Government is notorious for fuzzy thinking – when it thinks at all. So we were dismayed, but not surprised, that Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his 5th Ward Alderpuppet, Robert Ryan, want to press ahead on a big new police station even though we can’t seem to afford to pave our streets, fix our curbs, eliminate flooding, and do all those other things for which residents of upscale communities such as ours pay their hefty property taxes.
And we were pleased, but not surprised, to read that many of the 566 respondents to the recent City survey (who, admittedly, don’t speak for all of us despite what the surveyors may say) don’t want to spend a lot of money on another multi-million dollar boondoggle, even though we’d prefer an advisory referendum on the November ballot that would let the voters voice their opinion on the issue.
But you can be sure the fans of the new cop shop don’t want that. People behind big new spending plans always try to keep them away from the voters, preferring to slide them through the local governmental body of their choice – be it the City Council, the School District 64 Board, or the Park District Board – where compliant officials seem always at the ready to write checks that we taxpayers struggle to cash.
That’s why we expect that the lobbying for a new cop shop will start picking up steam, which is what the letter to the editor in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate by John P. Kenney, “DDS, MS D-ABFO, CSCA, Fellow, American Academy of Forensic Sciences,” of Park Ridge (“Time to take action for police station,” May 15) appears to be.
Had we put much stock in Dr. Kenney’s hand-wringing hyperbole over the possible consequences from the size and condition of the current cop shop, we might have barricaded ourselves inside our houses behind triple-locked doors, installed multiple alarm systems, and put 911 on speed dial. But once you get past all the speculation, opinion and just plain bluster, the arguments are more “Chicken Little” than Armageddon.
As we’ve written many times before, the condition and layout of the current police station is dilapidated trending toward deplorable. Our police officers and department staff deserve better – including a better layout, better space use, and better conditions. But tripling or quadrupling its size, as the “if you build it, we want some” consultants have self-servingly recommended, is exactly the wrong way to spend our money.
Yes, the current layout is inefficient. Yes, the female officers need a better locker room. And, yes, arrestees shouldn’t be traipsing past rooms where the witnesses against them are being interviewed. But that’s as much an argument for renovating and reconfiguring the current space – with perhaps a modest addition – than exponential expansion. And that’s because people, not brick and mortar, do most of the real police work, as Dr. Kenney’s letter unintentionally reveals.
Take his anecdote about last Sunday’s “situation” where some goof shot up a TV set with a .22 rifle. Kenney notes that it drew the attention of “four patrol cars, a community service officer, and a command officer” to “neutralize” the offender before he could commit another telecide. Don’t get us wrong: we’re pleased with how the situation was handled. But did the size of the current cop shop impede the handling of this situation? If so, how would a four-times bigger cop shop have produced a better result, or prevented it from happening altogether?
Dr. Kenney complains about evidence technicians working “in a room the size of a walk in closet!” Admittedly, that doesn’t sound too good. But before we start looking to build them a crime lab, we’d sure like to hear an authorized representative of the PRPD (like Chief Swoboda) specifically identify any investigations or prosecutions that have been torpedoed or compromised because of the size of the evidence techs’ room.
Dr. Kenney advocates building a police facility “that will carry us for the NEXT 40 years.” Frankly, that’s a really good sound-bite but a really dumb idea. Trying to predict the future even 10 years down the road is tough enough: taking that out 40 years is a fool’s errand, especially when it involves betting $15-20 Million in bonds and another $5 Million or more in interest on that prediction. Not even the mercenary cop shop consultants are willing to go beyond vague generalities and questionable extrapolations that are fuzzier than bunny slippers in making their case for a Taj Mahal cop shop.
That’s why we hereby invite Dr. Kenney and any of his fellow futurists to produce their detailed depictions of Park Ridge 2048: what it will look like, how many people will live here, their demographic make-up, how many magnetic cars will fill our airspace, how many RoboCops we’ll employ, and any other specifics by which the taxpayers might be able to assess for themselves whether spending multi-millions on a 40-year facility is a good idea or a crackpot one.
But while we await the arrival of those crystal balls, we can take comfort in the fact that, as Dr. Kenney points out: “Our police department, one of only 47 municipal CALEA accredited departments in the state of Illinois, has done more with less for decades.” With that in mind, we wonder: “Why can’t the past be prologue?”
19 comments so far
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the Park District gone to referendum 3 times (2 binding & 1 advisory) regarding the Oakton Pool sinkhole.
It might be a bit unfair to lump them in with the City, who can and will move forward on major projects without the input of the Community.
