Several weeks ago we asked a simple question about Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of both the new ICOPS union contract and the raises for non-union, salaried City employees: “WWRD?” (09.05.12). 

That question was directed to mayoral candidate Larry Ryles, who has been running a stealth-like campaign as the only announced challenger to Schmidt since he established a campaign fund and a website in September.  We offered Mr. Ryles 400-500 words to answer two questions:

“Would Ryles veto the ICOPS contract and/or the non-union employee raises?  And, if not, how would he come up with the money to pay for them?”

We were hoping to encourage Ryles – who claims to have a lot of ideas for running Park Ridge better than it has been run under Schmidt – to share some of them with the City Council and the taxpayers sooner rather than later.

But Ryles’ silence has been deafening.

Which is a curious approach, given that Ryles’ website promises that he “will take the lead on getting annual tax increases down below the annual rate of inflation or CPI” and the City is currently in the process of finalizing its 2012 property tax levy (for 2013) that Finance Director Alison Stutts and Council Finance Committee chairman Ald. Dan Knight (5th) have pared down from an anticipated 11.11% increase to the 2.15% increase that will be debated at tonight’s Council meeting.  That’s the lowest levy increase in memory.

Sadly, this will be Stutts’ curtain call as Finance Director, as she will be leaving the City at the end of December to open her own financial advisory firm.  Ironically, it also will be the first major project she has been able to manage without the inept interference of former city manager Jim Hock.  Until he was sacked in May by a unanimous vote of the Council, Hock’s penchant for facilitating the bad and impeding the good often seemed to force Stutts to choose between what’s best for the taxpayers and insubordination to Hock.

Hopefully, the newly-hired replacement for Ms. Stutts – Kent Oliven, whom Stutts helped select – will be able to fill Stutts’ figuratively “large” shoes, presumably with a distinctly lower and wider heel. 

But this proposed levy increase – which reportedly would raise the City’s property tax revenue by a total of $364,829 for the next fiscal year – provides another fine opportunity to ask the question: “What Would Ryles Do?”

That 2.15% levy increase, however, will still exceed the 1.9% increase in the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”) for the first 10 months of 2012, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That doesn’t technically satisfy Ryles’ CPI-limited benchmark, so the first question we’d like to hear Ryles answer is: Does he support this 2.15% levy increase?  And if not, what planned spending would he propose the Council cut to bring the new levy in under the CPI? 

That second question becomes even more interesting when considering that Ryles is a member of the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force which has championed the $1.1 million police station addition/renovation.  Schmidt vetoed the $290,000 first phase of that project at last Monday night’s Council meeting.  But if that $290,000 “Phase I” were deferred/cut, the levy increase could be reduced from the proposed 2.15% to almost zero – actually, an estimated 0.30% – well under Ryles’ tax levy cap.

So does Ryles support deferring/cutting Phase I of the cop shop project?  

Frankly, we suspect Ryles is just blowing smoke with his tax levy promises, and with his other campaign bluster as well.  But, once again, we’re willing to give him 400-500 words to tell the taxpayers of Park Ridge “What Would Ryles Do?” about the ICOPS and non-union salary increases; and about the tax levy increase, including the $290,000 Phase I cop shop project.

It’s time to come out of the political closet, Mr. Ryles.

UPDATE (11.27.12):  For the first time in months, Candidate Ryles was “in the house” last night for the Council’s tax levy discussion.  Unfortunately, Ryles (accompanied by one of his principal handlers, Paul Sheehan) offered nary a question nor comment.  So we still don’t know WWRD about the levy.  Or anything else.

Perhaps he’s just shy.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Last Wednesday night the Park Ridge City Council took its first stab at cleaning up a mess made in 2008 by previous mayor Howard Frimark and the two previous City Councils, which we first wrote about in our 05.30.08 post, “Going Into Hock For New City Manager.”

The mess?  A $350,000 interest-free loan to then-incoming city manager Jim Hock, on which Hock is now welshing. 

Back in 2008, some “genius” – we’re not quite sure who exactly, although a safe bet would be Frimark – apparently concluded that a $165,000 salary, health insurance, defined benefit pension, the use of a car, free gasoline and insurance, and a variety of other perks weren’t quite enough to lure Hock to our cozy bedroom community from his home in Michigan.  So the “genius” proposed a $350,000 interest-free loan with which Hock could buy a residence here.

We’ll call that “Mistake No. 1.”

That mistake was compounded when City Attorney Everett “Buzz” Hill drafted an “Employment Agreement” that provided for the interest-free loan but stated (on Page 3) only that the loan would be “secured by the home” – without specifying that the City’s security for the loan would be a “first mortgage” or “first position” security interest on that home.  Judging from excerpts of the May 5, 2008 Council meeting minutes, then-aldermen/now mayor Dave Schmidt and fellow Alds. Rich DiPietro, Don Bach, Jim Allegretti, Robert Ryan, Tom Carey and Frank Wsol unanimously rubber-stamped that agreement without discussion, even though there is nothing in those minutes or in the Council materials for that meeting to suggest they even saw or read the actual agreement.

We’ll call that “Mistake No. 2.”

When Hock decided to buy a $550,000 townhouse and wanted/needed additional financing from a private lender, however, that lender demanded a first mortgage – notwithstanding that it was financing less than half the amount of the City’s loan.  So the lender called City Attorney Hill with its demand that the City subordinate its security interest to the private lender’s. 

And guess what?

