More than a month ago, on June 3 to be exact, a high-speed collision of two automobiles occurred at the intersection of Devon and Cumberland, resulting in four people being injured.

Yesterday it was announced that the criminal investigation into the accident resulted in charges against Park Ridge resident William J. Kivit, 20, for three counts of felony aggravated reckless driving and one count of felony aggravated fleeing and eluding in connection with that accident. That announcement was made via a Park Ridge Police Department press release.

With that investigation now out of the way, we can only hope that the Police Department will finally stop stonewalling the Park Ridge City Council and City taxpayers, and provide an explanation of why it took almost four days, and an ABC7 I-Team investigative report based on a tip from a PRPD insider, to finally admit that a Park Ridge police officer was involved in that crash – after the department had issued several (we hear it was three) press releases about the incident that made no mention that it occurred in connection with a police chase.

You can get the background on that from our 06.10.15 post, “‘Whole Truth Goes Missing In Police Dept. Account Of Crash.”

The PRPD’s radio silence about those false press releases is a troubling sign for a department that already has shown itself to be at least a quart or two low on transparency, yet high on self-promotion and congratulation – as evidenced by all those fluff-and-stroke “Complimentary Letters” Police Chief Frank Kaminski keeps on sticking in the record at every Public Safety COW meeting.

Despite Chief K’s assurance to the I-Team investigators that those press releases were not intended to cover up the involvement of the officer, more than a month later he has said and done nothing to dispel the impression that he and his department are stonewalling all inquiries about how and why they repeatedly handed out misleading information until they were caught by a t.v. news team, based on an insider’s tip.

To the contrary, at every turn Chief K seems to conflates the “internal investigation” of the accident itself (i.e., did the officer act properly in participating in the police chase) with whatever “internal investigation,” if any, is being done of who lied about the incident, albeit by omission, in those press releases.

That’s simply not right, and it’s not even close to transparent.

Worse yet, the City Council is letting him get away with it, if the Public Safety segments of the last two Committee Of the Whole (“COW”) meetings are any indication.

Chief K’s first report to the Council about the accident starts at the 3:50 mark of the June 8 COW meeting video. Although it kind of sounds (from the 6:05 mark to the 7:05 mark) like maybe he’s alluding to the press releases when using words like “gap” and “inconsistencies,” one cannot tell for sure. Unfortunately, neither Committee Chairman Ald. Nick Milissis, an attorney, nor any other alderman asked for a more substantial explanation.

And this past Monday’s COW meeting was just the same old same old, with Chief K offering (beginning at the 7:10 mark of the July 13 meeting video) more palaver about an “internal investigation” involving “interviews and interrogations,” without even mentioning the press releases or answering the two basic questions that could have, and should have, been answered a month ago:

• Who issued the erroneous press releases?
• Why wasn’t the police officer’s involvement mentioned?

Ald. Milissis has repeatedly shown himself to be a vigorous and relentless advocate for his constituents when it comes to issues like flooding, so we were both puzzled and disappointed with his meek, almost apologetic, tone in posing a few lightweight questions to Chief K as the rest of the Council sat silently.

On this issue, not unlike others that touch on policing and public safety, Chief K seems to exert a Svengali-like influence over a Council that responds like a gaggle of Trilbys.

In his six-year tenure here (after 32 years with the Evanston Police Department) Chief K has shown himself to be, perhaps, the most masterful politician in City government. He holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellog School of Management and he clearly knows how to “manage” – or, in this case, withhold – information. He’s like a combination of Teflon and Kevlar, deflecting or harmlessly absorbing whatever comes his way.

At this point we will repeat again, for the record, that we are supporters of Chief K and the Police Dept. We believe they generally do a fine job of policing our community, and they deserve our respect and gratitude.

But that doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye toward things like the PRPD’s sending out erroneous/false press releases that appear designed to conceal what might be seen as an embarrassing fact, or of stonewalling once the error/fraud is discovered –including by rejecting (so far, as we understand it) a FOIA request by the Channel 7 I-Team.

Just like we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the way the PRPD handled/mis-handled last summer’s Hinkley Park incident where a middle-aged Park Ridge man was beaten by several young thugs egged on by a large crowd of teens – including the PRPD’s rejection (so far, as we understand it) of a FOIA request by the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate.

And just like we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the curious way in which a PRPD officer was found not guilty of DUI when the PRPD arrest report mysteriously failed to include the results of a blood-alcohol test reportedly taken at Lutheran General Hospital following the arrest last October, as reported in a February 10, 2015 H-A article.

John Adams, the 2nd president of the United States, wrote that “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right and a desire to know.”

