As part of the continuing effort by our City officials trying to convince us they are really working to give Park Ridge taxpayers cost-effective government, there will be another budget workshop tonight at City Hall (505 Butler Place, 7:00 p.m.).
The Council continues to address the initial budget proposed by City Mgr. Jim Hock and his Staff, which jacks up the City’s portion of our property taxes by 5% (following a similar 5% hike last year) even though the cost of living has not increased by anything close to 5% last year, or 10% over the past two years. But simple percentage hikes in taxes and/or fees are standard operating procedures which allow government bureaucrats to avoid making tough choices of “this” over “that” even though that’s one of the things they are being paid to do.
As occurred last year, Hock and his executive staff (i.e., full-time City employees paid, cumulatively, close to $750,000 a year) are trying to wipe their hands of any further budget responsibility beyond that initial draft by dumping it into the hands of the Mayor and City Council (i.e., part-time volunteers paid, cumulatively, $20,400 a year). And, as last year, this Council seems all too willing to let that happen.
Which makes it likely we will see a repeat of last year’s goat rodeo, where our elected officials volley increasingly arbitrary revenue and expense numbers around The Horseshoe at an increasingly frantic pace until moments before the deadline for passing a balanced budget expires, at which point somebody proclaims the budget to be “balanced” – even if the balancing is done with inflated revenue projections, deflated expense projections, smoke, mirrors and stealth technology.
What Park Ridge taxpayers deserve, instead, is a budget where every number is owned by both City Staff and our elected officials.
In our opinion, what the Council should do tonight – and should have done as soon as it received Hock’s/Staff’s draft – is to tell Hock/Staff, in no uncertain terms, that any property tax increase is unacceptable; and that, consequently, each department head must provide a written report (available to the public on the City’s website) within 7 days that describes the specific budget cuts he/she recommends to make up for the 5% of his/her budget that can no longer be expected from the property tax increase.
In other words, Wayne Zingsheim will own the 5% cut in Public Works’ budget; Chief Kaminski will own the cuts in the Police budget; Chief Zywanski will own the cuts in the Fire budget; and Librarian Janet Van De Carr will own the cuts in the Library budget.
Oh, yes: and City Mgr. Hock, as the City’s COO, will own all of those cuts.
That way, the mayor and each aldermen also will own those cuts or any changes to those Staff recommendations they approve – so long as the official presiding over each committee and Council meeting at which Staff recommendations are changed insists upon roll call votes for each and every nip, tuck and tweak, rather than those voice votes that often allow individual aldermen to escape accountability.
Sadly, we don’t expect any of this to happen from the fiscally feckless majority that’s been sitting around The Horseshoe producing multi-millions of dollars in deficits since the voters foolishly bought former mayor Howard Frimark’s snake oil referendum to cut the Council from 14 to 7 aldermen. The only good thing we can say about this group of tax-and-spenders is that they haven’t added massive borrowing to their legacies – although much of the credit for that has to go to Joe Egan’s 2009 police station referendum and the voters who torpedoed it and the multi-millions of bonded debt it would have required.
But as inept as this current Council has been at budgeting and management, in fairness we must acknowledge that it inherited an albatross in the Uptown TIF, which is pointed out in a story in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“City Budget: Uptown TIF debt going nowhere soon,” Feb. 15).
The H-A story reports that over $5 million of City funds has been sucked into the TIF black hole with no hope of repayment in full for another 12 years. And repayment even then isn’t assured if the City decides to fund additional capital projects in the TIF district – like, say, Ald. Robert Ryan’s favorite boondoggle, a parking facility on the Scharringhausen lot on Fairview.
The TIF was the City-orchestrated brainchild of 26 citizens whom, in 1999, were assembled into the Uptown Advisory Task Force (“UATF”) that included, ironically but not surprisingly, Ryan himself. The TIF-enabled redevelopment was touted at the time by its proponents as a retail-oriented development that would pour money into the City’s coffers while turning Uptown into a “vibrant” retail and entertainment destination.
Lofty visions of Barnes & Noble, Crate & Barrel, the Gap, etc., however, soon were replaced with a condominium and townhouse-dominant project, notwithstanding the results of a City-sponsored 1999 survey which showed strong citizen opposition to Uptown condominiums. But by that time the UATFers, along with then-mayor Ron Wietecha, then-City Mgr. Tim Schuenke, and most/all of the aldermen then on the Council (including Ald. Rich DiPietro) had signed onto the multi-family residential-heavy deal lock, stock and barrel.
Less than a decade later, we have a project that has not moved past the first of its intended four phases because it hasn’t even been able to pay its own debt service, or the subsidy payments it committed to make to School Districts 64 and 207. In 2011-12 alone, the City will need to make $2.9 million in TIF-related bond payments, according to the H-A article.
So while the current occupants of 505 Butler Place didn’t make the entire current financial mess by themselves, we cannot afford a continuation of the deficit-producing business-as-usual that our public officials have tried to pass off as sound fiscal policy since 2006-07, when the City posted its only surplus this millennium.