Instead of informing the City Council of that demand and seeking its input, Hill inexplicably went straight to Frimark, who – without advising the Council – told Hill to make it happen.  And Hill did so, with neither he nor Frimark giving the Council even the simple courtesy of an after-the-fact “here’s what we’ve done without consulting you” announcement.  

We’ll call that “Mistake No. 3,” even worse than the first two because of the disappointing way Frimark and Hill concealed this key information about Hock’s loan from the Council.

Under pointed questioning by Schmidt last Wednesday night, Hill explained his first-mortgage faux pas with an almost surreal matter-of-fact wrong-headedness: Hill believed Frimark had the authority to give away the City’s first-mortgage position because the Employment Agreement provision Hill drafted and the Council approved didn’t expressly require a first mortgage; so Frimark’s putting the City behind the private lender wasn’t technically a “change” in the terms of the Council-approved agreement that needed additional Council approval. 

None of this would have come to light but for the fact that Hock recently announced that he won’t be honoring his Employment Agreement commitment to repay the loan “within six (6) months of the date that [Hock] is no longer employed by the [City]” – because he hasn’t yet sold his townhouse.  Hock wants more time to sell before he has to repay the approximately $288,000 of remaining loan principal due the City.

And an inexplicably accommodating City Attorney Hill promptly drafted – on the City’s (a/k/a, the taxpayers’) dime, not on Hock’s – a “Forbearance Agreement” which could give Hock up to an extra year to sell his townhouse, presumably at a higher price that would let him recoup more of his heretofore unsuccessful townhouse “investment.”  But the terms of this new agreement are so squishy that even its arguably “toughest” provision (Paragraph 4, ostensibly giving the City the right to force Hock to accept or reject an offer) contains the squishy qualifier “reasonable,” thereby giving Hock plenty of legal wiggle room should push come to shove.

Call it Hock’s customized individual Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) bailout, compliments of City Attorney Hill and all us Park Ridge taxpayers whom Hock served with such distinction during his four year tenure that he was fired this past May by a unanimous vote of the Council.   

After almost 50 minutes of discussion (from 0:50:30 to 1:40:44 of the City’s meeting video) during which the Council couldn’t even get a straight answer about whether what’s left of Hock’s $100,000-plus severance is legally considered “wages” that can’t be forfeited to further reduce his outstanding loan principal – a question that should have been answered back in 2008, and/or again when his new contract was signed in 2010 – a decision on signing the Forbearance Agreement was properly deferred.

That’s a good thing, because although Hock reportedly owes the City $288,000 and his private lender $133,000, neither Hill nor Acting City Manager Shawn Hamilton were able to produce any authoritative documentation of those purported facts.  Meanwhile, Hock continues to live in his taxpayer-financed townhouse which is reportedly listed for $459,000 with no takers.   

So a bad idea from 4 years ago, kept secret from the Council by Frimark and Hill until now, continues to insult us taxpayers.

To read or post comments, click on title.

A few weeks ago, in our post “Park Ridge Not “Unfriendly” To Business, Just Nutty”, we were critical of Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) for his attempt to make more of a mockery out of what already was a mockery: the Council’s attempts to cut-and-paste a variety of questionable amendments to the new Class M liquor license requested by Whole Foods.

Whole foods actually drafted the proposed Class M license language and, not surprisingly, it was written to apply only to grocery stores 35,000 square feet or larger.  And not surprisingly, Whole Foods will be one of those, while we understand only Dominick’s currently satisfies that requirement. 

Both Jewel/Osco and Trader Joe’s do not.  And therein lies the rub that begat Ald. Smith’s motion to amend the Class M license area requirement to only 20,000 square feet – which we assume qualifies both Jewel/Osco and TJ’s.

Frankly, once Smitty started talking about shoe stores, florists and real estate offices serving liquor by the glass, he lost us.  And it looked like that’s where he lost the Mayor and the Council, too.  So his 20,000 square foot Class M license amendment really had no chance of receiving meaningful consideration.

And it didn’t.

Which, in retrospect, was unfair.  What’s good for the goose, policy wise, should be good for the gander.  Grocery stores like Whole Foods, Dominick’s, Jewel/Osco and Trader Joe’s should be able to compete on a level playing field.  And if passing a Class M license that would apply to all of them would help level that field, why not consider it now rather than playing catch-up ball later?

As it stands right now, Dominick’s has an eating area where people can consume food purchased there – a situation Whole Foods is expected to duplicate and enhance.  Neither Jewel/Osco nor TJ’s currently offers that dine-in experience, perhaps because of their significantly smaller size.  But why should the language of the new Class M license be structured to frustrate any future effort by those two stores to create dining areas in their existing footprints, or in expanded premises of something less than 35,000 square feet?

Given the effort and debate the Class M adoption process has already consumed, we think it would be more efficient to consider these issues now – when the matter is already before the Council and the law is being written on a clean slate – rather than later, when the debate would need to be effectively re-started from scratch, and intervening circumstances might add to, or cloud, the issues that are pretty clear at this time.

And while the Council is at it, one of the 5 who voted for the adoption of the Class M license as modified by the DiPietro Amendment to restrict alcohol by-the-glass sales to between 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. rather than from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. should seek reconsideration of that service hours restriction. 

Why should Whole Foods be prejudiced in competing for lunch business even though Chipotle (a block away), the Pickwick (two blocks away), and Houlihan’s and the other restaurants in the Uptown complex (three blocks away) can all serve lunchtime liquor by-the-glass – as can all the restaurants in Edison Park a scant five blocks in the other direction?

