Question:  What do three former mayors, twenty-five former aldermen, a former City treasurer, a sham “political party,” the unions who represent City employees, and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky all have in common?

Answer:  They all tried to prevent Mayor Dave Schmidt from being re-elected to another four-year term, and lost.

By a veritable landslide of 5,597 (62.06%) for Schmidt to 3,422 (37.94%) for challenger Larry Ryles, the largest margin of victory since Park Ridge resumed contested mayoral elections in 2005.

What brought this rather eclectic collection of people together for such an effort?  What bizarre force of nature put the likes of former mayor Howard Frimark and former ald. Don Bach on the same political team as former alds. Jim Radermacher and Jeannie Markech?

Perhaps those ex-City officials were embarrassed by how Schmidt spent his first four-year term fighting, and winning, a number of battles on behalf of that beleaguered and forgotten class of citizens known as “taxpayers” – the folks who pay the bills for City government but who, while governed by those former City officials, always seemed to take a back seat to the money-grubbing special interests, whether they be City employees, their unions, private “community group” corporations, developers, or certain favored businesses.

Or perhaps those former officials were sick of hearing Schmidt talk candidly about the messes left behind in the wake of their mismanagement of the City on their respective watches.

Take the Uptown TIF, for example, in which many of them had a hand.  It’s an attractive development, all right, but did we really have to sell off prime City land at what appears to have been a sweetheart price without even having it appraised?  Did we have to foolishly mortgage $40+ million and 23 years of the City’s future so that some of those former officials’ buddies – like PRC’s owners, investors and contractors – could profit at the taxpayers’ expense?

In stark contrast, Schmidt and the current Council refused the demands of Whole Foods and developer Lance Chody for in excess of $2.5 million of sales tax revenue sharing.  And guess what?  Whole Foods and Chody blinked, and that “destination” retailer is scheduled to be open for business at Touhy and Washington by year’s end.  Go figure.

Whatever the reasons for that unholy alliance of former City officials, unions and Jan Schak, however, Frimark and some of Park Ridge’s political “usual suspects” – Paul Sheehan, Dick Barton, John & Kate Kerin, Mary Ann Irvine, etc. – banded together in an informal pact to “Beat Schmidt.”  And depending on whom you talk to, it sounds as if they actually may have recruited Ryles as a malleable nice guy and political empty-suit with an almost embarrassing lack of knowledge about the history and workings of City government.

The captains of Team Ryles did their best to hide his shortcomings by crafting a campaign strategy emphasizing “government by personality” instead of government by policy and performance.  They did their best to turn the mayoral race into a Miss Congeniality competition, and Ryles into a “hug and a handshake” wind-up doll.

Team Ryles found the unions that represent City employees willing accomplices in trying to dump a mayor who was completely unlike the previous Mayor Gumbys who would twist themselves into pretzels to keep the unions happy.  Team Ryles got $1,000 out of the Public Works employees’ union, and it also squeezed $10,000 out of Citizens for Non-Partisan Local Elections, a shadowy political “party” fronted by former ald. John English that inherited the balance of the old Homeowner’s Party treasury when the HOs pulled the plug on their own life support a few years ago.

Team Ryles assembled that “100+ years of City Council Experience” contingent to sign onto the Ryles “Clear Voice, Big Heart” campaign.  And it even secured a last-minute blitz of e-mail and letter endorsements from Schakowsky, which suggests that the City’s non-partisan politics may be taking on a decidedly partisan edge going forward.

Fortunately, none of it worked.   As best as we can tell, Ryles won only one precinct – his home precinct in the Roosevelt School neighborhood.  And even that was only by a handful of votes.

What does such a beat-down suggest about City government, or local government generally?

The anti-Schmidt crowd already is spinning the results as a loss by Ryles rather than a win for Schmidt, placing blame on Ryles for being a “weak” candidate who got outworked by Schmidt; on his political gadfly/campaign manager, Sheehan, for being out-strategized; on Frimark for anointing Ryles with his greasy thumb-print early in the campaign; on Kerin and the other former HOs who thought “100+ years” of irresponsible incompetence would impress voters; and on whoever thought that taking $1,000 from the union trying to pickpocket the taxpayers was a good idea.

Not surprisingly, these personality cultists can’t or won’t accept the fact that the outcome may have been based more on Schmidt’s performance than on his personality, or that the political paradigm in Park Ridge is changing, albeit slowly, from the old-style Cult of Personality to a more policy-oriented style where the message is as important, if not more important, than the messenger.  It’s a maturation process not unlike what children go through when they move from obeying their parents because they have to, to taking their parents’ advice because they finally can appreciate its wisdom.

But old habits die hard.

There are still way too many voters in this town who cast their ballots for the guy who coached their kid in soccer, or the gal who was in the Field School V-Show with them five years ago, irrespective of what those candidates’ political philosophies and views on the issues may be.  And almost 65% of the registered voters didn’t care enough to vote at all, despite two whole weeks of early voting and polls being open 13 hours on election day.  The 35% of Park Ridgians who did vote, however, not only beat the 19% county-wide average for this election, but also beat the turnouts in the 2009 and 2005 contested mayoral elections.  So at least we’re moving in the right direction in that regard.

It looks like we’re also moving in the right direction on policy over personality.

In 2005, Frimark received 4,889 votes in a winning effort, but the same Frimark “personality” received only 3,801 votes in his losing effort in 2009.  And Frimark protégé Ryles – with arguably a better “personality” than his mentor but most of the same discredited policy positions – received only 3,424 votes in 2013.  Meanwhile, Schmidt’s vote totals went up from 4,897 in 2009 to 5,601 in 2013, with a “personality” that remained constant.

That might suggest more people are expressing a preference for Schmidt’s policies and the record he built on them than for the policies and the record of Frimark, Ryles and the “usual suspects.”  And that would make Tuesday’s mayoral election result an even bigger win for the taxpayers.

If so, let that maturation process continue!

To read or post comments, click on title.

Mayor:                                Dave Schmidt

Alderman (2nd Ward):     Nicholas Milissis

Alderman (4th Ward):      Roger Shubert

School Dist. 64:                Dathan Paterno

                                           Benjamin Seib 

School Dist. 207:             Mary C. Childers

                                         Jeff Spero

Park District:                   Richard Biagi

                                         Richard Brandt

                                         Steven Hunst

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
? Abraham Lincoln

To read or post comments, click on title.

