For over a decade we’ve been investigating, researching and writing about the incompetence, stupidity, greed, dishonesty and outright mopery of our local elected and appointed officials, as well as our well-paid bureaucrats. On occasion, we’ve even sung their praises when they actually acted like sentient, rationale, responsible People’s Representatives and done something good, or just didn’t screw up.

Unfortunately, two nights ago our City Council, during a COW meeting, put on a display of aggravated mopery with intent to gawk, if not worse, that needs to be seen to be believed.

That’s when the Council discussed giving hundreds of thousands (maybe even a million, or more) of taxpayer dollars in “incentives” to the proposed purchaser of the Mr. K’s property on Higgins and/or the proposed developer/operator of a hotel proposed for that site.

The festivities start at the 1:17:04 mark of the meeting video.

CP&D Director Jim Brown kicked off those festivities by effectively reading from his Agenda Cover Memorandum that was already posted on the City’s website. He casually mentioned his and City Mgr. Joe Gilmore’s meetings with the owner and developer, as well as a 04.24.2019 “letter from the developer” that mysteriously didn’t qualify for an attachment to his memo.

That was followed by Gilmore introducing what apparently was the theme of the night: No matter what kind of deal the City might cut with the property owner and/or developer, it would be “cash flow positive” from Day 1.

Say “Cash flow positive”…from Day 1. Say it again and again. Consider it City Hall’s new mantra, at least as to this project.

We haven’t done the math to check if Gilmore is right – primarily because neither Gilmore nor Brown have provided sufficient data from which anybody could make such calculations. In fact, Gilmore actually admitted that those rosy projected revenues to the City are hard to quantify – causing Brown to engage in what appeared to be a bit of CGA (“Cover Gilmore’s Ass”) by claiming that the prospective owner and developer offered to provide the City their pro forma, which is basically just a collection of self-serving projections and guestimates.

If those kinds of things really matter, however, why didn’t Brown already have the pro forma? He didn’t say.

Resident Joan Sandrik, along with Alds. Nick Milissis and Roger Shubert, tried to stem the rising incentive fever by reminding the Council of the Whole Foods sales tax abatement demand made by that property’s developer as an “or else” condition on Whole Foods coming to Park Ridge, and how Mayor Dave Schmidt and that 2012 council successfully called the developer’s bluff, thereby saving the City’s taxpayers over $2 million.

That prompted Brown to start explaining how the Whole Foods situation  was “different” from this hotel deal. But if you’re watching the meeting video you’ll never hear his explanation: The video’s sound drops out at the 2:12:13 mark, and the screen goes blue 7 seconds later. By the time the sound resumes at approximately 2:14:15 and the video 20 seconds after that, Brown’s explanation is long over. So we have no idea what kind of differences Brown identified.

Shades of Rose Mary Woods, lite!

Two true highlights of this meeting, however, deserve special mention.

The first is the fact that while Brown, the developer and the prospective property purchaser kept referring to this hotel as a “boutique,” none of them identified what brand, or “flag,” the hotel would bear; e.g., Hyatt, Marriott, Hillton, La Quinta, etc. And when they described the hotel as having a “pantry” instead of a restaurant, and room rates between $145 and $160 a night tops (with the City staff guestimating $115-$120), it sounded more like a Days Inn than The Talbott.

Yet NOBODY around The Horseshoe – not the mayor, not a single alderman, not a single staff member – dared to ask the developer or the owner, on the record, what name or brand their “boutique” would bear. Did they all know but weren’t saying for some unknown reason, or did they not even care?

The absolute pinnacle of absurdity, however, occurred fairly early on, when somebody (we think it was Joyce) asked the prospective owner and the prospective developer why incentives were a necessity for them to do the deal. Amazingly, the prospective owner explained that the property was worth only $2 million but he had agreed to pay the Mr. K’s owners $3.3 million!

Yes, friends, you heard that right: The City is considering bailing out, with our money, someone who is knowingly overpaying for the Mr. K’s property by a whopping $1.3 million, or 65%!!!

If even one of the elected officials around The Horseshoe had an iota of common sense, and a spine stiffer than Silly Putty, they would have responded to the prospective owner with:

“You, sir, are either an idiot or a scam artist who thinks WE are a bunch of idiots who will sell out our taxpayers to bail you out of a totally boneheaded business deal. Go away and don’t come back until all you want from us is a zoning change.”

But that’s not the way this City Administration rolls.

Instead, the prospective owner’s admission set off a round of babbling by those around The Horseshoe about how the City might go about satisfying itself that the incentives really were a “necessity.”

Mayor Dave and that 2012 council knew how to do that: Just say “No!” But apparently that’s too final and too harsh for the gentle souls currently inhabiting The Horseshoe.

So Moran proposed a “feasibility study.” Joyce said he wasn’t opposed to incentives. Melidosian gave the project a “thumbs up.” And Mazzuca could only wonder how the hotel might fit into that neighborhood in his ward 50-100 years from now.

That means we’ll likely see a string of new rosy-but-fuzzy propositions, projections and proposals designed to make sure this developer (who has never done even one project in Illinois) and this owner – along with the owners of Mr. K’s – end up getting a healthy helping of taxpayer money.

Because in what is becoming a surreal world of City government, when it comes to spending public funds in questionable ways, the question no longer appears to be “if” but only “when” and “how much.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

It was political philosopher George Santayana who famously said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This post is for the benefit of the current members of the Park Ridge City Council and City Staff who either never knew, cannot remember, or just don’t care about the City’s relatively recent past as they address one of the more important items on tonight’s (May 28) Council agenda: Taxpayer subsidies to the developers of a proposed “boutique” hotel on the current Mr. K’s property down on Higgins.

We don’t object to a hotel – “boutique” or otherwise – in Park Ridge or on that property. What we do object to are money-grubbing developers and money-grubbing property owners who seem confident they can shake down our City officials into handing out what amount to bribes as incentives to certain development projects in our community.

Shake them down how?

