Last night Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt issued another one of his vetoes.  Actually, it was two vetoes: of the contract negotiated with unionized City employees represented by ICOPS, and of the raises given to the non-union City employees.

Schmidt’s veto message echoed themes voiced in his previous vetoes: “you cannot spend money you do not have”; the City “cannot afford to emulate [the federal and state governments’] irresponsibility” on spending; and “the Uptown TIF debt is a financial time bomb” that is projected to be $1 million short on its bond debt payment this year.

He also claimed that his vetoes sustained by the City Council cut $500,000 of City expenditures, and that the vetoes the Council over-rode would have cut another $800,000.  Schmidt owes the taxpayers some solid back-up for those figures, but we’ll take them at face value for the time being.

Two of the more interesting points in his speech involve the City’s recent hiring experiences: a whopping 98 applicants sought a single $39,000 Finance Department position; and an even more whopping 192 applicants sought 3 vacant firefighters positions. 

We can speculate almost endlessly as to whether the stampede for these positions speaks to the generosity of the pay and benefits, or to the desirability of Park Ridge as a municipal employer, or to some other factor(s).  But it sure suggests that City employment and compensation is highly desirable.

Notably, Schmidt ended his veto message with a general invitation for residents to submit suggestions for other expense cuts different from those Schmidt has made, or for tax increases: “I want to hear your ideas about other ways that we can pull our City out of [this] financial quicksand.”

Which brings us to resident Larry Ryles.

Mr. Ryles has declared himself a candidate challenging Schmidt’s re-election bid.  He already has a campaign fund, a campaign treasurer (Paul Sheehan), and a website.  So it would appear he’s a serious candidate, even though it’s too early for any candidate to submit the nominating petitions required to make his/her candidacy “official.”

As the first and only (so far) challenger to Schmidt, Ryles enjoys an outstanding opportunity to draw clear distinctions, in real time rather than retrospectively, between what Schmidt is doing and what Ryles would do with regard to various situations and circumstances facing the City. 

Like the ICOPS contract and non-union employee raises which Schmidt just vetoed.

According to the “Control Taxes” page of his website, Ryles claims Schmidt has been profligate in presiding over 3 straight years (2009-11) of increases in the City’s portion of the property tax that have averaged almost 3.9%, well above the 2.4% average annual increase in the CPI for that same period (We are ignoring Ryles’ unfounded attribution to Schmidt of an 11.11% “December 1212” increase, as no such increase has been proposed or debated by Schmidt or the Council).   Ryles promises to “take the lead on getting annual tax increases down below the annual rate of inflation of CPI, just like our two school districts and our Park District.”

Frankly, we like the sound of that.  But we’re not too sure of its economic soundness.

First of all, those three other governmental units lack the home-rule powers the City enjoys – meaning that their ability to raise taxes is legally capped at the percentage increase in the CPI or 5%, whichever is less.  And while we retain a warm spot for the Park District, everything – EVERYTHING – it provides qualifies as an amenity rather than as a necessity, such as the streets, sewer, water, police and fire protection that the City provides.

Perhaps Ryles wasn’t paying attention when Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 so mismanaged its finances following its successful $20 million-plus new-Emerson Middle School referendum in 1997 that, by the Fall of 2005, the Illinois State Board of Education’s school finance arm was poised to take over the District’s finances in response to the District’s four appearances on the ISBE’s financial “Early Warning” and “Watch” lists.  That led to a sneaky “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue band-aid to tide the District over until it could organize the successful 2007 referendum campaign that added an unprecedented (?) 44 cents to the District’s tax cap rate.

He might also have been preoccupied 2 years ago when all the bad news hit about Maine Twp. High School District 207 facing “its worst financial challenge in 80 years” (according to a Chicago Tribune 01.13.10 article) that was going to require $15 million in cuts through the layoffs of 135 employees, including 75 full-time teachers.

Nevertheless, we would love to hear Ryles’ plan for operating the City with sub-CPI tax increases.  So, starting today, we begin a new feature here at PublicWatchdog – “What Would Ryles Do?” (“WWRD”) – to give Mr. Ryles roughly 400-500 words to tell his prospective constituents how he would do certain specific thing(s) differently from Schmidt. 

In view of Schmidt’s vetoes last night, today’s WWRD topic is:

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?

Should Mr. Ryles choose to avail himself of this opportunity, he need only provide this blog with his written response to this topic, along with a fool-proof way for us to verify that whatever is submitted truly comes from candidate Larry Ryles, such as a telephone number and a photocopy of a drivers license or similar identification. 

WWRD? 

We hope to find out.  And when we do, we’ll share it with you.

To read or post comments, click on title.  

A few random rim-shots and quick-hits for your mid-week edification, in no particular order of importance:

Unaccountable ComEd.  At Monday night’s City Council COW meeting, two ComEd reps showed up with a variety of non-explanations of recent power outages throughout the City.  Alibis ranged from a “big tree falling in the Forest Preserve” to smaller trees and/or limbs causing local “pocket reliability issues” within and without ComEd’s “tree zone.”  They also described one of ComEd’s key diagnostic techniques as “walking the line”; i.e., walking along the ground looking up at the power line for problems.  How 21st Century! 