Three Park Ridge aldermanic seats are being contested on Tuesday, based on the staggered system that was implemented in the wake of former mayor Howard Frimark’s successful cut-the-Council referendum in November 2007.

Second Ward:   The announced retirement of Ald. Rich DiPietro has opened up that aldermanic seat for the first time in 18 years.  And the way the two Greek-American candidates are going at it suggests Athens v. Sparta 2,400 years ago.

George Korovilas has set his opposition to the 80-unit apartment complex proposed for the corner of Northwest Hwy. and Greenwood as the flagship issue of his campaign, along with his opposition to needless City regulations – two positions on which we heartily agree with him, although we don’t view them as anywhere near the top of the City’s priorities.  We’re also not quite sure what to make of his call for a “complete audit” of City finances, in part because that already occurs every year; and his call to “reduce wasteful spending” is undercut by his failure to identify specific items of waste, including no mention of how he would address the ever-increasing personnel costs.

Over the years we have been critical of Nick Milissis, going so far as to speculate – in a less-than-kind way – that he was being groomed by former mayor Howard Frimark for a Council seat.  Consequently, his endorsement by former alds. Curt Edlund and Maureen Strauts (rubber-stamp Homeowner’s Party aldermen in their day) who also have publicly endorsed hug-meister Larry Ryles over task-master Mayor Dave Schmidt, gives us a bit of pause…as does his endorsement by current High School District 207 board president Sean Sullivan, who has been a dependable advocate for every non merit-based pay increase for teachers and administrators that has come down the pike during his tenure.

So while it would be easy for us to be wary of Milissis, as we wrote in our post for our Park District endorsements: “easy” is often, if not usually, wrong.  And in this case, we believe his engagement in City issues over the past four years and the positions he has taken in this campaign have earned Milissis our endorsement, notwithstanding his other endorsers.    

He has spoken publicly against spiraling personnel costs and other expenditures that appear more “want” than “need,” like the police station expansion and renovation project that has pushed the number one “safety and health” issue – mold remediation – out to the third year of that three-year project while more office and storage space is treated as a priority over what Chief Kaminski and his Task Force branded a serious health issue.  Really…a bike corral over mold remediation?

Millisis’ presentations at both the Town Hall meeting in February and the Republican Women’s forum in March demonstrated a comprehensive view of Park Ridge issues that his opponent has not matched.  And we fully expect that, if elected, he will not be revealed as a Frimark disciple or the typical go-along-to-get-along guy that used to be the rule in City government – and still is the rule in school board governance.

Fourth Ward:     Current Ald. Sal Raspanti is retiring after one 2-year term because of work obligations.

One of the candidates vying for the open seat is J.B. Johnson, to our knowledge the first-ever black aldermanic candidate and wife of blood-drive organizer extraordinaire George Johnson.   She is opposed by Roger Shubert, who also has a well-known spouse: Amy DeGrazio, former owner of New Prospects.

Our endorsement goes to Shubert, primarily because of his emphasis on continuing “the positive fiscal momentum in the city of Park Ridge after years of budget deficits,” not only for its own sake but also because a financially-sound City enhances its ability to provide a more credible business-friendly environment without fiscally irresponsible gimmicks like TIFs and façade improvement subsidies.  We also believe he correctly has identified the new Centennial aquatic facility as the No. 1 “4th Ward” issue, and one about which that Ward’s alderman might actually be able to do something concrete for its residents.

Ms. Johnson is an engaging person who seems to be relying on personality instead of public policy to get herself elected.  Her campaign “platform” is a crazy-quilt of platitudes, generalities, personal anecdotes and name-dropping (e.g., Bill Gates, Rand Paul, “pal” Keith Olberman).  We also wonder why her number one issue is “[m]oving Public Safety of our citizens up a notch” – especially given that Park Ridge was recently recognized as one of the safest cities in America with populations over 25,000, with an already-low crime rate that keeps declining.

Sixth Ward:    The toughest decision of the three aldermanic races is in the 6th Ward, where appointee Ald. Marc Mazzuca is seeking his first full elective term against Vincent LaVecchia.

In the interest of full disclosure, this editor was a member of the four-person 6th Ward residents mayoral committee that interviewed Mazzuca and three other candidates for appointment last summer to fill the unexpired term of then-ald. Tom Bernick, who went “over the hill” after barely a year in office.  At that time, we had high hopes for someone with an economics degree from the U of I/Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago, who seems to revel in drilling down into the most arcane data – as he demonstrated with his painstaking study of the City’s new water rate ordinance.

Unfortunately, in a couple of key respects those hopes have been dashed rather than realized, most significantly by Mazzuca’s rubber-stamping of the cop shop expansion/renovation plan that ignores the allegedly health-threatening mold problem for the next two years while new/additional office and storage space is being built; his request for a do-over and his subsequent flip-flop on the mayor’s veto of the across-the-board, non-merit based pay increases for the ICOPS; and his recent vote to give more non-merit based pay increases to the City’s Public Works employees.

Non-merit based raises are simply bad public policy, especially where each pay increase given without measurable linkage to improved efficiencies and/or enhanced employee performance actually encourages future non-merit based pay increases for other City employees, thereby perpetuating the upward spiral of the City’s personnel costs.

On the other hand, his opponent, Vincent LaVecchia, is like a cat in heat when it comes to pursuing additional retail and overall economic development.  He has stated that the first thing he would like to do if elected is to lead an economic development team and sell unspecified retailers on Park Ridge’s “great demographics.”

While his energy and enthusiasm are laudable, we’ve been hearing that kind of talk for decades.  And we have to question how he realistically believes he will be successful when both the City’s old quasi-private Economic Development Corporation and, in more recent years, its six figure-salaried City E.D. Director, produced pitifully lackluster results in selling retailers on Park Ridge’s “great demographics.”  More importantly, he hasn’t explained the fact that the most significant retailer to locate in Park Ridge in years, Whole Foods, decided to come here while the City had no E.D. person or department in place – and despite the City’s outright refusal to give Whole Foods and/or its developer the financial incentives and concessions they requested.

Under these circumstances, although each of them brings certain assets to this endeavor, we can’t give either one a clear advantage over the other.  Consequently, this is a “you-pick-‘em” race, perhaps based on what we’ll call dueling flyers: Mazzuca’s versus LaVecchia’s.

