Our property taxes are soaring.  Mortgage defaults and foreclosures on Park Ridge homes are occurring in alarming numbers.

Meanwhile, our basements keep flooding, our streets and sidewalks need repairs, our electric power is dependably undependable, we’ve got a $1.7 million hole in last year’s budget and another similar budget hole is already expected for this year. 

And, oh yeah – the country’s in a recession that the “experts” are predicting will take years to climb out of.

So why in the world has the City Council’s Public Safety Committee placed a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) for a big new police station on the agenda [pdf] for tomorrow night’s meeting?

Ask the chairman, Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), or his fellow committee members, Ald. Jim Allegretti (4th Ward) and Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward).  After all, they’re already on record as supporting the construction of a big new police station, with Wsol displaying his brand of fiscal conservatism (?) – as reported at Page 4 of the Draft Minutes of the October 2, 2008, Committee Meeting [pdf] – by talking about limiting the cost of the project to no more than $16.5 million (if located on property currently owned by the City), along with additional interest (of $5-7 million?) over the roughly 20 year life of the bonds the City will issue to finance it.

The RFQ [pdf] is being designed for the 37,000 square foot building (v. the current 9,000 square foot facility) and 12,000 square feet of “secured or underground parking” that was recommended by those hired-gun consultants who have never seen a police station or other public building that couldn’t be bigger and more expensive.

Unfortunately, this is one of the back-door ways public officials try to give these kinds of projects traction – before the taxpayers start paying attention.  Is it sneaky?  Of course it is.  Is it a waste of time?  Of course it is, unless the City is actually going to go ahead with the project.  Is it intended to get big and expensive new cop shop built without consulting the taxpaying voters?  Absolutely!   

Wsol, Allegretti and Bach need to understand that fiscal responsibility is living within one’s means – or, more accurately, the means of their constituents who actually pay the bills for the “toys” these aldermen buy.  Maintain and repair needs to take precedence over expand and replace.

But since these three gentlemen don’t seem to understand that concept, the City Council should put the cop shop issue to advisory referendum in April to find out what the voters want before embarking on this sneaky and fiscally irresponsible frolic.