A more detailed “report” from ComEd can be found here, and ComEd’s reps are scheduled to be back before the Council on September 17 at 7:00 p.m.

What we’ve concluded – although we hope we’re wrong – is that ComEd’s got so much juice (pun intended) in Springfield that they basically can do whatever they want.  So while the City should continue to be as squeaky a wheel as possible re these outages, about all it can do from a practical standpoint is: (a) try to keep our trees trimmed away from power lines; and (b) keep giving an earful to our state legislators (Sen. Dan Kotowski, Rep. Rosemary Mulligan) for letting ComEd continue to get away with being too big to give a rat’s derriere about dependable power for Park Ridge.

City Council Policy No. 6 On Way Out?  Council Policy No. 6 is the one that deals with “regulating the use of City funds for the support of private non-governmental organizations. It is the basis for years of arbitrary, unaccountable donations to private community groups – something we’ve been critical of for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it appears to violate Article VIII, Section 1 of the Illinois Constitution: “Public funds, property or credit shall be used only for public purposes.”

From what was said at Monday night’s COW meeting, it looks like Policy No. 6 will either be modified or perhaps eliminated.  As Ald. Marty Maloney (7th) correctly noted, for years the City has been “writing blank checks” to community groups without a strong sense of what the City is getting for its money.  Ald. Joe Sweeney suggested an advisory referendum on whether the taxpayers want to see $250,000 a year budgeted for handouts to these community groups.

As we’ve said before, if these private community groups want public funding of the services they provide, such funding should be under a contract with the City like every other vendor – with fixed prices for the various identifiable units of services and documentary proof that those services are going to Park Ridge residents.  Maybe, just maybe, our City officials finally are getting the message.

New D-64 “Changes” Frivolous?  An article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“District 64 welcomes new year with changes,” 08.23.12) announces three changes for the new D-64 school year, two of which are more students riding buses, and more students eating lunch at school.  Big whoop.

According to the H-A article, the bus-riding results from the borderline bankrupt State of Illinois deciding that D-64 deserves state funding so that Lincoln and Emerson 7th and 8th graders can get free busing through “so-called hazardous crossings that students encounter two [sic] and from school.”  No mention in the article of what those “hazardous crossings” are so that the rest of us can be extra careful when we cross there.  Also no mention of whether the free busing will be based on economic need, so we’ll assume need is not a criterion unless and until we hear otherwise.

And elementary students will be required to stay at school for lunch, with the elimination of the lunch supervision fee.  That begs the question of who pays for the lunch supervision that used to come out of the pockets of the parents whose kids lunched at school rather than went home to eat.

“Free” bus service should require a showing of need – otherwise it just shifts the costs (and the inconvenience) of getting one’s kid to school from the parent to the taxpayers.  The same goes for lunch supervision: making stay-at-school lunching mandatory doesn’t magically make the supervision costs disappear, does it?

A Sign.  Our post of 08.03.12, “’Management By Walking Around’ Should Start With Stroll Along Summit,” complained about how City government seems to have a hard time making sure that even the little things – like posting a sign on the paybox for Summit parking that actually tells parkers what the daily fee is – are getting done right.  Well, somebody finally got around to that: and a new sign is up announcing the $1.50 per diem.

In Neil Armstrong’s honor, we’ll call that “one small step for some bureaucrat, one small leap for City government.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

If the title of this post didn’t jolt you, you haven’t been reading this blog very long – because it’s about as close as we’ve ever come to “man bites dog.”

We’ve hammered private corporation Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”), of which Dave Iglow is the Big Kahuna, for its 7 year no-bid, no-contract monopoly of the annual Taste of Park Ridge event (“TOPR”) that then-mayor Howard Frimark and a previous negligent City Council handed over to Taste Inc. back in 2005.  That monopoly has helped put close to $100,000 of net profits in Taste Inc.’s private bank account, almost all of which can be attributed to Taste Inc.’s stiffing Park Ridge taxpayers for the cost of the police, fire and public works services TOPR consumed.

But after a long and often rancorous battle, Mayor Dave Schmidt finally persuaded the current City Council to act responsibly and put TOPR out to bid.  And as the successful bidder, Taste Inc. was required to sign a contract that for the first time ensured it would provide full reimbursement of City expenses, along with insurance, a performance bond and an accounting.

Which is why we did a triple take at the August 24 on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story about something called “Pizza Fest” that is scheduled to take place September 7-8 and which sounds like it will be an event on the scale of TOPR, albeit for one less day (“Pizza fest has easier path to permit than Taste of Park Ridge”).

According to the H-A article, the City hasn’t held Pizza Fest’s sponsor, the Park Ridge Chamber of Commerce, to the same contractual requirement as it held Taste Inc. just a couple of months ago.

Why?

We’re not sure.  And neither is Mayor Schmidt, who vowed to find out and added Pizza Fest as an item on the agenda of tonight’s City Council COW (Committee Of the Whole) meeting – 7:00 p.m. at 505 Butler Place.