Whatever you do, however, and irrespective of whom you support, make sure you get to the polls tomorrow if you haven’t already done so.  Otherwise you’re part of the problem – apathy – rather than part of the solution.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Four years ago, following then-Ald. Dave Schmidt’s defeat of then-mayor Howard Frimark, we congratulated Schmidt in our 04.09.09 post and identified five significant tasks facing the new mayor – given that he was going to be inheriting a Council majority of Frimark alderpuppets Jim Allegretti, Don Bach, Tom Carey and Robert Ryan.

Those five tasks were: (1) prevent the alderpuppets from moving ahead with Target Area 4 of the economically-debilitating Uptown TIF plan, using a mayoral veto if available; (2) stop the deficit spending and straighten out the finances; (3) change the Culture of Secrecy by cutting down on closed sessions; (4) make useful information more readily available to the taxpayers; and (5) make a “sound appointment” as his replacement First Ward Alderman.

Four years later, it’s clear that Schmidt has succeeded on the first three, partially succeeded on one, and had one mooted by First Ward voters who elected Schmidt pick Ald. Joe Sweeney to a full term in 2011.

And four years later, Frimark is back – this time with a surrogate in likeable puppet candidate Larry Ryles, who not only has never held elective office in Park Ridge but who hasn’t even run for one.

Ryles is such an empty suit when it comes to the substantive issues facing the City that even the Park Ridge Journal’s endorsement of Schmidt noted how Ryles was “not being willing to discuss with the Journal his positions on local issues in the same setting with Schmidt” – the first time we can think of where a challenger adopted a “rose-garden” strategy.  Ryles’ attempts to hide in plain sight – which included not even attending City Council meetings – were the main reason ran a series of “What Would Ryles Do” posts on 09.05.12, 11.26.12, 12.17.12, 12.26.12, 01.31.13, 02.13.13 and 03.13.13.

Not surprisingly for a candidate backed by Frimark, Ryles has picked up some interesting special-interest support – a couple of which deserve special mention.

The first is a $1,000 contribution from the Operating Engineers union that represented the City’s public works employees in the just-concluded contract negotiations.  Those negotiations resulted in yet another across-the-board, non merit-based wage increase that Schmidt has indicated he will veto.  As best as we can tell, that’s a first-ever attempt by a union representing City employees to get involved in City politics; and it suggests the union believes Ryles will be a much softer touch than Schmidt.

We’d bet on it!

The second is a $10,000 contribution from something called the “Citizens for Non-Partisan Local Elections,” a seemingly “shell” organization that received the $15,000 remaining in the treasury of the old Homeowner’s Party (the “HOs”) when it shut down a few years ago in the aftermath of its seven aldermanic candidates getting thrashed in the 2003 City elections, after years of piling up victories in uncontested ones.  As a result of that $15,000 bequest, from time to time we’ve referred to this new “party” as the “New HOs,” and we take a small amount of pride in having speculated on both the Frimark-backed Ryles candidacy and the New HOs’ involvement back in our 06.25.12 post.

Although the New HOs is nominally operated by former 1st Ward ald. (and old HO) John English, we hear its behind-the-scenes movers and shakers include: Frimark’s former alderpuppets Allegretti and Bach; former 4th Ward ald. (and Frimark backer) John Kerin; former 5th Ward ald. (and Frimark backer) Steve Huening; and former 7th Ward ald. (and Frimark backer) Frank Bartolone.  Whether their fingerprints ever actually show up on the New HOs paperwork remains to be seen.

While we could go on a lot longer about why Ryles is just Howard Frimark in a red beret, we won’t because Schmidt should win or lose based on his record, one that has been the most public and transparent of any mayor’s in Park Ridge’s history.  And on that basis alone, he’s earned our endorsement…and your vote.

UPDATED 04.05.13:  It looks like the Illinois “Combine” – that aggregation of Democrats and Republicans who share the same political bed and gorge at the same public trough – has found its way to Park Ridge.

According to a flyer e-mailed by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s office, she has endorsed mayoral challenger Larry Ryles in what is legally a “non-partisan” election that historically has been considered out-of-bounds by the area’s Dems and GOPers.   Whether that’s what will become standard operating procedure from here on, or just a one-time deal for Rep. Schakowsky, remains to be seen.  But it speaks volumes about the importance of Tuesday’s mayoral election.

We wonder how cozy self-proclaimed “Republicans” like Howard Frimark, Don Bach, Dick Barton and Jim Allegretti are under the same covers with Democrat Schakowsky?  This being Illinois, we’re guessing their answer would be: “Very.”

Coming Next:  Aldermanic Endorsements.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Since 1997, when the Park Ridge – Niles Elementary School District 64 Board bamboozled the public on its ridiculous proposal to tear down and replace the District’s newest school, no local governmental body has consistently done less with more.

For those of you without any historical memory, D-64’s then-Board members not only gave the taxpayers a foolish “new” Emerson, but followed that up with such financial mismanagement that the State Board of education was preparing to take over the District’s finances – until the District snuck through an eleventh-hour, $5 million “back-door” working-cash bond issue.  That funding ploy bought the District enough time to get to its 2007 “Strong Schools” super-funding referendum that replenished its coffers and preserved its status as the highest taxing body on our property tax bills.

Meanwhile, academic performance, as measured by ISAT scores, declined even as the District’s administrators actually bragged about not “teaching to the test.”  And everyone did their best to ignore the distinct possibility that the under-achieving D-64 kids feeding into Maine South began lowering that school’s performance, from among the Top 10-rated high schools in Illinois to 24th among Chicagoland public high schools, according to the 2012 Chicago Sun-Times analysis of ISAT scores.

In large part, the cause of this decline in economic value to the taxpayers and educational value to the students has been a succession of school boards packed with basically nice people who came to the Board ill-equipped to say “no” to teachers and administrators – and to the teachers’ union that controls all of them – or to hold those teachers and administrators accountable for their acts and omissions to the taxpayers who pay their ever-increasing salaries and benefits.  With one notable exception, Tony Borrelli, those are the kind of people who currently populate the Board.

Fortunately, three of them are leaving, and a fourth is being challenged in his re-election bid.  That means D-64 voters have an excellent opportunity to make some changes to a Board that, just a year ago, had the dubious distinction of making the District’s under-performing administrators the 4th highest-paid in the state, and its under-performing teachers the 25th highest-paid, despite having only one of its schools in the top 100, based on ISAT scores.

And, thankfully, two candidates seem intent on changing that, and they are running as a two-man ticket.

