This Friday we hope to address an issue other than the PADS shelter, because we have this suspicion that Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark may be using it as a diversion while other important pieces of City business are being flown under the radar. 

But we must note the lead story on the front page of today’s Park Ridge Journal, which is titled “’Sickened’ By Attitudes,” and which purports to relate the opinions expressed in a letter to the Journal by one “James Olson.”  “Olson” claims to be a currently homeless Park Ridge resident and the same homeless man who spoke in favor of the PADS shelter at the City Council meeting on October 20.

As reported by the Journal’s Dwight Esau (Where is Journal reporter Craig Adams? Can we issue an “amber alert” so he can be found and returned to the Park Ridge beat?), “Olson” condemns the “hateful and vulgar” attitudes of Park Ridge residents directed toward him and his fellow homeless who are “not drug addicts, boozers, or convicts but…people who have fallen on hard times” – as distinguished from the “seven sexual predators” who “Olson” says are already living in Park Ridge.

Well, Mr. “Olson” – whoever you are – let’s get a few things straight.

First of all, PADS itself has admitted that many of its “clients” are drug addicts, boozers, or have mental health issues. If we truly have plenty of those kinds of people already living in Park Ridge (as the PRMA members and their white-shirted cheerleaders keep insisting), why would we want to bring in any more?

Second, the State of Illinois sex offender website reports a total of six sex offenders living in Park Ridge, two of whom are identified as “sexual predators” and all of whom are reported as currently being “Compliant” with the laws regulating sex offenders. And because those reports come with pictures, we have the ability to identify those individuals on sight.

The same can’t be said about all those PADS “clients” that the PRMA and Mayor Frimark want to import into our community from near and far. The PADS website doesn’t even list the names of those “clients,” so we’re left to guessing who they are and what criminal/legal issues they may have.

That also means we have to trust those hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-no-evil PADS functionaries to do all the security things they say they do.  As The Great Communicator once said: “Trust, but verify.” But how do we verify when we can’t even identify?

Mr. “Olson” also claims that there are only “three homeless people” living in Park Ridge, which is down from the six that we previously heard about. If that’s the full extent of our native homeless problem, however, we suggest that the PRMA-ers rent three apartments for them. 

We can then declare victory over homelessness in Park Ridge and send our local clergy back to their pulpits and away from the kinds of activities that prove the wisdom of the separation of church and state.

UPDATE 10/30/08
At last night’s (10/29/08) City Council meeting, Mayor Frimark announced that PADS Inc. is having second thoughts about opening one of its traveling road show homeless franchises in Park Ridge.  Whether and how that translates into a reality beyond Frimark’s notoriously unreliable words remains to be seen. 

If true, however, that would be a triumph of common sense and good judgment.  And better yet, it would also provide an opportunity for the PRMA – and Frimark, too – to come up with a truly meaningful way to help those Park Ridgians who are either homeless or on the brink.  
 
But the success of such an effort will require the PRMA and Frimark to have learned from their many mistakes with the PADS shelter.  Which means that, this time, they should enlist the input and support of their respective congregations and the community as a whole from the very beginning of the process, so as to avoid the divisiveness – as well as the tremendous waste of time and effort – that came to characterize their PADS initiative.