There’s an old joke about how differently a chicken and a pig view the traditional ham & egg breakfast: The chicken may be interested, but the pig is committed.  

That’s how we here at PublicWatchdog view the ongoing debate between those who want a PADS homeless shelter in Park Ridge, on one hand, and many of the parents of St. Paul of the Cross school children, in whose gym the homeless will be housed on Sunday nights.  The PADS supporters are interested in helping the homeless, but the parents are really committed to the health and safety of their children.  

The parents see the shelter as one night a week of comfort for 20 transient homeless versus the health and safety of 700+ school children from our community.  Cast that way, it’s hard to justify putting the shelter at St. Paul or any other school, especially knowing that there are other available sites in town for homeless shelters even if not all of them satisfy the PADS “model.”

But we’re not just dealing with the health and safety of 700+ St. Paul school children.  Because a PADS shelter will attract homeless from outside Park Ridge who might otherwise have stayed away, this is a civic issue that impacts the whole community.  And that’s why the whole community should get the chance to vote on the issue via referendum this coming April.

Not surprisingly, that’s not what the Park Ridge Ministerial Association (“PRMA”) and the pro-PADS crowd wants.  They’d prefer not to hear what the voters think and, instead, have Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his Alderpuppets hurry up and adopt the zoning ordinance text amendment recommended by the Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) that permits homeless shelters as “special uses,” but only after they eliminate the recommended restriction on any homeless shelter locating within 500 feet of a nursery or elementary school.

But to make that happen, the Council will pretty much have to ignore a number of provisions of the zoning ordinance. 

For example, the purpose of the zoning ordinance [pdf] is to address 19 separate criteria, none of which at first reading appear homeless shelter-friendly.  Item “O” identifies one of those purposes as being to “[p]rohibit uses, buildings or structures incompatible with the character of the districts in which they are located.”  We see nothing about St. Paul of the Cross’s zoning district that reveals a “character” compatible with temporary transient sleeping accommodations in an elementary school gymnasium.  

Similarly, the purpose of a zoning amendment [pdf], such as the one P&Z recommended to the City Council, is “to permit modifications in response to changed conditions or changes in City policy.”  It should be noted, however, that amendments “are not intended to relieve particular hardships or confer special privileges or rights upon any person or party.” [Emphasis added.]  Such language would appear to disfavor a homeless shelter as one of those “special privileges” for both the transient homeless and the PADS supporters.

And because we are dealing here with a text amendment that will permit homeless shelters as a “special use” [pdf] that is not currently provided for in any of the classifications for existing zoning districts, it requires “consideration, in each case, of the impact of those uses upon neighboring land and of the public need for the particular use at the particular location.” [Emphasis added.]  

An April advisory referendum may not be the absolute best way to discern the “public need” for a shelter at St. Paul, but we can’t think of a better way.  And it’s far more meaningful and objective than counting the number of white shirts at City Council meetings, or counting the names on competing petitions.

It should also be pointed out that even a quick reading of Section 4.8.D-4.8.E [pdf] and “Table 1: Standards for Zoning Amendments” [pdf] makes it pretty clear that a text amendment like what is being proposed for the PADS shelter cannot be adopted by the City Council without consideration of nine separate public policy criteria, three of which (Table 1, at Nos. 1, 2 and 6) stress the general welfare of the City as a whole over “just [the welfare of] the applicant, property owner(s), neighbors of any property under consideration, or other special interest group.” (Table 1, at No. 6.) 

We’re still waiting for the PRMA, the pro-PADS crowd, or Mayor Frimark to make a plausible argument about what benefits a PADS shelter brings to the whole city, and how it promotes the general welfare of our entire community.

In fact, a homeless shelter may not satisfy any of the other six “text amendment” criteria, either, unless something in the City’s “Comprehensive Plan” (which we could not find on the City’s website) encourages zoning amendments that facilitate the establishment and operation of temporary homeless shelters in Park Ridge. Frankly, we doubt that’s the case.

But this isn’t really a zoning matter.  It’s a political matter that’s being driven by Mayor Frimark’s rumored assurances to the increasingly politicized PRMA and its supporters that he could get them a PADS shelter using a City Council packed with a majority of his Alderpuppets and a P&Z Commission whose compliance was expected because every member of it was either appointed or re-appointed by Frimark. 

But, remarkably, seven members of the nine-member P&Z actually stood up for school children and the community as a whole (over Frimark and the PRMA) when they voted last month to recommend the text amendment that contained the 500-foot restriction.  And the two who voted “no” did so not because they wanted a more liberal amendment but because the proposed text amendment was not restrictive enough.

So with P&Z’s refusal to rubber-stamp Frimark’s decision, the mayor is reportedly scrambling to come up with some kind of “compromise” that might keep the 500-foot restriction but limit it only to times when children are in school.  Maybe we’ll hear about that at tonight’s (October 6) continued City Council Committee of the Whole meeting, currently set to begin at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall.  The White Shirt brigade, fresh from yesterday’s pro-PADS rally at St. Paul, is expected to show up in force.  Will they bring their bagpipes?

After having created this divisive issue with its secretive and heavy-handed conduct, the PRMA has now turned to staging political rallies and flexing its political muscle to get its way – without any accountability to the majority of our residents who will be impacted by this special-interest project.  Apparently “playing politics” is also a kind of “ministry,” at least when the PRMA does it. 

But if the PRMA wants to “play politics,” it should do so the most honest and fairest way – by taking its chances at the ballot box with an April advisory referendum instead of by cutting deals for the benefit of one special interest while ignoring the rest of our community.