Monday night (Oct. 3) Mayor Dave Schmidt vetoed the 3-year firefighters union contract that was approved by the City Council on September  19.  In his veto message, he criticized the new contract for only two reasons: the 3% increase in the contract’s third year, which he wants to subject to a re-opener (re-negotiation) if economic conditions warrant it; and the new no-layoff provision, which he wants to eliminate. 

We were disappointed that the City Council passed a contract containing those very significant flaws by a 6-0 vote (Seventh Ward Ald. Marty Maloney was absent) – especially when the minutes of that September 19, 2011 meeting show that only Alds. Dan Knight (5th) and Tom Bernick (6th), along with Schmidt, asked any meaningful questions about the contract’s terms during what passed for Council “debate.”  Across-the-board increases unrelated to improved performance and productivity are hallmarks of bad management, whether in the public or the private sector.

But the most important reason why the mayor’s veto should be sustained is the no-layoff provision.  And if you doubt just how important it is for the City to retain its unfettered right to lay off employees in order to manage expenditures, look no further than the editorial in yesterday’s (Oct. 4) Chicago Tribune, titled “Selling out Illinois.”

That editorial justifiably rips Illinois’ latest ethically-challenged governor, Pat Quinn, for selling out the state’s taxpayers one year ago by…wait for it…cutting a no-layoff deal for state employees.  Now he’s trying to back out of that deal because…wait for it…the state can’t afford all those employees.   The editorial also notes that, in exchange for that no-layoff promise, “the union made some minor cost concessions” – kind of like our firefighters union agreeing to no wage increase this year as the proverbial carrot for a 2% increase next year and the 3% increase the year after that.  

But unlike the governor, who cut his deal with the state’s largest employees union to gain its endorsement of his election bid, we don’t see any evidence of a similar quid pro quo sell-out by the City Council members who approved the firefighters deal.   It seems as if they just decided to give away across-the-board, non-merit based increases and a no-layoff guaranty because the City’s “negotiating team” and its labor attorney recommended it, or they think such raises and guaranties are what government is supposed to do.

Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like the City’s “negotiating team” was the sell-out.  

As we understand it, that “team” was nominally headed by City Mgr. Jim Hock, although he purportedly delegated his primary responsibility to Fire Chief Mike Zywanski, Dep. Chief Jeff Sorensen, and one or more unidentified Battalion Chiefs (the “Fire Guys”).  Hock apparently was oblivious to the risks of letting the Fire Guys – long-time firefighters union members before accepting their promotions to “management” – run contract negotiations with their former “frat brothers.”    

We can only wonder if the Fire Guys showed Hock their fraternity’s secret handshake as part of the deal. 

What else but a sell-out would explain why the City got stuck with a set of negotiation “Ground Rules” requiring that all demands, offers and other such details of the negotiations be kept totally secret and not reported to the public.  And if that doesn’t sound kinky enough, consider that not only did the Fire Guys lack the legal authority to bind the City to those Ground Rules, but they did so without even telling the mayor or the Council.  And then they kept the Ground Rules secret for months afterwards. 

Accrording to the minutes of the May 2, 2011, Council meeting, “[t]he origination of the Ground Rules agreement remained questionable” to that point, in large part because both Hock and Chief Z, despite being present that night, apparently lacked whatever virtues it would have taken for them to stand up and tell the truth then and there – something Chief Z finally got around to doing at the May 16 meeting, when he belatedly admitted (according to that meeting’s minutes) to “presenting the ‘Ground Rules’ to the union” after checking “with a labor attorney and Human Resources” personnel whom he conveniently failed to identify. 

What makes things even more interesting is that, as also reported in the Sept. 19 Council minutes, the City’s bill for those secret negotiations is “approximately $40,000 thus far, non-inclusive of staff time.”  Could the “labor attorney” with whom Chief Z claims to have consulted also be the recipient of that astounding expense?  And could that attorney be Dina Kapernekas, even though we cannot find the minutes of the Council meeting at which her retention by the City for this purpose was approved? 

It should be noted that Schmidt’s latest veto is consistent with his previous veto of a 3% across-the-board increase for non-union City employees.  The Council’s vote on sustaining or over-riding that earlier veto was to have occurred at Monday night’s meeting, but it was postponed by the Council in order to give Hock and City staff a chance to prepare a comparative analysis of other municipalities’ salary structures.

Why wasn’t that kind of analysis prepared before Hock and staff recommended those 3% increases, and before the Council’s original vote that Schmidt vetoed?  Could it be because such comparisons would show that the City’s employees are already better paid than their counterparts in other communities?

We agree with the Tribune that Illinois taxpayers continue to be sold-out by Gov. Quinn.  And it looks to us like Park Ridge taxpayers are being sold-out by some of our City employees, with both this firefighters contract and the non-union raises serving as two of the most recent examples.

Will our elected officials do something about it, or will they just look the other way and rubber-stamp the results?

To read or make a comment, click on the title.

A headline in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate caught our attention, and not because it was a good one: “No profit for city of Park Ridge as Shops of Uptown goes up for sale” is how it read. 

The accompanying story reported on how the profit-sharing element of the City’s January 2005 “Redevelopment Agreement” with PRC Partners, LLC – a “partnership” of Mid-America Asset Management (the “retail” partner), Edward R. James Homes (the “residential” partner) and Valenti Builders, Inc. (the “construction” partner) – would not be yielding any cash to the City, once touted as the “government” partner of this venture because of all the money and bonded debt it was going to be “investing” – that’s government code for “giving away.”

Who was doing that touting? 

