They’re all sock puppets. They just answer to different puppet masters.

EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s the kind of opinion folks like yourself only state anonymously.

As we responded to your comment of 02.28.15 @ 6:14 pm: “[J]ust because the choice is sometimes/often a bad one – like heart disease v. brain cancer, or Thillens v. Moylan – doesn’t mean one isn’t better than the other, if only slightly.”

We know you have your favorite sock puppets, as your many comments have indicated. You just don’t want to have to defend them, and your own credibility, like you would if your name were linked with them.

It’s funny how D-64 and the City spend about the same amount of money a year, yet nobody shows up at D-64 board meetings while the City Council chambers are often pretty crowded. One reason that I can think of is that D-64 has never had a champion of transparency to match Mayor Schmidt. The other is that the Council and the D-64 board meet on the same night. Why doesn’t D-64 move its meetings to Tuesday night so that interested citizens don’t have to choose between its meetings and the City’s? If I can get to the D-64 forum tonight, that’s the question I would probably ask.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The very LAST thing the D-64 Board, administrators or staff wants is more taxpayers at its meetings. So the chance of D-64 moving its meeting to another night so as not to conflict with the City Council meetings is slim bordering on none.

Both Knight and Maloney are qualified for the job….and are not puppets! Both genuinely care about the city and more importantly share the same passion of ultimately doing what’s in the best interests of it’s residents, as Dave did. They’re also both committed to staying the course when it comes to fiscal responsibility while at the same time progressively moving the city forward. No one’s going to replace Dave…..but Marty or Dan will do right by the city and it’s residents by carving their own path.

What’s interesting about Eggemann is that in an article in the H-A in early December, he was said to have been Mayor Dave’s Campaign Manager. Which he was not. Apparently once called out on that fact he took it off his Linkedin profile. Why is that interesting, at least to me? Because his wife, Char Foss-Eggemann scrutinized the petitions of several local candidates and called them out on what she perceived as irregularities. Perhaps she should have started at home.

Meow!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This editor was one of Mayor Dave’s closest friends and political allies, and was very active in both of Mayor Dave’s campaigns (2009 and 2013). He can say – and he IS saying, with the utmost confidence and certainty – that Mayor Dave considered Mark Eggemann his “campaign manager” for the 2013 campaign and referred to him as such. Any assetion to the contrary is totally false.

Having attended a couple of D64 meetings I can tell you that they are full of “ed speak” (another name for b.s.), long beyond reason and they don’t subscribe to the H.I.T.A. of Mayor Dave. I’ll attend the city council meetings any day over D64. But then, I suspect that’s what D64 is counting on, so don’t look for any change in meeting days on their part.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Exactly, which is why (according to the March 12 H-A article about the D-64 candidates, you have PREA candidate Bublitz talking about “Jane Boyd’s Core Plus More” and an “improved Multi-Tiered System of Support (previously known as Response to Intevention)”; and Board president Borrelli talking about “the Educational End review.”

And the administrators and teachers are hard pressed to get out a sentence without some acronym or edu-speak term at the heart of it.

What is Jane Boyd’s Core Plus More? What is the Multi-Tiered System of Support? What was Response to Intervention?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We Googled “Jane Boyd’s Core Plus More” and found bupkis. When you can’t achieve an objective because you don’t even have one, try to bamboozle them with process and edu-speak.

My hope is that Mark Eggeman will be the Mayor Dave of D64. I too am underwhelmed at Borelli and Paterno’s performance so far, but I haven’t lost all hope. Perhaps Mark will be the catalyst to bring more attention to the goat rodeo on South Prospect Avenue.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We think those two guys need an alchemist more than a mere catalyst, but the only candidate remotely close to either running for the D-64 Board is Eggemann.

Wouldn’t dave want a more transparent and more informed process of picking an acting mayor – one that would give an opportunity to have public input and something more than a quick knee jerk decision? The city attorney memo recommended quick action but failed to give reasons why quick action is mandated? Actually the memo says a temporary chairman can sign what needs to be signed and the council can go about its business.

When ald Bernick resigned Dave did not simply make a quick decision. He empaneled a group (including you pub dog) and had an open process that accepted applications conducted interviews and allowed public input.
Honoring dave’s legacy would warrant a more open and informed process rather than a quick vote tonight which will ultimately give the impression that back room deals were being struck and/or alderman were lobbying to become acting mayor behind closed doors and before the body is even cold.

Showing respect to dave’s legacy mandates appointing a temporary chairman per the city attorney’s memo and then taking some time to pick the acting mayor. Why the rush?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This isn’t anything like replacing Bernick. HIS replacement was an unelected citizen chosen by the Council, not a sitting elected aldermen being chosen by the Council.

