Park Ridge Alderman James Allegretti and the consummate Park Ridge insider, prominent local attorney Jack Owens, are leading the charge for a billboard company that wants to put four 80-foot billboards on the west end of Park Ridge, along Interstate 294.

Whether that’s a good or a bad idea is a matter of opinion.  In the case of Park Ridge City government, the “opinion” that matters historically has been that of the members of the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”).  But Allegretti and a majority of his Council chums are trying to change that.  And “Mr. Insider” Owens is more than happy to help them.

Presumably, Owens is being well paid to change the City zoning ordinance for his client, billboard company Generation Group, Inc.  And as Allegretti constantly reminds us, he is poorly-paid to represent the residents of Park Ridge’s 4th Ward. 

But if Allegretti is going to keep on accepting his $100/month to sit in one of those nice chairs around the City Council horseshoe, we would expect him to be something more than a lackey for special interests like Generation Group.

Or was it just a coincidence that Generation Group, Inc. contacted Allegretti directly, rather than going to P&Z, when it made its initial pitch for a text amendment to the City’s zoning code so that its billboards would be allowed?  And was it just a coincidence that Allegretti has led the charge to have the City be identified as the applicant – as Generation Group’s stooge surrogate – for the pro-billboard text amendment?

This week’s Herald-Advocate (“Zoning panel’s message: Don’t place your ad here,” Nov. 17), reports that P&Z commissioner Anita Rifkind criticized the “subterfuge by the City Council to take over the application for Generation,” only to be upbraided by Allegretti.

“It’s truly a pet peeve of mine that with virtually everything the City Council is asked to do, someone says we’re in somebody’s pocket — or potentially in somebody’s pocket — and somehow getting a campaign contribution from them,” Allegretti reportedly complained.

Gee, Jimbo, how would anybody ever get the idea that you would be questioned about your motives when acting as a public official?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that he contributed $300 [pdf] to Howard Frimark’s election campaign in March, 2005, but made no mention of that fact during his rather lengthy confirmation hearing as Frimark’s hand-picked aldermanic successor in June of that year – before Frimark’s campaign disclosure report made that contribution a matter of public record?  Or could it have anything to do with the fact that he contributed $200 [pdf] more to Frimark’s campaign in July 2005, just a few weeks after he got his aldermanic seat? 

Even at the paltry $100/mo aldermanic salary he whines about, Allegretti still made back that entire $500 contribution by the end of his first year in office.  And by the time his appointed term was through in 2007, he had picked up more than enough to also fund that $1,500 he contributed [pdf] to Frimark’s recent, unsuccessful re-election campaign. 

But if Allegretti really cares about dispelling the notion that he or anybody else on the Council is “in somebody’s pocket” on this issue, what he and his Council colleagues should do is immediately move for reconsideration of last Monday (Nov. 16) night’s Council vote by which they gave themselves final say over all P&Z decisions by “super-majority” vote.  Instead, they should require a unanimous vote to over-ride any P&Z decision.

That way, the public can be assured that if the Council is trumping a P&Z decision, it’s only because every single alderman is willing to go on record as saying that the P&Z decision was wrong.

But we’re not going to hold our breath for that to happen.  Allegretti and Owens have P&Z right where they want it: neutered.

As best as we can tell, nobody who lives in Park Ridge likes airplane noise.  Most of us are also concerned about whatever pollutants from those planes might be contaminating our air.

But last week we received information about yet another effort at doing something, anything, about O’Hare.  Unfortunately, that effort could end up being more damaging to our community than O’Hare itself – something that not only will be ineffective and expensive, but that will also publicly brand Park Ridge as an unsafe and unhealthy place to live.

Included with one of the e-mails we received was a flyer [pdf] with Gene Spanos and Tom Math referenced as the contact persons.  We don’t know anything about Mr. Math, but Mr. Spanos has been an outspoken and relentless critic of O’Hare expansion.  From the sound of things he is looking to get us into class action litigation – and appears to have already made some kind of commitment in that regard, as suggested by reference to “our next step toward a class action lawsuit.” 

That would also explain why the guest speaker is none other than “Mr. Joseph Karaganis – Attorney at Law,” who served for more than a decade as the lead litigation attorney for what we understand is the now-defunct Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”) and whose firm reportedly made a bundle in legal fees from litigating over O’Hare. 

Now, maybe litigation is the only chance we have left to get some relief after all of us (including our elected and appointed officials) were too busy with other things – our kids’ soccer practices, Market Days, purple ribbons, school variety shows, the PADS shelter, Uptown redevelopment, etc. – to have paid close enough attention while the O’Hare Modernization Plan (“OMP”) and the new runways were being discussed, planned, budgeted, approved and built over the past eight years.  

