We’re taking a break from the PADS/zoning code text amendment controversy today because something even more troubling hit our radar yesterday – courtesy of the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“City manager warns: Expenses outpacing revenues,” October 2). 

According to that article, former city manager Tim Schuenke put together some revenue projections “that never materialized in actual dollars,” so the City is now looking at a year-end 2007-08 (last year’s) budget deficit of $1.7 million.  And it looks like this year’s budget is heading down that same track.  That’s got new City Manager Jim Hock warning that the City will need some “dramatic cost cutting measures” to make ends meet.

Revenues related to housing – building permit fees and transfer taxes – account for the lion’s share of the revenue shortfall: $1.2 million, with sales tax and water revenues making up most of the balance.  And the Uptown TIF fund was $531,466 in the red last year, which means that it continues to borrow money from the City’s general fund to pay for Uptown improvements being done.  The TIF isn’t expected to start breaking even on its annual revenues versus expenses until 2009-2010, although it will likely be in an overall debt position for years to come. 

This does not bode well for the infrastructure maintenance, repairs and improvements that haven’t been getting done, much less any hope for a plan to increase the number of storm/relief sewers or take other measures to reduce the flooding that continues to plague our community.

What sounds just plain wacky, however, is how the City Council came up with a balanced budget for this current year, according to the Herald-Advocate: “Earlier this year, the City Council balanced the 2008-09 budget in large part by approving increases in projected revenues recommended by Schuenke.”  That sounds a lot like the fun-with-numbers Congress has been playing for the past several years, which has caused the national debt to increase by almost $4 trillion?

Of course, now that Schuenke’s gone (and we say “good riddance”), Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his Alderpuppets can lay most of the blame for this mess on him.  But it was the folks still sitting around the big table at City Hall who bought into Schuenke’s charade and accepted the made-up numbers, so it’s time for them to step up to the plate and be accountable to the taxpayers for the problem we’re now facing. 

But the real test of City leadership – or lack of it – will be how it reacts to this bad economic news and the prospect that the national and world economies will not be recovering anytime soon. 

So far, Frimark is still trying to get the taxpayers to bail out his buddy and campaign contributor, Bill Napleton, by spending $2-3 million on Napleton’s empty car lot at Greenwood and Busse so that the City can spend upwards of $20 million (in bond principal and interest) on a big new police station.  

With that kind of thinking, and with the pinch many of us are feeling from the heftier property tax bills starting to show up in our mailboxes, maybe a homeless shelter – but for real Park Ridge residents, not those homeless imports from neighboring communities who are part of the PADS traveling road show – isn’t a bad idea after all.