The PCATF was formed on Schmidt’s watch, so he has to take the blame for whatever it did. Schmidt likes these task forces until he doesn’t like them, then he tries to undermine what they are doing. Can you say having your cake and eating it too?

EDITOR’S NOTE: As we see it, Schmidt has to be accountable for the PCATF, if only for not insisting on a limited set of tasks and responsibilities strictly related to the Ekl Report recommendations.

Once the PCATF was formed without such restrictions, however, Chief K and the PCATF saw the opportunity to leave the Ekl Report in the dust and head right for new facility recommendations. At that point, it took Schmidt AND the Council to put the clamps on a task force out of control.

Careful what you wish for dawg. Delaying Phase II & III may come with a price….btw which comes accross as grandstanding (not being fiscally conservative) by certain yes men on the council. Phases I, II & III collectively are an excellent alternative to spending 18million for a new cop shop. Curious, why is it that far less afluent communities like Franklin Park are finding ways to mainain or build new infrastructure (like a new police station) but we can’t. This sounds alot like the Park Boards of old being nickeled and dimed year after year until they finally had enough and went ahead with the current Centennial Pool project without consulting residents, much less with their consent. The result of that nickel and diming is now a project that’s way over the top and one that dwarfs previously proposed more modest projects. Hope the same doesn’t happen here with the police station.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A stack of day-old IHOP pancakes would be “an excellent alternative” to the brain-dead $18 million new cop shop.

Other communities spend bundles of money on things like new, bigger cop shops because bureaucrats and most elected officials are the same everywhere, intoxicated with the ability to spend OPM. The City of Park Ridge is the exception to that rule because a majority of the current Council and the mayor aren’t drunk on OPM.

And OPM intoxication is why a majority of the current Park Board members and all the executive staff chose to waste $8 million on their economically foolish water park, which would have lost in a referendum just like the cop shop did in 2009.

Aren’t these tax increases just passed onto another year? The work has to be done soon. So, like a typical government, we will wait until we are sued or forced to do it at higher price (whether higher borrowing or physical cost.) There are absolute liabilities in which Park Ridge could easily be sued because of.

The “Cop Shop” is disgusting. It’s not a respectable environment for workers of Park Ridge. Is it ironic or “serf”like for elected politicians who are lawyers (one with a government PENSION on the way) making 1st responders work in awful environments?

Schedule ALL city council meetings in the “Cop Shop” until it’s renovated. That would change things. Didn’t the Mayor say he wouldn’t work there?

I find it pretty off-putting to treat the police like that in a city like Park Ridge.

Cutting, cutting, cutting isn’t always good policy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: What tax increases “just [get] passed onto another year”? What work “has to be done soon”? What “absolute liabilities” could Park Ridge “easily be sued because of”?

Those are the kind of half-baked comments that used to drive City government into all sorts of stupid, fiscally irresponsible decisions from the time Ron Wietecha became mayor throught Howard Frimark’s vacating of City Hall, all of which left the City’s infrastructure neglected and the City burdened with multi-millions of unproductive debt and years of deficits.

If the cop shop is so “disgusting,” Chief K and the PCATF shouldn’t have put off mold remediation until Year 3 of the “improvement” project. And if all it takes to solve that problem is cleaning a couple of times a year – as Chief K is now suggesting – why wasn’t that already done?

We critiqued the foolishness of the cop shop “improvement” plan in our posts of 03.14.12 and 03.16.12. We continue to stand on those critiques.

PW- c’mon you don’t think it’s because the Park Ridge taxpayers are about to be hit with the largest tax increase in decades?
Putting off work doesn’t save money, it defers it. Park Ridge has been paying the minimum payment on our infrastructure “credit card” for years and post election year 1 it’s about to hit. If the city doesn’t have a master plan for infrastructure improvements then they can’t be planned for the right way.

Bailing out expenditures with selling off assets reminds me of a gambler selling his watch to pay a gas bill. It’s not the right way to budget a household or a city.

