According to an article in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate(“Mayor: Prefers pursuing police station for Busse and Greenwood,” September 11) , Park Ridge Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark is once again trying to stick Park Ridge taxpayers with the former Napleton property on the southwest corner of Greenwood Avenue and Busse Highway now that his buddy Bill Napleton has no use for it.  And maybe paying a premium price for it to boot.

Frimark reportedly was “really encouraged” that the City’s Public Safety Committee – two/thirds of which is comprised of Frimark alderpuppets Don Bach (3rd Ward) and Jim Allegretti (4th Ward) – wants to move forward on a new police station.  The mayor claims to favor the Napleton site because it’s next door to the Public Works Service Center, which apparently wasn’t a factor when he wanted the City to buy the current School District 64 headquarters on Prospect, or the American Insurance building at 720 Garden, or the parking lots near the AT&T building.

But back then, Napleton wasn’t trying to dump his property.

At least Public Safety Committee chairman Frank Wsol (7th Ward) was outraged by Frimark’s attempt to put taxpayer dollars into Napleton’s pocket, even if he waited until Frimark left the meeting before expressing his displeasure.  Wsol rightly accused Frimark of “playing games” with yet another potential cop shop site.

Unfortunately, that’s the only kudo Wsol has earned on the new police station issue. 

Despite his slam on Frimark’s game-playing, Wsol – along with Allegretti – did a little game-playing of their own, refusing to disclose Napleton’s asking price for the property other than to call it “outrageous” and say that it was well above what Napleton had paid for it within the past year. Why the big secret, gentlemen? 

And new City Manager Jim Hock didn’t exactly cover himself with glory, either, revealing that the City had the Napleton property appraised but refusing to say what that appraised value was.  Welcome to membership in the Culture of Secrecy, Mr. Hock.   

But back to Wsol, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative who drank the Kool-Aid on a big new multi-million dollar police station two years ago when he was locked in what looked to be a tough re-election fight with Frimark tool (and former Park Ridge cop) Bob Kristie.  After supporting a new cop shop four times the size of the current one while battling Kristie, however, Wsol now wants the City to buy whatever it can get for a $16.5 million bond issue.

That $16.5 million “magic number” is just a calculation of what would make the annual debt service payment on a new cop shop about $1.4 million, slightly less than the $1.67 million annual payment the City has been making on the expiring 10-year bond issue used to build the Public Works building.  But because the new bond issue proposed by Wsol will extend over 22 years instead of just 10, the taxpayers will get hit with millions more dollars in interest payments over the bond’s lifetime.

Worse yet, Wsol came up with this plan without ever having asked, or having received an answer to, the most fundamental question about any new, bigger police station: How much safer and more secure will we be for each additional million dollars we spend on it?  Nobody in favor of a big new cop shop wants to even address that question.

So while more and more Park Ridge homes go into foreclosure and while the City keeps raising our taxes but still can’t pave our streets, fix our curbs, keep our homes from flooding and do the many other things that it should be doing, Wsol wants to lock us into a new 22-year, $16.5 million-plus bond issue for a new police station that may not make us any safer or more secure than the current one.

That’s not fiscally conservative, Ald. Wsol.  That’s fiscally irresponsible.