John O’Flaherty apparently doesn’t care about winning friends and influencing people here in Park Ridge.

It’s one thing for the real estate developer disgruntled with the way the City is responding to his development plans to sue the City and/or City officials for not giving him his way. But when he sues ordinary citizens simply for expressing their opinions at an open public meeting, O’Flaherty might just as well have told Dale Carnegie to go pound sand…and the horse he rode in on.

O’Flaherty responded to the Park Ridge Planning & Zoning Commission’s denial of his application to build a 22-unit residential building on top of a parking garage and 1,500 square foot commercial space at 400 W. Talcott – the last feature apparently being the bare minimum commercial space he needed in order to camouflage his residential building as a “commercial” structure for purposes of the property’s “B” (for “Business”) zoning classification – by filing a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County: 400 W Talcott LLC v. Argionis, et al., Case No. 2014-CH-17457

We can understand O’Flaherty suing the City, the Planning & Zoning Commission, and the individual P&Z commissioners. We can even understand his suing Ald. Joe Sweeney, the Council’s liaison to the P&Z Commission, and Jon Branham, the City’s Senior Planner in charge of evaluating the Zoning Code compliance of projects such as this. They are City officials so they at least technically fall within O’Flaherty’s field of fire.

But naming twenty-two private citizens – Al Beltuzzi, Larry Devereux, Krystyna Doerhty, Linda Foss, Joe Fresel, Patricia Gagliardi, Tom Harris, John Hildefra, Missy Langan, Dan Lawlor, Pat Livensparger, M. Christina, Tom Maheras, Carol McComb, Steven Nadler, Ron Pollina, Karen Sloma, Ray Wachnick, Jerzy Wachnick, Paul Wright and former ald. Frank Wsol – just for speaking out against the size and density of the projects is nothing but unvarnished political hardball.

It also may be a violation of the Illinois Citizen Participation Act, 735 ILCS 110/1 et. seq., commonly known as the Illinois Anti-SLAPP (“Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”) statute, which is designed to prevent folks like O’Flaherty from filing lawsuits not so much to actually win them but, instead, to “chill” citizens’ exercise of their free speech and protest rights, and to discourage future opposition to their projects by causing the sued citizens to incur the time, expense and distraction of being a defendant in a lawsuit.

Interestingly enough, the lead attorney for O’Flaherty, Ronald Cope, is himself an elected official in Lincolnwood. And, even more interestingly, within days of filing the suit naming all these individuals, Cope reportedly offered to drop them from the suit if they would sign waivers agreeing not to seek attorneys’ fees or damages from O’Flaherty and his attorneys.

In other words, Cope – on behalf of O’Flaherty – intentionally scared the beejeezus out of many/most of those private citizens, then offered an olive branch in the hope of extricating himself and his client out from potential Anti-SLAPP liability, which includes an award of the wronged individuals’ attorneys’ fees.

A few of us folks here at PublicWatchdog are trial attorneys who make decent livings from waging courtroom battles, but we’d be the last folks to encourage anybody to litigate – including our fellow residents, especially a developer who has far more to gain from unleashing a pack of high-priced attorneys on ordinary Park Ridge citizens.

But from what we know of this situation, it appears Team O’Flaherty’s lawsuit is the exact kind of action the Anti-SLAPP law is intended to discourage and punish. And his attorney’s attempt to let bygones be bygones by tendering waivers to the folks they just sued seems like a pretty transparent acknowledgment that O’Flaherty and Cope may have overplayed their hand.

Whether any of the 22 private residents choose to hold O’Flaherty’s feet to the fire and try to Anti-SLAPP him remains to be seen. Given the expense, the potential exposure to liability, and the distraction presented by this lawsuit, we can understand if all 22 choose discretion over valor, take the waiver deal, and leave with a whimper instead of a bang.

But as we argued pre-SLAPP suit (in our 10.02.14 post), the real lesson from this situation is just how inadequate and/or screwed up our Zoning Code is – and how it encourages uncertainty, acrimony and expense for the City.

Now 22 ordinary citizens have discovered that, up close and personally.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Not all that many years ago “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was an aphorism parents taught their children from an early age. It was so common you often heard kids on playgrounds chanting it in an almost-taunting, sing-song fashion.

In today’s full-employment-for-psychologists,-sociologists-and-lawyers society, however, “sensitivity” is a virtue and “victimhood” has gained almost sacred status. And a an expanding contingent of the shameless not only seek to reap what they have not sown, but when called out for their avarice they feign sensitivity and claim victimhood. Or their sympathizers and apologists claim it for them.

