Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, famously invoked a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

If you’ve been paying attention to the adventures of Illinois’ new governor, Bruce Rauner, you know that he has been learning a painful lesson: In the state that calls itself the Land of Lincoln – a sick joke, considering the pervasive dishonesty and corruption for which Illinois has become infamous – we seem to have become a government of the bureaucrats, by the politicians, for the special interests.

And those special interests often include both the bureaucrats and the politicians.

Gov. Rauner is finding out just how entrenched those bureaucrats and special interests really are, and how determined they are to maintain Illinois’ continuing road-to-bankruptcy status quo: No matter what it is that Rauner wants to cut, it always seems to be somebody’s indispensable program, service or entitlement.

So it should come as no surprise that a variation on that same theme is playing out here in Park Ridge. And although there are many examples we could point to, today we will look at the Park Ridge Public Library – specifically the $43,738 in raises recommended for some of the Library’s 90 employees that the Library Board nixed last month.

That $43,738 is around 1% of the Library’s annual budget. In government, both that dollar amount and that percentage are treated as little more than rounding errors. And small ones at that.

But that $43,738 represents a principle much more significant than the dollars or percentage: Whether the Library exists primarily for the benefit of its taxpayers/users, or for the benefit of its employees?

Last summer that question was answered loudly and clearly by Library Director Janet Van De Carr and a majority of the then-Library Board (Trustees John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White) when it chose to slam the doors – literally – on the Library’s Sunday users for 14 summer Sundays, rather than use the roughly $20,000 earmarked for employee raises to keep those doors open. You can read the gory details in our our 04.04.14 post, our 04.14.14 post and our 05.29.14 post.

And those doors stayed shut until the July 15, 2014, Board meeting, when new Trustees Pat Lamb and Dean Parisi, replacing Benka and Schmidt, joined with Trustees Joe Egan, Char Foss-Eggemann and myself to provide a majority vote to overturn the Sunday closings.  With that handwriting on the wall, Ebling, Harrison and White grudgingly flipped – leaving only Hynous insisting that shutting down the Library on summer Sundays wasn’t wrong and provided a more consistent referendum message.

With the new Board has come more oversight, a more pro-active approach to management, and a more exacting focus on Library finances than existed in past years.

So when increases to employee compensation came up at the April 14 Library Board personnel committee meeting, a majority of the Trustees in attendance voted to convert Van De Carr’s recommended $43,738 merit salary increase pool into a $25,000 merit bonus pool.  And then at the April 21 Library Board meeting, a majority of the Trustees present rejected any additional compensation for employees, indicating that neither Van De Carr nor the employees themselves had made a persuasive case for such additional compensation.

Not surprisingly, that exercise in financial stewardship whacked the hornets’ nest.

Not only did Van De Carr express her indignation at the temerity of the Board to reject one of her recommendations, but so did some employees and a collection of folks from the Citizens Supporting the Library Referendum, who were on hand that night to be honored for their efforts in running the successful Library referendum campaign. The employees and referendum folks accused the “no”-voting Trustees of not valuing the employees, of ruining morale, and of ignoring the will of the voters who passed the referendum.

Of course the Library employees are valued.  But just like the rest of us mortals, they are not irreplaceable. They can die, become disabled, move to another state, or simply change jobs or careers.  So if their morale is so fragile that it can be crushed by not getting a raise or bonus this year, then it’s far too fragile to count on under any circumstances.

Moreover, nothing in the referendum question itself mentioned employee raises or bonuses.  Neither did anything in the Library’s own Funding and Budget FAQs, or in its Referendum Information sheet, or in the campaign mailer sent out by the referendum folks.  And for good reason: neither the Library employees nor the referendum folks wanted the taxpayers/voters even to think about whether any of the extra $4 million in total funding would go for employee raises and bonuses.

Just like the way the Director, the former Board majority, and the employees emphatically denied and ridiculed any suggestion that last summer’s Sunday Library closings were in any way related to last year’s employee raises.

As one of those trustees who cast a “no” vote at that April 21 meeting, the easiest thing to do would have been to rubber-stamp whatever the Director proposed. That’s what past Library boards had been doing for over a decade, even if it meant deficit spending to the point of closing the Library’s doors on summer Sundays,and cutting other hours.  And the reason they did that is because they never cared enough to ask the basic questions that should be sine qua non inquiries before taxpayer money is used for additional employee compensation:

“Is the Library better today than it was a year ago?”

“Are the employees providing more and/or better service than they did a year ago?”

“Does the Library provide greater value to the taxpayers than it did a year ago?”

None of those questions, or any variants of them, were answered or even addressed by the Director or by the employees, or by the referendum folks, prior to that April 21 vote.  Instead, all that was offered were arguments along the lines of the contents of a letter which the refendum folks sent to the Trustees two days ago, which all boil down to: “Library staff members deserve a modest wage increase in line with that being received by other City employees.”

In public employment that’s what’s known as an “entitlement.”  Because here in Illinois, just showing up for your public-sector job is usually reason enough for a raise, especially if other public employees are getting raises.

What those of us on the Board considered, however, were a variety of facts that suggested the answer to all three of those sine qua non questions was “no” – including the Library’s own reports showing: (a) a consistent decline in Library visits to their lowest level in 10 years; (b) a decline in Library circulation to the lowest level in six years; (c) a decline in Library program attendance to the lowest level in 9 years; and (d) even a slight decline in the number of Library card-holders and the number of cardholders actually using their cards to check out items.

And, as Trustee Pat Lamb pointed out, Library employees had received raises over the past four years that averaged in excess of the increases in the Consumer Price Index.

