All you St. Mary’s Episcopal neighbors: Nice try.  Same for you Concerned St. Paul Parents.  You took your shot at grass-roots democracy, and you even had your occasional moments – and for that you should be commended. 

But if Monday night’s Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole meeting revealed anything about the PADS shelter issue, it’s that a majority of Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark’s Alderpuppets on the Park Ridge City Council will vote as early as October 20th to amend the City’s zoning ordinance to give those folks at PADS and their allies in the Park Ridge Ministerial Association (“PRMA”) pretty much whatever they want, and definitely all that they need.

Want proof? 

Let’s start with Alderpuppet Jim “Chicken Little” Allegretti (4th Ward), an attorney who seems more concerned about being sued than Richard Grieco in “A Night At The Roxbury.”  Allegretti’s website states that his firm concentrates on “Divorce; Family Law; Personal Injury; Workers Compensation; Drivers License Reinstatement; DUI; [and] Criminal Law.”  When it comes to a PADS shelter, however, Allegretti is also a Constitutional scholar, proclaiming that the restrictions contained in the zoning amendment recommended by the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission “are going to run afoul of the law and we know it.”

Another Constitutional scholar is Allegretti’s puppetmaster, Mayor Frimark, who said that the City is “constitutionally on thin ground” in regard to fingerprinting of PADS guests and wants to “move forward” – his signature line whenever he can’t think of anything more meaningful to say about something he wants. 

Neither Allegretti nor Frimark could quite get an “Amen, brother!” from City attorney “Buzz” Hill on those points, nor have they been able to cajole or browbeat Hill into giving his written legal opinion that a 500-foot restriction on putting homeless shelters in or near nursery or elementary schools would be unconstitutional.  Yet.

But with Frimark Alderpuppets Bach and Ryan having jumped aboard the PADS/PRMA train early on, all Frimark/PADS/PRMA need is a “yes” vote from Alderpuppets Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) or Tom Carey (6th Ward), or from an aching-to-compromise-so-as-not-to-tick-off-the-clergy Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward).  Of those three, only Carey showed any signs of seeing the whole picture – and the value of an advisory referendum – with his comments Monday night.

And then we have Acting Police Chief Tom Swoboda, who claims he has no concerns about sheltering 20 or 30 itinerant homeless from a “law enforcement” perspective even while acknowledging that PADS shelters in other communities do account for some increase in both police calls and actual crime.  We guess that Swoboda is just chalking those increases up to acceptable collateral damage, given all the benefits our community will derive from putting a PADS shelter here.

But what are all those community-wide “benefits” exactly?  Only Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) asked that question Monday night, even though it is the central element of three of the nine considerations required under our zoning ordinance for the approval of a text amendment.  No real answers were forthcoming from either Frimark or the rest of the Council, which suggests that they will continue to ignore those considerations when they vote to pass a PADS-approved revision to the P&Z’s draft text amendment. 

But the most telling signal that this matter is a done deal came from none other than City Clerk Betty “The Hen” Henneman, whose contributions to City Council meetings are usually limited to calling the roll, conducting roll call votes, and announcing the totals. 

The Hen insisted that she was not as much concerned about health and safety issues as she was about how embarrassing the press coverage of this issue has been and what image it projects to other towns.  There’s that acceptable collateral damage angle again, except that for The Hen the relevant decision isn’t about the burden on law enforcement but about choosing public relations over child health and safety.

The Hen’s most offensive statement from our perspective, however, was her claim that: “We already know that a great majority of the people really want this to happen.”  Hey Betty!  How many of the 37,000-plus residents of Park Ridge have you canvassed to come up with that whopper – or are you just taking the PRMA’s word for it on the assumption that it’s some sort of Divine Revelation?  Or do you just count the White Shirts?

Those are just rhetorical questions, folks, because Betty the Hen – like Mayor Frimark – prefers to avoid answering unpleasant questions.  Expect that both of them, along with the PRMA and the pro-PADS crowd, will keep telling that same Big Lie in the hope that the public is either gullible enough to buy it or not interested enough to care.  And by telling it long enough and loudly enough, there will be no advisory referendum in April to measure public opinion on this issue in an honest and accurate way.

So the bottom line is that, barring some new development more troubling to the PRMA and pro-PADS crowd than a drunken PADS to Hope “client” (whose residence – 1140 E. Northwest Hwy., Palatine – is the principal place of business of PADS to Hope, Inc.) beating another man to death, dailyherald.com/story, the Fat Lady is warming up in the hallway of 505 Butler Place and will sing the PADS Aria at the City Council meeting on October 20th.