As has previously been reported in this blog, its editor was a member of a committee of Sixth Ward residents who, in June 2012, screened four candidates for mayoral appointment to fill that ward’s aldermanic seat when Tom Bernick abandoned ship after little more than the first year of his four-year term.
Based on the committee’s recommendation, Mayor Dave Schmidt nominated Marc Mazzuca, whose appointment was unanimously approved by the City Council.
We welcomed Mazzuca to the Council in our 06.23.12 post, and early on he displayed some of the qualities we expected him to bring to the Council. But he soon became a poster child for aldermanic schizophrenia, painstakingly drilling down into some fiscal issues while totally and inexplicably ignoring other ones.
One night he would argue interminably for saving $20,000 by benchmarking city manager compensation against the federal government’s civil service pay scale, then turn around and rubber-stamp hundreds of thousands of dollars of police station “improvements” after a Q & A of Chief Kaminski so soft it would have made a marshmallow blush. He has repeatedly voted for across-the-board, non-merit based pay increases for union and non-union employees alike without even any attempt at an economic or public policy justification.
Consequently, we couldn’t endorse his election in April, although he nevertheless won a four-year term by a margin of 20 votes. But since that time, sad to say, he has done little to cause us to question our lack of an endorsement.
This past Monday night’s City Council COW meeting was a case in point.
Mazzuca joined Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Jim Smith (3rd) in another attempt to give away a used City SUV (reportedly worth at least $3,000) to Maine Township government, reportedly because that governmental unit doesn’t want to reduce its operating fund balance from $1 million to $997,000 for the benefit of its own Maine Twp. Emergency Management Program (“MTEMP”). Although that giveaway was defeated a couple of weeks ago during the previous COW meeting, Sweeney resurrected it with a motion for reconsideration – which he could bring because he was absent for the previous COW vote.
We encourage you to actually watch Monday night’s debate on the issue, which begins at 1:39:14 of the City’s meeting video. But for those who want the Reader’s Digest version, we’ll try to accommodate you.
Alds. Dan Knight (5th) and Marty Maloney (7th), both of whom had voted “no” two weeks ago, noted how giving away Park Ridge tax dollars to another taxing body is bad policy and bad precedent, with Maloney correctly pointing out that several areas of Park Ridge aren’t even in Maine Twp. Ald. Roger Shubert (4th), who had voted for the giveaway two weeks ago, voiced similar concerns in announcing that he was changing his vote to “no” after additional deliberation.
With previous “no” voter Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd) absent, another 3 to 3 tie prevented the giveaway from once again getting out of the COW.
But Mazzuca’s and Sweeney’s arguments in support of the giveaway – wrong at best, disturbing at worst – should be studied as an object lesson in what having virtually no sense whatsoever of the legal and practical division between separate governmental taxing bodies sounds like.
Mazzuca began his defense of the giveaway by asserting that “[t]here’s still a taxpayer that is going to benefit” from the City’s donation of the SUV to Maine Twp. – presumably meaning that Maine Twp. will use the vehicle for the benefit of at least some Park Ridge taxpayers. Such an absurd argument, however, could effectively justify the City’s giving the $3,000 SUV (or $30,000, or $300,000, for that matter) to any other governmental unit to which any Park Ridge taxpayers also pay property taxes, be it the Park District, School Districts 64 and 207, the Water Reclamation District, the Mosquito Abatement District, or Cook County itself.
While some savvy marketer might brand that as “Local Governments Without Borders,” all it does is make it even tougher for taxpayers funding multiple governmental units to track how their money is being spent and to hold any particular unit of government accountable for that spending.
Mazzuca then went further afield when he attempted to demean the issue and the applicable public policy by minimizing its cost, t.v. infomercial-style, to the average taxpayer: “It’s not nickels, it’s not dimes, it’s not even pennies,” he insisted.
No, alderman, it’s $3,000 – enough money to cover at least one of the arbitrary, non-performance based raises you irresponsibly voted to hand out to various City employees this year.
But Mazzuca’s dumbest argument was his grand finale: that with the City looking to renegotiate its Uptown TIF-related revenue-sharing agreements with other local governmental units (i.e., School Districts 64 and 207, and the Park District), denying Maine Twp. a free $3,000 SUV would be “a bloody flag” that would discourage those three governmental units from doing any kind of a deal with the City on the TIF.
If any reader can even begin to understand that bizarre linkage, please feel free to explain it to us.
But leave it to Sweeney to make even Mazzuca’s ridiculous arguments seem sublime.
After reciting all the things MTEMP allegedly “gives” to Park Ridge – 25 to 30 CERT bags valued at $100 each, CERT training, volunteers directing traffic during flooding, providing a light tower at Taste of Park Ridge, etc. – Sweeney displayed his ignorance (or his duplicity?) about MTEMP when he proclaimed: “I’m not talking Maine Twp, I’m talking the Emergency Management Group”
As if MTEMP is an independent organization rather than a branch of Maine Twp. government funded with $100,000 of Maine Twp. taxpayers’ money, a/k/a, our money.
That launched Knight.
“[MTEMP] didn’t give the City of Park Ridge anything,” he replied sharply. “They gave it to us by expending taxpayer money.”
Knight then recalled MTEMP’s director’s appearance at the last COW meeting, where he referred to MTEMP as “his” organization.
“It’s not his organization, it’s the people’s organization. And they don’t give us things, they tax us so that they can buy stuff, and then they give it to us.”
“You tell me how that makes sense.”
BAM!
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