Those of us who have been entrusted with the stewardship of the Library realize that the additional $1 million/year in referendum money the voters gave us for the next four years carries additional responsibilities for using it wisely. That means making sure that, first and foremost, the Library is put on a sound and sustainable financial footing by the time those four years are up.

It also means improving the Library and its operations so that it looks, feels, and IS a better facility – not only for its regular users but, also, for the occasional user and even those non-user taxpayers who are funding it without getting any direct benefit in return.

That requires more from both the Board and Staff than acting merely as custodians and doing the same old same old for the next four years. That requires improving and even re-inventing what the Library does, how well and efficiently it does it, and the space in which it does it – so that the Library’s performance metrics start demonstrating something better than the lemming-like following of some “national trend” that has become the alibi du jour anytime those metrics are questioned.

If the Director and Staff can figure out ways of doing that, maybe next year they will have some tangible achievements, instead of just a purported entitlement, to justify a request for additional compensation.

Let’s hope so…for the community’s sake.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

Since 2009 the City of Park Ridge has had the most transparent operations of any local governmental unit, by far. That’s because the late Mayor Dave Schmidt fought tooth and nail to make it so. And because the voters wisely elected a majority of aldermen who joined Mayor Dave in that fight.

One of the fruits of that transparency was on display – naturally, given that “on display” is what transparency’s all about – at the City Council COW (Committee Of the Whole) meeting last Monday (April 27) night when the Council conducted its open-session review of City Manager Shawn Hamilton.

Hamilton is the top City employee and its highest paid one. He’s also, as we understand it, the only City employee whom the Council is legally empowered to directly hire, fire, review and compensate.  And as it has done for the past few years, the Council once again conducted his review in open session, with the press present and the videocamera running.

That’s the way government should work: out in the open, in the bright light of day.

According to the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story about the process (“City manager receives ‘below average’ performance review,” 04.29.15), Hamilton received less than a ringing endorsement of his past year’s performance.  In the pre-Schmidt, pre-transparency years, there would have been no such H-A story because the process would have been hidden from view in closed session, leaving the taxpayers scratching their heads and wondering why the then-city managers were getting their regular raises and benefit increases.

Not only does the transparency of the City’s process give the ordinary taxpayer an up-close-and-personal appreciation for how their top employee performed over the past year, but it also gives them some insight into how their aldermen came up with Hamilton’s rating – because the aldermen’s actual rating sheets were part of the meeting materials posted on the City’s website.  That way, taxpayers can see for themselves what factors went into that rating.

Unfortunately, at its March 5 meeting the Park Ridge Park District Board took a big step backward from last year’s more transparent process for evaluating the District’s top employee, Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle.  Instead of an open-session discussion like last year, the Park Board waited until the end of its lengthy meeting before running into closed session for its 40-minute evaluation of Mountcastle.  The result: another 4% salary boost (from $149,000 to $155,000) after a 4% bump last year and a 7% bump in 2013.

Not surprisingly, the individual Park Board members’ reviews of Mountcastle were not posted on the District’s website, nor does it sound like any Board members except president Mel Thillens actually saw all the written reviews prior to the Board adjourning, lemming-like, into the closed session.

Call it a cowardly retreat from the promise of last year’s more-open process.

That probably shouldn’t have come as a total surprise, however, given that Board president Thillens and several other Board members have consistently displayed no natural instinct for transparency and accountability – other than when they are on the campaign trail, or when they believe they have no other alternative.

But when it comes to treating the taxpayers like mushrooms, nobody does it any better/worse than both of our local school boards. When they review their respective superintendents – Park Ridge-Niles School District 64’s $240,000+ Laurie Heinz, and Maine Twp. H.S. District 207’s $250,000+ Ken Wallace – those boards are so secretive that Edward Snowden would be challenged to sneak a peek.

We’ve heard all the secrecy arguments, most of which are some variation on the “closed sessions let elected officials speak candidly” theme.

Elected officials who need the secrecy of a closed session to speak candidly about the performance of their government unit’s top executive have no business holding public office.

Too bad so many of them still do.

To read or post comments, click on title.

About a dozen years ago, consultant S.B. Friedman helped Park Ridge’s then-mayor, Ron Wietecha, and its then-city manager, Tim Schuenke, convince Park Ridge’s then-city council – which didn’t take much, considering how shamelessly a majority of aldermen were panting over the deal – that “investing” around $30 million in an Uptown TIF would bring a $20-30 million-plus profit by the time the TIF was scheduled to end 23 years later.

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past several years, however, you know how totally wrong that projection turned out to be: that $20-30 million “profit” is now projected to be a $20+ million loss.

But Wietecha fled to Barrington shortly after getting the TIF passed, Schuenke fled to Wisconsin after the sweetheart development deal was cut with PRC, and not one alderman who rubber-stamped that boondoggle is still on the Council.  In fact, 11 of the 14 didn’t even stand for re-election after then-mayor Howard Frimark led the referendum drive that cut the council from 14 aldermen to 7.

So when we read in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge asked to make water supply decision by July,” 04.14.15) how another consultant – this one paid by Niles and Morton Grove rather than on the City’s meter like Friedman’s was – is claiming the City could save between $74 million and $111 million in water costs over the next 40 years if it spent around $47 million toward the construction of a new water main from the City of Evanston to Park Ridge, our initial reaction was: we’ve seen this movie before.

And it’s a horror film.

Make no mistake about it: our City currently is being gouged on the price of its water purchases from its sole-source supplier, the City of Chicago. And given Chicago’s decades-long self-destructive run toward bankruptcy, we can expect to be gouged even more as Emperor Rahm tries every trick in the book to avoid imposing necessary tax increases on all those mindless serfs (a/k/a Chicagoans) who elected and re-elected him, just like they mindlessly elected and re-elected Rahm’s evil dwarf predecessor whose name Rahm cannot speak.