While the Park District hasn’t taken the final (and correct) step to close Oakton, they have at least asked the public what they will $upport and now have a “plan” in place for when the pool fails—-bulldoze the rest as they bulldozed the diving well this week.
GreenDick:
To paraphrase a theological quote: “The voters answer every prayer; but sometimes the answer is ‘No’.” And we here at PW consider “No” as acceptable an answer as “Yes” if that’s what the taxpayers/voters decide.
Many years of experience have provided us with a lot more faith in the voters not to waste our money than we have in our public officials.
I don’t know what CALEA certification means, so I’m not sure how good it makes our police. But you’re right that good police work doesn’t depend that much on space.
The City Council will probably never agree to put the issue of a new police station to a public vote. They would probably claim the old and tired “making these decisions are why we were elected” argument.
I do value that the Park District has gone to referendum three times on the Oakton pool issue, but I suspect they have done so because that is what they are required to do by law, just as that is what is required of the School District; not because the Park Board commissioners (or the School Board) are some shining beacons of good government.
There is plenty of unexpressed voter sentiment in the decisions the Park Board makes when subsidizing other, less major park programs. The Senior Center immediately comes to mind.
I agree….”no” is a fine answer, just as valid as “yes.”
The point I was trying to make was that the Park District should be given credit for taking their questions (that would result in significant spending) to the public for approval or denial.
It just so happens that they (unlike the City) operate under tax caps, so for anything over roughly $7M they have to take the question to the voters.
They do however deserve some credit for utilizing the power of referendums to see if the public will or will not support a project.
I can’t honestly give D64 the same credit, because while they did pass their referendum they have utilized too many back-door referendums before and since, that make the one time (recently) that they asked the voters to approve something insignificant.
That and the fact that there was a fair amount of misleading information shared by people who were pro-referendum, but that’s a conversation for another day.
A governing body’s deigning to obey the law hardly seems like an act worthy of praise. Pardon me, but I’ll take a pass and wait for something that is truly meritorious of kudos.
Should the City decide to ask the voters their sentiments on building a new police station, even when they aren’t required by law to do so, that would earn my thanks.
As for the School District referendum, I opposed it. But not enough to partake of any organized effort to oppose it, if there even was one. If the information offered by the pro-referendum forces was misleading, I’d be interested in hearing what the misleading information was. I agree that the School District has gone the backdoor referendum route in the past, but I do not know of anything they’ve done recently in that vein.
I have held jobs in the private sector that included space planning and facility expansion projects. Given my background, I am appalled at the lack of planning and questioning on the police station project.
If money were no object, my family would “need” four times the space than we currently have in our home. And I’m sure that I could find an architect to support that position, especially since the architectural fees would be based on the size of the project. But reality intervenes, and we live in the space we have due to financial constraints. The same thing happens in the private sector. At the beginning of a project, everyone “needs” a lot more space. Someone with authority has to question those “needs” and determine what is truly required given a limited budget.
When are our elected officials going to start to ask the difficult questions that will make this project both financially viable and good for the police department? Challenge every “need” and make independent decisions about what the requirements really are. And please don’t tell me about the expert consultants. These people get their projects (and make their living) via referrals, so they’re going to say exactly what the police department tells them to say. That’s the only way that they can get a good reference.
If you want to get to the truth, find someone from the private sector who knows how to question each “requirement”. That person will know to ask for the financial analysis on things like building a shooting range vs. renting time on one. And he or she will know how to challenge people to get to the real requirements.
I believe that there are some things included in this project that the police truly need. But I also believe that human nature dictates that if someone else is paying (in this case the taxpayers) and money is not a constraint, everyone’s pet project and nice-to-have items are included in the “requirements”. Someone needs to sort these out.
In closing, I would implore our politicians to address the financial condition of our town and make some hard decisions about the priorities for the limited money that we have. Borrowing money for a police “Taj Mahal” seems to be foolish when we can’t get the roads fixed or prevent basements from flooding.
Sunshine,
You are not completely correct. The Park District has some ability to issue bonds. They could extend up to around $7,000,000 on any project without going to referendum. I realize that is small in comparison to what the city can do without referndum, or D64 for that matter (do yourself a favor and see where they are relative to debt…it’s astounding, but the Park Board has chosen to go out to referendum on their projects. As has been discussed at Park Board meetings, even if the project came in at (or in the future comes in at) $6,000,000 they have stated the proper thing to do would be to go to referendum. I think that is worthy or praise.
The Park District is financially in the best position of any of our taxing bodies and does the best to live within their means.
The subsidizing of the Senior Center happens to be a topic where you and I agree, so the Park District has work to do as well, but I think lumping them in with D64 and the City is a bit unfair.
