Today we are posting a letter to this blog’s editor by Kenneth Butterly, a Niles resident (Elementary School District 63) who nevertheless lives within Maine Township High School District 207. It addresses many of the points made in our 07.19.2018 post; and it is published with the permission of its author. FWIW, Mr. Butterly’s reference to his and this editor’s past disagreements might be better understood, at least in part, by reading our 12.12.2011, 01.19.2012 and/or 11.03.2015 posts. 

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Robert, you and I have gone nose to nose on several occasions regarding local subjects. And we’ve hardly ever agreed. However, this is not going to be one of those times. 

The “Public Opinion Survey” was District 207’s attempt to finesse its way toward its goal; the $240.7 million referendum. The questions were obviously designed to solicit a positive District-leaning response. And yes, we’ve not seen the results of those surveys, nor in my opinion, were we ever meant to. The “Public Opinion Survey” technique is a commonly used marketing gimmick designed to make target audience members feel as if they are part of the show. This same method is being utilized elsewhere by districts engaged in similar referendums.

Now to your question. Is the District planning a November 2018 or April 2019 vote?

On June 29^th, D207’s Superintendent and his Board hired Mr. Brett Clark as D207’s Co-Director of Communications for $150,000+. Sean Sullivan and Teri Collins moved and seconded, respectively, the motion. Results: Aye: Austriaco, Collins, Coyle, Lee, Owen, Sullivan; Nay: None; Absent: Besler.

What does this mean? Two things I think.

First, D207 now has 2, yes I said 2, Co-Directors of Communications: (1) Long time Director of Communications, $85,000+ Mr. David Beery; and (2) $150,000+ Mr. Clark, to work toward the referendum. That’s $235,000+ in propaganda-creating talent.

Second, D207 intends to go for broke and, at this moment, it’s still unclear as to whether that will occur this November or in April 2019.

Mr. Beery, to my understanding, has never fought a referendum battle. It’s also unclear if Mr. Clark has done so, either. On the other hand, if you believe Mr. Clark’s work history, this is not his first rodeo.

Mr. Clark’s “Linkedin” page states the following:

“Summary

Experienced educator with more than 20 years experience in the areas of communications, marketing and human resources. Skilled in Crisis Communications, Editing, Public Speaking, Media Relations and Publications. Earned the Accredited in Public Relations (APR) designation from Public Relations Society of America.”

Under the “Experience” section he displays the following job titles: 

• Adjunct Faculty, Governors State University (Feb. 2017 – Present – 1 yr. 6 mos.);
• Director of Communications and Marketing, Consortium for Educational Change (Sep. 2015 – Jul. 2018 – 2 yrs. 11 mos.);
• Executive Director of Human Resources, Glenview D34 (1 yr. 3 mos.);
• Executive Director of Communications and Strategic Planning, Glenview D34 (4 yrs. 1 mo.);
• Director of Community Relations and Grants, Glenview D34 (7 yrs. 11 mos.);
• Public Relations Director, Ladue SD (2 yrs. 3 mos.);
• Lead Public Information Specialist / Public Information Specialist, Parkway SD (2 yrs. 5 mos.);
• Publications Coordinator, Missouri Society of CPAs (8 mos.);
• Information Specialist U. of Missouri, St. Louis (6 mos.); and
• Public Relations Coordinator, McCann Erickson Public Relations (9 mos.).

If you want to see it all, go to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-clark-apr-0b69126.

So, what’s the bottom line?

The fact that Dr. Wallace and Board President Carla Owen see a need for this much public relations fire-power says a lot about their fear of being rebuffed by the taxpayers/voters, and a heightened determination to get the money.

The plot thickens!

P.S.  For those of you who might be interested, please take notice of the following:

SUBJECT:      D-207 Building & Grounds Committee mtg. Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:15 p.m., 1177 South Dee Rd.

AGENDA:      “…3. Public Comments  4. Facility Master Plan  5. Financing Facility Master Plan….”