The most likely reason Pizza Fest escaped a Taste Inc. contractual requirement is because former city manager Jim Hock and/or former acting city manager Juliana Maller may have decided that the Chamber of Commerce, for whatever strange reason, didn’t have to play by the same rules as Taste Inc.  Or maybe it was because, unlike Taste Inc., the Chamber reportedly offered to voluntarily reimburse the City for its expenses.

But neither of those reasons is a substitute for a clearly-expressed and consistently-enforced City policy that requires a legally-binding contractual arrangement between the City and any person or entity who wants to close streets or alter traffic for a profit-making activity like TOPR…or Pizza Fest.  Which is why we agree with the comment by Taste Inc.’s Iglow that “[o]ne would hope special events would be treated the same way”; and with his suggestion that the City establish a uniform policy for such public events.

Last time we looked, the Chamber of Commerce is no less a private corporation than Taste Inc.  And we can’t say with any confidence that the Chamber’s purpose is any more noble or altruistic than Taste Inc.’s so as to entitle the Chamber to less stringent requirements and accountability for its making a buck.

Contrary to the view of Taste Inc.’s 2012 TOPR chairman (and Park Ridge Recreation and Park District commissioner) Mel Thillens, this is about more than “just a difference of opinion that got blown out of proportion” – Thillens’ description of the “controversy” over TOPR’s 7 years of welfare.  This is a matter of basic public policy and of establishing uniform requirements that create and maintain a level playing field for anyone who wants to do this kind of “business” with the City.

That’s the best way to avoid “special” deals and the “controversy” that they ultimately generate.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Government, especially local government, tends to prove Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.”

Monday night, the Park Ridge City Council once again displayed its insanity when it approved raises for 32 employees represented by the Illinois Council of Police and Sheriffs (“ICOPS”) and 46 non-union salaried employees.  The non-union employees’ raises will cost the City $48,000 this year. 

Unfortunately, whether because of ineptitude, subterfuge, or a more benign reason, the Agenda Cover Memorandum for the ICOPS three-year contract doesn’t explain what “Salaries $1,436,052” means.  Is that the amount of just the raises for only this year?  Or the raises for the life of the contract?   Or the salaries for only this year?  Or some random number stuck there just to bedevil anybody who’s actually paying attention?

It’s a truism that when somebody says “It’s not the money, it’s the principle,” it’s really the money.  But in this case, it should be both – with principle the more important of the two.  That’s because $48,000 (the non-union employee raises) may be small potatoes when it comes to a $60 million annual budget, but it’s still $48,000 that could be used for something else that might be more essential to the well-being of the entire community. 

But as Finance Committee chairman Ald. Dan Knight (5th) pointed out in voting “no” on both sets of raises, the City has failed to conduct any comprehensive study of its various salary structures to determine their interplay and how they compare to equivalent private sector compensation.  “We have these discussions on a one-off basis,” Knight noted, “and it’s leading us down a bad path.”

In reality, that one-off mentality already has led the City into a de facto policy of spiraling raises, with each group’s becoming the justification for another group’s; and so on, and so on, and so on.  Such a situation becomes even more problematic should the City ever actually try to hold the line on police and fire union increases, because those personnel are entitled to mandatory arbitration where one of the more significant factors arbitrators can look at is the increases received by other City employees.

But only Knight and Ald. Marc Mazzuca – who provided the other “no” vote on both sets of raises – seem to “get” this concept, along with Mayor Dave Schmidt, who has used his veto power to hold the line on employee compensation increases and a variety of other expenses, with mixed success.  That’s why, when newbie Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton suggested that he and the City’s department heads could identify $48,000 of expenditure cuts to offset the non-union raises, Schmidt replied that if there still was $48,000 of fat in the budget it should be cut for economic reasons independent of enabling more spending on raises.

Exactly.

But none of the 5 aldermen voting for the ICOPS contract and the salaried-employee raises – Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd), Sal Raspanti (4th) and Marty Maloney (7th) – seem ready, willing or able to address employee compensation in anything other than a here-and-now basis.  Which causes us to wonder whether any of them understand Appendix A to the ICOPS contract; and, if so, can they explain how that compensation schedule compares to compensation paid for equivalent employment in the private sector – assuming anybody with equivalent private sector employment gets a whole month (“20 days after 11 years of service”) of annual vacation, which is, amazingly, “a reduction from 29 days after 15 years of service”!

Which begs the question of how they got to that point, which is partially answered by then-city manager Jim Hock’s August 11, 2011 Memorandum.   That memo, besides admitting to the “10%-15% [increases] most ICOPS employees received from movement through the steps during the 2008-2011 time period or the minimum 6% lump sum payments,” also provides a little insight into the “step increase” world of public sector union compensation that, according to Appendix A, ensures ICOPS employees between 2% and 2.8% per-step increases.   

We also look forward to what kind of explanations these same five aldermen will offer for their recent largesse this coming November, when they will vote to levy the taxes needed for the 2013-14 budget. 

Because of the continuing recession and the dismal performance of the Uptown TIF, there already have been vague mentions in Council meetings of 10-11% tax increases just to keep City finances from sliding back into the red after finally moving into the black the last two-three years.  Perhaps those five aldermen are counting on the taxpayers’ inability to remember this bit of August generosity or, even if they can remember it, on their inability to link it to tax levy hikes in November. 