The goats are loose at City Hall. Will anybody be able to round them up?
To read or post comments, click on title.
18 comments so far
People tend to forget about how the TIF came into being and what we were told it would do for the city of Park Ridge. Funny how all the people who committed us to the TIF have disappeared from public life, with a few exceptions like DiPietro and Ryan.
What really angers a lot of us, especially those who live in the shadow of Uptown, is that all this development was to supposed to bring in a lot of revenue and keep our property taxes low. That didn’t work out too well, did it? The City will say, “oh, but we are only a fraction of your property tax bill.” Well, that fraction seems to get bigger all the time.
It is worth noting that the Planning & Zoning commission, unelected but seemingly under the influence of anyone who wants to build anything, has a big role in this dynamic. Next week they will consider whether to rezone the Iannelli property (aka Audrey’s) as R-4. Ostensibly this would be for townhomes but the new zoning would allow an apartment building, too.
One of the reasons to rezone is said to be – wait for it – more tax revenue for the City. We don’t buy it anymore. If our property taxes are going to keep going up, we might as well have a completely residential neighborhood to show for it, not some mish-mosh of homes, apartments, drive-thru banks and who knows what else.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We also question replacing single family homes with multi-unit residential that reduces the amount of empty land (a/k/a, “yards”) and increases the demands on our already-fragile infrastructure (a/k/a, sewers). More flooding, anyone?
Ryan on the current council running up millions in deficits. Ryan on the UATF producing a project that is soaking us instead of helping us. Ryan on the school board that replaced the newest school in D64 with the new Emerson that we’re still paying for. Sure hope he gets out of public life for good.
The biggest goat in the rodeo is the judas goat mayor. Telling the sheeple the city has a deficit when it has a surplus.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We are convinced that the confusing and misleading nature of government fund accounting like we have with the City (and with the County, and State) is responsible for creating the appearance that the City has a “surplus” when that very well may not be the case in the most practical sense.
As best as we can tell, the “surplus” to which you (and the author of the anonymous essay in this week’s Park Ridge Journal, assuming that’s not also you) refer is based on revenues over expenses in all the various funds, certain of which are “enterprise funds” that can be used only for specific limited purposes and not for the City’s general expenses which are paid out of the General Fund.
And we understand that the City is projecting an approx. $150,000 deficit for the General Fund this current fiscal year.
Anonymous, re: Ryan, here’s an even more sickening fact. He got elected 5th ward alderman in part by whipping up friends and neighbors to go to the polls and support the school tax increase that was on the same ballot that year. The logic now appears to have been: Vote to raise taxes, and Elect Ryan — so he can raise taxes even more.
Of the supposed $745,000 “surplus” referred to by the anonymous blogger/essayist, about $50,000 is already gone because of blizzard-related expenses. Out of what’s left of the “surplus”, about $340,000 of that belongs to the Library. Legally, the City cannot touch it. And about $390,000 is in the sewer fund which the City also cannot legally touch for anything except sewer projects. Do the math: that leaves less than zero to spend on the City’s operations, let alone contributions to community groups. And that means yet another deficit in the general fund.
So 614, wake up and smell the crisis.
Now we know why Schmidt doesn’t understand the budget. It is because PW doesn’t understand the budget.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Great logic, given the multi-millions of dollars of deficits run up by the City under the day-to-day management of Hock, supported by the majority vote of the current City Council – but opposed by Schmidt (and PW).
I have a question for those of you who believe that there is a surplus: Why is Hock proposing a tax increase? We wouldn’t need to increase taxes if there really was a surplus.
Thank you, Anon. 8:41 pm! We should be talking about DEcreasing tax rates. My property tax bill has nearly doubled in the past 6 years, with most of the increases coming after property values decreased.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes and no. What we really need to do in the first instance is “re-define” or “re-invent” government so that it goes back to doing what only government can do, or what government can do better than the public sector – leaving all the other things to the private sector UNLESS the majority of the appropriate group of taxpayers (e.g., city, park district, school district, county, state) expresses in unequivocal terms its desire for more government…and is willing to pay for it.
Additionally, an overlooked element of the tax debate is “value” – getting a full $1.00 of service for each $1.00 of taxes.
The mayor and PW are trying to manufacture a financial crisis for political purposes. The goal is some unexplained re-defining and re-inventing of our government. Frimark did that too.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The only way Frimark tried to re-define government was by cutting the Council in half and then packing it with his stooges – Allegretti, Bach, Carey and Ryan – after the gutless incumbents who had opposed him chose to run away rather than run for re-election.
We don’t have to try to “manufacture a financial crisis” because, by our back-of-the-envelope calculation, City government has produced just a shade under $8 million in operating deficits over the past 3 years – even as it was raising taxes and cutting services. Call it what you will, but whatever you call it is not good.
True dat, PW.
