Two items in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, although seemingly unrelated, demonstrate why too many Park Ridge residents seem to be so blithely ignorant of what their City government is doing.

The first is an article titled “Despite cuts, Park Ridge City Council passes budget with $6.1 million deficit” (April 23, 2014),  which reported the vote taken at this past Monday night’s Council meeting.

That headline is almost accurate, which is a good thing.  And the article that follows almost accurately points out, in the third paragraph, that the $6.1 million deficit (actually, $6.0507 million, rounded upward to the nearest $100,000th) is the product of 61.7 million (actually, $61.6737 million) of projected revenue and $67.7 million (actually, $67.7245 million) of projected expenses.

But a reader needs to make it down to the tenth paragraph before beginning to be informed that the deficit is being created not from ordinary operations – the day-to-day business of keeping the City running – but from what amount to capital projects with long-term benefit, such as the $2.1 million deficit in the “Sewer Construction Fund” created by expenditures for sewer construction and improvement projects.

Such deficits, although sounding bad, can reflect the simple reality that expenditures for such capital projects tend to involve boxcar numbers that regularly exceed the amount collected for such projects in that same year.  Often money is accumulated in a particular fund over several years, during which time that fund might post annual surpluses.  But in the specific year in which, say, $3 million is spent for capital improvements, and only $1 million in taxes may have been collected for that fund, it appears that the City is deficit spending by $2 million – which it is, but only in an apples-to-oranges sort of way.

But as we pointed out in our last post, that’s not really explained in the budget summary provided by the City’s Finance Director.  And it’s not explained in the H-A article.  So the average reader is left with the literally accurate but functionally ignorant misimpression that the City is planning to overspend its income by $6.1 million in the coming fiscal year.

The taxpayers are owed a solid, clearly-understandable OFFICIAL City explanation of why the Council just passed a new budget with a $6.1 million deficit.  And they are owed that explanation by the Finance Director; by the City Manager, who is responsible for overseeing the Finance Director’s work; and by the Mayor and the City Council, who are responsible for making sure that the other two well-paid guys do their jobs properly.

And that explanation is already OVERDUE, because the Council already has approved the budget and misimpressions have already been created.

The second dose of ignorance is provided by a letter to the editor from prolific letter writer Jack Spatafora.

Titled “Park Ridge lucky to be where it is” (April 23, 2014), Spatafora’s letter attributes whatever success Park Ridge is experiencing – “today’s happy constellation of new supermarkets, food specialty shops, upscale restaurants, and pedigree school faculties” – primarily to its “being in the right location at the right time,” rather than to the efforts of “our hard-working City Council.”

We previously called out Mr. Spatafora on his ignorance of local government matters in our 08.14.09 post.  Since then (as best as we can tell) he has stayed within his happy-talk “those-were-the-days” wheelhouse and left the business of local government to the folks who do it, and to those who actually care enough to pay attention to and inform themselves about it.

Too bad he couldn’t have left well enough alone, because the existing level of public ignorance about local government needs no enhancements.

We may not agree with the views and decisions of some of our current and former elected City officials, or with their philosophies of government and local public policy, but Spatafora’s dismissal of them and their efforts as virtually irrelevant to whatever good things may currently be happening in Park Ridge demeans both those officials and their efforts.  And perhaps even worse, it could be viewed as effectively excusing the lazy and boneheaded efforts of mayors and councils past.

For example, we actually agree with Spatafora’s “right location at the right time” characterization for Whole Foods (assuming that’s one of those “new supermarkets” Spatafora places in his “happy constellation”).  But without the hard line taken by Mayor Schmidt and the previous Council – Alds. Sweeney (1st), DiPietro (2nd), Smith (3rd), Raspanti (4th), Knight (5th) and Maloney (7th), with then-ald. Tom Bernick (6th) MIA – against the demand by developer Lance Chody for tax revenue sharing, the City would be out $2 million of sales tax revenue.

Similarly, only by the aggressive and sometimes-painful efforts by Schmidt, the previous council and the current Council to cut expenses and reduce deficits, while keeping annual property tax increases at less than 4%, has Park Ridge been able to keep itself a place “where people want to be.”  That most certainly would not be the case had the City chosen, instead, to maintain its former spending habits by 10% annual tax increases, an extra 1-2% local sales tax and gasoline tax, and/or even higher licensing, parking and permit fees.

Park Ridge had the same location during the 1990s when the City – under then-mayor Ron Wietecha and a bunch of bobble-head rubber-stamp Homeowners Party aldermen – stagnated.  That led to last decade’s “don’t-just-stand-there-do-something” boondoggle of the Uptown TIF and the $20 million-plus faux-“investment” handout to Uptown developer PRC that has jackpotted City finances ever since.

After almost two decades (1990 – 2008) of City government done wrong, we’re finally starting to see some of the positive effects of City government done right.  But those are the product of plenty of hard work and sound decision-making by our elected City officials.

Not simple geography or serendipity.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Mayor Dave Schmidt has made “transparency” a central theme of his, both during his 2-year tenure as 1st Ward alderman and in his 5-year tenure as mayor.  He has done so not just for transparency’s own sake but, also, because transparency is essential to accountability.

For information to be transparent, however, it has to be readily accessible in user-friendly form so that the ordinary taxpayer, as well as the ordinary alderman, can understand it and effectively use in understanding how City government is operating.

Which leads us to the subject of today’s post.