After all, reliance on public ignorance and/or inattention is supported by the well-known H.L. Mencken’s quote: “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

And we’ve seen that exact situation play out so many times before with City government…and our other local governmental branches.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today we’re going to depart from our usual complaining about local government screw ups and/or its robbing of the taxpayers and, instead, praise the brand-new athletic track at Roosevelt Elementary School. 

What’s so special about a new athletic track?  After all, it’s clearly an amenity rather than a necessity – so why all the fuss?

For us, it’s the fact that it cost Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 (a/k/a, its taxpayers) nothing.  Nada.  Zip. Nil.  According to the article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“New track at Park Ridge school fully funded by community donations,” 08.10.12), the construction of the $90,000 track was undertaken by the Roosevelt Parent-Teacher Organization (“PTO”) “fully funded through donations from Park Ridge families and area businesses.”

Outstanding!

The planning for the project reportedly started two years ago.  In addition to the two lane, one-fifth mile asphalt track, the project features two “rain gardens” comprised of plants suited to utilizing the rain water run-off from the track.

Given its location, we imagine that it will draw most of its users from the Roosevelt School neighborhood rather than from the rest of the City.  Currently, runners from the southwest end of town seeking a track to run on have the use of the one at Maine South, and those on the northwest end have the Maine East track.  

Although the article didn’t give the details of the fundraising other than to note that a “track-a-thon” held in September 2011 pushed project funding over the top, the bottom line is that the PTO folks running this project didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk.

So kudos to the Roosevelt PTO.  Raising $90,000 of net funds in two years for a 2-lane asphalt running track in a bad economy is a significant accomplishment. 

Maybe some of our local community groups who constantly put the arm on City government for handouts should consider holding a track-a-thon or two.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Corrections posted 08.13.12 (See footnote below)

Regular readers of this blog know how we feel about the City of Park Ridge giving away arbitrary amounts of tax dollars to private “community group” corporations who proclaim their “widespread community support” but who can’t seem to raise the funds they need directly from the members of that community and, instead, want to feed at the public trough.

Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt and Ald. Dan Knight (5th Ward) not only have voiced their own objections to such public trough-feeding, but they have voted to deny tax dollars to those corporations.   That has earned them the ill-concealed enmity of the trough-feeders and their more vocal supporters, both on the Council and off – even though they have regularly encouraged their constituents to voluntarily support those community groups with direct donations. 

Last Friday, however, Schmidt and Knight – unlike the vast majority of their critics – walked their talk by putting on a barbecue fundraiser next to City Hall before the regularly-scheduled concert at Hodges Park.  And in a little over three hours, Mayor Dave and Alderman Dan, with the able assistance of the lovely Sue Knight and the talented Charlie Melidosian (or, for all you gender-equity types out there, the talented Sue and the lovely Charlie), raised around $1,200 for the Park Ridge Fine Arts Society that sponsors those summer concerts.

In the interest of accuracy, we note that Schmidt and Knight donated the roughly $200 of “fixins” – hot dogs and hamburgers, buns and condiments – so the net profit from their ‘cue was about $1,000.  There also was a little planning involved, although nothing like for Seal Team 6’s strike on Bin Laden’s compound.  Heck, Schmidt and Knight couldn’t even come up with pricing for their mutts and ‘burgers, instead accepting whatever customers wanted to toss in the open American Tourister that they employed as a cash register. 

We realize, just as Schmidt and Knight do, that $1,200 isn’t going to fund even one concert in the park.  But the real value of their exercise is to demonstrate what can be accomplished if all those legendary Park Ridge “volunteers” – especially the ones who show up at City Hall once or twice a year to shake down the Council for tax dollars for their favorite community group – would get off their duffs and actually do some real fundraising.

Like our favorite “whipping boy,” the Center of Concern (“CofC”).

We endorse the work it does, really we do.  But we pick on it primarily because: (a) its Board of Directors and Advisory Board are loaded with former public officials in an obvious attempt to bond with, and influence, current public officials to throw tax dollars their way; (b) its supporters beef and whine more than the rest of the community groups combined when they don’t get what they want; and (c) it really seems to just plain suck on ice when it comes to fundraising.

For example, judging only by what it reported on Schedule G to its most recent (2010) IRS Form 990 filing, CofC ran four fundraising events between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 that grossed a combined $59,873.  As if that’s not embarrassing enough, those fundraisers actually lost $9,186!  

In other words, with one 3-hour barbecue Schmidt and Knight out-fundraised CofC’s entire organization for an entire year!

How flippin’ pathetic is that?

Such pathetic fundraising could well be a factor in the upcoming City Council debate over its Policy No. 6, which regulates the City’s contributions to private organizations but which hasn’t been revised in over 20 years; and which appears to have been consistently ignored by the Council in arbitrarily giving away millions of tax dollars, literally, to local community groups over the past decade.  Two of the four principal criteria for such contributions are the amount of “[p]rivate financial support” and “[c]ommunity volunteer support” for the services the private organization provides – both of which CofC appears to be sorely lacking, judging by its dismal private fundraising.  

But to show that we’re willing to offer solutions in addition to our criticisms, we’ve come up with a few fundraising ideas that CofC might try over the next twelve months. 