But before we allow ourselves to get stampeded by Spanos and friends into a briar patch of litigation over OMP, we should stop and think about what we can expect to achieve from litigation…other than running up huge legal bills.

First of all, what are our chances of winning – whatever “winning” means in the grand scheme of things?  Has any single community (like Park Ridge) ever “won” in a fight with a particular airport, the FAA, the airlines, and all the other players who want the OMP and who have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars just to get it to its current stage?

Second, just what does “winning” mean?  As we’ve written before, after spending one-half billion dollars on the newest runway at O’Hare, we don’t see a chance in hell for that runway to not be used as much as possible.  And even if we could get a cut-back on use of 9L/27R, that just means that those flights will be re-routed to 22R and 22L, which run right over the Maine East and Country Club neighborhoods, thereby pitting neighbor against neighbor.

We can’t imagine those folks in the 1st and 2nd wards wanting to spend tax dollars on that option, and we can’t blame them.  That’s bad government and bad politics, plain and simple.  And with Karaganis’ track record on behalf of Bensenville and Elk Grove Village, it could be just plain dumb.

But if anybody out there thinks they’re going to get a financial windfall in the nature of “reparations” for the loss of their property values, guess what?  Before somebody writes you a nice big check, you will have to successfully plead, argue and prove that your home lost all that value.  In other words, you will have to establish that Park Ridge is a terrible and unsafe place to live.

That sure sounds irresponsible to us, unless the proponents of this misbegotten “strategy” are hoping to get some quick cash and then get out ahead of the rest of us, before all property values start sinking even more because we have tarred and feathered the quality of life in our own community.  Then it’s not irresponsible, it’s reprehensible.
 
As the “Ty Webb” character in “Caddyshack” would say: “Thank you very little.”

This week’s Herald-Advocate contains an article that reads like it was written by a public relations agent for former mayor Howard Frimark (“ETHICS ORDINANCE: Victory, vendettas on Frimark’s mind after ethics dispute,” Nov. 10).  So we’re taking this opportunity to provide some direct commentary on that piece, including information that the writer overlooked or intentionally omitted (with our comments in bracketed boldface):
_______________________________         

Victory, vendettas on Frimark’s mind after ethics dispute

November 10, 2009
By JENNIFER JOHNSON [email protected]

Former Park Ridge mayor Howard Frimark contends he was “vindicated” by the City Council’s vote last week not to prosecute him for an alleged ethics-ordinance violation, but he remains angry about the complaint. [“Vindicated” by a political decision, despite the City Attorney’s finding that there was probable cause to prosecute Frimark for a violation of the City’s ethics ordinance – a fact that mysteriously didn’t make it into Ms. Johnson’s story.]

“A lot of people are telling me this whole process was a political vendetta by the mayor’s office,” Frimark said this week.  [“A lot of people” apparently has replaced the “little birdie” that used to tell Frimark all the gossip he used to spread about his political opponents and critics when he was still mayor.]

When asked if he agrees with this interpretation [“Interpretation”?  Of what?  Is the word you were looking for “opinion,” Ms. Johnson?], Frimark responded, “I hope the complaint was not politically motivated,” but added that he felt it was an attempt to “smear my family and my business reputation and hurt my ability to make a living.” [Then City Attorney “Buzz” Hill must have been in on the “smear” campaign, because he’s also the City’s ethics officer who found that there had been a violation of the ethics ordinance that warranted Frimark’s prosecution.] 

The council, including Mayor David Schmidt, voted unanimously not to seek prosecution against Frimark for the alleged violation, which involved Frimark’s sale of insurance policies for the Shops of Uptown’s underground garage, which the city of Park Ridge partially owns and for which it pays a portion of the insurance. According to the city’s ethics ordinance, which was adopted while Frimark was mayor, for a period of two years after leaving office an elected official may not act as an agent for any party requesting “consideration” from the city. [Which is exactly what the City Attorney found Frimark had done, even if the Council and the mayor lacked the integrity and the fortitude to actually enforce the City’s ethics ordinance.  But hey, we live in Crook County, Illinois – who needs ethics?]

“He spoke against me in every facet of the complaint, but then he votes not to prosecute,” Frimark said of Schmidt. “To me, that doesn’t make sense. [In what we believe to be a first for this blog, we actually agree with Frimark on this one: that doesn’t make any sense to us, either.]  I wonder what the real motive behind it was.” [And we wonder what Frimark’s “motive” was for ignoring the requirements of an ethics ordinance enacted during his mayoralty, especially because just this past January he signed a legally binding amendment [pdf] to the City’s agreement with PRC and the Uptown Condominium Homeowners Association that expressly identified the City’s interest in the project.  Oops!]