Tonight the Park Ridge City Council is scheduled to adopt the 2014-15 Budget.  Although that budget has to be approved prior to May 1, we’re hoping that doesn’t happen tonight, if only because the budget the Council has been given by City Staff – and which is still titled “preliminary” – projects a $6,050,768 overall deficit and calls for a 16.38% property tax levy increase.  Neither of those points sounds promising.

But arguably more problematic than those unpromising numbers is the way City Finance Director Kent Oliven is presenting them, specifically in his April 18, 2014 FY2015 Budget Summary Memorandum (the “Summary”).

The narrative in Oliven’s Summary contains good news: that the City’s General Fund from which it pays its day-to-day operating expenses is projecting a $581,877 surplus.  It also contains what sounds like bad news: that, overall, the City is projecting revenues of $61,673,703 but expenditures of $67,724,471, for a $6 million overal budget deficit.

But Oliven has made understanding why there is such a large deficit a significant challenge.  And in so doing, he pretty much undermines the value of his “summary” document for both the Council and for the ordinary citizen who might want to better understand City finances and how our City officials are dealing with them.

For example, Oliven reports that $2,131,612 of that $6 million overall deficit comes from bonded debt being incurred for relief sewers and high-capacity line connections during the last year of something called the “Sewer Construction Fund.”  That sounds like needed long-term capital improvements to us, but we’re just guessing because Oliven doesn’t make any attempt at explaining what the “Sewer Construction Fund” is, what it was created to do, and what it has done and spent in however many years prior to the upcoming final year.

Another $992,807 of the deficit is projected for the Water Fund, but the reason for that deficit is not described at all in Oliven’s narrative.  Another $601,208 deficit is projected for the Parking Fund, again with no explanation other than “the City Council decided to review parking rates in FY15.”  So not only aren’t the taxpayers being told why the Parking Fund is deficit spending, but we are being warned that WE may end up paying for that unexplained deficit spending through higher parking rates.

Marvelous!

There also are no explanations in the Summary for the Municipal Waste (Refuse/Garbage) Fund projected deficit of $123,325, the Library’s projected $368,510 deficit, the Motor Equipment Replacement Fund deficit of $939,393 and the Technology Replacement Fund deficit of $401,901.

The financial black hole commonly known as the Uptown TIF Fund is budgeting for a $653,804 deficit, based on a reported “increase in bond payments.”  We can’t tell from Oliven’s  Summary narrative, however, the amount of that year-over-year increase; and whether that $653,804 is the entire bond payment or only the net payment after TIF revenues (also unidentified) are deducted.

Curiously, Oliven projects “$200K for Court Fines, which is significantly above the $56,721 FY14 budget amount” due to “better enforcement and collections.”  Only a few years ago, however, Oliven’s predecessor discovered over $1 million in uncollected fines, including penalties and interest – which we wrote about in our 11.08.11 post – which is why we would have expected an explanation of how the City is planning to increase its fine “enforcement and collections” by approximately 350%.

We suspect that all those figures mentioned above as MIA are included somewhere in Oliven’s 210-page budget document.  One of the early lessons taught in “Bureaucrats 101” is how to hide information in plain sight by burying it in comprehensive that include as much information as possible, preferably indiscriminately and in a way that discourages casual readers from accessing it without enduring painful tedium.  That’s because so long as the information is somewhere in the report somewhere, the bureaucrat’s derriere is covered – and the taxpayers don’t get easy access to the kind of information that might lead to unpleasant questions.

Make no mistake about it: there are plenty of places to hide information in a 210-page budget document.

But, frankly, the ordinary taxpayer – or even the ordinary alderman – shouldn’t have to wade through 210 pages to find those figures and explanations missing from the Summary.  If the subject is important enough to be addressed in an executive-summary fashion, that executive summary should provide enough basic detail so that the issues can be understood from reading that summary, without diving into the 200 pages of back-up for each point made.

But Oliven doesn’t seem to get that.  And because it appears that simply leaving important numbers and explanations out of his Summary isn’t troublesome enough for ordinary citizens and aldermen alike, Oliven adds insult to injury by providing an “Index” of the entire budget document that lacks any page numbers.

So much for transparency.  And maybe for competence, too.

To read or post comments, click on title.

When I wrote the 04.04.14 post, I expected a hue and cry from the apologists for the Park Ridge Public Library’s business-as-usual deficit spending and its reluctance to generate revenue or ask the taxpayers directly for more money (through a referendum) when, instead, it can just blame the City Council for not giving it more tax dollars.   

And I wasn’t disappointed.

Ninety-five comments shattered the existing record for any one post.  And even if nineteen of those came from Library employee Laura L. Enright, both in her own name and by her initials (“LLE”), the remaining 76 comments alone show what a hot-button issue the Library can be – especially when its executive Staff and the Library Board’s majority (Margaret Harrison, John Benka, Audra Ebling, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White) wants to play politics rather than manage responsibly.

Not surprisingly, most critics of the post chose to ignore the economic issues raised in it.  Economics involves too many objective, measurable facts and basic mathematics.  Instead, the critics chose to advance subjective emotional appeals, while also rejecting any ulterior motives of the Library’s senior Staff and the Board majority.

The closing of the Library for 14 summer Sundays, recommended by the executive Staff and approved by the Board majority, stands as the single most egregious display of mismanagement and political gamesmanship perpetrated against anybody who uses the Library on summer Sundays, as well as against those Staff members who might end up losing more pay from closed Sundays than they will gain from the raises those closings arguably will be financing.  But the apologists for Library standard operating procedures and the political gamesmanship being used to preserve those SOPs can’t seem to fathom the facts about what’s going on.

