Two agenda items for tonight’s City Council COW meeting caught our attention: Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti’s attempt to scale-back the “supermajority” requirement for over-riding decisions of the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”); and the renewal of the City’s lease for parking spaces on the Scharringhausen family’s 20-22 S. Fairview lot.

*                                   *                                   *

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Allegretti has been trying to finagle a way for the City Council to get around P&Z’s refusal to approve a zoning code amendment to permit Generation Group, Inc. to erect 4 billboards along the Tri-State Tollway.  On November 16, 2009, the Council rejected Allegretti’s proposal to let the Council trump P&Z decisions by simple majority vote and, instead, approved Third Ward Ald. Don Bach’s proposal to give the Council P&Z trumping power by a “supermajority” vote.

From the video of that 11/16 meeting (in contrast to City Clerk Betty Henneman’s sanitized meeting minutes), however, it is clear that Bach understood “supermajority” to be measured by only the aldermen, not by the aldermen and the mayor – the latter of which is how the term “city council” is defined in the State of Illinois municipal code and not otherwise defined in the Park Ridge municipal code.  That would explain why Bach, on at least two occasions during that November meeting, referred to “four versus five” when comparing majority to supermajority voting.   

So when Bach pointedly proclaimed, at the 2:31:55 mark of the April 12, 2010, COW meeting video, that “[he] knew [he] was asking for six votes” when he made his “supermajority” proposal back on November 16th, he may have been engaging in a bit of creative truth-telling, as well as some character re-building.  Which is understandable, considering how mindful he needs to be of having his competence doubted as he begins gearing up for a re-election bid next April that could serve as a springboard to a possible run for mayor in 2013.

But if Bach really meant it when he said at that April 12, 2010, COW meeting – that, back in November, he wanted “to make it as difficult for [the Council] to overturn [P&Z’s] expert recommendations as [the Council] could without leaving too much …wiggle room” – then we’ve got what we will call, immodestly, the best solution to this issue: forget about all this “supermajority” foolishness and simply require nothing less than a unanimous Council vote to trump any P&Z decision.

If a P&Z decision is so wrong the Council needs to trump it, then the Council should be able to muster a unanimous vote to do so.

We doubt that Bach has the stones to propose such a thing but it would be worth the price of admission, if only to see how quickly Allegretti could turn purple and start spinning dervishly in his chair.

*                                   *                                   *

In June 2008, we questioned the City’s leasing of 50 spaces from the SCH Real Estate, LLC, a venture operated by the Scharringhausen family and represented by Patrick Owens of Park Ridge’s first family of law, Owens Owens & Rinn (“The Politics Of Park Ridge Parking,” 06/04/08). Back then we questioned the deal in view of the fact that the City was going to pay the Scharringhausens $500/space/year while it was leasing spaces from the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists for only $140/space/year. 

Last year’s lease [pdf] changed that from 50 spaces to 57 spaces, and from $500/space/year to $360/space/year.

This year’s lease [pdf] has the City paying the same rental for the same number of spaces.  But for some strange reason the proposed lease term is only for 6 months with an automatic six month renewal, instead of for one year.  And for some other strange reason the lease can be terminated on one-month’s notice rather than on six-month’s notice.

We’re not necessarily saying there’s anything kinky about this latest lease, but we do wonder why those two points weren’t flagged as notable changes from last year’s deal in Cathy Doczekalski’s “Agenda Cover Memorandum” to the COW [pdf].

Could it be that the Scharringhausens have some plans in the works for that lot that may come due before the end of the upcoming lease year?  Or is this 6-month lease with a 1-month out simply designed to give the Scharringhausens some special mid-term bargaining power?

One thing is certain: if either Cathy D or her boss, City Mgr. Jim Hock, know the answers, they sure aren’t sharing them with the members of the City Council.

Park Ridge resident Ken Balaskovits is at it again.