Kenneth Butterly

To read or post comments, click on title.

Back on May 30, 2018, we published a post about the “Public Opinion Survey” (the “POS”) in support of the massive $240.7 million boondoggle/scam/“con job” being run by the Maine Township High School District 207 School Board and Administration, against the D-207 taxpayers.

The last day for responding to that survey was reportedly May 18, yet as we publish this post more than two months later we have neither seen nor heard any of the results of that POS.

As we wrote back then, the answers to the POS would almost certainly be used to: (a) guide the D-207 Board’s spinmeisters in crafting their elevator pitch to prospective referendum voters; and (b) help that Board decide when to hold the referendum vote, which we predicted would most likely be in April 2019 – when the turnout is expected to be much smaller (and, therefore, more easily manipulated by the Board’s spinmeisters and sycophants) than the turnout for this November’s election.

FYI: Because of the difference in turnout, passing a local referendum in any of the last four mayoral election years could have been done with no more than 4,510 votes, while doing so in any of the corresponding November elections would have required at least 7,001 votes. And because the April 2019 ballot won’t even include a Park Ridge mayoral race, the turnout is almost certain to be even less than in mayoral election years.

That’s why we suggested back on May 30 that despite the District’s holding a bunch of “community engagement meetings” (i.e., propaganda sessions) about the project, the Board would delay disclosing the POS results or acting on them until it blew the August 20, 2018 deadline by which the District could put the necessary funding referendum question on the November ballot.

As we are now 2/3 through the 3-month referendum window (from May 18 to August 20) with only deafening silence from D-207 about the POS results or a referendum question for the November ballot, it looks like our prediction is coming true – compliments of Supt. Ken Wallace, who has proven himself much more of a politician than an educator or administrator by not only keeping his job but getting salary increases, even as the ranking of the District’s flagship school, Maine South, has plummeted while Maine East’s and Maine West’s rankings have risen only in consideration of their increasingly minority and/or low income student bodies.

And compliments of clueless and/or dishonest School Board members Sean Sullivan, Carla Owen, Jin Lee, Paula Besler, Teri Collins, Aurora Austriaco and Linda Coyle, all of whom appear to believe that the best way to represent their constituents is the “Mushroom Policy”: Keep those constituents in the dark and covered with manure. Hence, the minutes of those May, June and July Board meetings make no mention of drafting or passing one or more referendum questions for the November ballot.

We take a measure of pride in the fact that we never endorsed the first six listed above, or most of their predecessors whose mismanagement of D-207 contributed substantially to the quasi-criminal neglect of the District’s buildings and grounds for at least the past decade.

We did endorse Coyle, however, calling her a “star by far” in 04.03.2017 post based on what we saw of her service on the Park Ridge P&Z Commission and on the D-207 Community Advisory Council; and based on her support of our late mayor Dave Schmidt and his H.I.T.A. platform. We were confident she had the intelligence and the spine to break free from the bovine herd-think that has been the hallmark of the D-207 Board since at least the time Sullivan first sullied the D-207 Board room with his presence back in 2007.

In our post of 05.08.2018, we gave Coyle and Austriaco a half-pass for their under-performance as Board members, on the basis of their having just completed their “honeymoon” year. At the same time we called them out and encouraged them to “demand that D-207 taxpayers get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about everything D-207.”

Since then, however, neither Coyle nor Austriaco has done anything to shed more light on the POS results or on the $240.7 million boondoggle; or to push the Board to put a funding referendum question on the November 2018 ballot.

And because there’s only one more Board meeting – on August 6 – between now and the August 20 deadline for putting such a referendum question on the November ballot, the handwriting (albeit more like vulgar graffiti) is now on the wall.

It seems like the Boards of D-207 and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 are engaged in a race-to-the-bottom of incompetent, secretive, disingenuous and/or outright dishonest government that not only extorts their respective taxpayers but, also, deprives their respective students of an education commensurate with all those tax dollars being extorted.