But much as we think Smitty’s idea of a level playing field for comparable grocery stores makes sense, we’re still not buying into his concept of liquor licenses for every Park Ridge business.

“Koenig & Strey Cocktails” just doesn’t sound quite right.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We start this post with a disclaimer: We like Police Chief Frank Kaminski and think he has done a good job of running the Park Ridge Police Department.

But when he or any other bureaucrat starts acting like a politician and trying to pass off cow flop as chocolate pudding in order to spend taxpayer money needlessly, we’re going to call him on it.  And that’s what it looks like Chief K is trying to do with this $360,000 “Phase I” of an approx. $1.2 million, 3-year cop shop renovation/expansion, which we have criticized since our “$1.1 Million Cop Shop Renovation A Want, Not A Need” (11.22.11) post.

At Monday night’s COW meeting, 5 of the 6 aldermen in attendance acted as if they didn’t want to risk not getting their Jello pudding cups by asking Chief K any tough questions.  As a result, it was left to Mayor Dave Schmidt to point out all the existing available space at City facilities and ask the tough questions about why the City should be spending over $360,000 for: a new building to store evidence that has been stored in a vault in the police station for the last decade (or two, or three, or four?); a bike corral; and some additional paved parking spaces.

If you want to see/listen for yourself, the Phase I discussion can be found on the City’s website, from approximately 2:28 to 2:45 – a mere 17 minutes – of the meeting video.

Chief K’s answers consisted almost entirely of ipse dixit (“He, himself, said it” – so it must be true) opinion instead of hard facts, but that seemed to be more than enough for the can’t-tell-cow-flop-from-pudding Alds. Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd), Sal Raspanti (4th), Marc Mazzuca (6th) or Marty Maloney (7th) to rubber-stamp the Phase I contract – with nary a mention that it came in $10,000 over the budget. 

Of the five, only Mazzuca had the temerity to even ask a question, a softball about whether any alternatives have been explored and studied.  When Chief K responded with “We’ve been studying this for over a year, ” – which didn’t actually even answer the question – Mazzuca was finished.  Apparently, he and his colleagues (save for Ald. Knight) share the view that simply spending time “studying” something is the equivalent of, or a substitute for, actually conducting an objective, competent and thorough analysis of it.

In the case of these Phase I expenditures, we can only surmise that Chief K and the five aldermen must not (or not want to) remember how Chief K’s predecessor and a number of former aldermen spent well over a year “studying” a brand new police station – until resident Joe Egan got it put on the April 2009 ballot as a referendum, and the voters told them in no uncertain terms what they thought of that idea and the value of all that “studying” – by an 83% to 17% “no” vote on that new cop shop.    

The defeat of the new cop shop, however, is why Kaminski and this new crop of aldermen have adopted this nickel-and-dime strategy, even if the nickels and dimes total $360,000 for just this Phase I – without even attempting to solve what is supposedly the most pressing health issue afflicting the current cop shop: mold.  That’s “Phase III” of this plan, three years from now.  Behind a bike corral and some parking spaces.

Really, Chief?  Really, Alds. DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti, Mazzuca and Maloney?

If you want to see the “studying” that led up to this point, look no further than the “Cost Effective Strategies to Address Risk Factors at the Police Facility,” a transparently lightweight power-point presentation from the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force that we discussed in our “New Cop Shop Plan Just Reheated 3-Year Old Canards” (03.14.12)   and “More Disingenuousness On New Cop Shop Plan” (03.16.12)  posts and won’t waste additional time re-ridiculing – except to say that such a lame presentation in any competent private-sector business setting might well get the authors fired.

The takeaway from Monday night’s meeting (and from the long history of this cop shop saga) is that when a high-placed bureaucrat who professes expertise in an area wants something, most elected officials will take the path of least resistance by simply rubber-stamping it  – as they did Monday night – instead of making the effort to actually think about the issues and ask the tough questions that need to be asked…and answered meaningfully.    

And it’s so much easier to do when those officials can tell themselves it’s a bargain at only $360,000.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Our original plan for today’s post was to do something we wish we had more opportunities to do: praise – that’s right, actually praise – one of our local governmental departments for going above and beyond the call of duty in providing the taxpayers with real bang for our bucks.

We intended to give a big PublicWatchdog bark-out to the Park Ridge Police Department, which recently achieved a 100% score on the 71-point Tier One compliance evaluation by the Illinois Law Enforcement Accreditation Council (“ILEAC”) rating team.  Actually, the focus of that planned bark-out was going to be the way the accreditation recommendation was achieved: according to the ILEAC rating report, the recommendation was achieved by “extraordinary patience and dedication,” the use of “ingenuity and creativity,” and “careful procedures and diligence” of the PRPD administration and staff – all of which was needed to overcome the 11,000 square foot police station that the ILEAC report pointedly criticized as containing “various physical inadequacies.”   

In other words, at first glance it appeared that our Police Department is doing what most successful businesses and organizations have been doing for years, and even more so since the recession hit a few years ago: getting more done with less resources, a/k/a greater efficiency.  And that’s exactly what the taxpayers deserve from the PRPD…and every other City department, and every other local governmental body.  

But before we got too far along in praising that accomplishment, we took a little time to Google ILEAC and what this 100% Tier One rating actually means.