According to the Agenda Cover Memorandum of C.P. & D. Director Jim Brown, how about with seven years of hotel tax rebates after the City more than doubles its hotel tax?

How about by waiving building permit fees that could run as high as $200,000?

How about by paying for architectural/design fees up to $250,000?

How about by rebating the City’s incremental property tax increases on the property for a period of seven years?

All of those shakedowns are intended to take money out of Park Ridge taxpayers’ pockets and put it in the pockets of developer Scarlett Hotel Group (“SHG”) and the owners of Mr. K’s – based, of course, on various projections and calculations (even the worst of which will be rosy) intended to convince folks that the requested bribes will still be a great deal for the City.

If you think you may have seen this movie before, you have.

You saw it back in 2003-05, when interim-mayor Mike Marous and then-city manager Tim Schuenke sold a bovine city council on the idea of subsidizing the private redevelopment of Uptown by borrowing many millions of dollars (secured by the City’s issuance of general obligation bonds). Not surprisingly, all the rosy projections of a $23 million return on that “investment” proved bogus, and when those bonds are finally paid off the City will likely end up booking a several million dollar loss.

Now contrast that with the situation seven years ago, when developer Lance Chody thought he could sucker Mayor Dave Schmidt and the then-council into believing that Whole Foods would only come to Chody’s stagnant property on Touhy and Washington in return for approximately $2 million of sales tax revenue sharing. A number of residents, including many members of the local business community, foolishly bought Chody’s pitch and demanded the mayor and the council comply.

Schmidt’s and those aldermen responded like the taxpayers’ champions: If WF needs a bribe to come to Park Ridge, it must not really want to be here.

Two weeks later, Chody and Whole Foods came back before the Council and said they would do the deal without the revenue-sharing windfall.

Just saying “no” to these kinds of shakedowns should be the automatic default mechanism any time such demands are made. Unfortunately, none of the current aldermen were part of that 2012 council that hung tough against Chody and Whole Foods, so there’s no way to predict whether any of the current seven have the spine to stand up to whatever pressure might be applied, or emoluments offered.

Not surprisingly, Brown’s memo has a few baseless conclusions that appear designed to encourage the City’s cutting a deal with the developer and property owners, such as: “In particular restaurants would benefit from the influx of hotel patrons.”

That might be a reasonable conclusion if the proposed hotel were in Uptown. But down near the City’s southwestern boundary, hotel patrons are more likely to be lured away to Rivers Casino and its restaurants, or to that garish garden of earthly delights called Rosemont.

Brown’s memo also doesn’t attempt to quantify the cost to the City of those seven years of rebates not only for the increased hotel tax but also for the City’s incremental increases in its property tax revenue. And although the memo references certain April-May correspondence between SHG and City Manager Joe Gilmore, none of that correspondence is included with Brown’s memo.

So much for transparency and accountability by Gilmore and Brown.

At the end of the day, however, this isn’t about speculative restaurant revenue and all the other happy horsebleep that anybody conjure up out of whole cloth to market this idea to the feeble-minded. It’s about the bottom line public policy questions:

1. Is Park Ridge so desperate it should allow itself to become an easy mark for these shakedowns?

2. If the hotel developer really wants to be in Park Ridge, why does it need a bribe?

Let’s see if either of those gets answered tonight.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today is Memorial Day, a national holiday established to honor those Americans who died in service to their country.

As Pres. Abraham Lincoln so poignantly noted at the end of his Gettysburg Address:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

To correct an all-too-common misconception, it is not a day to thank living servicemen for their service. There are two days for that: Veterans Day (November 11) to honor and thank those living who have served in the U.S. military; and Armed Forces Day (3d Saturday in May) to honor and thank those currently serving in the armed services.

Of course, flying the flag today is encouraged in remembrance of those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.

For those of you who can do so, the proper way to fly the flag today is “in mourning”: Raise it to the top of the staff, then solemnly lower it to the half-staff position where it should remain only until noon, at which point it should be raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day.

And for those of you who don’t have an adjustable flag staff, you can attach a single black ribbon, the width of one flag stripe and with a length twice that of the flag by tying the center of the ribbon to the staff immediately above the flag such that its two ends (each as long as the flag) fly freely.

To read or post comments, click on title.

At tonight’s Park Ridge City Council meeting the Council is scheduled to address another aspect of the ill-conceived and misguieded – bordering on stupid and wasteful – “green” Library lot project.

Unlike in past sessions where this project was discussed and various aldermen and residents took turns blowing smoke up each others’ (and the taxpayers’) kilts, tonight’s topic is supposed to be limited to the Intergovernmental Agreement (the “IGA”) the MWRD wants the City to sign.

A redlined version of the entire IGA is attached to City Atty. Adam Simon’s analysis of it. But you really don’t need to get past the analysis to see how the reportedly corrupt MWRD wants to stack the deck in its favor.

Simon’s analysis breaks the IGA down as follow:

Performance of the Green Infrastructure

The “green” lot must provide “retention” of at least 192,760 gallons of storm water. The preliminary design of the “green” lot has it capturing the stormwater and then slowly releasing it into the sewer system for ultimate treatment as wastewater. That’s called “detention, not “retention.”

Floating Grant Amount

192,760 gallons of storm water is the “Design Goal.” If MWRD finds, in its discretion, that the “green” lot doesn’t meet the Design Goal, it can unilaterally reduce the amount of the grant.

Long-Term Maintenance Obligations

If the City fails to maintain the “green” lot to MWRD’s standards in perpetuity, MWRD can demand a refund of the grant amount, perform the maintenance work itself, and charge the City for its costs.

No Redevelopment

Once the “green” lot is installed, that lot may never be redeveloped for a different purpose. Even if part of the lot is redeveloped for another purpose, it will affect the Design Goal, which could result in the MWRD demanding partial reimbursement of the grant.

Procurement Issues

The use of the grant money is expressly subject to complying with MWRD’s purchasing laws, including the below state law and local procurement policies – some of which limit the eligible contractors who can be hired to provide material or do the work.

