If you were in the City Council chambers this past Monday you witnessed a textbook case of bad government when Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark gave local attorney and Frimark campaign contributor, Jack Owens, a liberal opportunity to mesmerize the Council into recommending – without an actual Council vote – that City staff should look the other way to help Owens’ clients open orthopedic and physical therapy offices in an area not currently zoned for them.

Even more amazingly, Frimark and Owens were able to do this on a matter that wasn’t even on the Council’s agenda!

This all started when Chipman Adams Ltd., the architects for Owens’ clients, were advised by City staff that their plans for the Renaissance Office Plaza could not be approved because that area was not zoned for medical offices.  As explained by Acting Community Preservation and Development Director Carrie Davis, a text amendment to the zoning code is needed to change the zoning to permit medical offices there.

The normal text amendment process can take several months to get approval from both the Planning & Zoning Commission and the City Council, which would not accommodate Owens’ clients’ plans for a September 1 occupancy date.  As a result, it was suggested that while the text amendment process is pursued the building owners could submit plans showing only generic – rather than medical – offices and thereby get the City approval necessary to move forward. 

That suggestion was accepted by consensus of the City Council. So if that plan is followed, Owens’ clients will be submitting false plans which the City will approve knowing them to be false…presumably with the appropriate Chicago-style wink and nod.

Is that any way to run City government? 

But this isn’t only about public officials behaving badly.  This is also about what looks like incompetence by one of the City’s outside consultants – in this case, Camiros, Ltd., a zoning rewrite consultant that was paid good money to guide the City’s Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Committee through the year-long task of revising our zoning code. 

Davis claims that she spoke with Camiros about this matter, but the only explanation she could come up with is that this “medical office” anomaly may have simply been overlooked during the year-long rewrite process.  Maybe she just doesn’t want to say anything to offend Camiros – after all, the City recently hired them for around $50,000 to consult on the proposed Higgins Road Corridor.

Within months of the Council adopting the Camiros-approved, Committee-recommended zoning ordinance rewrite, however, Frimark and his Alderpuppets were approving an 8-unit variance for the Executive Office Plaza (“EOP”) development of Frimark campaign contributors Norwood Builders and Norwood’s Bruce Adreani.  Jack Owens also reportedly represented the EOP developers early on, and former 4th Ward alderman and principal of Chipman Adams, John Chipman, is an EOP investor.

Frankly, we’d expect that a local architect and former alderman like Chipman would understand our zoning code well enough that he wouldn’t put himself and his clients in need of favored treatment to keep a project on schedule.  But apparently getting favored treatment is becoming standard operating procedure in Park Ridge, along with cozying up to public officials.  Call it  “The Chicago Way Comes To Park Ridge.”

Let’s see if we’ve got this straight: A prominent local architect’s ignorance of our zoning code reveals mistakes in that code’s rewrite by a favored consultant for the City which, in turn, causes a prominent local attorney and mayoral campaign contributor to ask for, and get, special treatment from the City Council that involves letting City staff process falsified construction plans.  That may not be the “perfect storm” of bad government, but it’s got to be close. 

At least one alderman voiced reservations about the Council’s conduct Monday night, even though he now admits that he didn’t do enough to stop it while it was going on.  Consequently, Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward), in a Wednesday morning memo to Frimark, the other aldermen, and Acting City Manager Julianna Maller, asked for a “special meeting” to actually vote on whether to formally direct Carrie Davis and her staff to treat as legitimate any falsified plans that Owens’ clients might submit.  Schmidt noted that, Monday night, he and his fellow Council members had “lied to ourselves and our constituents, and we have told staff it is all right to lie to us and to the people.”

But at least one of Schmidt’s colleagues seemed to have no problem with that kind of chicanery.  Alderpuppet Jim Allegretti (4th Ward), an attorney no less, called for “common sense” and argued against strict enforcement of the current zoning and text amendment procedures: “We shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand and say procedure, procedure, procedure.”

From comments like that and from what we’ve seen of Allegretti’s performance on the Council so far, perhaps buried in sand would be an improvement over where his head seems to be.