Consider it the Chicago Way’s equivalent of the Mafia’s code of “omerta.”

So leaving our water supply at the mercy of the ethically-challenged parasites who run Chicago is a very big risk. But so is bonding $47 million when even the consultant trying to separate us from our money can’t come up with a better snake-oil pitch than one that needs 40 years for payback – especially when we’ve already seen just how foolish it is for politicians and bureaucrats to think they can predict a project’s ROI even 10 to 20 years into the future, much less 30 and 40 years out.

For proof, look no further than the Uptown TIF.  And just to show that inept prognosticating isn’t a recent phenomenon, Maine Twp. H.S. District 207 opened Maine North High School in 1970 to accommodate projected enrollment growth, then closed it for good a mere 11 years later when those projections didn’t materialize.

But being wrong, even spectacularly so, has never stopped irresponsible public officials from plowing ahead with bad decisions, especially when they know they’ll be out of office (if not out of town and/or out of state) and, therefore, conveniently non-accountable for those bad decisions by the time those turkeys come home to roost.

Niles and MG are simply looking for deep pockets to share the cost of this major project. And E-Town is just looking for additional revenue sources for itself. None of those three communities cares whether the money they’re looking for comes from Park Ridge, Park Forest, or Park City, Utah.

If the City were to bond the $47 million water line cost (assuming that number is accurate – don’t bet your lunch money on it) at an interest rate of 3% over 20 years – which is the customary term of muni bonds such as these – interest on those bonds would jack that $47 million price up by over $16 million if payments were made annually, or by over $15.8 million if payments were made semi-annually.

That cuts into the $74 million minimum projected savings by around $63 million. Except that the debt service calculation is basically a mathematical lock, while the savings calculation includes a bucket of variables that likely can’t be known with any certainty for a decade, or two, or three.

The H-A article quotes City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton as saying: “We want to make sure the numbers being used in their projections are good numbers and that the assumptions are correct.”

Now there’s a pile of heifer dust that would rival the Augean Stables.  Except Hamilton is no Hercules.

If Hamilton and City Staff actually believe they have a snowball’s chance in hell of coming anywhere close to predicting the cost of water – whether purchased from Chicago or E-Town – for the next 20-30-40 years, they must be smoking the souvenirs of their last trip to Colorado.

For this deal to make any sense at all, the first order of business is to determine whether Evanston is willing to lock in a water rate schedule for enough of those 20-30-40 years that the ROI from water cost savings becomes as close to mathematically certain as the $60+ million cost of building that infrastructure.  Because trading one avaricious water vendor (Chicago) for another (Evanston) without some ironclad guarantees on pricing is just plain foolish.

And one thing we’ve learned from watching Park Ridge government and politics for the past 24 years is that there are rarely any real consequences for bureaucratic foolishness. So when it comes to anything in the nature of long-term predictions or projections, a Magic 8 Ball is about as reliable as any local bureaucrat.

Fortunately, unlike the bobble-headed aldermen back in 2000-2007 who danced to whatever tune Schuenke and the consultants played, the current Council is willing to question and push back against Staff and consultant pronouncements – as you can see with Alds. Dan Knight’s (5th) and Marc Mazzuca’s (6th) interrogations of the Niles/Morton Grove consultant at the Council’s 04.13.15 Committee of the Whole meeting – with the consultant’s presentation starting at 1:11:10 of the meeting video; and Knight ‘s and Mazzuca’s interrogations running from 2:01:10 to 2:22:15.

THAT’s the way elected officials (D-64 and D-207 board members take note!) are supposed to look out for the taxpayers they represent.

Especially when they’re thinking about betting $60+ million of the taxpayers’ money.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Only two of the four City aldermanic races are contested: incumbent Alds. Dan Knight (5th Ward) and Marty Maloney (7th Ward) are running unopposed, although we heartily endorse their re-elections and trust they will continue the solid efforts that characterized their first terms…and even take them up a notch to compensate for the loss of Mayor Dave Schmidt’s leadership.

In the First Ward relative newcomer Andrea Cline is facing off with longtime resident John Moran to fill the seat being vacated by Ald. Joe Sweeney, while business consultant Bob Wilkening is running against teacher Rick Van Roeyen in what we believe to be the first contested race the moribund Third Ward has seen in perhaps two decades.

All four of them are personable folks who seem sincere when proclaiming their interest in improving the community. But personality and sincerity should never be enough when it comes to the public trust inherent in the offices they seek. And it’s even less satisfactory when those offices require dealing with problems that have built up through two decades (1990-2009) of neglect and mismanagement by their equally personable and seemingly sincere predecessors.

We’ll start with the Third Ward race by noting that it’s basically one hand clapping – with that hand belonging to Wilkening. If Van Roeyen’s campaign were a military jet, most radar screens couldn’t even “ping” it.

Van Roeyen’s website states that, “[i]f elected, [he] would create a form…that would be used to poll the 3rd Ward to gain insight into the true will of the citizens [he] would be representing.” That sounds a whole lot like finger-to-the-wind politics of the worst kind: reliance on subjective surveys and questionnaires instead of objectively verifiable referendum votes. And if Van Roeyen really wanted constituent input, he should have created and circulated such a form as soon as he filed his nominating petitions months ago.

Wilkening, on the other hand, appears to have one principle focus: flooding. As he said in his candidate profile in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Q&A: Park Ridge’s 3rd Ward Candidates,” March 24) in response to the question of why he was running: “Because Park Ridge is now facing serious challenges as it struggles to deal with an aging and undersized sewer system.” And his website bears that out.