Building on Schmidt’s and Knight’s successful barbecue effort, and mindful of the Maine South football season fast approaching, how about CofC setting up a tent next to the Wilson Field concession stand and challenging the Hawks boosters to a “Battle of the Brats”?  Former alderman (and CofC treasurer) Jim Radermacher and former alderman (and CofC v.p.) Sue Beaumont could don their “Grill Sergeant” aprons and fire up some of Sheboygan’s finest. 

And for those “foodie” Hawks fans, how about having CofC Advisory Board member and current City Clerk “Betty the Hen” Henneman fry up batches of chicken tenders served with a choice of gourmet dipping sauces, while Advisory Board member and former mayor Mike Marous cooks up some stuffed portabella “Marous-shrooms”?  This kind of gastronomic extravaganza could put a grand or more in CofC’s coffers every game.

But we see the real cash cow as being former alderman (and current CofC director) Rich Whalen, who back in February showed up at City Hall with a display of legerdemain that convinced Aldermen Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd) and Jim Smith (3rd) that CofC really can turn every $1 of City funding into $3 of value to the community.  If Whalen can do that to the $10s, $20s and $50s of Hawks’ fans instead of to just the City’s $1s, he could knock down $5-10,000 for CofC during half-times alone!

And come next summer, how about those uber-“volunteers” from Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) designating the Saturday night session of Taste of Park Ridge as “CofC Night” – with all profits (after the City’s expenses are paid, of course) going to CofC?  That should fund a lot of those “wellness” calls CofC specializes in, especially if it includes the profits from “Bobby the Pro” Provenzano’s Maine Township Republicans’ beer tent.

Those are just a few ideas off the top of our heads, but we invite our readers to contribute CofC fundraising ideas of their very own, preferably involving folks like those listed on the CofC and Taste Inc. websites, or other local residents who regularly trumpet their volunteerism and/or support for throwing scarce taxpayer money at private corporations without demanding one whit of accountability for what they are doing with it.

Meanwhile, a wag of the Watchdog’s tail goes out to Schmidt and Knight for proving that not-for-profit fundraising isn’t just showing up at City Hall once or twice a year with a handful of “gimme” and a mouthful of “much obliged.”

CORRECTION:   A commentator pointed out an error in our presentation of CofC’s fundraising versus Mayor Schmidt’s and Ald. Knight’s barbecue.  On a net/net basis as reflected by Schedule G of CofC’s Form 990, it would appear that the latter out-fundraised the former because the latter had a net “profit” of $1,000 while the former had a net loss of $9,186. 

However, it must be noted that although Schedule G requires the deduction of $27,756 in “charitable contributions,” those contributions, just like the $200 of “fixins” contributed by Schmidt and Knight, nevertheless were actually raised by CofC in connection with its fundraisers.  So when those contributions are added to CofC’s gross rather than subtracted, CofC actually raised $46,326 compared to Schmidt’s and Knight’s $1,200.   

We apologize for that error.

To read or post comments, click on title.

There’s a style of business management called “management by walking around.” 

Among its notable proponents is management consultant Tom Peters, who wrote about it in his 1982 book “In Search of Excellence.”  Its premise is that a manager can learn many of the things he needs to know about his/her business simply by walking around and informally observing.

After strolling along Summit Avenue this morning from near St. Paul of the Cross School to the METRA station, we observed a few things that suggest our City is not being managed in the way it should be, as to matters both large and small.  And that suggests new Acting City Manager Shawn Hamilton and whoever becomes the permanent city manager may be inheriting more of a mess than they, or we taxpayers, have been led to believe.

The first observation we made in our stroll concerns what is commonly called “infrastructure.”  In this case, we’re talking about the condition of that 3-block long strip of 100+ perpendicular parking spaces on the South side of Summit along the railroad tracks, which could be considered of “Third-World quality” only if one stretches the meaning of the term “quality”…and doesn’t mind insulting the Third World. 

We don’t know how many years (decades?) it has been since that expanse of asphalt was last repaved, but judging by its overall appearance we’d be willing to bet it hasn’t been since at least Bill Clinton’s first term (i.e., 1992-96).  That stretch of pavement contains so many dangerous elevation changes, depressions, pockmarks and holes that we’re surprised some enterprising personal injury lawyer hasn’t set up shop out of the trunk of his BMW to sign up prospective plaintiffs near the pay-box at Summit and Euclid.

And speaking of that pay-box, does anybody on City staff realize that there’s no sign posted on that box to inform parkers about how much the daily parking fee is?  Just this morning we saw two consecutive parkers appear to stick only a single $1 bill in the slot, even though the charge has been $1.50 for quite awhile now.   How tough is it for one of our City employees – how about whoever collects the money from that pay-box? – to note the absence of a daily fee sign and report back to whoever’s job it is to post one?

On the other hand, parkers might very well be discouraged from putting any money in those pay-box slots if they are already filled because nobody is showing up to collect that money.  This morning we saw bills and coins already filling the slots for many of the higher-numbered spaces beyond the 40 or so cars actually parked there at the time – suggesting that nobody emptied the box yesterday.

