When, early into Monday night’s (Dec. 1) City Council meeting, 1st Ward Ald. (and mayoral candidate) Dave Schmidt made his motion to seek the voters’ advice on whether the City should spend in excess of $16 million (not including land acquisition and bond interest) on a big new police station, the silence from his fellow aldermen was deafening.

Some stared down at their desks while others looked blankly into space, as if trying to avoid eye contact with Schmidt or the citizens in the audience whom they claim to represent.  Only their shameless leader, Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, spoke…and that was only to ask the question to which he already knew the answer: “Is there a second?”

There wasn’t, and the motion died.  And with it died the Park Ridge voters’ best hope for getting an honest chance to tell City government whether or not they want their money spent on an expensive new cop shop that – under the most recent plan expressed by 7th Ward Ald. (and aspiring Frimark Alderpuppet) Frank Wsol – will likely cost the taxpayers over $1 million a year for 20+ years in debt service payments, of which approximately $200,000 a year would be just the interest on the bonds.

By our unscientific calculations, those annual interest charges alone could pay for two police officers, three-four blocks of new relief sewers, or our current city manager.  Any of those three options seems like the better deal for Park Ridge taxpayers, especially since Frimark and the current Council members have shown the inability to manage city finances – as evidenced by the $1.7 million deficit City Mgr. Jim Hock reported for last year, and an even bigger deficit being projected for this year.

But those kinds of calculations and budget deficits don’t seem to matter to our current City officials when the alternative is building a big new monument to themselves – and which also enables them to dish up a lot of sweet contracts to consultants, architects, engineers and contractors.

But with Schmidt’s motion having died without a second, the voters are unlikely to get a chance to express their opinions on the big new and expensive cop shop in the way it can best (and most honestly) be measured: at the polls on Tuesday, April 7.  That’s because the only vehicle for putting an advisory question on the ballot, other than by Council resolution, is by a citizen petition, which would have to be filed no later than January 20, 2009, and which we understand would require something in the neighborhood of 3,000 signatures (although the exact amount is a question for an election law attorney and/or City Clerk Betty Henneman).

Why would Frimark and the Alderpuppets want to put our voters to the onerous task of collecting all those signatures in the dead of winter to get such an important public policy issue on the April ballot when the Council, from the comfort of its warm and cozy chambers, could make that happen in minutes? 

Because if the referendum doesn’t go their way (which is what we believe would be the case), they would have to disregard the manifest will of the people if they still wanted to build their “Taj Mahal” cop shop.  Without a referendum, however, they can continue to talk about the “need” for such a structure and claim – without any way of being proved wrong – that the residents they’ve heard from really want another expensive pile of brick and mortar.  

Frimark and the Alderpuppets think that makes them “leaders.”  What it really does is expose them as cowards.

UPDATE 12/03/08 @ 4:20 p.m.

Today’s Park Ridge Journal contains an article (“At This Point, Can City Even Afford New Police Station”) about the new cop shop debate that should be a “must read” for anybody interested in this issue and the current City administration’s fiscal management, if only for the quotes from 3rd Ward Alderpuppet Don Bach in which he blames the current police station for everything but the heartbreak of psoriasis.

Bach, channeling fellow Alderpuppet Jim “Chicken Little” Allegretti, calls the current cop shop “a lawsuit waiting to happen” with “unsafe and dangerous prisoner facilities” that is such “a disgrace, a joke” that it is creating a “morale problem with our police officials.”  Big talk, Mr. Bach, but where are your facts – not opinions, but hard evidence – that any of your spiel is true, and that the City has suffered any adverse financial effects because of it?  And isn’t it true that any time a new officer vacancy opens up, the P.D. is flooded with applications?

Despite the current recession, hundreds of homes sitting stagnantly for sale (many of which are in foreclosure), and the City budget awash in red ink, Bach – the same Alderpuppet who earlier this year voted to give Mayor Frimark crony Bill Napleton as much as $2.4 million of our tax dollars because (Bach claimed) a whopping 30 of his constituents said it was okay – insists that the new cop shop presents no financial issue.  Watchdog to Bach: “It’s the economy, stupid!”

But, for us, the defining quote from Bach is his claim that: “The overwhelming majority of residents I talk to in my ward on a weekly basis tell me they favor building a new facility.” 