Combine that with his belief that “the City Council and staff spend far too much time talking about subjects that they should find ways to resolve more rapidly,” however, and it might not be too much of a stretch to wonder whether he will adopt a “ready, fire, aim” approach to flood control – especially since his endorsement of long-term debt to pay for it is not accompanied by an endorsement of referendum(s) to measure public support and to legitimize whatever multi-million dollar projects and/or programs might be undertaken.

Notwithstanding these concerns, however, Wilkening is running the far more active campaign and gets our endorsement.

Our toughest endorsement decision this election cycle, by far, is the First Ward aldermanic race. That’s why we have waited and watched this race play out on almost a daily basis over the past several weeks as the candidates’ positions have continued to evolve from the vanilla-vs.-vanilla match-up of a mere six or eight weeks ago.

That battle seems to have effectively morphed into a contest between flooding (Cline) v. money (Moran).

Cline brings technical expertise as a “Stormwater Management Professional” (per her website) for the Lake County Stormwater Management Commission. We’d venture a guess that she has forgotten more about stormwater management than Moran and the seven guys currently sitting around The Horseshoe, cumulatively, have ever known. She and her supporters – especially in the flood-impacted areas of Park Ridge both within and without the First Ward – tout that expertise and experience as her principal qualification.

If Park Ridge’s flooding problem were just a collection of technical engineering challenges, Cline’s specialized knowledge might very well make her the better choice. But like so many of Park Ridge’s problems, flooding is far more a money problem than a technical engineering one.

Christopher B. Burke Engineering (“Burke”), for whom Cline once worked, has already come up with several alternatives for the three most significant problem areas. Per Burke’s 2013 plan, 100-year flood protection for 23 Mayfield Estates properties would cost $3.3 million, or $143,000 per property. The 418 properties in the Northwest Park area could get 100-year protection for $16.6 million, or approximately $40,000 per property. But the 680 properties in the Country Club area would get only 10-year protection at a cost of $48.7 million, or approximately $72,000 per property.

That’s around $70 million, not counting debt service, to protect roughly 1,100 out of over 14,000 Park Ridge households – with no guarantees that those projects will actually solve those three problems, or not exacerbate flooding problems elsewhere in the City.

And once that $70 million of bonded debt is locked in, how long should the other 13,000 households have to hang fire on their own flooding while the City pays off that $70 million?

Cline claims to have obtained in excess of $2.5 million of grants, and she suggests we can pay for these projects with federal, state and county grants, as well as low-interest loans. But she hasn’t even begun to spell out with any specificity what kind of grants she’s talking about (e.g., would they be matching grants requiring the City’s taxpayers to cough up an equal amount of funding?), their availability, the criteria for getting them, and how soon they might be forthcoming.  Meanwhile, the City already has applied for $27 million of such grants, but we have yet to hear the jingle-jangle of grant-generated OPM pouring into the City treasury.

So Cline’s funding plans, such as they are, sound a little too much like politician-style pie-in-the-sky.

Moran, on the other hand, has been talking on his website about “cost-sharing” funding arrangements, while also suggesting at campaign stops and on social media that SSAs (Special Service Areas) and referendums could play a role in the kind of bonded debt that would be needed if those grant windfalls don’t arrive – and maybe even if they do. Given the financial condition of our state and Crook County, we believe Moran’s approach is the far more practical and realistic one.

And it’s also the more courageous one, as evidenced by the barbecuing he is getting from the folks in those three affected areas who would derive the most direct and substantial economic benefit, through increased property values, if the City were to mortgage its future – Uptown TIF-style – to undertake those projects, especially if it did so without a referendum.

Dealing with our City-wide flooding problem is going to be a painful, frustrating and very expensive proposition. It will demand a unified purpose and an iron-clad City-wide commitment, the likes of which most of us have not seen in our lifetimes. Appeasing special interests or down-playing the substantial long-term costs to the City’s taxpayers is not the way to build the support needed.

That’s why we believe John Moran to be the better choice for 1st Ward alderman.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Yesterday we talked about showing the door to the incumbent Maine Twp. High School District 207 Board members because they have demonstrated they can’t, or won’t, do the job the students and taxpayers deserve. Today we shift gears to the contested race for three 4-year seats on Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.

Actually, those seats aren’t all that “contested” because there are only four candidates vying for the three seats. So the only suspense is finding out who is going to be the odd man out among incumbent Tony Borrelli and challengers Greg Bublitz, Mark Eggemann and Tom Sotos.

If the Park Ridge Education Association (the “PREA”) – the teachers union – has its way, that odd man will be Eggemann, which would be reason enough to endorse him.

That because the PREA exists solely to put more money and better benefits in the pockets of its members, while avoiding as much accountability as it can get away with. And the PREA has gotten away with that for years while student performance has stagnated or even declined compared to higher-scoring districts in Glenview, Northbrook and those other suburban communities with which Park Ridge competes for new residents.

Worse yet, D-64’s under-performance may be contributing to the marked decline in the performance and ranking of Maine South, which dropped a dozen slots in its student performance rankings in just three years!

Eggemann is the husband of Maine Twp. Republican Committeewoman (and Park Ridge Library Board member) Char Foss-Eggemann. He also served as the late Mayor Dave Schmidt’s 2013 campaign manager. Both of those facts rub certain people – the Kool-Aid drinkers who prefer go-along-to-get-along government – the wrong way.

He’s also the PREA’s worst nightmare: somebody who thinks for himself and isn’t easily intimidated.