And by kicking the referendum can down the road from the much larger-turnout November election to the much smaller-turnout April 2019 election, D-207’s sad-sack Board has taken the lead in that perverse match race.

At least for the time being.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Strap yourselves in, campers, because this is one is as long as it is bizarre.

Two articles in last week’s edition of the Park Ridge Journal merit your attention: “10 Maine GOP Women Sign Letter Demanding Trustee’s Resignation” and “If Touching Allegations Prove True, Leading Republicans Say Maine Township Trustee Should Resign.”

Both of them are allegedly written by Journal editor/publisher Todd Wessell, a long-time cheerleader for the RINOs who have run Maine Township government since the days of Mark Thompson, Bob Dudycz, Bob Provenzano and Gary Warner. The online versions of both articles are dated July 12, and both of them address a surreal situation involving two Maine Township Trustees: Kim Jones and Dave Carrabotta.

Both articles involve the accusation by Jones of Carrabotta’s “inappropriately touching her” on three separate occasions during township-related activities over the last several months. Carrabotta reportedly has denied those accusations.

Not surprisingly, neither of those stories even addresses the threshold question presented by this situation: Assuming her accusation is true, why did Jones endure three separate incidents of inappropriate “touching” over several months, dating back to 2017, before finally saying something – and even then only in a secret one-on-one meeting with her alleged harasser?

Although Wessell and certain others appear to want to make this a #metoo moment, it’s not. In fact, it’s poltical theater of the absurd, Maine Township style.

For starters, Jones is a middle-aged career woman, not some naïve aspiring Hollywood starlet looking for her big break. She has been a township trustee since 2014, and a Park Ridge alderman from 2005 to 2007. She also has spent the past 28 years working for the State of Illinois in its Division of Banking. She’s as politically savvy as they come, and not going to be terrorized into silence by even the political equivalent of sleazebag Hollywood power-broker Harvey Weinstein.

Conversely, Carrabotta is a political neophyte whose first foray into public life was his election as Trustee in May 2017. His Township bio describes him as a licensed attorney, a licensed insurance agent, a husband and father of three children, an usher at St. John Brebeuf in Niles, a current Knight of Columbus (and former Grand Knight), and a member of Boards of Review for local Eagle Scout candidates and Judicial Review Boards for the Illinois State Bar Association. That’s hardly a Harvey Weinstein-style resume.

And because Carrabotta is both a newbie and the only male among five Township trustees, the idea that he could conceivably wield any personal or political power over Jones is ludicrous.

Equally ludicrous are the circumstances under which Jones accused Carrabotta of the alleged misconduct: She reportedly asked him to meet privately, one-on-one, in an ante-room behind the Board meeting table during the “bill pay review” meeting (from 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. on May 22), which led to Carrabotta’s seeking an “emergency” closed session to address “an accusation made against him at 6:46 p.m.” – according to the minutes of the General Assistance Budget Hearing. 

The closed session was approved by a vote of 3 (Carrabotta, Trustee Claire McKenzie and Trustee Susan Sweeney, whom we have dubbed “The Reformers” for their refusal – at least up until now – to play Maine Township RINO politics-as-usual since their election in April 2017) to 2 (Supervisor Laura Morask and Jones). You can watch the run-up to the closed session and vote on the meeting video, beginning at the 40 second mark.

According to Wessell’s “10 Maine GOP Women” story, Jones sought this private meeting with Carrabotta “[o]n the advice of the township attorney” from the Ancel Glink law firm.

Let’s set aside for a moment the utter asininity of an attorney purportedly advising an alleged victim of sexual harassment – especially harassment involving physical contact – to meet privately with the alleged harasser and, instead, focus on the inappropriateness of the Township’s attorneys unilaterally and secretly giving personal legal advice to one trustee who recently voted to hire those attorneys (Jones) about how to deal with alleged harassment by another trustee who voted against hiring them (Carrabotta).

Can you say “conflict of interest”? How about “appearance of impropriety”? Or, in tribute to the legendary Mike Royko: “Aggravated mopery with intent to gawk”?