So today’s post will recite actual statements about the summer Sunday closing as presented in their most tangible official form: the Library Board meeting minutes, which are intended to capture the substance of everything that is said during meetings, although not with verbatim accuracy. 

Minutes of December 17, 2013 Library Board Meeting

Board member Charlene Foss-Eggemann objected to summer Sunday closings, noting “that Sundays, even in the summer, are important to people, some of whom may work six days a week and Sundays may be the only day they can get to the Library.” (Minutes, Page 3)

Board member Joseph Egan “believes the Library should charge a nominal fee to come up with $20,000 to keep the Library open on Sundays in the summer.” (Minutes, Page 4)

Board member Robert Trizna “agrees with Mrs. Foss-Eggemann…[because] Sunday had the highest average visits per hour.” (Minutes, Page 3)

Board member John Schmidt “noted that his impression was that one of the reasons for closing on Sundays in the summer was to make a visible impact with the public; whereas the other cuts being made are not as visible to the public.” (Minutes, Page 3)

Director Janet Van De Carr “noted that to Mr. Schmidt’s point, if the Board feels it is important for the community to be aware that the Library is definitely being negatively impacted by the decisions made by the City Council then having a visible reduction is one way of proceeding.” (Minutes, Page 3)

Board member Dorothy Hynous “stated that the most significant impact is to close on Sundays…[because] it is the thing Library-goers will notice.” (Minutes, Page 6)

Board member John Benka (in response to Board president Margaret Harrison’s suggestion that summer Sunday closing be re-visited) stated “it’s already done – it was decided at the Committee meeting…[and he] is not in favor of opening it up to another vote.” (Minutes, Page 6)

Ms. Hynous “agrees with Mr. Benka; that it was  voted on in Committee. (Minutes, Page 6)

Board member Jerry White “stated that [summer Sunday closing] was already passed in Committee and [he] doesn’t understand why it is being discussed at length tonight.” (Minutes, Page 6)

Board member Audra Ebling “stated that the Committee already discussed all of these matters and did all the work at the Committee meetings.” (Minutes, Page 5)

Minutes of January 21, 2014 Library Board Meeting

Mr. Trizna stated “[h]e believes the revenue from charging for computers will pay the $20,000 to keep the Library open on Sundays in the summer.” (Minutes, Page 8)

Ms. Hynous “asked then why not just charge $1.00 per book [use]?” (Minutes, Page 8)

Minutes of February 18, 2014 Library Board Meeting

Mr. Trizna “brought up the matter of closing on Sundays during the summer…thus depriving the people of service on a Sunday while a third of those [summer closed Sundays] could be opened if the Library was not forfeiting money” through the Food For Fines program. (Minutes, Page 4)

Mr. Schmidt “stated that the Library is ‘depriving’ people of service on Sundays because the City Council, which is voted in by the public, has reduced the amount of money the Library has to work with….” (Minutes, Page 4)

Minutes of March 18, 2014 Library Board Meeting

Mr. Trizna stated that “he doesn’t see the logic in closing on [summer] Sundays, on what appears to be the busiest day of the week.” (Minutes, Page 2)

“Mr. Egan asked Mr. Trizna if his is suggesting the Board bring the matter [of summer Sunday closings] back to a vote, to which Mr. Trizna said, ‘no, I can count heads’.” (Minutes, Page 2)

*                                             *                                             *

If you read through those Minutes you will find the foregoing excerpts highlighted in yellow.  One thing you will not find, however, is any Library Staff member or any member of the Board majority expressing his/her interest in discussing how to keep the Library open any of those 14 summer Sundays.  You also won’t find any of them proposing ways to raise revenues – or further cutting expenses – sufficient to keep the Library open those summer Sundays.  In fact, you’ll find that none of them voiced any real concern about the effect of those closings on the Sunday users or Sunday Staff.

And don’t expect to find any encouraging words about a referendum from that crowd.  Mr. Schmidt comes closest, on Page 6 of the March meeting Minutes, with a non-committal “at least now the discussion of the matter is on the record in the minutes” – such as it was.  But Mr. Benka deserves special mention for his conclusion (at Page 5 of the December 2013 Minutes), drawn from the results of the recent Community Health Survey, that voters might not vote to give the Library extra money via a referendum because “they are used to quality service for nothing.”

Can you say “freeloaders,” John?

What these meeting minutes demonstrate, in these public officials’ “own” words, is what we wrote in our previous post: managing the Library effectively has taken a back seat to the executive Staff’s and Board majority’s attempt to wage political war on City Hall for more money.  To that Staff and Board majority, Sunday Library users are mere pawns and acceptable collateral damage in that war

And you can now add the Library’s Sunday staff members to the “pawn” column, too, even if they don’t realize it.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

If you are a regular Sunday user of the Park Ridge Library, you’ve just become a pawn in a local political battle.

That’s because the Library is scheduled to be closed every Sunday this summer, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  And that closing for 14 Sundays is being done purposely to anger you Sunday users enough to demand that Mayor Dave Schmidt and the City Council give the Library the hundreds of thousands of additional tax dollars the Library wants, but isn’t getting, from City Hall.