Limited Appropriations

The IGA expressly disclaims any promise to re-appropriate any amounts which have not been disbursed after the expiration of the [current] fiscal year.

Every one of those terms and conditions should be a red flag, warning the City away from doing business with what the Chicago Tribune recently branded as “a bastion of crony politics” that provides “big opportunities for corruption” because it “has long been a hotbed of Democratic politics and patronage.”

We doubt that those red flags will be heeded by the biggest fans of the “green” Library lot boondoggle. But it might be fun to watch and listen to how those proponents try to put some sort of benign spin on the situation in order to keep it moving forward.

Kick-off is at 7:00 p.m. in the City Council chambers, 505 Butler Place.

*                             *                             *

Tonight is the final meeting for Second Ward Ald. Nick Milissis, who is resigning from the Council after six years of service. He is moving with his family to Glenview and, therefore, is legally prevented from continued Council service.

He was elected to the Council in April 2013 with our cautious endorsement, which you can read in our 04.08.2013 post. Since then he has been a zealous advocate for his constituents in the Second Ward, especially on the flooding issue which seems to dominate all others up there.

Although the magnitude of the flooding problem and the cost of remediation – especially in Wards Two and Three – have made progress slower and more incremental than Milissis or his constituents might like, that has not deterred him from making a case against flooding, and for his constituents, at every opportunity.

In reviewing our posts about the Council since Milissis became an alderman we discovered a fairly equal split between those time we praised him and those times we barbecued him. Not surprisingly, a number (if not a majority) of the latter involved our disagreement on the best way(s) to remediate flooding in the Second Ward and how to allocate the costs of doing so. At one juncture he wrote a lengthy comment critical of one of our posts on that topic that we chose to publish as a post of its own: “Ald. Milissis: PubDog Has ‘Jumped The Shark’ On Second Ward Flood Projects,” 06.12.2014.

But while we may have disagreed with the alderman, we have never doubted his diligence, his sincerity and his desire to vigorously represent not just himself, his friends, or one special interest or another but ALL his constituents. And on all but the rarest occasions he would explain his position and his vote so that his fellow aldermen and residents alike knew the “why” behind it.

We have no idea who will be appointed to fill the remainder of his term, which expires in May 2021. We can only hope whoever it is will bring a skill set, temperament and demeanor similar to what Millisis regularly demonstrated.

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” (Garrison Keillor).

Update (05.21.2019) We were mistaken about last night being Milissis’ last Council meeting: June 3 will be his last meeting. Hopefully that extra time will give him a few more opportunities to convince his fellow aldermen that this “green” Library lot is basically a deal with the Devil (MWRD) that will be far more expensive – to do right, not half-baked – than the prices we’ve been hearing.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We intended to publish a short post yesterday about why the Park Ridge City Council shouldn’t let Ald. John Moran and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District stampede it into approving the purely political “green” Library lot when the first order of business should be piloting the “green” paving of our many un-paved alleys.

But then one of our more prominent local Go Green goddesses, Andrea Cline, checked in with a comment to our previous post that we thought deserved a bit more attention, especially since she had the gumption to sign her name. So we’re giving it a post of its own.

Her comment reads as follows:

As much as I’d like to claim to be the “very engaged resident” Anonymous [commenting on 05.13.19 @ 9:09 AM], twasn’t me, even though I have been singing the praises of MWRD and the CMAP LTA program (totally separate for those of you following along) for years. And while I’d like to take the time to point out all the flaws in this post and the previous one that touched on the library lot, as the Editor often says, I’m busy with my day job.

If Cline isn’t Moran’s mysterious “very engaged resident” – the one who purportedly started this MWRD grant ball rolling – who is? And why is Moran being so uncharacteristically reticent about that person’s identity?

We don’t know, so we’ll just start breaking down Cline’s comment.

She begins by claiming that “MWRD and the CMAP LTA program” are “(totally separate for those of you following along).” At least Cline got that right, the only part of Cline’s comment that is accurate: “CMAP” stands for the “Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning,” while “LTA” stands for its “Local Technical Assistance” program.

Did you ever hear of those before? We didn’t.

Not surprisingly, CMAP is another one of Illinois’ league-leading 7,000 (roughly) units of government that spend billions of taxpayer dollars each year with seemingly no transparency or accountability, and what appears to be few measurable results.

CMAP reports $18,477,158 in FY19 revenues, with almost $13.5 million coming from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and another $3.4 million (almost) coming from the Illinois Dept. of Transportation. Like so many of Illinois’ typically inefficient taxpayer-scamming public agencies, CMAP appears overpopulated: It has 92 staffers who reportedly consume a whopping $11,929,805 of its $18,320,827 in FY19 expenses – that’s an average of $129,672 per staffer – sporting job titles like “Local Planning” (25 of those) and “Policy & Programming” (23 of those).

If this sounds to you like a bunch of public payroller positions filled by various politicians’ otherwise unemployable relatives, you might be on to something.

And it’s run by career politician Joseph C. Szabo, who was paid $216,320 in 2017 and is likely being paid more today. After serving as the top dog at the Federal Railroad Administration from 2009 to 2015 (during the Obama Administration, for all you “R” and “D” geeks), heading CMAP appears to have been his soft landing reward, at least for the time being.

Cline doesn’t say what CMAP’s role in the “green” Library lot is, or is supposed to be. That’s probably because it has none, considering that neither Moran nor Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim mentioned CMAP in their respective January 14, 2019 memos, nor did City Engineer Sarah Mitchell mention it in her April 8, 2019 memo.

Maybe Cline just wanted to impress with a little acronym-dropping about an obscure state agency.

She goes on to claim there are all sorts of “flaws” in our 04.26.2019 post and our 05.09.2019 post, although she demonstrates the superficiality she first displayed during her 2015 campaign against Moran for 1st Ward alderman by blithely stating that she doesn’t have the time to identify any of them.

Weak, but not unexpected.

That bit of disingenuousness, however, caused us to go back to the January 14, 2019 meeting video and Cline’s remarks in support of the “green” Library lot project, which you can watch from the 1:41:20 to the 1:43:12 mark.