This week’s Park Ridge Journal carries another letter from Kenny B (“Council Must Stay At Seven,” April 21) arguing against restoring the City Council to the 14 alderman size it had for close to 100 years – before it was cut in half through a referendum initiated by former mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark.

Although he would never admit it, we’re pretty certain that cutting the Council in half was Frimark’s strategy for making it easier to control City government: it’s easier to elect a 4-alderman majority than an 8-alderman one.  And Frimark was instrumental in recruiting and helping elect the current Council majority Alds. Jim Allegretti, Don Bach, Robert Ryan and Tom Carey in 2007 – another one of Frimark’s “gifts” to the City that keeps on giving – who, 2 years later, returned the favor by contributing over $3,200 to Frimark’s unsuccessful re-election campaign.

The central thrust of Balaskovits’ letter is his more-aldermen-mean-more-uncontested-elections spiel, which ignores the fact that the 14-member City Council produced more contested races in the past decade than the other three 7-member local governmental bodies (School District 207, School District 64, and the Park Ridge Park District) combined!  From 2001 through 2005 (the last election year for the 14-member City Council), the Council had 35 candidates for 21 seats, compared to 16 candidates for 12 seats on the Park Board, 13 candidates for 12 seats on the District 64 board, and 14 candidates for 11 seats on the District 207 board – and that’s including 2001, the last year of Homeowners Party domination, where 6 of the seven HOs ran uncontested.   

But Kenny B was never one to let facts get in the way of a totally bogus argument, especially one of his own.

Balaskovits warns readers of his letter: “Do not sign this petition and, if you have, make an effort to have your name removed.”  In other words, don’t let the matter even get on the ballot.

Frankly, we think a referendum on restoring the size of the City Council is worthy of voter consideration…certainly a lot more worthy than at least one of the 3 referenda proposed by Ald. Bach: Whether to reinstate the position of City Treasurer, which was a worthless one before it was eliminated in 2005 and has no realistic prospects for providing any greater value if reinstated.

So we applaud the restore-the-Council petition circulators for their efforts; and we encourage the voters to help them put this important issue on the November 2010 ballot. 

The Park Ridge City Council has voted to pass a budget which Mayor Dave Schmidt has described as “hopelessly flawed” and has said he will veto.  

The reasons Schmidt cites for that conclusion are many, including his belief that City Mgr. Jim Hock’s revenue projections are seriously overestimated, as they were – by a whopping $2.1 million – for the current budget year; and the budget’s failure to address the $936,000 reduction in state tax revenue sharing that Gov. Pat Quinn already proposed, and that state rep. Rosemary Mulligan already warned the Council about.  

Schmidt also takes issue with the $165,000 budgeted to battle O’Hare Airport, especially the hiring of a lobbyist at $105,000 which he called “a colossal waste of money.  And he questions how the Council could justify cutting personnel from the City’s police, fire and public works departments but then donate $186,000 of public funds to private community organizations, with no strings attached.  

We agree with Schmidt.  This budget, like last year’s and the year before that, is unworthy of the taxpayers who pay for City government and deserve better.  

Which is why we hope the Mayor will veto the whole damned thing – because simply cutting some line item expenses here and some there won’t address structural defects like Hock’s inflated revenue estimates.  But anything that displays some sense of fiscal reality and restraint, even line item vetoes, will be a welcome change from the irresponsible tax and spend mentality of the aldermen who outnumber him around The Horseshoe.  

To get a real sense of the intellectual deficiencies on display last Saturday prior to the passage of this “hopelessly flawed” budget, we strongly encourage you to watch the meeting video posted both on the City’s website and on Park Ridge Underground.

Meanwhile, we’ll give you a taste from both the video and from quotes in yesterday’s on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate article (“Park Ridge mayor promises veto of ‘hopelessly flawed’ budget,” April 20)…with our comments, of course (in bracketed bold): 

“When you are laying off people and seriously affecting their lives and then turning around and giving money to community groups that will survive without donations, I think that is not right,” [1st Ward Ald. Joe] Sweeney said. [Not only is it “not right,” it’s irresponsible public policy and only encourages those organizations to remain dependent on handouts from  various governmental bodies rather than on voluntary contributions from donors who may actually believe in those organizations, their missions, and their management. Or does that explain the need for all the government handouts?] 