The customary five hours (from noon until 5:00 p.m.) you Sunday Library users have enjoyed for more than a decade have become acceptable collateral damage to Library Director Janet Van De Carr and her executive staff (“Staff”), and to Library Board members John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White.  And you Sunday users have become cannon fodder in their political battle with City Hall, viewed by them the way King Edward Longshanks viewed the Irish in “Braveheart”: expendable.

Why the Sunday shutdowns?

First and foremost, because the Library Board and Staff want to cause pain to the group of Library users they consider least valuable and least dependent on the programs and services Staff is most concerned about preserving and expanding – the vast majority of which are offered during the week even though Sunday per-hour Library attendance is often higher than any other day of the week.

But what is most frustrating, dishonest and just plain wrong with the way the Library Board and Staff has gone about stiffing you Sunday users is the misinformation/disinformation campaign that is being employed to actually mislead the taxpayers on what the Library is doing, and why.

For example, The Board and Staff issued a January 23, 2014 Press Release about the Library’s finances and operations that is most notable for the information it omits.

Let’s start with the fact that it makes no mention whatsoever of the cost of keeping the Library open those 14 summer Sundays, which is believed to be only about $20,000.  Nor does it mention that roughly that same $20,000 will, instead, be spent on raises for Library employees.  This Board and Staff don’t want the Sunday users or the taxpayers to think that the Library will be closed 14 Sundays this summer just so Library employees can get raises.

The Board and Staff also don’t want you Sunday users or the taxpayers generally to know that, if the Library charged users of the Library’s computers a nominal $1 fee per log-in, the Library’s own computer usage figures through February 2014 suggest that such a charge could generate over $63,000 of new revenue on an annual basis.

That’s right, folks: over $63,000.  Three times the cost of keeping the Library open those 14 Sundays this summer.  Enough to keep the Library open and pay for those employee raises.

But as infomercial king Ron Popeil would say: “Wait, there’s more!”

The Library regularly shows movies and runs a variety of programs for which it charges nothing.  Yet based on the Library’s  program attendance figures, just a nominal $1 admission fee for those movies and programs could generate another $31,000.

Don’t expect to see those figures in any of the propaganda the Library is generating to goad its Sunday users into fighting its battle against City Hall.  The Library Board and Staff don’t want you Sunday users or the taxpayers generally to even consider the possibility that the way the Library currently is being run isn’t the only way, or even the best way.  And they hate any data that suggests otherwise.

Even if it’s their own.

Which is why those figures also don’t appear anywhere on the Library’s anonymous “survey” that asks the people who have been getting free programs whether they want to start paying for them.  That survey apparently does not prevent respondents from taking that survey as many times as they want, so “ballot box” stuffing is permitted if not tacitly encouraged (despite the perfunctory “Only one survey per person, please” request).  And the Board’s and Staff’s preferred answer to the pay-to-play questions is “no.”

The survey is the Board’s and Staff’s attempt to stave off any Library funding referendum, especially in light of the recent suggestion of such a referendum by Mayor Schmidt and Ald. Dan Knight (5th).  That’s because, despite their insistence that the Library is so beloved and treasured that the taxpayers want nothing less than for the Council to give the Library whatever additional funding it asks for, none of those Board or Staff members want to give those taxpayers an actual vote on that funding via a referendum question – especially on the November general election ballot when turnout is expected to be much heavier than for our local elections in April 2015.

An actual vote – democracy instead of bureaucracy, or oligarchy – on additional Library funding carries too great a risk of the Board and Staff being proved wrong.  They know (as did the Park Board when it arrogantly refused to ask the voters whether it should spend $8 million for the new Centennial water park) that the voting taxpayers often see “amenities” where bureaucrats and sycophantic public officials see “essentials.”

It’s one thing to manipulate pawns and a rig-able survey.  It’s quite another to manipulate a majority of the voters.

Especially when sombody else is counting the votes.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

When we read the headline “Park Ridge mayor rejects grant for police training in mental health” in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (March 26, 2014), the first thought that crossed our mind was: What kind of idiot would do that?

We know money’s tight over at City Hall and that, consequently, our elected officials have been in a constant battle since 2009 to maintain essential services while keeping annual tax increases at around 3%, even as the Uptown TIF debt continues to suck up around $1 million in debt service expense each year.  Getting $59,000 of grant money to provide Park Ridge police officers with training to better deal with mentally ill individuals, therefore, should have been something the City would jump at.

So why would Mayor Dave Schmidt “reject” such a grant?

After reading the H-A article, it’s clear he didn’t “reject” the grant.  But, notwithstanding the misleading headline, the article doesn’t fully explain where and/or how the grant ball got dropped.

The article reports that Schmidt was concerned about “hidden costs” of the grant such as travel and overtime charges for the officers undergoing the training.  That’s a legitimate concern, especially if those “hidden costs” wouldn’t be covered by the grant funding itself and, instead, would become over-budget expenses that had to be paid out of the City’s General Fund.

“When I got it I looked it over and had questions for staff, but I never really got complete answers and the time expired,” Schmidt explained.  “I never got an explanation so I never signed the form.”

Police Chief Frank Kaminski claims he promptly responded to Schmidt’s questions through City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton; and Kaminski is quoted in the article as saying he didn’t think Schmidt “didn’t want to sign” the grant.  Unfortunately, the article fails to report whether Hamilton forwarded Kaminski’s responses to Schmidt fully and in timely fashion, and/or whether those responses actually did answer all of Schmidt’s questions.