Back then the Uptown bandwagon was pretty crowded with Uptown merchants and many of the people who then ran the City of Park Ridge: Acting Mayor Mike Marous; Alds. Mike Tinaglia and Don Crampton (1st), Rich DiPietro and John Benka (2nd), Sue Bell and Andrea Bateman (3rd), Sue Beaumont and Howard Frimark (4th), Dawn Disher and Mark Anderson (5th), Frank DePaul and Rex Parker (6th) and Frank Bartolone and Larry Friel (7th); City Treasurer Betty Henneman; City Treasurer Carl Brauweiller; and City Manager Tim Schuenke. 

By then, what had begun in 1999 (and continued through the 2003 formation of the TIF district) as a retail-driven project already had defaulted into a predominantly-residential one; and the advertised 70,402 square feet of retail space became the “tail” on the 189 residences “dog.”  Nevertheless, Uptown redevelopment was hailed as ushering in the dawn of a new era in Park Ridge: like Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich with the promise of “peace in our time,” many of those City officials waxed glowingly about “the largest redevelopment effort in generations” that would inject “vibrancy” – “vibrant” and every possible variant thereof being the unofficial watchword of the project – into a moribund Uptown retail district.

Those officials, seduced by predictions (including some of their own) of how certainly and quickly the City would recoup its expenditures, voted to “invest” multi-millions of dollars in cash and bonded debt to acquire a so-called “partnership” and “profit sharing” relationship with PRC.  The City sunk $5.25 million into just the parking garage alone, and we doubt even the City itself has an accurate fix on its entire, to-date cost of Uptown Redevelopment; or what that cost will be when the last of the bonds are retired.

But once again this fiscal year the City will make a $2.9 million payment on that TIF-related bonded debt.  And because the TIF/Uptown project is still in such a deep financial hole, it appears that the City has paid none of the $1 million it owes the Park District in consideration of the millions of dollars the Park District saved the City by permitting the construction of the Uptown reservoir in Hinkley Park rather than at the former City Garage property at Greenwood and Elm.

Upon reading the H-A article, we checked the Council’s 09.26.11 meeting packet on the City’s website and discovered a Sept. 26, 2011, Agenda Cover Memorandum  and an August 12, 2011, letter from the City’s Uptown Redevelopment “consultant” – the former blithely recommending (without any meaningful reason) the Council’s acceptance of the consultant’s profit-sharing analysis; and the latter providing a collection of unsubstantiated conclusions about how the City is entitled to nada from PRC.  We have provided some redlined annotations to the consultant’s letter highlighting some of the inadequacies of that report which, on its face, assumes that the City and its taxpayers should take Mr. Friedman analysis as gospel.

Apparently “trust, but verify” isn’t a favored concept of our City officials, past or present.  And, once again, it looks like the City is taking it in the economic shorts from the Uptown Redevelopment project.

To read or post comments, click on title.

No alderman took us up on the invitation in our Sept. 21 post to explain their “yes” vote on the new 3-year, 5%, no-layoffs firefighters union contract.  But a number of readers commented on that post. 

The following is one of those comments that we thought deserved “guest essay” status:

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I was directed to this site by someone who said I might learn some things about School District 64 here.  After reading up on D64 I read this post and your other ones on the firefighters contract, including the comments, and want to add a comment myself.

Let me say right off that I’ve got nothing against firefighters or teachers.  My mother was an elementary school teacher, and I attended nothing but public schools all the way through my MBA.  My personal appreciation for firemen goes back fourteen years, when a brigade of volunteer firemen in Medway, Ohio, saved my house from a fire that burned down most of my next door neighbor’s house. 

I moved my family from Ohio to Park Ridge almost ten years ago to take a job after my employer went out of business, owing me over ten thousand dollars in commissions that I was never able to collect.  Since then I have had three jobs, only one of which was in my chosen field, and I have been unemployed (“between jobs” ) a total of almost two of those ten years.  Because I make less in my current job than I made when I moved here, my wife has taken a part-time job despite our youngest child is still in D64 and could use a stay at home mom.  And my 401k, like many other people’s, has gone down from investment decline and from a withdrawal to get us past one of my unemployed periods.

But we aren’t complaing.  Unlike some other people we know, we are all still healthy, we still have a little equity in our home, and we probably look “normal” to anybody who doesn’t know about our check-to-check financial struggles.

The problem I have with the firefighters (and the teachers) demands stems from what they don’t have to do.  Almost none of them have to work a full year in the sense most of us in the private sector do.  None of them have to worry about their employer going bankrupt, closing down, or moving to another state or country or continent.  None of them have to worry about having their salaries reduced, or having to actually get results (make sales) to earn their paychecks.  None of them have to worry about managing their retirement fund so they might retire at 65 because none of them will have to wait that long to retire.

Maybe years ago firefighters (and teachers) were not treated as well as they should have been.  But that doesn’t justify the demands they are making today, in a terrible recession with a lot of people holding on by their fingernails.  As somebody pointed out, they can make even more extreme demands without any consequences because of the secret bargaining sessions that the public never hears about.  You compared the aldermen to the sheriff in Blazing Saddles, but I would compare the union’s attitude to Paulie’s in the movie Goodfellas, when he gets a piece of that tiki restaurant and drives the original owner bankrupt. “Business bad? F*** you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F*** you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? F*** you, pay me.” 

I don’t care if the city gives the firefighters a three year contract if the compensation piece can be negotiated every year to adjust to economic conditions.  Who knows, maybe it could work to the firefighters’ benefit at some point?

I hope the aldermen will take up your invitation and explain why they gave in to a bad deal for the taxpayers.

Thank you.