So it came as no surprise that a recent article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge library fees mean lower use, fewer ‘parasites’,” November 4) would seize on how the editor of this blog – in his role of Park Ridge Library trustee – used the word “parasites” to describe a certain group of non-resident Library ex-patrons at last month’s Library Board meeting.  Especially since the H-A reporter who wrote the story is no “fan” (to put it mildly) of this editor or his philosophy of local government.

She also wasn’t in attendance at that meeting.  So it must have been her muse that inspired her to listen to the tape recording of the meeting, because she seems to have gotten the quotes right…or close enough for government work.

To be clear, the “parasites” label was not conferred on all non-resident Library users – just those who had been coming to our Library for the past few years for free use of our computers and programs but recently stopped doing so because (according to our Library’s director) the Library started charging non-residents for those privileges. Although this editor voted to approve those fees, they were actually proposed by Library staff in response to Library Board requests for ideas on how to raise needed revenue.

One of the definitions of “parasite” in Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary is: “a person or thing that takes something from someone or something else and does not do anything to earn it or deserve it.” That pretty much describes those non-resident Library patrons who profited from their lower-than-Park Ridge property taxes because they could get free library computer time and programs – compliments of our taxpayers – while their own communities saved money by offering less amenities and not even keeping their libraries open as many hours as ours.

But judging by the hue and cry from a couple of Library employees and a few suspected parasites (posted as comments to the H-A article, many of which this editor sportingly responded to), one might think labeling parasites as…well…“parasites” was some heinous crime; or, at the very least, an outrageous social faux pas.

Admittedly, “parasites” in this context is probably as provocative as it is descriptive, with a decidedly negative connotation. Nobody who regularly uses somebody else’s resources without paying fair value for them – no matter how shameless they have to be to do so – likes to be compared, even indirectly, to a leech or a tapeworm.

But as the Library’s director seemingly lamented the departure of those shameless non-resident patrons, “parasites” was actually the nicest term that went through this editor’s head: none of the other ones, including the several adjectives that might have preceded them, can be printed here.

That’s because Park Ridge Library trustees like this editor owe a fiduciary duty to our residents and taxpayers – and ONLY to our residents and taxpayers – who foot the bill for the Library’s maintenance and operation through payment of their property taxes. Many of them struggle mightily just to pay those taxes. When it comes to spending those tax dollars, therefore, every penny had better benefit OUR residents and taxpayers first and foremost.

That sense of duty became even more honor-bound when, just this past Tuesday, those taxpayers conscientiously and graciously voted to tax themselves even more to keep our Library open, operating and improving.

So if Chicago residents, for example, want free library computers and free programs, they should demand them from Rahm Emanuel and his alderpuppets, many of whom were co-conspirators with Rahm’s predecessor in the decades of stupidity, irresponsibility, mismanagement, graft and/or corruption that have virtually bankrupted that city. And they should be willing to have THEIR property taxes raised to pay for them.

Meanwhile, the doors of our Library remain open to Chicagoans and other suburbanites who are content to enjoy our Library’s ambience and its printed materials, or who are willing to pay the modest non-resident fee of $3 per hour for computer time – more than a sawbuck less than what Kinko’s charges just 5 minutes down the road.

The “parasites,” on the other hand, can do our taxpayers a favor by staying away.

To read or post comments, click on title.

In our 11.08.11 post, we gave the City of Park Ridge an “F” in Outsourcing 101 because of how it totally dropped the ball in municipal fine collections by private vendor Duncan Solutions of Milwaukee, WI.

Back then, the City was carrying almost $1 million of uncollected fines, penalties and interest on its books. Three years later, it’s still almost $1 million. And reading the story in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge owed nearly $1 million in unpaid fines,” 10.28.14) makes City government look like a clown car, at least on this issue.

According the City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton, a big problem with the collection effort is that the City doesn’t have a “collection policy” for collecting unpaid fines. He claims such a policy is needed to “dictate how, when and why we write off tickets” – which write-offs totaled over $60,000 in just in 2012 alone.

Information in a 10.27.14 Memorandum from Michael Fricano to Hamilton indicates that those write-offs were of tickets that were issued from 2002 to 2007 and determined to be uncollectable, although the report fails to say exactly why they were uncollectable. Fricano’s memo contains a three-page “Collection Update” that suggests enough bureaucratic incompetence and futility from November 2011 through June 2014 that it could almost be the script for a Saturday Night Live skit titled “Diddle-Fest.”  It actually made us laugh…but only because the only other alternative would be crying.