GreenDick,
Thank you. I am aware of the fact that the Park Board is limited by a dollar amount, unlike the City.
I cannot remember and perhaps you are aware of the referendum history, but has the Park District ever gone to referendum for an amount under the legally proscribed limit?
I’ve asked this before and I must ask it again.
While I’m not completly chalenging the fact something needs to be done with the police station why is it after 46 years and 505 BULTER PLACE why has this become an issue in recent years?
has it always been inadequate?
The park board funds many organizations, not just the senior center. The PRPD spends a reported $3,000,000 a year on overall park maintenance. I do not know what that breaks down to by football, soccer or baseball field but I am sure the $5 per kid per season that is paid by the separate organizations of baseball, soccer and football does not come close to recovering the cost of maintaining the fields. (Soccer has contributed in addition to the $5 per participant to maintaining the fields and paying for new lights-don’t know about bb or football). So if we can allocate PRPD money to these youth sports programs then why not to the senior center?
It will be interesting to see if the PRPD board will ask the voters again if we want a new pool at Oakton or an expensive indoor practice field for youth sports? The citizens have been asked 3 times if they want to spend millions for a new outdoor pool that would only be open 10 weeks out of the year and three times they have said no. Has the board given up on this issue or are they going to come back again? Each time they do this they spend taxpayer money to print brochures and market the pros of the bond referedum to the voters. This seems like a waste money when we are asked nearly the same question for a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time and so on.
And given the report of the ethical breach by the PRPD board president that was reported by the PRU crew-let’s hope the PRPD board spends some time developing a strong conflict of interest policy that bans a PRPD board member form using his or her position for personal gain or for the gain of a family member.
Sunshine,
To my knowledge the recent history regarding referendums for the Park District have been two binding—both above the legally allowed bonding limit, thus requiring a referndum to move forward with those respective projects, and one advisory.
Further back, I know there were some questions on the ballot years ago for Hinkley Pool, and the Edison Park Lutheran Home.
I think the “save hinkley” referendum was for less money than than what they had to legally go out for referendum.
I’m not 100% positive but I think it was for a dollar amount the District could have done without going to referendum.
I did try to look it up at http://www.voterinfonet.com to see if I could pull the question or dollar amount needed, but it didn’t go back far enough.
At the risk of further encouraging the “Park District” tangent to what is a Police Station posting, we offer the following points:
GreenDick 05.16.08 1:12 pm: It is our understanding that the dollar debt limit to which you refer is the Park District’s cumulative non-referendum debt limit, not the non-referendum limit on any one project (although, obviously, no one project can exceed that cumulative limit).
MIKETOUHY 05.16.08 4:52 pm: It is our understanding that both the population and the crime rate have been higher in decades past. It appears to us, therefore, that the “inadequacy” is more properly viewed as dissatisfaction.
Anonymous 05.16.08 6:19 pm: One difference between money for the Senior Center and money for fields is that the fields are used by exponentially more people – from children on up – than use the Senior Center: in fact, the Senior Center is used by only a small fraction of this community’s senior citizens. And when it comes to the Park District wasting money on brochures for various referenda, we believe that democracy – giving the voters chances to vote on different kinds of expensive projects requiring long-term debt – is a better use of relatively small amounts of our tax dollars than the $80,000 or so the Park District loses each year on Oakton Pool.
GreenDick 05.16.08 8:00 pm: We recall that the Save Hinkley Pool referendum was an advisory refendum for an amount that did not require a binding referendum. Edison Park Home, however, had to go to binding referendum because its cost exceeded the District’s available non-referendum debt – which had been almost exhausted a few years earlier when the District chose (foolishly, in our opinion) to build the Community Center without going to referendum.
Publicwatchdog- The figure you use for the loss on the pools may need to be adjusted for the revenue generated by the numerous summer camps that use the pools in the afternoon from 1-3 pm. Since a portion of the day is spent at the pool-2 hours out of a 6 hour camp-then 1/3 of the revenue from camps that use the pool should be added to the revenue stream from the pool if it is not already included and I have been told by someone familiar with it that the camp revenue is not included in the loss you keep quoting. This would reduce the net loss from the pools.
True the PRPD fields are available to all in PR, but for a significant part of the year and during usable daylight hours the fields are used by baseball and soccer and football. They are therefore unavailable to the rest of the population. In addition, not every kid in PR plays in one of the organized sports-is 2000 kids enough to give such a big subsidy to baseball? They should be funding more of the field maintenance than just $5 per child. They-baseball soccer and football-collect hundreds of thousands in participation fees and sponsorship revenue. They should be doing more to offset the PRPD’s cost of maintaing the fields they are the majority user of.