How many parkers see their coin slot already filled and thank their lucky stars that “good enough for government work” just saved them $1.50?

With Park Ridge’s city-manager form of government, the “buck” for all of this supposedly stops at the city manager’s desk.  We realize that the firing of Jim Hock by a 6-0 vote of the Council this past May might represent a partial explanation for that kind of neglect over the past four years Hock was putatively at the helm. 

But the abysmal condition of the pavement along Summit predates Hock by a number of years, which raises a legitimate concern about how efficiently and well the City’s Public Works Dept. is functioning, especially given that we don’t recall anybody from that department pushing to give this Summit paving problem any kind of priority. 

That, in turn, makes us wonder how much money is being spent by the City to do “just enough” infrastructure maintenance, repair and replacement to create a kind of Potemkin village – or, if biblical references are more to your liking, “whited sepulchers” (Matthew 23:27) – that lead the taxpayers to believe things are a lot better than they really are?

Despite Mayor Dave Schmidt’s incessant calls for cutting expenses for everything other than infrastructure and essential City services, and even after years of annual property tax increases that have exceeded the rate of inflation, is the City effectively playing a shell-game to conceal or disguise infrastructure deficiencies that arose while Ron Wietecha devoted his 12-year mayoralty to jousting with former Chicago mayor Richie Daley over all things O’Hare, and that were compounded by the subsequent neglect of later mayors and aldermen preoccupied with TIFs, Uptown redevelopment, and other frolics and detours?

We already have heard rumblings about a 10-11% City property tax hike this November, and about the possibility of similar tax hikes needing to be repeated for several more years thereafter in order to pull the City’s finances out of the power dive they were in when Schmidt took over as mayor in May 2009.  We also get the sense that there are more than enough infrastruture and other “essential” projects to soak up that extra revenue if the City Council goes in that direction. 

With that in mind, maybe new ACM Hamilton, Council Public Works Committee chair Ald. Marty Maloney, and Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim should try some of management by walking around.  And we encourage Mayor Schmidt to join them, if only to point out the things that many inhabitants of City Hall apparently have trouble seeing. 

They can start with a stroll along Summit.

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A little over four years ago, then-mayor Howard Frimark welcomed new city manager Jim Hock by announcing that Hock wasn’t Frimark’s first choice.  In retrospect, that might have been one of the few things Frimark actually got right as mayor – even if most of us didn’t realize it at the time. 

By contrast, Monday night current Mayor Dave Schmidt got his first choice for interim Acting City Manager.  Well, maybe not quite his first choice – because Schmidt and a majority of aldermen reportedly were ready to offer the post to Finance Director Alison Stutts before a consensus was reached that the Finance Department needed her services more than did the city manager’s office.

But once the position was publicly advertised and resumes of 12 applicants were received and reviewed, Shawn Hamilton became Schmidt’s top choice.  And he was approved at Monday night’s “special” Council meeting, after a lengthy closed session, by a vote of 5 (Alds. Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Knight and Mazzuca) to 2 (Alds. Raspanti and Maloney).

Hamilton, an interim choice hired under a contract that extends only through this coming April, might be considered a high-risk, high-reward selection. 

The high-risk part comes from the fact that he has less than a year of public-sector experience under his belt, as Grundy County Administrator running an annual budget of only $14 million – less than a quarter the size of Park Ridge’s.  For those of you who subscribe to the theory that top-level public sector positions must be filled by career bureaucrats, Hamilton is clearly not your man.

But as we often have argued, we think that such a bureaucrat-centric theory is largely responsible for the widespread (although not without significant exceptions) mediocrity that afflicts government service today, driving up the cost to the taxpayers without commensurate increases in service.

Hamilton’s resume reflects a varied background in banking and management consulting that should come in handy in the not-so-brave new world of municipal government, where economic and personnel issues have assumed increasingly prominent, if not dominant, roles.  And his 10+ years of service as an elected member of the Coal City School Board suggests that he will have a better understanding than his predecessors of the mindset and concerns of the elected officials arrayed around The Horseshoe.

This creates the opportunity for a new paradigm for how the City is managed and City services administered.  That’s the potentially high-reward part of the equation.  And given the fact that Hamilton’s appointment is only for 9 months, we have almost-laboratory quality conditions for conducting this kind of private-to-public-sector experiment. 

If Hamilton is up to the challenge – as the mayor and 5 alderman appear to believe he is – the City will have 9 months of solid ACM service and a real-time audition for the permanent city manager position in which Hamilton has expressed interest.  If not, the City will have nine months to conduct a more thorough and deliberate search for a permanent replacement for the departed Hock and Juliana Maller.

Under these circumstances, the “no” votes on Hamilton’s appointment by Alds. Raspanti and Maloney are both noteworthy and instructive. 

Both of them professed unhappiness with the selection process – especially with what they viewed as a too-small pool of candidates.  And we would agree with them …IF this had been the hiring process for a permanent city manager, or if the City was given more time than the approximately one-month fire drill that resulted from Maller’s announcing her departure for scenic Hanover Park on July 5, a month before her last day as Park Ridge ACM.

