present on the dispatcher listing. I guess you'd better not be out of town when the job you want is taking applications. It doesn't seem like the best way to get a large pool of applicants though. But what do I know, its not like I have a degree in this...

-Did anyone make it to the Figge, Symphony, or RME events last night? Knowing that I'd be out during the cold nights this weekend, I chose to stay in yesterday afternoon. Of course the negative folks will jump all over low attendance to prove their favorite thing, failure. We wouldn't want to look at all the circumstances, such as weather, or anything.

-The Crescent Warehouse District website has added more content, including all the floorplans for the Crescent Macaroni and Waterloo Mills buildings, in addition to the 4th Street Lofts building. Even my floorplan is up there... Maybe some of you will notice that many of the market-rate rents exceed $1000 a month before saying how we all get cheap rents.

-Verizon rolls out high-speed network to QC -QCTimes
I meant to say something about this back on Thursday when the article was in the paper. What in the world is the Times doing reporting this now? I have Verizon, and EV-DO has been working here since sometime in November or December. Apparently either Verizon just finally got around to announcing it, or the QCT finally got around to reporting it. I guess I should have reported it back when I first noticed.

-I hope to be posting some renderings soon of what the new police station will look like, because I'm not sure if those of you complaining about it already realize what it will look like when its done. Or maybe you do and you're just against it like everything else.

-I'm snarky enough this morning to change my name to SnarkyGuy...

-Go Colts

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take a guess, they do not wish to have a large pool of applicants. Most likely hoping for someone who is referred by someone in public safety, just required to advertise by law I expect.

Anonymous said...

If D1 wants to have another one of these 'free days' downtown, they need to come up with a gimic to make the thing work. Maybe something like this: HyVee is successful with their milk punch card. You buy 10 gallons of milk at HyVee and the 11th is free. Everyone loves that promotion. D1 could do the same thing by making all events free like yesterday, then give everyone a punch card. You get a punch for parking in the free ramp, one punch for the free adler, rme, agteche, and river center, and for attractions that people really think are horrible, like the Figge and the skybridge, you get 3 punches as a bonus. Then after you spend an hour walking around seeing all there is to see and you get 10 punches on your card, you can turn it in to D1 and they give you a check for $25 per person. To cover the costs, the downtown partnership could hold a bake sale. Promotions like this can surely save our downtown.

Anonymous said...

"Go Colts"
That figures, coming from you QCI.

Anonymous said...

The RME show was sold out. Pieta Brown and Bo Ramsey were wonderful! Iris Dement has a beautiful voice and storytelling ability-the crowd was like a golf tournament-so quiet and hanging on every word. Tickets were $30 and many folks had the printed out from the internet kind. I talked to several people who were from southern Illinois-came to meet college friends-stayed at the Radisson. I sat with a couple from Iowa City. Talked to two couples from Davenport who had never been to the RME-loved the experience. Lee Ann does a great job of running the place and keeping things moving smoothly.

Anonymous said...

10:46
The only free event was Figge admission. This type of promo is common around the country with museums. The Brooklyn Museum of Art has a free family night every month with activities galore. The only thing D1 did was coordinate the shuttles so you wouldn't have thousands of people walking around downtown freezing.

Anonymous said...

Part of the reason that downtown events like this fail, is because people feel unsafe about being downtown. Next time, a Bagdad Green Zone should be created, with uniformed cops with machine guns on every corner, and everyone entering the downtown would go thru security to make sure they weren't packing. If people don't feel safe, they will never venture to that part of the city.

Anonymous said...

Possibly it wasn't 'fair and balanced,' but the photo journalist from Kwqc showed the crowd as far different than 12:19 describes as 'thousands.' The pictures clearly show "a small handful."

QuadCityImages said...

12:31, could you tell me the last time there was a murder in downtown East of Ripley?

I bet you can't.

Anonymous said...

QCI, just a few weeks ago there was a black guy shot just a few blocks north of your apartment, and the guy drove a couple blocks, and smashed into some parked cars about a block from you because he had lost so much blood. In the dangerous catagory, I lump critical wounds + murder into the same column.

Anonymous said...

QCI - you live a fantasy world. D1 has drawn a line using the tracks pretty much to signify the 'downtown' and forget the rest of us who live solo. Draw a magical line in this city. If you live between the tracks of Locust - screw you - you ask for the trouble. YOu have the same BS attitude and it harms people.

Anonymous said...

Ya know what QCI - answer me this question. Can you name a month in the past year that someone wasn't shot or at least an attempted shooting hasn't occured south of locust. I thought not!!You idiot! That IS a problem that excuses aren't cutting it for anymore. Excuses made by the likes of you and those aldermen and city officials you support.

cruiser said...

QCI did say downtown, not all of SoLo. While some people lump that area together, they don't necessarily mean one and the same. Yes there is a lot of crime in the SoLo area, but I don't think it's actually reached downtown myself. The guy who got shot and ended up on East 6th., was actually shot in the 9th. and Pershing area, which I don't consider downtown. We all need to work to change this negative image of downtown, or we'll all be paying the price when everything closes downtown.

Anonymous said...

Some of us who live in the N/E part of Davenport, consider anything south of Central Park to be the downtown area.

Anonymous said...