Dathan Paterno is a licensed clinical psychologist whose practice centers on children and adolescents.  He has expressed a refreshing willingness to address tough issues like the cost-benefit equation for D-64’s traditional special education programs, which he correctly notes are “enormously expensive” for the relatively small number of students served.  And unlike some of the other candidates, he views funding referendums not as last resorts in times of crisis but as proactive educational tools that “would afford voters/taxpayers a greater awareness of the financial woes of the district and the policies that contributed to those woes.”

Gee, fiscal responsibility and accountability…concepts heretofore foreign to the D-64 Board and administration.

His running mate, Benjamin Seib, the Vice President of Finance for Cancer Treatment Centers of America and the son of a southern Indiana math teacher, understands the need for public schools to provide measurable rather than just anecdotal value to the entire community.  He already has demonstrated his ability to put his University of Chicago MBA to the service of D-64 by drafting an executive memo pointing out two notable trends in the District – a report that, on one page, displays more analytical thinking and transparency about its topics than we’ve seen from either the current Board or the District’s highly-paid administrators.

We believe Paterno and Seib will become two of the most capable and effective advocates for the taxpayers and the students to sit on the D-64 Board in recent memory.  They are enthusiastically endorsed.

Terry Cameron brings some interesting attributes to his candidacy, including a strong finance and business management background.  And we like his idea about regularly budgeting to address infrastructure issues before they become critical and require yet another big tax-hike referendum.  Unfortunately, he seems to view the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) as a valid benchmark and driver of cost increases – including teachers’ and administrators’ compensation.  That’s the same wrong-headed view that has caused teacher and administrator compensation increases to not only outpace the CPI but also to increase dramatically even as student performance stagnates.

Rick Van Roeyen is a special ed. teacher and wrestling coach for Leyden Twp.   His “platform” is the typical set of warm-and-fuzzy bon mots (e.g., “My interest in serving as a District 64 school board member is to honestly forward the ideals of the citizens of this community, and maintain the highest level of service practicable to our children.” Yada, yada, yada.) that appears to be missing only the tried-and-true “I want to give back to the community.”

Vicki Lee promotes her candidacy by noting that she is a “PTO President and an involved mother of two children in Park Ridge soccer, softball, Girl Scouts, and religious education” who has “always worked well in a group environment” and “strive[s] to communicate effectively and listen to all to make positive change.”  If Genie Taddeo was your kind of Board member, Lee is your cup of tea.

Finally, the chief accomplishment of incumbent Scott Zimmerman in his three years on the Board appear to be serving as a dependable “yes”-man for Board president John Heyde.  Whether Zimmerman can talk while Heyde is drinking water still remains to be seen, but neither the former nor the latter have ever seen a teacher’s or administrator’s salary they couldn’t raise, or some mediocre educational performance they couldn’t spin into something superficially-but-deceptively positive.  So unless you enjoy paying top-shelf taxes for second-shelf education, the simple rule when voting your D-64 ballot should be ABZ: “Anybody But Zimmerman.”

Coming Next:  The Park Ridge Recreation & Park District

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today we’re taking a short break from the stretch drive of the various political campaigns – but not a whole week of Spring Break, like mayoral challenger Larry Ryles is enjoying – to address a matter that’s on tonight’s City Council COW agenda: the new collective bargaining agreement between the City and Local 150 of the Operating Engineers who represent the Public Works employees.

Yes, the same union that gave Ryles a $1,000 contribution a few weeks ago, in what might be viewed as an “investment” in a hoped-for future.

It was only back on March 11 that we published a post critical of how City Staff managed labor negotiations, contracts, and communications with the City Council concerning them: “Latest Episode Of Labor Contract Buffoonery On Display Tonight”.  We won’t repeat that discussion (which you can read for yourself if so inclined) other than to note some recent developments that continue the City’s clown-car approach to labor matters.

When we wrote that March 11 post, the Council “packet” on the City’s website didn’t include Acting City Manager Shawn Hamilton’s Memorandum containing his “Summary and Analysis Local 150 Tentative Agreement” – nor did the Council, as we understand it.

That Memorandum recounted some details of a May 21, 2012, closed session (“executive session”) to discuss bargaining strategy.  In fairness to Hamilton, he wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of Mayor Dave Schmidt or the Council back then, as his predecessor, Jim Hock, had just been sacked and long-time Deputy City Manager had taken over as ACM with the Council’s expectation that she would stay on until the City had paid off all of Hock’s $120,000+ severance package.

But Hamilton apparently did enough research to discover that the Council had reached a consensus back then “to use other fridge [sic] benefit concerns as bargaining”; and that the Council “wanted to see any wage increases offset with other concessions” – “offset” being the operative word, suggesting that any deal would be revenue-neutral for the City.

So when Hamilton joins Suppan in recommending that the Council pass this new Agreement that he admits results in an expenditure of $75,488 of “net new dollars,” we would hope that recommendation would come with an explanation of why the Agreement was good for Park Ridge’s taxpayers and consistent with the Council’s revenue-neutral mandate.

So much for that hope. 

In his own Agenda Cover Memorandum from March 11, 2013 – which we did address in our March 11 post – City H.R. Director Michael Suppan provided no explanation whatsoever for why he and Hamilton were recommending the Agreement even though it failed to achieve the revenue-neutral status the Council wanted.  Instead, he notes only that “[t]he terms of this agreement are below the authority originally authorized by the Council on May 2012” – an oblique way of saying that, at 2.75% for the first two years, it was under the “3% over the first two years” referenced in Hamiton’s memo as Maller’s “authority”; and even though, in apparent excess of her authority, it includes a 1.75% increase in year 3 that takes the Agreement up to a 4.5% increase over 3 years.

But where’s the “offset” that makes such a wage increase revenue-neutral, gentlemen? And where’s the “potential wage reopener in the third year”?

We aren’t suggesting that $75,488 over 3 years will break the City’s piggy bank.  It won’t.  But when the City is giving away 4.5% increases over 3 years with not even an attempt to tie it to merit or performance, this sounds like just another COLA-based deal that is designed to help ensure the preservation of the employees’ purchasing power against expected inflation rather than to reward and incentivize better performance and productivity. 

Where in the City Code does it say that the City is supposed to ensure the purchasing power of its employees?

Hamilton’s memo makes a point of mentioning that the new Agreement cuts the amount of vacation for new employees from as much as 29 days (at 15 years of service) down to a mere 20 days, a/k/a 4 weeks.  So all 28 current employees will be grandfathered into the current vacation plan until they leave or retire, which means the benefits of that policy might not be felt for awhile – assuming the next contract doesn’t restore the current vacation schedule for all employees.

