Tonight the City Council’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”) is scheduled to consider a recommendation (the “Recommendation”) by the City’s Flood Control Task Force (“FCTF”) togive away hundreds of thousands of public/tax dollars – if not more – in subsidies, or “incentives,” to various residents if they install private flood control devices to help flood-proof their property.

Why is that kind of a recommendation wrong-headed?  Let’s start with it being fundamentally unfair.

If you’re a responsible Park Ridge resident who already has spent thousands of your own hard-earned dollars installing flood control devices (e.g., overhead sewers, check valves, etc.) in your home to protect from sewer back-up, the Recommendation will take some of your equally hard-earned tax dollars and give them to those less responsible residents who have heretofore neglected to install their own private flood control systems.

What’s fair about rewarding the negligent?

We would contend “nothing.” But at their last meeting back on May 15th, some FCTF members argued that it’s no less fair than when the City used public funds to install the flood wall on Riverside Drive 20+ years ago that only benefitted around 250 homes in that area.

That wall, however, was designed to protect not only all the private homes in that area (rather than just certain ones) but also the public streets from flooding and becoming impassable.  The FCTF’s Recommendation, on the other hand, would only protect a sprinkling of individual homes in various areas and do nothing to reduce public-area flooding, such as in the streets and other public ways.  In fact, FCTF members have even acknowledged that adding more private flood control devices could actually increase public (or “overland”) flooding, albeit slightly, by eliminating what effectively were water detention areas – those flooded basements – that held water until the sewer system could empty out.

So if you’re one of those responsible residents, the FCTF’s Recommendation will give you something new to worry about: a slight increase in the overland flooding that might breach your foundation or your ground-floor doorways, even as you’re paying for other folks’ flood control.

From a public policy perspective, this Recommendation has already flown past “tone deaf,” rounded “stupid,” and is heading for “brain dead.”

But the FCTF members sure don’t think so.  In fact, they actually consider their Recommendation a “cost saver” because they claim it will reduce the number of homes that pile all that sodden furniture and carpeting on the parkways, costing the City (a/k/a, the taxpayers) extra garbage collection expense.  That argument was conveniently underscored by a recent story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Flood debris pick-up cost Park Ridge $76,000,” May 24) that produced a $76,200 bill from ARC Disposal for the April 18 flood clean-up.

Not surprisingly for a H-A story, however, that figure assumes a lot of facts not yet in evidence, starting with whether all of the homes throwing out waterlogged carpeting and other items flooded because of no flood controls, or because of overland flooding, seepage, sump-pump failure, etc.  Nor did the H-A story address the issue of whether homeowners should be sur-charged for such extraordinary garbage pickup costs that may be resulting from their own negligence.

Why has a task force that was formed to help come up with innovative ideas for city-wide flood remediation become so obsessed with these patently quick-fix handouts to a limited number of local homeowners?

Could it be that those FCTF members already have effectively thrown in the towel on coming up with meaningful ways to remedy, on a city-wide basis, the so-called “50-year” or “100-year” floods we seem to be getting once or twice a year?  Could it be that individual subsidies or “incentives” as proposed in the Recommendation are simply an attempt to grab the lowest-hanging fruit, no matter how unsound it is as a matter of public policy?

Consider that some FCTF members – without dissent from their fellow FCTF members or City staff – noted that all the FCTF’s recommended improvements to the sewer system (at a cost of tens of millions of dollars) will, at best, make the system capable of handling only 10-year floods.

But even if a grand plan for preventing 50 or 100-year floods may not be easily achievable, does it make any sense at all to throw hundreds of thousands of public dollars (or more) at private homeowners who, up until now, have been too stupid, or too irresponsible, or just too darn cheap to install private flood control devices in their own homes on their own dimes?

At the May 15th meeting, resident Joe Weber and new Second Ward Ald. Nick Milissis – himself a flooding victim – wisely warned that subsidizing private flood control will distract the City’s attention and resources from the far more important and difficult task of controlling  “public” flooding.  They also wondered aloud about what kind of people could be content to run the risk of flooding until now, but suddenly become motivated to install flood control devices by the promise of a couple thousand dollar City subsidy?

How about “imbeciles” (a step above the “idiot” but still a notch below the “moron”)?  Or maybe the old reliable “freeloaders” who seem to be able to pick up even the faintest scent of public-fund handouts and get to the front of the line?

Several of the latter were at the meeting May 15th and they, along with a couple of FCTF members, were shameless in advocating for the Recommendation for purely private, personal benefit: in order to prevent losing flood insurance coverage (due to too many claims) and to make their homes more marketable.

Hey, maybe the City should spring for a new roof and some fresh paint while we’re at it, just to improve the curb appeal?

We trust that the City Council will not be bamboozled by this kind of soft-headed welfare for the irresponsible, because our community has serious flooding problems that require serious answers.  And handouts of public funds taken from the many for the private benefit of a few isn’t serious.

Except to the hopelessly shameless and the terminally silly.

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