Frankly, based on that “Update,” somebody probably should be fired: either the somebodies at City Hall who have been wrangling this goat rodeo for almost 3 years, or Duncan Solutions. Maybe both. Because the taxpayers of this town deserve better than what the “Collection Update” discloses.

In the H-A story Hamilton is quoted as saying “[w]e definitely made some strides” in referring to the $51,000-plus in outstanding tickets the City has collected. But that was over the past two years..which means the City collected less than $26,000 a year against a $1 million outstanding balance!

And as if that were not lame enough, Hamilton appears to be bragging on the City’s already exceeding this FY’s ticket revenue budget by $300 – which might be justified if that budget wasn’t a measly $8,000!

If all you’re budgeting for ticket revenue is $8,000, why even bother?

City Council Finance chair, Ald. Dan Knight, correctly noted that uncollectible tickets (say from 2004 to 2010?) need to be identified and cleared off the books so that the City can focus on what’s collectible. One would think well-paid full-time City employees wouldn’t need to hear such advice from a $100/month part-time elected official, but apparently that’s not the case when it comes to collecting fines and making sure the City’s outsource fine collection vendor is earning its keep.

Frankly, the whole “Citation Process” for Duncan Solutions processing ticket collections reads like it was created by Rube Goldberg. It also seems likely to be using more staff time and effort than if everything was being done at City Hall, which is exactly what outsourcing shouldn’t do. Accordingly, it should be scrapped and its replacement designed to get any money owed the City in fees or fines within no more than 60 days, or 90 days if an “adjudication” is required.

For example, any City employee writing citations that are not legible, or have erroneous information on them that jeopardizes their enforceability, should be reprimanded and sanctioned so that we don’t end up a year or two into the process only to find out that the license number was wrong. Sending out “4th notice[s]” of any type seems ridiculous, and sounds positively absurd when they are being sent out “40 days after adjudication date.”

Similarly, if a fine or fee isn’t paid within a reasonable time (e.g., 14 or 28 days?), it should be doubled or tripled – not only so there is some real incentive for the perp to pay the fine, but also so the cost of processing and enforcement is fully covered without any doubt. And unless state law prohibits it, it should take a whole lot less than “10 or more outstanding tickets” before licenses are suspended.  Like maybe 1 – if it has been outstanding for more than 3 months.

Otherwise, the process just invites people to become scofflaws while wasting staff time.

With the City buried in Uptown TIF debt, facing major flood control expenses, and struggling to hold annual tax increases to around 3%, just the idea that $1 million of fines and fees is being left uncollected is infuriating. And when we see just how bollixed up and neglected the whole process is – despite what was supposed to be a cost-effective outsourcing of ticket processing and collections that has turned out to be just the opposite – it becomes almost maddening.

It’s well past time for some butts to be kicked because of this fiasco.

To read or post comments, click on title.

One would think that Mary Ann Irvine would know better.

After all, she was a two-term Park Ridge alderperson from 1987 to 1995. She sought to replace mayor Marty Butler when he resigned in 1991 to become a state senator, withdrawing her name before the city council chose Ron Wietecha.

After leaving the council she became the City’s Public Information Coordinator (a/k/a propaganda minister) for another 10 years. As some point she also served on the Park Ridge Library Board, including as its president.

Given all those years in and around City Hall, she should have learned how representative government is supposed to work in a municipality such as ours – even though we recall her as one of those many rubber-stampers who filled most seats around The Horseshoe between 1991 and 2003, when the Homeowners Party ran local government more like a social clique than a true political party with policies, principles and platforms.

But in a letter in this week’s Park Ridge Journal, Irvine displays an ignorance – or maybe just an arrogance – of City government and aldermanic power that warrants some discussion because it’s so plainly wrong.

We’ve included what the Journal has set up as a kind of point-counterpoint presentation – both Mayor Dave Schmidt’s criticism of a previous Irvine letter published in the October 8 Journal slamming the City Council for this election’s Library referendum, and Irvine’s reply to the mayor’s criticism – so you can read them for yourselves (and think about how Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd might present it back in their old Saturday Night Live days).

Before we get into Irvine’s reply, we must point out that Schmidt and Irvine both supported Howard Frimark in his successful run for Park Ridge mayor in 2005. They parted company when Schmidt successfully challenged Frimark in 2009, however, and she was one of the twenty-five former aldermen who, along with the three former living mayors, formally endorsed Larry Ryles for mayor over Schmidt last year.

As best as we can tell, she abhors the way the City is governed under Schmidt.

So when Irvine starts her reply to Schmidt with “[t]he mayor and I must have different philosophies about serving on the city council,” she isn’t kidding – even if the rest of her letter demonstrates no grasp whatsoever of Schmidt’s philosophy of government as repeatedly expressed and practiced by the mayor over the past five years he’s been in office, as well as during the two years before that when he served as 1st Ward alderman.

