This blog doesn’t regularly quote scripture.
And when it does, it’s usually the gospel according to Franklin, Adams, Jefferson and Lincoln instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
But in our post of 03.17.11, we used the words of Luke 16:10 to describe how our public officials’ ability to handle important and expensive tasks is often revealed by how they handle the smaller tasks:
“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.”
And that principle is at the heart of the article in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate about the Park Ridge Library Board’s rejection of a proposal to purchase $19,232 worth of high-density stackable event chairs, primarily for use in the Library’s first-floor meeting/activity room (“Park Ridge Library Board rejects $19,232 chair purchase,” November 10) – even though the article pretty much misses that principle entirely.
First and foremost (although overlooked in the article), NO Trustee objected to the purchase of new chairs. The current ones are reportedly 35 years old and anybody who has seen them knows they are more than showing their age.
Also missing from the article was any reference to the fact that the Library’s purchasing policy, which requires the Library Director to “secure informal written proposals from suppliers…when an expenditure for a single item” – in this case, 125 stackable chairs – “…is expected to be over $5,000.00 but less than $20,000.00,” was totally ignored.
Instead, the Library Director initially came to the Board on August 5, 2015 with ONE proposal for one particular chair: the KI “Opt4.”
Just that one.
Why?
Because, according to her 08.05.15 memo, that’s a chair that is “comfortable, lightweight and can be stacked up to 40 high,” has a “10 year warranty,” weighs “less than 8 pounds each” and are “in use at several area libraries that report they are very satisfied with their performance.”
“Comfortable” based on what objectively measurable standards? The memo doesn’t say.
“Lightweight”? Why does it matter whether they’re 8 lbs., 11 lbs. or 14 lbs.? How much more “lightweight” than comparable chairs? The memo doesn’t say.
“In use at several area libraries”? Which ones? For how long? The memo doesn’t say.
“[Those libraries] report they are very satisfied with their performance” but how do they “report” it? What does “very satisfied” mean”? What “performance” standards are they applying? The memo doesn’t say.
Yet notwithstanding those 8 unanswered – actually, UN-ASKED – questions, the Library Director inexplicably requested the Library Board to blindly approve those $135.72 chairs. In other words, a rubber-stamp approval without ANY comparables. And without ANY specifications from which such comparables might be objectively determined.
None! Zero! Zip! Nada!
Actually, that’s not quite true: the Library Director tried to create the illusion of “comparables” by juxtaposing the $135.72 per chair cost of her preferred KI chairs with the estimated $110.00 “Cost to repair old chairs” – that NO Trustee suggested should be repaired.
An “irrelevant” non-comparable.
Translation: “I want these particular chairs and I don’t have to justify my wants to you Trustees or to the taxpayers you represent.”
Only after the Board balked at rubber-stamping that purchase did the Director come up with four alleged “comparables,” in a memo dated 09.08.15, despite no objective specifications to demonstrate whether and how those other four chairs might actually be “comparable” to the KI chair. Nor did she provide any objective “Consumer Reports”-style test results, evaluations or recommendations concerning quality, durability, or value of the KI chair or any of the four “comparables.”
Without such specs, test results, etc., the Board decided it should actually see and sit on some of those comparables.
So at the Planning & Operations portion of the October 14, 2015 Committee Of the Whole (“COW”) meeting, the Director provided samples of three allegedly comparable chairs while continuing to assert, as she did in the September 8 memo, that there weren’t many other comparables. Consequently, the minutes of that 10.14.15 meeting reflect that 5 of the 8 trustees present voted for the KI chair while 3 voted against it.
But when the KI chair came up for a final vote at the October 29 Board meeting and after further discussion ensued, a 5 (Egan, Dobrilovic, Foss-Eggemann, Reardon and Trizna) to 3 (Lamb, Parisi and Rayborn) majority voted to reject the Director’s chair recommendation for economic and procedural reasons – including that president Egan noted that he was able to find “many chairs” that appeared comparable to the KI simply through a 10-minute Google search.
You can read that discussion in the “draft” minutes of that portion of the meeting, or you can watch the meeting video, starting at the 54:17 mark and concluding at the 1:08:50 mark,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bcR8UJE0bw
during which you can hear the Director admit that her principal “specifications” for the new chairs was simply “high density” – followed by a lot of vague and subjective pseudo-criteria that ignores the fact that both the KI and the Demco Compact are made primarily of polypropylene (“poly”).
Except that the Demco costs only $48 each, or 35% of the cost of the KI. With no objective proof that the KI is better constructed, is more comfortable, or will last longer.
That’s what happens when the Library’s top administrator ignores the Library’s purchasing policy in the first instance – and then compounds that failure with two months of obfuscation and attempts at circumventing that policy; and when the Library Board is not just a rubber-stamp for the Director.