Do Hamilton and Suppan think that’s a good idea?  Have they done some kind of calculation that convinces them the vacation change will somehow bring about the revenue-neutral “offset” the Council wanted?  Do they think that this new Agreement really is in the best interest of the City’s taxpayers, and why? 

We don’t know, because Hamilton and Suppan aren’t saying.

We realize that answering those questions would require actual “analysis” and judgment rather than just clerical compilations.  Given how cavalierly prior Councils gave away across-the-board raises and benefits, there probably are no benchmarks or “cheat sheets” laying around to help them with that task.

But isn’t that what these guys are getting paid for?

To read or post comments, click on title.

When people visit a doctor with a health problem, they expect a diagnosis of the problem before the doctor starts prescribing a treatment or cure.  That’s because in medicine, like in so many other areas of life, you can’t come up with an effective treatment or cure until you’ve figured out the problem.

Unfortunately, in politics the opposite is often the case – as we saw last Wednesday afternoon at the mayoral candidates’ debate held by the Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce.  Not surprisingly for a business group, the main topic of the debate was business, specifically retail…and why Park Ridge doesn’t have more of it.

Mayor Dave Schmidt made it clear that he wants more retail, while at the same time pointing out that retail has picked up over the past four years by about 25%, as reflected in the approximately $1 million increase in annual sales tax revenue.  He also talked about the burdens of an Uptown TIF which, contrary to what its proponents promised back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, has turned into an economic black hole so deep that the City might never recoup the $40 million-plus that it borrowed to finance the City’s portions of the project, even if the TIF is extended beyond its intended 23 years.

The chief culprits and apologists for that TIF debacle?  Former mayors Ron Wietecha, Mike Marous and Howard Frimark, who have endorsed challenger Larry Ryles for mayor.  And the Chamber of Commerce itself, whose members clamored for something, anything, that might juice their own businesses with little regard for the consequences on the entire community.

At last Wednesday’s debate, Ryles – as he has done throughout this campaign season – showed how he is like a doctor writing all sorts of feel-good prescriptions without bothering to make any diagnosis.

He reiterated his promise to become “the face of economic development in Park Ridge” and to “sell Park Ridge” at local and national conventions, using tools like a promotional DVD.  Reinforcing his “heart and hugs” platform, he talked about making existing businesses feel “appreciated” with “just a hug and a handshake.”

If that sounds vague and silly to you, join the club.

What it’s lacking is a “diagnosis” of what, if anything, is “wrong” with Park Ridge that is preventing the kind of retail this community wants from coming here – assuming anybody has even bothered to figure out exactly what kind of retail that is.

Ryles sure hasn’t, unless his website’s display of the logos of Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, Ann Tayor, Clarks and GameStop are his oblique attempt to do so.  All he’s been actually talking about are unspecified “local brands” and “national brands,” which apparently leaves out unspecified “international brands” and “intergalactic brands.”

But we digress.

What, if anything, is so “wrong” with Park Ridge that desirable retailers avoid us – and why should we believe that it can be cured with “just a hug and a handshake”?

Is there something inherently “wrong” with the old Napleton property on Greenwood between Busse and Northwest Highway – or is the problem with Park Ridge generally?  That’s a decent-sized parcel right across from the Jewel that’s been vacant for a couple of years, apparently with no interest from any notable retailers.  Could “just a hug and a handshake” turn that parcel into thriving retail?

Is there something inherently “wrong” with the former Napleton site at Northwest Highway and Meacham, just west of Trader Joe’s and the Uptown complex – or is the problem with Park Ridge generally?  And let’s ask the same question about the Mr. K’s Garden Center property just east of the Big Ten headquarters on Higgins, which has been rumored to be on the block for the past several years but where nothing seems to be happening, either.  Could “just a hug and a handshake” change that?

Even smaller existing space hasn’t proved a big draw.  The former Dominic’s Kitchen Store at 116 Main St., a decent-sized space, has been vacant for the two years since Park Ridge native Dominic Cimilluca closed his doors and filed for bankruptcy because his specialty store “just didn’t get the support we needed from the locals” – according to a 03.16.11 story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate.  “We love Park Ridge.  We love the people.  It’s just a hard place to do business,” Cimilluca said.

Not surprisingly (at least to us), Dominic voiced no complaints about City government being “unfriendly” to business, so that takes away one of the convenient scapegoats.

Could “just a hug and a handshake” have saved Dominic’s?

Ten years ago all we heard was that Park Ridge couldn’t attract desirable new retail until it had the kind of space the new Uptown project was going to provide, and which would reinvigorate the entire area and turn all of Uptown into a “vibrant” commercial and retail mecca.  We were told going $40 million in the hole (with bonded debt) was a small price to pay for all the benefits that would flow from the TIF and the project.

That was a prescription without a diagnosis.  And as an economic “cure,” it has turned out to be the equivalent of trying to cure lung cancer by applying a dozen leeches to the patient’s ankle – leeches that not only won’t cure the disease but which will keep sucking up millions of taxpayer dollars for years to come.

Mayor Schmidt seems to be advocating a measured wait-and-see approach based on an overall economic recovery, although we think he’s off-base when he talks about the City hiring another economic development person.  He’s dead-on, however, when he notes that Whole Foods found its new site at Washington and Touhy despite the City Council’s rejection of WF’s request for over $2 million of tax revenue sharing, and without even any City official offering “just a hug and a handshake.”

What did Whole Foods see in Park Ridge that other retailers haven’t seen?

While Schmidt hasn’t offered a specific answer, Ryles doesn’t seem to have a clue.  But that hasn’t stopped him from writing a flurry of “prescriptions” while still not offering a credible “diagnosis” of what, if anything, ails Park Ridge in its quest for more and better retail.

There’s a name for doctors who do that.

Quacks.

To read or post comments, click on title.

 

Better grab a sandwich and a beverage, not-so-gentle readers, because this is a long one.

On October 13, 2010, and on December 29, 2010, we published posts about the Park Ridge Teen Center in response to the whines and howls from the Teen Center crowd when the City cut its funding – along with the funding for all but three other private “community groups”: Center of Concern, Meals on Wheels, and the Maine Center for Mental Health.

But apparently you can’t keep an entrenched entitlement down.

According to a March 8 article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate and a similar article in the March 13 edition of the Park Ridge Journal, the Teen Center is again threatening to close its doors at the end of this April because of…wait for it…the City’s cutting off of its funding.

Back in 2010!