Eggemann sounds uncompromising in his demand for higher measurable student achievement, and unabashedly dismissive of the District’s nonsensical “teaching the whole child” instead of “teaching to the [standardized] tests” alibi for its low rankings. Even more notably, he is the only candidate demanding complete transparency from the District and the Board – including dragging the teacher contract negotiations out of the closet and into the sunlight, where the taxpayers and the media alike can see and hear not only the PREA’s demands but also the District’s responses.

Not surprisingly, two of Eggemann’s opponents are PREA sock puppets.

Bublitz is a former teacher and current School District 63 administrator. And for good measure, his wife is a D-64 teacher and PREA member, which would appear to create both a conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety in dealing with any systemic teacher issues. Bublitz is so much the PREA’s boy that its president, Andy Duerkop, didn’t hesitate to admit that the PREA recruited Bublitz to replace departing two-term PREA cabana boy/beyatch John Heyde, who engineered the current sweetheart contract for the PREA back in 2012.

According to Duerkop, Sotos also sought PREA support. So when a successful challenge got Bublitz’s running mate, Kristin Gruss, tossed off the ballot, the PREA adopted Sotos as its unofficial Plan B. Which is why you’ll see his and Bublitz’s signs paired up in front yards all over town, except where some sly devils have placed Bublitz’s sign on one lot line and Sotos’ sign on the opposite lot line to make it look like they’re on different properties altogether.

Busted.

While we are tempted to suggest that voters tired of the D-64 same old same old might want to consider giving Eggemann the “bullet” – i.e., voting only for him rather than diluting that vote with votes for his competition – we believe Tony Borrelli deserves another shot at proving he can be the kind of thoughtful and courageous people’s representative we endorsed back in April 2011.

On one hand, Borrelli has delivered for the taxpayers on a number of occasions during his first term – like with his “no” vote on the current teacher contract, his “yes” vote for residency checks, his “yes” vote for videotaping Board meetings. But seemingly just as frequently, he has stiffed those same taxpayers with his “yes” votes on “free” Chromebooks, on a sweetheart contract for newly-minted Supt. Heinz, and an even more ridiculous contract extension for business manager Becky Allard.

And most importantly of all, the educational performance of D-64 students seems dead in the water.

Assuming Dathan Paterno pulls his head out of his anti-Common Core whatsit and actually starts representing all those taxpayers who aren’t afflicted with obsessive/compulsive right-wing ideological pathology but who, instead, just want the educational quality they’re paying so dearly for, a Borrelli/Paterno/Eggemann alliance might be able to inspire some independent thought and civic-mindedness from a cipher like Bob Johnson.

And without a Heyde on the Board for the first time in a dozen years, maybe even a blind squirrel like Vicki Lee might find an occasional acorn.

But the first step is electing Eggemann and re-electing Borrelli.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Two important events will occur this evening that merit your attention.

Election of Acting Mayor: Early on in the Park Ridge City Council’s agenda for tonight is the scheduled election of the Acting Mayor pursuant to Section 5 of the Illinois Municipal Code. Because Mayor Dave Schmidt died with less than 28 months left in his term, state law provides that the Council shall elect the Acting Mayor from among its members.

Because state law does not provide for a “temporary mayor” who would serve until the successors to current Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Jim Smith (3rd), the City Attorney has recommended that the Acting Mayor be chosen as soon as possible. Hence, tonight’s election.

We would hope that whomever is chosen will make a public commitment to continue on the trail Mayor Dave blazed over these past six years. This Council, and the one that will follow it come May, owe a debt of honor to his legacy of honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability in City government through what would have been the final two years of his second term, at the very least.

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

So if candidates Cline, Moran, Van Roeyen and Wilkening want to demonstrate a little statesmanship, they should all show up at City Hall tonight and unanimously tell the Council, and their fellow citizens, that they don’t want the Acting Mayor vote postponed – because the aldermen most qualified to vote on the Acting Mayor are already sitting around The Horseshoe.

We’re not going to hold our breath waiting for that to happen, but we would be delighted if it did.

D-64 Candidate Forum: A candidate forum for Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 will be held tonight from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. in the Roosevelt School auditorium, 1001 S. Fairview.

The forum purportedly is being “sponsored” by the various D-64 Parent-Teacher organizations, the Elementary Learning Foundation, and the Park Ridge Education Association a/k/a the teachers union (“PREA”). But make no mistake about it: this is the PREA’s rodeo, as even the title of last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story suggested (“District 64 teachers, school groups host candidate forum,” March 10).

That story quotes PREA president Andy Duerkop as admitting (a) that the union recruited candidate Greg Bublitz, a former special-education teacher and current East Maine School District 63 administrator; and (b) that candidate Athan “Tom” Sotos sought support from the PREA. In other words, one started out in the PREA’s pocket, and the other happily climbed in with him.

Which would explain their campaign signs paired around town. And why the PREA wants to put as many PREA-beholden sock puppets on the new Board as it can, seeing as how that Board will be negotiating – with the PREA, naturally – the new teachers’ contract next year.

They’ve already got Scott “Mini-Heyde” Zimmerman in their pocket, and we can’t imagine the malleable Vicki Lee standing up to the PREA. Appointee Bob Johnson has done nothing in his 7 months on the Board to dispel the concerns we expressed about the process by which he was selected. Worse yet, the performance of two candidates whom we previously endorsed – Board president Tony Borrelli and Dathan Paterno – has been underwhelming, to say the least.

We wouldn’t be surprised if the PREA turns out a hefty number of teachers and friendly parents in support of their sock puppets. And to hiss their Public Enemy No. 1: candidate Mark Eggemann, who is decidedly not a sock puppet and who is the only D-64 non-incumbent (according to the H-A’s March 12, 2015 candidate profiles) who is demanding improved student achievement and more accountability to the taxpayers.