Distilled to its essence, Irvine’s position is: (a) she wants the Library to get more money from the City; (b) the Council sucks for not giving the Library more money; (c) the Council is using the referendum to avoid responsibility for any Library–related tax increase; and (d) the Council worded the referendum question so that it would fail.

The wording of the referendum, as Schmidt points out, is prescribed by state law and was fashioned with the assistance of the City Attorney and debated at no less than five public meetings in May, July and August of this year. One of them was a joint meeting between the City and the Library Board. A quick Google search reveals that there also were numerous newspaper stories about the referendum and referendum language during that period.

So where was Irvine with her criticisms of the referendum wording during the three months when they could have made a difference?

Contrary to Irvine’s complaints, the Council hasn’t “dodged” any responsibility for funding the Library. The aldermen expressly decided not to give the Library all the funding it requested, instead treating the Library like many other City departments and cutting its budget in an attempt to manage the entire City budget without unduly hiking taxes.

Rather than pull a “we know what’s best for you ignorant taxpayers” move like the Park Board did with its no-referendum $8 million water park decision in 2013, however, the Council – in response to the Library’s and some citizens’ complaints about that funding decision – chose to give the taxpayers a chance to prove the Council wrong through a binding referendum vote.

In other words, unlike an arrogant Park Board and the arrogant way Irvine thinks a City Council should operate (so long as it agrees with her ways of spending taxpayer money, of course), these current aldermen are actually inviting the taxpayers to publicly second-guess their decision of what is the prudent amount of Library funding, and whether taxes should be raised for that purpose.

Imagine that!

Irvine takes a parting shot at the Council for eliminating more than $550,000 from the Library’s budget since 2009 but not giving the taxpayers a tax reduction in that amount, asking: “Where have those funds gone?”

Try the same place that a boatload of other tax dollars have gone: into that black hole otherwise known as the Uptown TIF. Irvine should remember the Uptown TIF because she spoke favorably of it and promoted it while she was the City’s paid propaganda minister.

Whether the Library referendum passes or fails is up to the voters – but only because these aldermen, after deliberating at length and making a tough decision, weren’t so arrogant that they couldn’t acknowledge they might be wrong about their constituents’ willingness to pay additional taxes for the Library; and because they weren’t so cowardly that they were afraid to let the voters prove them right or wrong by an actual vote, rather than by rumor, innuendo, or some half-baked survey.

This is the way local government should operate, and the mayor and the City Council should be applauded rather than pilloried for it.

Irvine, on the other hand, thinks quite differently. And she may still be carrying a grudge from when the voters rejected the $7 million Library expansion referendum she favored back in November 1992; and/or when the voters rejected the brand new $20 million library referendum she also favored back in November 2002

No matter what the outcome of this referendum, however, this editor – in his role of Library Board member – will continue to do his fiduciary duty and work to ensure the Library is managed as well as it can be for all the taxpayers and residents of Park Ridge.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

Recessions like the one this country recently experienced cause a lot of bad things.

The economy contracts. Unemployment increases. Wages stagnate. Savings are consumed by cash-strapped people and cash-strapped companies that can’t make ends meet on their reduced income or profits.

One good thing that can come out of a recession, however, is the belt-tightening that tends to make people and businesses more efficient. Sometimes it even causes outside-the-box thinking from executives who need to do more with less but can’t do so simply by continuing the same old same old.

On rare occasions that outside-the-box thinking even finds its way into the public sector, as we read about in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge city manager to look at outsourcing jobs,” Oct. 9) reporting on how City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton announced at the October 6 Council meeting that he and his staff would begin exploring possible outsourcing of some City jobs.

But before the needle on the Richter Scale could even begin to jiggle, Hamilton promptly began backsliding into an acknowledgement that he might decide not to go in that direction once his outsourcing analysis is completed over the next few months.

If you want to bet on how that will end up, the smart money is going with the “under.”

Outsourcing – or, more accurately, talking about outsourcing – is becoming the flavor-of-the-month management tool among government bureaucrats who are only now finally figuring out, more than five years since the recession official ended (according to the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of U.S. recessions) that their units of government can’t keep paying those escalating wages and benefits they’ve been giving out for decades. Or at least not without raising taxes higher than most taxpayers are willing to accept.

In Hamilton’s case, however, he has a built-in excuse that doesn’t require him to wear the jacket for the City’s wage and benefit largesse that has gone on during his relatively short watch:

The Uptown TIF.