If you think it’s not merely a coincidence that this latest threat arrives just in time for the April 9 election, then you have been paying attention.  And you also understand how slick the folks running challenger Larry Ryles’ mayoral campaign can be.

Of course, it could be just a coincidence Teen Center board member Kate Kerin and friends are bringing up this imminent closing – without any prior warning – just before next month’s mayoral election.  But that would mean the Teen Center operators didn’t know what their finances were; or they just had the financial rug pulled out from under them; or they suffered some other major setback.  But if any of those things had occurred, wouldn’t they have made it into the Teen Center’s press release?

They didn’t, so we have to assume that the timing of the announcement is an orchestrated political stunt.

Which should come as no surprise, considering that Ms. Kerin is the wife of former 4^th Ward alderman John Kerin, who over the years contributed over $700 to Howard Frimark’s campaign fund.  Kerin also was a member of the old, post-Marty Butler Homeowner’s Party (the “old HOs”) and is rumored to be part of the “new Homeowners” group (nominally known as the “Citizens for Non-Partisan Local Elections”) that just gave Ryles a whopping $10,000 from that group’s $15,000 war chest it received when the old HOs went out of business in early 2009.  Kerin also gave the old HOs almost $700.

Besides being a one-term alderman, Kerin is a former chairman of the old Economic Development Corporation, a weird public-private group that spent City money but held closed meetings and achieved little actual economic development over the roughly 12 years its existence – other than recommending the Uptown TIF.  He’s also a Center of Concern board member and advocate, which makes him another Kerin whose pet ox has been gored by Schmidt’s efforts to stop tax dollars from going to unaccountable private corporations.

Using something like the Teen Center as a political pawn was never beneath Frimark, so there’s no reason to think it’s beneath his newest BFF, Ryles – or beneath Frimark/Ryles supporters such as the Kerins.  And there’s no reason to think that the timing for moving this particular pawn to help Ryles defeat incumbent Mayor Dave Schmidt (who beat Frimark 4 years ago) is just happenstance.

Mrs. Kerin is quoted in the H-A article as pointing out that: “Since the inception of the Teen Center, the city of Park Ridge was our main funding source.”  Indeed, the City had been a/the major source of funding for almost all of those many private “community group” corporations who fed at the public trough despite providing many/most of their “services” to non-Park Ridge residents, including the Center of Concern, Maine Center, Meals on Wheels, and the Park Ridge Senior Center, as run by private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc.

All those groups would still have been getting their government handouts if it were up to Frimark’s then-alderpuppets Don Bach (3rd), Jim Allegretti (4th), Robert Ryan (5th) and Tom Carey (6th), who voted to throw another $190,000 at those groups back in 2010 but came up one-vote short of over-riding Schmidt’s veto.  Since those alderpuppets’ departure from the Council in May 2011 without even seeking re-election, however, the Council has adopted two more budgets that haven’t included Teen Center funding.

But it looks like the Kerins and their Teen Center comrades are counting on a Ryles victory to change all that.

Despite Mrs. Kerin’s sky-is-falling laments 3 years ago, the Teen Center managed to remain open, reportedly by soliciting a major donation from the Park Ridge Juniors in 2012, and donations from other local groups like the Park Ridge Community Fund and the Kiwanis Club.  Why those groups have shut their wallets is a question neither the H-A story nor the Journal story addressed, presumably because the Teen Center’s press and its designated talkers preferred it that way.

We’ve always viewed the Teen Center as another one of those manufactured “needs” that are really “wants” or “amenities.”  Realistically, how many Park Ridge youths actually need a place to watch t.v., play games, and generally hang out?  That might even explain why the Teen Center reportedly serves so many teens from Chicago’s nearby Edison Park neighborhood (one of the more affluent neighborhoods of Chicago) and “from all of Maine Township.”  The only Teen Center users quoted in either article were from Chicago, with one girl talking about how she was invited there by her friends from Taft high school.

And THAT’s where the rub comes in.

As a matter of public policy, Park Ridge taxes should be used for Park Ridge property and Park Ridge residents.  Period.

If private corporation Park Ridge Teen Center, the private United Methodist Church (which provides the location) and other private community groups want to fund a teen hang-out 8 hours a week, or 80 hours a week, we don’t particularly care where the teens come from – even if we doubt those Edison Park kids have any more of a need for the Teen Center than their Park Ridge counterparts.  But Park Ridge taxpayers should not be forced to fund the recreation and entertainment of non-Park Ridge teens with tax dollars confiscated by the City and diverted to those private groups – especially when a good chunk of that money is going to pay for administrators and “adult supervisors” doing what should be unpaid “volunteer” work.

While the Teen Center leadership claims that they made “valiant fundraising efforts,” we sure didn’t see or hear about them.  But if they really did make serious fundraising efforts, then their inability to raise enough funds to keep their doors open speaks even more volumes about the lack of that widespread community support Teen Center proponents invariably claim.

Like the Park Ridge Senior Center (as run by private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc.), the Park Ridge Teen Center looks and sounds like just another semi-private club run by a select few for the benefit of a select few.  No vote of the taxpayers or their elected representatives created any of these private organizations; and no taxpayer oversight, either direct or indirect through their representatives, has ever been volunteered by those groups.

That’s particularly problematic when, for example, non-profit resource Guidestar shows no Teen Center Form 990 tax return since 2010.  So the ability of the City or the general public to keep a meaningful eye on these groups is virtually non-existent.  Yet the folks who run these private “community group” corporations cling tenaciously to their privacy, even when they demand public funding – and, even then, they prefer their handouts without any commensurate disclosures or accountability.

Kind of like those private corporations and banks that insist on privatizing their profits but always want the government to “socialize” their losses by means of subsidies and bailouts.

The Kalo Foundation and the Mural Committee have shown how to rally public support and raise money privately, without demanding handouts from the City and without badmouthing the City when they don’t get those handouts.  The folks running the Teen Center might learn a lesson from the Kalo and Mural folks.

Unfortunately, demanding handouts from the City and beefing about not getting them seem to be more their style than real fundraising.

Especially when there’s less than a month before an election, an incumbent who vetoed their handouts, and a challenger who keeps on emphasizing his “big heart.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

The first of the final two mayoral debates – the only two opportunities for Mayor Dave Schmidt and challenger Larry Ryles to confront each other with their respective ideas and opinions about how the City of Park Ridge should be run for the next four years – kicks off at noon today.