So far, Chief K doesn’t seem to understand or feel bound by that right.

And, so far, our elected representatives on the Council don’t seem inclined to hold him accountable for it.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We rarely have anything good to say about that banana republic to the east of Park Ridge known as the City of Chicago. 

Then again, what good can be said about what purports to be a “world-class” city but has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy from decades of pillaging by the Daley Family and its retinue of carpetbaggers and scalawags –and now presided over by Daley Family confidante The Rahmfather? So when somebody suggests a way for Park Ridge to break its shackles to Chicago as its exclusive supplier of Lake Michigan water – a suggestion that is being re-visited by the City Council at this evening’s meeting – our default reaction is to jump at the chance.

That’s probably a mistake.

Park Ridge currently is served by two water lines from Chicago, thereby giving it redundancy in case one line fails. So far, there has never been a failure in the supply of water from Chicago.

The proposed water agency to be formed by Niles, Morton Grove and Park Ridge, on the other hand, would bring in Lake Michigan water through Evanston. But it would do so by only one line, without any redundancy.

The start-up cost to Park Ridge is now estimated at $49.9 Million, which would be funded by a 30-year GO (“General Obligation”) bond, which requires that ALL City assets and income streams be pledged to secure repayment.  The assumed interest rate of 4.5% means that the City would end up paying more than $90 Million over the 30-year loan term – for only 50% of the infrastructure (one water transmission line) that it already has in place with Chicago!

Sorry, folks, but undertaking a guaranteed $90 Million debt for 30 years in order to reap projected savings on water, without any redundancy in the system, sounds like fool’s gold to us.

Kind of like the Uptown TIF funded by GO bonds that were to produce a $24 Million profit after 23 years and are now projected to saddle us with a $15 Million loss.

The bottom line here is that Niles and Morton Grove want at least one more warm municipal body to share the boxcar infrastructure cost, and Park Ridge is it. Which is why they are putting on a full-court press to force Park Ridge to join their club.

As we wrote in our April 21, 2015 post: we’ve seen this movie before, and it’s a horror film.

Except without the popcorn and Raisinettes.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today we’re giving a Watchdog bark-out to the Board and Administration of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 – and the Park Ridge City Council and Staff – for resolving their dispute over that economic black hole commonly known as the Uptown TIF.

As reported by the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“City: New agreement will lower Park Ridge TIF payments to schools,” June 23), it looks like the City and District 64 will be amending their existing intergovernmental revenue-sharing agreement that was entered into back when the Uptown TIF was created in 2003.

Interestingly enough, we believe that H-A article may be the very first time either local newspaper has referred in print to that Uptown boondoggle as being “the failed Uptown Tax Increment Financing District.” [Emphasis added.]

“Failed” is an apt description of was once touted as a once-in-a-lifetime “investment” of tens of millions of dollars of long-term bonded debt by the City’s “ready, fire, aim” cheerleaders back then: mayors Ron Wietecha and Mike Marous; a substantial bobblehead majority of the then-14 aldermen Council; Rasputin-like city manager Tim Schuenke; and all the “buy us more retail” folks populating the Chamber of Commerce.

Ironically, according to some of the financial projections circulated back then by Schuenke and the City’s hired-gun consultant, S.B. Friedman, 2015 was supposed to be the year that the TIF was to have started generating enough revenue to cover all of its debt service payments and actually produce a profit. Instead, the City is currently looking at a projected deficit/loss of over $15 million by the time the TIF expires in 2027.

The good news is that deficit/loss figure is down almost $8 million since the City’s current TIF consultants first calculated it, presumably because of some of the advanced bond refunding already done and taking into consideration the anticipated savings that the City is projecting from revising its revenue-sharing agreements with D-64, Maine Township High School District 207, and the Park Ridge Park District.

D-64 attorney (and former School Board member) Ares Dalianis noted a general consensus by the City and D-64 that “the language of the existing agreement is a little ambiguous” – in no small measure because that agreement contemplated that the Cook County Clerk would annually calculate the Equalized Assessed Value (“EAV”) for the new property growth in the TIF district, apparently without anyone at the City or D-64 actually confirming that fact with the Clerk’s office.

That’s because the mayors and the folks on the Council back then were so intent on getting the TIF passed and the project built that they were like cats in heat (or like folks with personal financial interests?). And the go-along-to-get-along D-64 Board members back then were more than happy to accept the City’s financial bribery and waive their well-founded objections to the TIF.

That apparently resulted in a slap-dash agreement with “ambiguous” terms that was negotiated in…you guessed it…closed sessions and rubber-stamped by both the Council and the School Board without the kind of public vetting that today’s City Council would be expected to require. 