Schmidt said he brought the matter to the city attorney to inquire whether the city’s ethics ordinance had been violated, and it was never meant to be a formal complaint.  [If that’s true, then why did he encourage the City Attorney to perform the review process prescribed by the ordinance; and why did he waste two hours of City Council time on what appears to have been nothing more than a “show trial” of Frimark, before announcing that he would be voting “no” on prosecution?]

“If this was a political vendetta, I would have filed a formal complaint with an affidavit so it would have gone to a special investigator instead of leaving it in the hands of the City Council, which I knew would never vote to prosecute Frimark,” Schmidt said. “It doesn’t make sense for people to believe this was a political vendetta. If it was, I wouldn’t have handled it the way I did.” [If this was “handled” at all, we believe that term deserves the prefix “mis-“.]

Frimark said he is considering legal action, but would not say what type of litigation he might seek or who it would be directed toward. [This sounds like the stereotypical hollow Frimark bluster we’ve heard since he became a public official.  But we have to wonder what his legal claim will be: “Attempted enforcement of an ethics ordinance for which the City Attorney determined there was probable cause to prosecute me”?  Good luck with that!  Or maybe he’ll try the late Mike Royko’s favorite Chicago ordinance violation:  “Aggravated mopery with intent to gawk”?]  He did say that he has incurred about $10,000 in legal fees related to the issue even though it never reached the courtroom phase, and he objected to the way the complaint has been handled.  [If this is true, Frimark might actually be as irresponsible a spender of his own funds as he was of the public’s!]

“I never had the complaint given to me,” Frimark said. “Whatever system of justice this is, it’s a complete travesty.” [More Frimark hollow bluster.  Under this particular ordinance enforcement procedure, what occurred was only the investigation stage, so there was no “complaint” for Frimark to be given.  And even though the City Attorney found probable cause to prosecute Frimark, because the feckless Council voted to give him a pass, there never will be any “complaint” to give him.  We would have thought that for $10,000 some lawyer would have explained that to Frimark by now.]

Frimark maintains he did not do anything wrong, and that Park Ridge was not listed on any documentation he was given prior to establishing the insurance policy. He admits he did not take action to remove Park Ridge from the policy once he learned the city was responsible for a portion of the insurance payment.  [Apparently he expects us to believe that he simply didn’t remember that amendment he signed last January, or that we won’t remember his attorney’s admission to the Council that Frimark was advised of the City’s insurable interest before he bound the City to this latest insurance coverage.]

“No one said I should do anything with it or not. So I let it sit there,” Frimark said of the policy. [Apparently the $10,000 in legal fees didn’t cover that bit of advice, either.]

The insurance coverage has since been canceled by PRC Partners, the owner of the commercial Shops of Uptown properties. Frimark said he voluntarily canceled the homeowners portion of the insurance, as well. [Which just goes to show that Frimark can do the right thing…once he’s figuratively caught with his hand in the ethical cookie jar.]

Tomorrow night the City’s Planning and Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) will be considering text amendments to the City’s Zoning Ordinance to allow billboards that are now prohibited.  Those amendments are desired by Lombard-based The Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”)[pdf], and the aroma coming from this amendment process is a lot closer to week-old catfish than to rose petals.

Carrying the water for GGI in this matter is 4th Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti, who seems hell-bent on changing City ordinances to enable the City Council to trump P&Z decisions about billboards.  And he appears to be “gaming” the process by getting the City to be the applicant rather than GGI, which allows GGI to avoid the disclosure requirements under the City’s ethics ordinance [pdf] that were adopted at the April 2, 2007 City Council meeting [pdf] in the face of accusations by then-mayor (and Allegretti puppeteer) Howard Frimark that more-stringent disclosures were “motivated by politics rather than integrity.”

[We pause for a moment of “pot calling the kettle black” contemplative silence]

Allegretti’s walk on the billboard wild side started back in June when the attorney, agent and possibly owner of GGI, Joseph J. Loss, sent a letter to Allegretti [pdf] requesting four special use permits for four billboards proposed for the Renaissance Office Center properties.

Leaping into action, at the July 13, 2009, City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting [pdf], Allegretti successfully advanced both the process whereby the City Council (rather than GGI) would submit the billboard text amendment request to P&Z, and the process whereby the City Council could over-ride any P&Z decision on amendment requests by simple majority vote rather than super-majority vote – and, for good measure, City Clerk Betty Hennemann once again sanitizing the minutes to conceal the identities of who voted how on those two issues.