If you’re feeling a little civic-minded tonight, you could go to City Hall at 7:00 to see the Acting Mayor selected and still have time to catch most of the D-64 candidates forum at Roosevelt. But if you can only go to one, then the place to be is the Roosevelt auditorium.

Because that’s where you’ll find the sock puppets on parade.

UPDATE (03.16.15).  Moments ago, Ald. Marty Maloney (7th) was elected Acting Mayor by a 6-1 vote of the City Council: Alds. Milissis, Shubert, Knight, Mazzuca and Maloney – yes; Ald. Sweeney – no; Ald. Smith – abstain, which counts with the majority.  Maloney pledged to extend the legacy of the late Mayor Dave Schmidt.

Maloney said he would remain an alderman rather than give up his aldermanic seat in return for being able to exercise mayoral veto power.  Sweeney claimed Maloney’s refusal to relinquish his seat was the reason for his “no” vote, but Sweeney promptly congratulated Maloney after the vote.

Godspeed, Acting Mayor Maloney.

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Last Monday night (March 2), Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt gave his sixth consecutive “State of the City Address.” By his own admission, it was the most upbeat one he has given.

He didn’t know it was to be his last.

Mayor Dave was buried yesterday in the Town of Maine cemetery. He died suddenly late last Wednesday (March 4) night of what is believed to have been a brain aneurysm.

Ironically, in the address’s opening-paragraph Mayor Dave claimed to be “as optimistic as ever about the City’s future,” clearly unaware of how soon his own future would be cut short. Throughout his address he cited the progress made on such matters as the refinancing the Uptown TIF bonds, a lower projected TIF deficit, stopping further decline in Moody’s rating of the City’s bonds, surpluses in the General Fund, and the repair of the Touhy railroad overpass.

Always the realist, however, he echoed Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address (“a wise and frugal Government…”) in reiterating the need for City government to maintain its resolve that “every single dime we ask the taxpayers to give to us is spent as wisely and frugally as possible.”

That should be a prominent piece of the legacy Mayor Dave left his successors and our community.

The rest of Mayor Dave’s address was a mixed bag of the good and the not-so-good. But telling his constituents the bad as well as the good was a hallmark of Mayor Dave: he respected us enough to tell us the truth.  And he trusted us to understand and use that truth to vote and act in the best interest of our entire community.

That respect and trust should be a prominent piece of his legacy, as well.

One of Mayor Dave’s greatest virtues was that he never wanted to be mayor. As a first-term First Ward alderman he regularly scoffed at any suggestion that he was looking toward the big chair at The Horseshoe.

But about a year into his aldermanic term he saw and heard things that he knew weren’t right. He spoke out against improper closed sessions and the secret dealings that went on in them, most notably over the City’s attempt to acquire the 720 Garden property for a new police station.  That earned him a formal, albeit meaningless, “condemnation” from his predecessor and a majority of his fellow aldermen, even though everything he said and did was fully within the boundaries of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

It also contributed to a break with his mayoral predecessor – as did Ald. Dave’s siding with residents who opposed the traveling road show known as PADS because he believed it to be a half-cocked, ineffective and inhumane way to address homelessness; and because it violated the City Code.

Those positions made Ald. Dave a number of powerful adversaries. But it earned him even more supporters.

And the more he studied City finances, the more he realized they were a house of cards that nobody else around The Horseshoe – elected official or bureaucrat – wanted to acknowledge.

So when no other challengers to the then-sitting mayor stepped forward in 2009, Ald. Dave became Candidate Dave, a reluctant Cincinnatus with a simple campaign platform: “H.I.T.A.”

Honesty. Integrity. Transparency. Accountability.

Can you imagine any “politician” running on such a platform?  They’d be laughed right out of the politicians’ union. But Candidate Dave was no “politician” because he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he wouldn’t compromise principles just to make some half-baked, short-term deal that would make some special interest happy.

So despite running as the darkest of dark-horse candidates – a short-time Park Ridge resident with no kids in the local schools or sports programs, no family members living in town, no local business presence, and no Country Club, Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions club memberships – his message and his two-year record on the Council resonated with the voters. He won the mayoralty in 2009 by a solid margin over the incumbent.

His adherence to those H.I.T.A. principles and his straight-talking, stand-up style during his first term in office earned him the nickname “Mayor No” for having the common sense, courage and foresight to just say “no” to unaffordable and/or misguided spending; and the nickname “Mayor Veto” for doing what no other Park Ridge mayor had ever done: veto irresponsible budgeting and veto irresponsible spending.

Not all of his vetoes were sustained, but a majority of them were. And the ones that were sustained saved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on untimely, unnecessary or just outright wasteful expenditures.

That earned him re-election in 2013 by an even wider margin than in 2009 – despite the first-ever endorsement of his opponent by (and a $1,000 contribution from) the union representing the City’s public works employees; and an unprecedented endorsement of that same opponent by the City’s three previous mayors and twenty-five former aldermen allegedly representing 100 years of City government experience.

Mayor Dave took that in stride: “If the people who caused all the problems we’re stuck with are for [my opponent], I must be doing something right.”

And indeed he was.  But that ended last Wednesday night.

In his six years in office, Mayor Dave was bolder and more courageous, and more fiscally responsible, than all three of his predecessors. Combined. He embraced the daunting tasks they left for him and “his” City Councils. And in that relatively short time he and those City Councils succeeded in mending the gaping holes in the City’s finances while at the same time invigorating the City’s spirit with a new style of government – grounded in reality but energized with a freshness, honesty, transparency and optimism that won him support from a broad spectrum of City residents.

Mayor Dave knew his own mind and had firm principles which he articulated clearly and acted upon decisively.  Although a staunch Republican, he never saw any City issue as a “Red” or “Blue” one.  He knew the color of most of the City’s problems was green, the color of money, which is why he was so focused on the financial side of City government.