Rubber-stamping is what used to pass for “due diligence” at City Hall. And that’s what still might pass for “due diligence” at D-64 – except that it’s almost impossible to tell for sure because that Board still conceals much/most of its deliberations about the important stuff in closed sessions and/or by not publishing relevant documents.

Unfortunately for all involved, however, the County “only measures new property [growth] at the end of a TIF district and there is not an accepted methodology on measuring new property during the life of the TIF,” according to Dalianis, and confirmed by City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton in slightly stronger terms back in 2013.

“The Cook County Clerk has never and will never, as a matter of fact and law, determine or recognize new property within the Uptown project area.”

Not surprisingly, none of the previous three city managers (Schuenke, Jim Hock and acting-CM Juliana Maller) seems to have made any effort to find that out. Instead, Maller came up with a bunch of mojo calculations of what the City owed to the other local taxing bodies, which now appear to have been flat-out wrong. But because Maller vouched for them and nobody questioned them, they became S.O.P. for the City and D-64 thereafter.

During her short tenure as the City’s finance director, Allison Stutts started looking into Maller’s calculations. But it was her successor, Kent Oliven, who in his even shorter tenure as finance director (relying on his prior experience with TIF and TIF accounting) suspected that those calculations were bogus. That led to the City’s hiring of Kane McKenna and KM’s confirmation of their bogusness.

That led to the dispute between the City and D-64 over the difference between what the City actually owed and what the City had paid based on Maller’s calculations of the incalculable, which payments continued even after she packed up for Hanover Park.

With such a ridiculous history as backdrop, therefore, it’s nothing short of a minor miracle that the current Council and Staff, and the current D-64 Board and Administration, were able to overcome their predecessors’ buffoonery and reach a resolution without resort to costly litigation that would have bled the taxpayers from both sides.

Well done, folks!

To read or post comments, click on title.

We have been regular critics of our local governmental units’ almost reflexive hiring of a private consultant or the commissioning of a study whenever they face a difficult question.

So our own reflexive reaction to the Park Ridge City Council’s recent discussions about commissioning a long-range comprehensive parking study was a big dose of healthy skepticism.

With new businesses and restaurants opening, especially in the Uptown area, and numerous multi-family residences nearing completion nearby, it would appear to even the most inexpert eye that the demand for parking will be increasing. And from the remarks by the Council and City staff, it’s pretty clear that there is no in-house parking expertise on which to draw.

As reported in a Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story (“Park Ridge talks ‘long-range’ parking study,” June 16), such basic information as whether the City is charging the right amount of parking fees, or whether it’s getting enough parking spaces out of its existing lots, appears to be baffling staff. And, perhaps even more infuriatingly, as of April 2015 the City was reporting 4,749 unpaid parking tickets dating back to 2008 – SEVEN YEARS! – and representing $559,200 in fines.

At this point, whoever is allegedly in charge of that enforcement/collection effort should be publicly identified, placed in stocks in front of City Hall, and pelted with rotten tomatoes, cabbages and the occasional dead cat. Because, seriously, this is bleeping ridiculous.

If these fines aren’t collectable for legal or practical reasons, it’s time to make that determination, write them off, and institute a policy and process that ensures this kind of situation never repeats itself.

But we digress.

Just because the demands for parking will be increasing doesn’t mean that they will reach the critical mass necessary to support an economically viable parking business. And if we’ve learned anything from that economic black hole otherwise known as the Uptown TIF, it’s that the City has shown itself to be totally incapable of making sound business decisions in any way relating to private enterprise.

So before the City runs off and hands over $20,000-$40,000, or more, to some eager consultants who will tell us that (a) we have a parking problem, and (b) the only way to solve it is with one or more parking lots and/or garages, we’d first like to hear the Council and staff address and resolve the policy issues that any such study will almost certainly raise, starting with:

• Is the City ready, willing and able to undertake the bonded debt necessary for it to acquire land and build the necessary lots or garages; and 

• If not, is the City ready, willing and able to give any tax concessions to one or more private developers to spend their own money acquiring land and building the lots/garages?

If the City is not willing, as a public policy matter, to say “yes” to at least one of those questions, then any kind of meaningful “comprehensive” parking study is going to be a waste of time and money – because it can’t lead to any meaningful action by the City.

Make no mistake about it: we don’t believe the City should be in the parking business. As noted above, the City has so far proven itself incapable of even collecting its parking tickets. And the last time it dipped its toe into the parking garage water was (as we understand it) by borrowing and spending several million dollars to faux-“partner” with Uptown developer PRC Partners – a “deal” that has left the City violated in every available orifice and continuing to pay for that dubious “privilege.”