Because Ryles dodged the first scheduled debate – at the town hall meeting at the Park Ridge Senior Center on February 7 – and because the format for last week’s Park Ridge Republican Women’s event was a candidates’ forum rather than a debate, the candidates will need to cover a lot of ground at today’s luncheon debate at the Park Ridge Country Club hosted by the Chamber of Commerce (lunch begins at 11:30 a.m.) and tomorrow night’s debate at City Hall hosted by the League of Women Voters (7:00 p.m.).

Mayor Schmidt has a clearly-defined, thoroughly-explained and fully-transparent record of accomplishments, most of which involve pulling the City out of the economic and financial tailspin that it had been in since Ron Wietecha spent 99% of his waking hours – and millions of our tax dollars – unsuccessfully battling O’Hare Airport.  Four years ago Schmidt, in no uncertain terms, said what he would try to do if elected.  And, for the most part, he’s done just that.

Challenger Ryles, on the other hand, has been running a vague, warm & fuzzy, stealth-like campaign more befitting a candidate for student council president than mayor – as was evident from his performance at last Thursday night’s Republican Women’s forum.  He has studiously avoided Council meetings and, to our knowledge, has not shared any of his ideas or opinions about City governance with those elected officials during Council deliberations, when any such ideas and opinions might have been able to influence the decision-making process.

That’s why we have run an occasional feature titled “WWRD…” – What Would Ryles Do – concerning various City issues: on 09.05.12, 11.26.12, 11.28.12, 01.31.13 and 02.12.13, for example.

So as a public service we’ve come up with some questions for candidate Ryles which the folks who will be attending these two debates can ask if they don’t have questions of their own:

• On your website you state: “When elected Mayor on April 9, 2013, I will immediately take the lead on limiting future tax levy increases to a rate that is less than the annual inflation rate.”

Q:       Do you endorse the 2.15% tax levy increase recently passed by the Council? 

Q:       If not, what percentage levy increase would you have endorsed if you were mayor; and what expenditures would you have cut to reach it?

Q:       Why did you not attend the Council meetings at which the levy was discussed to share your thoughts and ideas on the subject?

• On your website you criticize Mayor Schmidt for raising the property tax levy by a cumulative 155% of the rate of inflation over the past 4 years.

Q:       Isn’t that 155% of the rate of inflation a lower rate of levy increase than achieved over any 4-year period by any of the three previous mayors who have endorsed you?

Q:       Isn’t the average property tax increase, in real dollars, less during Schmidt’s 4 years in office than during any 4-year period under the three previous mayors?

• On your website you promise that, if elected, you will assess “each planned expenditure by determining whether the expenditure will improve the lives of our Park Ridge residents.”

Q:       Which three City expenditures during the current fiscal year would you have cut based on your quality-of-life standard; and how much would you have saved with each such cut?

Q:       What three expenditures would you add, and in what amounts? 

• On your website you state that each step of your budget process will always start with the question:” Is this the morally correct thing to do.”

Q:       Name five expenditures during the current fiscal year that you believe are not “the morally correct thing to do”; and have you ever asked the Council, in person at one of its meetings, to stop doing any of those morally incorrect things?

Q:       How is it “moral” for you to accept a $1,000 campaign contribution from a union representing certain City employees whose sole goal is to get more money from Park Ridge taxpayers for no additional, or better, work? 

Q:       How “moral” is it for you to criticize various actions by the mayor and the City Council on specific issues, but not even show up at the meetings when those issues are discussed to voice those criticisms and share your views? 

Q:       Do you consider it “moral” for the City to divert large amounts of tax dollars taken involuntarily from taxpayers in order to “incentivize”/bribe businesses to locate or remain here?  If so, do you consider it “moral” for the City to give such funds to certain businesses but not to other competing businesses who already are here?

Q:       Do you consider it “moral” for the City to divert significant amounts of tax dollars taken involuntarily from taxpayers in order to give those funds to private “community group” corporations who have been unsuccessful in obtaining voluntary contributions from those same taxpayers?

• On your website you state that “[w]hen elected Mayor on April 9, 2013, [you] will immediately take the lead in improving the process the city uses to collect all past, present and future fees and fines owed to Park Ridge” by “better management oversight of its revenue streams….”

Q:       What specific elements of “management oversight” will you implement?

Q:       What exactly would you do to collect on more than 2,200 tickets and violations that you acknowledge “have no name or address attached for collection purposes”?

• On your website you state that “[w]hen elected, [you] will take the lead in reaching out to retailers, both local and national brands, and will convince them to bring their stores to Park Ridge.”

Q:       What are the three most important “national brands” retailers you will convince to bring their stores to Park Ridge, and what exactly will you do to get them here?

Q:       What are the three most important “local brands” retailers you will convince to bring their stores to Park Ridge, and what exactly will you do to get them here?

Q:       What are the five most important factors that distinguish Park Ridge from neighboring communities and make it attractive to business; and why haven’t those factors already attracted the “local and national brands” you intend to bring here?

Q:       If Park Ridge is such a “strategic location…for the 5.2 million shoppers of Cook County,” what specific reasons can you give to explain why retailers aren’t flocking here already?

Q:      What three specific things would you do to “keep the business home”?  To “bring new business home”? 

Q:      What three specific things would you do to “market our great city to our own residents”? 

• On your website you talk about a number of “leadership principles” you put into practice during your 24 year military career and your 18 years in the insurance industry.

Q:       Under Park Ridge’s city manager-form of government, in what specific ways does the mayor’s roll and job duties reflect those of your rank of Command Sergeant Major?

Q:       In what specific ways is being mayor of a city with a city manager-form of government similar to being an insurance agent or agency manager?

Q:       In what specific ways do you consider your “character” superior to Mayor Schmidt’s?

Q:       In what specific ways do you consider your “competence” superior to Mayor Schmidt’s?

Q:       What five “smart people” will you surround yourself with if you become mayor?

Q:       If you had been mayor these past four years, would you have retained Jim Hock as city manager? 

Q:       Are there any “yes” people currently in City government whom you would like to “shuck”?  And, if so, who are they?

• On you website you state that “[w]hen elected Mayor on April 9, 2013, [you] will immediately take the lead in investing in our emergency health services….”

Q:       Do you believe our residents are currently at risk because the City has yet to purchase replacement cardiac monitors/defibrillators?  If so, do you believe Fire Chief Mike Zywanski was lying when he recently assured the Council that the current monitors/defibrillators do not pose any health risk to residents?

Q:       What five other community health and/or safety purchases would you take the lead in making during your first year in office, what are their costs, and how would you fund them?