To understand that the firefighters contract passed by the Park Ridge City Council Monday (Sept. 19) night is bad for the taxpayers, all one needs to do is read the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate’s article about it (“Park Ridge firefighters get contract but veto likely, “ Sept. 20). 

After reading that story twice, the only arguable benefit we can see the new 3-year contract providing for the City (and, hence, its taxpayers) appears to be that it saves the costs of negotiating a new contract every year – although that’s coming from the City’s labor attorney, Dina Kopernekas, who also trudged out the old reliable we’ve-always-done-it-that-way justification for another 3-year deal, while demonstrating her value-add by re-naming that alibi the City’s “historical norm.”

Actually, from the way the H-A story describes Monday night’s proceedings and quotes Ms. Kopernekas, one might think she was the union’s negotiator instead of the City’s. 

We don’t know how much Ms. Kopernekas’ services cost the City, but we sure wish the mayor or one of the six aldermen who voted to approve this latest exercise in bad public policy – Ald. Marty Maloney (7th) was absent, so his fingerprints aren’t on it, yet – would have asked her and/or the City negotiating team members (City Mgr. Jim Hock, Deputy City Mgr. Julianna Maller and Fire Chief Mike Zywanski) to itemize and explain each of the benefits the City is supposed to be getting from the “new” contract terms, and especially the no-layoff provision. 

That utterly foolish provision is straight out of the political playbook of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, which he employed last year in all its pandering squalor to lock in the re-election support of the state’s largest public employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (“AFSCME”).   Not surprisingly, however, the insipid Quinn now is trying to welsh on his no-layoff bet, recently announcing layoffs of approximately 2,000 AFSCME members while blaming state lawmakers for not appropriating enough money for him to make his political payoffs.  

But at least Quinn may have an escape clause: a state law that makes all state contracts “subject to appropriations.”

Does the City have one of those?  Not one of our elected officials gathered around The Horseshoe Monday night asked about it, and neither attorney Kopernekas nor the City’s negotiating team members mentioned it.  So we’re betting on “no.” 

Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd), Sal Raspanti (4th) and Tom Bernick (6th) also didn’t see the wisdom of either Ald. Dan Knight’s (5th) suggestion of only a 1 or 2 year contract, or Mayor Schmidt’s suggestion that any 3-year deal include a “wage re-opener” that would give the  City the right to re-negotiate just the compensation piece of the contract for that final year, to reflect whatever the economic conditions might be at that time.

Ironically, all six of the aldermen who approved this contract claim to be “fiscal conservatives” which, in light of their votes, may have further debased the meaning of that term.  And none of them, save for Bernick, gave much of an explanation for his vote, although Bernick’s explanation was uber-lame:  if the City didn’t approve the contract, the union could demand arbitration that would take the decision out of the City’s hands and cost the City even more legal fees.

That’s the kind of spineless attitude public officials employ to hold themselves hostage to shameless demands, whether from the public employee unions or the business community.  And it reminds us, in a pathetic rather than humorous way, of the scene in the movie “Blazing Saddles” where the black sheriff holds a gun to his own head and warns all the lily-white citizens of Rock Ridge, sotto voce: “Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!”

Worse yet, by voting for the no-layoff provision, Bernick and his fellow aldermen actually gave away their primary weapon for dealing with an extreme award by a rogue/union-biased arbitrator: layoffs of union personnel to free up the money to pay the increased wages and benefits.  Neither he nor his colleagues seem to grasp Albert Einstein’s maxim: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”  

Which is even more amazing, considering that all six aldermen who voted “yes” on that contract could be characterized as “business people.” 

Do any of them have 3-year employment contracts?  Do any of them have guaranteed wages and guaranteed increases in those wages?  Do any of them have defined benefit retirement plans?  Do any of them have the Civil Service and contractual job protections they once again gave the firefighters?  Do any of them provide this array of benefits to their own employees or subordinates in the private sector?  We’re guessing “no.”

Fortunately, because Mayor Schmidt has indicated he will veto this contract, those six aldermen and Maloney will get another opportunity to vote on this issue.

So, in anticipation of that veto vote, we’re extending the following invitation to all of those aldermen:  Send us your explanations for your votes on the firefighters contract by 5:00 p.m. next Tuesday (Sept. 27) and we will publish them in their entirety (other than for any per se libelous content) as the featured text of next Wednesday’s post (and, if you prefer, also as comments to this post). 

Be forewarned, however, that we reserve the right to comment on your explanations, although that should not deter you if you truly believe your reasoning is sound.

Let’s hear from you guys!

To read or post comments, click on title.

Because there are some “hot” items on the agenda’s of both the Park Ridge City Council and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board who are meeting TONIGHT, we’ve got our quick takes on a few of them for your consideration:

City Firefighters’ Contract: On tonight’s City Council agenda is approval of a new 3-year firefighters’ union contract.  As we’ve said before, we believe multi-year contracts that effectively try to predict future local and national economic conditions by locking-in increases in compensation and/or benefits are foolish; and across-the-board compensation increases not based on greater productivity or other merit are idiotic.   Worse yet, in a separate memorandum (“Appendix E”) attached to the proposed agreement, the City is being asked to give up its right to lay off any current firefighters for the three years the contract is in effect, until April 30, 2014.  That means that, should the economy take a turn for the worse during the next three years, the City will be contractually forbidden from laying off firefighters irrespective of its financial circumstances!