Allegretti next got formal Council approval for the City to be the applicant for the billboard amendments by misrepresenting the relevant law by (as reported in the August 17 minutes [pdf]) stating that private-party applicants like GGI “would have no recourse” to challenge an application denial by P&Z – even though he attended the April 27, 2009 meeting [pdf] where City Attorney “Buzz” Hill stated unequivocally that an applicant denied by P&Z “always has the right to appeal” that denial to the Circuit Court of Cook County.

And just last Monday night, Allegretti led the 4-3 (Allegretti, Bach, Carey and Ryan) approval of the first reading of the zoning text amendments that would let the Council trump decisions by P&Z on this billboard issue.

Which takes us to tomorrow night’s P&Z meeting where that commission will get to consider the City Council’s request to make billboards legal.

As noted in the November 10, 2009 memo [pdf] of the City’s Community Preservation & Development Director Carrie Davis, GGI is now represented by prominent Park Ridge attorney and consummate “insider,” Jack Owens – who is aggressivley lobbying P&Z for GGI’s billboards even though all GGI has to do is watch Allegretti and the City Council do GGI’s bidding.

If the odor from all of this rigmarole isn’t dank and pungent enough in its own right, we direct your attention to two articles published in the Des Plaines Journal & Topics: one from September 2004 [pdf] that links convicted felon and allegedly mobbed-up former Cook County under-sheriff James Dvorak to another billboard company with ties to GGI’s Mr. Loss that won billboard rights in Des Plaines; and the other from January 2008 [pdf] which identifies Loss as the attorney for yet another billboard company that got a favorable ordinance change from the Village of Deerfield [pdf].

We’re not quite sure exactly what to make of all this, but we do wonder exactly what is motivating Allegretti’s (and Owens’) full-court press to drive the City Council into neutering P&Z in order to give GGI its billboards.  And it creates an impression that there is more to this deal than meets the eye.

Even if it can’t escape the nose.

Back in March, 2008, then-mayor Howard P. Frimark orchestrated a kind of “show trial” of then-Ald. Dave Schmidt by obtaining the public “condemnation” – by Frimark’s Alderpuppets (Alds. Allegretti, Bach, Carey, DiPietro and Ryan) – of Schmidt for disclosing information from a closed session City Council meeting even though that disclosure was perfectly legal under the Illinois Open Meetings Act. 

We branded Frimark’s and the Alderpuppets’ action “a naked political ploy” and “a gratuitous shot” at Schmidt, which it clearly was.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, now-mayor Schmidt seemingly repaid the “favor” by presiding over a “show trial” of Frimark that appears to have been every bit as nakedly political and gratuitous – by all involved – as its predecessor.  And in the process, Schmidt and the City Council made a mockery of a provision of the City’s ethics ordinance that ironically was enacted during Frimark’s mayoralty to prohibit exactly the kind of conduct in which Frimark admittedly engaged.

Anybody who showed up at City Hall Monday night expecting the Council to vote to prosecute Frimark must have been smoking illegal substances, because the odds against the Alderpuppets holding their political mentor accountable for an ethics violation after having filled his re-election war chest with almost $4,000, cumulatively, were so long that there wasn’t even a Vegas betting line on them.

But what the most naïve observer could not have expected was the theater of the absurd that actually took place over more than two hours of apparently not-very-valuable City Council meeting time.

It started with City Attorney “Buzz” Hill practically begging for an excuse not to officially recommend prosecution for what Hill had already determined to be Frimark’s ethics violation.  It continued with Ald. Ryan’s challenging of Schmidt’s biggest campaign donor – resident and local business owner Tony Svanascini – to dueling disclosures, after Ryan admitted to “about $100” in contributions to Frimark’s campaign when, in reality, he kicked in more than eight times that much.

Next came non-lawyer Ald. DiPietro’s personal anecdotes disputing the City Attorney’s legal interpretation of “agent” and “broker.”  And that was followed by an agitated Ald. Allegretti’s denigrating of the applicable ethics ordinance provision as “goofy,” while also denouncing those attacking Frimark for his six years of serving the City “honorably or dishonorably.” (Yes, he really said that!)    

This charade ended with a whimper when its instigator-in-chief, Mayor Schmidt, announced immediately prior to the Council’s vote that while he believed beyond doubt that Frimark had violated the ethics ordinance, he would vote “No” on prosecution because it would not “further the purpose of the ordinance” now that Uptown developer PRC Partners and the Uptown Condominium Homeowners Association (“UCHA”) had pulled the offending insurance coverage from Frimark, thereby depriving him of the economic benefit of his violation.