He never backed down from a fight when he was championing the cause of Park Ridge, and especially its taxpayers.  Mayor Dave instinctively embraced the common sense of those taxpayers that Nelson Algren so marvelously memorialized in his book Chicago: City on the Make: “For the masses that do the city’s labor also keep the city’s heart. And they think there’s something fishy about someone giving them a museum for nothing and free admission on a Saturday afternoon.”

Substitute “an Uptown TIF” for “a museum,” and “anything” for “admission,” and you’ve got the picture.

There will never be another Mayor Dave.

He was the right man at the right time for Park Ridge: an affable, tireless, guile-less yet savvy public servant who hated “politics” and the term “politician,” for good reason.  He strove every single day to do the right thing for the well-being of his adopted community with absolutely no expectation of, or desire for, any economic, social or personal gain.  Whether at his Loop law office, at the ballpark, or on vacation near some ocean a thousand miles away, he truly was the 24/7 mayor Park Ridge needed these past six years.

But now he’s gone.

So it’s left to those of us who believed in the principles of government he stood for to carry them forward – hopefully with something close to the humor and irreverence he regularly brought to the task.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr. Seuss)

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Park Ridge Mayor David Schmidt dead at 57 (Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, March 5, 2015)

Mayor David Schmidt remembered for vetoes, civic passion (Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, March 5, 2015)

As recently as our 02.02.15 post we applauded the Park Ridge City Council’s continuing efforts to become fully transparent in its activities on behalf of the City’s taxpayers.

Unfortunately, while Mayor Dave Schmidt and most aldermen are striving for transparency, the same cannot be said for many of the City’s senior bureaucrats. And the most recent evidence of that is their handling of the Request for Proposal process to determine who will serve as the City’s feasibility consultant on the much-discussed storm water utility.

We’ve noted on several previous occasions the cozy relationship that City Hall has established with Christopher Burke Engineering. Burke seems to have become the go-to consultants for anything flood related. So one would think that the bureaucrats – from the City Manager on down – would make sure that the whole RFP process was crystal clear.

But the folks employed at City Hall don’t seem to get the concept of transparency, if the 02.16.15 Agenda Cover Memorandum from new City Procurement Officer Jim McGuire is any indication.

McGuire’s memorandum suggests a half-baked process for awarding the feasibility consultant contract, just as his similar 01.23.15 Agenda Cover Memorandum reflected a similarly half-baked process for awarding a new City Attorney contract.

Fortunately, Ald. Dan Knight (5th) voiced his concerns about McGuire’s folly at the February 16, 2015 Council meeting, which you can see and hear starting at the 37:04 mark of the Council meeting video.  Knight pointed out how McGuire’s memo, although implying that more than one bureaucrat was involved in the review and scoring of the four proposals and the firms presenting them, was not accompanied by those individual scoring sheets, thereby preventing aldermen (and the taxpayers) from reviewing and comparing that scoring. Knight correctly noted that he and the rest of the Council shouldn’t have to blindly trust the unsubstantiated opinions and conclusions of any City staff member, especially when it comes to casting a vote to spend significant sums of money with, or repose significant responsibility in, a particular vendor.

And McGuire wasn’t even there to shed any light on his incomplete work product, or explain why he left out that important underlying data.

So it was left to Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim to come to McGuire’s defense when Knight complained that McGuire didn’t even include pricing sheets from the four consultants, although Zingsheim did so in a somewhat odd way.

“I can’t understand this [scoring summary] either, alderman, I’ve got news for you,” said Zingsheim, who then also admitted that he “never even saw the cost sheets, ever.”  Why that lack of documentation and data didn’t trouble him enough to assert his own concerns about those shortcomings, however, was not revealed.  And City Manager Shawn Hamilton, on whose desk this “buck” should have stopped before it ever got to the Council, sat mute.

We will pause to let you appreciate the absurdity of a public works consultant bidding process so slipshod that the City’s procurement officer fails to provide the Director of Public Works with the necessary information, causing the latter to candidly admit that he can’t understand the documentation the procurement officer did provide.

And for a bit of comic relief you can go to the 46:30 mark of the same meeting video and listen to Ald. Joe Sweeney (1st Ward) demonstrating, once again, that he still doesn’t grasp the role and duties of the alderman’s job – by arguing that, basically, he doesn’t have to understand what he’s voting for or even the integrity of the process by which the proposal comes before the Council for a vote, so long as Staff understands and supports it.

Fortunately, that kind of trust-but-don’t-verify decision-making is in its final two months – assuming that neither Andrea Cline nor John Moran, the two candidates vying to succeed Sweeney, will attempt to revive it when one of them takes Sweeney’s seat in May.

No matter how thick or thin McGuire’s baloney is sliced, however, Burke appears to be the hands-down winner based solely on price, which is one-half the cost of (and $62,000 lower than) the next lowest bidder. And Burke’s explanation of why its price was so low is a plausible one: its familiarity with the City’s flooding problems through its work to date requires a shorter and less-expensive ramp-up.

All that probably explains why, after a lengthy debate about this procurement process’s shortcomings, Burke’s bid was accepted by a vote of 6 to 1 (Ald. Mazzuca dissenting).

But that doesn’t excuse McGuire’s – and his superiors’ – dropping the ball, big time, by the cursory presentation of the bidding “scorecard” without including the actual scoring sheets.  The omission of such information is especially problematic because of the inclusion of such squishy criteria as “General Firm Qualifications” and “Key Qualifications” – whatever those might be, given that they aren’t defined and the criteria for scoring them is not identified – provides far too many opportunities for skewing the scoring, whether through arbitrariness, non-uniformity, or outright favoritism.