She starts out by praising the Morton Arboretum parking lot as the “most infamous” example of “green” parking lots (Are there any other “infamous” green parking lots are out there that Morton has beaten out for the title?) before bragging about its zero stormwater discharge.

Cline credited that zero discharge to the Morton paver lot’s sitting on four feet of gravel that itself sits over soil.

That got a rise out of Zingsheim, who noted (a) how such a deep sub-base with such a high-water storage capacity would explain the zero discharge; and (b) how, unlike Morton’s gravel-over-soil base, the Library lot’s base is likely to be the same non-absorbent hard blue clay that’s found in most parts of Park Ridge.

Cline’s smug response: “I would argue that you don’t know that.”

We would argue that Zingsheim has forgotten more about Park Ridge soil and infrastructure than Cline currently knows or will ever know. But until soil borings are done in various parts of the Library lot, everybody remains ignorant – including Moran, whose data-less proclamation that “200,000 gallons of water…will be absorbed and detained during a major storm event” remains the same steaming and odoriferous pile it was four months ago when he first dropped it.

Cline ended her data-less video pitch by claiming an additional benefit from the “green” Library lot: “Less snow removal costs…so you don’t have to apply salt or plow as much.” That’s not what we hear from all those Park Ridge folks with paver patios and driveways during our winter months.

We can’t think of any significant City project that has gotten as far as this “green” Library lot with so little hard data to support it. Then again, we also can’t think of any significant City project where a single alderman pulled a Lone Ranger stunt with another governmental body without any direction or authority from the Council itself.

But that’s what you tend to get when you let “politicians” run wild without transparency and accountability.

And that’s also what you tend to get when you let the political tail wag the government dog.

To read or post comments, click on title.

In our 04.26.2019 post we pointed out how the City Council, at its April 8 Public Works committee-of-the-whole (“COW”) meeting, decided to move forward with a $1.3 million (at least?) project to replace the Library parking lot’s “grey” asphalt surface with a “green” surface of paver stones – despite an almost total lack of data demonstrating that this is a worthwhile, cost-effective project.

The principal driving force seemed to be the a $650,000 matching grant for the “green” Library lot from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (the “MWRD”), which the Chicago Tribune called “a bastion of crony politics” with “big opportunities for corruption” as recently as in its April 22, 2019 editorial.

How did Park Ridge get that grant?

The first public mention of it was at the January 14, 2019 Public Works Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting, when Public Works Committee chair, Ald. John Moran (1st), announced out of the blue that he and City Staff had already obtained that $650,000 matching grant for the “green” Library lot from the MWRD.

What’s troubling about that?

Nothing at all, if you prefer your City government running on behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing like we had during the almost two decades when Ron Wietecha, Mike Marous and Howard Frimark occupied the big chair at The Horseshoe, surrounded by a bunch of rubber-stamping minions who made sweetheart deals that left the City with neglected infrastructure, depleted reserves and a falling bond rating.

But there’s plenty wrong with that if you prefer your City government conducted above-board and in the sunlight, transparent and accountable.

According to a Jan. 14, 2019 Memorandum issued by Moran (the “Moran Memo”), an opportunity for a grant from the MWRD “was brought to [his] attention a few months ago by a very engaged resident.” Who was that “very engaged resident”? Moran isn’t saying, for reasons he isn’t sharing; but we’ll accept guesses from our readers just for chips and giggles.

Moran then claims he “requested a sit down” (Yes, a “sit down” – apparently Moran channeling Tony Soprano in the back room at Satriale’s) with some un-named MWRD folks last Fall, apparently without notice to, or formal authorization by, the Council; or even any formal after-the-fact reporting to the Council about the “sit down.”

The Moran Memo goes on to state that “[o]ur staff handled the [grant] application,” also apparently without prior notice to, or formal authorization of, the Council; and apparently also without any interim status report to the Council. This is confirmed by Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim’s “Agenda Cover Memorandum” of January 14, 2019, although he puts the City’s cost for the project “in the neighborhood of $850,000-$950,000.”

The result? A $650,000 matching grant from those corrupt politicians running the MWRD.

Huzzah! Huzzah!

Except that while Moran and Zingsheim were going rogue with the MWRD on a “green” Library lot, the City reportedly was looking into MWRD grants for “green” alley paving. Will the $650,000 Library lot grant impair the City’s ability to get a “green” alleys grant? Who knows? The aldermen who green-lighted the project at the April 8 meeting don’t seem to particularly care.

But despite Moran’s and Zingsheim’s Lone Ranger and Tonto act, let’s look at what benefits the “green” Library lot could bring us.

Moran’s memo states that this project will “help us address the stormwater management challenges that our city has been wrestling with for decades.” How? By “the 200,000 gallons of water that will be absorbed and detained during a major storm event.”

Where’s Moran’s supporting documentation for such braggadocio? There isn’t any – only a nifty analogy to help sell his project: The purported 200,000 gallons of Library lot water detention is “the same as installing 4,000 rain barrels in town.”

After a quick Google search, however, we found that you can buy a 50-gallon rain barrel for $60, and a 60-gallon one for $100 (made from re-purposed olive shipping containers, for you Greenies). And that’s retail. Think Wal-Mart might give the City a deal on 4,000 of those suckers?

So if water detention is Moran’s primary goal – and if you believe that we have some Florida swampland at a bargain price – those same 200,000 gallons of rainwater could be detained with 4,000 of those 50-gallon rain barrels for a mere $240,000 instead of the City’s $650,000 contribution needed to win the matching grant from the corrupt MWRD. Or for $330,000, if we wanted to splurge on 3,330 of those 60-gallon barrels.

Or, looking at it another way: For the City’s $650,000 contribution to the “green” Library lot and a purely speculative 200,000 gallons of stormwater detention, the City could buy no less than 10,833 of those 50-gallon rain barrels, which would store…wait for it…a whopping 541,650 gallons of stormwater!

That’s why this project isn’t really about stormwater detention, or flooding. It’s about politics…which, in Crook County, means partisan Democratic politics.