This is bad economics and bad government, but what can you expect from a contract that was negotiated in secret because the union requested secrecy, and City Mgr. Jim Hock and Fire Chief Mike Zywanski agreed to that secrecy without even consulting the mayor or the Council?  That secrecy in the negotiating process becomes even more troubling when you look at the red-lined version of the proposed contract on the City’s website and see a number of changes from the previous agreement, the reasons for most of which are not apparent on their face and are not explained anywhere in that document or otherwise.  That’s just more bad government by the bureaucrats (Hock, Zywanski, et al.) for a special interest (the firefighters’ union). 

Under these circumstances, any alderman who votes to approve such an irresponsible and anti-taxpayer agreement should have the decency to accompany his vote with either a public admission that he is not being fiscally responsible, and/or a public confession that he doesn’t even understand what being “fiscally responsible” means.

Washington Ave. Assisted-Living:  Also on the City Council’s agenda is another episode of “How the Group Homes Turns,” the continuing saga of developer Mark Elliott’s attempt to turn his bad investment in 3 single-home lots into three group homes, purportedly for “frail elderly…who can no longer live on their own without assistance from a care giver” according to Elliott’s most recent “Updated Application Statement” – even though Elliott insists that these homes are not “assisted living” facilities for purposes of City licensing and zoning.

It is becoming clearer as this saga continues that our Zoning Code, despite an extensive (and not inexpensive) re-write several years ago, is ill-equipped to deal directly and efficiently with issues such as are presented by this type of group home concept.  Which is why, if Elliott’s Updated Application Statement is factually accurate and truthful, it would appear that what he is trying to do with his property is lawful, albeit undesirable to many residents in that neighborhood who long have suffered from the anti-social behavior from residents of the adjacent Park Ridge Youth Campus.

What we need, at least for dealing with this current mess, is a formal and unequivocal legal opinion from the City Attorney stating whether the facts and the law support Elliott’s proposed use of his property or not.  If they do, then – like it or not – he has the right to do what he is trying to do with his own property; and he should be allowed to do so.  And then the City should get busy revising its Zoning Ordinance to correct what is looking more and more like the shoddy work product of our highly-paid zoning consultants (Camiros Ltd.) and the citizens who comprised our Zoning Re-Write Task Force.  

D-64 Budget Q & A: Over at Franklin School tonight, the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board will hold its 2011-12 budget “Q & A” session, a week in advance of the planned approval of that budget next Monday night (Sept. 26).  Whether this Q & A session is legitimate or just a perfunctory attempt to create the illusion of transparency and accountability in the budget process remains to be seen.  But, given its 6:00 p.m. start time before many residents are even home from work, much less able to grab a quick bite to eat and head back out the door, we have our doubts.

Of course, the 93-page draft budget is a pretty impenetrable document, even to accountants and attorneys trained and accustomed to dealing with such financial matters; and it lacks detailed explanations of all of the differences between the 2010-11 revenues and expenses versus those in the 2011-12 proposed budget .  So exactly what kind of Qs might be asked from whoever shows up remains to be seen.  But one question that comes to mind is: What specific expenses have gone up over last year (and by how much) so that an almost  $6 million decrease in proposed “Capital Outlay” still leaves only a $2 million reduction in overall budgeted expenses? 

But if you have any questions about the proposed budget, you had better get there on time.  Because once the Board and Administration are done with any pesky questions from the taxpayers, they will be running into closed session to plan how they’re going to give away more of our money when they “negotiate” the District’s upcoming collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union – despite the appearance that the proposed budget already will be giving those teachers more than $3.2 million in salary and benefit increases during the coming budget year.  And, must we remind you, that’s for only 8-9 months of actual work?

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Perhaps one of these days the City and D-64 will put on their inter-governmental cooperation hats and agree to schedule their meetings so that they both don’t hold them on Mondays, thereby forcing interested taxpayers to have to choose which one to attend.  But we’re not going to hold our collective breath waiting for the D-64 Board to voluntarily do anything that might add to its transparency and accountability.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We rarely comment about what the governments of neighboring communities are doing, in large part because the bureaucrats and politicians who run most local governments sing from the same hymn book of non-transparent, unaccountable and often just plain incompetent tax/borrow/spend management as do our own.

But we were especially struck by two blatantly stupid ideas that appeared in the September 7th issue of the Daily-Herald: Des Plaines’ generator rebate program (“Des Plaines approves generator rebate program,” Section 1, Page 4) and Arlington Heights’ overhead sewer rebate program (“Village hall overflows with flood stories,” Section 1, Page 1).  And the reasons we were struck by them is that they both represent the exact same bad public policy of using public money for purely private benefit.

The Des Plaines program would use $22,500 of public funds to reimburse residents for 50% of the cost – up to $250 – of the price of a portable generator.  According to Des Plaines acting City Mgr. Jason Slowinski, the goal of that program is getting as many generators into the hands of residents who don’t currently have them.

What’s wrong with that picture?  In the first place, when did it become the job of local government to promote the sales of portable generators?  More objectionably, it effectively forces somebody who doesn’t want to buy a generator of his own to help pay for the generators of others who do – with any benefits being purely personal to the generator purchasers rather than to the public at large.  And by addressing a symptom rather than the root problem (an inadequate electric infrastructure), it simply kicks that can down the road.

The Arlington Heights program is an even bigger money pit, with the Village paying up to $5,000 per household toward the installation of overhead sewers – which, if they operate as intended, simply diverts one home’s flooding/backup to other homes and/or the public streets and alleys.

Brilliant!

Both of these programs are the kind of warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good expenditures of public funds (or “OPM,” as in “other people’s money”) that bureaucrats and politicians love so much, in large part because it lets them further expand their local governments and play Santa Claus at the same time, with little to no cost to themselves.   And it’s the kind of pork-barrel politics that has put so many local governments in financial distress, and the State of Illinois in an economic iron lung.

