Tonight the City Council’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”) is scheduled to consider a recommendation (the “Recommendation”) by the City’s Flood Control Task Force (“FCTF”) togive away hundreds of thousands of public/tax dollars – if not more – in subsidies, or “incentives,” to various residents if they install private flood control devices to help flood-proof their property.

Why is that kind of a recommendation wrong-headed?  Let’s start with it being fundamentally unfair.

If you’re a responsible Park Ridge resident who already has spent thousands of your own hard-earned dollars installing flood control devices (e.g., overhead sewers, check valves, etc.) in your home to protect from sewer back-up, the Recommendation will take some of your equally hard-earned tax dollars and give them to those less responsible residents who have heretofore neglected to install their own private flood control systems.

What’s fair about rewarding the negligent?

We would contend “nothing.” But at their last meeting back on May 15th, some FCTF members argued that it’s no less fair than when the City used public funds to install the flood wall on Riverside Drive 20+ years ago that only benefitted around 250 homes in that area.

That wall, however, was designed to protect not only all the private homes in that area (rather than just certain ones) but also the public streets from flooding and becoming impassable.  The FCTF’s Recommendation, on the other hand, would only protect a sprinkling of individual homes in various areas and do nothing to reduce public-area flooding, such as in the streets and other public ways.  In fact, FCTF members have even acknowledged that adding more private flood control devices could actually increase public (or “overland”) flooding, albeit slightly, by eliminating what effectively were water detention areas – those flooded basements – that held water until the sewer system could empty out.

So if you’re one of those responsible residents, the FCTF’s Recommendation will give you something new to worry about: a slight increase in the overland flooding that might breach your foundation or your ground-floor doorways, even as you’re paying for other folks’ flood control.

From a public policy perspective, this Recommendation has already flown past “tone deaf,” rounded “stupid,” and is heading for “brain dead.”

But the FCTF members sure don’t think so.  In fact, they actually consider their Recommendation a “cost saver” because they claim it will reduce the number of homes that pile all that sodden furniture and carpeting on the parkways, costing the City (a/k/a, the taxpayers) extra garbage collection expense.  That argument was conveniently underscored by a recent story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Flood debris pick-up cost Park Ridge $76,000,” May 24) that produced a $76,200 bill from ARC Disposal for the April 18 flood clean-up.

Not surprisingly for a H-A story, however, that figure assumes a lot of facts not yet in evidence, starting with whether all of the homes throwing out waterlogged carpeting and other items flooded because of no flood controls, or because of overland flooding, seepage, sump-pump failure, etc.  Nor did the H-A story address the issue of whether homeowners should be sur-charged for such extraordinary garbage pickup costs that may be resulting from their own negligence.

Why has a task force that was formed to help come up with innovative ideas for city-wide flood remediation become so obsessed with these patently quick-fix handouts to a limited number of local homeowners?

Could it be that those FCTF members already have effectively thrown in the towel on coming up with meaningful ways to remedy, on a city-wide basis, the so-called “50-year” or “100-year” floods we seem to be getting once or twice a year?  Could it be that individual subsidies or “incentives” as proposed in the Recommendation are simply an attempt to grab the lowest-hanging fruit, no matter how unsound it is as a matter of public policy?

Consider that some FCTF members – without dissent from their fellow FCTF members or City staff – noted that all the FCTF’s recommended improvements to the sewer system (at a cost of tens of millions of dollars) will, at best, make the system capable of handling only 10-year floods.

But even if a grand plan for preventing 50 or 100-year floods may not be easily achievable, does it make any sense at all to throw hundreds of thousands of public dollars (or more) at private homeowners who, up until now, have been too stupid, or too irresponsible, or just too darn cheap to install private flood control devices in their own homes on their own dimes?

At the May 15th meeting, resident Joe Weber and new Second Ward Ald. Nick Milissis – himself a flooding victim – wisely warned that subsidizing private flood control will distract the City’s attention and resources from the far more important and difficult task of controlling  “public” flooding.  They also wondered aloud about what kind of people could be content to run the risk of flooding until now, but suddenly become motivated to install flood control devices by the promise of a couple thousand dollar City subsidy?

How about “imbeciles” (a step above the “idiot” but still a notch below the “moron”)?  Or maybe the old reliable “freeloaders” who seem to be able to pick up even the faintest scent of public-fund handouts and get to the front of the line?

Several of the latter were at the meeting May 15th and they, along with a couple of FCTF members, were shameless in advocating for the Recommendation for purely private, personal benefit: in order to prevent losing flood insurance coverage (due to too many claims) and to make their homes more marketable.

Hey, maybe the City should spring for a new roof and some fresh paint while we’re at it, just to improve the curb appeal?

We trust that the City Council will not be bamboozled by this kind of soft-headed welfare for the irresponsible, because our community has serious flooding problems that require serious answers.  And handouts of public funds taken from the many for the private benefit of a few isn’t serious.

Except to the hopelessly shameless and the terminally silly.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Almost a year ago we welcomed the arrival of Shawn Hamilton as Acting City Manager in our post: “Will Interim ACM Create New City Manager Paradigm?”

At that time we branded him a “high-risk, high-reward selection” – the former because of his minimal public sector experience as the Grundy County Administrator managing a $14 million budget, the latter because of his more extensive background in private-sector banking and management consulting.  We expressed our hope that he might dispel the notion that private-sector skill sets don’t work all that well in a government setting.

Now, almost a year into this noble experiment, we think the results remain decidedly mixed in light of some significant mis-steps by Hamilton during his first 10 months in office.

For example, last October Hamilton stumbled badly out of the gate in what looked to us like an attempt to play “politics” with the new ICOPS contract.  He authorized and/or prepared an “analysis” demonstrating why the new ICOPs contract was better than the old one – but only after the new contract had already been passed, vetoed, and that veto sustained.

In December we discovered that Hamilton inexplicably had been sitting on the contractual “accounting” required from Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) for a couple of months before reporting the results to the City Council.  Not only was that accounting non-compliant with the contract’s requirements, but Hamilton’s delay let the clock tick down on the City’s option of putting the 2013 Taste of Park Ridge event (“TOPR”) out to RFP; and, consequently, TOPR 2013 was given to Taste Inc. on a no-bid basis because there was no time to do anything else.

In January, we wondered whether Hamilton and new Finance Director (Hamilton pick) Kent Oliven would be up for the City Manager’s biggest test: the 2013-14 budget process.  They weren’t.  In fact, they were so discombobulated that the Council had to delay the start of its budget workshops for a couple of weeks while Hamilton and Oliven stumbled around just trying to fill in the blanks of the budget template that had worked so well the previous year.

By March, Hamilton was aiding and abetting Fire Chief Mike Zywanski’s attempt to end-run the competitive bidding process on a $150,000 contract to replace the Fire Department’s ambulance cardiac monitors.  Hamilton stood silently by as Chief Z tried to stampede the Council with a questionable-bordering-on-bogus “analysis” of comparable products, along with dire warnings about the endangerment of public safety if the no-bid deal wasn’t cut immediately.  Only when pointedly questioned by Ald. Dan Knight did Chief Z finally admit that delaying this procurement really wouldn’t jeopardize the health or safety of Park Ridge residents.

Also in March, Hamilton aided and abetted Human Resource Mgr. Mike Suppan in botching the contract negotiations with the union representing the City’s public works employees – the one that contributed $1,000 to the candidate challenging Mayor Dave Schmidt’s re-election bid.  Apparently Hamilton and Suppan couldn’t, or wouldn’t, follow the Council’s direction that any contract be cost neutral; i.e., that any wage increases be offset with union concessions on other items.  The result: Hamilton recommended a contract requiring the City’s expenditure of $75,488 of “net new dollars” over the contract’s 3-year term, with no explanation from him of why this was such a good deal for the City’s taxpayers.

And in April we wondered what Hamilton was thinking in recommending that the City Council pass a resolution proposed by the next-to-worthless Northwest Municipal Conference, encouraging the federal government to adopt a plan of immigration reform.  Hamilton’s recommendation was properly dismissed by the Council, which gave it a unanimous “no” vote with barely any discussion – except to criticize it.

These incidents, although few in number, raise enough questions about Hamilton’s priorities and  judgment to deny him “permanent” city manager status.  At least for the time being.

But apparently these and other gaffes by Hamilton aren’t enough to prevent the City Council from offering him the permanent City Manager position at the Council’s May 28th meeting.  To the contrary, the Council – with the exception of Ald. Jim “Sleepy” Smith (3rd) – sounds pleased with Hamilton’s performance, and has directed Schmidt to “negotiate” an employment agreement with him.

Frankly, we wonder whether they are as “pleased” with Hamilton’s performance as they are dubious about finding anybody better if they go through the time, effort and expense of conducting a formal search to fill that position.  Given the City’s recent experience with the likes of Jim Hock and Tim Schuenke before him, and what we read and hear about the city and village managers in other communities, they may be right.  And despite all these whiffs, fumbles and shanks, Hamilton still might be able to raise his game to the level of what we hoped for when he arrived.

But why give Hamilton a contract?

According to H.R. Mgr. Suppan, such a contract “solidifies the city’s position and the candidate’s position.”

That bit of squishy H.R.-speak may sound nice, but how does an employment contract solidify “the City’s position” when we all know that the moment Hamilton – or any other City employee, for that matter – says he wants to leave, the Council will most certainly bid him bon voyage on the theory that somebody who doesn’t want to be here won’t do a good job if he/she is kept here?

Let’s call a spade a spade: these kinds of employment contracts protect the employee.  Period.

So even though we’re confident Schmidt won’t negotiate the kind of fiasco deal then-mayor Howard Frimark cut with then-incoming city manager Jim Hock, a deal made exponentially worse by the Council’s demented contract extension months before five Frimark holdovers (Don Bach, Jim Allegretti, Robert Ryan, Tom Carey and Frank Wsol) left office, we question the wisdom of any employment contract at all.

The overwhelming majority of Park Ridge taxpayers who pay Hamilton’s salary don’t have employment contracts in their jobs.  They’re subject to Illinois’ “employment-at-will” laws, which permit their termination at any time for virtually any reason, or for no reason at all.

So why does Hamilton, or any public employee for that matter, deserve an employment contract when the private-sector employees who pay those public employees’ salaries don’t?

And if he doesn’t deserve a contract, then why was Schmidt directed to negotiate one?

To read or post comments, click on title.

In 1692, the English philosopher John Locke – whose political philosophy inspired Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence – first suggested the concept of “unintended consequences” when he argued against a parliamentary bill cutting the maximum interest rate because it would actually reduce the availability of credit, thereby hurting the very borrowers the bill was intended to help.

That concept has since been elevated informally to a “law” by its application to a wide variety of circumstances, especially economics (including “Freakonomics”).  And a story in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate demonstrates how it appears to have adversely affected our City’s cultural arts community: “Arts fundraiser fails to stick with Park Ridge residents” (May 20).

When the City Council, at the behest of Mayor Dave Schmidt, finally said “enough” to the various private “community groups” that had developed an entitlement mentality towards the public funding they had grown accustomed to receiving from the City, then-city manager Jim Hock and a few aldermen tried to throw a sop to the cultural arts crowd with the institution of a special $10 “arts” sticker that could be purchased along with a City vehicle sticker and would benefit six local cultural arts groups.

But after just one sale – in the Spring of 2011 – the initiative was dropped because too few residents purchased those stickers to justify their cost and the City manpower to process those sales.  And, not surprisingly, the intended beneficiaries of that effort are now beefing about its failure, while also seeming to take a backhanded slap at the mayor and the Council for cutting their funding.

According to the H-A article, Cultural Arts Council member Diddy Blyth called the sticker program a “political move” that actually “diffused and incinerated” an incipient effort by the six cultural arts groups at working together on larger-scale fundraising.  And the article reports that those groups have not met together since.

Can you say: “Why should we actually work at fund-raising when we can once again feed at the public trough”?   Apparently those cultural arts groups can.

Brickton Art Center received a shade over $2,200 through sticker sales, nowhere close to the $11,000 it was going to receive in FY2010-11 before Schmidt’s veto was sustained by the Council.  And according to Brickton Executive Director Alyssa Kulak, Brickton is compensating for the failure of the sticker initiative by “seeking out different grants” and “cutting back on expenses.”

We suggest Brickton and these other cultural arts groups take a lesson from those old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movies, where a group of enthusiastic folks would signal their fundraiser of choice with the now-iconic exclamation: “Let’s put on a show!”

If Park Ridge residents truly support the arts – as the cultural arts folks insisted every time they sought City funding – these cultural arts groups should figure out a way to have those residents show it.  With cash. 

How about talking to the owners of the Pickwick, the City’s crown jewel venue, about hosting a gala event?  Or the old reliable Park Ridge Country Club, if the Pickwick won’t work?  Charge a C-note per ticket, serve champagne and some of those “heavy” hors d’oeuvres (we’re partial to super-colossal U12-count shrimp that look like they kicked a lobster’s butt just for the privilege of being on the tray) and feature some notable entertainment that will make the event the place to be in Park Ridge on that particular night.

If that doesn’t raise the kind of money these groups need, maybe it’s time for them to re-think their roles in this community.

And maybe it’s time for the Council to learn yet another lesson about the unintended consequences of City government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong while trying to funnel public monies into private entities and activities.

To read or post comments, click on title.

In 2010 Mayor Dave Schmidt formed the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force in the aftermath of the so-called “Ekl Report” of 2008, which identified a variety of problems within the Park Ridge Police Department that had arguably damaged relations between the PRPD and the public it is sworn to serve and protect.

As we recall it, the Task Force’s “task” was simply to come up with ways to improve those relations.

Unfortunately, Schmidt and the City Council provided no detailed task or mission definition.  And because power, even on a small scale, abhors a vacuum, the Task Force members promptly filled that vacuum with all sorts of “mission creep” tasks and activities increasingly removed from the PRPD’s community relations – the most notable being the Task Force’s recommendations and advocacy for over $1 million of improvements, renovations and expansions of the police station.

But Schmidt recently let it be known that the Task Force is being disbanded due to the completion of its original task of improving relations between the PRPD and the community.

Whether the Task Force’s efforts actually improved the PRPD community relations appears to be a function solely of anecdotal “data” that varies significantly – depending on whom you speak with, their connection to the PRPD or to the Task Force, and their own experiences with the PRPD both pre-Ekl and post-Ekl.  Our own anecdotal “data” suggests that most people never had any problem with the PRPD and saw the Ekl Report as an unnecessary expenditure, irrespective of the glimpse into the internecine power struggles between two rival police factions back then.

In the three years the Task Force has been operating, it has attempted to insinuate itself into all sorts of City matters, including  “public safety” (e.g., “the role of the Police Department in [dealing with]…cyberbullying”), legislation (“proposing changes to the municipal code regarding underage drinking disposition”) and other local issues the scope of which “goes beyond the Police Department and involves other parts of the city government” – according to Task Force chair Frank Gruba-McCallister’s Report to the Mayor and City Council presented at last Monday (May 13) night’s meeting.

Sounds to us a little bit like task force members gone wild.

But there may be more method to this “wild”-ness than initially meets the eye, perhaps related to the new community health initiative and survey sponsored by the “Healthier Park Ridge Project” (the “HPRP”).

According to a Chicago Tribune article from December 17, 2012, by Gail-Tzipporah Saunder, the HPRP arose out of Lutheran General Hospital’s failure to pay the City any parking taxes on cars parked in its lot.  Instead of paying the parking tax, LGH reportedly started giving money to the City’s paramedics – although we haven’t been able to determine whether LGH’s contributions matched what the City should have been getting in parking taxes.  And the same lack of quantified dollar value appears to be the case with this new health survey.

Not surprisingly for an upper-middle class community like Park Ridge, the hot-button public health topic is mental health/mental illness, at least judging by Gruba-McCallister’s Report and quotes from Police Chief Frank Kaminski, Maine Center for Mental Health’s CEO Fran Hook Hume, and Park Ridge Health Commission member Peter Ryan.

Kaminski pointed to the number of suicides in “our community” and the decrease in state funding for mental health services, while Hume and Ryan both extolled the health survey as a way to understand what the community is thinking about public health.

During the Council debates over public funding of private “community group” corporations which have no legal accountability to the taxpayers, it was often noted by those corporations and their advocates that the City – unlike its neighbors such as Des Plaines, Niles and Morton Grove – had no social services department and, therefore, should be funding those corporations as a substitute for its lack of in-house services.  Of course, none of those corporations’ officials or advocates offered to provide the City with transparency and accountability relative to their services, nor did they offer to enter into any legally-binding service contract with the City for a fixed amount of services at a fixed price solely for the benefit of Park Ridge residents.

City Council Policy No. 6, however, governs private vendors of services “deemed to be of substantial benefit to the community” and which are not “in conflict with or duplicative of services provided by any other governmental body having jurisdiction within the City.”

Given the way some of our past mayors and Councils tossed around tax dollars, however, it’s no surprise to us that we can find no indication in City records of a prior Council actually conducting any evidentiary hearing or otherwise taking evidence, and making findings, related to the benefit to the community of the private services and the availability of those services from other governmental bodies – like Maine Township or Cook County.

LGH’s community relations director, Paula Besler, has said that LGH is willing to provide financial support to initiatives created from survey results, including the option of creating a community health specialist position.

But we’re betting that, if this initiative gains traction, LGH won’t be providing all the “financial support” for all those sub-initiatives.

And we’re also betting that it’s only a matter of time before the various private corporations that became so comfortable over the years feeding from the public trough with only the most minimal transparency and no legal accountability to Park Ridge taxpayers turn up at City Hall some Monday night with what Will Stockdale (in “No Time For Sergeants”) called “a handful of ‘gimme’ and a mouthful of ‘much obliged’.”

Meanwhile, we’ll await the expected effort from the Police Chief’s Task Force folks to prod the Council into creating some kind of City “commission” that will allow them to pursue their many and varied governmental interests on a more permanent basis.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We’ve been a fan of the Flood Control Task Force (the “FCTF”) since its establishment, in part because several of its members have first-rate expertise in water and flooding matters; and most of the other members appear to have served capably in their lay-persons roles.

But when appointed board, committee and task force members decide to go beyond their assigned duties and try to play politics, it almost always goes off the rails – often causing additional and unnecessary expense to the taxpayers.  That’s what we addressed in our post “The Flood Control Task Force: Leaping Before Looking” (07.22.09), and that’s exactly what we’re getting again from the FCTF, if the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate’s story is accurate (“In flood’s wake, Park Ridge task force looks for new problems,” May 6).

Former Public Works director and FCTF member Joe Saccomanno, claiming he speaks for a majority of FCTF members, is trying to resurrect one of the more boneheaded wastes of taxpayer dollars we have seen or heard in at least two decades: City (a/k/a taxpayer) subsidies, or “incentives,” for homeowners installing flood control systems – primarily overhead sewers and shut-off valves – in their own homes.

That wrongheaded idea was originally proposed by Saccomanno and Company back in 2009 as a $420,000 give-away which, at $2,500 a home, would help 168 households.  It was wisely rejected by the Council for several reasons, including that it’s a form of “welfare” that would actually reward those homeowners who have been too irresponsible or too cheap to install their own flood control systems, at the expense of those many residents who already have sprung for that expense themselves; or who are fortunate enough to not have seepage and/or back-up problems.

Worse yet (and as Saccomanno acknowledges), these taxpayer-subsidized private flood control devices would likely put more water into the streets, many of which already become impassable when we get the kind of rains that cause this kind of flooding.  In other words, the FCTF wants to use public monies to subsidize the installation of flood control devices in private homes that likely will push more water into neighbors’ basements and into public streets, helping make those streets impassable.

And impassable streets mean a likely delay, if not a complete loss, of fire, police and other emergency services – as anybody who remembers the photo of a City police cruiser on a flatbed and a Fire Department ambulance literally dead-in-the-water at Greenwood and Busse back in 2008 can attest.

That kind of subsidy was bad public policy four years ago, and it’s bad public policy today – just as it’s bad public policy to throw public dollars at private community groups, or to subsidize private businesses.

We believe the recent flooding should cause the City – and the FCTF – to revisit the issue of whether the flood control program already devised will actually provide $1 or more of value for every $1 borrowed and spent.  That program is only designed to address “10-year” floods, even though we reportedly have had three “100-year” floods since 2008 that the City’s 10-year plan would not have prevented.

Is simply “reducing” the amount of flooding worth the multi-millions of cost – and bonded debt to fund it – that the current program is intended to provide?  More importantly, do our citizens realize that the program will do only that and not keep their basements bone dry going forward?

Those questions should be front-and-center on the new Council’s agenda, especially as it reconsiders the already-passed 2013-14 budget over the next few weeks, a prerogative newly-elected Councils enjoy.

Meanwhile, we suggest that the members of the FCTF stick with the technical issues within their wheelhouse, leaving public policy matters to the folks the voters elected to address them.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Monday night, the Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 Board did the unimaginable: it elected first-term member Tony Borrelli as its president over the hand-picked choice of immediate past president John Heyde, Scott Zimmerman.

Borrelli, joined by fellow-first termer Dan Collins and newly-elected Vicki Lee and Dathan Paterno, prevailed over Zimmerman, Heyde and newly-elected Terry Cameron, who ran on a “ticket” with Zimmerman.   And, just like that, the prospect of unprecedented transparency and accountability from an historically opaque and irresponsible governing body is in the air.

Borrelli has been the only D-64 Board member in the past two years – or the past twenty years, for that matter – who has dared to vote against the across-the-board, non merit-based pay raises for both D-64’s teachers and administrators.  For those who haven’t been paying attention, or who missed our 06.06.11 post, those pay raises are what helped push D-64’s average teacher and administrator salaries above those in places like Winnetka, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Wilmette, Bannockburn, Lake Forest, Deerfield, Arlington Heights, Northbrook/Glenview, Western Springs and Lake Bluff.

But there’s no guarantee that prospect will become a reality.

First off, the fact that Borrelli could garner four votes for president doesn’t mean he can count on those same votes on other issues.  Collins has spent the past two years hiding from his own shadow, so whether his vote for Borrelli signals his acquisition of a spine remains to be seen.  Lee will have to show she is bringing more to the table than her Carpenter PTO fundraising ability.  And Paterno will have to fend off wackos demanding to know whether he believes that God is a white-bearded heterosexual male who created the world in, literally, seven days.

Moreover, if those four dare do anything to suggest that they don’t believe D-64 exists primarily for the benefit of teachers and administrators, they likely will be assailed and undermined not only by their fellow Board members but by the PREA and the highly-paid administrators.

Nevertheless, at least there’s new hope that business as usual at 164 South Prospect might be coming to a welcome end.

While Borrelli was being elected, however, Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt was being over-ridden.  Or, more accurately, his two vetoes on Monday night’s agenda were being over-ridden as the last official acts of the 2011-13 City Council.

First up was Schmidt’s veto of the new Public Works employees’ contract, which Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton botched by ignoring the express directive from the Mayor and the Council that it be “neutral” – i.e., that any wage increases would be offset with other concessions – and negotiating a deal that will cost $75,000 of fresh cash.  Unfazed by Hamilton’s quasi-insubordination and the new contract’s arbitrary, non merit-based raises that other City employees can now use to justify future increases of their own, on March 25th the Council blithely voted 5-1 (Knight dissenting, Sweeney MIA) to approve that contract.

Monday night, City Atty. Everett “Buzz” Hill responded to a softball question from Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) by indicating that he would not be surprised if the union filed an unfair labor practice (“ULP”) charge should the Council not over-ride Schmidt’s veto and finalize the contract.   Hill did not opine on whether he thought such a charge would be successful, but Knight pointed out that if the City’s disapproval of any contract negotiated by City staff can conceivably be a ULP, then the City will need to change the way it negotiates its labor contracts.

Without further ado, the Council over-rode Schmidt’s veto by a vote of 6-1 (Knight dissenting).  And the spiral of arbitrary, performance-unrelated raises continues.

Then came the Council’s vote on Schmidt’s veto of the $389,500 “Phase II” of the police station renovation/expansion, which it over-rode by another 6-1 vote (Knight dissenting).  Although Schmidt and Knight both spoke against that expenditure, it was left to Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) to ask the only Council questions about Phase II – two marshmallows that went like this:

Mazzuca: “First, do you believe that Phase II would be helpful to your department in creating a more efficient and professional police force, that it’s a good investment for your department?”

Kaminski: “Yes I do.”

Mazzuca: “How do you think [Phase I] is going, and are we still on track to get our money’s worth on Phase I.”

Kaminski: “I think so.”

Gee, Marc, did you really think that Chief K was going to say “No”?  And if he had, were you ready with another withering inquiry – something along the lines of: “Chief, are you really sure you want to give that kind of answer?”

Mind you, Mazzuca is the kind of guy who, armed with an MBA from the University of Chicago, can spend an hour drilling down into a potato chip – a trait he demonstrated with his one-man water meter crusade and, later during Monday night’s meeting, what seemed like an eternity questioning Police Pension Board re-nominee Tom Ahlbeck.  So lobbing his Stay Pufts at Kaminski seems like just a feeble attempt to add a sliver of legitimacy to his vote.  He might as well have been sitting on Chief K’s knee, hoping nobody could see the Chief’s lips moving.

And the rest of the aldermen?  Silent as sphinxes.

The tally for the evening: more City employees get arbitrary raises unrelated to performance, and almost $400,000 more will be spent on the cop shop without remedying the allegedly health-threatening mold infestation.

Change?  Not this time around.

To read or post comments, click on title.

This Monday (May 6) night, the new City Council will be sworn in.  And when the smoke clears, for the first time in 18 years Ald. Rich DiPietro will not be sitting at The Horseshoe.

DiPietro did not seek re-election on April 9, and will be replaced by Nick Milissis.

It was all the way back in 1995 that Rich first took his seat in the Council Chambers.  The mayor back then was Ron Wietecha, each ward still had two aldermen, and the City was still in pretty much the same shape as former mayor Marty Butler had left it after his 18 years in the big chair, prior to his being appointed state senator in 1991 following Bob Kustra’s election to the post of Lieutenant Governor.

From the moment he took his seat on the Council, Rich and I rarely agreed on any controversial issue.

I never could understand what appeared to be his unwavering support for Wietecha’s obsessive/compulsive, spare no expense, all-O’Hare-all-the-time agenda.  That obsession led not only to years of neglect of Park Ridge infrastructure but also to the City’s flush-down-the-sewer $650,000 “investment” in a proposed Peotone airport.  Rich also endorsed both Wietecha’s thwarted effort to build a new $20 million library, and his ill-conceived/worse-executed Uptown TIF that Wietecha successor Mike Marous made a reality – and which has proved to be a multi-million dollar financial albatross that is now projected to hang around the taxpayers’ neck for years to come.

But we really crossed swords over Rich’s equally-unwavering support of mayor Howard Frimark, perhaps Park Ridge’s all-time political bottom-feeder and opportunist.  Rich was on-board with Frimark’s closed-session efforts to cut sweetheart deals to owners of land on which Frimark wanted to build a new $20 million police station, and he voted in favor of Frimark’s legally-meaningless “condemnation” of then-Ald. Dave Schmidt for actually upholding the Illinois Open Meetings Act and blowing the whistle on Frimark’s closed-session wheeling and dealing.

How Rich’s legacy of Council service will be viewed likely will not be known for a number of years, probably not until the Uptown TIF expires and its full effect on Park Ridge can be assessed.   It remains bewildering, however, that after 18 years of watching and listening to Rich and watching his Council votes, I can honestly say that I have no idea of what his overarching philosophy of City government might be.

Yet notwithstanding the upbraiding regularly administered to him on this blog, Rich remained unfailingly cordial and gentlemanly in person.

Which brings us to the point of this post: praising the “real” Rich DiPietro.

If you want to learn about the real Rich, you can start by reading Denise Fletcher’s Park Ridge Journal article dated August 15, 2012.

There you’ll find out that he has been married to his wife, Kathy, for 50 years – a truly “golden” achievement burnished even brighter by the fact they were high school sweethearts who married so young they couldn’t legally share a champagne toast at their own wedding.  Theirs is a Romeo and Juliet story without the tragic ending, and his role in that story speaks more to his character than any of his Council votes.

Not only did Rich and Kathy raise seven children of their own but, during the 1970s, they served as temporary foster parents to 22 infants until Catholic Charities could place them with adoptive parents.  That’s another kind of “walking the walk” that doesn’t show up in the Council’s meeting minutes or on its meeting videos, but is far more meaningful in the long run.

Rich has been in the printing business all his adult life, having started his own shop in 1981 and evolving it into a printing and graphic arts service provider now known as CrossTech Communications, with its own building on Jefferson Street just a block west of the Ogilvie Transportation Center.  He’s what used to be called a self-made man – except that I suspect Rich is too modest to claim that kind of credit for himself.

From all outward appearances and everything I have heard from those who know him far better than I, Rich has lived an exemplary private life and has more than earned whatever good fortune awaits him in his retirement from public life – including 24 grandchildren on whom he is reported to dote more than a little bit.

Rich DiPietro is one of the finest men ever to sit at The Horseshoe.  That should be his continuing legacy to this community, and that is what this post celebrates.

Ave atque vale, Rich!

Robert J. Trizna

Editor, publisher, chief cook and bottle washer

To read or post comments, click on title.

At this past Monday night’s Park Ridge City Council meeting, the Council did the right thing on a resolution that didn’t even deserve the dignity of a place on the Council’s agenda.

The Northwest Municipal Conference, one of the many clown cars masquerading as governmental or quasi-governmental organizations in the State of Illinois, promulgated a resolution supporting immigration reform for its members.  Or, more accurately, a resolution endorsing specific goals and processes that some people consider “immigration reform.”

Leave it to the mopes at the NWMC to find yet another thing outside their bailiwick on which to waste time while matters squarely in their collective wheelhouse are ignored or allowed to lie fallow.

NWMC bills itself as “one of the premier regional councils of government in the nation.”  If that’s so, we weep for the future of our nation…because by our reckoning the next thing NWMC does of major significance for most of its member communities will be its first.

This immigration resolution reportedly is intended to be sent to the president, vice-president, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, the speaker and minority leader of the House, and to each member of Illinois’ Congressional delegation.

Can you say: “Spit into the wind”?

The last thing Illinois needs is any more units of government – or quasi-governments like the NWMC, the Illinois Association of Park Districts, the Illinois Association of School Administrators, the Illinois City/County Management Association, Illinois Association of Municipal Management Assistants, etc.  These fluff and stroke societies are little/nothing more than networking opportunities for public officials exploring job openings, and occasions for discussing new and improved ways to bamboozle and fleece their respective bodies of taxpayers. 

But getting back to the NWMC resolution, it was such a brain-dead idea that even the Council’s gold-dust twins, Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Jim Smith (3rd), could see the pure tomfoolery of it – with Sweeney suggesting the Council “dispose of it, get rid of it and forget about it”; and Smith calling it “none of our business” and something that neither the City Council nor the NWMC should “be wasting their time on.”

That’s exactly right, guys.

You’ve got more than enough on your plate dealing with 100% local Park Ridge issues.  And that’s what you were elected to deal with.  Those of us with strong opinions about immigration can send our own letters to our various federal officials without your – or the NWMC’s – help, thank you.

However, given what a dumb idea the resolution was, as evidenced by the Council’s ultra-quick and unanimous rejection of it, we have to wonder what was going through Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton’s mind when he recommended the Council pass it.

Mr. Hamilton, you’ve also got enough on your plate that you have no need to concern yourself with resolutions dealing with federal issues.

Especially if they come from the Northwest Municipal Conference.

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We’ve already addressed the landslide victory by Mayor Dave Schmidt and the mandate that a 62% – 38% margin of victory suggests.  But what conclusions or inferences, if any, can be drawn from the results of the other races?

Park District Board:  This was billed as the local race where Park Ridge’s senior citizens were going to flex their political muscle and punish incumbent commissioners Rick Biagi, senior Steven Hunst and senior Richard Brandt, the “Top 3” ticket (for their first three ballot positions), for their perceived “anti-senior” attitudes and actions.

All three of them were roundly criticized by their opponents – a ticket calling itself the “Bottom 3” comprised of incumbent senior Steven Vile and two other seniors, Joan Bende and James Phillips – for: (a) their support for the District’s seizing control of the Senior Center from private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“SSI”); and (b) the District’s litigating with SSI over a $330,000 bequest to the “Park Ridge Senior Center” that former Park District employee Teresa Grodsky unilaterally handed over to SSI before belatedly filing a lawsuit seeking a court declaration as to whom that money legally belonged.

“Seniors” – or at least SSI-sympathetic seniors – do not appear to have been the political force they claimed to be: two of the Top 3 (Brandt and Biagi, the latter of whom was virtually demonized by some SSI members) won, while the only incumbent on the “Bottom 3” ticket (Vile) lost with almost the same number of votes as the other losing incumbent and fellow senior, Hunst.

The only woman running, Joan Bende, got the most votes of any candidate, outpolling runner-up Biagi by 554 votes.  So if this election reveals any kind of political demographic, it’s probably that women are more likely to vote for women – a still controversial theory among political scientists and politicians generally because of the sexism such a theory implies.

If Ms. Bende is going to become anything more than merely the successful “token” woman candidate, we can’t wait to see what she (and Phillips) actually do about their four main campaign issues – especially the second and fourth items on their campaign flyer that address the new Centennial pool/aquatic center/water park boondoggle.

School District 207 Board: 

The good news for taxpayers is that Mary C. Childers led all vote-getters, garnering 515 votes more than runner-up incumbent Margaret McGrath; and that long-time teacher/administrator-advocate, taxpayer-unfriendly Eldon Burk lost.

A bit of unsettling news in this election, however, is the open and notorious intrusion of highly-partisan Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky via her endorsement of successful candidate Jin Lee, whom we opposed because of his embrace of deficit spending and of the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) as a factor for determining teacher and administrator pay increases – which is ridiculous unless you believe it’s the taxpayers’ duty to ensure that the purchasing power of teacher and administrator salaries is fully hedged against inflation (i.e., increases in the CPI).

Given the way the rest of that Board – except for the departing Ed Mueller – has constantly rolled over when it comes to increases in teacher and administrator compensation despite the overall decline in D-207’s ranking vis-à-vis other Chicago-area public high schools, we don’t see any good coming out of either non-resident Schakowsky’s involvement in a local non-partisan election, or the election of one of her endorsees.

And if the rumor is true that both McGrath and successful quasi-incumbent Carla Owen boycotted the non-partisan candidates’ forum held on March 21 at South Park Fieldhouse because it was sponsored by the Park Ridge Republican Women, that adds further tarnish to the process

On the other hand, D-207 Board president (and former Maine Twp. Regular Republican Organization president) Sean Sullivan has been a dependable rubber-stamp for non merit-based pay increases, so disregard for the taxpayers appears to be truly bi-partisan at D-207.

School District 64 Board:  If you don’t think D-64 Board president John Heyde was extremely interested in the outcome of this election, think again.

Heyde made two e-mail appeals for the re-election of his right-hand man and potential heir apparent, incumbent Scott Zimmerman, and Zimmerman’s informal running mate, Terry Cameron, in the last 10 days of the campaign.

Not surprisingly, Heyde’s appeal on behalf of Zimmerman and Cameron also falsely labeled challengers Ben Seib and Dathan Paterno as “slated by the Park Ridge Republican Women’s Club” – even though that organization “slated” no candidates, and endorsed no candidates, in any non-partisan local election.  The fact that a couple/few members and/or officers of that organization, acting as individuals, supported Seib and Paterno wasn’t lost on Heyde, but just ignored in his efforts to make sure he and his pet superintendent, Phil Bender, wouldn’t have to deal with the only two candidates whose campaigns stressed accountability and fiscal prudence.

Fortunately, Paterno won.  That arguably gives the taxpayers two voices – Paterno’s and first-term Board member Anthony Borrelli’s – on a Board where they previously had only one, Borrelli’s.  Whether those two can develop any traction on a Board dominated by Heyde and Zimmerman will depend on how newbies Cameron and Vicki Lee, and first-term Board member Dan Collins, react to a slightly more balanced Board.

We endorsed Collins two years ago in the belief that he would bring some fresh and independent ideas to the Board.  Up until now, he has been little more than an empty suit and automatic vote for anything Bender, Heyde and Zimmerman want.  And while we hope we’re wrong about Lee, her ultra-lightweight campaign (mom, PTO president, works well in groups, wants positive change) gives every indication that she will be a reliable rubber-stamper in the tradition of the departing Sharon Lawson and the half-term removed Genie Taddeo.

Whether Cameron, now that he’s actually been elected, will be willing and able to climb out of Zimmerman’s shadow and start looking out for the District’s taxpayers – and its students – more than for the District’s teachers and administrators, will be a major point of interest over the next two years.

Park Ridge City Council:  We hope both Nick Milissis (2nd) and Roger Shubert (4th) will earn their Watchdog endorsements right out of the gate.

We also have high hopes that Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) will have learned a few lessons from his slender 20-point victory over Vinny LaVecchia – including that there’s more to City government than drilling down to the center of the earth on the issue of water rates, and that rubber-stamping every non merit-based pay increase that comes down the pike is horrible public policy.

And we hope LaVecchia maintains the level of interest and energy he displayed during the campaign, both in keeping an eye on Mazzuca’s performance and in promoting his ideas for improving Park Ridge’s retail base in ways that make sense and produce results.

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It didn’t take supporters of mayoral challenger Larry Ryles (or opponents of Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt) even 24 hours to begin trying to diminish the mandate of Schmidt’s landslide victory as consisting of the votes of only 34.8% of the registered voters.

And they have a point…up to a point.  The fact that only 34.8% of all registered voters bothered to show up at the polls for a hotly-contested mayoral race and hotly-contested aldermanic, Park Board and School Board races, and a significant Park District referendum vote, is nothing short of pathetic and shameful.

So all you 65.2% of registered voters who didn’t bother to go to the polls, either on election day or during the two weeks of early voting: you suck at citizenship!  Fortunately, it’s likely that this community and all of its governmental units actually benefitted from being deprived of all your votes cast from ignorant apathy, thereby diluting the votes of people who actually care and who might even be informed about the candidates and the issues.

Notwithstanding that 65.2% of our registered voters were ignorant and apathetic last Tuesday, an article in yesterday’s Park Ridge Journal identifies Park Ridge as having the top turnout among a number of neighboring communities, ahead of Rosemont (24.5%), Niles (23.3%), Des Plaines (22.7%), Arlington Heights (20.9%), Wheeling (15.6%), Glenview (12.6%) and Mt. Prospect (11%).  For the sake of an apples-to-apples comparison, however, it should be noted that Rosemont, Glenview and Mt. Prospect did not have contested mayoral elections this year.

The Journal article also points out that Park Ridge led all those communities except Rosemont in turnout for the 2009 election, with our 2013 turnout even being 1.4 % higher than in 2009.

Generally speaking, the more contested elections any community has, the likelier the turnout will be bigger – especially if the competing candidates actually articulate significantly differing views on important issues.  That’s why throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, turnout was generally dismal as the post-Marty Butler Homeowner’s Party routinely ran unopposed slates of bland candidates for City offices, and similarly bland “shadow” candidates unopposed for the Park Board and the School District 64 Board.

Beginning in 1995, however, that began to change when a three-candidate slate successfully challenged three incumbents for Park Board seats.  That kind of change spread to City government in 2003 when four “independent” candidates successfully challenged the Homeowner’s Party candidates.  Two years ago change finally migrated to D-64 with the election of Tony Borrelli over insider Genie Taddeo, followed by the District’s finally joining those other two governmental bodies in televising/videotaping its meetings after a group of private citizens forced the Board’s hand.

As a result, each local unit of government is now far more transparent and accountable than a decade ago, although we realize that isn’t saying all that much when closed sessions still dominate certain discussions.  And it is still outrageous that labor negotiations – which make up such a large part of each governmental unit’s expenses, especially in connection with teachers contracts – are conducted in secret so that the ridiculous demands by the unions and the spineless responses by our elected and appointed officials remain hidden from scrutiny by the taxpayers who end up paying the freight.

Ironically, many registered Park Ridge voters seem to think that it’s more important to vote in national elections than in local ones, even though an individual voter’s impact on national elections is almost non-existent compared to local elections.  And let’s face it: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner and the rest of their playmates in Washington don’t give a rat’s derriere what individual Park Ridge residents think about national and international issues; or whether we live or die, for that matter.

That’s why it’s almost impossible to get serious face-time with any of those Washington players unless you can bundle a few hundred thousand bucks in campaign contributions, or deliver a guaranteed 20-30,000 votes for them or their surrogates.  In contrast, you stand a pretty good chance of being able to have a meaningful conversation about community issues with the mayor, your alderman, or your Park Board and School Board members – usually for the bargain price of a cup of coffee.  Your own.

And unlike all the political hoops you generally need to jump through to get an appointment to a federal or state committee or commission, you’ve got a pretty good chance of being appointed to one of the City’s committees or commissions if you really want to serve in a non-elected capacity and have some basic qualifications unrelated to how much you contributed to somebody’s political campaign.

The local level is where real grass-roots government gets done by real people with real jobs and real lives – not the hyper-partisan cynical career politicians and their high-priced political whores (paging David Axelrod, paging Karl Rove) who live in a political fantasyland and who can’t seem to tear themselves away from their costly partisan political games to actually “govern.”

But while over 60% of Park Ridge’s registered voters turned out in November to cast ballots in partisan elections for the Obamas and Romneys whom they don’t know and who don’t know them, apparently only 34.8% of Park Ridge’s registered voters care about grass-roots local government and the issues it deals with.

So the tallest midget in the civic circus remains just a midget.

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