Whichever it might be, it sure doesn’t sound like unbiased, top-shelf legal advice from attorneys hired a few months ago by the majority vote of Morask, Jones and McKenzie after the prior Township attorney resigned following the disclosure of a secret appeal by Township non-Assessor Susan Moylan-Krey of the Reformers’ refusal to certify that Moylan-Krey’s position, in which she doesn’t actually assess anything, requires the 1,000 hours of work per year minimum for her to accrue pension benefits.

You can read more about Morask’s and Moylan-Krey’s secretive efforts to reinstate Moylan-Krey’s pension in our 02.08.2018 post and our 02.13.2018 post

Compounding the stench of a Township attorney’s giving legal advice to Jones against Carrabotta (on the taxpayers’ dime?) is the odor from the same law firm appearing to have gone off to investigate the situation and prepare a “report” without any formal Board authorization. According to Wessell’s “10 Maine GOP Women” story, the investigation has been completed and the report “will soon be delivered to Morask,” who “will share its findings with the board and possibly the public.”

Assuming Wessell’s reporting is accurate, why isn’t the report from the Board’s attorneys going directly to the entire Board – including Carrabotta and Jones – and not just to Morask? After all. Ancel Glink is supposed to be representing all the Trustees collectively as a Board, not just Morask (or Jones) individually.

Could it be because a more-transparent process wouldn’t give Morask (and Jones) a preview of the report and the opportunity to consult privately with the attorneys who authored it about its findings and conclusions before they become public? Or give them the opportunity to spin those findings and conclusions if/where needed to aggrandize Jones and/or prejudice Carrabotta?

Let’s try it again: Can you say “conflict of interest,” “appearance of impropriety,” or “aggravated mopery”?

Irrespective of which of those three it might be, it hasn’t stopped those “10 Maine GOP Women” – including…SURPRISE!…Jones, Morask and Moylan-Krey – from proclaiming Carrabotta guilty and demanding his resignation in a July 7, 2018 letter to Maine Twp. Republican Committeeman Char Foss Eggemann, with copies to Gov. Bruce Rauner and several other notable Republicans.

Just like the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards!”

All of this drama strongly suggests that this situation isn’t really about sexual harassment. Rather, it’s about typically-sleazy Illinois politics, being played this time not by Mike Madigan and his henchmen/women but by RINO political hacks Morask, Jones and Moylan-Krey, with the help of those other seven “Maine GOP Women.”

Why?

Because those RINO hacks realize that they will be powerless so long as Carrabotta, McKenzie and Sweeney stick together as a Board majority and continue to vote the interests of Maine Township taxpayers instead of the interests of the bureaucrats trying to build themselves an even bigger fiefdom at Maine Township – complete with those constitutionally-guaranteed pensions like the one over which non-Assessor Moylan-Krey has been fighting The Reformers.

Although we suspect that Morask and Jones already have identified McKenzie – a Democrat and, therefore, a natural ally of RINOs – as the weakest link among The Reformers, they don’t yet appear willing to bet on McKenzie’s becoming their dependable stooge. So getting rid of either Sweeney or Carrabotta, and appointing a Morask flunky to fill that seat, is a pre-requisite for destroying The Reformers’ majority.

Nobody would believe that Sweeney would engage in the “actual groping” (per the “10 Maine GOP Women” letter) of Jones, so Carrabotta became the obvious patsy.

And it seems like he has let himself be played for a patsy – initially by foolishly demanding a closed-session discussion of Jones’ charges instead of publicly calling out her and her accusations in open session, then by hiding from the public and meekly claiming the matter is “confidential” while awaiting Morask’s release of that report by the Township’s new, Morask-friendly attorneys.

That requires us to ask: What’s so “confidential,” Trustee Carrabotta?

Either you did or you didn’t touch/grope Trustee Jones. And Trustee Jones either is or isn’t a stone-cold liar making this whole thing up for rank political purposes.