Under the Illinois Constitution, public funds are supposed to be expended only where their primary objective is some clearly identified public purpose and where there is a reasonable expectation that the expenditure will substantially achieve that purpose; i.e., the City’s spending $100,000 on Powerball tickets probably wouldn’t satisfy the “reasonable expectation” test.

But those programs by Des Plaines and Arlington Heights aren’t just bad public policy.  They’re the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound, seemingly intended to mask the bureaucrats’ and politicians’ inability to effectively address the underlying problems without having to publicly admit to that inability.

In other words, it’s a kind of fraud on taxpayers.

And it teaches us one other important lesson: when Park Ridge is faced with a problem, looking at what neighboring communities are doing is no substitute for doing the heavy lifting of thinking through our own solution.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Is Park Ridge business-unfriendly? 

We’ve heard such accusations over the past decade or so, both about the City’s ordinances and about the less-than-motivated way some members of City Staff – or, at least, some former City Staff members – respond to the desires of certain businesses and prospective businesses. 

At the same time, we have seen “business friendly” but just plain stupid City initiatives (like the facade improvement program) waste hundreds of thousands of dollars with little measurable return on investment. 

So we found it somewhat instructive to read a couple of recent letters to the editor in the Park Ridge Journal that  criticized City Hall’s anti-business attitude: “A Perfect Fit For Uptown,” by John McGinnis (8/19/11), and “Building Sits Vacant While Offers Come And Go,” by Mike and Maribeth Carroll (8/24/11).  Both of those letters, perhaps not so coincidentally, focused on the former Pioneer Press office building at 130 S. Prospect, which the Carrolls own and which has been vacant ever since Pioneer Press broke camp several years ago.

Let’s start with the McGinnis opus, which blames “city officials” for “killing the historic Uptown shopping district of Park Ridge.”  McGinnis’ postmortem is based on his assertion that City Hall rejected not one but two “upscale businesses” that were interested in that same Prospect address. 

The first, an unidentified “progressive health club” (compared to a “regressive” one?) was purportedly rejected because of “not enough parking” and the property “not [being] zoned for a health club” even though (according to McGinnis) it’s “the perfect location for a health club” – especially for someone like him who claims he “has to travel quite a distance to find a health club close to home.” 

Paging Yogi Berra!

The second of McGinnis’ prospects for Prospect was a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant, which he claims was rejected because of insufficient parking and “limited liquor licenses” and which he brands collectively as “irresponsible zoning hindrances.”  His solution: “Why doesn’t the city purchase or lease one of these [nearby parking] lots to help boost local business?”

Hey, Mr. McGinnis!  Did you ever think of asking the Carrolls and the other building and/or business owners in that area why they don’t purchase or lease one of those lots to help boost their own business, instead of looking for more handouts from the City, a/k/a the taxpayers? 

The City already leases parking space in that vicinity, including the Scharringhausen lot at 20 S. Fairview that Robert Ryan did his best to get the City to buy for $700,000-plus while he was 5th Ward alderman from 2007-11.  Maybe the Scharringhausens would be wiling to chip in that lot as their share of a joint venture parking deck to serve the existing businesses in that part of town and to attract new ones, assuming parking is an attraction and not just an excuse.

The Carrolls’ letter was partially an “us too” to McGinnis’ health club/restaurant anecdote, but with a kicker that raises at least one red flag. 

The Carrolls claim that the City “dismissed any potential tenants related to general office and the medical industry…even though there’s a dentist on one side of the building and Resurrection Medical Group on the other”; and two buildings owned by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists further down that block.  And they further complain that their inquiries to Deputy City Mgr. Juliana Maller about “what kind of business is allowed” in 130 S. Prospect have gone unanswered, while she has told them that chances of a zoning variance “were very slim.”

We don’t know if what McGinnis and the Carrolls wrote is factually accurate or not.  But, frankly, it sounds a little soft and squishy to us, with more un-named “potential tenants” that don’t readily lend themselves to independent verification.   

Nevertheless, it does call into question whether City Staff – in this case, the Deputy City Mgr. whose job description includes economic development – is asleep at the wheel, if not actively discouraging business development.

We would hope that, if McGinnis’ and the Carrolls’ anecdotes are true and they are sincere about their concern for the Uptown business district, they will bring these matters formally to the City Council – via either Ald. DiPietro’s Policy & Procedures Committee, or Ald. Knight’s Finance & Budget Committee – so these matters can get a proper public airing.  But that means naming names other than just Lettuce Entertain You.

Only a few years ago a group of citizens and some well-paid consultants totally rewrote the City’s zoning ordinance, reportedly to reflect current economic reality and to enhance, within reason, the City’s ability to compete with neighboring communities for desirable businesses.  If that effort produced a hostile business climate that is inconsistent with the wishes of the majority of the City’s taxpayers, then it’s time for the City to acknowledge that and go about correcting the situation.

But if, on the other hand, these complaints are just hot air from special interests who want to off-load some of the risks and expense of doing business in Park Ridge on the City and its taxpayers, we should find that out sooner rather than later, too.

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Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt and Finance & Budget Chair Ald. Dan Knight (5th Ward) wanted at least one of the operators of Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) to appear at a City Council meeting and answer some questions about Taste Inc.’s management of Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) – starting with what it did with all the money it made running TOPR as a for-profit Subchapter S corporation from 2005 through 2008, even as it was praising itself as a not-for-profit corporation whose “volunteer” operators never made a penny for their efforts. 