We discovered that the ILEAC is a sub-group of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police (“ILACP”), which appears from its website to be one of those pseudo-“independent” self-promoting fluff-and-stroke organizations that exist in many industries, but seem particularly prevalent in the public sector – seemingly to persuade gullible taxpayers that they are getting more and better government services for their money than might otherwise be perceived if those taxpayers were left to their own observations and common sense.

A Tier One accreditation, which costs $500, purports to be based on 71 standards for administration, operations, personnel and training.  A Tier Two accreditation costs $1,000 and purports to be based on 180 standards.  Both types of accreditation evaluations involve a two-day, on-site process of file review, interviews and ride-alongs by an assessment team, which submits an Assessment Report to the accreditation committee chairman for distribution to, and consideration by, the entire ILEAC.  If accreditation is granted, it is valid for four years.

And, of course, accreditation wouldn’t be worth even $500 if there wasn’t an awards ceremony, customarily featuring the presentation of the accreditation certificate at…wait for it…a City Council meeting.

Our cursory investigation into the accreditation process also revealed that the ILEAC members are a cast of characters who, if this were the movie “Casablanca,” would be rounded up by Inspector Renault for being “the usual suspects”: two incumbent Illinois police chiefs appointed by ILACP; a member of the Campus Law Enforcement Executive Committee appointed by ILACP; the Director of the Center for Public Safety and Justice, or designate; the Director of the Institute for Public Safety Partnerships, or designate; the Director of the Illinois Municipal League, or designate; the Director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, or designate; the Director of the Intergovernmental Risk Management Association; and the Director of the Illinois County and City Managers Association.

In other words, a group of uber-bureaucrats.  Or their “designates.” 

And guess who just happens to be on the accrediting Council?  None other than Park Ridge’s own, Police Chief Frank Kaminsky.

That very well could explain the arguably gratuitous “shot” at the condition of our cop shop, which lends aid and comfort to Chief K’s advocacy for his latest pet project: a $1.3 million renovation and expansion of the cop shop.  Ironically enough, the $360,000 contract for Phase I of that three-phase project is set on tonight’s City Council Finance & Budget COW agenda for preliminary approval. 

Chief K’s prominent role with ILEAC might also explain some, if not all, of the gushy accolades about the PRPD’s Herculean efforts to overcome its alleged Black Hole of Calcutta-like working conditions.  What better way to set the table for advocating even higher pay and benefits in the future than for ILEAC to “officially” extol the “extraordinary patience and dedication,” “ingenuity and creativity,” and “careful procedures and diligence” of the PRPD personnel?    

So it pains us to conclude that this ILEAC Tier One rating – all $500 worth of it – appears to be little more than a kind of sales pitch.  But instead of Ron “Wait, there’s more!” Popeil pitching his Showtime Rotisserie, we have Chief K pitching a cop shop project and higher pay for PRPD personnel by means of a quasi-official accreditation. 

Accreditation certificate included.    

To read or post comments, click on title.

For as long as we can remember, the City of Park Ridge has tried to lure “retail” businesses to our community.  Yet despite that desire being openly expressed by virtually every public official over the past two decades, Park Ridge allegedly has a reputation for being “unfriendly” to business.

We think that’s a bad rap, unless “unfriendly” means not throwing buckets of money at businesses to locate or stay here.  We call that “bribery,” but semantics are debatable. 

After this past Monday night’s performance in the Council Chambers, however, we’re convinced Park Ridge isn’t nearly as “unfriendly” to business as it is “nutty” to business.

On the Council agenda Monday night was a “first reading” (of the required two readings) for approval of a new type of liquor license – a “Class M” license – sought by the Whole Foods Market planned for the southeast corner of Touhy and Washington.  The Class M license would permit the consumption of beer and wine within any grocery store at least 35,000 square feet in area, a criterion which the proposed Whole Foods store would satisfy.

“Champagne Shopping,” anyone?

But a number of the folks who unsuccessfully opposed the zoning change permitting Whole Foods to build a store at that location in the first place apparently figured they could exact a figurative pound of flesh – high-priced prime Angus sirloin? – from the retailer by opposing the new license.   And that led to approximately 2 hours of what often approached theater of the absurd.

Several residents spoke of the carnage that would result from shnockered shoppers slamming their cars into St. Paul of the Cross school kids on their way to and from school – as if those same school kids aren’t already at risk from the lubricated motorists making their way along Northwest Highway from their liquid lunches at the gin mills/restaurants just down the street in Edison Park.  Or from the lunch crowd at Houlihan’s, Chipotle, or even the Pickwick Restaurant who might hit the road a bit tipsy. 

And that’s not even counting the frugal folks who imbibe their Two Buck Chuck at home before heading out on their daily errands. 

If protecting St. Paul kids from drunken drivers is really that much of a concern, however, why haven’t those folks who are ragging on Whole Foods about serving liquor demanded that the Park Ridge Police set up “Checkpoint Paulie” – as in St. Paul, not Paulie Walnuts of “The Sopranos” – on Northwest Hwy. every afternoon to snag impaired drivers – and do the same for the kids at all the other schools in town?

The Council’s contribution to the goofiness was led by Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd), who sought to amend the original Class M license language proposed by Whole Foods by imposing several restrictions on liquor sales, the most significant of which was limiting Whole Foods’ sale of liquor-by-the-drink to the after-school hours of 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.   DiPietro wasn’t all that clear on why Whole Foods should be limited in ways that neighboring liquor-by-the-drink emporiums are not, but he’s always been more of a one-shot thinker than a comprehensive public policy wonk.