If you did it, Trustee Carrabotta, you should be drummed off the Board. But if you didn’t do it, why aren’t you publicly standing up for yourself instead of first hiding in closed session, then pleading that everything is “confidential” while Wessell churns out hit-piece after hit-piece, most likely at the bidding of your political opponents? How can the taxpayers of the Township trust you to stand up for them when you seem too timid even to call out Jones and defend yourself?

On the other hand, Ms. Jones, if you really were inappropriately touched or groped, why haven’t you filed a formal workplace harassment complaint against your fellow Trustee and fellow Township employee with the Cook County Dept. of Human Rights, the Illinois Dept. of Human Rights, or the federal EEOC? How can the women of the Township trust you to stand up for them when you aren’t even willing to file your accusations under oath and stand up for your own right to be free from sexual harassment in the workplace?

We’d love to hear each of them answer those questions in an open-session Township Board meeting, with the videotape running.

Because this is political theater, however, our guess is that Jones, Morask and their RINO political handlers are plenty content to rely on “news” stories like “10 Maine GOP Women” and “If Touching Allegations Prove True” from their media shill, Wessell, to figuratively inflict the proverbial 1,000 cuts – in the form of those two articles and six more Wessell has authored (dated May 30, June 6, two on June 13,  June 27 and July 4) – while hoping Carrabotta will continue to just stand there and bleed

And then resign, or course.

Will this be the way The Reformers’ era at Maine Township ends after barely one year – not with a bang but a whimper?

To read or post comments, click on title.

What do Andrew Duff, Owen Hayes II, John Bennett and Ellen Upton have in common?

All four of them showed up at last week’s Park Ridge City Council meeting to speak against Mayor Marty Maloney’s veto of Pusheen, Inc’s special use for the ground-floor space in 104 Main Street. That veto came after a (4-2) majority of aldermen voted on June 4 to grant the special use, which was approved 7-0 by the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) back on April 24.

You can read our take on Maloney’s veto in our June 28, 2018 post.

That Duff and Hayes would show up and argue in support of the special use was expected.

Duff is the owner of Pusheen Corp. and his company already occupies the upper floor of 104 Main. He claims he wants the ground floor of the building so that deliverymen don’t have to hall boxes up to the second-floor.

How thoughtful.

When Hayes addressed the Council last week he initially introduced himself as just the “manager” of the 104 Main building. But beginning at the 27:56 mark of that Council meeting video he reveals himself as “not the owner but a part owner” of the property – as well as both a manager and an owner of other Park Ridge property.

That’s a bit curious because, according to Page 3 of the minutes of the April 24 P&Z meeting, Hayes identified himself as the “real estate agent representing the owner of the [104 Main] property,” as he also did in an April 13, 2018 e-mail to the City’s Senior Planner, Jon Branham. Compare that to the special use “Applicant Disclosure Statement” dated March 15, 2018, in which he lists 104 Main LLC as the property’s owner, while listing only himself in response to the request for “the name of every…[LLC] member.”

Should we just chalk that up as another one of those “Certs is a candy mint; Certs is a breath mint” moments in local government, or is there more to it than that?

For those who have been following City government for a decade or more, you might remember Hayes as the agent and…wait for it…undisclosed owner of the former Foot and Ankle Surgeons building at 515 Busse that he tried to flip to the City as the site of a new cop shop back in 2004. Had he succeeded, he would have netted a tidy $200,000 profit for only a few days of ownership, as you can read about in our 11.15.2007 post and our 08.14.2008 post

We also have heard rumors, seemingly corroborated by Hayes’ statement to the Council during last week’s meeting, that he is the agent and/or owner (full or part) of various other commercial properties in town. A cursory check of a random sampling of Uptown and vicinity properties shows that their ownership is often hidden – albeit legally, we might add – by title being held in the name of a partnership or LLC, like it is with 104 Main LLC. Consequently, some of the City’s property-related forms (like the special use “Applicant Disclosure Statement”) require disclosure of the “real” owners, not just the legal title holders.