Has this editor toured the police facility? I can’t imagine anyone thinking its suitable.

EDITOR’S NOTE: What “largest tax increase in decades”? What “infrastructure ‘credit card'”?

As best as we can determine, the City never has had a “master plan for infrastructure improvements,” and it may not even have a complete and comprehensive analysis of every foot of the current sewer system, including when each section was last inspected, last maintained, last repaired and/or last replaced?

One reason for that is that previous administrations were too busy wasting money on a new Peotone airport and giving multi-million dollar subsidies to private businesses and developers like PRC (for the Uptown TIF) which are now costing the City $1 million-plus a year in debt service and will continue to do so for years to come. Meanwhile, the elected officials who perpetrated these messes are out of office and acting like they weren’t even on the Council.

As far as the police station being “suitable,” take that up with Chief K, his command team, and the PCATF folks – all of whom apparently were content to let mold grow for a couple of extra years while “improvement” money was used to build a new evidence storage building when the evidence could have been stored in an existing City building like the current or former public works buildings.

LOVE your story about the cop shop cleaning solution. You aren’t happy about the Centennial Pool project but I hope you will admit that six years of nonstop nagging by several Park Boards has made the Park District think first about using elbow grease before fiscal grease to improve facilities. It’s amazing what a little soap, water, ammonia and paint have done to freshen many formerly ratty spaces. Maybe the City could take a page from the Park District’s book. Maybe.

EDITOR’S NOTE: After burying Park District taxpayers in around $7 million of non-referendum debt for a half-baked water part that can only be used 3 months of the year, the Park Board and District staff who perpetrated that boondoggle should be wielding the buckets and mops themselves for the next several years. And even THAT wouldn’t be enough punishment for their stupidity and arrogance.

So now we have the police “bunker” next to city hall and I’m curious: Has an occupancy permit been issued? If so, when? And if it’s been more than 7 days since it was applied for, how come Workmaster still has a sign on the property?

EDITOR’S NOTE: According to both Wikipedia AND the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a “bunker” is a mostly below-ground structure, while Cop Shop South is (we understand) entirely above ground. As for your questions, we have no idea.

It looks like it should be below ground.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hey, it’s a delightful structure – just ask Chief K and the folks on the PCATF.

The point about infrastructure improvements is that ignoring them doesn’t make them go away.
Move it to next year then that has to replace something else. It’s a bad cycle. It will force taxpayers to eventually “pay” to get caught up

Also, mold is one problem. Not the only by far.

As far as the tax increase , isn’t it going to be at least 5.53%??

EDITOR’S NOTE: Unfortunately, it appears the City doesn’t even have a comprehensive understanding of the current condition of its infrastructure, especially the sewer system. So “infrastructure improvements” are still a step or two away, other than those tied to flood control as identified by the Burke study.

As for mold, apparently it’s now a problem a little Mr. Clean can solve. Who would have thought it when Chief K and the PCATF seemed to be suggesting PRPD personnel should be wearing haz-mat suits.

Where did you get that 5.53%?

The property tax increase will be 2.2%, assuming it passes in its current form.

Phase II and III included many projects which simply cannot be considered as essential, most notably a sally port. I expect the Council to revisit each and every aspect of those Phases if and when the matter is resurrected. I do not agree that the project should go forward in its present form even if we sell city property or receive some other “windfall.’

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mega Millions is up to $257 million, Mr. Mayor. For only a $1 “investment” the City could build a new cop shop that would totally smoke anything Niles, Glenview or the other North and Northwest suburbs have. And there would be enough money left over to fund the City’s own “Deep Tunnel” for flood control.

That’s WAY better than the $3, $5, or $8 of services all those community groups said they were providing for every $1 of City money they received.