After DiPietro’s amendment passed 6-0, seemingly blessed by the silence of the Whole Foods representative in the audience, the amended Class M license was approved by a 4 (Alds. Raspanti, Knight, Mazzuca and Maloney) to 2 (Alds. DiPietro and Smith; Ald. Sweeney absent) vote.

That’s right, DiPietro voted against his own amendment!  Crass two-bit politics, anyone?

Not to be outdone, Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) – whose views and votes sometimes suggest the adverse effect of sunspot activity or, perhaps, subtle changes in the Earth’s magnetic fields – sought an amendment that would permit any business in Park Ridge to obtain a liquor license. 

Banking on bourbon?  Pinot at Pines?  Living Sea libations?

That bit of knuckleheadedness lost by a vote of 5-1, with Smith casting the only “yea” vote.   Smith also moved to have the Whole Foods site plan reduced from a 38,000 square foot store to a 20,000 square foot one, but that motion failed to even earn a second.

Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) let his freak flag fly, too, proposing the limiting of any Whole Foods boozer to 16 ounces of beer or 6 ounces of wine per day.  We can only hope his motion was an attempt at satirical improv, because not only would such a standard be pretty darn silly but it would be practically unenforceable.  Fortunately, that motion also failed, by a vote of 4-2 (Mazzuca and Smith voting “yea”). 

At one point, resident George Johnson asked:  “Do shoppers need to be liquored up to go to Whole Foods?”

We’re not sure of that, George – but a double scotch on the rocks sure might make Council meetings like these easier to endure.

To read or post comments, click on title.

In our previous post we criticized our elected City officials for the “not-so-good government” or “outright bad government” involved in the recent Council vote to sustain Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of the ICOPS contract. 

Since that post, however, we have learned a few things about Ald. Marc Mazzuca’s (6th) motion for a do-over of the September 17, 2012, vote that sustained Schmidt’s veto.  And, unfortunately, most of what we learned suggests that bad government is not confined to elected officials – although Ald. Joe Sweeney (1st) still deserves special mention for his “I’m sure this is going to screw the City, but I’m doing it anyway” spite vote to sustain Schmidt’s veto, which just might be the single most stupid and irresponsible vote any alderman has cast in recent memory. 

And that’s saying something.

What we have learned is that City Staff – those full-time City employees who are paid good money and benefits by the taxpayers to handle the day-to-day administration of City business – dropped the ball, and then kicked it a couple of times, when it came to providing our part-time, barely-paid ($100/mo. for aldermen, $1,000/mo for the mayor) elected officials with the information they should have had, and probably needed, to cast a truly informed vote on the ICOPS contract and on the Schmidt veto.

As we noted in our 08.23.12 post (“Will August Spending Bring November Taxing?”), when the Council voted 5-2 on August 20th to approve the new ICOPS contract, the only Staff “analysis” of that contract provided to the Council appears to have been a page and one-half Agenda Cover Memorandum so lacking in useful information and analysis that it didn’t even attempt to compare the new contract’s costs to those of the old contract.  Yet, incredibly, Staff recommended Council approval of that contract for no ascertainable reason. 

And that lame memo apparently was the only information Schmidt had when he vetoed the contract on September 4th; and the only information the Council had on September 17th when Sweeney, Mazzuca and Ald. Dan Knight (5th) cast the three votes needed to sustain Schmidt’s veto.

We also have learned that since Schmidt’s veto was sustained, somebody(somebodies?) on City Staff put together a new “analysis” which lists every ICOPS employee and attempts to show how the new contract that was vetoed is actually better for the City, economically, than the old one was.   

Can you say “Bass-ackwards”? 

Whether this new “analysis” is worth the paper it’s allegedly printed on remains to be seen, assuming it ever sees the light of day.  But the fact that someone got paid a significant sum of taxpayer dollars to produce that original memo and recommendation with the expectation that the Council would rely on it to vote on the ICOPS contract is sad, bordering on pathetic.  And the fact that the Council and the Mayor apparently DID rely on that memo and recommendation, without question, in approving and vetoing (respectively) the ICOPS contract just compounds the  problem.

The fact that someone also working on the taxpayers’ dime decided to crank out some new “analysis” only AFTER the ICOPS contract is voted on, vetoed, and the veto sustained, is even more troubling.   And the fact that it appears to have been done on the down-low – as evidenced by the fact that the new “analysis” hasn’t appeared (to our knowledge) in any Council meeting packet or posted elsewhere on the City’s website – is offensive.

Can you say: “Staff playing politics?”  Or how about: “Alderman(men) using staff to play politics?”

If the Mayor, the Council, and the acting City Manager are doing their jobs, there should be a very “public” inquiry into who prepared this new “analysis, who requested and/or ordered it prepared, and why it wasn’t prepared until AFTER the entire legislative process had run its course?  And somebody also should explain why it seems to have been concealed from the taxpayers who are paying for this latest example of bad government?

Paging Acting City Manager Shawn Hamilton!

We realize Mr. Hamilton has only been on the job a little over two months, so he’s still entitled to a bit of slack when it comes to finding his way around City Hall and figuring out who can do their jobs, who are overmatched by their jobs, and who (if any) are just collecting a paycheck and/or playing political games on the taxpayers’ dime.  We also realize he’s got a full plate dealing with the day-to-day workings of the City, while also going through the 300-or-so resumes already received for the soon-to-be-vacant H.R. Manager’s job, and the 200-plus resumes already received for the soon-to-be-vacant Finance Director’s job.