Every last one of the Tastees – Albert Galus, Dave Iglow, Dean Patras, Sandy Svizzero, Barb Tyksinski, John Warnimont, Jackie Matthews and Mel Thillens – basically told Schmidt and the Council (and, indirectly, the taxpayers) to go pound sand: they were too busy, and they would remain too busy until some unspecified future date which, as Schmidt quipped, seemed like “eternity.” 

But while they were laying low (and, perhaps, watching the proceedings live on WOW?) an “unofficial” spokesman showed up at Monday night’s City Council meeting  to rant on their behalf, while disingenuosly (as evidenced by all his “we” references) claiming to be speaking only for himself.

Their champion was none other than former mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, who came out with guns blazing at Schmidt, Knight, and anybody else who might dare even to hint that his Tastee buddies were anything other than Mother Teresas in orange TOPR golf shirts.

Frimark called Schmidt a “liar,” called Knight a Schmidt “lackey,” and accused City Staff of “cooking the books” in calculating the $20,000-plus in direct and indirect costs of all the City services that Taste Inc. received for free again this year.  And he provided a history of TOPR that was so incomplete and distorted that it would stretch the meaning of the term to call it merely “revisionist.” 

But while almost everything Frimark said was, typically, of questionable veracity, one line stood out, even for him:

“[The City] doesn’t own the Taste.  You have to get that through your thick skulls.”

The reason that line stood out is because it may have been the only completely truthful and factually accurate statement Frimark made all evening, because just last Thursday (August 18), Taste Inc. registered the “Taste of Park Ridge” trademark, along with its logo, with the Illinois Secretary of State’s office. 

That’s a pretty slick business/legal move for people who only recently admitted (through a press release) to being so unsophisticated that it took them more than four years to discover a “paperwork error” and figure out that they were a for-profit corporation instead of a not-for-profit one.

The practical effect of this move by Taste Inc. is that if the City chooses to bid out next year’s TOPR, neither the City nor the winning bidder will be able to call the event “Taste of Park Ridge” – unless, of course, the winning bidder is Taste Inc., or the winning bidder gets a license from Taste Inc. to use the name.

While the slickness and the timing of the move surprised us, the attitude it reflects is spot-on for a group of people whose stewardship of TOPR has been a continuous display of secretiveness, self-aggrandizement and arrogance for over 7 years.  Which is why Frimark is the perfect Taste Inc. spokesman: a shameless opportunist who seems to view “government” as little more than a vehicle for letting private individuals and enterprises feed at the public trough.

In other words, Chicago-style government in Park Ridge – compliments of ol’ “Let’s Make A Deal.”

UPDATE (08.25.11)   Just when we thought nothing could be more bizarre than Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark’s emergence Monday night as the unofficial shill for Taste Inc., Howard and the Tastees have produced an unsigned “Memorandum of Understanding” dated 1/1/2006 from head Tastee Dave Iglow (Pine’s Mens Wear) to then-mayor Frimark (naturally), claiming an “understanding” by Taste Inc.’s “directors” that Taste Inc. from that point on had no further financial or reporting obligations to the City.

As Dana Carvey’s “church lady” character used to say on SNL: “Now isn’t that special.”

Not surprisingly, we can find no mention of this Memorandum in any of the admittedly sketchy records on the City’s website for 2006; and we could find no reference to it despite a pretty darn thorough Internet search.  And as best as we can tell, no mention of it ever surfaced in any of the achingly self-serving statements Taste Inc. has issued over the past few years.  So we have to wonder whether it’s just a total scam, or whether it’s something Iglow cooked up a few years back and Frimark stuffed under his mattress just in case Taste Inc.’s (and Frimark’s?) for-profit TOPR scheme was ever discovered and Taste Inc. faced the kind of Council scrutiny it is now under.

We can’t wait to see what the next treasure from the Taste Inc./Frimark Wonder Cave will be.  Could it be a secret 99-year license for Taste Inc.’s exclusive use of Summit Ave. for 4 days each July?  An undated general pardon from then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich?  A “Dude for Supervisor” campaign button?  Jimmy Hoffa?  

When dealing with the likes of Frimark and the Tastees, nothing seems too implausible or outrageous. 

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To nobody’s surprise (least of all ours), none of the folks who operate Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”), the private corporation with the no-bid monopoly on the Taste of Park Ridge event (“TOPR”) since June 2005, showed up at Monday night’s City Council meeting to answer Council questions about their seven-year stewardship of the City’s premier event.

As Mayor Dave Schmidt quipped about the no-show excuses given by Taste Inc. vice-president Albert Galus, it seems like Galus and all of his fellow Tastees – Dave Iglow (Pines Men’s Wear), Dean Patras (Broadway Livery Service), Sandy Svizzero (Parkway Bank), Barb Tyksinski (All on the Road Catering), John Warnimont (Activision Electric), Jackie Matthews (Rainbow Hospice) and Mel Thillens (Thillens Service Corp) – are unavailable to attend a Council meeting “for eternity.”

The Tastees, however, did send the City a well-crafted (albeit undated) “Press Release” that sounds like they’ve already “lawyered up,” as terms like “aldermanic purview” and references to “federally protected rights” and Illinois statutes like “35 ILCS 120/11” don’t normally trip lightly off the tongues of non-lawyers like Mr. Galus or his fellow Tastees.

But the most notable information in that entire Press Release is Taste Inc.’s admission – or maybe it should be called a confession – of what we’ve suspected for a few years: that for the first four years of its existence, Taste Inc. really wasn’t a not-for-profit organization, as the Tastees always claimed when bragging about their thousands of hours of uncompensated volunteer service for TOPR.  Instead, we now find out that Taste Inc. was just a standard for-profit business, the profits from which the Tastees could lawfully treat however they wanted, including by stuffing their pockets with them if they so chose. 