Fifth Ward Ald. Robert Ryan: “I want [the City Manager] to look for how you can outsource public works, even fire [protection].” [So you can throw $165,000 of our tax money at a no-win fight against O’Hare, or $186,000 at various private community organizations that don’t have to account to the City or the taxpayers for how they spend that money, or even on whether they spend it for the benefit of Park Ridge residents?] 

“[This budget] is both fiscally and socially irresponsible,” 2nd Ward Ald. Don Bach said. [How is it “socially irresponsible”? What “social” activities are the taxpayers supposed to fund through our City taxes?] 

“It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do,” said 4th Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti. [That pretty much identifies the main problem with this City Council.] 

“I hate a lot of pieces of this budget. I hope the mayor will look to his ability to exercise veto in certain areas,” said 7th Ward Ald. Frank Wsol. [So why did you wimp out and vote for it?]

And the last word, coming from Allegretti while arguing to close debate and approve the budget: “If we can’t come to an agreement on what [the budget] means, shame on us.” [Exactly!]

A quote erroneously attributed to 19th Century Germany’s “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, warns that “laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” 

Anyone who sat through Saturday morning’s special City Council budget meeting and watched the Council “debate” and pass the 2010-11 City budget ordinance can appreciate the sausage quote.  Actually, what came out of City Hall Saturday morning wasn’t even high-quality sausage (although it was a lot of baloney) but more like that second-tier lunchmeat kids never want to find in the sandwiches they pull from their brown bags at school – stuff like olive loaf or head cheese.  

From the comments of the aldermen, it seemed like none of them believed the finished product was actually “balanced” – even Alds. Jim Allegretti, Tom Carey, Rich DiPietro, Robert Ryan and Frank Wsol who, in lemming-like fashion, voted to adopt it. 

Some of them questioned the accuracy of the revenue figures, suggesting that City Mgr. Jim Hock took a page from the playbook of his predecessor, Tim Schuenke, and basically just made up whatever revenue figures he thought he needed to off-set the expenses he and/or the Council were locking in.  Others didn’t like some of the spending, but couldn’t muster enough votes to defeat it.  And at least one alderman said he was voting to approve the budget but would support a mayoral veto of what he was voting for. 

We’ve never been overly impressed with the intelligence, the historical knowledge, or the analytical powers of Allegretti, Carey and Ryan, nor the spine of DiPietro.  So their votes in favor of a bad budget were not unexpected.  

Wsol’s vote, however, was disappointing because he definitely knows better.  So when he explained that he was voting for passage but would consider supporting Mayor Schmidt’s veto, we realized that “Frankie, the Politician” had returned and was playing some political angle either for his own aggrandizement or to put Schmidt in a trick bag.  Because for those of you who don’t remember, this is the same “Frankie the Politician” who wanted to saddle the City with a couple of decades worth of $1 million-a-year debt service payments for the big new cop shop that Frankie (and others on the Council) so desperately wanted. 

It should be noted that Alds. Don “Air Marshall” Bach and Joe Sweeney voted “no” on the budget, although neither really explained why, other than to voice general dissatisfaction with it.  But leave it to Bach to once again display the kind of fiscal policy disconnects that make him seem either exceptionally dull-witted or borderline schizophrenic.

After voting to retain that ridiculous $165,000 appropriation for the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission in the budget, Bach orchestrated the purely symbolic reduction of elected official compensation to $1 per month – from the current $100/month for the aldermen, and from the current $1,000/month for the mayor.  In other words, Bach is willing to waste $165,000 on tilting at the O’Hare windmill in order to save a symbolic $20,400.  Brilliant! 

But coming from the guy who, back in January 2008, vowed not to buy another Cadillac from the “insulting” Bill Napleton but in the next breath voted to give Napleton up to $2.4 million from the City treasury, neither consistency nor reason should be expected when it comes to spending public funds. 