As Schmidt correctly, albeit jokingly, noted Monday night: “Let the minutes reflect there is a market for $100,000 a year jobs, even here in Park Ridge.” 

But Hamilton’s not entitled to even one millimeter of slack when it comes to transparency and accountability of City government – a/k/a, keeping our elected officials and the taxpayers fully informed about what’s going on and why.

Starting with the circumstances and details of this new after-the-fact, under-the-radar ICOPS contract “analysis.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

Not-so-good government, and outright bad government, comes in many forms. 

The policy-oriented “good government” Homeowners Party created by Marty Butler that controlled City government in the 1970s and 1980s degenerated into a policy-challenged social clique of “bad government” under successor Ron Wietecha and his sycophants.  The major accomplishment of those post-Butler  Homeowners was electing (mostly in uncontested races) go-along-to-get-along toadies like themselves who could be counted on to rubber-stamp the few initiatives Wietecha proposed.   

By 2003, the Homeowners brand was so tarnished its candidates were defeated in four of six contested races by the highly-political-but-inept “Anderson Four” (2003-2007), which morphed into the less-political-but-equally-inept “Gang of Nine” (2005-2007) before surrendering to a cut-down City Council and the let’s-make-a-deal special-interested “Frimark Alderpuppets” (2007-2011).

Meanwhile, Park Ridge slid into almost two decades of gradual economic decline.

The current Council is better than any of its recent predecessors, if for no other reason than it seems to lack the social cliques, overt political partisanship, or overt special-interests of its predecessors.  But the current Council, with the fiscally-conservative leadership of Mayor Dave Schmidt, also has shown that City government actually can govern within the taxpayers’ means, as evidenced by how the customary annual deficits that occasionally exceeded a million dollars have been turned into modest-but-growing surpluses these past few years.

But a better Council still doesn’t guarantee good government at every turn, as last Monday night’s Council meeting demonstrated when Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) inexplicably moved for reconsideration of the Council’s September 17 vote that sustained Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of the new 3-year ICOPS contract.

That September 17 vote, although providing an outcome we favored, was itself an example of bad government, thanks to the hi-jinks of Ald. Joe Sweeney (1st), which we described in greater detail in our 09.20.12 post “Say It Ain’t So, Joe!”  Sweeney provided the object lesson that even the correct result can be bad government when it’s the product of shameless political boneheadedness – in that case by someone who cast the decisive third vote to sustain Schmidt’s veto despite insisting he favored the ICOPS contract, and warning that the veto he was voting for would lead to an unfair labor practices claim by ICOPS, a possible sympathy work stoppage by all other unionized City employees, and a lot of unnecessary legal fees for the city.

From his half-baked comments, it seemed clear to us that Sweeney was playing petty politics in an attempt to embarrass Schmidt and pressure Mazzuca and Ald. Dan Knight (5th), both of whom also voted to sustain Schmidt’s veto.  But if Sweeney were doing anything other than playing political games, his conduct suggests that if this were a high school student council instead of the Park Ridge City Council, he couldn’t even come up with a theme for the homecoming dance.   

Although we oppose the ICOPS contract primarily because of its 3-year term and its performance-unrelated raises, and although we don’t believe it’s in the public’s best interest to give the Council a second opportunity to over-ride Schmidt’s veto, that’s not why we think Mazzuca’s do-over motion is bad government.  It’s bad government because Mazzuca, who not only provided one of the three votes needed to sustain Schmidt’s veto and, several weeks earlier (at the August 20 meeting), had voted against the Council’s ratification of that contract, didn’t seem to care enough about the transparency of this process to articulate his reason(s) for seeking the do-over. 

Did he have a policy-related epiphany about the merits of the issue since his vote to sustain Schmidt’s veto?  Was he moved by City Finance Director Allison Stutts’ after-the-fact diatribe about how sustaining that veto would adversely impact the operation of her department?  Does he just want to give Sweeney another chance to make a fool of himself? 

Who knows, because Mazzuca didn’t say. 

Unfortunately, Mazzuca’s reticence is not unique to this Council, especially on certain controversial issues.  Alds. Sal Raspanti (4th) and Marty Maloney (7th) regularly become almost Sphinx-like when anything related to contracts and raises for City personnel come up, even though they are hardly shy about speaking their minds on other issues.  It makes us wonder what particular cat’s got their tongues on these labor issues, and why. 

18th Century British statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke, in a speech to the Electors of Bristol (England) on November 3, 1774, addressed the duties of an elected representative to his constituents:

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. [Emphasis added.]

That concept was echoed by James Madison 13 years later in Federlist No. 10, in which he argued that our representatives aren’t supposed to be mere windsocks for public opinion but, instead, should apply their own knowledge, experience, wisdom and reasoning to refine that public opinion into sound public policy and law. 

But when aldermen, without explanation, cast their votes on controversial issues, or make do-over motions after twice voting in a way inconsistent with that do-over, we have no idea whether or how they are exercising “judgment.” And by not articulating their reason(s) for their votes or motions, those aldermen deprive the taxpayers  and voters of the ability to determine for themselves if each of those aldermen’s judgments is sound or lacking – or if they’re not exercising judgment at all but just playing petty politics.

At the taxpayers’ expense, of course.

SIDEBAR:  The editor of this blog was a member – along with fellow 6th Ward residents Rick Biagi, Gail Haller and Alison Harrington – of the mayor’s ad hoc committee that interviewed the four applicants for appointment to fill the aldermanic seat vacated by the resignation of Tom Bernick and made the recommendations that resulted in Mazzuca’s appointment to that seat.

