As we enter both a new year and a new decade, it’s a good time to look both backwards and forwards at not only our City government but also those other branches of government that primarily service our community, and take stock of where we came from and where we are going financially.
The years 2000 through 2009 were characterized by spending, spending and more spending, enabled by taxing and borrowing – even though all that spending does not appear to have provided us with better quality infrastructure or services.
For example, the City of Park Ridge pretty much neglected its sewer system for the past decade, failing to perform needed systemic inspection, maintenance and repairs – not only under Mayor Ron “Damn O’Hare!” Wietecha and the sclerotic Homeowners Party, but also under Acting-Mayor Mike Marous and the “Independents” (non-Homeowner aldermen) and even more so under Mayor Howard Frimark and his Alderpuppets. Flood control and remediation also were ignored while new development and redevelopment actually increased flooding risks and demands on our sewer systems.
Although its academic standing generally remained stable over the decade, High School District 207 currently is trying to cope with a $17 million “structural budget deficit.” Meanwhile, during the first part of the decade Elementary School District 64 spent itself to the brink of Illinois State Board of Education intervention [pdf] before bailing itself out with a “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue to make payroll in 2005 [pdf], followed by a major referendum-based tax increase in 2007 – neither of which has produced consistent, notable gains in student performance, even as the District has gone about restoring many of the $12.2 million in cuts it made while claiming they would not impair educational quality. (So why restore them?)
Even the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the smallest-budget branch of local government, continues to bungle the management of its outdoor swimming pools (which look to have booked another operating loss approaching $100,000 once the December figures are in [pdf]) and an almost $200,000 loss on the Senior Center [pdf], while still being bedeviled by the management of problematic facilities like the do-not-resuscitate Oakton Pool and the poorly-designed Community Center.
Fortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, the schools and the Park District are non-home rule bodies whose ability to raise taxes is limited by what are known (fondly to many taxpayers) as “tax caps.” Not so the home-rule City government, where spending is limited only by whatever sense of shame City officials can muster about their fiscal mismanagement. And for most of the past 10 years those officials have been pretty darned shameless.
So what can we expect from these governmental bodies in 2010?
Well, District 207 is proposing to cut expenditures by $15 million and raise revenues $2 million [pdf] to fill that $17 million budget hole. Part of those cuts will come from a freeze of administrators’ salaries and from the District 207 teachers’ voluntary salary increase give-back program, which they are exploring as an enlightened alternative to the District’s cutting of approximately 75 teacher jobs.
District 64, on the other hand, recently approved an approximately 4.9% property tax levy increase for the 2009 tax year – with only board member Russ Gentile voting “no” [pdf]. And, according to its November 10, 2009, press release [pdf], the District is already starting to waffle on its pre-2007 referendum 10-year financial projections, despite amassing very healthy budget surpluses these last two years. But what should we expect when the District’s School Board and Administration just gave the teachers’ union members annual raises of approximately 4.5% (including step increases) over the next three years, even though (as the press release acknowledges) the Consumer Price Index increase in 2008 “was just 0.1%”?
And if what was included in the Park Board’s December meeting package is any indication, the Park District looks to be predicting its own budget deficit of between $800,000 and $1.1 million [pdf], depending on which of two revenue projections is ultimately adopted by the Park Board later this month. It also appears that $300,000+ of that deficit can once again be attributed to Oakton Pool and the Senior Center, thereby providing further proof of the correctness of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
And the City? At this point in time, it looks like Mayor Schmidt’s plan for some form of zero-based budgeting is a pipe dream – what with City Mgr. Jim Hock loudly objecting, City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on her way to Gurnee, and the Council majority of deficit-wallowing Alderpuppets installed by former mayor Frimark seemingly incapable of performing subtraction when it comes to City expenditures.
Last May we provided our own simple way to almost balance the City budget (“How To Balance The City Budget,” May 27, 2009) – we came up $49,700 short on the $2 million, which we left for self-proclaimed budget “hawk” Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) to take care of. Fortunately, we didn’t hold our breath for that to occur.
Which sets the table for Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti and his Council cronies to push through the highly-questionable Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboard deal as $400,000 of “found money” that the City would be foolish to turn down – notwithstanding the City Attorney’s preliminary opinion that such an “impact fee” might not be legally enforceable or even constitutional, and despite the whole Allegretti-engineered, City-as-applicant arrangement stinking up the entire Council chambers.
One thing does look pretty certain, however: the taxpayers likely will take a trimming from every branch of local government, to go with the ones they will take from the State of Illinois and Crook County; and that trimming will likely be accompanied by reduced services from most, if not all, branches of local government.
So Happy New Year…and welcome to the 2010 edition of fiscally mismanaged local governments gone wild.
11 comments so far
Great post Watchdog.
I agree that the Park District is way out of line with the amount of money they throw down the drain at Oakton every year. How many people swim there anymore anyway?
They ought to close that pool once and for all. Too bad that none of those Commissioners have any backbone at all. What a bunch of wimps!
We ought to vote them all out of office based on their lack of fiscal responsibility.
Oakton was the biggest money loser even before the diving well blew up. Outdoor pools make no sense in climates like this when you can use them only a few months a year at most.
But so what if Oakton loses a hundred grand a year? Maybe the Park District can make it up with one of Allegretti’s billboards next to the driving range.