Presumably in response to Knight’s complaints, someone at City Hall posted those scoring details that were missing at the time of the meeting on the City’s website, including McGuire’s signed “Scorecards” and City Engineer Sarah Mitchell’s unsigned ones.  But a review of those scoring details raises more questions about the process than it answers – such as the fact that Mitchell’s ratings consist of unexplained numerical scoring that suggests total arbitrariness, while McGuire’s ratings don’t appear to be numerical at all!

Or as Zingsheim explained: “We did it one way, he [McGuire] did it another. ”

That’s no way to evaluate storm water management consultant candidates.  Or new City Attorney candates.  Heck, it’s no way to do anything that will cost tens or hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

Unless the bureaucratic perpetrators are incompetent. Or unless they’re trying to hide the ball from the City Council.

And the taxpayers.

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For those of you who actually give a rat’s derriere about who runs our local governmental bodies for the next four years – and how they do it – tonight is what passes for the unofficial kick-off of the 2015 election season in these parts.

It’s the Republican Women of Park Ridge’s 2015 Candidate Forum, and it will be held at the South Park Field House, Talcott at Cumberland, beginning at 7:00 p.m.

It is expected to feature appearances by Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Pharrell Williams, Beyonce, Sam Smith…wait a minute, no…that’s the list of the performers from the recent Grammy Awards broadcast. Sorry.

Instead, you’ll get to see and hear the candidates for:

• Park Ridge alderman in Wards 1, 3, 5 and 7, of which only Wards 1 and 3 have contested races (Andrea Cline v. John Moran, and Rick Van Roeyen v. Bob Wilkening);
• Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board, where four candidates are running for three 4-year terms (Tony Borrelli v. Greg Bublitz v. Mark Eggemann v. Tom Sotos), and one candidate, Bob Johnson, is running unopposed for a 2-year term;
• Maine Twp. High School District 207 Board, with six candidates running for three 4-year terms (Paula Besler v. Theresa Collins v. Jill Dolan v. Chimanial Patel v. Pablo Morales v. Sean Sullivan);
• the Park Ridge Park District Board, for which there are four candidates running for three 4-year terms (Cynthia Grau v. Jim O’Brien v. Mary Wynn Ryan v. Mel Thillens); and
• the Oakton Community College Board, where five candidates are running for two 6-year terms (Thresa Bashiri-Remetio v. Christopher Evdoxiadis v. Constantine Ress v. Benjamin Salzberg v. William Stafford).

Although we don’t particularly care for the “forum” format in which each candidate speaks for around four minutes and fields no questions from his/her opponents or the audience, we understand the difficulties of implementing a “debate” format with so many candidates. Nevertheless, this event is worthy of your attention because it will be the first – and perhaps only – time where voters can expect to see and hear all the candidates for these offices in one place.

And that’s important.

While the now-ubiquitous websites and flyers can give you a lot of useful information about the candidates, seeing and hearing them in person is one of the best ways – if not the best way – to judge their sincerity, genuineness and credibility. That’s why the truth-seeking function of our judicial system is based on a judge and jury getting the opportunity to take the measure of witnesses in person.

And with our state and its subsidiary local governmental units in such cumulatively dire economic straits, electing the most qualified, sincere, genuine and credible candidates means more today than ever before.  So it’s pretty darned sad that we have two uncontested aldermanic races, and effectively only one contested race for the D-64 Board and the Park Board.  And then folks wonder why Illinois is in the mess it is!

The most important races are for the boards of the two school districts, which consume almost 70% of our property taxes.

Over the past several years their rankings vis-à-vis the public schools of other comparably-affluent communities (and of the Chicago magnet schools) have dropped considerably from the days when Maine South was a fixture among the Top Five public high schools in Illinois – and similar regard was given D-64 schools as being the principal feeder system for Maine South.

Meanwhile, both districts’ teachers and administrators appear to be among the highest paid, thanks to elected school board members who don’t seem to understand that they are supposed to be representing the taxpayers’ interests every bit as much as the students’ interests. Or the concept of paying for performance. Or of not being sock puppets for the teachers’ unions. Or of doing things of consequence out in the open instead of hiding in closed sessions, as we wrote about in our 08.29.14 post.

The D-64 Board members elected in April also will be charged with negotiating the next D-64 teachers contract in 2016. That may be the single biggest responsibility they will have during their four years in office.

The good news is that neither of the perpetrators of the last negotiated-in-secret sweetheart teachers contract – current Board member John Heyde and former board member Pat Fioretto – will be part of that process. The bad news is that Heyde’s “Mini Me,” Scott Zimmerman, will be the most senior Board member and likely to lead the negotiating team; and the rest of the current Board have shown themselves to be more sock puppet than steel-spined when it comes to fiscal matters.

The candidates in the two contested races for the City Council, on the other hand, seem to be focused on the issue of flooding. The decisive question there may end up being who is less of a one-trick pony and more of a big-picture visionary.

And we wonder whether the Park Board incumbents will even attempt to alibi/justify/spin the quality of their stewardship under which the District has taken on around $19 million of new long-term debt, $7 million of which (for the Centennial water park) never even went to referendum, and the remainder of which – for the new Prospect Park – went to referendum only because the $7 million water park debt used up most of the District’s limited non-referendum borrowing power.

So bundle up and come on out to the South Park Field House tonight to see and hear the candidates who want your vote, and control over your tax dollars, for the next several years.  Give yourself the best possible chance to make the best possible decision on election day.

Or you can always take the easy way out and move to Chicago – where “participatory government” means selling your soul, and your finances, to Mayor Tiny Dancer.

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