Editor,
The thing with numbers is you can play around with them any way you want and get them to present the basis for any argument. I’m a relatively new reader, but you are obviously a tea bagger and very good one at that.
“What we really need to do in the first instance is “re-define” or “re-invent” government so that it goes back to doing what only government can do, or what government can do better than the public sector” is great verbiage. Who could disagree? The problem is having gone back and read several of your previous arguments is that you seem to already have written that definition. You speak as if it’s in an Almanac with clearly defined lists of “things government should spend money on”.
Nothing is a simple as you make it out to be. If you really want to set up a pay as you go system, why stop at the library or human needs services? Why not charge people for all costs associated with a call to the Fire or Police? Hey the old lady down the street has been taken by 911 to thre times this last year. Why should I pay for that? Why not charge people directly for the children they send to school? My kids are grown, why should I pay for it?
We don’t because it’s the wrong thing to do. Not because it doesn’t line up in some column on some spreadsheet bean counters like you have created. Your ability to take facts up to edge and then push them over the hill to make some extreme opinion of your seem like fact is quite gifted. Do you work for Fox news?
EDITOR’S NOTE: We doubt that you’re not a “relatively new reader” but we’ll indulge your charade nonetheless. Not that it should matter, but we are not “tea bagger”s nor do we even watch Fox News.
Why shouldn’t “the old lady down the street” pay for those 911 calls if she can afford it? Why shouldn’t there be a kind of FAFSA to determine how much families should pay to send their kids to “public” grammar and high schools, like there is for college education? Is it “right” or “fair” for the kids of some family with a $500K annual household income to get the same “free” (taxpayer-paid) education as the kids from a family earning 20% of that?
Things actually are a lot simpler once you break them down into their component parts, which is why those who wish to preserve the current status quo always use “complexity” to scare off scrutiny and possible change.
Why shouldn’t “the old lady down the street” pay for those 911 calls if she can afford it? Why shouldn’t there be a kind of FAFSA to determine how much families should pay to send their kids to “public” schools? Is it “right” or “fair” for the kids of some family with a $500K annual income to get the same free education as the kids from a family earning 20% of that?
Putting aside the obvious nut jobs, because they do exist in all parties and factions, what is wrong with being a tea bagger? I’m not one, and I hate Fox “News” but they have a different idea about how things should be run/managed. Just because it is different doesn’t make it wrong. Hell, look how well things have turned out on our great two party system. What is happening all across the county was bound to happen at some point, what has been going on is unsustainable, the tea baggers simply hastened it. I think in the lok run we will thank them for it.
Not quite sure what your first point is about? I’m sure there is some disturbed reason for your assumption as to how long I have read this dribble. But, just so you know I stumbled upon it when I was trying to find out what the Tea baggers were doing in this area. Go to Google and type “redefine government”, which is the typical babble from Tea baggers such as yourself and then type “Park Ridge”. You my friend are the seventh listing. The rest of your rambling about setting criteria for receiving an education and the right to fire protection is an even more extreme right wing response then I thought you would produce. It’s all right out of the playbook. I thought you would at least fake some conscience. Anyway, have a nice day Bean Counter.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Re-defining government is starting to be done all over the countyr for the simple reason that government has been perverted over the years into its current, unaffordable and unsustainable form.
As we have recommended to you before, go find Ms. Park Ridge Underground and get her to re-open her site so that you have a more hospitable place to push your free-lunch agenda. You won’t be missed here.
PW, that was me you said should go ask Ms. Park Ridge Underground to reopen her site. I said you sounded more concerned than anybody so you should be the one to go begging.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Obviously, you can’t take a hint.
Two things; I was researching your perimeters for establishing whether or not people get to go to school. I can’t find the exact census numbers for the Northwest suburbs, but I can assume that like 90% of households fall between the $20,000 and the $500,000 cut offs you suggest (Kind of like talking about John Gacy when discussing the death penalty). So where would your exact cut off be?
Oh and thanks for the Ms. Park Ridge Under Ground reference. The site is cool, but seems to be inactive. I did not see anything regarding Ms. Park Ridge though.
EDITOR’S NOTE: 20% of $500K is $100K, not $20K. And since you can’t take a hint, we will begin treating your comments as spam. See ya.
Sorry for the typo and the missed calculation. Same question though, where is the cut off?. As for the Censorship, is the Libya? I feel like Andrei Sinyavsky.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Don’t flatter yourself – the quality of your ideas and writing don’t warrant censorship. You’re simply ignorant, boring and annoying. Now go away.
from the about us page of publicwatchdog:
Responsible government requires broad public participation by an informed citizenry that can be achieved only through the timely dissemination of complete and accurate information and vigorous public debate.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Whether you are “frick” or “frack,” neither of you – or both of you, if you are schizophrenic – have been engaging in “vigorous public debate” about issues, which is why we didn’t bother to publish the rest of your irrelevant comment.
Either debate the issues or be treated as “spam.” You’re choice.
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