Anonymous 05.17.08 3:10 pm:
The figure we use is the figure the Park District uses, so if you have a problem with it you should take it up with the Park District. But camp revenue is camp revenue, not pool revenue – unless you want to re-invent cost accounting. The bottom line is that Oakton Pool is a black hole sucking up taxpayer dollars year after year while a gutless Park Board and Park District Staff can’t bring itself to close it.
As for the affiliates paying more toward field use and maintenance, we have no problem with that. Why don’t you raise that with the Park Board and District Staff?
Another question which I should of asked the first time is how has the PRPD allow Oakton Pool to fall apart?
I know the passing of time causes things to decay and need repair and maybe the Park Dist has been lacking in funds or something but at the same time I wonder if they’ve been neglectful as well?
Yes I’ve followed up on this ever since but still when you’ve been around as long as I have don’t recall such issue untill whenever they began to service you’ve just gotta wonder.
It is not reinventing cost accounting-if you have written a book on the matter or are a CPA then go ahead and comment. But all revenue associated with the pool should be considered before deciding to close a pool or build a new one.
Part of the reason kids go to camp is to use the pools. The total “guests” at the pools should include the campers and the revenue associated with their use of the pool. There are lots of participants in the camps. With Oakton closed, where will all these campers go from 1-3. If all the campers go to Centennial for swimming the pool will be unusable to the rest of us from 1-3 as it will be simply too crowded. Hinkley is too small to accomodate any overflow-it is already crowded on a nice summer day.
I don’t think the PRPD has planned for how to handle the camp situation if the pool closes. Perhaps they think one summer of a too crowded pool and we will all jump on board and vote for a multi million dollar outdoor aquatic and fun center that will still be only used 10 weeks out of the year.
Perhaps the PRPD board will comment on why the Oakton pool got into such disrepair in the first place. To force us to vote yes for a new pool?
About PRBS-the issue has been brought up to the PRPD board at the same time the issue of noncompliane with IRS filing rules and tax returns for public funded non-profit organizations. But PRBS seems to have some control over the PRPD as no changes have been made to the $5 fee in years. In 2007 when the PRPD board approved the creation of a reserve fund, the issue of affiliation fees to the PRPD was discussed. The board voted to keep it at $5 where it has been for years. As was stated earlier-some of the affiliates, including PRBS, collect hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and they should give more to the PRPD than the roughly $11,000 for the summer baseball season.
Anonymous 05.17.08 8:17 pm
We have consulted with a CPA who confirmed that, even in the arcane world of public fund accounting, because camp use of Oakton Pool is only a fraction of the “camp” program no more than that fraction of camp revenue can properly be attributed to the pool – which amount would also have to be offset by whatever revenues the pool would have earned from general users but didn’t because the campers were there.
And from our perspective, unless the camps provide $80,000 to Oakton – which we have seen no evidence that they do – then Oakton is still a big money loser that should have been closed a year or two ago as scheduled. But if you’ve got a complaint about how the Park District accounts for the campers, we suggest you take that up with the Park District.
As for why Oakton pool got into such disrepair in the first place, the most obvious answer is its age – which is why the Park District was told it could not simply repair the current problems. We consulted with one former and one current Park District Commissioner, both of whom confirmed that they were unaware of any time during the past decade when the Park Board refused, or demanded a reduction in, the recommendation of Park District Staff as to the amount budgeted for maintenance and repairs of Oakton, even during the year of the drought Summer when the diving well cratered.
Finally, as to the sports affiliates fees, we agree that they should pay their fair share of the costs of field maintenance, repair and/or replacement. And you may be right about some supernatural sway the affiliates have over the Park District. But you seem to be missing the accounting gene again when you suggest that some of the sports affiliates should pay more money for the fields merely because they “collect hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.” Basic accounting dictates that if they spend all of that money on legitimate expenses, there may not be any extra money (i.e., “profit”) to give the Park District.
But once again, that’s a topic that should be taken up with the Park Board.
And just so all of you who have, with your comments, effectively turned this Police Station posting into a Park District one, we will not publish any more of these Park District comments under this post. But tomorrow’s post will be about the Park District and will feature these issues – so keep your powder dry until then.
Comments about the Police Station, however, will be accepted and are encouraged.
Police station matter-wasn’t the old public works building suggested as a location for the police station? I believe the suggestion mentioned remodeling this location to serve as the new station rather than spending $30,000,000 on a brand new facility. Has this been eliminated as a possibility and if so why?
Thanks.
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