More significantly, the article fails to report why the mayor needed to sign off on the grant at all if there truly were no uncovered expenses.  As we understand it, Hamilton has the discretionary authority to sign contracts without mayoral or Council approval where the costs to the City don’t exceed $10,000.  So if there were any timing issues that jeopardized getting the grant, why didn’t Hamilton either follow up with Schmidt or just sign off on the grant himself?

We expect Schmidt’s critics to howl that he’s prejudiced against the police department and the mentally ill.  They’ve already barbecued him repeatedly for his vetoes of giveaways of arbitrary amounts of taxpayer funds to private corporations who want to use those funds to provide services to non-Park Ridge residents with no accountability to the City for those funds.  Some of those critics probably insist Schmidt hates puppies, kittens and small children, too.

But we can find no mention of, nor even think of, any instance in which Schmidt has “rejected” or not supported free, no-strings-attached funding of anything that would benefit the City or its residents.

Except for one misleading headline.

To read or post comments, click on title.

As we’ve repeatedly pointed out in past posts, our various branches of local government always seem to be overmatched when collectively bargaining with the unions that represent most of our public employees.

Tonight the Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) is scheduled to discuss City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton’s Agenda Cover Memorandum on the current state of the City’s labor negotiations and unfair labor practice charges.  A review of that report suggests that the City is not even close to getting its labor costs and bargaining practices under control – or establishing a workable, pro-active plan for getting the taxpayers fair value for those ever-rising labor costs.

The report starts with the Local 150 Operating Engineers (“OEs”) contract, which passed the Council by a 4-3 vote but was then vetoed by Mayor Dave Schmidt because he wasn’t convinced that the promised health insurance savings promised by the OEs would actually be realized.  While we await the vote to sustain or overturn Schmidt’s veto, the City’s labor attorneys – Robert Smith and his Rosemont firm of Clark Baird Smith, LLP – continue to battle the OEs on two related unfair labor practice charges before an Illinois Labor Relations Board administrative law judge.

Unfortunately, these ULPs tend to be decided in favor of the unions because the vast majority of the ALJs who decide them are pro-union lawyers placed on the state payroll by the clout of the ruling Democrats who need to keep the public-sector unions happy.  Chalk that up as yet another cost of one-party rule in Illinois for the past 30+ years.

But that doesn’t mean the City should just roll over any time the unions beef about something – even in a situation such as this one, where it looks and sounds like either the City’s crack negotiating team was asleep at the wheel when it came time for properly documenting the “deal” it claims it obtained from the OEs, or it simply got suckered and slickered by its union counterpart.

The report also talks about the upcoming firefighters contract negotiations.  The City’s negotiating team will once again be headed by Fire Chief Mike Zywanski, which is like giving the firefighters union an extra negotiator and a blank check.  Chief Z is the guy who proposed those secretive negotiating “Ground Rules” a few years ago, then didn’t have the basic integrity even to raise his hand and admit he did it when Schmidt asked who was responsible for agreeing to something so stupid.

All of this, however, is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

So long as the City continues to go along with a process where it budgets arbitrary amounts of tax dollars with the expectation of raises and benefit increases, then sits back and waits for the unions’ arbitrary and excessive demands, it will continue to commit increasingly more funding for services that are neither more numerous nor better than what is currently being provided.

That’s because the unions and the employees they represent don’t care about greater productivity, greater efficiency, or better service.  The last thing they want is raises and benefit increases tied to such measures.  So each negotiation starts off with a set of union demands that have no basis in anything but the unions’ wish list.

Their goal, at a minimum, is to lock in what amounts to cost-of-living allowances (“COLAs”) which are intended to do nothing more but make taxpayers the guarantors of the purchasing power of these employees’ wages.  If the price of gasoline, or milk, or housing, or anything else included in the Consumer Price Index goes up, these unions want to make sure their members get enough additional money to cover those increases.

How many private-sector Park Ridge taxpayers get such COLAs?  We’re betting not many.

But when it comes to being lost in the funhouse regarding labor costs, the City isn’t just clueless with unionized employees.  It may also be an equal-opportunity bungler when it comes to non-union staffing, as has been the case with the various raises it has given those employees with no thought to greater productivity, efficiency or value.

And yet another example of that is on tonight’s COW agenda under “Economic Development Coordinator proposal,” which gets its own City Mgr. Memorandum to explain why the City needs to create a new position of highly-questionable worth.

Hamilton spends six paragraphs positively gushing over all the miracles – “grow our business tax base,” “reduce the property tax dependency of our residents,” and create “the competitive advantage the City can realize” – an $80,000/year ED coordinator will perform.  Not surprisingly, he offers no business plan or any metrics for evaluating the success or failure of this new incarnation of a position that was eliminated back in 2010 because it produced little beyond a $120,000/year expense.

Sadly, that’s the kind of lightweight work product we’ve come to expect from Hamilton, for whom we and other Park Ridge residents had so much hope when he was hired back in the summer of 2012.  The only redeeming quality of his latest brainchild is that it will cost the taxpayers $40,000 less than its predecessor.

Hamilton actually may have been out-gushed, however, by the president of the Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce, whose letter predicts even more miracles from the new ED coordinator, including “more long-awaited shopping, dining, and service options for Park Ridge residents” that will “improve the attractiveness of Park Ridge as a place to buy a home.”  And it that’s not enough, the Chamber pres suggests that when the new coordinator isn’t busy shilling for the business community he/she can also help people “find the [social] services they need.”