So let’s not even think of going there again.

But if the City isn’t going to throw a bundle of taxpayer money and/or debt at this problem, who will?

Basic capitalism would suggest that, if there truly were a commercially significant demand for parking anywhere in Park Ridge, some private operator would come forward with a project. But while we’ve got every Tom, Dick and Harry developer looking to throw up condos, townhouses or apartment buildings, we haven’t heard about anybody knocking on the door at City Hall inquiring about the permitting and licensing of parking lots and/or garages.

That lack of interest, however, won’t stop a limited (fortunately) contingent of knuckleheads from arguing that the City must “invest” in parking in order to prime the “retail” pump. Check out the Park Ridge Citizens Online and Park Ridge Concerned Homeowners Group Facebook pages and you’ll discover a few members of the knucklehead brigade actually advocating – in a total fantasyland way – for the City to somehow force private landlords to lower their rents in order to make their properties more “friendly to business.”

Even the former Soviet Union countries don’t seem to play that socialist game anymore.

So before the City Council spends one dime on any “comprehensive” parking study, it should do the intelligent, fiscally-responsible thing and formulate a City policy on public parking and the City’s role in providing, maintaining, creating and/or incentivizing it. Otherwise, the City will, once again, be putting the cart before the horse.

With the Uptown TIF albatross scheduled to hang around the City’s neck for another 12 years, we don’t need to waste any more scarce tax dollars on studying something the City has neither the money nor the political will to undertake.

To read or post comments, click on title.

How many times have we heard some resident, when addressing a situation or condition that doesn’t meet his/her expectations, insist that “This is Park Ridge!” – with an almost palpable curl of the lip that adds the implicit rejoinder: “With the taxes we pay, this should be taken care of”?

That was one of the takeaways from the alley-paving portion of last Monday (June 7) City Council COW meeting, beginning at around the 2:01 mark of the meeting video.

The City has 53 gravel alleys remaining, which we understand to mean 53 blocks of such alleys. The City’s Public Works Dept. maintains those alleys by re-grading the gravel surfaces, generally without adding gravel so as not to build up the alley elevation.

For a number of years the City would pave 2 or 3 of these gravel alleys a year, with paving including a relief/storm sewer down the middle of the alley. That program was done via the creation of Special Service Areas (“SSA”s) voted on by the affected residents, with the City initially covering half the costs and the homeowner of the affected blocks paying the other half, over time, by an additional charge to their property taxes. That split later shifted to 75% City, 25% residents.

But the program was stopped altogether, along with a number of other non-essential expenses, once Mayor Dave Schmidt was elected and the City Council finally realized just how adversely the Uptown TIF albatross was affecting City finances.

But now some residents whose homes abut those alleys want them paved. And they are making variations of the “this is Park Ridge” argument in support of the City’s paving them – even though they bought their homes with the gravel alleys and, as best as we can tell, never received any firm commitment from the City to pave them.

And as is often the case with these long-delayed projects, some of the residents are now calling the paving of these alleys “needs” rather than wants.

Why are we not surprised?

Public Works director Wayne Zingsheim guestimates that each block of alley (with relief sewer) will cost around $400,000 to pave. That comes to around $21 million, which just happens to be one of the figures (albeit one of the lower ones) bandied about as the cost to provide flood relief for Mayfield Estates and the Northwest Park area. And that would be for paving those alleys with plain old non-permeable concrete. That new environmentally-friendlier permeable pavement that has been used in places like Chicago and Highland Park would be significantly more expensive.

Even if those alley residents approved SSAs for their respective blocks, the cost to the rest of the City’s taxpayers would be $15.75 million at a 75%-25% cost split; or $10.5 million if the split would be 50%-50%. With that 50/50 split, the average resident on those affected blocks could be expected to pay around $10,000, not including interest, as his/her share of the project, presumably over several years.

Fortunately, Acting-Mayor Marty Maloney asked the right questions: “How do we pay for it, and what does it do to the flooding problem we have in the City?”

The first of those questions should be asked about EVERY project, big and small. Because that’s the question that politicians and bureaucrats rarely ask. And when they do, they also often answer it with whatever they think they can sell to a gullible public.

We look forward to seeing what City Staff comes back to the Council with in August, when this matter returns to the Council’s agenda. And then we’ll also see how much the residents with those gravel alleys are willing to pay for their paving “needs.”

Or how quickly those “needs” become mere “wants.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

The benchmark for honest and thorough factfinding in our society is the court-administered oath to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  And if anyone ever needed an object lesson in the meaning of the three components of that oath, the Park Ridge Police Department’s reporting of the high-speed crash last Wednesday (June 3) night near the intersection of Cumberland and Devon provides it.