Say what?

Schmidt subsequently explained his action in an e-mail [pdf] by claiming that “[t]he purpose of the discussion [Monday] night was not to decide whether Frimark had violated the ordinance”; and “that the public admonishment of Frimark and the fact that he will not profit from the transaction was punishment enough under these particular circumstances.”

Say what!

We scoured the ethics ordinance and could not find “public admonishment” or depriving the violator of his ill-gotten gain mentioned anywhere as the purpose of the ordinance, or as a prescribed remedy or penalty for its violation.  We also found no mention of relying on private parties (like PRC and UCHA) to provide de facto private enforcement of the ordinance, as happened here.  The only thing the ordinance provides for, following prosecution by the City and conviction by a Circuit Court of Cook County judge, is a fine of “not less than $1,000 nor more than $5,000 for each offense,” money which would end up in the depleted City treasury. 

Schmidt’s comments, therefore, reflect a straight-out disregard for the ordinance’s processes and penalties.

The bottom line is that City Attorney Hill found probable cause for prosecution as the result of Frimark’s admission that he sold the insurance that provided coverage to the City and that required payment from the City under its contract with PRC and the UCHA.  In so finding, Hill determined that Frimark was an “agent” for purposes of the ordinance – a finding which is also consistent with the law of Illinois under which all “brokers” are “agents.” 

In the insurance industry, the only basic distinction between “broker” and “agent” is determined by who is the agent’s/broker’s principal. But whether Frimark’s principal was the insurer seeking to sell insurance coverage to the City, or whether his principal was PRC/UCHA buying insurance and seeking contractual contribution from the City for part of that premium, does not change the fact that Frimark was an “agent” of somebody who was seeking “consideration” – in this case, the payment of money – from the City.

By failing to accept Hill’s legally-correct finding and recommendation, Schmidt and the Council not only implicitly endorsed a violation of the ethics ordinance but, at the same time, they gave what amounts to a “no confidence” vote to Hill, whose legal expertise in such matters is paid for by our tax dollars and who is employed to do exactly what he did, albeit reluctantly, Monday night.  They also gave a clear signal that they aren’t serious about ethics in government – or at least not when Howard Frimark is involved.

Had Schmidt made his position known from the outset rather than at the end of those proceedings, everyone in the Council chambers Monday night – and everyone who might watch those proceedings on videotape – could have been spared the two-hours of unvarnished political posturing for which the ethics ordinance served as little more than a cheap prop.  And even though he may not have deserved it, Frimark could have been spared the meaningless ordeal which had him shifting between glad-handing and perp-walking for most of the evening.

Mayor Schmidt and the City Council owed us honest, ethical government.  What they – and Frimark himself – delivered Monday night was a fraud, wrapped in a sham, inside a farce.

Tonight’s meeting of the Park Ridge City Council (City Hall, 7:30 p.m.) involves two agenda [pdf] items that implicate transparency and accountability in local government, which should be of concern to residents who favor open and honest government.

The first item shows up under the “City Attorney” portion of the meeting, and is the continuing saga of former mayor Howard P. Frimark’s possible violation of the City’s ethics ordinance by his attempt at selling insurance for the Uptown structures, of which the City is one of the insureds by virtue of its ownership of the underground parking garage.  Now that it appears the deal with Frimark has been un-done – exactly how we’re not sure, unless Frimark agreed to rescind his agreement with the insureds – the question remains whether the Council will try to treat it as a no-harm, no-foul situation and sweep it under the rug, or will they actually address it through the process prescribed in the ordinance, culminating in a vote by the Council as to whether or not to prosecute Frimark for a violation if the City Attorney opines that there was one.

Almost as interesting will be whether the Council runs off into closed session to hide these deliberations from the public, even though – as everyone who reads this blog should know by now – the Illinois Open Meetings Act merely permits, but does not require, certain enumerated matters to be discussed in closed session; and that even those closes-session deliberations are not “secret” or “confidential.”

Another item tangentially related to Frimark’s insurance sale also appears under the “City Attorney” segment of the meeting: the “Discussion of First Amendment to Easement and Operating Agreement for Uptown Phase III.”  That’s the legally-binding contract that then-mayor Frimark signed in January without City Council approval, or even the Council’s knowledge.

As can be seen from the City Attorney’s memo [pdf] on that point, he is accepting responsibility (a/k/a, “wearing the jacket”) for advising someone (Frimark?  The City Manager?  Other City Staff?) other than the Council members that Council approval of that amendment was not needed because it constituted a “minor modification” that could be approved by the City Manager.