Irrespective of whether the matter is big or small.
Robert J. Trizna
Editor and publisher
Member, Park Ridge Library Board
To read or post comments, click on title.
14 comments so far
Pub dog- your kidding with this post about chairs right? Is it April fools already?
Really … You need a vacation or something. This is not your regular goofy nonsense but a full fledged off the deep end blathering. I am starting to feel even more sorry for you than I usually do.
EDITOR”S NOTE: Dislike, mock, feel sorry for, whatever…so long as you don’t like or agree with us we know we’re on the right track.
This is really basic, grass-roots government – which explains why you don’t understand it, considering you want to waste $6 million to inadequately address a virtually non-existent threat.
Great piece. Our library director has to wake up and realize- it’s not your money. It’s the taxpayers money and there are rules in place to protect our funds.
Thank you watchdog for a great job pointing out when our employees think this is a family business.
Good call on this. $10-11,0000 is not just chump change that bureaucrats are free to squander just because they want to.
For example, that same $10-11,000 would have kept the library open on those Sundays it was closed the summer before last.
And while I don’t know if the audience chairs at City Hall are “poly” or some other plastic-like material, or how much they cost, I have sat on them for a couple hours at a crack and didn’t feel like I was being tortured. So how much more comfortable could that KI chair be to justify its price?
We get it. You hate the library director and love to publicly humiliate her and anyone not aligned with your worldview. Great job.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s called “accountability”- although it’s unlikely that you’ve heard of it or know what it means. Here in Illinois it’s a concept that’s generally foreign to both bureaucrats and public officials.
The City Council has a pretty good grasp of it, the Park Board is trying, and now it’s the Library Board’s turn to start demanding it. Meanwhile, the two school boards are totally oblivious to it and, consequently, the performance of the schools shows it.
But those $6 million vestibules will save the day, we’re sure.
“The City Council has a pretty good grasp of it”….What?? How can that be??
You mean that there can be accountability without blogging about your good deeds or getting into online squabbles with fellow board/council members or getting into an online slap fight with a city employee??
Wow!! Amazing!!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Maybe you missed it, but it took the firing of one city mgr. and a number of very public and often heated “dialogues” between the Council and the current City Mgr. to finally get them on what seems to be pretty much the same page.
“it took the firing of one city mgr. and a number of very public and often heated “dialogues” between the Council and the current City Mgr. to finally get them on what seems to be pretty much the same page”.
So what is your point?? I mean that is their job. Just like it is your job to manage the Library Director including termination if you and a majority of the board see fit.
I will repeat, they managed to achieve “accountability” without blogging about their good deeds or getting into online squabbles with fellow board/council members or getting into an online slap fight with a city employee.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The point is that there are a number of ways to skin the cat, and most of them take time and consensus building.
it took over a year from the time an alderman suggested the former city mgr. was not cutting it until a majority of the Council, after giving him opportunities to straighten up and fly right, was willing to launch him.
If you don’t like what this blog says or how it says it, go elsewhere. Or get yourself a public office and actually do something, preferably without the bag over your head you wear here.
Ten grand means nothing to bureaucrats. Neither does objective standards for buying things as simple as chairs.
What I find infuriating is that the library board is scrutinizing a $19,000 purchase more closely than the District 64 board is scrutinizing a $6 million purchase.
EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s because most folks are afraid of being stigmatized by the Borrelli (formerly Heyde) crowd, the administrators and their toadies, as well as the PREA that never saw a taxpayer dollar that it didn’t believe belonged in its members’ pockets.
I think it’s interesting that you had NO problem spending $15,000 to $30,000 of taxpayer dollars to have TWO architects fight over each other. THAT’S not a waste of money. (From board minutes 11/10/15)
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Library Board had “NO problem” deciding to spend $15,000 on an architect to come up with design concepts for what might be a $2-3-4 Million Library renovation. And it seriously considered spending an additional $15,000 for a SECOND architect to come up with competing concepts with the intention that such a competition would bring forth the best ideas for such a project.
But at last Tuesday night’s Board meeting the decision was to hire only one architect – even without you showing up to tell us that a second architect was a waste of money.
Every dollar matters, and it’s time our public officials realized it. I agree that the City has been doing a pretty good job of it, and the Park District (except for the new park) is improving. Now it sounds like the Library is following suit. But the schools just don’t get it.
7:25:
So your infuriated, huh?? Well why don’t you “get yourself a public office and actually do something, preferably without the bag over your head you wear here”.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Said the fellow bag-head.