By state law, Mayor Dave’s successor must be chosen from among the seven aldermen, all of whom already have gained voter authority by virtue of their having been elected by the voters. So while the replacement of Bernick was in derogation of voters’ rights, the replacement of Mayor Dave by a sitting alderman is not.

And as we stated in the post, nobody knows more about working with the aldermen who will be considered for the Acting Mayor position than the current aldermen.

Bob, I do not know where you are getting your information but a cursory check of Dave’s Campaign disclosure would show that I am the only salaried staff person Dave hired for his campaign. I was hired for his campaign in the role of campaign manager.

I don’t know what agenda this serves to have this lie perpetuated but it is a lie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This serves no “agenda,” Jean, it’s simply the truth based on my firsthand personal knowledge.

Dave consulted Mark on all aspects of the campaign, including strategy, messaging, flyers, campaign events, etc. – as those of us whom Dave asked to work with Mark on those matters well know; and Mark agreed to do that on an unpaid basis. You were paid to handle the day-to-day management of the campaign office and to coordinate the volunteers on a day-to-day basis, which you also had done for his 2009 mayoral campaign.

I was at Roosevelt last night. Eggemann wasn’t there, but the mealy mouthed crap I heard from the other four (Borrelli, Bublitz, Johnson and Sotos) gives me no hope that anything will change for the better, either for student achievement of for the taxpayers, during the next two years. Ugh.

“This editor was one of Mayor Dave’s closest friends and political allies, and was very active in both of Mayor Dave’s campaigns (2009 and 2013)”.

Wow!!! Now I am an old guy but I have never heard you say this before….ever!!!! Feel free to correct me if I am wrong as I am sure you will. In fact I would say that over the years on this blog if you have tried to play it as if you were calling it down the middle when apparently you were not.

Care to be a bit more “transparent” about your relationship with the Eggemann campaign(s)?? I mean if you all worked so closely on two campaigns you must consider them to be political allies (maybe more than social friends) and are providing them with advice. By the way I love the word messaging you used. This blog is very good a messaging. Those who read this blog should keep that in mind when endorsements come out.

Man for a group of people who talk about how much they hate politicians you sure seem to know how to act like them.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Despite what you apparently have heard, being an “old guy” doesn’t require that you be asleep at the switch or just plain oblivious to what’s been going on in local government.

This blog was founded on the principle that local government should be focused on issues and ideas, rather than on personalities. Hence, we have always allowed anonymous comments even when it gives regular commentators (and former officials?) like yourself the abiliy to snipe from the bushes without accountability.

But for you to claim you didn’t know this editor was a close ally and friend of Mayor Dave is like “Inspector Renault” in Casablanca claiming to be “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” in Rick’s Cafe. This editor’s friendship and support of Mayor Dave has been so well known that no less a paragon of civic virtue than our former mayor, Howard P. Frimark, responded to the appointment of this editor to the Library Board by calling him “one of the many unqualified cronies of [Mayor Dave] who has been placed on boards and commissions the last 27 months” – from the City Council Chambers – as was reported in the local papers and in our 07.21.11 post.

This editor has provided “advice” about local government to everybody who reads this blog, to anyone who asks for it, and even to those who don’t. He has taken meals, cocktailed, and smoked cigars with a number of elected and appointed officials over the years, many of whom he has vigorously supported and many of whom he has opposed with equal vigor. Among them is Mark Eggemann.

And, yes, this editor and everybody associated wtih this blog hates “politicians” and “politics.” That’s why we do “government.” But if you ever want to come out of the anonymous closet and debate these issues, just name the place and the time. Don’t take it the wrong way, however, if we don’t hold our collective breath waiting to hear from you.

Jean:

Here is a possible agenda. PD clearly supports Eggemann and is probably very involved in the campaign. You know, strategy, messaging and the like. He has admitted working with them on Mayor Dave’s campaign and being a “social friend” with Char.

Combine that with the fact that he and Char went nuttso about attention to detail in an attempt to get an opponent booted from the ballot and to some this will look bad. I mean detail is so critical and yet Eggemann claimed to be CM when the documents say he was not.

The agenda is that PD wants to brush this away as soon as possible.

As to whether or not it is a lie, I will leave that to you. I have no involvement or relationship with any of the parties mentioned on this thread.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please identify with specificity what “documents” state that Mark Eggeman was NOT Mayor Dave’s “campaign manager” for the 2013 campaign.

After all, who wouldn’t take the word of an anonymous commentator when he says that he has “no involvement or relationship with any of the parties mentioned on this thread”?

I am still curious about why the hardasses you have championed become apostates once they’re on the inside. I mean, these are genuine hardasses in their right-wing views. And yet….Aren’t you the least bit curious? Do you think their human desire to fit in and be liked really trumped their hardass zeal? I am asking this honestly as I agree we pay way too much for the administrators vis a vis our test results and their unwillingness to give manifestly awful teachers the boot. So I’m not a tool of the schools. What could it be, then?

In re Mayor Maloney. It has a ring to it, eh?

Let the games continue!

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s pretty simple, really: many/most of them aren’t really “hardasses” to begin with because their “hardass” attitude isn’t grounded in any informed, principled philosophy of government. Combine that with a need to be liked and an aversion of conflict, and they become pathetically easy marks for the feel-good, big-government, non-transparent, economically-irresponsible “politicians” who tend to control these local governmental bodies – especially the schools.

You demonstrate some of that faux-“hardass” attitude with your comment that “we pay way too much for the administrators vis a vis our test results and their unwillingness to give manifestly awful teachers the boot.” You’re willing to blame ALL “administrators” while giving a pass to all but the most “manifestly awful” teachers.

If teachers are “professionals” and influence education as much as their many apologists insist they do, then those “professional” teachers should be able to overcome the bureaucratic administrators. And if they can’t, then those teachers are overpaid and underqualified.

8:24 a.m., I would sure hope that Mr. Trizna and this blog are supporting Mr. Eggemann over those other four sob sisters running against him. I read their positions in the Advocate, and only Eggemann sounded like he cares about the taxpayers and will not be a tool of the PREA. My neighbor who attended last night’s forum at Roosevelt said the other candidates sounded even worse in person than the did in the Advocate.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Your neighbor’s observations are consistent with the feedback we have received.

You’re being disingenuous. I’m not blaming “all” administrators any more than you are blaming “all” of the many members who inhabit the categories of people/livelihoods you despise. It’s just shorthand. but yes, I do cut the teachers more slack. They make a lot less than even the lowest-paid desk jockey/administrator and are actually working face-to-face with their customers’ kids in the field. Kinda like being in court with everything riding on you for six hours every day with a semi-lunchbreak. But whatever do you mean about “professional teachers should be able to overcome the bureaucratic administrators” — how is an excellent, motivating teacher to “overcome” the dragass administrators who are too lazy or scared to document the failings that parents and students bring to them about the same handful of lousy teachers, kid after kid and year after year? Do you get to say which of your peers get to stay? Teachers don’t. And that doesn’t make them “overpaid and underqualified.” It does make you a bit less careful in your thinking than I would expect.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We “despise” no honest work, nor honest workers.

That being said, only someone on the PREA payroll or totally bereft of their senses would compare classroom teaching in D-64 with “being in court” – or being in the operating room, or fighting a fire, or playing “Taps” at a military funeral, or performing a thousand other tasks for which their performer’s success or failure is revealed clearly, definitively and relatively contemporaneously with their performance. And that carry real consequences.

Moreover, “everything” is NEVER “riding on [a teacher] for six hours every day,” or any day. How may teachers ever step forward to claim, or even accept, responsibility for a student underachieving, or failing? NONE! Only the absolute worst of the worst teachers are fired, and then usually only after months of paid leave while their union prosecutes grievances. And there aren’t many jobs in Park Ridge that have such a favorable risk/reward equation as being a D-64 teacher when one considers: (a) the pay, especially for only 8-9 months of work; (b) the pension; (c) the calendar; (d) the convenience; (e) the lack of performance standards; and (f) the lack of any threat of outsourcing, relocation, or closure.

I think accountability is what we are trying to talk about here, and on that we agree completely. But it gets lost in the generic resentment of the perceived easy berth and excessive compensation teachers enjoy. If only you were half as incensed about the plank in your pals’ eyes as the mote in the teacher’s.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The “easy berth and excessive compensation” is not “perceived,” it is real – along with no accountability and none of the customary job risks most taxpayers have.

And stop being obtuse with nonsensical phrases like “the plank in [our] pals’ eyes” just because you think it’s a cute metaphor.

PW, your response to 3:49 is exactly right. Teaching at D-64 (and 207) carries none of the accountability or the risks of most jobs, which is why so many people flock to those jobs and hang onto them for so long. And so long as the PREA can keep the school board members and taxpayers from challenging that propaganda by calling them “anti-teacher,” things will just get worse.

I find it fascinating that people (like 5:40)go on about people flocking to these jobs. That just does not match my experience. When I think about all the people I grew up with and went to school with and college with, and when I think about my 12 years here in PR, and all the children I have seen grow up and go to college or are now in college, I cannot think of a single one who became a teacher or even considered it…….not one!! I mean I can name boat loads of lawyers and bankers and programmers but not one freakin’ teacher.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You must be right, because the front page of our local newspapers regularly warn of the dire shortage of teachers in our local schools. And haven’t you seen the signs on the doors of all our local school buildings: “Teachers Wanted. Apply Within”? Or hear the giant sucking sound of teachers fleeing both local school systems every year immediately after the school year ends?

Well, I didn’t plan to be an apologist for the teachers, as I tend to be more on your side of the fence, but the easy berth and excessive comp is not “real.” It is perceived. I don’t see you spending the day with 30 of somebody else’s kids of any age.

And then being blamed for whatever goes wrong with their values, their work ethic, etc. etc.

Whether a job is too well paid or too easy is totally a matter of opinion, whether you like it or not.
However, the no accountability thang IS real. And that has to change, like, yesterday. But making teachers struggle, scramble, worry, walk the floor and eat excrement to keep food on the table as is now the norm in the private sector (wasn’t always, as you will reluctantly recall) is NOT the way to enforce accountability. What has to happen is that the board tell the admins that they will be held accountable and that if they don’t muster it, they will be cast back into the loving arms of the private sector and its 24/7 job risks. Teachers who can’t or won’t shape up will be gone if the administrators do their jobs. No need to screw the good teachers to get to the bad ones. Unless you’re just out to cut paychecks and benefits wherever you can, under the assumption that the market will provide the desperate. That’s not you, is it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Puh-leeze! You’ve been on the small-“s” socialist/deus-ex-government side of the fence for so long you stopped looking for the gate years ago. Stop pretending you’re anything but.

If people don’t want to spend the day with 30 of somebody else’s kids, there’s always barber college – or medical school, dental school, veterinarian school, law school, diesel mechanics’ school, engineering school, MBA programs and thousands of other jobs out there for the masses who have college educations but didn’t realize early enough in their adult lives what a sweet deal being a public school teacher in Park Ridge is. For the kind of money, the kind of guaranteed pension, and the lack of any risk or accountability they enjoy, the line to replace those poor downtrodden excrement-eating teachers who decide to do something else will be around the block.

“Teachers who can’t or won’t shape up” shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, but they were; and then they were given tenure so you can’t get rid of them…as if their former fellow teachers who are now administrators would actually try to get rid of them. And thinking the folks currently sitting on both of our local school boards – who prove, on a daily basis, the wisdom and insight of Mark Twain’s quote about school boards – would actually demand better from either the teachers or administrators is just silly.

Jean Dietch is a busybody trying to be important. [Remainder deleted by EDITOR]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The first sentence of your comment has been published because it appears to be within the boundaries – barely – of what we permit from anonymous commentators about specific persons who have chosen to enter the public or the PW domain.

But that’s the end of this particular who-knew-Mayor-Dave-best type of kerfuffel. Comprende?

I have a question. Was there a need for the aldermen to “elect” a mayor now? Why not wait until after the upcoming election and have the new council do so?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We answered your question in the post:

But just because state law doesn’t provide for a temporary mayor to serve for the six-plus weeks until the two new aldermen will be seated, doesn’t mean some ill-informed folks won’t call for the Council to wait anyway. As if brand new out-of-the-box aldermen could possibly have anything close to the sense of the current Council’s group dynamic – and what it’s like to work with each of these individual aldermen – that Sweeney and Smith have developed over 4 years of Council service.

Who’s ill-informed? You seem to miss the fact that neither Sweeney nor Smith will be working with the acting mayor after May 1 or thereabouts. So why on earth should they get to say who the next generation of aldermen have to work with? And what is the group dynamic you are lauding? More like groupthink, I think. Mr. Maloney will do a fine job but I certainly wouldn’t credit the all-knowing but fast-escaping lst and 3rd ward aldermen for being a better judge than the new elected officials will be.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whether or not you like or respect Alds. Sweeney and Smith, the undisputed fact is that they have served with Alds. Knight and Maloney for the past four years; with Ald. Mazzuca for the past three years; and with Alds. Milissis and Shubert for the past two years. With the possible exception of the occasional meeting dealing with the west-of-Greenwood flood issue that candidate Wilkening attended, the four aldermanic candidates, cumulatively, have not attended even one year’s worth of Council and COW meetings.

So thinking that these newbies could make even remotely as informed a decision on who should be the Acting Mayor is borderline brain-dead.

So what’s your solution? If you feel my fellow small-s-u-no-what Mr. Clemens is correct, then it is “silly” to hope that an elected body will do right by its constituents. But where does that leave us, except impotent and depressed?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The solution is simple: get better candidates to run, and then elect them.

We had almost twenty years of chowderheaded mayors and pretty much rubber-stamp councils, but we finally elected and re-elected an excellent mayor and a much improved Council. And despite some of our beefs about how the Park Board has done some things, even THAT body is also operating as good or better than it did over those same twenty years.

Only the school boards have remained a backwater of rubber-stamping bobbleheaded midgets who defer to the “education professionals” at the drop of a pencil, respond to declining rankings by spending more and demanding less, and then tell whomever will listen that it’s all “for the kids.”