Hamilton said the impetus for his outsourcing initiative was the increasing Uptown TIF bond payments, which were back-end loaded by those irresponsible City officials who saddled Park Ridge taxpayers with that financial boondoggle a decade ago. Cynics might suggest that back-end loading was intended to ensure that the perpetrators of the Uptown TIF would be long-gone from public office before any real pain might begin to be felt. And in the case of Uptown TIF ringleaders like former mayor Ron Wietecha and former city manager Tim Schuenke, they would be long-gone from our community entirely.

Mayor David Schmidt sounded receptive to the idea when he noted that “everything has to be on the table” when figuring out ways for providing City services more cost-effectively. According to the H-A article, the number of full-time City employees has decreased 10% since FY2009-10, although some of that reduced manpower has been replaced with an increased number of part-time employees.

From the hour or so of research we were able to do by Googling “municipal outsourcing,” we have concluded that outsourcing is far more talk than action. One reason is that it has not yet proved to be the magic/silver bullet bureaucrats and elected officials alike were hoping for. Another reason is that municipal employee unions and their members view it like the ebola virus.

And despite what they say, bureaucrats don’t really want outsourcing because it reduces the size of their fiefdoms. It’s a lot harder to argue for more money when you are seen as managing less people because 20 city/school/park jobs have been outsourced to a private vendor. In Hamilton’s case we also have to question the legitimacy of his outsourcing initiative when its announcement comes with a “we-might-not-do-any-of-it” qualifier.

Even more tellingly, despite promoting unspecified “outsourcing” out of one side of his mouth, Hamilton has been arguing for returning the city attorney functions to an in-house position – despite the fact that the in-house position was abolished around a decade ago because the total cost was too high – due to so much of the work still having to be outsourced to private law firms.

So we’ll be interested to see whether Hamilton is really serious about outsourcing, or whether he’s just another lemming bureaucrat.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Anyone who has been reading this blog or otherwise paying attention for the past few years knows what a Sisyphean task it has been getting any meaningful noise relief from O’Hare International Airport, especially since the $8 billion O’Hare Modernization Program (“OMP”) was adopted.

The airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and congressmen and senators from around the nation were looking to reduce the air traffic bottleneck that O’Hare had become. Meanwhile, a virtually bankrupt City of Chicago became hell bent on building more runways and running as many flights in and out of O’Hare as possible, if only for the taxes and fees they could generate.

Lo and behold, last week we heard that O’Hare had wrestled the title of the country’s busiest airport away from its old nemesis, Atlanta’s Hartsfield.

Add to that the seeming sabotage of Park Ridge’s efforts to alleviate the overhead traffic and noise by neighboring O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (“ONCC”) member communities like Arlington Heights – who feared that any gain in Park Ridge’s noise reduction efforts would result in increased noise for them – and the task of merely gaining approval of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (“SEIS”) looked increasingly bleak.

So last week was quite a welcome development for Park Ridgians.

On Thursday, October 2, Illinois congressman Mike Quigley announced the formation of a “Quiet Skies Caucus” comprised of himself, fellow Illinois representative Tammy Duckworth, and 11 other U.S. House members from California, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York.

Then on Friday, October 3, the ONCC voted to support Park Ridge’s request for the SEIS, with only three “no” votes: from Elmwood Park, Melrose Park and the City of Chicago.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

While the vote in support of the SEIS is an important step, the FAA is not bound to honor that vote. And even if it does, it could be years before any meaningful relief is provided – and that will most likely be in the form of a new noise contour map that would increase the number of homes and buildings entitled to soundproofing. And, if we’re lucky, it might also promote an increased implementation of the “Fly Quiet” program.

And you can bet Chicago will fight tooth and nail to keep O’Hare cranking at full capacity.  Because of the mess he inherited from Daley, Rahm needs every penny he can squeeze out of anything that moves…or sits still for too long.

Nevertheless, Mayor Dave Schmidt’s jaw-boning of the ONCC to vote in support of the SEIS is something. And it validates the decision of the City Council to look for political solutions to what is a political problem, rather than spend tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars on litigation with little-to-no chancce of gaining any better result.

Meanwhile, the best chance we have for noise relief continues to be the airlines’ modernization of their fleets by replacing the noisiest jets – currently the MD80s – with newer, quieter jets. Expediting those upgrades is where a caucus like the one Congressman Quigley helped form might be able to exert some influence that’s not in Park Ridge’s or any other community’s tool box.  But, once again, don’t expect that to happen overnight – if at all – because Chicago is too big to fail.  And so are the airlines, at least to those elected officials who count on them for campaign contributions and jobs in their districts.