AS long as we continue to compartmentalize the city, we will not get a remedy to crime. we need to stop stereotyping and start to work together. People who live in NE dav need to care what happens solo and visa versa.

Anonymous said...

Can anyone name the last time someone in the Q.C.'s was shot or stabbed by another person to whom they were not related or acquainted? The exception being criminals who were shot at by police. As far as I recall, violent crimes against "innocent bystanders" are few and far between in the Q.C.'s. The victims of crime, or someone in their family or circle of friends, are usually involved in some way with the person who attacks them. This doesn't make the crime any less heinous, or should cause law enforcement or the general public to be less diligent about combatting crime, but it does make it unlikely that someone minding their own business, especially in the middle of the day, is going to be a victim.

Anonymous said...

Another excuse - good job. Hey you, guess what? When these criminals are shooting people on the street, into houses at intersections, the world is exposed. My children are at rsik of being shot and so are you. Keep making excuses for doing little to get crime under control.

We have to make a plan to rid Davenport of these low lifes or this will nto improve.

Get rid of the slum housing and they won't come here!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Thug eradication!

Anonymous said...

Now way - the city wouldn't go for that because once we get rid of the low income thugs, then the millions in federal money is gone. Poof! We have a vested interest in poverty and blight. In order to get CDBG$ and HUD money and all the other funds that JLCS brings in, we need poverty. We are depedant on the poor folks.

Anonymous said...

Let me get this straight...cities are willng to turn a blind eye to crime in order to maintain a level of poverty that qualifies them for federal funding? How much public funding is spent on maintaining the county jail, the criminal court system, and police departments at the city, county and state level? My guess is that whatever federal funding is received by the City and County, it doesn't even approach what it costs to deal with crime. Not to mention the loss of revenue from property and sales taxes because people don't want to live in or patronize establishments in areas where crime is rampant.

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see what Hammerlinck and the rest of the Bozo Squad will cut from public services to keep taxes down. This town will always be a dumping ground until they beef up all enforcement

Anonymous said...

Yep - I kind of mean that, but more about the blight then the crime issue. You see, the tax credit projects that the big developers are getting rich on must have a poverty and blight component to them or the funding isn't there. In other words, without the blight there ain't no money. It gets worse actually, the requirement for blight and actually the city and developer must prove that the area developed has a high poverty rate in order to be funded. So, essentially, the fudning dictates that if you want it you have to build low income apartments or whatever for low income people in low income areas and that just houses low income people, it doesn't increase the econonomy in those areas or promote anything but low income stuff. PLus, these projects typically get a tax abatement from the city, so very little if any taxes are paid in these areas that so desperately need to be taxed. It is really nutty when it comes to urban planning. It is a bad concept.

So, how does it relate to crime? Well, believe what you want, but facts don't lie. The most impoversihed areas have the highest crime rates. Even shiny brand new apartments conecentrated will not decrease crime. The Loft District just puched the crime in that immediate area back up the hill into the established neighborhoods.

Anonymous said...

Oh sorry, a solution?

Well, require that in order to get tax credits you must develop low income apartments in higher income areas.

And, you get the tax credits even if you develop market rate units in low income areas. That will help decrease the blight.

Anonymous said...

When the IOC moves out of the downtown, watch for them to want to unload their Meth Lab Hotel onto the taxpayers for $1. The taxpayers don't want it. These public-private partnerships always cost taxpayers in the end. The IOC made money all these years, and now as part of the deal for them to move, it should be in the agreement that first they must find someone to take over the hotel. If the IOC needs to pay a developer a million dollars to take it off their hands, so be it. So that the city is assured that it does get rehabbed, the money should be put into a trust fund held by the city, or a performance bond purchased. Mike Loos used to do that on single family rehabs all the time to assure that repairs were done in a timely manner. Please keep a close eye on this deal Alderman Meyer, so the taxpayers don't get stuck with this lemon.

Anonymous said...

The Loft District pushed crime up the hill? Don't the lofts include apartments with income eligibility requirements as well as market rate units? Wasn't it because of these income eligible apartments that the developer received TAX CREDITS? I believe you just contradicted your own argument. So which is it? TAX CREDITS for low income residential contribute to blight and crime? Or, TAX CREDITS for residential development push crime elsewhere?

QuadCityImages said...

The whole conspiracy theory that city leaders purposely "keep us down" for the low income/blight money is crap.

Talk to some of these people that you guys all hate, and you'll see that they're not really the evil, corrupt folks you think they are. If Dee, Craig, Clayton, or any of the hated city staff could snap their fingers and instantly remove blight, they would.

There's a lot more money in being a clean, crime-free city than there is in being blighted. Look at Madison.

Anonymous said...

way to celebrate having four thousand people downtown after dark in the middle of winter than roughly 20 comments on how crappy the downtown is. Can't we celebrate the fact that we had so much going on downtown and by all accounts there was no uptick in muggings, crack deals, or solicitation? Davenport needs more nights like this.

Anonymous said...

YOu forgot to mention that 3,975 of those vistors to the downtown were guests of the JLCS shelter and free meal handout center.

Anonymous said...

What does "snarky" mean?

QuadCityImages said...

1 : CROTCHETY, SNAPPISH
2 : sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner