As regular readers of this blog know, we are no fans of individuals or special interest groups who look to gain personal advantage at the expense of the taxpayers. 

That’s why, for example, we oppose giveaways like the City’s facade improvement program and donations to private charitable organizations.  And that’s also why we are big fans of user fees for uses of government facilities or services that are extraordinary, measurable and specifically allocable – especially when those facilities or services are amenities instead of necessities.  

That’s also why, over the past couple of years, we have devoted several posts – including those dated 12.01.10, 07.29.11 and 04.16.12 – to the greed and intransigence of a small group of Park Ridge senior citizens who talk and act like they, and not the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District (and all of its taxpayers), own and control the Senior Center building at 100 S. Western.

Which provides a context for the Park District’s recent press release declaring its willingness to surrender in the recently-filed lawsuit over a $330,000 bequest to the “Park Ridge Senior Center” by deceased Senior Center member Betty Kemnitz: Grodsky v. Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, Case No. 2012 CH 2032, currently pending in the Circuit Court of Cook County.

That seems like a good thing in our book, because this litigation has the makings of an expensive goat rodeo.  

Let’s start with the fact that the plaintiff is Teresa Grodsky, whose 30-year employment as manager of the Senior Center terminated last year amid reports of insubordination and of secret dealings with Park Board member Steven Vile detrimental to the Park District, but beneficial to a private corporation with no legal affiliation to the Park District: Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”), also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. 

Grodsky apparently was so sure that Ms. Kemnitz intended Seniors Inc., rather than the Park District and its Senior Center facility, to receive her bequest directed to the “Park Ridge Senior Center” that Grodsky reportedly gave Seniors Inc. $250,000 of before the Park District woke up and claimed the bequest for its Senior Center.  When she received the Park District’s claim, she promptly lawyered up and filed the lawsuit. 

Perhaps because Grodsky and certain seniors were worried about the Park District’s prevailing in that litigation, a group of Senior Center “members” led by Helen Roppel are trying to join the suit by claiming to be an unincorporated association calling itself…wait for it…the “Senior Center.”  As in: Let’s say we’re an association, call ourselves the “Senior Center,” and then say we’re the “Park Ridge Senior Center” named in the bequest.

How convenient.  And how blatantly petty and dishonest.

And as if those aren’t enough goats for one rodeo, add to the mix the “Park Ridge Senior Center Senate,” whose officers drafted and circulated to Senior Center members a self-serving letter, along with some even more self-serving Senior Center Q & As, ripping the Park District for daring to challenge their “rights to control what happens at the [Park District’s Senior Center] building,” including their entitlement to Senior Center dues (“our dues”) that “should have been deposited in our accounts” rather than the Park District’s accounts, and deciding who can be a member of the Senior Center (“it was the Senior Senate which made those membership rules”).

It’s no secret we view the “leadership” of Seniors Inc. and this “Senior Senate” as a bunch of greedy geezers who make bratty young children seem temperate, cooperative and frugal by comparison.   Which might explain why they are stomping their feet and threatening to take “their” money and start their own senior center independent of the Park District.

Great!  How soon can they leave?

Whatever good intentions may have accompanied the founding of the Senior Center 30 years ago have been replaced by a greedy entitlement mentality by this senior “leadership” which insists on members’ paying a paltry $45/year in “dues” (that’s 17 cents a day!) even as they continue to bleed the taxpayers of roughly $160,000 each year to cover the Senior Center’s operating deficits.  As best as we can tell, that’s the lowest-priced fee – by far – the Park District charges for any facility membership or program, which makes the $160,000 shortfall sucked out of the pockets of all Park District taxpayers all the more unacceptable.

So the sooner these geriatric welfare kings and queens pack up and leave, the better off everyone else will be.

But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.  The greedy always know when they’ve got a great deal and how to exploit it to the max.  This senior crowd has been feeding at this particular trough for 30 years, and they’re not about to give it up – especially when they’re confident the Park District is likely to cave in to their demands if they keep playing hardball.

This fiasco is just another example of the shameless-versus-spineless contests we regularly write about, with governmental bodies invariably lacking the backbone.  And it should be a warning to the Park District about the dangers of abdicating management and control of its programs and facilities to self-serving special interests like Seniors Inc. and the Senior Senate.  And of not keeping a close and measured eye on its own employees.

Although Grodsky was a well-paid, high-seniority (pun intended) Park District employee, she apparently “went native” years ago, aligning herself with those 800-1,000 “seniors” (anybody 55 and older) belonging to the Senior Center instead of with the tens of thousands of taxpaying residents of the Park District – including the several thousand “seniors” who have never belonged to the Senior Center and likely never will.  That twisted allegiance gave Grodsky an almost cult-like following among the Seniors Inc. leadership and Senior Senate members to whom she effectively turned over Senior Center decision-making, some of whom talked about her in ways reminiscent of steamy jungles, guayabera shirts, dark glasses and adulterated Kool-Aid. 

Which is why, even though the Park District has waved the white flag in the Grodsky lawsuit, we aren’t betting on Grodsky, or the Seniors Inc. leadership, or the Senior Senate, accepting that surrender promptly or graciously.  They’ve already got $250,000 of Kemnitz found money in addition to the $241,000 sitting in Seniors Inc.’s treasury (as of its 2010 Form 990-EZ), so the remaining $80,000 of Kemnitz’s bequest could easily become a litigation war chest.

As we’ve already seen, these petty and greedy geezers don’t give a damn about running up the taxpayers’ tab for their own benefit.

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