Hell, let’s just cancel everything to do with the Park District!! How much do we pay for all the ball fields?? We don’t need that, right? What about the skate park?? How about the play grounds?? How many people use those things anyway?!?!
10:39:
Based on the Park District’s own figures for pool usage, in 2009 attendance at Oakton was 7,740, down from 13,395 in 2008 – probably due in large part to the cooler summer we just had. Oakton also drew 3,000+ less users than Hinkley in 2009, despite Hinkley’s having a capacity less than one-half Oakton’s.
And Oakton shows an operating loss of just a shade under $100,000 on revenues of almost $46,000 v. expenses of $145,516. That means it cost the taxpayers approx. $12 for each of those 7,740 visits to Oakton last summer. That’s almost a definition of fiscal mismanagement, especially when the other pools were nowhere near their capacities and could have accomodated Oakton’s users.
But even using the 13,395 uses figure from 2008, that comes out to about 150 uses per day for the measly 3 months Oakton’s open. We’d be willing to bet that the athletic fields get that much, or more, daily use…and for 8-9 months instead of only 3, max. So even if each of those athletic fields costs the taxpayers the same amount as Oakton, the actual cost per use is only a tiny fraction of Oakton’s – which means that they provide a lot more of what is known as “value,” a difficult concept for most public officials.
So you’re comparisons are more like blueberries to cantaloupes than apples to apples.
Close the skate park? Where do I sign that petition?
PD:
What comparison was I making? I have no problem with closing Oakton. I can’t wait to hear the folks whining about parking at the rec center when those folks who went to Oakton come to swim there. The poster went further than just Oakton and made a statement that outdoor pools do not make snese in this climate. OK, so let’s not support any outdoor pools!! With that in mind, I am sure there are plenty of people in PR who don’t think ball fields make sense in this economic climate or the play grounds or the driving range. So let’s just not have the PD supported by our tax dollars. Let someone organize a soccer or baseball league and if it cannot support itself then screw it. Same with summer camps. Same with a pool. Let some business person start a “club” and charge membership fees. As far as the seniors, hell, let them fend for themselves, right??
Lots of bitterness. Seems the author doesn’t believe any government official is a person of integrity. I was taught not to generalize, but to judge each person individually on thier own merits.
9:48,
I don’t know about the “author” but when I go to meetings or read the newspapers (or blogs) about any of these local governments I almost never see, hear or read things that make me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from thse gov’t officials. The bozos just lurch from crisis to crisis with no definite understandable plan, no responsibility, no accountability, while doing their best to conceal as much information as possible from the people who pay their salaries. If that’s “integrity” then we’re in big trouble.
Are you saying acres of grass on which people play 8-9 months a year are not more desirable than a concrete hole in the ground that is filled with water only three months of the year?
1/5/10 at 7:51-Actually, baseball and football and soccer in Park Ridge are run by private organizations-they are only affiliated with the PD. They rent the fields from the PD for nearly nothing and then monopolize those fields for a good portion of the time the fields are usable. (Not including the fields at Emerson which the soccer club paid to build-do they also pay to maintain). So the taxpayers of PR are funding the PD and the cost of maintaining the fields but their ability to use the fields whenever they want is limited because these privately run clubs are using the publicly paid for and maintained fields.
To make matters worse-baseball and football have only recently filed with the IRS to be recognized as tax-exempt as a c3 public charity and after more than 50 years of not filing-baseball finally has filed a return. So some of these privately run clubs are getting large subsidies from the PD (taxpayers) and they are not disclosing how they are spending the money they collect. Sounds like the Taste of Park Ridge. It is not just the pools and the senior center that are subsidized by PD money. PR baseball and football are also the beneficiaries of PD subsidies.
Pubdog-why do you only attack the pools and the senior center? Why don’t you broaden your focus to include other programs that are subsidized by taxpayer money? Why do these two programs piss you off so much?
Anonymous on 01.07.10 12:23 pm:
We don’t “only attack the pools and the senior center.” We “attack” local government waste and mismanagement wherever we find it, which seems to be almost everywhere we look.
And, more accurately, we don’t attack “the pools” but basically just Oakton, the white elephant that sucks about $100,000 out of the taxpayers every year as it sits virtually empty – even during the summer pool season. If the Park District were actually managing Oakton rather than merely tending it, Oakton would have been closed down years ago – and the Park Board would be passing a budget with “only” a $700,000 deficit rather than an $800,000 one.
The Senior Center is little more than a taxpayer-funded clubhouse for about 1,200 seniors, a good number of whom aren’t even Park Ridge residents and taxpayers. And they pay next to nothing in “dues” while the City and Park District taxpayers keep it afloat with over $200,000 a year.
As for Park Ridge Baseball/Softball and the youth football programs, we wrote back on May 19, 2008: “Finally, as to the sports affiliates’ fees, we agree that they should pay their fair share of the costs of field maintenance, repair and/or replacement.”
Those two organizations – along with Park Ridge Soccer and Northern Express Hockey – are private entities known as “affiliates” to whom the Park District has effectively contracted out its baseball/softball, football, soccer and hockey programs. The use of its fields and ice rink is what the Park District “pays” those organizations for operating those sports programs.
We have seen nothing to suggest that this arrangement isn’t financially beneficial to the taxpayers, although we’re not sure just how scrupulously the Park District keeps an eye on the operations of those “affiliates.” And it does appear that, at the very least, the arrangement probably has reduced the Park District’s payroll by a dozen or so employees.
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