We’ve still got a long way to go. But last week was easily the best one Park Ridge has had in years when it comes to dealing with O’Hare noise.

And it cost Park Ridge taxpayers next to nothing.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate contained a letter to the editor from long-time resident William Scharringhausen, on behalf of the Park Ridge Kiwanis Club, criticizing the Park Ridge Library Board’s discontinuation of the “Food for Fines” (“FFF”) program. (“Food for Fines cancellation disappointing,” Sept. 30)

We published posts on 10.03.13 and 08.22.14 explaining why FFF was a form of theft from the taxpayers, and we stand by those posts. Not surprisingly, because misconceptions die hard, some of the pro-FFF arguments we criticized in those posts are resurrected in Mr. Scharringhausen’s letter – to go along with a new one such as: “Kiwanians saw the value of transforming a negative fine system into an opportunity to nurture the spirit of giving in our community.”

Heck, if that truly was their motivation, they should have approached fellow Kiwanian and Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski about “transforming a negative” parking fine system. With parking fines checking in at a $25 minimum as compared to a mere couple-to-several bucks average for Library fines, just think of how much more the “spirit of giving” could have been nurtured!

But the simple truth is that any real “spirit of giving” shouldn’t need to be nurtured by any kind of quid pro quo personal economic benefit, especially when that benefit picks the taxpayers’ pockets by what we estimated (because the Library staff didn’t even try to keep track of it) to be as much as $7,000 worth of of Library fines in any given year.

That’s not chopped liver for a Library that could have used that $7,000 to remain open for four or five of the weeks it was closed this summer.

Mr. Scharringhausen concludes his letter with what sounds like a challenge to Library Board members:

“We also anxiously anticipate the generous contributions of the Library Board members to this holiday food drive as they demonstrate leadership in our community without encumbering public funds.”

When I proposed abolishing the FFF program, I suggested that the Library could still be a collection point for food donations. And in order to walk the walk instead of merely talking the talk I also suggested that, instead of donating taxpayer funds, all Library Board and staff members could show their community spirit by making personal monetary donations towards the purchase of food for the needy.

That was a good idea then, and it’s a good idea now.

That’s why I pledge a $100 donation to the no-longer-FFF Library food drive this holiday season. And I invite all current Library Board members and those former Library Board members who voted for keeping the FFF program (e.g., John Benka and John Schmidt) to do likewise. Assuming everybody comes through with a Benjamin apiece, that’s at least $1,100 right there.

But let’s not stop walking the talk with just the Library Board members.

Several staff members who advocated for the continuance of the FFF program should also be willing to say “C” (as in C-note) to support the Kiwanis food drive for the needy. And let’s not forget those Kiwanians who showed up at the Library Board’s January 21, 2014 meeting to successfully (for the time being) lobby against elimination of the FFF program, including: Ted Sigg, Jack Owens, Gerald Berkowitz, Lloyd Lange, Frank Kaminski, Maureen Kaminski and Jay Terry.

If they all step up and donate the basic hundo in addition to what the Library Board members come up with, we’ll be kicking off the holiday season with around $2,000 just in cash donations – unsullied by any crass quid pro quo fine forgiveness – before the very first can of Green Giant “Niblets” hits the bottom of the Library’s collection drum.

And, better yet, the Library Board won’t have to waste valuable meeting time discussing such weighty Library operational issues as how the expiration dates on FFF contributions are checked, and how far past those dates the food is still usable so as to be credited against fines.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

About eight years ago then mayor Howard Frimark and the city Council formed an “Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Committee” tasked with re-writing the City’s Zoning Code. The City hired an outside consultant and conscripted seventeen Park Ridge residents – six of whom were attorneys – to do the job.

But almost immediately after the newly-rewritten ordinance was adopted, developers began identifying all sorts of gaps and inconsistencies that they tried to exploit – with varying degrees of success. And an old rumor got new life:

“Park Ridge is unfriendly to business.”

Anything that is unpredictable is, almost by definition, “unfriendly” to business. Unpredictability increases the risks inherent in already-risky business ventures – medical marijuana and casino gambling likely being the most notable exceptions. And that unpredictability can be perceived as “unfriendliness,” especially to prospective businesses and developers.

In the years that have passed since the “new” Zoning Code was enacted, it seems as if most developers come in looking for variances and MAP amendments; and expecting to get them. Often they have at least a colorable argument, given the gaps, inconsistencies and general ricketiness of many of the Code’s provisions.

So it should come as no surprise that a developer is threatening to sue the City for the Planning & Zoning Commission’s recent denial of his request to build a four-story primarily-residential building at 400 Talcott Road that formerly housed an auto repair business.

