The new Executive Director of the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District won’t take the reigns of the District until November 10th.  But Ray Ochromowicz has already made some of his views known about how a local governmental body should be run, and it’s the kind of talk we like to hear.

According to a Herald-Advocate story (“’When you ask for something, you’ll get it,’ new parks head promises,” October 6), Ochromowicz says residents will get “same-day responses” to questions and comments about the District. 

But the comments that really got our attention are the ones about information and referendums.

Ochromowicz said that during his employment as executive director of the Bolingbrook Park District, both the media and the residents themselves could get information about the park district and documents related to its operations merely by request, without filing a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request.

After years of trying to pry information from secretive or unresponsive bureaucrats, the idea of truly open government operations is welcome indeed.  And in that regard, the Park District has historically been ahead of the curve, at least among our local governments, in making its operations open to the public: it’s still the only local governmental body that videotapes its meetings and puts them on its own website.

As for referendums, Ochromowicz also talks the right talk when he says: “Our job is to take the needs of the people, put them into a plan, attach a price tag and then say, ‘Here it is. Are you willing to pay for it?’ And if they are not, that’s OK.”

That’s a wonderfully refreshing viewpoint after years of watching local governmental bodies treat referendums – especially the binding ones involving tax increases – like military campaigns for which armies of pass-the-referendum volunteers are marshaled to execute what amount to marketing strategies to “sell” the voters on the vital need for whatever project, program or expenditure is being promoted.

Like, for example, School District 64’s “Yes/Yes” referendum campaign back in 1997, and its “Citizens for Strong Schools” referendum campaign in 2007 – even though, technically, each of those campaigns was “privately” run and funded.

Ochromowicz claims that: “The way I like to operate is, I want to blow up people’s traditional perceptions of government.”

Well, Mr. Ochromowicz, it’s clear you know how to talk the talk.  Now we just have to wait and hope that you can walk the walk.

Last week’s Herald-Advocate carried a story on City Finance Director Diane Lembesis’ report to the City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting last Monday night (“Finance director says $5.4M deficit not as bad as it seems,” Sept. 29). 

In addition to the 2009-10 budget year deficit having grown to $5.4 million, Lembesis also reported that the City’s General Fund – its principal operating fund – had to borrow money from other funds last week in order to make payroll!  But fear not, Park Ridgians: she expects the deficit to shrink approximately $3.2 million, down to around $2.2 million, by year end. 

Why?  Well, the H-A story doesn’t say. 

But if you check out the video of that COW meeting on Park Ridge Underground from Sept. 29th, you’ll hear Lembesis say that such a reduction is based on her “experience” – although her rambling response to Ald. Don Bach’s question is far from confidence-inspiring, and sounds a lot more like guess-timation than information.

For example, when talking about her hopes for a big increase in sales tax revenues this year, she states: “I know Trader Joe’s, I think that…every time I’m in Trader Joe’s it’s doing great business. I know Jason’s, every time I go in there I have to wait in a long long line.” 

Those kinds of stories may be gratifying to those of us who would like to see a lot more sales tax revenue being generated by local businesses, but we expect the City’s director of finances to rely on hard, cold numbers, not on warm and fuzzy personal anecdotes.  And we expect our elected representative on the City Council to demand them.

Another thing not reported in the H-A story is the identity of those other City fund(s) from which the money to meet payroll was borrowed.  But, once again, the COW video on PRU captures Lembesis saying that payroll was met by the City borrowing from the Water Fund – which, as best as we can tell, is currently the only City fund with enough of a balance to make such rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul loans.

Ironically, the Water Fund is the favorite whipping-fund of  Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), who continually refers to it as over-funded because of its $2 million-plus balance.  Wsol continually cites that balance in chiding anyone (e.g., Mayor Schmidt and City Mgr. Hock) who advocates for passing on to water users the full cost of the increase in water prices charged to Park Ridge by the City of Chicago.