Will the City end up chopping 4 cops from the payroll May 1 because the Council would rather send $165,000 of our tax dollars to the O’Hare Airport Commission and another $186,000 to all those private community organizations that the taxpayers themselves aren’t willing to support with their own direct donations?  

Will Mayor Schmidt veto the whole budget, or just a few line items?  If so, will the Council once again muster the five votes needed to over-ride the mayor’s veto? 

Those questions will be answered in the upcoming few weeks.  Meanwhile, however, we encourage every Park Ridge resident who cares about how our City is being run and how our money is being spent to watch the video of yesterday’s meeting when it becomes available on the City’s website. 

But be forewarned: you might never want to eat sausage again.

Last night’s public hearing on the 2010-11 budget went on for over two hours before recessing to tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 9:00 a.m., assuming that doesn’t violate State law regarding advance notice of meetings.

That procedural move was made at the suggestion of Mayor Schmidt, who sharply criticized City Mgr. Jim Hock for not posting updated budget information on the City’s website until only hours before last evening’s hearing.  The mayor correctly pointed out that residents were being badly served by such a process that seemed intended to keep them in the dark until the last minute.

The mayor is right.  It looks like Hock is playing hide-and-seek with budget figures, or he’s badly overmatched by his job.  Either way, the result is that the Council seems ready to approve a budget that is so poorly documented it causes us to wonder whether even the aldermen know exactly what it is they will be voting for.  And, amazingly, when questioned about whether the City could post a “red-lined” version of the budget that showed the changes from the version he originally proposed, Hock claimed to be unable to do so!

And we’re paying Mr. Hock almost $200,000 a year, all in, for this kind of performance?

The aldermen showed few reactions to the comments from the citizens who addressed the Council, the vast majority of whom voiced support for keeping all of our police and firemen while at the same time criticizing the $165,000 budgeted for the O’Hare Airport Commission.  So it’s hard to tell whether any minds were changed.  And Ald. Jim Allegretti was MIA altogether.

The good news about last night’s meeting is that it was SRO, with about 15 people standing out in the hallway listening to the proceedings over the sound system.  Interestingly enough, it looked like the O’Hare Airport Commission and most of the private community organizations (with the notable exception of Center of Concern) were unrepresented.

Will the Council heed the comments of the citizenry?  Tune in tomorrow, City Hall, 9:00 a.m.

There’s a big poker game in Park Ridge tonight. 

We suspect all the players will be wheelin’ and dealin’, bluffin’ and blusterin’, some holding cards close to the vest, others tipping one or two – as one might expect when the “pot” exceeds $50 million.  Some of the players will hold ’em, some will fold ’em.  And by the end of the night, some will walk away, one or two might even run.

The poker game is what the City Council will play during and immediately following the “public hearing” on the City’s 2010-11 budget scheduled for 7:00 p.m., which is the taxpayers’ last chance to comment on how the City is going to tax us and spend our money during the upcoming fiscal year. 

Although these public hearings have been sparsely attended in past years, this year might be SRO if all the special interests (police, fire, the O’Hare Airport Commission, seniors, private community groups, etc.) show up.  After all, they have to make sure they get the deal the City Council has already promised them, and not some watered-down version.

Will any plain old ordinary taxpayers show up in sufficient numbers to off-set all the special interests in the audience and cause our City officials to finally act in a fiscally responsible way?  We can only hope. but we’re not holding our breath.

Will the budget be balanced by evening’s end?  We can only hope.  But that will depend in large part on whether the revenue projections City Mgr. Jim Hock and his Staff have produced are credible.  Frankly, they seem overly-optimistic to us, especially in view of all the unenthusiastic economic forecasts for the coming year and our memories of all the pie-in-the-sky revenue projections that didn’t pan out and produced the torrent of red ink that has filled the City’s ledger for 9 of the last 10 years. 