The “truth” piece of this story is pretty simple: four people were injured, two seriously, when a red 1996 Chevy SUV driven by a 20-year-old man, traveling east on Devon at a high rate of speed, ran a red light and struck a gray 2014 Audi driven by a 24-year-old Park Ridge woman traveling north on Cumberland. That basic truth was conveyed in three separate police department-issued press releases since June 4.

The “whole truth,” however, is that a Park Ridge police officer was chasing that SUV when it ran the red light.  That truth was not revealed to the public, despite three separate press releases about the incident issued by our police department, until June 7 – almost four days later.  And that revelation occurred only after somebody, reportedly from inside the police department and “angered” by the way the situation was being handled, tipped off the ABC News television investigative team of Chuck Goudie and Christine Tressel about both the police chase and the existence of a video of it recorded by the squad car’s dash camera.

As for the “nothing but the truth,” that part of the oath is intended to deter obfuscation of the whole truth by a clutter of irrelevant information and opinion. In this case, that clutter includes information like: the SUV had been driving around the suburbs for 30 minutes before the crash; the officer involved in the chase was at least a 10-year veteran of the force; he was treated at the hospital for high blood pressure and trauma from what he had seen; he has been relieved of street duty and placed in a desk job pending investigation; and that the driver of the SUV promptly lawyered up and isn’t talking to the police.

And let’s not forget Police Chief Frank Kaminski’s own admonition that the media focus shouldn’t be on the officer’s involvement in the crash or on his department’s concealment of that involvement, but on the driver of the SUV.

Look, there goes Elvis!

Ironically, the crash occurred the very same day that we published a post critical of the police department’s seeming cover-up of the two-police-calls prelude to last summer’s beating of a Park Ridge man in Hinkley Park, which most recently involved the department’s rejection of a Park Ridge Herald-Advocate FOIA request. Now, one week later, we’re writing about another cover-up completely unrelated to the first.

We believe Chief Kaminski is basically a good man. And we believe that the police officers under his command are basically good men and women. We also believe that the police department has generally done a fine job in serving and protecting our community.

But even basically good people can do bad and destructive things.  And, frankly, there seems to be some kind of dysfunction within the police department, one of the symptoms of which is these instances of subterfuge and manipulation of information that are as inexplicable as they are unacceptable.

From what ABC News has reported, there also may be some dissension in the ranks – as indicated not only by the angry leaker of the tip to ABC, but also by rumors we’ve heard of two “factions” or “cliques” within the department which, if true, could be contributing to some of these transparency issues.

Although Kaminski insisted  to those ABC investigators that “[t]here is no cover-up,” the only other explanation for the failure to include the police-chase element of the incident in those three separate press releases issued by the police department would appear to be that the person(s) issuing those releases is/are incredibly inept. And, frankly, we can’t give much credence to that alternative in light of the department’s pre-occupation with public relations – as reflected by things like the “Complimentary Letters and Awards” insert that shows up regularly in the City Council’s COW packets.

Whether or not the officer involved in this incident acted properly or improperly in chasing the SUV down Devon at high speed is a question that won’t be answered until the investigation is completed. And even if the outcome is unfavorable to the officer, it likely was more of an error in judgment than a premeditated breach of policy, protocol or procedure.

But once again we note that it’s way past time Chief K and his department learned that the cover-up is usually worse than the error. Because an error is correctable, while a loss of trust and confidence that comes with a cover-up is usually permanent.

Especially when it’s the trust and confidence of the people you have sworn to serve and protect.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We’re a little late getting to a May 9 article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“City appeals Labor Board’s ruling on union health care violations”).  But because that article demonstrates one of the problems the City of Park Ridge causes for itself by the way it deals with the unions representing its employees, better late than never.

Historically, the City – like our other local governmental units with unionized workers – treats collective bargaining as a mysterious process that requires a “strategy” devised and monitored in closed-session meetings because disclosure would fatally compromise it. So whenever employment matters are discussed, our elected officials run off into closed session meetings with the City’s legal beagles.

Invariably, the taxpayers remain in the dark. And, invariably. stuff goes wrong that costs those taxpayers money.

The latest screw up involves a collective bargaining agreement (i.e., a contract) ostensibly entered into between the City and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 representing our Public Works Dept. employees, which we wrote about in our 06.14.13, 03.14.14 and 12.05.14 posts. Local 150 represents approximately 23,000 members working in various industries throughout Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana, and Southeastern Iowa; and since 2006 it has become a sophisticated political player, throwing millions of dollars at politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Or, as we saw in the 2013 non-partisan Park Ridge mayoral election, at the candidate (unsuccessful challenger Larry Ryles) it felt it would provide a much more sympathetic ear than the late Mayor Dave Schmidt.

