NIMBYs Prove People Can Make A Difference.  PublicWatchdog wants to give a big bark-out to those St. Mary’s Episcopal neighbors who showed us that NIMBYs can make a positive difference when they organize and actually fight for their neighborhood. 

Led by Phil Donohue, Dan Knight and Gary Beckner, among others, those St. Mary’s NIMBYs defeated the Park Ridge Ministerial Association’s semi-secret, heavy-handed attempt to jam a PADS homeless shelter down the neighbors’ throats and into St. Mary’s basement.  We score it: NIMBYs – 1, Shameless PRMA – 0.

But the PRMA didn’t miss a beat, bringing in prominent local attorney (and big-time Frimark friend and contributor) Jack “Mr. Insider” Owens from the bullpen as its “closer” and announcing that it’s moving the PADS shelter to St. Paul of the Cross.  And because PRMA’s members seem to believe they’re acting by Divine Right, they continue to insist that our zoning laws are only for the suckers who actually pay taxes – a position the City is inexplicably encouraging by sending City Atty. Buzz Hill, hat in hand and head bowed, to beg PRMA to follow the City’s zoning laws.

Looks like yet another example of the spineless rolling over for the shameless…and selling out their constituents in the process.  Score this one: Shameless PRMA – 1, Spineless City – 0.

The Puppetry Of Ald. Wsol.  This past Monday night’s City Council meeting featured the familiar sight of our City Council retreating into closed session to discuss the purchase of yet another possible site for the big new cop shop Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his Alderpuppets seem hell-bent on building.  Which means we also got to see and hear the equally familiar protests of Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward), the only City official who’s not a card-carrying member of the Culture of Secrecy.

As usual, Schmidt was right on target with his objections that unless and until the Council makes some concrete decisions on whether to build a new cop shop, how big it should be, where is the best place to put it, and how we’re going to pay for it, buying land for it – any land, not just what’s owned by a Frimark buddy like Bill Napleton – is an exercise in stupidity.  And if you don’t believe him, look no further than the City’s purchase of 229 S. Courtland in 2006 for approximately $660,000. 

But it was more than a little disappointing to see 7th Ward Ald. Frank Wsol, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, act like an alderpuppet in full by leading the charge to closed session while claiming (with a straight face!) that those secret discussions could end up saving the taxpayers money.  Yeah, right. 

Somebody needs to remind Wsol that the City can exercise its eminent domain power to buy virtually any piece of property it needs by condemning it and paying its fair market value, so there’s no need for secrecy.  Unless, of course, Mayor Frimark insists on paying more – like he wanted to do a few months ago with 720 Garden, another one of his many cop shop sites.  

More, Bigger Condos On The Way? The City Council’s Procedures and Regulations Committee took another big step toward adding more taller buildings – and greater population density – to an increasingly crowded Uptown when it voted 2-1 to recommend a larger R-5 zoning district last Tuesday (June 3) night.

Committee chair and Mayor Frimark Alderpuppet Jim Allegretti, along with fellow Alderpuppet Tom Carey (6th Ward), thwarted attempts by Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) to send the matter back to the Planning & Zoning Commission to study Schmidt’s plan to limit the R-5 status only to what is now the Uptown B-4 district rather than letting it expand by approximately 75% beyond that area, primarily on the west end of Uptown where (it is rumored) some “lucky” investors are waiting for their ships to come in.

We hear that Allegretti provided some perversely humorous moments with his seeming lack of knowledge about both the zoning code and how R-5 districts operate, which led to him and Acting Director of Community Development Carrie Davis doing their own version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine – at least when Davis wasn’t bemoaning all the work that supposedly would be needed to accommodate Schmidt’s proposal.

So unless citizens show up and speak up for retaining the current character and feel of the physical “heart” of Park Ridge, it looks like the developers and “lucky” land owners will be stacking more condos and townhouses in and around Uptown.

We have to confess that anytime we hear a bureaucrat or elected official talk about parking in or around Uptown, our ears perk up – because that can mean a land deal is in the works. 

So we paid attention when Park Ridge’s Economic Development Director Kim Uhlig said that she wants to make sure Park Ridge has enough parking spaces for all those visitors who regularly clog the streets and sidewalks of Uptown.  Or maybe she means all those visitors that Uhlig hopes will be clogging the streets and sidewalks once she starts marketing Uptown to the traveler-filled hotels in the communities surrounding O’Hare. 

In any event, the City has embarked on an Uptown “parking inventory” designed to identify all of the available parking spaces in Uptown.  Uhlig wants City staff to have its recommendations ready by September 1, even though the effects of the Target Area II redevelopment – with its underground and surface parking – will not be known by then, which would seem to make any “recommendations” now about available Uptown parking premature at best.

So what’s the real point of this exercise?  We’re not sure, but it’s beginning to smell a lot like the first step in a process of justifying the City’s buying up of more private land from one or more “lucky” – a/k/a “well-connected” (a/k/a Friends of Frimark?) – owners, based on some cooked up projections of our future parking needs. 