It will also depend on whether all the proposed expense cuts can actually be achieved, something called into question by the story in Tuesday’s on-line Herald-Advocate (“Budget hearing: Debate over public safety cuts goes on,” April 13) that reports on the impasse between the City and the police union on how to save the jobs of four officers.  The police department reportedly still has to cut $283,768 from its budget in order to retain those four low-seniority officers – which could be done by things like an annual $6,500 pay reduction for every officer on the force; or by an additional $8 increase (above and beyond the already-approved $5 increase) in the price of vehicle stickers; or by a variety of furlough arrangements; or by things like cutting the funding to the O’Hare Airport Commission and the private community groups; or by a combination of several of these alternatives, and others.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t account for the prospect of $936,000 less revenue than Hock budgeted, if the Illinois General Assembly goes along with Gov. Quinn’s proposal to cut 30% from the state income tax payments scheduled to be sent to municipalities like Park Ridge.  Despite our own state rep (Rosemary Mulligan) telling the Council to expect that cut, the folks sitting around The Horseshoe – with the notable exceptions of Mayor Schmidt and Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward) – are like kids whistling past the graveyard, refusing to even acknowledge that looming danger.

Which pretty much convinces us that what the taxpayers of Park Ridge are getting, once again, is another budget fast-shuffle from City Mgr. Hock and a complicit City Council – a fast-shuffle designed to minimize public scrutiny and understanding of the proposed budget necessary for ordinary citizens to ask the tough questions before tonight’s public hearing and the adoption of the budget expected immediately thereafter.

The evidence?

Let’s start with Hock, who claims to have a “contingency plan” of expense cuts to cope with that potential 30% revenue reduction from the State.  What are those cuts?  Hock’s not committing to any, which suggests he’s either talking through his hat, or that what he’s come up with is so questionable or ridiculous that it wouldn’t pass the smirk test if subjected to any real scrutiny.

If Hock were being straight with the taxpayers, each of the specific cuts of his “contingency plan” would have been publicized and posted on the City’s website immediately after he announced that he had such a plan, back at the March 31, 2010 budget COW meeting. 

The same goes for the “red-lined” version of Hock’s budget book showing all the changes that the Council has already approved, copies of which we understand he distributed to the Council at Monday night’s COW meeting but have yet to made it to the City’s website. 

Why wasn’t that information available to the taxpayers well enough in advance of tonight’s public hearing so that it could be reviewed?

By now it should be obvious to all but the legally blind why Mayor Schmidt wanted to start these budget discussions months earlier than Hock and the Council did.  Unfortunately, Hock and the Council won that battle, and we’re now back to the kind of eleventh-hour rush-to-judgment that characterized past budgets, and which started and continued the City down the current path to financial instability.

So expect to see a lot of wagering tonight, with money from here going to there, money from there going elsewhere, and not a lot of reliable countin’ going on.  Don’t be surprised if you can’t follow what’s getting cut, what’s getting funded, what’s staying the same, and whether and how the budget balances.  Or doesn’t. 

That’s the way the fast shuffle is done: Hock and the aldermen don’t want to actually do a final count of the money while they’re still sittin’ at the table with the public hanging around.

As Kenny Rodgers sings: “There’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done.”

In yesterday’s editorial, “The Illinois Spiral,” the Chicago Tribune editorial board noted that Illinois got itself into the economic mess it currently faces via “the Law of Accumulation: Little things add up.” 

A lot of phrases from that Tribune editorial describing State government are equally applicable to City of Park Ridge government. 

Like the State of Illinois, Park Ridge also has gotten itself into a downward spiral of its own by a lot of little things adding up over the years.  For example, previous mayors and aldermen found it easier to pander to a variety of short-term special interests than to comprehensively build toward the City’s long-term future – such as by borrowing tens of millions for a frill like the Uptown Redevelopment TIF that continues to suck millions out of the City treasury, instead of taxing and borrowing fewer millions for infrastructure essentials like sewer maintenance and replacement.  

