Yesterday’s on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate reports that four Park Ridge Public Works Department employees received termination notices as one of the City’s cost-cutting measures in the face of this year’s multi-million dollar budget deficit (“Four city employees handed pink slips,” August 4).
This action came in the wake of the Public Works employees union’s reported refusal to agree to wage freezes or pay cuts. Ironically, one of the four terminated employees repairs water main breaks and maintains and repairs our sewers, while another one patches our roadways.
We wonder if those are the kinds of services Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) was considering reducing when he came up with his demand for staff cuts months ago, even while he was voting to give more public money to private community groups?
We don’t know how much these four employees were being paid, but we’re guessing that this was more of a shot-across-the-bow, a signal to the union that the City is serious about the proposed wage freeze. And it should be.
The union is an easy target for blame, if for no other reason than it should have realized – with the City’s big budget deficit and mounting expenses cutting into already-thin reserves – that its bargaining position was weak. On the other hand, it has a reason to question the City’s good faith when it is asked to give up contractual rights while at the same time hearing Ald. Frank “Borrow & Spend” Wsol and his Council buddies planning to squander $420,000 on ridiculous flood control “rebates.”
The City administration deserves its share of the blame as well, because those are the folks responsible for managing the City’s operations and its money. They’re the ones who proposed the $2.5 million deficit budget in the first place, and who have failed over a number of years to control spending and/or request increased taxes in order to build sufficient surpluses in “good” years to carry us through the “lean” ones.
In fairness, current City Manager Jim Hock shouldn’t wear the jacket for all of this mess, as he inherited most of it from former City Manager Tim Schuenke, who apparently figured out that the easiest way to balance an unbalanced budget is with revenue estimates pulled out of thin air. While Hock did himself no favors by proposing this year’s deficit budget, he’s still a big improvement over his predecessor; and, hopefully, he will learn and improve as he gets a better understanding of the community and the sometimes bizarre dynamics of City government.
But the folks who really deserve to wear the jacket for this are the members of our City Council, past and present, who we elect to keep a keen eye on the bureaucrats and represent our interests with good judgment and foresight. Instead, they spent most of this decade as mindless enablers of Schuenke’s budgetary follies.
Whether they were the rubber-stamp Homeowners Party seat-fillers who monopolized the Council until 2003, the mixture of Homeowners and “Independents” from 2003 through 2007, or the Frimark Alderpuppets who currently predominate, none of them demanded the kind of fiscally-responsible, forward-thinking management the taxpayers deserve. But as best as we can tell, the current crew has done more than their predecessors to erode the City’s fund balances and leave us exposed to the full fury of a bad economy and neglected infrastructure.
They were the ones who passed what appears to have been the largest deficit budget in recent City history and then compounded that insanity by refusing to pass through the $400,000 water rate increase from the City of Chicago to water users, while also approving over-budget funding increases to private community organizations.
So if you find yourself getting a little ticked off about that pothole in front of your house or that clogged street drain at the corner of your block, consider taking a stroll around the Brickton Art Center or stopping by the Park Ridge Senior Center – because that’s where some of the money is being spent that otherwise could have been used for street and sewer services.
Welcome to the reap-what-you-have-sewn world of fiscal mismanagement in a bad economy.
13 comments so far
The Senior Center provides $3 ROI for every $1 that is spent.
It is a truly invaluable resource for the Community. You only tear down because you haven’t visited. Please come by and see the center; you will see how valuable it is for a large segment of the city’s population.
Mary:
We have studied both the Park District’s and the City’s financials re the Senior Center, and we cannot find one shred of evidence to support your contention that the Senior Center “provides $3 ROI” – or any ROI in terms of real dollars – to the taxpayers for every one of the approx. $150,000-$200,000 the Senior Center consumes each year.
We’re not saying that the Senior Center has no value, or that it should be eliminated. But based on all the facts that we can find, it is a big consumer of tax dollars by a relatively small number (1,200?) of people, a significant number of whom are not even Park Ridge taxpayers.
But we welcome any evidence that supports your contention.