Those politicians at the MWRD wouldn’t get any favorable publicity whatsoever from the City’s buying 10,833 rain barrels using its own money. And a certain local politician wouldn’t have a nice “green” paver Library lot as a prop for his next campaign.

This Library lot project is supposed to be on the agenda of this coming Monday night’s Public Works COW meeting (May 13, 2019, 7:00 p.m. at City Hall). We suspect there already may be a flurry of back-filling activity by Moran, if not Zingsheim, in advance of that meeting to prop up all the ipse dixit conclusions in the Moran Memo.

We don’t know about you, but we can’t wait to hear more and/or new justifications for the City’s choosing the MWRD pork barrel over 10,000 rain barrels.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We here at PublicWatchdog have long been pro-environment and anti-flooding.  Heck, the editor of this blog participated in the very first Earth Day – April 22, 1970 – in Grant Park, and has been environmentally conscious ever since.

So the recent Park Ridge Herald-Advocate article reporting on the Park Ridge City Council’s April 8 discussion about replacing the Library parking lot’s asphalt surface with water-permeable brick pavers at a cost of $1.3 million (“Park Ridge aldermen divided on pursuing ‘green’ parking lot in Uptown,” April 11, 2019) caught our attention.

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (“MWRD”) reportedly is willing to provide a matching grant, up to $650,000, for the project. For those who don’t pay attention to this stuff, the MWRD is one of the thousands of Illinois taxing bodies seemingly created and maintained to confiscate our tax dollars so that, in the MWRD’s case, dim-witted nephews and ditzy sisters-in-law of Crook County politicians can become public payrollers with guaranteed health care and pensions, but with no accountability.

But don’t take our word for it: Read “The ‘Ed Burke Effect’ washes over the  water district: Cue Cook County’s inspector general” (Chicago Tribune, April 22) and you’ll see the MWRD described as “a bastion of crony politics” that provides “big opportunities for corruption” because it “has long been a hotbed of Democratic politics and patronage.”

The MWRD’s corruption is the least of our concerns when it comes to this “green” paver project, however.

We were struck initially with the superficiality and stunning lack of data in that April 11 H-A article, which we initially attributed to superficial journalism until we read the superficial POS (and, in this case, “POS” does not mean Point Of Sale) April 8 Agenda Cover Memorandum by City Engineer Sarah Mitchell and watched the data-light Council discussion on the April 8 meeting video.

Sorry, J.J. Our bad.

Both Mitchell’s memo and the roughly 50-minute Council discussion are bereft of the most basic hard data that any responsible public official should have needed to justify moving this project forward, including: (1) how much water the “green” paver lot will detain; (2) for how long; (3) where will the water go from there; (4) the all-in project cost, including the cost of the design and engineering work for which the City is 100% responsible; (5) the cost to maintain the pavers v. maintaining the asphalt surface; (6) exactly what “other things” the City will we need to do “to make this project work,” per Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th); and (7) viable alternatives.

The only usable information provided by Mitchell’s memo and the Council’s discussion appears to be a proposed Library lot redesign required for the project, which would eliminate 13 current spaces in order to create the island “rain gardens” that are supposed to aid in the water detention.

Is a “green” Library lot more of a solution looking for a problem?

According to the H-A article, Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim told the Council the project will have “limited benefit” for flood control, because water runoff will still end up in the City’s sewer system. And he warned that heavy clay under the Library lot may hamper the amount of stormwater the lot will be able to detain.

“Limited benefit”? Water runoff still ending up in the sewers? No certainty as to how much water such a “green” lot can hold? At a cost of no less – and maybe a lot more – than $650,000?

Half-baked doesn’t come close to describing this boondoggle, which is sounding more and more like a non-solution looking for a non-problem.

There’s a lot more to this story than can be gleaned from just the H-A article about the April 8 Public Works meeting, the POS memo, the meeting minutes, and the meeting video. So we’ll be writing more about this in our next post.

But in view of the gross ignorance that appears to be driving this project forward, we need to give a special shout-out to Ald. Charlie Melidosian (5th) who – in response to a concern of Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd) about the “optics” of this project and its expense – expressed his unqualified support by self-assuredly proclaiming that he was “not concerned about residents’ perception: If we voted based on residents’ perception I think we’d be making a lot of mistakes.” (See meeting video, starting at the 1:02:17 mark).

Is Melidosian so clueless that he thinks being “concerned about residents’ perception” means becoming a human windsock blowing hither and yon at the public’s whim? Or is he so arrogant that he believes there’s nothing he can learn from residents, including his constituents?

To be fair, Melidosian qualified his tone deaf/arrogant comment with: “Our job is to educate people on the facts….”

But just what “facts” might those be, alderman – the answers to questions (1) through (7) above? If so, why weren’t those facts front-and-center in Mitchell’s memo, or raised by you and your fellow “green” lot cheerleaders, Alds. John Moran and Mazucca, at the April 8 meeting before your “consensus” to move this project forward?

For those of you keeping score, those three aldermen were part of a unanimous 6-vote (Milissis MIA) Council that screwed the pooch senseless with their Axon body camera ankle-grab for Chief Kaminski that will cost Park Ridge taxpayers approximately $280,000 – while the Niles PD got the same number of body cams from another vendor for approximately $64,000. We wrote about that in our 12.27.2018 and our 01.14.2019 posts, but you should also check out Kaminski’s defense of his disregard for the City’s procurement policy.

$280,000 is chump change compared to $650,000, which sounds more like a bait-and-switch number than the final, all-in one. And, unlike with the “green” lot’s water detention, there was never any doubt that the Axon body cams would actually work.

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We begin this post with a disclaimer: The editor of this blog has known both candidates for 5th Ward alderman for many years, has dined with them, has cocktailed with them, and likes both of them and their wives.

But if the race for 5th Ward alderman between current alderman Charlie Melidosian and former 4th Ward alderman (2011-2013) Sal Raspanti were a pageant, Melidosian would be a shoo-in for “Miss Congeniality.”