Emulating their counterparts down in Springfield, another “little thing” our politicians did was form a “mutual admiration society” with our City employees, creating a system of automatic annual raises and increased benefits unrelated to increases in productivity.  And because residents displayed so little interest in demanding a fiscally-responsible City government, the politicians and bureaucrats alike found little to worry about in the way of accountability, either on a day-to-day basis or at the ballot box.

One would think that the recession would have given City government the incentive to re-invent itself.  But like our State Capitol, it appears our City Hall “brims with defensive, small-think pols hoping to survive another election” while “dithering through a crisis, inviting an even more bleak future with their refusal to reform government spending.”

Which might explain (about as well as anything can) Ald. Don “Air Marshall” Bach, joined by Alds. Jim Allegretti, Robert Ryan and Tom Carey, voting for a “little thing” like budgeting $165,000 – including $105,000 for our very own lobbyist! – to once again tilt at the O’Hare windmill, even as the federal government bestows $410 million for O’Hare expansion.  The chances of that $165,000 having any significant effect on the O’Hare situation?  None.  But those aldermen appear to be betting that it will ingratiate them to those Belle Plaine folks who act like O’Hare’s existence was just revealed by a burning bush. 

Another “little thing” those same four aldermen, along with Ald. Rich DiPietro, also approved was to give more unrestricted handouts of tax dollars ($185,680) to private community groups who have no legal accountability to the taxpayers.  Once again, several special interests get greased in the hope that they won’t squeak, and that they will say nice things about their City Council benefactors.

Meanwhile, the Council continues to disregard the prospect of a $936,000 cut in the City’s share of state income tax revenues as proposed by Governor Quinn, which the Council already has been warned about by State Rep. Rosemary Mulligan.  That might be nothing more than political posturing, but the Council ignores it at its – and, more importantly, our – peril. 

The Council plans to vote on adopting this questionable budget Thursday night (April 15), following a public hearing at 7:00 p.m.  In referring the budget from committee to the Council for final approval, DiPietro noted that not many citizens show up for those hearings.  We suspect the Council is sincerely hoping that’s the case again this year, so they can dodge this particular bullet without much more attention. 

That causes us to echo one other comment from yesterday’s Tribune editorial: Park Ridge “needs leaders who [will] unwind the terrible indebtedness that lawmakers past and present have bequeathed to taxpayers and their grandchildren.”

Because one thing is certain: we sure don’t have them now.

We here at PublicWatchdog are fans of charity, including all those “charitable” private community organizations which provide a variety of services that (we are told) contribute to the “character” of our community.  Which is why, back in the summer of 2008, we encouraged our readers to make voluntary contributions to the Center of Concern (“A Great Time To Support Our Center Of Concern,” 06/16/08). 

But as much as we support and encourage voluntary private contributions to those private organizations, we oppose with equal vigor the contribution of tax dollars forcibly collected by governmental bodies (like the City of Park Ridge) to those very same organizations.

Why?  Because it is, plainly and simply, bad public policy. 

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government,” stated James Madison, as a member of Congress in a speech in the House of Representatives in January 1794.  In 1887, President Grover Cleveland expressed a similar sentiment: “I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds…[as] I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”

Both Madison and Cleveland were not opposed to charitable contributions, just to those contributions being made by government from public funds.

But if the City’s 2010-11 budget is passed “as is” following last Wednesday night’s budget workshop, $185,680 will be taken from the pockets of Park Ridge taxpayers during the coming fiscal year and put in the pockets of the Center of Concern, Meals on Wheels, the Brickton Art Gallery, the Kalo Foundation, and a number of other private organizations; and in the pocket of the quasi-private Senior Center.

For those of you who care about things like police and fire protection, and who understand that responsible budgeting often requires hard choices that sometimes call for robbing Peter to pay Paul, that $185,680 represents almost the full cost of two police officers or firefighters.  And it also represents a good chunk of the extra $5 the Council voted to tack onto the annual cost of your vehicle sticker.