This proposed 4-story building would be located in a “business” rather than a “residential” district, but it will have approximately 1,429 square feet of commercial space and 22 two and three-bedroom condos, each of which reportedly will contain more square footage than the entire amount of commercial space. That apparently qualifies as “business”/commercial under our whacked-out Zoning Code.

And the language of our Zoning Code, as previously interpreted by City staff and approved by the P&Z Commission for the project at 20-30 South Fairview – by the same developer, John O’Flaherty – would appear to permit the kind of structure he wants to build on Talcott.

But there’s a difference between that Fairview project and the Talcott project.

The Fairview project appears to have been a favorite of City staff, including Senior City Planner Jon Branham. Consequently, City staff may have interpreted vague or ambiguous Zoning Code terms in ways that favored the developer and advanced that project earlier this year – without any regard for what kind of precedent such interpretations might set for future projects.

Precedent, as in predictability.

Back at the public hearing on May 27, P&Z chairman Joe Baldi expressed concern about the lack of Zoning Code standards for the Talcott style of residential development in a B-1 Retail and Office district. Had this project been located in an area zoned “R” (for “residential”), even the highest residential rating, R-4, would have limited the maximum number of residential units to around 10-15 units.

Which don’t provide enough profit for Mr. O’Flaherty, who paid $400,000 for the property with the understanding that he could build what he is proposing on that site.

And if O’Flaherty gets his way, storm water detention may be a combination of insufficient and stupid, because he gets to pay a fee-in-lieu of providing sufficient detention. A fee which we understand to be wholly inadequate to address already-problematic flooding. Doesn’t that sound just ducky!

While we don’t take kindly to any developer threatening to sue the City in order to get what it wants, O’Flaherty and his attorney rightly pointed out that developers buy property only after analyzing the zoning parameters, with the purchase price based on what they should be able to build there. And that determination is based on what increasingly appears to be a vague, ambiguous and unacceptably inadequate Zoning Code.

Interpreted by City staff and P&Z in ad hoc ways that make it unpredictable.  And unfriendly.

To business and to residents alike.

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Park Ridge resident Dennis Sladky has spoken thoughtfully about flooding at several Park Ridge City Council meetings. But his letter to the editor (“Park District’s land grab is greedy,” Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, September 23) reflects a misunderstanding of recent actions by the Park Ridge Park District.

In fairness to Mr. Sladky, however, his misunderstanding seems to have been caused by the inept and heavy-handed way the Park District presented its proposal for letting the City use Northwest Park as part of its flood control program.

The premise of his letter is that the Park District is using its permission for the City to use Northwest Park as a flood water detention to extort the City out of an excessive amount of compensation, including the former public works facility at Greenwood and Oakton, a property reportedly appraised at $1.8 million. Mr. Sladky sees this as a sign the Park District is callously holding approximately 450 Northwest Park area flood-prone residents hostage.

First of all, Mr. Sladky seems to be making a mistake common to many/most residents: thinking that the City’s taxpayers are the same as the Park District’s taxpayers. Although the overlap is substantial, the City’s boundaries are not the same as the Park District’s, meaning that certain City taxpayers are not Park District taxpayers, and vice versa. That’s why the City and the Park District are two separate taxing bodies with two separate governing bodies.

Chalk that up to the absurdity that is Illinois government, with more governmental units – 6,968 – than any other state: over 2,000 more than Pennsylvania, the first runner-up in governmental inefficiency with 4,871. As if we needed 2,000 more ineptly and/or corruptly-managed governmental units.

Absurdity notwithstanding, the City Council and the Park Board are duty-bound to look out for their own provincial interests. Which is why, before the Park District can offer Northwest Park to the City for storm water detention, it owes its taxpayers a duty to lock the City into a binding legal obligation to minimize, and then repair, any damage to that park caused by the storm water.

That kind of guaranty is an appropriate quid pro quo for the Park District’s cooperation with the City’s flood control project for that area.

We suspect Mr. Sladky’s perception of over-reaching by the Park District came from the District’s September 10 letter to the City, in which Park District Exec. Director Gayle Mountcastle appears to link the District’s permission for the City’s use of Northwest Park to the City’s agreement to a variety of other District demands – including the City’s unmet TIF obligations to the District, a new City lease of the Salt Dome at Oakton, the District’s acquisition of the old City garage at Greenwood and Elm, and a variety of Northwest Park amenities like a “trail system for the park” and “tiered concrete retaining walls and stadium-style seating.”