Whether he’s barbecuing competitively or just for fun, whether he’s walking his mammoth beasts around Hodge’s Park or being walked by them, whether he’s pumping out somebody’s flooded basement, building Habitat residences on weekends, or chauffeuring campaign manager Jean Dietsch from Central Wisconsin back to Park Ridge to deal with a family emergency, Charlie is an undisputed social asset to this community.

Heck, he probably could qualify for sainthood if he were Roman Catholic.

As it is, however, he may be Park Ridge’s current benchmark of affability.

But the history of failed local government in Park Ridge is filled with affable people who weren’t very good, and sometimes just plain sucked, at being elected or appointed public officials

It was affable people on the City Council who blew millions of taxpayer dollars over decades of the City’s membership in the impotent Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”). Other affable people on the Council blew tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on the General Obligation bonds the City issued to subsidize the private developer of the Uptown Redevelopment Project and its TIF (“Tax Increment Financing”) district – even as those same folks routinely neglected sewer maintenance and repair, and did nothing about flood remediation.

It was a bunch of affable people on the Park Ridge Park District Board who wasted more than $20 million tax dollars on two undersized, second-rate facilities – the Centennial “Fitness Center” (f/k/a the “Community Center”) and the Centennial water park – because they didn’t want to give the taxpayers a referendum vote on those projects.

And let’s not forget those affable people on the D-64 Board who spent over $20 million (in late 1990s dollars) replacing the District’s then-newest school (the “old” Emerson), which has subsequently delivered student performance remotely close to what was advertised from the new “middle school” concept back then, or remotely commensurate with what D-64 taxed, borrowed and spent on the “new” Emerson.

Most recently, it was those affable people on the D-207 Board who so grossly neglected the District’s infrastructure and mismanaged its resources over the past 9 years that it will cost taxpayers over $300 million to make things right. And then those same affable folks gave the affable Supt. Ken Wallace – who wouldn’t last a full day as the head of any private corporation with a $120 million/year budget – a 5-year contract extension because he helped pass the $300 million November 2018 referendum after keeping the lid on his (and the Board’s) decade of mismanagement and neglect.

So much for historical background.

We supported Melidosian’s appointment to fill the seat of the late Ald. Dan Knight, which we wrote about in our 02.24.2017 post. But in the two years since his appointment, we have seen little to suggest that he is capable, or willing, to do the heavy lifting.

Frankly, we were appalled by the way he disregarded the City’s procurement policy and joined his fellow Council members in rubber-stamping Police Chief Frank Kaminski’s arrogant no-bid, sole-source procurement of $280,000 of Axon body cameras, which served as the subject of our 01.14.2019 post – which looked even more irresponsible when Niles announced that, after field-testing three body cams instead of just one, it was getting the same amount of cameras and the necessary support equipment for less than a quarter of the cost.

And we were particularly offended that Charlie attempted to justify his wrong-headed support of Kaminski’s folly by claiming that “[Charlie’s] world is H.I.T.A.” – the acronym originated by the late Mayor Dave Schmidt for “Honesty,” “Integrity,” “Transparency” and “Accountability” in local government. Charlie wouldn’t have dared pull something like that if Schmidt were alive, nor would he have dared trade on Mayor Dave’s reputation and popularity by mimicking Mayor Dave’s campaign signage.

We’ll give Charlie’s campaign manager the discredit for a cheap shot like that, along with other ticky-tacky things like: (a) portraying Charlie as seeking “re-election” when he was never “elected”; (b) claiming that his opponent has “participated in some negative campaigning, without specifying what that was; and (c) claiming that his opponent “provided misleading information to the public,” again without specifying what that was.

But that’s just the chaff.

When it comes to the big stuff, however, we don’t think the body cam fail was a one-off for Charlie. He’s just too much of a “pleaser” to be counted on to make the tough, and often unpopular, calls needed if the City is to continue on the upswing started by Schmidt and “his” councils, beginning in 2011 with the departure of mayor Howard Frimark’s alderdopes.

Ironically, Charlie’s opponent served on the citizens committee that recommended Charlie’s appointment to succeed Knight. Before that, however, Sal served on a Mayor Dave-led Council as the 4th Ward alderman from 2011-2013, until a job promotion and a related increase in world travel caused him not to seek re-election.

In his two years on the Council, Sal’s greatest achievement – in our opinion – was standing tall with Schmidt and a then-Council majority in rejecting the demands of the various local business interests clamoring for the Council to give developer Lance Chody a sweetheart deal in the neighborhood of $3 million of tax relief in return for bringing Whole Foods to Park Ridge. We wrote about that in our 05.17.2012 post

Although he was never a rubber-stamp for Schmidt, he supported many of Schmidt’s efforts to dig the City out of the deep financial hole their affable Council predecessors left behind, to go with a sinking bond rating and unsustainable commitments of tax dollars for questionable projects and programs.

That’s why we believe that Sal, while decidedly less affable than Charlie, is more ready, willing and able to actually walk the H.I.T.A. walk, and not just talk the H.I.T.A. talk. And that’s why we endorse Raspanti for 5th Ward alderman, while leaving sainthood for Melidosian.

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It took us awhile, but we finally finished Part II about how the Park Ridge City Council helped Police Chief Frank Kaminski (1) make a mockery of the City’s procurement requirements by (2) authorizing a no-bid, sole-source 5-year, $282,000 purchase of Axon body cameras for our police officers.

Back in April 2018, Kaminski told the Council he was going to test only Axon body cameras despite his failure (refusal?) to follow the City’s procurement rules. And he did it in the face of a warning by Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) that “nobody said that we’re going to waive our procurement rules to do this.”

Unfortunately, Mazzuca, et al. didn’t have to say they were waiving anything, because Chief K recognizes empty warnings from toothless wannabe-politicians when he hears them.

So when this body cam issue finally came up for a Council vote at the November 26, 2018 Finance & Budget COW meeting, the discussion that evening – running from the 2:57:34 through the 4:04:50 mark of that COW meeting video (including a 45-minute sales pitch from 3:05:15 to 3:50:35 from Axon’s Vince Valentine) – bounced between stupid, ridiculous and infuriating.

