Peoria, Illinois, is Cleaning Up for March Madness -- Perhaps a Little Too Much?

This is a hard article to write. It is about Peoria, Illinois, my hometown. I'm not sure what I really want to say, but something doesn't make sense to me.

What is generating this article is my thinking about the "March Madness" High School Tournaments being held in Peoria. You can see the schedule at the Illinois High School Association's site; look here.

Peoria will be hosting the 1A/2A size schools this coming weekend (the 10^th-12^th of March) and the 3A/4A schools a week later.

It took Peoria awhile to get these tournaments and, being a large basketball city, we have the Bradley Braves and a long high school history of good teams and Illinois State winners, it means a lot to them.

One of the great benefits of having tournaments of this nature is that thousands of people, players, fans and press come to the city and use hotels, gas stations, taxis and restaurants and any other retail business you can imagine.

So what is on my mind? I'm so glad you asked.

Any Peoria native who has ventured out of their home this last week has seen them. And who would be "them?" "Them" would be city workers, at least I think that's who they are, dutifully using leaf blowers. They are cleaning sidewalks, parking lots, walks and anywhere in sight where there may be a leaf, pebble or aberrant "thing" that may mar the city's image. The thing is there's not just one or two or 10; there are legions of them

My wife and I had business downtown and had to walk a couple of blocks from our parking meter. The reason was there were numerous meters placed out of order so these guys could "clean" the city. It wasn't much fun having to walk around them either.

I have three questions to present to my city of Peoria.

First, What is this costing the city? It has to be costing a pretty penny.

My next question is Who are we trying to fool? People ignore tiny pebbles and leaves because they are in every city, not just Peoria.

Finally, Do you mean to tell me visitors are more important than citizens? Why aren't the workers routinely cleaning the city for us?

I'll tell you why: It costs too much to do on a regular basis.

If we factor in this type of "work," you can rest assured the "profit margin" isn't that large from visitors; or is this all about image?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to "bash" my hometown, but, well, what are they doing?

Reference:

IHSA Website, "March Madness IHSA Boys Basketball State Finals"