Not surprisingly, two of the principal sponsors of this year’s version of that long-standing bad policy are Alds. Don Bach (3rd) and Robert Ryan (5th), both of whom act and sound like they hold the moral high-ground whenever they talk about these kinds of contributions.  Just last Wednesday night Ryan endorsed these kinds of contributions by claiming that “Park Ridge is a caring community” that wants the Council to make these contributions.

But if the residents of Park Ridge really wanted to make these contributions, they could and would have already made them directly out of their own pockets.  The fact that they haven’t raises an important question that underlies the policy positions expressed by Madison and Cleveland:  What’s “moral” about giving somebody else’s money to the charity of your choice, especially when that money is effectively confiscated from those other somebodies by taxation?

Throwing money at these organizations in this way is also dishonest, because it is unrelated to the nature, kind and amount of services each of these organizations provides to Park Ridge residents.

If funding these organizations is truly something a majority of Park Ridge residents wants the City to do with our tax dollars, the honest way to do it would be for the City to contract to pay a specific amount for each unit of service provided to Park Ridge residents; e.g., X dollars for each meal on wheels delivered to a qualified Park Ridge resident, X dollars for each night of housing provided to a Park Ridge resident by the Center of Concern, X dollars for each concert in the park, etc.

Neither those private organizations nor our aldermen, however, are even suggesting that kind of quid pro quo.  That’s because it ultimately requires accountability – both from the organizations to show what they are providing, to whom, and at what cost; and from the aldermen, to show why they are giving our money away, and why they are giving it to some private organizations but not to others.

So don’t hold your breath waiting for that kind of accountability from either group…unless you look good in blue.

On Wednesday we noted how a proposed budget that started Monday night’s City Council Committee of the Whole meeting being $227,000 in the red seemed to get redder as the night wore on and more spending was added.  Wednesday night’s budget workshop, however, made Monday night’s spending spree look tame by comparison, even though the Council claims to now have a “balanced” budget – thanks to a proposed $5 increase in the price of the City vehicle sticker.

We’re not sure how that modest bump in vehicle sticker pricing did that trick, especially since the Council added a variety of new expenses, including the tentative approval of Ald. Don “Air Marshall” Bach’s proposal to add $165,000 in expenses to address O’Hare expansion issues, including an allowance of $10,000 for “community awareness” and another $105,000 for our very own lobbyist to persuade the FAA, members of Congress, the airlines, etc. to stop running air traffic down the Belle Plaine Corridor.  

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  And the Council’s conduct proves him right yet again.

For the amnesiacs on the Council and throughout Park Ridge, between 1994 and 2003, the City spent in excess of $1 million of our tax dollars fighting O’Hare and “investing” in an airport down in Peotone, all while a member of the Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”).  That failed to stop O’Hare expansion, and the Peotone “investment” was a total bust.  From 2003 to last year, the two remaining members of SOC (Bensenville and Elk Grove Village) continued to pour money into more legal battles, also without success. 

$50,000 of the budgeted $165,000 is earmarked for “environmental” studies, even though we understand that none of the previous studies of noise and air pollution conclusively attributed dangerous levels of either exclusively to the airplanes flying thousands of feet overhead – as distinguished from, for example, all the ground-level pollutants generated by the vehicle traffic on the Kennedy Expressway to the South, and on the Tri-State Tollway to the West. 

So what makes these guys sitting around The Horseshoe now think that another $165,000 will do what the previous $1 million-plus couldn’t? 

Did anybody stop and think that the $105,000 these guys are budgeting for a lobbyist is probably less than what the City of Chicago’s team of lobbyists spends each year just on U.S.D.A. prime beef at Morton’s and Sam & Harry’s for FAA and Congressional honchos?  Or that the same $105,000 would more than pay for one Park Ridge cop or firefighter?

