Back in 2003, when members of the Park Ridge City Council were like cats in heat trying to get the Uptown TIF off the ground, they needed the support of the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 School Board.  And the Council knew that support wouldn’t come easy.

The TIF plan was going to take money from D-64, D-207 and the Park Ridge Park District.  Because D-64 would be the most financially-impacted by the TIF of those three taxing bodies, it hired a top-notch TIF attorney: John B. Murphey of Rosenthal, Murphey, Coblentz & Donahue in Chicago.  And Murphey told the D-64 Board that the City could not prove its contention that the proposed TIF district met the “but for” test: but for the creation of a TIF district, that area would not be redeveloped.

Armed with Murphey’s opinion, the D-64 Board demanded some significant financial concessions from the City in order to forego a lawsuit.  And those randy cats on the Council – happily slurping up all the pro-TIF Kool-Aid being doled out by then-mayor Ron Wietecha, then-city manager Tim Schuenke, and the various bond consultants and attorneys who saw the TIF as a nice chunk of revenue for them – jumped at the chance to effectively bribe D-64 for its support.

They cut a deal that required payments to D-64 irrespective of whether or not the TIF was successful.  And, by now, we all know how that’s turned out for the City..

So it comes as no surprise to hear that the City has been behind in making payments to D-64, as recently reported in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge owes cash to schools, District 64 says,” 03.07.14).

Right now City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton and Finance Director Kent Oliven claim to need more and better new-student data from D-64 to determine how much the City owes.  For its part, D-64 says it provided its calculations back on January 9, but D-64’s highly-paid Business Mgr. Becky Allard reportedly was unavailable for comment.

Interestingly enough, the H-A article does not report either the dollar amount claimed by D-64, or the City’s proposed payment to D-64.  And the most recent Agenda Cover Memorandum on this issue says only that payments to D-64 were due by December 15 but D-64 didn’t even submit its new student data to the City until January 9.

Whatever the number turns out to be, the City should pay it promptly because – in true Chicago Way style – once you’ve been bought, you stay bought…so long as you get paid.  The City bought D-64 back in 2003, and it now owes that obligation despite the TIF’s turning out to be the financial white elephant for the City that some of us warned about back in 2003.

Although some folks at City Hall would like to renegotiate the bribe deal their predecessors cut a decade ago, the D-64 Board owes its constituents (a good number of whom are not Park Ridge residents) the duty to collect the TIF-related payments D-64 is owed.  And the D-64 Board has every right to take a lesson from the fictional “Paul Cicero” in the movie “Goodfellas”:

“But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what.  Business bad?  #@$% you, pay me.  Oh, you had a fire? #@$% you, pay me.  Place got hit by lightning, huh?  #@$% you, pay me.”

Back in July 2003, Wietecha criticized the few aldermen who hesitated to vote for the TIF.

“The people are expecting you to do your job, and your job is to cast a vote.”

Two months later, after the Council foolishly passed the TIF, Wietecha resigned his office on a Friday night and subsequently moved to Barrington.

Before his bill came due for “Paulie’s [TIF] money.”

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