Brilliant!  The position hasn’t even been created yet, but the Chamber is already advocating a kind of mission-creep which can be used to justify the employee’s retention if/when he/she fumbles the primary economic development task.

We suspect neither Hamilton nor the Chamber want the taxpayers to think about how, despite not having any such ED employee on the City’s payroll for the past four years, Park Ridge was able to land a Whole Foods, a Mariano’s, a Chipotle, a Jersey Mike’s, and other businesses, the cumulative total of which absolutely dwarfs anything any City ED employee or department have generated in more than a decade.  Nor do they want the taxpayers to realize what a joke the Chamber has become at actually promoting Park Ridge as a viable business community.

At least not until after the new ED coordinator position is approved.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Mayor Dave Schmidt’s latest veto – of the new contract between the City and its public works employees represented by Local 150 of the Int’l Union of Operating Engineers (the “OEs”) – came with what might be his shortest veto message to date.

The contract Schmidt vetoed would require the City to pay the OEs to provide health insurance for the 28 public works employees it represents, rather than keep those employees on the City’s insurance.  The projected $70,000 savings to the City of that insurance off-loading purportedly justifies the multi-year pay raises the contract includes, which are to run through April 2017.

Schmidt is concerned “because the projected costs and purported savings for the 2016-17 fiscal years are too uncertain.”  That was the same theme advanced by Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) – one of the three aldermen (along with Alds. Dan Knight and Roger Shubert) who voted against the contract initially – in a letter to City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton last month.

Hamilton and HR Director Mike Suppan are endorsing this contract as buying labor peace for our time, or at least until April 2017.

That should be the concern of all Park Ridge taxpayers who have seen just how bogus “projections” can be, especially when they are created and/or endorsed by bureaucrats, politicians and private organizations trying to feed at the public trough.  Remember all those glowing Uptown TIF projections?  And how then-city manager Tim Schuenke waived them around like Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich with that white paper “accord”?

Replace Schuenke/Chamberlain with City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton and you’ve got the picture.

And any question about whether this contract is likely to be a good or bad deal for the taxpayers should be dispelled by one simple fact: the OEs are arguing that it will save the taxpayers money!

As reported in a recent Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge mayor vetoes union contract over health care concerns,” March 6), Local 150 “spokesperson” Ed Maher chided Schmidt for not locking in protections for taxpayers and employees against possible future spikes in health care costs.  He also took a swipe at the ACA/Obamacare, calling it “completely unfunded” and contending that any suggestion that it will result in health care savings to the City is “absurd.”

A public sector union executive expressing concern for the taxpayers sounds about as sincere as Putin expressing concern for Ukrainian independence.

Schmidt is spot-on in asking that the contract be revised to at least include a wage and health insurance re-opener if all these projected savings don’t occur.  But, of course, the OEs want no part of anything that might add any accountability and real consequences if their projections turn out to be nothing but propaganda.

And Hamilton and City Staff just want to make a deal, any deal, to put to rest the continuing saga of what appears to have been their botched negotiations of this contract, as we wrote in our 06.14.13 post.  They seem to have not even the vaguest grasp of how whatever they negotiate with one group of employees – be it unionized or non-unionized – impacts the demands of other groups; and how it can effectively become the baseline for what terms an arbitrator can impose on the City in connection with the police and firefighters’ contracts.

This latest veto surely won’t endear Schmidt to the OEs, who threw their support – and an unprecedented $1,000 contribution – to Schmidt’s opponent in last April’s election.  At least one of that opponent’s campaign signs was also reported to have been prominently displayed in the Public Works garage even weeks after the election – notwithstanding that Schmidt won handily, in large part because it seems the voting taxpayers respect a public official who actually walks his talk.

Since we don’t appear to have any City negotiators with the brains or the backbone necessary to protect City taxpayers from the OEs’ (and other unions’) demands,, and their possible chicanery, that task falls to the Mayor.

Fortunately, he’s not afraid to do his job, especially when others can’t seem to do theirs.

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Back in 2003, when members of the Park Ridge City Council were like cats in heat trying to get the Uptown TIF off the ground, they needed the support of the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 School Board.  And the Council knew that support wouldn’t come easy.

The TIF plan was going to take money from D-64, D-207 and the Park Ridge Park District.  Because D-64 would be the most financially-impacted by the TIF of those three taxing bodies, it hired a top-notch TIF attorney: John B. Murphey of Rosenthal, Murphey, Coblentz & Donahue in Chicago.  And Murphey told the D-64 Board that the City could not prove its contention that the proposed TIF district met the “but for” test: but for the creation of a TIF district, that area would not be redeveloped.

Armed with Murphey’s opinion, the D-64 Board demanded some significant financial concessions from the City in order to forego a lawsuit.  And those randy cats on the Council – happily slurping up all the pro-TIF Kool-Aid being doled out by then-mayor Ron Wietecha, then-city manager Tim Schuenke, and the various bond consultants and attorneys who saw the TIF as a nice chunk of revenue for them – jumped at the chance to effectively bribe D-64 for its support.

They cut a deal that required payments to D-64 irrespective of whether or not the TIF was successful.  And, by now, we all know how that’s turned out for the City..

So it comes as no surprise to hear that the City has been behind in making payments to D-64, as recently reported in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge owes cash to schools, District 64 says,” 03.07.14).