• On your website you state that, “[w]hen it comes to purchasing priorities with available funds, [you] will never put resident safety second to anything!!!”

Q:       Considering that the City is currently finalizing a contract with the public works employees’ union (which just contributed $1,000 to your campaign) that will increase the cost of the public works services the City is “purchasing,” do you oppose such cost increases until the City purchases replacement monitors/defibrillators?  If not, why not?

Q:       Do you support all of the wage and benefit increases given to unionized and non-unionized City employees over the past four years?  If not, would you have advocated for higher or lower wage and/or benefit increases?

Q:       How can you justify your support for building a new police out-building and bike storage corral when that money could fully fund the monitors/defibrillators?

Q:       Which of Mayor Schmidt’s vetoes, if any, do you support?  To the extent the Council sustained those vetoes, do you believe the Council was wrong in doing so?

Q:       Considering how vocal you are in criticizing Mayor Schmidt’s positions on City finances, do you favor the type of fiscal management demonstrated under Mayor Frimark?  Under Mayor Marous?

Q:       Which of the three (3) Kane McKenna suggestions for reducing the continuing multi-million dollar deficit from the Uptown TIF, if any, do you recommend the City choose to deal with that problem?

And that’s just for starters.

To read or post comments, click on title.

At tonight’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting (City Hall, 7:00 p.m.), the City Council will be asked to approve the new collective bargaining agreement between the City and the Int’l Union of Operating Engineers covering the City’s public works department employees.

As any reader of this blog knows, we’ve been critical of the almost automatic way the City (and each of our local school districts, for that matter) has increased wages and benefits for City employees without requiring any commensurate increase in performance.  We’ve been even more critical of the secretive way all those negotiations have been conducted (e.g., Fire Chief Mike Zywanski’s “Ground Rules” which effectively imposed a gag order on the mayor and the Council preventing them from giving the taxpayers progress reports on the negotiations).

As best as we can tell, this new agreement continues that economically-irresponsible automatic wage increase practice.

But we can’t say for sure because the Cover Memorandum provided by H.R. Director Michael Suppan contains nothing in the way of an “executive summary” or other analysis that would assist us, or the Council, in fully understanding the deal that the City’s negotiating team (whose members also remain unidentified) appears to have cut with the union – other than that it’s a 3-year deal that’s been delayed almost a year.  Consequently, the City will effectively owe the covered employees a year of retroactive raises.

What will those raises total?  The memo doesn’t say, other than for a check in the box that states that Council action on the agreement “will Require an Expenditure of Funds” – without any of the additional required information about that expenditure, such as its “Total Cost,” whether it’s a “Budgeted Item” and, if so, what budget section it will affect.

And although the agreement itself refers, on Page 2, Section A of Article V, to a “Wage Schedule” attached as “Tab A,” guess what?  No “Tab A” is attached.  Instead, Suppan writes that “[t]he details of the changes in the agreement will be presented to the Council in closed session.”

Brilliant!

Should the Council go along with Suppan’s folly and the aldermen hightail themselves into closed session to discuss the results of these secret negotiations, the taxpayers who will be asked to pay for this deal over the next 3 years will remain in their current “mushroom” state (kept in the dark and covered with fertilizer) for at least another week.

What’s so darned secret about all this stuff, Mr. Suppan?  Or, voiced another way, what exactly are you trying to hide?  And why isn’t Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton doing anything to enhance the transparency of this process?

Discussions of wages and benefits for City employees should be open to the public so that taxpayers can see and hear how their elected and appointed public officials are responding to the demands from City employees and their unions; and so the employees and their unions also get to hear the Council’s discussion and have a better understanding of the City’s position, free from suspicions of bluffing or bad faith.

That way, if the taxpayers think their representatives are being unfair to City employees, or are not treating them with enough “respect,” they can tell their officials in time to do something about it.  Or not.

Heck, maybe such an open process would even lure mayoral challenge Larry Ryles out of hiding to address the Council on his ideas for how the Council should deal with the ever-escalating demands of its employees, or with this contract in particular – although we’re not going to hold our collective breath waiting for that to happen.  Ryles hasn’t addressed the Council on any of the issues it has faced since he declared his candidacy last Fall, so there’s no reason to think he’ll risk publicly displaying his views (0r lack thereof) on these kinds of controversial matters.

But whether Ryles shows or not, the one-sided way labor negotiations have gone for as long as we can remember has demonstrated, time and again, that secrecy has ill-served the taxpayers – whether at the City, at the Park District, and especially at the school district levels.

Since secrecy hasn’t worked, it’s time it ended.  Starting tonight.

UPDATED 03.12.13.  By the time last night’s COW meeting was convened, “Tab A” had finally been posted on the City’s website.  Unfortunately, whoever prepared it must didn’t think to include the previous year’s “Wage Schedule” for comparison purposes.  Or else he/she was actually trying to conceal those numbers to prevent such a comparison.

Either way, the COW discussion that begins at approximately 01:20:55 of the meeting video demonstrates the problems this Council – and City staff – still have with being honest and forthright with City taxpayers about the details of unionized employee contract negotiations, even if they can’t seem to come up with good reasons for that particular malady.

Ald. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton clearly don’t “get it,” as their arguments for closed-session secrecy about those negotiations and the Council’s discussion of the tentative contract indicated. 

If we understood Sweeney, contract terms should remain secret until the Council reaches a closed-session consensus to approve them.  Hamilton, on the other hand, worried about “releasing to the other side” the Council’s views and strategies about contract terms – as if there’s some big honkin’ secret about how much money the City can afford, and wants to spend, for raises and benefits for any particular group of employees.

Not surprisingly, Mayor Dave Schmidt was right on target in noting the public’s “right to know” all those details.  Whether he’ll be able to convince the “I’ve Got A Secret” contingent remains to be seen, because they sure don’t seem to want convincing.

As we’ve said many times before, there’s no reason to be coy or secretive about labor and employment negotiations.  The Council (and all other public governing bodies) should discuss and calculate – openly and publicly – what terms and amounts are fair and affordable by the City, so that such information is known and understood not only by the “other side” but also by the taxpayers and the rest of the civilized world.  That way, whether a raise is a meager 1% or a whopping 10%, its amount and the reasons for it will become public knowledge in real time, with no secrets and no opportunities for mistrust.  And the same goes for all demands made by those employees and their unions.

Both “sides” hold a public trust, and owe us taxpayers duties and obligations commensurate with that trust.  There’s no place for secrecy in that kind of relationship.

To read or post comments, click on title.