Last Monday night (March 2), Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt gave his sixth consecutive “State of the City Address.” By his own admission, it was the most upbeat one he has given.

He didn’t know it was to be his last.

Mayor Dave was buried yesterday in the Town of Maine cemetery. He died suddenly late last Wednesday (March 4) night of what is believed to have been a brain aneurysm.

Ironically, in the address’s opening-paragraph Mayor Dave claimed to be “as optimistic as ever about the City’s future,” clearly unaware of how soon his own future would be cut short. Throughout his address he cited the progress made on such matters as the refinancing the Uptown TIF bonds, a lower projected TIF deficit, stopping further decline in Moody’s rating of the City’s bonds, surpluses in the General Fund, and the repair of the Touhy railroad overpass.

Always the realist, however, he echoed Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address (“a wise and frugal Government…”) in reiterating the need for City government to maintain its resolve that “every single dime we ask the taxpayers to give to us is spent as wisely and frugally as possible.”

That should be a prominent piece of the legacy Mayor Dave left his successors and our community.

The rest of Mayor Dave’s address was a mixed bag of the good and the not-so-good. But telling his constituents the bad as well as the good was a hallmark of Mayor Dave: he respected us enough to tell us the truth.  And he trusted us to understand and use that truth to vote and act in the best interest of our entire community.

That respect and trust should be a prominent piece of his legacy, as well.

One of Mayor Dave’s greatest virtues was that he never wanted to be mayor. As a first-term First Ward alderman he regularly scoffed at any suggestion that he was looking toward the big chair at The Horseshoe.

But about a year into his aldermanic term he saw and heard things that he knew weren’t right. He spoke out against improper closed sessions and the secret dealings that went on in them, most notably over the City’s attempt to acquire the 720 Garden property for a new police station.  That earned him a formal, albeit meaningless, “condemnation” from his predecessor and a majority of his fellow aldermen, even though everything he said and did was fully within the boundaries of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

It also contributed to a break with his mayoral predecessor – as did Ald. Dave’s siding with residents who opposed the traveling road show known as PADS because he believed it to be a half-cocked, ineffective and inhumane way to address homelessness; and because it violated the City Code.

Those positions made Ald. Dave a number of powerful adversaries. But it earned him even more supporters.

And the more he studied City finances, the more he realized they were a house of cards that nobody else around The Horseshoe – elected official or bureaucrat – wanted to acknowledge.

So when no other challengers to the then-sitting mayor stepped forward in 2009, Ald. Dave became Candidate Dave, a reluctant Cincinnatus with a simple campaign platform: “H.I.T.A.”

Honesty. Integrity. Transparency. Accountability.

Can you imagine any “politician” running on such a platform?  They’d be laughed right out of the politicians’ union. But Candidate Dave was no “politician” because he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he wouldn’t compromise principles just to make some half-baked, short-term deal that would make some special interest happy.

So despite running as the darkest of dark-horse candidates – a short-time Park Ridge resident with no kids in the local schools or sports programs, no family members living in town, no local business presence, and no Country Club, Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions club memberships – his message and his two-year record on the Council resonated with the voters. He won the mayoralty in 2009 by a solid margin over the incumbent.

His adherence to those H.I.T.A. principles and his straight-talking, stand-up style during his first term in office earned him the nickname “Mayor No” for having the common sense, courage and foresight to just say “no” to unaffordable and/or misguided spending; and the nickname “Mayor Veto” for doing what no other Park Ridge mayor had ever done: veto irresponsible budgeting and veto irresponsible spending.

Not all of his vetoes were sustained, but a majority of them were. And the ones that were sustained saved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on untimely, unnecessary or just outright wasteful expenditures.

That earned him re-election in 2013 by an even wider margin than in 2009 – despite the first-ever endorsement of his opponent by (and a $1,000 contribution from) the union representing the City’s public works employees; and an unprecedented endorsement of that same opponent by the City’s three previous mayors and twenty-five former aldermen allegedly representing 100 years of City government experience.

Mayor Dave took that in stride: “If the people who caused all the problems we’re stuck with are for [my opponent], I must be doing something right.”

And indeed he was.  But that ended last Wednesday night.

In his six years in office, Mayor Dave was bolder and more courageous, and more fiscally responsible, than all three of his predecessors. Combined. He embraced the daunting tasks they left for him and “his” City Councils. And in that relatively short time he and those City Councils succeeded in mending the gaping holes in the City’s finances while at the same time invigorating the City’s spirit with a new style of government – grounded in reality but energized with a freshness, honesty, transparency and optimism that won him support from a broad spectrum of City residents.

Mayor Dave knew his own mind and had firm principles which he articulated clearly and acted upon decisively.  Although a staunch Republican, he never saw any City issue as a “Red” or “Blue” one.  He knew the color of most of the City’s problems was green, the color of money, which is why he was so focused on the financial side of City government.

He never backed down from a fight when he was championing the cause of Park Ridge, and especially its taxpayers.  Mayor Dave instinctively embraced the common sense of those taxpayers that Nelson Algren so marvelously memorialized in his book Chicago: City on the Make: “For the masses that do the city’s labor also keep the city’s heart. And they think there’s something fishy about someone giving them a museum for nothing and free admission on a Saturday afternoon.”

Substitute “an Uptown TIF” for “a museum,” and “anything” for “admission,” and you’ve got the picture.

There will never be another Mayor Dave.

He was the right man at the right time for Park Ridge: an affable, tireless, guile-less yet savvy public servant who hated “politics” and the term “politician,” for good reason.  He strove every single day to do the right thing for the well-being of his adopted community with absolutely no expectation of, or desire for, any economic, social or personal gain.  Whether at his Loop law office, at the ballpark, or on vacation near some ocean a thousand miles away, he truly was the 24/7 mayor Park Ridge needed these past six years.

But now he’s gone.

So it’s left to those of us who believed in the principles of government he stood for to carry them forward – hopefully with something close to the humor and irreverence he regularly brought to the task.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss)

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