If you’re not smoking the funny stuff or outright lying through your teeth, sir, you’ve just given away your only excuse (lame as it is) for not having a referendum: That you’re afraid of an overwhelming “No” vote.  Otherwise, you’d be eager to be proved correct by the voters.

So either publicly recant your opposition to Schmidt’s cop shop referendum, or tell us where you get your Maui Wowie.  Or should we just check to see how much your nose has grown?

According to Jim “Chicken Little” Allegretti, Fourth Ward Alderpuppet of Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark: “I don’t know how we can be any more open” with City government. 

Allegretti was speaking at the “strategic planning” session a couple of weekends ago, and he was referring to the perception expressed by a number of Park Ridge residents who responded to The National Citizen Survey of 566 Park Ridge residents conducted this past spring.  And as reported in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Survey says residents don’t think government is open enough,” Nov. 27), Allegretti was joined in his disbelief by fellow Alderpuppets Tom Carey (6th Ward) and Don Bach (3rd Ward), the latter of whom thinks this perception of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing can be cured with some good old positive public relations.

But 1st Ward Ald. (and newly-announced mayoral candidate) Dave Schmidt thinks that the perception is justified.  Schmidt correctly noted that the City Council goes into closed session far more frequently than it needs to, and he has been a vocal critic of the Council exceeding the bounds of the closed session exemptions to the open meeting requirement of the Illinois Open Meetings Act when it does go into closed session.

Not surprisingly, perhaps the biggest proponent of closed Council meetings and private deal-making is Mayor Frimark himself, who has seemingly spent the better part of his current term of office meeting privately with land owners like Frimark campaign contributor Bill Napleton, real estate brokers like Frimark campaign contributor Owen Hayes, and real estate attorneys like Frimark campaign contributor Jack “Mr. Insider” Owens, in his quest to find a site for a big new Park Ridge police station at which he can throw our tax dollars. 

Frimark has also met privately with interested parties behind the scenes of other attempted or completed deals, such as the developers (and Frimark campaign contributors) of the Executive Office Plaza project when they were seeking City approval of an 8-unit zoning variance; the developer of the “Heinz” project who also sought height and density zoning variances; and representatives from the Park Ridge Ministerial Association and PADS, in connection with the one-night-per-week homeless shelter that PADS ultimately walked away from rather than accept the lawful special use zoning amendment recommended by the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission and approved by the City Council with slight modifications.

Which is why Frimark and his Alderpuppets apparently have embarked on a campaign of denial, misdirection and sniffling dismissal of the notion that there is significant public distrust of City government and that residents believe they aren’t being listened to by the City.  Part of that campaign should be on display at tonight’s City Council meeting, the agenda [pdf] for which includes Ald. Schmidt’s proposal [pdf] for the City Council to put an advisory referendum issue about a new police station on the April ballot.

The last thing Frimark and his Alderpuppets want is a public vote – even an advisory one – that might undermine their contention that we need a big new cop shop and that the taxpayers are in favor of it. 

But while it’s hard enough for those guys to deny the City’s own survey results that reveal serious resident misgivings about the openness of City government, it may be even harder for them to dismiss the award recently won by the Frimark Administration: a “Worsty,” presented on October 9th in Springfield by the Illinois Press Association (the “IPA”). 

The Worsty Awards are given to governmental bodies or public officials who ignore requirements of the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) or the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.  Park Ridge won the third-place Worsty – the “bronze,” if you will – in the IOMA category for scheduling a “by invitation only” City Council meeting at the Park Ridge Country Club (where Frimark is a member) for the purpose of interviewing the City Manager finalists.  Once the local press got hold of that information and questioned the City about it, however, the meeting was quickly rescheduled for City Hall.

Not surprisingly with a mayor and a majority of the City Council who like secrecy as much as the current ones do, we can’t seem to find any mention of this Worsty on the City’s website, nor have we heard Frimark crowing about it in his usual self-promotional way.  Heck, we don’t even know if somebody from the City showed up in Springfield to accept it. 

But knowing ol’ “Let’s Make A Deal” the way we do, secrecy is far too essential to the way he operates for him to be content with this year’s “bronze” Worsty.  We’re betting he’s already thinking about ways City government can “Go for the Gold” in 2009.