And those profits were enhanced each year at the taxpayers’ expense by approximately $20,000 of free City services “donated” to the for-profit Taste Inc. during 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008; and then donated to the belatedly not-for-profit Taste Inc. for the past 3 years.   

We actually enjoyed, in a twisted sort of way, the Tastees’ “spin” (or was it just an outright lie) about how they didn’t realize they weren’t really a not-for-profit until they discovered “a paperwork error” that made Taste Inc. “an S corporation instead of the 501(c)(6) as desired.”  Yeah, right. 

Even if we bought into that fairy tale, the Tastees should have discovered that “paperwork error” when it came time to file Taste Inc.’s 2005 tax return, since they would have needed their 501(c)(3) or (c)(6) certification from the IRS to file the IRS Form 990 (which not-for-profits file and which are published on GuideStar) instead of the IRS Form 1120S filed by regular “S” corporations that are private and not published on GuideStar.   And they should have had three more of the same “I could have had a V-8” moments with the filing of each of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 tax returns.

And even if we assume the most extreme version of Taste Inc.’s fairy tale, in which the Tastees somehow didn’t discover that “paperwork error” until they closed down the original Taste Inc. and re-incorporated as a 501(c)(6) in March 2009, why did they continue the charade and not admit until August 2011 that Taste Inc. hadn’t been a lawful not-for-profit for its first four years in business? 

Which raises the question of what other TOPR-related things the Tastees have not been truthful about – including what Taste Inc. has done with all the TOPR revenue over the past 7 years, whether any of the Tastees have been taking dough, and/or whether they have been giving sweetheart deals to friends and favored vendors, all while taking the $20,000+ a year in City services.   

That’s what Ald. Dan Knight appears to have been trying to find out when he recently asked Taste Inc. for “cash flow statements” – and what Taste Inc. is trying to prevent the City from finding out when, “exercising its federally protected rights,” it unequivocally refused to produce them.

This being Illinois, schemes and outright scams by people in and around government at any level should no longer surprise us.  That’s why we shouldn’t be surprised by what is looking more and more like a scheme hatched back in 2005 by then-mayor Howard Frimark and the Tastees to hand over TOPR not to an ad hoc committee of the City (as Frimark initially proposed) but to the private Taste Inc. – a scheme that was eagerly rubber-stamped by a semi-clueless City Council that, back then, was too busy dodging all those pro-Frimark purple ribbons to pay any real attention to the no-bid, no accountability giveaway of the City’s premier event.

That’s the way government waste and corruption works in Illinois.  To paraphrase our late U.S. Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen: $20,000 here, $100,000 there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

But the end of Taste Inc.’s TOPR gravy train may be in sight.  The future of TOPR is on the agenda at this coming Monday night’s (08/22/11) Finance & Budget COW, at which F&B may explore alternatives to the TOPR monopoly by the secretive and arrogant Taste Inc. crowd.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (08.22.11)

On Friday, August 19, Taste Inc.’s Albert Galus ratcheted-up his arrogance another few notches by demanding that Mayor Dave Schmidt apologize for Schmidt’s comments about Galus’ and his fellow Tastees’ refusal to appear at last Monday night’s City Council meeting or otherwise provide the Council with various information and documentation about Taste Inc.’s operation of TOPR for the past 7 years.

We think that’s hilarious, in a sick and twisted way:  Having already been caught misleading – if not outright lying to – the citizens of Park Ridge about Taste Inc.’s being a not-for-profit corporation during its first four years of operation, Galus apparently is adopting “the best defense is a good offense” strategy by trying to put Schmidt on the defensive.  We hope Schmidt doesn’t let that happen, because allowing a totally shameless Galus to hijack the debate on Taste Inc.’s continuing monopoly of TOPR and/or to blunt the long-overdue inquiry into whether Taste Inc. actually defrauded the people of Park Ridge would be its own breach of the public trust. 

We feel no need to comment on most of Galus’ self-serving drivel, but a few of his “respect” lines are irresistible:   

• “As an elected official, you owe me, the taxpaying citizen, respect.” 

No, Fatuous Albert, Schmidt doesn’t.  As Edmund Burke noted, an elected official (like Schmidt) owes his constituents his “industry” and his “judgment.”  Schmidt has been plenty industrious in his first two years in office, which is why he has been able to pare the City’s annual deficit down from multi-millions to what we are hearing will be a couple hundred thousand dollar for the just-completed fiscal year, despite having several of his cost-cutting vetoes over-ridden by the Council; and his judgment, especially as it applies to Taste Inc. and TOPR, appears to be spot-on.

• “Additionally, I demand respect from you on behalf of all other volunteers in Park Ridge who strive to build a community that edifies one another.”

You have no right and no authority to demand anything for the true “volunteers” in Park Ridge – the ones who do what they do without sucking money out of the taxpayers’ pockets, without shameless self-aggrandizement and promotion, and who are transparent and accountable to the public for their activities.  In that regard, you appear to have so little in common with those true “volunteers” that your claiming the “volunteer” sobriquet for yourself is itself borderline fraud.

• “When you disrespect me in public fashion as you have done, you disrespect every citizen in Park Ridge.”

No, Albert, you and your fellow Tastees are the ones who have been “disrespect[ing] every citizen in Park Ridge” for the past seven years – and you continue to do it by thinking that those citizens are so stupid and/or gullible that they might actually buy into this latest public relations scheme of yours.  