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In 1919, the Chicago White Sox earned the lasting epithet “Black Sox” when several of its players – including star “Shoeless Joe” Jackson – allegedly threw the World Series.

Monday night the First Ward’s one and only alderman, Joe Sweeney, undeniably threw his Council vote.

It occurred in connection with the Council’s vote to sustain or over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of a new 3-year collective bargaining agreement negotiated with the Illinois Council of Police and Sheriffs (“ICOPS”), which provided yet more employee raises which Schmidt believes are not justified, given the current state of the City’s finances.

Sweeney, who inexplicably fancies himself a “conservative,” previously voted to approve the new ICOPS contract and its raises, just as he had voted for all the previous contracts and raises for union and non-union City employees, especially police and firemen.  In supporting those raises, Sweeney – like his colleagues Alds. Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd), Sal Raspanti (4th) and Marty Maloney (7th) – never once inquired about performance-based factors that might justify those raises; e.g., improved or additional services those employees were providing, or efficiencies they achieved to increase productivity. 

Nor did Sweeney and his keep-those-raises-comin’ colleagues join in Ald. Dan Knight’s (5th) call for a comprehensive plan and/or policy for dealing with all raises and related employment issues, rather than the ridiculous one-off way they’ve been handled to date.  Sweeney et al. apparently just enjoy the feeling of doling out arbitrary amounts of somebody else’s money (in this case, Park Ridge taxpayers’) to make certain special-interest groups happy. 

So when the meeting started Monday night, Sweeney was considered a sure vote to over-ride Schmidt’s vetoes of both the ICOPS contract and the raises for the non-union City employees.  True to form, Sweeney voted for the successful over-ride of Schmidt’s veto of the non-union, salaried employee raises.

But when the ICOPS veto over-ride came up for a vote, Sweeney got jiggy.

He started out by saying he would be voting “present” rather than for over-ride, apparently to put political pressure on Knight and Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) – both of whom had voted against the ICOPS contract and were expected to vote to sustain Schmidt’s veto – to switch their votes or risk being blamed for the veto’s being sustained.  For reasons not entirely clear, Sweeney was under the impression that by voting “present” his vote would not actually count one way or the other.

In other words, Sweeney was voluntarily gelding himself.  And in so doing, he was depriving all his 1st Ward constituents of representation on this issue.

Say it ain’t so, clueless Joe.

Before that bizarre scenario could play itself out, however, Schmidt and pinch-hitting City Attorney Kathy Henn advised Sweeney that, under the applicable rules, a “present” vote would be counted as part of the prevailing majority, thereby making Sweeney one of what likely would be the over-ride majority – where Sweeney was expected to be in the first place.  Sweeney resisted that advice, however, and the vote was temporarily tabled while Henn did some hasty additional research and checked with principal City Attorney Everett “Buzz” Hill. 

While she was doing that, the City entertained yet another version of Commonwealth Edison representatives demonstrating yet again ComEd’s continuing indifference to improving the reliability of Park Ridge’s electric power delivery system.  But that’s a post for another day.

Upon the conclusion of ComEd’s electric interlude, Henn advised the assembled multitude that she was sticking to her original position and that, if Sweeney voted “present,” his vote would be counted with the majority.

Sweeney then issued dire warnings and predictions of what would happen if Schmidt’s veto was sustained: unfair labor practice charges filed by ICOPS, thousands of dollars of legal fees incurred by the City, ICOPS picket lines being honored by the City’s other employees, and an actual shut-down of the City.  He might as well have added fire and brimstone coming down from the sky, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, and all that other Old Testament stuff.

But then, directly addressing Schmidt, Sweeney went from clueless Joe to witless Joe. 

He grandly announced: “I will vote to sustain your veto… although I don’t like it but I’m forced by law to do it” – the “law” apparently being the rule that would regard his intended “present” vote as a vote with the majority.  And if that weren’t nutty enough, witless Joe immediately became shameless Joe when he promptly proclaimed that he would “absolve [himself of] blame for all the costs that are involved when we go to litigation” over anything related to the veto being sustained.

Frankly, we’re glad Schmidt’s veto was sustained.  As we repeatedly have written, one of the several keys to rehabilitating the City’s finances is to stop the arbitrary, non-performance based wage and benefit increases that keep the cost of labor spiraling upwards.  But the right result for the wrong reasons is not a recipe for successful long–term management, which is why students often are required to show their work in addition to providing the right answer.

As for all of Sweeney’s dire warnings, they sound more like methane than MENSA to us.  But even if he turns out to be right, the alternative he seems to be suggesting is for the City to hold a gun to its own head and basically give in to whatever demands its unionized employees make so that they don’t strike or demand arbitration.   That’s just more government by the spineless rolling over for the shameless – which pretty much explains how the State of Illinois got into its current wage and benefit mess that shows no signs of abating. 

And despite Sweeney’s ICOPS contract wackiness, at the end of the evening the Council foolishly voted to run and hide in yet another closed session to discuss their…wait for it… “strategy” for the City’s upcoming negotiations with the police sergeants’ union.

Hey, gang, why not do yourselves and everybody else a favor and conduct those discussions in open sessions so that everybody – especially the taxpayers and the union – know, right out of the gate, exactly what kind of deal you’re trying to achieve and why.  Let the public have its input at the front end of the process rather than at the back end, when everything is already a done deal except for Schmidt’s vetoes.  It’s time to try something different, because your collective bargaining “strategies” so far have been a series of foul balls and strike outs.

