What does Ald. Robert Ryan know that the rest of us don’t?
We can’t help but wonder upon reading this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Debate to resume on parking lot purchase,” July 28), which describes Ryan’s continuing effort to get the City Council’s endorsement of his plan to spend $700,000+ of scarce City funds to buy the Scharringhausen parking lot that the City has been renting for around $20,000 a year.
We also wonder if Ryan’s concept of sound municipal finance really is: “Hey, why spend $20,000 a year renting a lot when we can spend $700,000+ to own it” – especially when (according to an analysis by City staff) it generates only $22,800 in annual commuter parking fees?
Frankly, we thought this was just a typical “insider” deal, where an established Park Ridge community member (Scharringhausen) cashes out long-term R.E. investment (Fairview lot) through connected R.E. broker (Owen Hayes II), who enlists the aid of a friendly elected official (Ald. Ryan, whose campaign treasurer was Hayes).
But it sounds like Ryan may have bigger plans than just a one-off property deal. As the H-A reports, Ryan is talking about the Scharringhausen lot supporting “new development” within the surrounding Uptown area. And he wants the City to spend some money on a “feasibility study” to determine whether a City-owned parking deck could fit on that site.
Unfortunately, that’s vintage Robert Ryan: Spend taxpayer money on a consultant to tell you how to spend even more taxpayer money and/or pile up public debt. That’s why he may be the biggest, most consistent spendthrift on this Council. And that’s saying a lot, give the drunken-sailor mentality of most of them.
For anbody who needs some help finding “dots” to connect, you can start with Ryan’s strong advocacy for sinking public funds into Uptown Redevelopment when he served on the Uptown Advisory Task Force (“UATF”) a decade ago. Before that, as a member of the District 64 School Board, he led the charge to borrow and spend around $15 million to knock down what was then the District’s newest school building (Emerson Jr. High) and build Emerson Middle School.
That expenditure and related debt service appears to have sent District 64 into a financial death spiral that put it on the brink of the State Board of Education’s taking over its finances, until the District snuck through $5 million of “working cash” non-referendum (“back-door”) bonds as a band-aid measure in 2005, and followed that up with its big tax increase referendum in 2007.
We’ve seen what Ryan can do with the taxpayers’ money, so we think it’s time to see what Ryan can do with his own money.
If Ryan really wants to ensure that parking remains on the Scharringhausen property, he should buy the property himself and get into the parking business. Or he could form a partnership with buddy Owen Hayes to do it. That way, the taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill; and the property stays on the tax rolls.
Maybe they could get some of those behind-the-scenes land speculators we keep hearing about to invest in the deal. They could all form an LLC to buy the lot and run it – which, fittingly enough, would support all that “new development” some of those same behind-the-scenes folks are reputedly looking to promote in and around Target Area 4.
If those land-speculation rumors are true, the speculators must be chomping at the bit by now to get some action on their TA-4 “investments” that were supposed to be short-term flip-jobs but have been languishing in this bad economy.
We don’t care whether Ryan is trying to help out some friends on a parking lot deal, or whether he’s trying to jump-start TA-4 – so long as it’s done with private money and/or debt instead of public funds. That’s why we encourage Ryan and Hayes to pony up their own cash to do the deal.
“R & H Parking,” anyone?
12 comments so far
The city should not buy any property. If parking so valuable over there, some private group should be willing to buy it and run it.
This sounds like another b.s. insider deal and it stinks.
2 questions for Ald. Ryan & City Council:
1. Why does the city wish to own a parking lot?
2. What other business endeavors does the city wish to start? We could really use an uptown car wash… or maybe a health club?
Tony S., we have a health club that’s public. It’s called the Community Center and is run by the Park District, a teeny tiny separate taxing body, not part of the City.
Instead of buying property or running car washes, how about the city actually doing the stuff its supposed to be doing right for a change. Pave the damn streets, get the damn sewers working right, keep us safe in our persons and property, and leave all this other stuff to private industry.
Has the city made any money (net) from the uptown parking garage? If so, please explain how the city makes money from free parking?
I was joking, and the community center isn’t really uptown…
Dear Onlygurl: Your use of the term “teeny tiny” is charming, but the role of government is not. Even local government has a tendency to go in the opposite direction of “teeny tiny”. Count me as a “no” to the city buying the parking lot. As for the community center, we used to be members but then they jacked up the fees. Alas, we still pay for some of it because it is, as you mention, a taxing body.
Just a few weeks ago this blog and its fans were demanding the city take over a privately run but not a basic government service or job, the Taste.
This week this blog and its fans demaand the city not get involved in running anything as a business.
LOL. Make up your minds already.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome back…we missed your Taste Inc. apologias.
Our minds have been made up for quite awhile now. We don’t care whether or not the City takes over TOPR so long as it gets all the “profit” that the allegedly non-for-profit Taste Inc. and all its not-for-profit volunteer operators appear to have been pocketing since 2005 – without accounting for any of those profits to the City or its taxpayers, even as it was sucking up $20,000+ in free City services in the process. If Taste Inc. truly is a not-for-profit organization, why doesn’t it turn its “profits” ($65,000 last year, the only year Taste Inc. filed a Form 990 tax return) over to the City in return for the City ensuring the seed money necessary to float the event each year?
Unlike the profits that TOPR could and should put into the City’s coffers, the City’s acquisition of the Scharringhausen lot would take money out of the City’s coffers by removing that property from the tax rolls and, at current rates ($22,500 annual revenue), not even pay off its purchase price for over 30 years – or longer, if the City pays cash for it rather than finances the purchase with bonds.
So, in summary, we think the public TOPR event should be putting its profits into the City treasury, and the private Scharringhausen lot should be putting its profits into private pockets – like, for example, Robert Ryan’s and Owen Hayes’.
Hear, hear, PubDog. Thanks for the distinction. Just to add some clarification for LOL: I never weighed in on TOPR, and really haven’t stopped to figure it out. I am quite sure, however, I would never want to pay for it with the money I pay as tax dollars.
Priceless.
From Protiviti risk consulting website:
“Embezzlement and other fraud schemes executed on not-for-profit organizations are as bountiful and resourceful as the charities themselves. Common schemes include skimming of donations, unauthorized fraudulent disbursements, as well as the payment of personal expenses with charity funds. Other examples of frauds involving non-profits include the use of the tax exempt status of the organization to generate fictitious deductions, kickbacks from vendors,” etc.
I’m all for Ryan and Hayes buying the Scharringhousen lot, just like I’m all for Iglow and Galus turning over the profits from Taste of Park Ridge to the City of Park Ridge. If they are non-profit, then they should act like a non-profit.
Who are these speculators? I have lived here 15 years and I don’t know about any of these things you are talking about. Is this stuff really going on?