A modification requiring a written amendment that was to be recorded against record title to the property doesn’t seem “minor” to us.  But even if it were, and even if it didn’t require City Council approval, we think the City Council should have been informed of it – even if it ended up listed among the items on the Consent Agenda. 

As it is, however, it looks – rightly or wrongly – like somebody was trying to pull a fast one on the City Council.  And that’s not a good thing under any circumstance.

The second item to which we direct your attention is the “first reading” of a proposed text amendment to Section 4.8 of the Zoning Ordinance that, if enacted, would politicize the zoning application process by allowing someone seeking relief from existing zoning standards effectively to end-run the Planning & Zoning Commission and seek support for that relief from an individual alderman – like is done in the City of Chicago. 

The fact that Chicago does it that way should be reason enough to give this idea a big thumb’s down.  So we’ll be watching with interest to see which aldermen, if any, look to change a process that appears, for the most part, to have worked well for many years.

To some, this may seem like much ado about nothing.  But it’s this kind of nitty gritty that determines how City government works, or doesn’t work – and for whom. 

School Rankings Time Again. Today’s Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times each have feature articles on the annual ISAT scores registered by our public school systems.

As usual, Maine South is on both lists of the top high schools, tied for 12th position (with Lake Forest H.S.) on the Tribune’s “Top 50” list, for which the rankings are a function purely of the percentage of test scores that met or exceeded state standards; and ranking 13th (several spots below Lake Forest) on the Sun-Times’ “Top 100” list, which uses a more complex formula that the S-T claims “allows for more definition among top schools.”

But for the first time in recent memory, a District 64 school makes an appearance, with Carpenter Elementary School ranking in a tie for 49th on the Tribune’s list, although no District 64 school shows up on the S-T list.  But it’s a start.  So a big wag of the Watchdog’s tail to the folks at Carpenter – maybe you can share some tips with the other schools in the District that were, once again, notably absent from the lists of ISAT achievement.

Walk On By.  They’re ba-ack.  “They” are those residents who want their own special deal at the Park Ridge Community Center: they want $2 per visit punch passes so that they can walk around the Community Center any time it is open because they don’t want to pay for one of the several kinds of Community Center memberships that were created after numerous other “limited-use” memberships wisely were eliminated several years ago in an effort to make that facility’s operations more efficient and cost-effective.

The problem with limited-use privileges at the Community Center is that the facility’s ridiculous “open” layout can’t reasonably accommodate anything but full-facility membership.  Too many residents found it too easy to buy some low-price, limited-use membership and then expand their use into areas where they weren’t supposed to be – causing migraine headaches for staff, irritating members who were paying full-fare, and ultimately cheating the taxpayers. 

Commissioner Mary Wynn Ryan claims to be offended that people might drive to Golf Mill to walk if they can’t have their $2-a-visit walking pass. 

We here at PublicWatchdog disagree.  If folks would rather drive to Golf Mill than buy a Community Center membership, let ‘em – just add them to the list of all the other people who go elsewhere because the Park District doesn’t offer something they want, like the golfers who drive to Tam in Niles or Chick Evans in Morton Grove to play a round of golf; or the sailors who drive to Lake Opeka to Hobie Cat; or the mini-golfers who drive to Des Plaines or Skokie; or the skiers who fly to Vail or Steamboat….

Not With A Bang But A Whimper.  We hear that City Attorney “Buzz” Hill and the Park Ridge City Council will be spared the agita and potential embarrassment of having to decide whether to prosecute former mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark for violating the City’s ethics ordinance by selling/brokering insurance for the Uptown parking garage in which the City has an interest. 

Word is that Mid-America and/or the Uptown Condominium Homeowners Association (“UCHA”) decided to pull the pin on Frimark’s insurance coverage.  We don’t know whether Frimark had any say in the matter, but that “Whew!” you heard emanating from the direction of City Hall was the collective sigh of relief from elected officials and bureaucrats alike.  And that means no tap dancing or sleight of hand at the City Council meeting this Monday night, when this matter was to have been taken up in earnest by the Council.

But we wonder whether the Council will also try to sweep under the carpet Frimark’s execution of the “First Amendment” to the easement and operating agreement for “Phase III” of the Uptown project – by which, as we understand it, the City ceded some of its voice and authority in the operations of that portion of the project to the developer and the UCHA?