And not just buying up more private land but also leasing more private land, also from “lucky” owners like SCH Real Estate, LLC [pdf], with whom the City Council voted (at its May 19th meeting [pdf]) to renew a lease for 50 parking spaces in the South Fairview “permit” lot for another year at $500 a space, or $25,000 a year.  Interestingly enough, the City rents 32 spaces from the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists for a mere $4,500, or a shade over $140 per space. 

Why the big difference? We don’t know for sure, but we have to wonder if the fact that one of SCH’s two owners is Bill Scharringhausen [pdf], reportedly an old friend of Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, has anything to do with it?  Or that SCH’s registered agent is attorney Patrick D. Owens, a member of the prominent Park Ridge law firm of Owens, Owens & Rinn headed by Jack Owens, the go-to guy for local zoning and land deals?  That firm and its partners contributed at least $1,750 to Frimark’s mayoral campaign fund, so one can imagine that their phone calls to 505 Butler Place get returned. Promptly.  

Never mind that, as can be seen from the figures in a May 8, 2008, memo [pdf] from City Finance Director Diane Lambesis to the City Council’s Finance & Budget Committee, the City may actually be losing money on the new SCH lease deal because it is projecting $1,000 less in revenue than it will be paying in rent.  And that’s before the cost of the liability insurance the City, in the lease [pdf], committed to maintain on the property that also covers SCH, as well as the cost of City staff actually doing the work of operating the parking lot, is figured in.  But what the hey, its only the taxpayers’ money!

We understand that the City has been leasing these parking spaces from the Scharringhausens for quite awhile now, although this appears to be the first year that the lessor is SCH instead of some other Scharringhausen-related entity.  So it looks like the taxpayers have been helping carry this appreciating asset on the Scharringhausen books for some time – and will likely continue to do so until Uptown Redevelopment south of the tracks goes forward and a willing developer comes up with the right price for them to cash out big-time. 

Or maybe Frimark will offer them the “right price” if he can’t lock up his favorite location du jour for the proposed big new cop shop: the freshly-defunct Napleton auto dealership property.  After all, with the other tax dollar giveaway ol’ “Let’s Make A Deal” negotiated (for Napleton’s original Cadillac dealership at Northwest Hwy and Meacham) having cratered, don’t Park Ridge taxpayers deserve yet another opportunity to bail out Frimark’s buddy and benefactor, Bill Napleton?   

Any way you cut it, it sure sounds like a mighty sweet deal for the Scharringhausens.  But when you’re “lucky” enough to be a friend of Frimark, sweet deals just seem to come your way.

In our May 21st edition we described how the City Council meeting minutes were regularly “sanitized” by City Clerk Betty Henneman’s office to make our officials “look their best.”  Well, this week we are getting “sanitized” agendas – not only of tonight’s City Council meeting but also of tonight’s Finance & Budget Committee meeting that precedes it by one-half hour.

What the City apparently doesn’t want you to know about in advance of these meetings are the details of a new termination payment to former Police Chief Jeff Caudill.  As you may recall, in order to push Caudill out the door quickly and quietly, the City offered him a sweetheart deal that included a bump in his pension.  But the City’s pension board balked at how that was done, so now the City has to come up with something else to keep Caudill gone and Acting Chief Tom Swoboda warming the big chair until he, too, can retire and Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark can fill it with “his” guy…or gal.

So the details of the new Caudill deal are not to be found on the City’s website.  If you go to the Finance & Budget Committee agenda [pdf], you will find only: “Authorize Payment to Former Police Chief Caudill.”  That’s it, that’s all.  And if you go to the City Council agenda [pdf], you find the equally enlightening: “Approve payment to former Police Chief Caudill.”

Why the secrecy, F&B Chairman Rich DiPietro?  Are you afraid that providing the details of the deal in advance of the meeting might remind us of how Caudill is reaping a mini-windfall at our expense because, depending on what rumor is true, either Mayor Frimark wanted him gone but had no grounds for terminating him, or Caudill wanted out ahead of the Police Department audit because he no longer had former City Mgr. Tim Schuenke to cover his back?  

No matter what the reason, this is just another example of the Culture of Secrecy that permeates local government, especially at 505 Butler Place.  And that kind of secrecy always means bad government.

But we would be remiss if we failed to note that the City Council agenda has one other “secret” item on the first page of tonight’s agenda, under “City Manager”: A closed session “to discuss the acquisition of property for a Police Facility.”  Yes, folks, they’re starting to rev up the temporarily stalled big new $10-20-30(?) Million cop shop project even though they have yet to decide exactly how big a facility they need and can afford, or how they are going to pay for: bury us in a lot more debt, or raise our taxes even higher while they are already having trouble providing the basics like filling its potholes and paving its streets.

We’re guessing the “lucky” (a/k/a “connected”) property owner who will be the topic of conversation tonight is Frimark’s old friend and campaign contributor, Bill Napleton.  That’s because Napleton “needs” another City bailout now that his original sweetheart deal that he negotiated with Frimark – for as much as $2.4 Million, with a tidy $400,000 up front – fell through when his dealerships closed down. 

But then again, that’s just our guess.  There are many friends of Frimark who paid good money to make him the mayor, at least a few of whom own or control property in Park Ridge that they’d be happy to sell to the City at the right price. 

And when you’re a friend of good ol’ “Let’s Make A Deal” Howard, the price is always right.