Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark wants a big new cop shop.  That’s one of the reasons why he’s spent much of the past year or so running around trying to get the City to buy land for that purpose – preferably from one of his buddies, like Bill Napleton. 

And because Frimark and his Alderpuppets are cowards, they don’t want to be held accountable to the taxpayers for spending a bundle of our tax dollars and digging us a 20-year, $20 million-plus debt hole for this kind of a boondoggle after the voters go on record (via indisputable referendum voting results) as opposing such an expenditure. 

So when 1st Ward Alderman (and mayoral candidate) Dave Schmidt, at the December 1 City Council meeting, proposed that the Council adopt a resolution putting an advisory referendum issue about a new cop shop on the April ballot, the Alderpuppets wouldn’t even give his motion a second. 

Outraged by that conduct, Park Ridge resident Joe Egan and a bunch of his fellow residents have taken up Schmidt’s referendum and begun a petition drive to do what the City Council wouldn’t.  Their question reads almost exactly like Schmidt’s:

“Shall the City of Park Ridge replace its current police facility with a new, larger structure at a cost of at least $16.5 million plus additional, but currently unknown, costs for the land on which it will be situated and bond interest?”

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Citizens Take On Police Station Referendum,“ Dec. 10), Frimark’s response to news of the petition drive was to attack the referendum issue: “The way Schmidt had it questioned, no one in their right mind would vote for that. It has to be a fair and honest question.”

In typical Frimark style, he didn’t give any specifics about what was unfair or dishonest about the referendum question posed by Schmidt, or the slight variation proposed in the citizens petition.  Nor did Frimark offer any suggestions for a new cop shop referendum question he could support.  So we have come up with a few alternatives to help kick-start the mayor’s thought processes:

*  “Do you want a new police station at whatever cost those City Council members you elected choose to spend?”

*  “The City paid experts a lot of money to tell us we need a big new cop shop, so do you think you know more than those experts?”

*  “Should we spend as much money as necessary to make sure Park Ridge doesn’t have a dinkier police station than our neighboring communities?”

Frimark and his Alderpuppets, like the Park Ridge Library Board and Staff back in 2002, consider any referendum issue that discloses the cost of a project as being inherently unfair.  We here at Watchdog, on the other hand, think that a referendum issue that doesn’t include the cost is unfair – and supremely dishonest.   

But we have to agree with one thing the mayor said: “No one in their right mind” would vote for a new police station that will cost at least $16.5 million plus the cost of land and bond interest. 

That’s why Frimark and the Alderpuppets want to keep that vote for themselves.