Who wants to give Napleton Cadillac $400,000 of taxpayer money as an “incentive” for demolishing the buildings and cleaning up environmental contamination at Napleton’s former location on the west end of Uptown?  How about throwing in a “sales tax recapture” agreement that could give Napleton hundreds of thousands of dollars more just to stay in Park Ridge? 

As reported in the August 29 issue of The Park Ridge Journal & Topics, that’s exactly what our city government is looking to do. 

Of course, the City is trying to build in some safeguards for its “investment” – like an agreement by Napleton to stay in Park Ridge for the next 15 years.  But you can be sure such an agreement would have a bail-out provision in the event the manufacturers of Napleton’s car lines become unhappy with Napleton’s current space or location, as purportedly occurred with one or more of the lines Bredemann was selling from its former Uptown locations.

But the larger issue is why the City keeps throwing tax dollars at private businesses to pay for problems those businesses caused, like soil contamination; or to “incent” (formerly known as “bribe”) them to stay in Park Ridge?  The standard explanation is that these businesses provide the City with needed revenue, which makes the cost of keeping them happy an “investment.” 

But when was the last time the City did a competent cost-benefit analysis for any of these giveaways – and then followed it up each year thereafter to determine whether the original analysis was accurate and whether the taxpayers are ahead or in the hole?  For example, when was the last time the City performed and made public an accounting of the revenues and expenses related to relocating the Bredemann dealerships from Uptown to their current Dempster Street location? 

Another concern should be even more obvious: Having long-term public bureaucrats negotiating business deals with hard-eyed private business owners like Bill Napleton and Joe Bredemann.  Does anybody really think that public trough dwellers are going to hold their own with their bottom-line private sector counterparts in those kinds of negotiations?  If so, would you be interested in some swamp land in Florida?

It also should be noted that Napleton Cadillac was one of Mayor Frimark’s more generous campaign contributors, having added $1,000 to the mayor’s coffers in November, 2004. That doesn’t mean Napleton is getting any improper or unduly favorable treatment from the City, but it does raise that possibility. And at the very least, it probably means that Napleton’s telephone calls to City Hall get returned a bit quicker than most.

In the final analysis, Park Ridge should figure out what it is, what it’s not, what it wants to become, and what it is willing to sacrifice to do so.  Until that occurs, however, spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to buy the affection of certain businesses seems like more of a crap-shoot than an “investment.”