According to articles appearing in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate and Park Ridge Journal, Raspanti “would have liked to have seen [the City] get 100 resumes and really broaden the search,” while Maloney complained about the Council’s doing nothing about finding a new permanent city manager after it terminated Hock back on May 4th.

We can’t find any record of how many resumes the City received when it used a professional search firm to conduct the “nation-wide” hunt that spirited Hock away from the wolverines in Michigan.  Both Raspanti and Maloney voted to sack him in May – without either of them clamoring at that time for the immediate commencement of an interview and hiring process for his replacement.  And as best as we can tell, neither of them started beating the drum for an expedited comprehensive search process until now.

But we’ll take their words and their motives at face value, while offering the mayor and the rest of the Council the following bit of advice: No matter how much you guys may like Hamilton and think he might fill the bill for the permanent slot, begin a search process for the permanent slot now.

And to ensure that process is as good as it can be, we suggest that Schmidt and the Council deputize Raspanti and Maloney to run it.

Let the quest for 100 resumes begin! 

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There’s a special meeting of the Park Ridge City Council tonight at City Hall/505 Butler Place.  Only one topic appears on the agenda: the appointment of an Acting City Manager to replace the soon-departing ACM Juliana Maller (leaving for the Hanover Park Village Manager job, at a $20,000+ pay boost) who has been filling in for recently-sacked City Manager Jim Hock.  

Thanks to the December 2010 fiscal boneheadedness of current Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Rich DiPietro (2nd) – along with former alds. Jim Allegretti, Tom Carey and Frank Wsol – the City (a/k/a, we taxpayers) is still paying Hock a severance of approximately $130,000 not to work for us.  By having Maller fill in for Hock while keeping her Deputy City Mgr. position vacant, however, the City has been able to somewhat ameliorate the adverse effects of that foolish severance benefit.

But with Maller’s decision to leave, the City now has to scramble to bring in a new ACM.  And under the City Code, it’s up to Mayor Dave Schmidt to appoint one, with the approval of the City Council.

We hear Schmidt is leaning toward someone with substantial private and public sector experience.  That sounds like the “right stuff” to us, as we have long been critical of traditional bureaucratic “leadership” that seems so immersed in the mediocre “good enough for government work” mindset that tends to strangle in its crib anything other than the same old same old. 

Consequently, innovation of the kind embodied in private sector strategies and methodologies is unlikely to spontaneously generate among the folks currently in charge of the day-to-day administration of City services, all of whom appear to be good people who seem to have become too comfortable and complacent with the way things have always been done.  Only the current Finance Director has demonstrated innovation in her approach to the City’s financial management – and her non-conformist methods have won her few friends at City Hall outside of the mayor and most of the aldermen.

As the City continues to confront the challenges provided by a grossly-underperforming Uptown TIF, tens of millions of dollars of TIF-related debt, neglected infrastructure, spiraling employee compensation and benefits, increasing water costs, flooding, and the prospect of a major RE tax increase in November, more “business-as-usual” just doesn’t cut it.  While Schmidt’s fiscally-responsible leadership has finally started to gain some meaningful traction – as evidenced by numerous vetoes that have helped turn operating deficits into surpluses, and the City’s succesful refusal to succumb to the revenue-sharing demands of Whole Foods – the City remains desperately in need of much more than the lackluster City Manager performance it has endured under the last two City Managers: Hock and Tim Schuenke.

Although the new ACM appointment is intended to be merely an interim one, we see no reason why Schmidt and the Council shouldn’t treat it as an “audition” for the permanent position.  We also see no reason, however, that they shouldn’t begin the interview process for other applicants for the permanent position – with the express understanding by both the Council and those applicants (including the interim ACM) that the interim ACM’s “audition” is not the same as a commitment for the permanent position.   

And with the April 2013 election presenting the possibility of a new mayor and three new aldermen, we think it would be wise of this Council to seriously consider offering the new ACM a term that runs through April 2013; and to defer any final decision on a new permanent City Manager until after that election when the new Council is seated.

Because the last thing the City needs is to hire a new City Manager who promptly finds himself/herself under the authority of a new mayor and three new aldermen who had no hand in and, therefore, no “ownership” of, his/her appointment.

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Some people in Park Ridge might consider the City’s spending of $48,101 as pretty much a drop-in-the-bucket number, especially when compared to the City’s $60 million 2012-13 budget.

But that $48,101 takes on much more significance as a symbol of the flawed decision-making that has plagued, and often even defined, previous City Councils – and that seems to continue to plague and define some members of the current Council and the bureaucrats who run City government on our “dime,” figuratively speaking.

In literal terms, that $48,101 is the total cost of the raises the Council approved Monday night for non-union City employees: a 1% raise for those employees who merely “meet expectations,” and a 2% raise for those who “exceed expectations.”  Ironically, although not surprisingly, that approval came on a 4 to 2 vote (Alds. Joe Sweeney, Rich DiPietro, Sal Raspanti and Marty Maloney v. Alds. Jim Smith and Dan Knight, Ald. Marc Mazzuca absent) only minutes after a discussion of how Crook County was now projecting $220,507 less revenue from the hapless Uptown TIF than has been budgeted this year. 

