Talk Back! 
Most Read stories this week
Most Emailed stories this week
Post will make most of city's Lincoln ties
From the H&R editorial staff
The Decatur City Council took a positive step Monday night when it voted to hire a director of the city's Lincoln heritage project.
The council voted unanimously to create the position, and Decatur resident Kim Bauer has agreed to oversee the Lincoln efforts in Decatur. Bauer is currently the state's Abraham Lincoln curator. He will resign his Springfield post to take the Decatur job. The main thrust of the new position will be to prepare Decatur to take advantage of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birthday in 2009.
Bauer will be paid $67,000 a year, with the money coming from hotel and motel tax funds collected in recent years. The city has designated about $744,000 in next year's city budget for Lincoln Heritage and Looking for Lincoln initiatives.
Those are the details, now for the exciting stuff.
Bauer is no stranger to Decatur. In addition to being a Central Illinois native, he voiced support last year for Mayor Paul Osborne's plan to move the Transfer House to Main and Main streets and make it the center of the city's Lincoln heritage. The Illinois Department of Transportation failed to support moving the Transfer House, but Bauer understands the importance of Decatur's role in Lincoln's history.
In downtown Decatur, Lincoln practiced law, is believed to have given his first political speech, was first dubbed the Railsplitter and was nominated for president.
Although Bauer did not reveal possible details about his plans, we would suspect that one of his first jobs will be to make those sites more visible and figure out a way to tell the Lincoln story to visitors.
"I feel very, very strongly that the city of Decatur has a wonderful heritage to be able to offer, not only to the state, but the nation and internationally," Bauer said.
Osborne said the city has "golden opportunity" in Bauer to capitalize on its Lincoln heritage.
While we think the news of Bauer's appointment is exciting, we do have one quibble with the way the city went about this process. The council held a study session on the issue Monday night and then approved it later that evening. That gives the public virtually no time to comment on a significant use of taxpayers' dollars. In this case, we doubt there would have been overwhelming comments against the hiring, but the city should take steps in the future to make sure citizens have a chance to be heard.
But that's a small point in the midst of some exciting prospects. Decatur is arguably the second most important city in the Lincoln story after Springfield. It's past time for the community to figure out a way to attract those visitors who are flocking to the Abraham Lincoln President Library and Museum in Springfield. Bauer seems a good person to quickly move Decatur into that position. We can't wait to get started.
Previous Page 
Subscribe 
Email Alerts 
Print this story 
Email this story
del.icio.us
digg
newsvine
facebook