I like that the library board chose to go to referendum and give us taxpayers a voice on whether we wanted to spend more money on the library. And I like how it also is looking at a renovation to modernize it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Library Board did not choose to go to referendum. A majority of the then-library board, 2013-14 edition (only 4 members of which are still on the Board today, 3 of whom – Egan, Foss-Eggemann and this editor – wanted a referendum) and the Director didn’t want a referendum. Instead, they chose to embarrass and browbeat the City Council into giving the Library more of the City’s tax dollars – one of their tactics being to close the Library on summer Sundays in 2014. So the City Council told the Library Board it was going to pass a Library referendum and invited the Library Board to advise on how much money it wanted out of the referendum. That Board majority changed in July 2014, and the new majority (adding Lamb and Parisi) re-opened the Library on Sundays.
And it’s the current Library Board that came up with the idea to renovate and modernize the Library to help it function and serve the community better.
The current library board came up with the idea to renovate and modernize? Complete fiction. The library has been looking to modernize for years, and you initially tried to block those efforts if I remember correctly. Your sour grapes that the referendum actually passed are showing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s a total lie.
The Library Director and former boards spent the years since 2002 pouting about not getting a new bigger library. Only the new Board made the decision to hire an architect when the best/only “renovation” idea the Director and staff could come up with was move the reference desk and buy some new furniture.
You’re so full of crap it’s not even funny. Your entire post vilifies the library director’s request for $20,000 worth of new chairs and now you’re patting yourself on the back for masterminding a multimillion dollar renovation? Your constant touting of this “new board” as somehow superior to any previous one is clearly propaganda designed to counter the prevailing sentiment among residents that you’re probably the last person in town who deserves to be on the library board.
EDITOR’S NOTE: More tough talk from an anonymous coward who wouldn’t know “the prevailing sentiment among residents” if it bit you on the derriere.
The current board is VASTLY superior to the previous rubber-stamp boards that did whatever the Director wanted, without question, such as neglecting the physical plant and deficit spending to the point where they CLOSED THE LIBRARY.
And the multimillion dollar renovation won’t occur unless the master plan provides sufficient value to the community; and, even then, might involve a referendum to judge that “prevailing sentiment among residents” you claim to know.
Mr Park Ridge Watch Dog, while I appreciate what your root goals are in maintaining this web-site. I am having a bit of difficulty, In why your are consistently focusing on the library so vehemently when you are a appointed not elected library board member, Is it because people have asked for your resignation (silent majority)Is it because you have no support or is it because it is a smaller part of the whole and you have the skills to make a wave in a puddle compared to an ocean.
I have been following the library story for some time now and to me “your relationship with the library is toxic”.
Please resign or focus your opinions/insights on areas with a higher expenditures…. Lean Six / Value adds Cost reductions like the educational system.
I am honestly not attacking you, let someone who is not jaded by the relationship take your place…
Focus on true value savings. I can appreciate your goals, opinions and objectives.
If by some chance you respond in the manner that you do to other people, it will just confirms my point…… Its time to resign and allow a moderate to replace you, It really in the best interest of the library and Park Ridge.
Fighting over Chairs
Fighting over Tutor Fee’s
Fighting over revenue generating fee’s
Focus on cost reductions, value savings instead of wasting your time in this toxic relationship for you and the library.
Please no standard response of “well If 20k is meaningless to you, you should pay it”…..
Resign and end the toxic relationship….allow time to pass and then become proactive again it will benefit yourself and more importantly the library.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Anthony: You must not read this blog very often, otherwise you would know that only a tiny percentage of the 800+ posts over the past 8 years even deal with the Library.
If you truly care about the Library, however, why were you silent during all those years when the current Director and former boards neglected the leaking windows and roof, engaged in chronic deficit spending, and chose to close the Library on summer Sundays rather than deny employees raises even as every single objective performance metric was in decline?
Or if you are legitmately concerned with those “areas with a [sic] higher expenditures…like the educational system,” why haven’t you appeared before the D-64 or D-207 school boards and voiced those concerns; or submitted comments to the various posts on this blog advocating for fiscal responsibility by those boards?
Just two summers ago the Director and then-library board CLOSED the Library for half that summer’s Sundays to save (they claimed) less than the approx. $13,000 the Director recently tried to waste by overspending on stackable chairs. And if Craig Elderkin paid just $10/hour for the approximately 30 sessions he brazenly admits the for-profit private tutors of his company, Park Ridge Tutoring Center, conduct in the Library each week (“Elderkin’s tutors typically have 30 separate meetings with students each week, he said.” Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, July 16, 2015), that could add $15,000 or more a year in non-tax revenue.
But if “cost reductions” are what really float your boat, show up at the next Library Board meeting on December 15 and publicly suggest all the reductions you want to make.
And, FYI, this editor intends to serve out the remaining two years of his Library term, notwithstanding the sidelines chirping from your and your not-so-silent minority.
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