Right now City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton and Finance Director Kent Oliven claim to need more and better new-student data from D-64 to determine how much the City owes.  For its part, D-64 says it provided its calculations back on January 9, but D-64’s highly-paid Business Mgr. Becky Allard reportedly was unavailable for comment.

Interestingly enough, the H-A article does not report either the dollar amount claimed by D-64, or the City’s proposed payment to D-64.  And the most recent Agenda Cover Memorandum on this issue says only that payments to D-64 were due by December 15 but D-64 didn’t even submit its new student data to the City until January 9.

Whatever the number turns out to be, the City should pay it promptly because – in true Chicago Way style – once you’ve been bought, you stay bought…so long as you get paid.  The City bought D-64 back in 2003, and it now owes that obligation despite the TIF’s turning out to be the financial white elephant for the City that some of us warned about back in 2003.

Although some folks at City Hall would like to renegotiate the bribe deal their predecessors cut a decade ago, the D-64 Board owes its constituents (a good number of whom are not Park Ridge residents) the duty to collect the TIF-related payments D-64 is owed.  And the D-64 Board has every right to take a lesson from the fictional “Paul Cicero” in the movie “Goodfellas”:

“But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what.  Business bad?  #@$% you, pay me.  Oh, you had a fire? #@$% you, pay me.  Place got hit by lightning, huh?  #@$% you, pay me.”

Back in July 2003, Wietecha criticized the few aldermen who hesitated to vote for the TIF.

“The people are expecting you to do your job, and your job is to cast a vote.”

Two months later, after the Council foolishly passed the TIF, Wietecha resigned his office on a Friday night and subsequently moved to Barrington.

Before his bill came due for “Paulie’s [TIF] money.”

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If you’re interested in the City’s efforts to control and remediate its flooding problems – or if you’re interested in how the City might be taking on tens of millions of dollars of long-term bonded debt – then show up tomorrow morning (Saturday, March 8) at City Hall (505 Butler Place) at 9:00 a.m. for a special meeting of the Park Ridge City Council to discuss the continuing saga of flood control.

For years we have argued for the City’s undertaking a plan for remediating both the sewer back-up and the overland flooding that plagues much/most of our community.  One reason we supported then-ald. Dave Schmidt in his mayoral campaign against then-mayor Howard Frimark in 2009 was Schmidt’s promise to meaningfully address this problem while Frimark fiddled with the Uptown TIF, the façade improvement program, and other giveaways of our public tax dollars to private entities.

And Schmidt has done just that.

He created the City’s Flood Control Task Force, which expended substantial effort in collecting data and providing a lot of valuable input from both an expert’s and resident’s perspective.  And Schmidt spearheaded the City Council’s hiring of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd. to provide a comprehensive analysis of Park Ridge flooding problems.

Unfortunately, kind of like the saying about how God answers all prayers but sometimes the answer is “no,” the Burke study and follow-up analysis produced a number of remediation projects – but with some major sticker-shock: $2.3 million for flood relief to just 23 homes in the Mayfield Estates neighborhood in the 2nd Ward, near Maine East; and another $16.6 million for the Northwest Park neighborhood, also in the 2nd Ward.

That’s basically $19 million and counting – because we all know how the costs of these kinds of projects tend to grow like Topsy – to provide flood relief to only two neighborhoods, leaving the rest of the City standing at the altar, ankle-to-knee deep in groundwater and/or sewage back-up.  Throw in the third main flood relief target area west of the Park Ridge Country Club, at another $80 million, and we’re looking at $100 million of long-term bonded debt that still leaves most of the City to fend for itself.

In our January 17 post, we suggested that the fairest way to undertake the staggering costs of these projects – which, if successful, could add tens of thousands of dollars to the value of those homes in the remediated neighborhoods – would be by a combination of City funds and a special assessment for the benefitted homes through the creation of Special Service Areas (“SSA”s).  Alternatively, we suggested a City-wide referendum.

Since then, the City has begun to look into both of those options, as can be seen from the SSA Memorandum and the Referendum Memorandum for tomorrow’s meeting.  These two options apparently have infuriated the folks in those neighborhoods who have been working for months to portray themselves as “victims” (of whom, precisely?) in the hopes of guilting our City officials into mortgaging the City’s future primarily for these victims’ private economic benefit.

Leading the charge for what amounts to a major Second Ward windfall is Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd), who has done an excellent job of firing up his “base” with e-mails and Facebook posts like his most recent one from Wednesday:

WE ARE SECOND WARD CITIZENS NOT SECOND CLASS CITIZENS.
Reading the packet for the Special Council Meeting to take place this Saturday March 8, 2014 it is apparent from the material included that some of our elected officials want to treat the residents of the Second Ward as if though they are a lower class subgroup of this city. The staff has been directed to produce memos that introduce concepts such as Special Service Areas and Advisory Referenda. NEVER I repeat NEVER has an area in the city been subject to this proposed discrimination and derogatory treatment. The City has never put a flood relief project to referendum nor has it ever passed on the costs directly to the victims of the flooding. Yet this is exactly what some aldermen will propose this Saturday. Instead of pitting areas of the city and residents against each other the council should be treating these projects as what they are; a continuation and a piece of an overall flood management plan for the entire city of Park Ridge. Let’s stop with the diversions and let’s assume our responsibility as a city for the health and safety of our citizens.

Frankly, we like the idea of aldermen advocating vigorously for their constituents.  And we also like the idea of other aldermen and citizens – like ourselves – vigorously challenging that advocacy, especially when it smacks of private greed and class and/or regional warfare.