For clueless Joe, however, that’s the only way to play ball.

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Tonight the Park Ridge City Council will vote (at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall, 505 Butler Place) to either sustain or over-ride Mayor Dave Schmidt’s vetoes of the Illinois Council Of Police and Sheriffs (“ICOPS”) collective bargaining agreement for 32 unionized public safety employees, and raises for 46 salaried non-union City employees. 

We discussed these raises in our 08.23.12 post, “Will August Spending Bring November Taxing?”, so we won’t repeat those arguments here.  The same goes for our 07.25.12 post, “$48,101 Increase Keeps City Wages Spiraling Upward”, questioning the empty-headed “rationale” given by the City’s H.R. Manager – who our since-fired city manager Jim Hock appointed to that position despite the appointee’s lack of H.R. expertise – and the City’s temporary H.R. consultant, other than to remind our readers of their wiseacre comment that “[t]he process of giving pay raises…[has] been happening since before the birth of Christ.”

Hilarious, aren’t they?

Whether any of the 5 aldermen who voted to give those raises in the first place (Alds. Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti and Maloney) will change their minds and join presumptive veto-sustainers Alds. Knight and Mazzuca to provide the 3 votes necessary to sustain either of Schmidt’s vetoes remains to be seen, but we’re not betting the ranch on it.  None of those five have even tried to articulate a compelling reason for those raises, other than such raises seemed like the “fair” thing to do.

Why are they “fair”?

We have no idea, because those aldermen ran into closed session to discuss the raises in secret – ostensibly to keep the information from the ICOPS negotiators but, just as likely, to keep their own constituents in the dark about just how superficial and bereft of actual analysis those closed session discussions were.  That would explain why, when it came time to vote on the raises, none of those aldermen or any City staffers identified any of the performance metrics or other criteria traditionally used to justify raises, such as increased productivity or increased cost savings/profits. 

So what do the taxpayers get from these raises, if not better performance?

As best as we can figure, nothing more than employee longevity: keeping long-time City employees with the City instead of watching them go elsewhere.  But what value does longevity provide the City’s taxpayers if it doesn’t result in quantifiable productivity increases or increased cost savings?

Ald. Sweeney?  Ald. DiPietro? Ald. Smith?  Ald. Raspanti? Ald. Maloney?  Anybody?  Bueller?

Without performance metrics these “negotiations” become just an arbitrary numbers game: the employees propose an arbitrarily big number just so they can compromise it down to something that is still acceptable.  Which might explain why the previous ICOPS contract contained incredible 5% step increases which have been “compromised” down to 2%; and why the previous contract provided for an incredible 29 vacation days – yes, basically 6 weeks! – after 15 years, which ICOPS has now “compromised” down to a mere 20 days after 11 years.

We’ve heard a couple of these aldermen and a few City bureaucrats mumble about keeping up with the cost of living.  Not only is that rationale unrelated to actual value being conferred on the City by its employees, but it also sets a dangerous precedent by effectively making the City the guarantor of its employees’ buying power, since the cost of living is a buying-power metric rather than a productivity one.

If the cost of living is a valid public policy basis for compensation increases when the CPI is at 2%, then shouldn’t it be an equally valid policy basis if/when the CPI goes up to 5%?  Or up to 10%?  Is that really sound management?

At the August 20th Council meeting, Ald. Knight indicated that he would not support any proposed increase in compensation until the City did a comprehensive review of its pay practices and salary structure.  He emphasized his frustration with the City’s practice of one-off, piecemeal compensation decision-making that ignores the inter-relationship of these compensation increases and their impact on the City’s overall financial position.

That’s exactly right – although the blank and downcast looks on the faces of most of the other folks around The Horseshoe when Knight said it suggests that those other folks lack the recognition and/or the will to see and act on such a fiscally-sound principle, especially when they appear motivated more by a desire to be liked than by the desire to do what’s right for the City as a whole.

If tonight’s votes over-ride Schmidt’s vetoes, that will be a sure sign that taxpayers can expect the City to keep chasing its own tail while bureaucrats and aldermen continue their practice of what amounts to giving arbitrary “gifts” to City employees – money and benefits unrelated to any additional value being conferred on the City or its taxpayers.

And that will also be a sign that the City’s finances will continue on life-support until a substantial tax increase becomes inevitable, perhaps as early as this November.

UPDATE (09.18.12)  The Council over-rode Schmidt’s veto of the salaried employees’ raises by a vote of 5 (Alds. Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti and Maloney) to 2 (Alds. Knight and Mazzuca), after Sweeney donned the mantle of advocate for those salaried employees because, as he explained it, they needed one due to their not being represented by a union.    

But when it came to the ICOPS contract, Sweeney turned on a dime and voted with Knight and Mazzuca to achieve the 3 votes needed to sustain the veto – but only after he predicted that sustaining the veto would wreak an Armegeddon on the City, including unfair labor practice charges, union picketing, other unionized employees refusing to cross picket lines, and the effective shut-down of City government.  

If Sweeney truly believes all those things actually will happen from Schmidt’s veto being sustained, then his vote to sustain the veto would appear to be the single most irresponsible thing any alderman or mayor has done over the past 20 years…and THAT’s saying something! 

We’ll be writing more about this in tomorrow’s post, so stay tuned.

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