But don’t get us wrong: We’ve got nothing against Hayes personally. He’s a nice enough guy who has been active in the community for many years. And there’s nothing wrong with making an honest buck, whether it be in real estate or any other business – even at the taxpayers’ expense – if fully disclosed. Hayes, however, seems more than a little preoccupied with keeping his (and others’) property ownership under the radar, even when he’s seeking special treatment from the City for one of those properties.

Although Hayes’ ownership of 104 Main explains his advocacy for the Council’s over-ride of Maloney’s veto of the special use, we must confess to being puzzled by Bennett’s appearance and the condescending tone he took from the very beginning of his comments at the 51:57 mark of the meeting video in lecturing/arguing for an over-ride of Maloney’s veto.

As a P&Z member he was one of seven at that commission’s April 24, 2018 meeting who voted – wrongly, as we pointed out in our 06.28.2018 post – in favor of Pusheen’s special use. At that point his work should have been finished. So his appearance before the Council was tantamount to a trial judge showing up before an appellate court panel and arguing that his decision should be affirmed.

That just doesn’t happen, even if nobody appears to have told Bennett.

But the most curious appearance was Upton’s, which immediately followed Bennett’s.

She introduced herself as a former 1st Ward alderman (from the late 1990s, as we recall) who chaired the Uptown Advisory Task Force that promoted the creation of the Uptown redevelopment project – although she conveniently left out her support of the City’s multi-million dollar bonded-debt “investment” in that project that is still on track to cost taxpayers millions of dollars because the revenue generated from that project has rarely come close to covering the debt service on the bonds the City issued to help out the developer. She also was a member of the City’s Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Re-Write Committee that made major revisions to the Zoning Code back in 2006, and also may have updated the Comprehensive Plan.

To the best of our knowledge and research, however, she has not addressed the Council on zoning issues ever since. At least not until now.

Is she that much of a Pusheen fan, or did she have other intentions?

If Hayes, Bennett and Upton are so committed to helping Park Ridge’s Zoning Code and/or the Comprehensive Plan move into the 21st Century, we encourage them to formally propose that the Council create another Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Re-Write Committee – and we encourage them to volunteer to become members of it.

But until that happens, the current Zoning Code and the current Comprehensive Plan provide the guidelines by which special uses are supposed to be measured. And as we’ve said about various other local ordinances, rules and plans: If you don’t like them, change them. Don’t just ignore them.

Or try to weasel your way around them.

To read or post comments, click on title.

 

On this day we honor the passage of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which is generally considered the founding day of these United States of America.

In order to guard against taking that event – and the principles of freedom embodied in the Declaration – for granted, we encourage you to watch this excerpt about that independence vote from the 2008 “John Adams” HBO mini-series – and to contemplate what it meant for those men in Philadelphia to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the cause of liberty 242 years ago.

That’s 242 years of Federalists, Whigs, Know Nothings, Democrats, Dixiecrats, Republicans, slavery, a Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, the Weathermen, robber barons, a Trust Buster, two World Wars, terrorist attacks, liberal Supreme Courts, conservative Supreme Courts, Democratic Congressional and Senate majorities, Republican Congressional and Senate Majorities, presidential impeachments, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, and the imprisonment of 4 of the last 7 Illinois governors.

This country survived all of those and far more, and it prospered, because of adherence – albeit imperfect in various respects – to the enduring values embodied in that Declaration and in the Constitution that followed, along with its 27 Amendments.

In this editor’s lifetime this country survived Presidents Harry Truman (D), Dwight Eisenhower (R), Jack Kennedy (D), Lyndon Johnson (D), Richard Nixon (R), Gerald Ford (R), Jimmy Carter (D), Ronald Reagan (R), George H.W. Bush (R), Bill Clinton (D), George W. Bush (R) and Barack Obama (D). And it will survive President Donald Trump (R?).

Because of what those guys in Philadelphia started 242 years ago.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor & Publisher

To read or post comments, click on title.