Long story short, the City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton and the City’s crack negotiators somehow had the City Council approve a contract with health care terms for its Public Works Department employees to which Local 150, on their behalf, never agreed.

So when the City started applying the new health care terms in that contract, Local 150 beefed to the Illinois Labor Relations Board (the “ILRB”), a sub-unit of state government dominated by political appointees and flunkies of Mike Madigan and his stooges. And to no one’s surprise, administrative law judge (and former ILRB ass’t. general counsel) Anna Hamburg-Gal, who has been an attorney only since 2010, found for Local 150.

We encourage readers to take a look at the 23-page written ruling online, especially pages 9 through 13, if only to see for themselves the kind of semi-incomprehensible goat rodeo just one small piece of those contract negotiations appears to have been – and how the City’s (H.R. Mgr. Mike Suppan and attorney Bob Smith) and Local 150’s (attorney Deanna Distacio) negotiators botched it so completely that the ALJ determined the contract the City began operating under in May 2013 wasn’t even a contract!

The City is appealing that decision, while Local 150 is calling on City taxpayers to pressure their aldermen into grabbing their ankles and meekly submitting to the union’s will rather than appeal.

That appears to be a Local 150 modus operandi: pick a fight with the City, then tell the taxpayers that their representatives are wasting their money fighting that fight – hoping to intimidate those representatives so that they fold up on their own, or that at least some taxpayers are dumb enough to believe the union’s “Shanghai Lil”-style propaganda.

What this kerfuffle illustrates, however, is the pitfalls of secretive negotiating “strategies” and non-public negotiating sessions which lead to these kinds of unnecessary and wasteful disputes, while also emboldening unions like Local 150 to make outrageous demands and negotiate in ways they might not want the public to see and hear. Conducting those negotiations in open, videotaped meetings would dispel the carefully-manicured, purely-politicial image of public-sector workers as Mother Teresa-types seeking just one more spot of gruel to sustain themselves and their families while they selflessly devote every waking hour to the welfare of the taxpayers.

But if any elected official wants to avoid future rodeos of this type while also leveling the playing field by making this process more transparent and accountable, there’s a pretty simple way of doing so.

Step one would be for the Council to decide, in open session as part of its annual budget process for any year in which a new union contract is to be negotiated, whether the City can afford to pay any additional compensation to the employees of that particular collective bargaining unit (e.g., Local 150, iCops, etc.). By conducting those deliberations over the whether, the how much and the why of any raises or bonuses in open session, interested members of the public could judge for themselves whether their elected officials are being fair and reasonable to the employees and to the taxpayers.

If the union wants to appear at those budget sessions and make its pitch for a higher budget number for its members, it could do so – but with the lights on, the camera running, and the reporters scribbling away. And once the City comes up with its fair-and-reasonable hard-dollar number, that number should be the City’s offer to the union.  Not 50%, or 75% or even 90%, but the whole 100% of that budget number.

No need for the City to play coy, or to stage some second-rate Kabuki just to make the City’s negotiators look like they’re clever negotiators who drive a hard bargain.

Oh yeah…and part of this process should be the City’s publishing of the current salary, benefits, and an updated pension calculation for every member of that bargaining unit, so that the taxpayers can know how much money, and what kind of benefits, those employees are already getting.

Any subsequent negotiations (i.e., the actual collective bargaining) about how the City’s dollar amount gets allocated can be done in open session, once again with the cameras running and the reporters scribbling away. Let the union state, on the record, whether it wants 3/4 to go to raises and 1/4 to benefits, or 2/3 and 1/3, etc.

And when the union decides, as it most certainly will, that the offered dollar amount isn’t big enough, the City Council’s response should be simple and straightforward:

“You’ve got our detailed budget. Tell us and the taxpayers what specific line items you want us to cut – and by how much – in order to come up with the extra money you want.”

That way the union and its member can go on record about where they think the extra money they want flowing into their pockets will be coming from. And what City infrastructure or services will get short-changed as a result.

Or how much higher they want our taxes to rise.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Over the past two weeks the media has reported that three of the four perpetrators of last summer’s vicious attack on a 48-year-old Park Ridge man at Hinkley Park following the Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) have pled guilty and been sentenced. The case against the final defendant is set to go to trial June 29 in juvenile court.