Go, HAWKS!  Tomorrow afternoon the Maine South Hawks start their drive to the 2009 state championship when they host Oak Park-River Forest.  We wish them well in their effort to repeat as state champs, and we encourage all Park Ridge residents to show up and support another Hawks football juggernaut, led on both sides of the ball by University of Indiana-bound Player-of-the-Year candidate Matt Perez and quarterback Tyler Benz. 

Many problems that seem intractable to an individual governmental body can be surmounted by “intergovernmental cooperation” – multiple governmental entities working together.  It’s called “synergy.”

So we’re glad to see that the City of Park Ridge’s flood consultant, Christopher B. Burke Engineering, is suggesting that one way for the City of Park Ridge to reduce flooding in certain areas might be to enlist the aid of the Park Ridge Park District and create above-ground water detention areas in the parks, according to a story in today’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park water storage could curb flooding: engineer” October 29).

A study of six heavy-flooding areas of the City done by the flood consultant indicates that an above-ground, grass covered basin at Northwest Park – when linked by storm sewers and cross pipes to nearby areas that are regularly hard-hit by flooding – could mitigate flooding in the areas both east and west of that park during those heaviest of rains which pose the worst problems for area residents. 

The water detained in that basin would drain within about 48 hours, according to the consultant.

Obviously, a plan like this, which appears very attractive at first glance, needs to be thoroughly vetted as to, first and foremost, its cost – not only the cost to create it, but the expected costs to maintain it.  Not surprisingly, there is no mention of cost in the Herald-Advocate article, which is a bit troubling given the astronomical numbers being tossed around for the kind of sewer upgrades needed to make a significant dent in the flooding problem city-wide.

And let’s also make sure the plan is thoroughly vetted as to all of its potential consequences to the fields themselves, such as the effect of water detention on the health of the turf and the fields’ playability, the potential for interruption of field use for scheduled events, etc.  Those also have a cost to them, both in money and in time lost to rescheduling or alternatives.

But the idea sure does sound promising, so we hope it will be given all due consideration. 

We’re giving a special wag of the Watchdog’s tail to the Park District, which has led the way in intergovernmental cooperation since 2004, when it saved the City (and, therefore, the taxpayers) several million dollars by offering Hinkley Park as the site of the City’s new reservoir.  And that savings isn’t even counting the approx. $2 million value to the NICOR site, value which would have been permanently lost if the City had gone forward with its plan to put the reservoir there.

Synergy.  Ya gotta love it.

It has been awhile since we’ve seen this many significant items on one night’s City Council agenda – or, in this case, two agendas, as the Council will have a “special meeting” [pdf] at 6:45 p.m., followed by the standard Committee of the Whole (“COW) meeting [pdf] at 7:00 p.m.

We sure hope residents show up at City Hall tonight to keep a keen eye on our City government, which needs all the scrutiny the public can give it – especially when it is discussing such hot topics as land grading for residential properties [pdf], the positively scary possibility of issuing bonds to replenish the $4.3 million the Uptown TIF has drained from the general operating fund [pdf], and whether the City should adopt a policy requiring it to be reimbursed for its costs from “special events” [pdf], something we believe is long overdue.

But the agenda item we want to focus on is the planned final vote at the “special meeting” to approve a contract [pdf] to tear out a portion of “Pickwick Plaza” behind 31-33 S. Prospect and restore the parking spaces that were removed back in 1986, when the previous owner of that property leased that area to the City for $1 per year.  The current owner, Winchester Investment Services, LLC, wants $2,000 per month to extend the lease, and the City wisely has said “No.”

According to the City Attorney, the City is contractually obligated only to replace the current features with the plain asphalt parking lot that was there in 1986.  But City Staff – in what seems to be yet another example of standard operating incompetence at the taxpayers’ expense – formulated the wrong bid specifications for that project by adding concrete aprons, a dumpster pad, and fencing, which jack up the cost to the City by over $5,000 (or 9%).

Fortunately, Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward) challenged the Staff’s incompetence, and the vote on this was deferred to tonight. 

Regular readers of this blog know that we have not had many good words for Ald. Wsol over the past year or so.  We thought his big new police station plan was ridiculous, his eleventh-hour alternative cop shop referendum question outrageous, and his opposition to a 100% pass-through of water rate increases fiscally irresponsible.

But when he’s right, he deserves to be recognized for it.  And this is one of those occasions.

We realize that $5,000 is not an earth-shattering amount, standing alone.  But it illustrates the positively cavalier way that Staff – in this case, Dir. Of Community Preservation & Development Carrie Davis, judging from all her tap-dancing about this matter under Council questioning, captured at www.motionbox.com/videos/a696d6b31f1fe0c129 – treats our tax dollars; and why the City’s financial condition is so shaky.