I agreed with your blog about the firemen doing the right thing and backing off their contract raises, even though the Council then decided to waste money on flood rebates. Now I’m feeling sorry for the firemen, becuase it looks like the public works workers and police are being greedy.
Does Ald. Bach have any idea of how many cops could be laid off?
Bach has no idea about anything except spewing his own personal agenda.
About the Senior Center–are you kidding? ROI? Where did you get your information?
Yikes, aren’t you also the famous Monger? If so, where the hell have you been today?
i’m a Monger, but perhaps not the one you are looking for!
It seems that we could put the four workers from the public works back to work and add another four if we eliminate the paper pushers at City Hall that hold clipboards for over $100,000 apiece, three engineers, and one ahead of public Works trim at the top and hire people who actually dig and clean we now have a free ex-head of pub. works Joe . The new city manager should check out how these people got hired at the top and their credentials and start trimming.
Four Public Works employees down, $2.3 million of deficit to go. Now what?
I have never understood why an assistant city manager is needed and what the duties of that position are.
LET’S NOT FORGET THE VALUE OF THE PW/ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT. UNFORTUNATELY THE BUDGET DOES NOT ALLOW THEM APPROPRIATE COMPENSATION. DON’T LET THEIR YEARLY SALARY REFLECT THE LARGE NUMBER OF HOURS THEY PUT IN, WHICH CUTS THEIR SALARY IN HALF IF THEIR HOURLY RATE WERE CONVERTED TO 2080 HRS. PUBLIC WORKS MAKES THE CITY MOVE, AND MY EXPERIENCE DEALING WITH PARK RIDGE (ALMOST 50 YEARS) SHOWS THAT THE INCREDIBLE SUCESSES PARK RIDGE IS SOLELY DUE TO THE ADMINSTATORS AND MANAGEMENT AND THE UNBELIEVEABLE WORK THE PW AND ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT PUTS IN IS SECOND TO NONE!
UNFORTUNATELY, THE DOWNSIDE OF PARK RIDGE ARE THOSE PEOPLE THAT THINK THEY KNOW THE BUSINESS, BUT THEY DON’T.
IF YOU MOVE TO PARK RIDGE, THERE WILL BE AIRPLANES
BASEMENTS WERE MADE TO FLOOD
TEACH YOUR KIDS NOT TO CROSS IN FRONT OF CARS
UNDERSTAND BEFORE BEING UNDERSTOOD
MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES ARE HUMAN
BY THE WAY, I AM AN EXPERT IN MANY OTHER WORK DISCIPLINES. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT!
BEENTHEREDONETHAT
Your response sounds very juvenile and what is it any of your business to tell anyone here how to raise their kids and if you keep your mouth shut then why are you saying anything now?
beentheredonethat on 08.07.09 8:05 am:
We live in what generally is considered a free-market economy. If the Public Works employees think they are grossly underpaid, they can go work for another community or try out another career, just like anyone else can do.
We have no particular axe to grind with Public Works or any other municipal employees, but we don’t think they are Mother Teresa’s, either. They are just like everyone else who has to work for a living.
Maybe public employees don’t get paid as much as their counterparts in the private sector, but from what we can tell their benefits (e.g., pension and health care) are as good or better than most. And when was the last time you heard of a municipal employee’s (or a teacher’s) employer closing up shop here and relocating to Mexico?
Please feel free to identify those “incredible successes” brought about by the administrators and management of Public Works, because we are having a hard time coming up with anything that we would view as “well-above average.”
Finally, where did you hear that “basements were made to flood”? That sounds just plain goofy to us; and, if it were true, it would make most of the residents of Park Ridge (and most other communities as well) who expect to use their basements for anything other than cisterns seem like idiots.
Man, do I feel bad. On a recent Monday morning, I watched 2 guys from Public Works pick up our brush. One guy sat in the truck for a bit, and I thought for a sec, why the heck in these times are we using 2 guys for this? Fast forward to now and my disbelief in reading that 2 “brush pickup” guys were let go? Great, all my fault. So, we’ve hardly made a dent in the deficit and now my brush probably will sit in my front yard forever.
Note: from Alpha Female; no email “spoofing”, please. An email address is not required when commenting.
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>