But maybe with Lembesis’ identification of the Water Fund as the City’s de facto “lender,” Wsol – the self-proclaimed “fiscal conservative” who can’t seem to understand that pay-as-you-go is one of the benchmarks of fiscal conservatism – might finally appreciate the wisdom of stopping the subsidization of water use, especially when that subsidization disproportionately benefits big water users at the expense of those who use less, or who actually conserve water.  That’s because not only is charging users for the full cost of the water they use the fairest thing to do, but the increased water revenues will help replenish the “bank” from which the City borrows.

And in case Ald. Wsol doesn’t understand why the City needs to borrow to make payroll, it’s because Wsol and his Council buddies can’t seem to stop aiding and abetting City bureaucrats in spending more than the City takes in.  Go figure.

“This is not gloom and doom,” said Lembesis. Maybe not, but it sure sounds a lot closer to “doom and gloom” than it does to a sunny day at the beach.   

Special “Spokesman” Edition: Today’s K&B focuses on the new issue of “The Spokesman,” our City’s bi-monthly, publicly-funded public relations effort. 

“We’re Fine, Just Ask Us.”  The featured cover story is about City government winning the 2009 “Voice of the People Award for Excellence in Code Enforcement” from the International City/County Management Association (“ICMA”).  Having spent a good amount of time checking out these types of fluff-and-stroke “professional” organizations (isn’t ICMA the one whose meeting City Mgr. Hock recently attended and was told by other city managers that our target fund balances were too high and should be lowered to meet actual performance?) and these kinds of feel-good awards, we’ve graduated from snickering up our sleeves to laughing out loud at how the folks running these mutual-admiration societies for government bureaucrats actually believe the public will fall for this kind of tripe…and how a certain gullible segment of the public actually does. 

But just reading The Spokesman’s bureaucratically-earnest account of the award and why the City won it brought a wry smile to our faces, as we hope it does to yours.  And it should, because we’re all paying for it.

“PRC’s Fine, Just Ask Us.”  For the first time in memory, The Spokesman sports a “special” four-page insert “[that] features our outstanding Uptown redevelopment project as it nears completion.”  For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, that’s the big condo and townhouse project in the center of town that was supposed to be (according to the propaganda floated by developer PRC and our City officials during the planning stage) a “partnership” between PRC and the City. 

Well, we haven’t seen any evidence of any “partnership” – or any good-faith, fiduciary-style behavior from PRC.  What we have seen, however, is the roughly $40 million of bonded debt that’s been hung around the taxpayers’ necks, along with a TIF district that in recent years has sucked millions of additional dollars out of City coffers while almost single-handedly pushing our annual budgets into their chronic multi-million dollar deficits. 

But, hey, it’s a really snazzy – and colorful – puff piece.  Did PRC at least pay for it, or is that yet another instance of PRC picking the taxpayers’ pocket?

New Nonprofit Center.  Last Friday we wrote about the Park Ridge Nonprofit Center, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation that is somehow involved in the ownership and/or management of the building at 720 Garden that formerly housed the American Insurance Agency.  The Spokesman appears to gild the lily a bit by reporting that resident John Sasser purchased the site “to save the building and to offer a site for local nonprofits to protect them from a difficult market situation.”

720 Garden is the property that, back in early 2008, then-mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark wanted the City to buy for a big new cop shop.  He wanted it so much that when the City’s own appraisal came in at several hundred thousand dollars under what the owner was asking, Frimark demanded a new, higher appraisal!  But when he caught some well-deserved flak for that, Frimark and his Alderpuppets retreated into closed session and agreed to offer the owner $1.1 million – more than $200,000 above the City’s appraisal.  The owner rejected the offer, and Sasser appears to have picked it up a year and a half later for $950,000.   

Cynics that we are, we wonder whether Mr. Sasser’s devotion to “saving” the building is a long-term commitment, or just a long-enough one…until the real estate market improves and he can turn a nifty profit on his investment.  Only time will tell.  Meanwhile, however, we wonder whether all those nonprofits he’s inviting into his building will be charged rent or other fees to help him with his carry costs…and whether those nonprofits will, in turn, add those costs into the amount of the handouts they regularly seek – and receive – from a heretofore compliant City Council.

Once again, only time will tell.