So we found it more than a little unusual to read in this week’s online Park Ridge Herald-Advocate that the Park Ridge Police Dept. had denied a Freedom of Information Act request from the H-A for copies of the official police reports from that incident (“Youngest teen charged in 2014 Park Ridge beating given probation,” June 2).

As we understand FOIA (courtesy of a “Citizen’s Guide” to FOIA published by the Paul Simon Institute of Southern Illinois University), arrest reports are subject to public disclosure under FOIA unless certain exceptions apply – the most common of which appears to be where disclosure would obstruct an ongoing criminal investigation. On the other hand, names and addresses of witnesses and/or minors are simply redacted from the reports produced.

Given the current posture of all four cases, we can’t begin even to imagine how the production of the police reports to the H-A could obstruct an ongoing investigation. By now those investigations should all be complete, and those reports would have already been produced to the attorneys for all four individuals. And the PD isn’t offering to produce the reports in redacted form.

So why is the Police Department balking?

Could it be the PD is concerned that the report(s) of not only the beating incident but also the two earlier police calls to Hinkley Park that evening might reveal merely perfunctory responses to those earlier calls? Or a delayed response to the beating call?

Up until now, the PD has kept a tight lid on what would seem to be critical information about the responses to those two earlier calls, including information we asked about in our 08.12.14 post re Chief Kaminski’s dog-and-pony show before the City Council:

• If the exact time of the officers’ arrival was so important, why wasn’t the time of their departures also important? Could it be that those departure times might show that the responding officers who “checked the area” for fireworks, alcohol, drugs, etc. really weren’t all that thorough in performing that task?

• Why didn’t the chief identify the time(s) and location(s) of those “other calls” the ROs supposedly had to run off to instead of staying at Hinkley and providing the kind of “police presence” central to the “community policing” the department claims to be practicing – especially on the second call, when the number of teens had inexplicably grown from 30-40 to around 75 in just 35 minutes?

• Why didn’t the chief talk about the reported police dispersal of more than 50 teens from the Library grounds between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. – the ones who supposedly migrated en masse the two blocks to Hinkley and further swelled those ranks?

Our limited experience with Chief K, a longtime Park Ridge resident, suggests to us that he’s basically an honest and decent guy who has run his Department creditably. But the way this whole Hinkley situation has been FUBARed makes it seem as if the Police Dept. was neither ready nor willing to deal in any meaningful way with the mass of youths at Hinkley that night.

And rejecting the H-A’s FOIA request does nothing to dispel that impression.

As this year’s TOPR quickly approaches, the residents deserve to finally know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about how the Police Department handled – or mishandled – the Hinkley situation last summer.  That starts with the release of the police reports.

And Chief K needs to remember that it’s not the screw-up but the cover up that presents the bigger problem.

UPDATED (06.05.15). This week’s Park Ridge Journal contains a letter by Chief Kaminiski about the sentencing of two of the perpetrators of last summer’s beating of a middle-aged Park Ridge man in Hinkley Park following that night’s Taste of Park Ridge festivities (“Park Incident, Outcome, Tough Lessons To Learn,” June 3). It makes several good points about vile incidents such as this serving as “teachable moments” for our youth.

We heartily concur.

That being said, this situation also presents an important “teachable moment” for Chief K and his department – who still seem determined to stonewall the disclosure of information about the events leading up to that incident that our citizens deserve to have. While we can’t say that better policing earlier that evening might have prevented the incident and its aftermath, it’s not much of a stretch to entertain that possibility.

Chief K’s message applies to himself and his department no less than to the average citizen: “[T]here are consequences for your decisions and…they can be rather significant.”

So if the department didn’t botch those first two calls to Hinkley, Chief, why not release the reports that will answer the questions we asked and prove your assertions?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Last year the City of Park Ridge suffered a bit of a national black-eye when a video of a middle-aged Park Ridge man being beaten by a few young thugs in the midst of a gathering of local (?) youths at Hinkley Park went viral.

News outlets around the county got to watch and listen to our callow youth triumphantly chant “U-S-A!” as the father, searching for his son in the crowd after Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) had closed down for the night, was verbally abused and physically tuned up.

As we wrote about in our 07.25.14 and 07.31.14 posts, our local police did a pretty horsebleep job of dealing with that Lord Of The Flies scenario and its group psychosis, despite being called out on two separate occasions within a couple/three hours of the incident. And that policing charade was followed by what could best be described as pathetic hand-wringing and buck-passing that we wrote about in our 08.12.14 post.

Almost a year later, the criminal charges against the four local darlings who assaulted and/or battered the dad are still wending their way through the Cook County justice system, with two of the “young men” scheduled to appear in court on May 26.