I remember reading that PowerPoint presentation over a year ago and thinking to myself what a load of crapola that was, incliuding the mold problem which everybody knows is usually just a cleaning/bleaching matter. So when these other commentators talk about how the place is intolerable for the workers I too wonder why they built that new ugly building when evidence storage could have been built in the empty space at the current public works building or in the Park Ridge Baseball space at the old public works building. This sounds more and more like a bunch of manufactured problems rather than real ones, and I’m glad the mayor and the council have finally stood up to the spenders.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We wouldn’t necessarily use the term “crapola,” but we wouldn’t take issue with it, either.

“This sounds more and more like a bunch of manufactured problems rather than real ones, and I’m glad the mayor and the council have finally stood up to the spenders”.

Stood up to the spenders??? Correct me if I am wrong but the council and the Mayor are the spenders. I mean neither the Chief nor any member of the PCATF can cut a check for a project or increase taxes to pay for a project. The flood control task force is not a spender either. All these groups (formed and appointed by the Mayor) can do is make recommendations. They do not have the power of authority to spend anything on these projects.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Admittedly only the ELECTED officials on the Council have the power of the purse: even the Mayor only votes to break ties, and he still needs 3 votes to sustain his vetoes.

But historically a variety of special interests, both inside and outside City government (and inside and outside other local governmental bodies), have lobbied both the elected officials and the public for all sorts of spending proposals, including: a $20 million new Library back in 2002; an $18 million new cop shop back in 2009; a $3.4 million Centennial water park in 1996; a $7 million-plus Centennial water park in 2013; a few hundred thousand dollars for private community groups, etc. And to the extent those special interests advocate spending, we believe they can accurately be characterized as “spenders” – even though the legally cannot do the spending themselves.

Boy the Mayor and the council have a great gig!! The Mayor appoints a task force and they proceed to give it no direction at all.

The purpose of the council on the city website says….”to provide input, feedback and recommendations to the Chief of Police, the Mayor, and the City Council regarding a range of issues or concerns related to the lives and well-being of the citizens of Park Ridge and the ability of the Police Department to fulfill its mission and purpose”.

The Mayor and council never give direction, never reign in, never do a damn thing related to this task force. The task force comes up with suggestions that you all do not like and now these folks who appear to have botched this whole deal get CREDIT for “standing up to the spenders”.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The PCATF was supposed to address how the image of the police department could be improved in the wake of the Ekl Report, but it was almost immediately turned into a cop shop advocacy group by a handful of task force members. From that point forward it was GIGO.

You make my point for me. That is what it was for?? Who says?? You? The above job description I pasted above certainly is, can be and turned out to be much more than that.

If, as you claim, it was turned into something it was never intended to be by some “evil” cop shop advocacy group, not a single elected official did a thing about it.

So I will repeat, they totally botched it (the Mayor in forming it and the council in not bringing it back to what they thought it was intended to be). They made a mess but now I am to give them credit for cleaning it up??

EDITOR’S NOTE: No, we didn’t make your point for you – because it’s still difficult to tell exactly what your “point” is.

We have never claimed the “cop shop advocacy group” is “evil.” But it’s pretty clear from reading the minutes of the PCATF meetings that by the end of 2010 – its first year in operation – Chief K and certain of the PCATF’s members had already moved beyond merely implementing the recommendations of the 2008 Ekl Report to improve police-community relations, and into almost full-time cop shop advocacy. That turned off some members, who either quit the PCATF or simply quit attending.

Blind-squirrel theory being what it is, however, you are correct in noting that “not a single elected official did a thing about it.” And that’s the fault primarily of Mayor Schmidt, then-Public Safety chair Ald. Sal Raspanti (4th), then-city mgr. Jim Hock, and Chief K himself. So when the cop shop plan finally came up for a vote, the previous Council approved all three phases of it and approved the funding of Year One.

Yes, that was “botched,” although Schmidt did veto that “botch” but his veto was overridden. The “new” Council, however, has corrected that “botch,” at least temporarily, by not funding Phases II or III this year.