Blow up people’s traditional perceptions of government?

Blow up people’s traditional perceptions of government? Pretty scary. Sounds like at the minimum we will have to go through all the referendums of the last few years again.

The people have already spoken about what they do and do not want. Why do it again, particularly to an organization that can’t take care of the assets they have been charged to manage. witness the flooding of gym floor the implosion of the Oakton diving pool, and the general don’t care attitude of the staff on the floor

Wow!! As often seems the case with some of the complaining posts and bad experiences with city employees (public works and police for example), my experience has been completely different. Perhsps I am just not as sensitive as some or maybe I am just low maintenance. “general don’t care attitude of the staff on the floor”………what??? I would have to guess I interact with the Park District staff as much as anyone in town and probably more than most. Pool, health club, summer camps for my kids, scout meetings, etc. I have never had a bad experience from office staff to people working the desks to summer life guards. Every question has been answered and every issue resolved. Maybe we are there on different days.

Annonymous on 10.07.09 11:58 am –

You got it wrong. Ochromowicz doesn’t want to re-do losing referendums. That’s the whole point of the post, it seems.

As for blowing up perceptions of government, I took that to mean perceptions tend to be bad and he wants to make them better by making service and facilities better. If he can do it, more power to him.

I agree with you that some Park District employee(s) screwed up regarding the flooded basketball courts, but Oakton has been a financial black hole for years and should have been closed down even before the diving well imploded. With the cool summer, I expect the outdoor pools will have lost an even bigger bundle than usual, with Oakton once again leading the way.

Oakton is a black hole, you are right, and no one swims there anymore.

I wish those commissioners would do something about it, but none of them have any backbone.

Your comment reminds us of the Yogi Berra quote: “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”

Both our own observations and the Park District’s records, however, indicate that sombody still goes to Oakton, although not in sufficient numbers and often enough to make that pool cost effective to operate, especially given the short season for outdoor pools at this latitude.

We agree that the Park District, both Board and Staff, has lacked the “backbone” to close down Oakton pool – except for Commmissioner Marty Maloney, who as best as we can tell was the only commissioner to go on record for doing so.

That’s why they went to referendum three times in 2 years – April 2005, March 2006 and November 2006 – in the hopes that the voters would endorse the big dollars needed to either replace Oakton Pool with an indoor recreation center or with a modern aquatic center, thereby taking the tough decision-making away from Board and Staff.

But a substantial majority of the voters said “No” on each occasion, restoring backbone as a pre-requisite for closing Oakton. And so far, the small number of highly-motivated and vocal supporters of Oakton have intimidated Staff and Board into such a paralysis that it appears the issue is not even discussed anymore.

So stay tuned for the Park District’s annual outdoor pools report and what will likely be another $80-100,000 loss booked for Oakton.

If you have attended any Board meetings lately or have watched the videos on-line, I think you will see that the current Board is fairly much in lock-step that Oakton will be closed as soon as a major failure in its infrastructure occurs…that could be as soon as Spring of 2010.

Anonymous @ 11:46:

You may be right, but waiting for the pool to have a major failure in its infrastructure is still letting the pool manage the District, instead of the other way around!

I also believe there are different opinions on the Board of exactly what a “major” failure would be.

Even after the diving well imploded, the Board majority (with the exception of Maloney?) still was willing to let the pool keep sucking major money out of budget.

Letting the pool manage the District (good call, anon 12:08) is a failure of leadership and a form of fiscally-irresponsible mismanagement, to the tune of what, $100,000 a year? That’s real money, people.

From time to time we hear that the Park District has too much outdoor water for the population. The amount of money that’s being lost on those pools every year would seem to bear that out.

Too much outdoor water for the population?

Hope nobody thinks I’m trying to pick on anyone’s replies but it seems so interesting.

Oakton was the last public pool to be built in town so it even amazes me that it’s claimed to not have very many people going there.

Even in years past many in the park district have claimed they’re way below standards comepared to other towns.

Mike:

You can’t live in the past. Back when Oakton was built people actually went to the pools to cool off on a hot night because many of them didn’t have central A/C. And they didn’t sit home watching 200 T.V. channels, or surfing the Internet.

The only shortage the Park District regularly talks about compared to other towns is shortage of land, not outdoor pools.

I could do without your scarcasim Hoover.

Mike…not sure what you mean when you say “many in the Park District claim they are way below standards compared to other towns.”

Not sure what standard you are meaning. I will tell you that very few communities in Illinois have more pool complexes than Park Ridge.

We have Hinkley, Oakton, Centennial, South Park (small but a pool none the less), and the Community Center. That is five distinct pool complexes for a community of 37,000. I appreciate that it is not “fun” water or recently built (so as to include the bells/whistles that people like these days), but we have too many pools/too much water for town.

For the month of July (most recent stats I have), Oakton had a total of 3,405 total users. Centennial during the same time had 11,021. Hinkley had 3,926 and South Park had 2,522.

Like I said ” In years past.”

I use to look though old PR papers in the library which have claimed this.

Of course this was decades ago and perhaps this has changed a bit.

I’m not saying I either agree or disagree with this but as Hoover pointed out, they mean in terms of land.

Anonymous on 10.09.09 6:24 am:

Thanks for the facts and figures. If the Park District wants to re-open Oakton next year, they’d be better off stocking it with bass and holding fishing derbies.