Taxpayers should at least be grateful that nobody seconded Ald. Robert Ryan’s (5th) proposal to spend $200,000 on fighting O’Hare, with the added money going for legal fees.  Ryan apparently just can’t grasp the fact that all of the court challenges to O’Hare expansion and operations over the years have been spectacularly expensive and equally unsuccessful.

In making their cases for budgeting money to fight O’Hare, Bach ranted about how Park Ridge has “backed down and backed down and backed down” from Chicago and the FAA until it now faces “a crisis of epic proportions,” while Ryan railed about the “environmental degradation” impacting Park Ridge.  Given that kind of demagoguery, we’re surprised they stopped short of issuing dire warnings of higher rates of cancer, tuberculosis and birth defects among our residents because of O’Hare.  That sure would boost our property values, wouldn’t it?

Frankly, earmarking $165,000 to fight O’Hare won’t make or break a $50 million+ budget.  But the flabby/flaccid thinking and the pandering decision-making it reveals calls into question the validity of every other decision these City Council members have made – and will continue to make – in formulating the 2010-11 budget.

If they’re willing to throw $165,000 of our tax dollars to the wind on O’Hare, how much more are they throwing away on other equally misguided frolics?

At the start of Monday night’s City Council Finance & Budget Committee of the Whole meeting, the City’s proposed 2010-11 budget was still projecting a $227,000 deficit.  Where it ended up at the end of the night is anybody’s guess.

By our very rough count, the Council added between $1/2 million and $1 million to that deficit.  But that’s without the $200,000+ in handouts to private community groups that City Mgr. Jim Hock left out of the budget, which will almost certainly be added back before the smoke clears and the budget is passed, even if it means wringing “voluntary” donations out of Park Ridge residents through a $10 increase in vehicle tags, or some other such subterfuge for another tax increase above the 5% that is already in the proposed budget.

We think it would make sense for the Council to post an oversized black/white board for keeping a very visible running tally of how the deficit goes up or down each time an alderman opens his mouth at these sessions.  That way, the taxpayers and the press – and even the aldermen themselves – could see, in “real time,” the tangible results of the various proposals, ideas and musings they were spouting throughout Monday night’s festivities and are likely to continue spouting until the budget is passed at the end of April.

But that would come too close to making the aldermen accountable.  And few politicians, even at the local level, are looking for any additional personal accountability for what they purport to do in the best interest of their constituents.

Frankly, we wish those of you who weren’t in attendance Monday night could watch the video of that meeting and see the circus for yourselves.  But now that City Staff has undertaken the uploading and hosting of meeting videos (still being filmed by volunteers George Kirkland and Charles Melidosian, fortunately), the most recent meeting you can currently (as of 8:00 a.m. today) view is the 3/22/10 COW meeting. (Feel free to insert “good enough for government work” here)

So for the time being you will need to be content with what you can read in the two local papers, as well as in what our dear friend, former mayor Howard Frimark, liked to call “the evil blogs.”

Which is too bad, because some moments lose so much in the translation to simple black print on white paper and really need to be seen to be properly appreciated. 

Like when Ald. Frank Wsol (7th) earnestly looked out at the massed police and firefighters in the audience and told them they would need to cooperate in the restoration of the personnel who were eliminated in the proposed budget – presumably by their respective unions accepting a significant number of furlough days (totaling approx. $700,000 in savings to the City) to get to what Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd) termed “budget neutral.”

Or like when Ald. Tom Carey (6th) erupted (by Carey standards, at least) at Hock for letting the Council debate and approve cutting the position of Deputy City Manager now held by Juliana Maller, and move to restore the Economic Development Director position held by Kim Uhlig, only to have Hock reveal that Uhlig had already resigned.    

Or like Carey coming up with a “formula” to give tax dollars to the private community organizations, which formula is calculated not by the amount of services to Park Ridge residents that is provided by those organizations, but only by how much money can be saved by cutting actual City of Park Ridge employees and expenses in a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” arrangement.

So make sure you get those local papers and read the “evil blogs.”  Or you can watch the video of these and other points of interest on the City’s YouTube site.

Say, maybe, in another week or two.