We urge the City Council to reject Staff’s foolish recommendation.  And because we’re being told that it’s too late to re-bid and complete the project before the asphalt plants close for the winter (which raises yet another question about Staff competence in waiting until this late in the season, after the lease has expired, before going out to bid), we also urge the owners of Winchester – Tim and Jennifer Perry – to magnanimously agree to preserve the status quo until Spring, so long as the City continues to provide the free snow removal and 12 parking lot spaces as it has been doing.

But whether or not that kind of accommodation between the City and the Perrys can be reached, the City Council needs to give Staff a stern warning that this kind of fiscal responsibility will not be tolerated any longer. 

Early in this past Monday night’s City Council meeting, two Park Ridge children walked to the podium in the “well” of the City Council chambers and successfully implored Mayor Dave Schmidt to restore an hour of trick-or-treating that had mistakenly been cut by executive order.

The kids addressed the mayor with a childlike earnestness that more than made up for their amateurish “legal” arguments. 

Moments later, prominent local attorney Jack “Mr. Insider” Owens strode to that same podium to make his professional legal arguments, with far less childlike earnestness, in defense of former Park Ridge mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, who may have engaged in unethical conduct as an insurance agent for the Uptown mixed-use development, in violation of Section 2-5-3 of the City’s ethics ordinance.

According to Owens – as captured on videotape, courtesy of residents George Kirkland and Charles Melidosian (using the videocamera donated by Mayor Dave Schmidt from his mayoral salary)  http://parkridgeunderground.blogspot.com/2009/10/city-council-meeting-video-oct-19-2009.html – Frimark had no idea that the City had any role in the insurance of the Uptown development when he intially bound the coverage several weeks ago.  To hear Owens tell it, Frimark was like Inspector Renault in “Casablanca” – except that instead of being “shocked” to discover that gambling was going on in Rick’s Café, Frimark was surprised to find out that the City had a stake in the Uptown development that made it an additional insured under the policy that he had bound for the developer, PRC Partners, and the Uptown Condominium Homeowners Association. 

But as Owens later admitted, even after Frimark found out about the City’s role, he went ahead and also bound the City to the insurance coverage. 

Trick and treat!

The “treat,” of course, is for Frimark, who wants to pocket the commission on what we understand to be over $42,000 of total insurance premiums on this deal that he is “absolutely prohibited” from doing under the ethics ordinance.  The “trick” – or at least one of them – was Owens’ effort to soft-peddle Frimark’s gain on the deal by pointing out that his commission on the City’s portion of the premium was a measly $365. 

Exactly what will happen in this continuing saga is anybody’s guess. 

Under one scenario, the City Attorney will refer the matter to the City Council to decide whether or not Frimark will be prosecuted and subjected to a fine of from $1,000 to $5,000.  Under another scenario, the matter could be referred to an independent investigator to determine whether the prosecution will go forward. 

Or maybe both things could occur, especially if the first scenario plays out and the Council majority (Allegretti, Bach, Carey, DiPietro and Ryan) whose members collectively gave $3,829.51 to Frimark’s re-election campaign can’t bring themselves to enforce the ethics ordinance against their mentor.  But that’s a question for another day. 

What we just discovered, however, is something that calls into question the truthfulness of Frimark’s “ignorance-is-bliss” defense: the “First Amendment to Easement and Operating Agreement for Uptown Phase III, Park Ridge, Illinois” [pdf], which confirms that the City is responsible for 21.28% of the Uptown underground parking garage, the same 21.28% of the garage’s air handling equipment, and 34.84% of the garage’s elevators (see Amendment, at page 2); and 21.28% of the insurance premiums (see Amendment, at page 4).

And guess what?  The person who signed onto this Amendment for the City on January 19, 2009, was none other than “Howard P. Frimark, Mayor” – whose signature (at page 8 of the Amendment) was attested to by City Clerk Betty W. Henneman, with both of their signatures notarized by City employee Cheryl Peterson.

A very quick search through the City Council meeting minutes for November 2008 through January 2009 revealed no mention of City Council approval of this Amendment.  That raises a question of exactly where Frimark got the authority to lawfully bind the City to such an arrangement.

So unless Frimark is going to change his plea from ignorance-is-bliss to Alzheimer’s (or perhaps only Half-heimer’s) memory loss about what he signed or why he signed it, this Amendment makes it pretty darn clear that the former mayor actually knew, or should have known, of the City’s stake in the parking garage and the insurance coverage that he was selling to the Uptown development…before he even started his sales pitch!

Oh, the twisted web he weaves….