Obviously, Albert, you missed the memo that most of us got as young kids – the one that says “respect isn’t owed, it’s earned.”

If you and your fellow Tastees want respect, Albert, start earning it by opening the Taste Inc. books and records to prove to this community that Taste Inc. hasn’t been just a self-serving, special-interest, pocket-lining scam since you folks took it over in 2005.  Until you and your fellow Tastees come clean, you’ve already received way more respect – and taxpayer funds – than you deserve.

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Is the don’t-ask, don’t-tell, monopoly of Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) by private corporate operator Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) coming to an end? 

From the ‘tude being copped by Taste Inc.’s top honchos – as expressed in Taste Inc. vice-president Albert Galus’ August 9, 2011 letter in response to City Mgr. Jim Hock’s July 21, 2011 invitation – that looks like a distinct possibility. 

According to Galus, neither he nor any of his fellow honchos can make Monday night’s Council meeting – or, apparently, any other Council meeting for the rest of eternity – to answer Council questions about Taste Inc. and its running of the TOPR event for the past 7 years.  So Galus wants “all questions the Council members have [to] be submitted…in writing” in order that he “may appropriately research for the correct information.”

Fatuous Albert seems to be disregarding the June 8, 2011 e-mail he received from Finance & Budget Chair (and 5th Ward Ald.) Dan Knight, in which Knight asks for, among other things: (a) an explanation of how Taste Inc. “evolved” from what was supposed to be a City committee into an allegedly 501(c)(3), and then a 501(c)(6), private corporation; (b) reasons why TOPR should continue to be run by private corporation Taste Inc. instead of a City committee; (c) all of Taste Inc.’s tax filings “since the organization’s formation”; and (d) Taste Inc.’s “cash flow statements going back as far as possible.”

Hey, Albert, how much “research” would it really take to put that information together? 

From what we’ve seen and heard (and, perhaps more importantly, not seen or heard) from Taste Inc. over the last few years, we have to wonder just how many shenanigans Taste Inc.’s operators have been pulling and covering up since June, 2005, when the TOPR “franchise” was handed over by then-mayor Howard Frimark and a semi-clueless City Council to what was supposed to have been an all-volunteer City committee that would have paid all TOPR profits to the City.

Instead of reaping those profits, however, the City has been getting stuck with the bill for all the City services that Taste Inc. has been using.  This year alone, those services cost the City’s taxpayers a whopping $20,292.41 in direct and indirect City staff expense!

Hey Albert, what happened to all the money TOPR generated for Taste Inc. over the past 7 years? 

For 2005 through 2008, Taste Inc. should have filed IRS Form 990 tax returns that would have been posted on GuideStar.org. – assuming Taste Inc. really was a not-for-profit corporation as its operators constantly claimed, and as the “NFP” (“not for profit”) in its corporate name identified it.  Producing those Form 990s would at least prove that the Tastees weren’t lying to the City Council and the people of Park Ridge all these years about Taste Inc.’s being an NFP.

We also wonder who has been running the beer tent all these years, and where all that money has been going.  We’ve heard rumors that the Maine Twp. Republican organization has a piece of that action which, if true, it presumably acquired back when Bob “The Dude” Dudycz abided as both a Taste Inc. honcho and the Republican Supervisor of Maine Township.  One thing we know for a fact, however, is that Taste Inc. displayed its appreciation to The Dude by spending $1,000 of its profits on a table at his retirement party back in 2007.

Hey, Albert, can you say “Busted”?

In addtion to whoever has been profiting from the beer tent, we wonder whether some of those unidentified TOPR vendors who have been providing Taste Inc. with various goods and services all these years may have been receiving sweetheart deals.  Could it be possible that Taste Inc. may have helped a favored few of those vendors’ bottom lines by paying a premium for things like insurance, electrical wiring and lighting, transportation, public relations, food, those nifty orange golf shirts, etc. – or even paying for stuff it never received?  After all, Taste Inc. has no actual shareholders to beef about profligate spending on such sweetheart deals.

For these reasons and more, we’re betting Taste Inc. finally has realized the jig is up and that it’s time to sneak away before the public picks up on these cues and starts demanding to know whether the Tastees have pocketed any of the profits generated by Taste Inc.’s no-bid monopoly of TOPR.  By getting out now, the Tastees can leave with all their secrets preserved, whatever money they may have pocketed undiscovered, and with the easy excuse that they were driven away by Mayor Schmidt, Ald. Knight, and even this “evil blog.”

Hey, Albert, you guys planning on using that 501(c)(6) status to finance any political campaigns with the remaining Taste Inc. funds?

Frankly, on one hand we are a little surprised that those local merchants who run Taste Inc. – Dave Iglow (Pines Men’s Wear), Galus (Academic Tutoring Centers), Dean Patras (Broadway Livery Service), Sandy Svizzero (Parkway Bank), Barb Tyksinski (All on the Road Catering), John Warnimont (Activision Electric), Jackie Matthews (Rainbow Hospice) and Mel Thillens (Thillens Service Corp) – don’t seem to have enough integrity or even the common courtesy to appear before the City Council and provide the transparency and the accountability that has been missing from TOPR since Taste Inc. took over. 

If they didn’t pocket any dough, they’ve got nothing to hide – although if they weren’t getting any direct or indirect benefits from running TOPR, they could have done it as a City committee, as the deal was originally sold to the City Council back in June 2005.

But on the other hand, Taste Inc.’s (through Galus’ letter) telling the City (and its taxpayers, many of whom are TOPR patrons) to pound sand is pretty much what we here at PublicWatchdog have come to expect from those individual Tastees. 

Thanks, guys (and gals), for not disappointing.

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