LaSalle Insider

If you have a problem with your cable or Internet service, do you really want to wait a month or more to get it resolved? No Way! But in LaSalle, this seems to occur time and again. People in the area have trouble getting their Comcast-related issues taken care of by contacting the local Comcast office. So instead they contact their alderman or the mayor and ask the city to help. This usually begins a lengthy process of the city trying to contact Comcast on behalf of citizens, asking a representative to attend a council meeting, and maybe a resolution results or maybe not. Not necessarily the best or fastest way for a person to have a problem with their cable or Internet resolved. So what is the answer? How can someone get their problems solved within minutes or hours?

Enter @comcastcares - an account set up on a new microblogging site called Twitter. If a person signs up on the Twitter Website and creates an account of their own using a “handle” or username, they can send messages to @comcastcares whenever they have a Comcast-related problem. Comcast also has several other Twitter accounts powered by people who are ready to help customers.

So how does this work? Well, at the last council meeting, Ald. Demes asked the city to invite a Comcast representative to the next meeting because a resident had complained about damage a Comcast contractor had done to their yard. Repeated attempts to contact Comcast had failed. So the council agreed to arrange to have a representative attend the next council meeting to discuss the matter.

How does someone use Twitter to solve a problem like this? A message (see the image showing how the message looks) was sent through Twitter to @comcastcares during the meeting. Within an hour, and before the council meeting was over, @comcastcares had answered who to contact to resolve the issue. If a city official had sent this message, they could have sent off an e-mail at this point and perhaps had the issue resolved by the next day. Here is an image of the Twitter page for @comcastcares showing his answer to the question above:

Anyone can create an account on Twitter and contact any of the Comcast Twitter accounts by simply typing in a message using the “@” symbol then the name of the Comcast account. There is a video on the main page of the Twitter Website that further explains how to use Twitter. But if you want a more in depth explanation of Twitter and how to use it, you can follow this link here:

Time to Meet the Bird (Twitter and Microblogging)

If you use Twitter for nothing else, you can at least use it to get fast, responsive, and efficient service from Comcast.

This past Friday, Sharon Wagenknecht invited us over for lunch and a tour. If you aren’t familiar with Sharon you should change that. She is the executive director of the Hegeler Carus Mansion. Mayor Grove, Fire Chief Andy Bacidore,Aldermen Lavieri and Herndon,  Cindy Arbisi,Joanne Milby ,Ginny Kochanowski, Brian Maddox ,Mike Furlan and myself were treated to a wonderful lunch in the dining room of the mansion. Although the lunch was excellent what followed was even better.
Our tour guide, Tricia Kelly, doubles as the guide for our canal boat and she is totally into the subject matter, if you know what I mean. The mansion is not totally restored but that isn’t important. What is is the story of Edward Hegeler and Frederick Matthiessen. These gentlemen not only changed our little corner of the world they impacted history.
I am not going to tell the story but I am going to tell you if you haven’t been to the mansion and taken the tour you are missing out on a grand time and a story that will make you come away saying “I didn’t know that!”
Go to www.hegelercarus.org and get more info and make your plans for a visit…..
Who knows.. you might even get lunch!

More and more of us are turning to the Internet to get our news and information. With Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, and even blogs like LaSalle Insider and Change for Peru, we can also have conversations online. And now local businesses are finding their way onto the Web. Which makes sense – after all, that’s where their existing and future customers are. A well-known and established LaSalle business, Machelle’s Backstreet, has set up a Facebook page and more recently started up a Twitter account.

Although people might think of Facebook and Twitter as a place where kids just hang out and talk, statistics tell a different story. A recent report by istrategylabs shows a 276.4% growth in the use of Facebook by those aged 35 to 54 years old. Those 55 and older showed a growth in use of 194.3%. And for Twitter, use studies show that the people signing up and using it the most are in the 25-to-54-year-old age bracket. So the bottom line is that everyone seems to be grabbing a keyboard, logging on, and joining in the conversation.

So kudos to you Machelle’s Backstreet for joining all of us online and helping to promote not only your business, but the city of LaSalle. And don’t forget everyone:

Click here & follow Machelle’s Backstreet on Twitter!

If anyone saw the News-tribune article from May 8th titled “Financing stymies Kaskaskia project” you must have come away with the same thought-Mayor Jeff what were you thinking?  In the article it talks about the inability to obtain financing (real shock in this economy!) to proceed with the renovations and improvements to the Hotel Kaskaskia. The bulk of the article deals with the obvious and points out that the private (read local) developers are hopeful they can still move forward soon with the project.

What I find amazing  were the comments by our new Mayor Jeff Grove. In the article the paper points out that  Grove”s campaign for mayor included his goal of clearing up eyesore buildings from the city  and the Kaskaskia project is high on his radar.  Grove even states that he has second thoughts on the fact that Blouke Carus purchased the building for a dollar.  Mayor Grove  states that “for a dollar, I wish we would have just taken it over”

I am fully supportive of cleaning up and getting rid of eyesores in the city.  As an alderman I have continually fought to get the old Mathiessen school building corrected or demolished in my ward. But to compare the Hotel and its developers with the likes of the owners of dilapidated rental buildings and abandoned decaying homes is an insult of the worst kind.

I was at the auction the day Blouke Carus purchased the Hotel for a dollar. There were no other bidders present. I thanked him for his willingness to take a chance on developing  and renovating the old hotel when no one else would even consider the idea.  He has spent thousands of dollars since that first buck was used to purchase the hotel.  He has not received a nickel’s worth of return since. He continues to spend to maintain the building while searching for the additional investment dollars to make this dream a reality!

Where did the  Mayor think that LaSalle’s taxpayers would find the funds equal to what  Mr Carus has invested to date? I am sure if Mr Carus had a crystal ball back on the day he purchased the Hotel and could see where the economy would be today, he might have hesitated to raise his hand at that auction.

I want to list those local individuals currently on the board for the hotel project besides Mr Carus;

Alderman John Lavieri,former Mayor Art Washkowiak, Dennis Clark,Mike Hess,Barb Koch,Pat Barry,Inga Carus,John Chamlin,Norbert Dudek,Helga Interrante, John Piano, and Jim Wikes. 

As an alderman here in LaSalle, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued efforts to make this project happen. I also pledge my support in doing what I can to help in any way.  I honestly hope that our mayor realizes that he has made a mistake with his comment about the project and truly doesn’t mean to dismiss your work as a failed attempt and that we , as a city, would be better off if you had just said “no thanks” when asked to step up to the plate!