Meaning that the Council majority voted to pay out an additional unbudgeted $48,101 in salaries while knowing that it now will have $220,000 less revenue from which to pay them. 

If that sounds shortsighted and irresponsible, that’s because it is.  And, unfortunately, it’s been the City’s practice for the past decade and beyond.

Like their counterparts in Chicago and Crook County, over the past decade or longer the City’s elected officials and bureaucrats, with a few notable exceptions, virtually institutionalized a process of giving raises to union employees, which in turn led them to give raises (albeit in lesser amounts) to non-union employees, which in turn led to further raises for union employees, and so on in an upward spiral.  As can be seen from a schedule recently produced by the City, since 2008 – in the teeth of this recession – the City’s unionized firefighters and police have received raises totaling 13% through next May; unionized public works employees have received raises totaling 12.75%, with more on the way; and non-union personnel have received raises totaling between 7% and 9%.

During that very same period the City, while continuing to raise taxes by approximately 3.5%, was cutting back on various services as Mayor Dave Schmidt led the fight to escape from a decade of deficits totaling multi-millions of dollars that had put the City’s finances in a figurative iron-lung.

In addition to all those raises, City employees also got credits toward their guaranteed defined-benefit pensions that are virtually extinct in the private sector, in part because not only can they be taken as early as age 55 but, also, they have been reported to provide the beneficiaries with as much or more money in pensions than they made while actually working! 

Additionally, unlike almost all private-sector workers, City employees are virtually fire-proof because of poor performance, which would explain why so few of them leave the City for similar positions in other communities.  Plus, City employees run no risk of their employer packing up and moving to Mexico or Malaysia; or of filing for bankruptcy – at least not until after the City bleeds the taxpayers dry.

So although the Council majority wasn’t deterred from those $48,101 in raises by this $220,000 revenue shortfall, it seems to have been mightily impressed by the “white paper” authored by the City’s H.R. Manager, Cathy Doczekalski, and its H.R. Consultant, Michael Suppan, which begins with the flippant, almost dismissive “[t]he process of giving pay raises…[has] been happening since before the birth of Christ.”

Doczekalski and Suppan go on to salt their report with certain buzzwords/phrases – e.g., “loyal”/”loyalty,” “hard working,” “dignity and respect” – in what appears to be an attempt to portray the City’s salaried employees as quasi-serfs.  They also spout the ridiculous assertion that “[w]hether the pay increases are merit increases or Cost of Living (cola) increases doesn’t matter” – thereby demonstrating their inability to grasp the difference between compensation earned for meritorious performance, on the one hand, and what amounts to nothing less than the employer’s guarantee of the purchasing power of the wages being paid, on the other.

Yet when Ald. Knight questioned them about the exact meaning and relevance of those various buzzwords and terms, he basically got deer-in-the-headlights responses from the authors…until Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim rode to their rescue with tales of salaried employees working extra hours without pay, and laments about “wage compression” – shrinking pay differentials between supervisors and subordinates. 

Zingsheim seemed oblivious to the fact that extra hours without extra pay is a hallmark of salaried employment.  And his only example of any lack of “dignity” or “respect” was the fact of subordinates making more than their supervisors, a/k/a “wage compression.”  

But proposing an actual solution for “wage compression” – other than just giving the salaried employees 1-2% raises – must be above both Zingsheim’s and the Council majority’s pay grade, as suggested by Ald. Maloney’s rationale that: “We say ‘no’ to this group [the salaried employees] because we can, but we can’t necessarily say ‘no’ to some of the unions.”

Why not, Alderman?

According to the final page of the arbitration award for the Fraternal Order of Police issued December 20, 2011, the City’s final offers – beyond which it chose to say “no” to the FOP’s demands – were upheld by the arbitrator in five of six instances.  Keep the champagne on ice for the time being, however, because while that might have been a technical “win” over more extreme union demands, the arbitrator’s findings on Page 35 of the award suggest more of a Pyrrhic victory, “won” by the City’s having given away “effectively 9% over four years, more when longevity is factored in.” 

If you want a little insight into how inter-dependent the various union negotiations and resulting contracts are, check out the first four pages of that award.

What becomes obvious from just this trickle of information is that the Doczekalski/Suppan phobia about the salaried employees possibly joining a union if they aren’t given raises, is that the City and its hard-nosed negotiators already gives the unions such good deals that even the pro-union arbitrators end up endorsing them!

Victory by surrender? 

We’re not opposed to City employees, including the salaried employees, receiving fair compensation.  And we’re certainly not opposed to City employees being represented by unions.  But we most certainly are opposed to aldermen and supervisory personnel who seem to care more about special interest groups – in this case, the salaried employees – than about the taxpayers who pay the wages of those employees, some of whom would gladly take those City jobs.  Without raises.

As was demonstrated Monday night, the City’s salaried supervisory personnel (with the notable exception of Finance Director Allison Stutts) and at least four of our seven elected aldermen are seemingly more concerned about pandering to this one special interest group than about undertaking the admittedly more difficult task of forging a long-term, comprehensive and economically realistic wage policy – especially when there’s already the specter of an 11% City property tax increase looming this coming November?

But when you can make a special interest temporarily happy simply by giving away $48,101, why do any heavy lifting?

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