But as Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel once was famously quoted: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

So this year the Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation (“MCYAF”) – in conjunction with the TOPR promoters, the Park Ridge Park District, the Police Departments, Maine South High School and Lincoln Middle School – is organizing even more events to…wait for it…“draw a bigger crowd” of youths to the Park Ridge Library lawn and the TOPR/Uptown area, according to a May 12, 2015 article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Group planning new activities aimed at teens during Taste of Park Ridge”)

That’s right, campers: The same Police Department and Park District that, together, couldn’t handle the reported 40+, 75+ and then 100+ youths who ended up at Hinkley Park, including the contingent of about 50 who migrated there from the Library lawn after TOPR closed for the evening at 10:00 p.m. last July 12, are part of an effort to encourage an even “bigger crowd” of youths to show up for activities at and around the TOPR this year.  But only until TOPR closes at 10:00 p.m.

Brilliant!

And the outgoing Park District president Mel Thillens, who also wears the TOPR chairman’s chapeau, is looking to get the Park District to have an “open swim” at Hinkley, just in case there are some aquatic-oriented youths whom might otherwise not be drawn to the area and miss out on the mob action…er, we mean fun.

To quote MCYAF’s (and newly-elected Maine Twp. H.S. Dist. 207 Board member) Teri Collins: “We think part of the problem is that kids don’t have things to do that are age appropriate.”

Sure they do, Teri: What’s more “age appropriate” for teenage kids than hanging out with friends, preferably somewhere their parents and other responsible adults can’t keep an eye on them?

And occasionally beating the tar out of some parent who foolishly invades their turf after TOPR closes at 10:00 p.m., two full hours before the City’s curfew goes into effect?

Given last year’s apres-TOPR fiasco, however, this year the Police Department is promising to deploy more troops to Hinkley. And maybe, unlike last year, the gendarmerie that shows up might actually stick around for awhile instead of stopping by, smiling, and leaving the growing crowd to its own devices despite two separate telephone complaints about repeated incidents of fireworks discharge, vandalism and aggravated mopery with intent to gawk.

Doing things to bring even more teenagers into Uptown on the Friday and Saturday evenings of TOPR makes us wonder what exactly are these folks thinking – besides the obvious special-interest benefits of more traffic and revenue for TOPR, and a higher public profile (and more donations?) for MCYAF.

It also makes us ask: Hey, Mel and Teri…are TOPR and MCYAF going to be footing the extra cop costs, or will the taxpayers get stuck with those while your organizations just reap the benefits?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today we’re giving a Watchdog bark-out to the Park Ridge Police Department for having all 54 of its sworn officers reaffirm the oath they took when they first became officers. (“Park Ridge police officers reaffirm oath to community,” Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, May 12, 2015)

According to the H-A article, the officers reaffirmed not only their official oath of office but, also, the Law Enforcement Oath of Honor – which includes vows such as never betraying the officer’s badge, or his/her integrity, character, “or the public trust”; and the vow to hold themselves and other officers “accountable for our actions.”

This reaffirmation of oaths reportedly came as a reaction to the highly-publicized incidents of questionable police conduct in various places around the country. And although Park Ridge and all of Illinois has, so far, been spared such highly-charged incidents, those of us here in Crook County have witnessed enough political and police corruption (e.g., drug dealing, burglary rings, shakedowns, bribery, the “blue wall,” etc.) to realize that no community is immune.

Additionally, while the H-A article mentioned incidents like the officer charged with DUI, a commander facing reinstated aggravated battery charges related to a 2006 beating of a teenage suspect, and an officer’s suspension for sexting, those three incidents involved off-duty officers – it failed to mention the 2010 FBI seizure of police department records and computers (at least some of which were related to the 2006 beating), or the 2008 Ekl Report that identified other instances of questionable police conduct.

That’s why we think that a reaffirmation of those oaths should be an annual event.

We’re not suggesting that as any slam on the police department and its personnel. We believe Park Ridge, on an overall basis, has a solid – and perhaps exceptional – police department. And while the mean streets of Park Ridge don’t regularly present the kinds of challenges that other communities present, even the most benign traffic stop carries the kind of risk that most of us do not want to face; and which we appreciate the police facing on our behalf.

But both elected and appointed City officials reaffirm their oaths of office every time their term of office is extended – and they don’t carry guns or have to make split-second, potentially life and death decisions for their own safety and the safety of others.

With regard to an annual reaffirmation, we’re encouraged by the comments of officer and police union steward John Dorner, who not only reported no negative response to the reaffirmation but also indicated that “every officer embraces it and…look[s] forward to hopefully doing it on a yearly basis, if not more.”

Exactly right.

To read or post comments, click on title.