You can watch the entire video if you want, but we don’t advise it: We already have and it’s not worth the time. But if you want a few of the lowlights, try these:

*   Ald. Marty Joyce (7th) endorsing Axon body cams (starting at 3:35:22) because Crook County and the City of Chicago both use them. Apparently the pervasive incompetence, wastefulness and corruption of those two cesspools of government is lost on Joyce: Otherwise, the fact that Axon was the body cam of choice for Toni Taxwinkle and The Rahmfather should have been reason enough to put the brakes on this sole-source deal.

*   Ald. Charlie Melidosian (5th) claiming (from 3:50:40 to 3:54:36) that “[his] world is H.I.T.A.” (the acronym, originated by the late Mayor Dave Schmidt, for “Honesty,” “Integrity,” “Transparency” and “Accountability”) before endorsing Chief K’s choice of Axon body cams as “defendable” (How’s that for a ringing endorsement!) despite a procurement process that was anything but “H.I.T.A.”

*   Ald. John Moran (1st), who may have suffered whiplash (starting at 3:59:20) from voting against the sole-source procurement (while mumbling about needing “more information”) and then almost immediately flipping his vote in favor of Axon because he didn’t want to be seen as being against body cams.

But that night’s poster child for bad government was Mazzuca, who was able to fuse tediousness, whininess and spinelessness into a seamless ball of fecklessness.

It was in our 05.08.2013 post that we first described Mazzuca as “the kind of guy who, armed with an MBA from the University of Chicago, can spend an hour drilling down into a potato chip.” While that can sometimes be useful in obtaining information, all too often Mazzuca’s chip drilling has produced little but a worthless pile of crumbs, as it did back in 2013 when he drilled himself silly before (Surprise!) rolling over for Chief K’s cop shop renovations.

The past was prologue on November 26, as Mazzuca badgered both Axon’s spinmeister and Chief K with more observations, comments and questions than the rest of the Council combined – which he followed with a litany of time-wasting gripes (starting at 3:54:40) about the history and inadequacies of Chief K’s procurement process.

But when it came down to actually having to vote on the Chief’s body cam sole-sourcing, Mazzuca grabbed his ankles and announced that he would vote “reluctantly…and I cannot emphasize ‘reluctantly’ enough” to approve the sole-source deal, before finishing with gratuitous shots at the Chief for “sloppy execution,” “foot dragging” and “excuses.”

That’s what’s called (borrowing a famous headline from the Boston Globe about a Jimmy Carter speech): “Mush from the wimp.”

Interestingly, even such mush was enough to provoke the ire of Chief K, who seems unwilling and/or incapable of tolerating anything but praise of himself and his department. So the Chief went after Mazzuca in a high-dudgeon defense of his integrity (starting at 3:57:59) before daring the Council to “fire [him] today!”

Dramatic, yes, but about as meaningless as the mush that provoked it: Only City Manager Joe Gilmore can fire the Chief. And for reasons known only to Joe Gilmore, he consistently provided alibis for the Chief’s eight-month trampling of the procurement rules.

Once the Council cast its unanimous 7-0 vote on November 26, the second vote required for final approval of the Axon contract, scheduled for the December 3, 2018 Council meeting, appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

On December 3rd, however, Mazzuca sprung a motion to defer the vote until the Council could review the Axon contract that the Chief failed (refused?) to deliver to the aldermen until minutes before that night’s meeting. Moran seconded that motion but, not surprisingly, it lost by a 3 (Yes: Mazzuca, Moran and Melidosian) to 3 (No: Wilkening, Shubert and Joyce; Milissis MIA) tie. And despite some additional mealy-mouthed complaints from Mazzuca and Moran, they dutifully grabbed their ankles and voted to pass the unread Axon sole-source contract by 6-0.

Fortunately, this episode of bad government lasted only ½ hour, from the 1:17:59 to the 1:49:35 mark of the December 3 meeting video.

But the no-bid, sole-source procurement charade turned into a cynical political travesty at the December 17 Council meeting (from 13:20 to 36:50 of that meeting video) when Moran made a half-hearted motion (“I don’t even expect it to [pass].”) for reconsideration of the Council’s December 3rd unanimous approval of the Axon contract.

Why did he make a motion that he did not expect would pass?

Moran claimed that he had done “some research” since the December 3rd vote (Nothing like an elected official waiting until after the deal is fully cooked before finally doing his job.). And in response to what seemed like an orchestrated “tell me more, tell me more” inquiry from Mazzuca (at 18:48), Moran noted that Kaminski never produced what he described as a “Department of Justice report” about the Elgin body cam vetting process and the wonders of Axon that he supposedly relied on in deciding to sole-source from Axon.

Moran also suggested that the information provided by Axon about purportedly unique features like 12-hour “battery life” and unique “interfacing” ability may not have been totally accurate, thorough and/or complete – notwithstanding its wholehearted endorsement by Chief K and CM Gilmore, and its previously unquestioned support by Moran and the rest of the Council.

All of those points could have, and should have, been raised during the seven months (between April 11 and November 26) that the aldermen sat on their thumbs, as could Melidosian’s abandonment (starting at the 30:05 mark of the video) of his previous support of Chief K’s “defendable” sole-source decision and his proposal for a full-blown competitive bidding process.

Predictably, this eleventh-hour gambit proved to be too little, too late – failing by another 3 (Yes: Moran, Mazzuca and Melidosian) to 3 (No: Wilkening, Shubert and Joyce; Milissis MIA) tie.

As best as we can tell, Moran’s do-over motion failed because he, Mazzuca and Melidosian did absolutely no lobbying of Wilkening, Shubert, Joyce and/or Milissis to change their own misguided sole-source votes.

So why no lobbying?