We can find no evidence of the Park Board’s directing Mountcastle to draft up such a list of demands and figuratively nail them to the door of City Hall, Martin Luther-style. So we’ll chalk that up to Mountcastle’s one-dimensional, zero-sum view of the Park District-City relationship.

Any deal to use Northwest Park as a storm water detention area should stand on its own, and not be tied to other deals. The City and its taxpayers need to ensure the Park District and its taxpayers that any damage to Northwest Park from storm water detention will be prevented and/or remediated by the City.

But flood control should not be made dependent on other unrelated matters, such as whether the City can satisfy its Uptown TIF-related obligation to the Park District by selling the Greenwood and Elm former public works garage property for $1 – even if such an Uptown TIF deal may make sense in its own right.

Unfortunately, the Park Board apparently gave Executive Director Mountcastle a free hand to deal with these issues. And, not surprisingly, Mountcastle bungled them with her stupid and seemingly extortionate linkage of unrelated projects to the Northwest Park storm water detention deal.

Wake up, Park Board members…you should know better by now!

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We’ve written several times about the Mayfield Estates homeowners who foolishly bought or built in a neighborhood without storm sewers and now are outraged that the City won’t flood-proof their neighborhood for them.

We’ve called them “freeloaders” for demanding that all City taxpayers bail them out, literally and figuratively, because that neighborhood’s homeowners didn’t want to spend the money to install sewers back when it was annexed to Park Ridge 50 years ago – or ever since. And from what we have read and heard, the folks running City government at the time of annexation were too stupid (or corrupt?) to require that the sewers be built as a condition to annexation.

So far City government wisely has told them “no,” unless they are willing to vote for a cost-sharing Special Service Area (“SSA”) or let all City voters weigh in via a referendum. And, so far, those Mayfield Estates folks are adamantly opposed to either option.

That’s their choice. Perhaps they’re hoping for a change in the Council next April and the election of more aldermen willing to act irresponsibly with other people’s money (a/k/a, “OPM”).

But now we’ve got a new group of residents knocking on the door and City Hall looking for OPM to subsidize the unpleasant consequences of another collection of deals the City did with developers of multi-family enclaves like Boardwalk (circa 1972), Bristol Court (circa 1967), Park Lane (circa 1972) and Park Ridge Pointe (1996), which we will collectively refer to as the “Associations.”

DISCLAIMER: The editor of this blog lives in Bristol Court.

Back when these planned-development enclaves were built the developers cut deals with the City to avoid having to comply with then-existing building code requirements. They kept all of the property in these developments “private,” and agreed to provide many customary City services through assessments of their homeowners. The deal the developers cut, however, didn’t involve property tax abatements to reflect the lack of certain City services.

Now the Associations want to change those deals, claiming they should get full City services for the full City taxes they pay.

Why?

Weren’t those the special deals the developers of these Associations cut with the City just so their enclaves could be built? Didn’t those deals allow the developers to benefit from below-City standard infrastructure, thereby lowering the prices of those residences? If so, the residents now beefing about the situation have nothing to complain about because those special deals might be the only reason they are living where they are living.

The 08.19.14 Memorandum from City Attorneys Buzz Hill and Kathie Henn sets out what seem to be pretty compelling legal arguments for why the Associations are barking up the wrong tree.

According to recent articles in both local newspapers, however, that didn’t stop Lee Tate, president of Park Ridge Pointe, from criticizing what he viewed as a “cavalier” attitude by City officials toward the Associations’ plight. He also claims he can’t understand why Association homeowners have to pay City taxes and Association assessments just because the developer got a special deal.

Gee, Mr. Tate, maybe you should ask Park Ridge Pointe’s developer, or whomever you purchased your unit from.  But if you didn’t know what you were buying into when you acquired your unit, then shame on you and/or your real estate attorney for being stupid or negligent. And shame on you and your fellow Association homeowners for now expecting the City to bail you out of the deal you should have known about because – as is pointed out in the City Attorney Memorandum – that deal is reflected in both a City ordinance (No. 95-52) and Park Ridge Pointe’s Declaration.

If these Associations or their individual residents believe they have legal rights to the City services they haven’t been getting, however, then they should dig in their own pockets and hire a good lawyer to make their case to the City.  They should even sue the City if they have a valid claim that the City won’t honor. But we haven’t heard or seen anything to date that would suggest these Associations or their members have any greater legal rights to the subsidy they’re looking for than do the Mayfield Estates folks for storm sewers that they or their predecessor homeowners should have paid for decades ago.

Which is why these Associations are whining and badgering the Council into giving them handouts they don’t deserve.

That’s the freeloader way.

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