So we will take this opportunity to remind Ald. Milissis that NEVER, we repeat NEVER, has such a limited area of the City demanded the kind of expenditures and long-term bonded indebtedness Milissis is demanding for his constituents – other than the Uptown TIF.

How’s that one working for us, Alderman?

And NEVER, we repeat NEVER, has the City committed the kind of expenditures and long-term bonded indebtedness Milissis is demanding for his constituents – other than the aforementioned Uptown TIF.

Let’s be painfully honest, Alderman: what you are tele-marketing as a mere “continuation and a piece of an overall flood management plan for the entire city of Park Ridge” will basically hogtie and hamstring the City in addressing other pieces of overall flood management for the rest of the City’s neighborhoods and residents for the foreseeable future.  What you’re proposing is nothing less than making sure your constituents win the race to empty what’s left in the public trough.

And let’s be even more painfully honest, Alderman: You don’t want a referendum because you know you can’t sell such a fundamentally dishonest, unfair and profligate initiative to the rest of this community.  And you don’t want SSA’s because many/most(?) of your most vocal constituents are shameless freeloaders who are counting on there being enough spineless aldermen to cave in to these demands and pay the entire cost – totaling as much as $100,000 per household – of their flood control.

As we’ve seen with the financially disastrous Uptown TIF, once the bonds are issued and the money is spent, there’s no do-over.  Once that debt service commitment is made, everything else must take a backseat to it – including the City’s ability to maintain its current level of services and to react to future challenges – unless the City jacks up its taxes substantially or watches its bond rating plummet.

Meanwhile, those residents directly reaping the benefit of all that debt and debt service can watch their property values rise dramatically as their homes lose the “we flood” designation.  And when those new taxes get too high and/or our bond rating drops, they can pack up and sell their properties – and pocket the enhanced profits provided by their fellow taxpayers’ financing.

Do you really want to talk about “pitting areas of the city and residents against each other,” Alderman?

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Just a month ago we wrote a post about what we dubbed a “boneheaded” ethics complaint by Park Ridge’s Gene Spanos.

Spanos’s complaint, in the form of a January 13, 2014 letter notarized on January 14, 2014, claimed that Ald. Marc Mazzuca and the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission chairman James Argionis were figuratively sleeping with the enemy by attending and participating in meetings of the Fair Allocation in Runways Coalition (“FAiR”), a group with the professed goal of dispersing the current concentration of O’Hare-related air traffic over the Northwest Side of Chicago and the near Northwest Suburbs…such as Park Ridge.

To most of us, that would be a good thing and FAiR would be our ally.  But not in Spanos’s wonderland.

In a January 24, 2014 memorandum, City Attorney Everette M. “Buzz” Hill, Jr. reviewed the City’s Ethics Code and determined that “attendance and participation at FAiR meetings creates NO conflict of interest” for either Mazzuca or Argionis.  But Spanos’s letter constituted an ethics complaint under the Ethics Code, for which the Code requires an investigation by an independent outside attorney.

So it came as no surprise to us that in a February 26, 2013 [sic] letter, independent outside attorney and retired Cook County judge James P. Etchingham found that Spanos “should be criticized for even suggesting any type of conspiracy, ethics violation or conflict of interest” for Mazzuca and Argionis because their involvement with FAirR “promotes the health safety and welfare of the community they serve.”

Exactly.

And that’s probably about as close to calling Spanos’s complaint “boneheaded” as judicial decorum, even the retired judge version, allows.

Nobody likes airplane noise, or whatever pollution may be fluttering down onto our community.  But it’s time the residents of Park Ridge realize that O’Hare expansion is a high-stakes game and our chip stack isn’t tall enough to effectively compete.

Our state-level representatives – State Sens. Dan Kotowski and John Mulroe, State Reps. Marty Moylan and Mike McAuliffe – have so far proved to be useless when it comes to all things O’Hare.  The same goes for U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky.  That’s because they and their political masters don’t want anything to curtail the O’Hare economic engine, especially when Chicago, Crook County and the State of Illinois as a whole already are barely limping along economically.

So when we finally get allies within the City of Chicago – the folks calling themselves FAiR – the last thing we need are grandstanders like Spanos fighting some kind of mindless political turf war against those allies, then going off half-cocked and filing baseless ethics complaints against our two City officials who, as Etchingham points out, “should be encouraged, not discouraged, from attending” FAiR meetings.

Spanos’s complaint was so bogus that Etchingham billed only 5.75 hours, and a total fee of only $1,581.24, to dispatch it.

It could have been worse.

While an alliance with FAiR would appear to give us nothing more than a tiny spark of hope, that’s more than we’ve had since the O’Hare Modernization Program was conceived and blessed by the FAA, Congress and O’Hare’s two major air lines.

Spanos and his CAPP crowd should stop trying to extinguish that spark.

UPDATED: Based on the letter that came over our transom this afternoon, it looks like Spanos is unapologetic.  No surprise there.  But two things deserver special mention.

The first is Spanos’ equating his boneheaded faux-ethics complaint with questioning and challenging our leaders.  We’re huge fans of the latter, no fans of the former.  But the disconnect that’s troubling is Spanos’ apparent inability to tell the difference.

The second is his invocation of his military service and his Rosemont public safety service to add legitimacy to his conduct in this matter.  Instead, it demeans the service, which is a shame.

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