We suspect it’s because the Triple Ms were more concerned about creating some plausible CYA for themselves, and not about how badly they had botched the body cam procurement. So they pulled the kind of crass political stunt we’ve come to expect from the Madiganocrats and RINOs down in Springfield, and on the Crook County Board: Having let Kaminski ignore the procurement requirements and than having grabbed their ankles on two successive Axon votes, even a failed do-over let’s them argue that they tried to correct their mistake but didn’t get the support of any of their colleagues in the Council majority.

You might want to remember this the next time any of these three invoke the name, reputation or record of Mayor Schmidt, or claim to be proponents of H.I.T.A.

Because in passing this hinky deal those three didn’t have a thimble-full of H.I.T.A., or one calcified spine, to share among themselves.

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Over the past 30-40 years Illinois has gone from being one of the most prosperous states in the Union to such a socio-economic failed state that Googling “Illinois failed state” will yield pages of articles explaining just how bad off our state is, and how seemingly hopeless is its future.

Illinois did not get that way by one catastrophic event. Instead, it got there because of thousands upon thousands of individual acts of incompetence, stupidity, dishonesty and/or waste by those people – at all levels of government – whom we have elected to represent us; and by those we employ with our tax dollars to conduct those various governmental units’ day-to-day operations.

Today’s post discusses one of those individual acts of incompetent, stupid and dishonest government that recently was committed here in Park Ridge: Our own City Council’s award of a no-bid, sole-source, 5-year, $282,000 contract for police body cameras that made a mockery of both the City’s procurement ordinance, City Code Section 2-9-9, and its Council Policy Statement No. 18.

That body cam procurement process – totally dominated by Police Chief Frank Kaminski – was so screwed up that, were it an episode of “Friends,” it would be titled: “The one where the Council lets Chief K ignore the City’s procurement rules and give a no-bid, sole-source contract to his favorite vendor.”

And, yes, “Joey” and “Phoebe” would have featured roles.

The express purposes of Policy Statement No. 18 include: to “[p]rovide public confidence in City procurement processes” and to “[e]nsure that procurement activity is more accessible and visible to the public.” That Policy also contains a statement of “Procurement Ethics” emphasizing that any interaction between City officials and suppliers be “fair and transparent” so that suppliers are selected “on the basis of meeting appropriate and fair criteria.”

The principle behind such a procurement process is simple: An honest and transparent process means that taxpayers don’t have to rely on the honesty, integrity and judgement (or worry about the lack thereof) of the public official(s) doing the procurement. They can trust the process because they can see how it’s operating every step of the way.

That’s why Policy No. 18 prohibits sole source procurement for non-emergency purchases – like body cams – except under the four limited circumstances listed on page 5 of the Policy, and at subparagraph (C)(5)(c) of Code Section 2-9-9. Both of those require that “[p]rior to presenting the [sole source] request to the Finance Committee, the Department requesting the sole source procurement shall prepare a fact-based, written justification for the Finance Committee to review that addresses each applicable criteria set forth above.” In this case, that would have required the Park Ridge Police Department to identify all of the Department’s “business needs” for body cams, and then produce a “fact-based, written justification” for why only one particular source satisfies those needs.

But try as we might, we can’t find a shred of evidence that Chief K presented the Council with any list of his Department’s “business needs” for body cams, or with any “fact-based, written justification” that only his vendor of choice (Axon Enterprise, Inc.) met those needs, before the Council’s April 11, 2018 budget workshop – at which Chief K did not ask the Council’s permission to sole source with Axon but, instead, brazenly decreed the fait accompli that “we’re going with Axon” on a no-bid, sole-source basis; and that he would be “piloting” only Axon’s cameras.

Despite the significant concerns about announcing the Axon sole-sourcing expressed by Mayor Marty Maloney and Ald. John Moran (1st) at that workshop, none of the aldermen – including Moran and finance committee chair Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) – had the temerity (a/k/a, the spine) to demand that Chief K produce his list of the department’s “business needs” for body cams, or his “fact-based, written request” to do the Axon deal as a no-bid, sole-source one.

But don’t take our word for it: Watch the relevant nine minutes of the April 11, 2018 meeting video (from the 32 minute mark to 41:10) and you will see and hear Kaminski admit that he was solicited by Axon and that he was going to do a 4-month pilot program involving only Axon cameras. You’ll also see and hear City Mgr. Joe Gilmore cover Chief K’s derriere by citing their “research of multiple vendors” – without either Gilmore or Chief K identifying even one of those other vendors, or providing even one page of documentation that such “research” actually was done.

And not one of the aldermen challenged either the Chief’s decision or Gilmore’s apparently non-existent research.

That’s because, as we’ve noted in the past, Kaminski is the most formidable “politician” (a term we consider an epithet rather than a compliment) in City government, if not in all of Park Ridge local government. And he’s not one bit shy about using those superior political skills and his badge to manipulate and even intimidate our aldermen in ways that no self-respecting elected official – especially one who claims to be committed to honestly and competently representing his/her constituents – should ever stand for.

But stand for it the aldermen did, notwithstanding Mazzuca’s toothless “warning” to Chief K at the end of that segment of the budget workshop that “nobody said that we’re going to waive our procurement rules to do this.”

They didn’t have to say it, however, because the Chief knew he already owned the Council on sole-sourcing the body cams from Axon. Which is why, despite no formal vote having been taken at that April 11 workshop, the Axon body cam purchase became a “done deal” that very day– even if some of the folks around The Horseshoe were too clueless to figure that out; and the few who did lacked the spine to do anything more than kick the can down the road, as reflected by Mazucca’s insipid “we’ll take this up at a different COW…and make sure that everything is crystal clear about how to move forward with body cameras.”

The Chief’s no-bid, sole-source Axon deal appears to have remained unofficially done until seven months later when, at the November 26, 2018 COW, the Council unanimously passed the first reading of the resolution approving the contract. In what appears to be Chief K’s first “written justification” of the no-bid, sole-source purchase from Axon, his November 26 “Agenda Cover Memorandum” reads like an advertisement for Axon body cams – presumably because it substantially relies on Axon’s standard-form “Sole Source Letter” attached to it.

We’ll go into the details of the charade by which the April 11 unofficial “done deal” became official in our next post.

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