Mayor Howard Frimark professes to be a stalwart Republican, which would make him an unlikely poster boy for further expansion of what has become known as the “Nanny State” – government intrusion into all aspects of our lives with the justification that it’s for our own good.

So when Frimark insists that his call to Oberweis Dairy’s corporate offices to complain about Joe Egan and his merry band of referendum petition circulators’ collecting signatures at Oberweis’ Park Ridge store this past weekend was simply to protect Oberweis from hurting itself, we have to wonder whether Frimark has become a Democrat…or even a Socialist.

But maybe what he’s become is a saint, a protector of politically naïve businessmen and small woodland animals alike.  Sort of a 21st Century St. Francis of Assisi, only smarmy.

Frankly, it’s beyond our comprehension why a thriving corporation such as Oberweis that’s been in the dairy business for 90 years would need retail advice from an insurance salesman moonlighting as the mayor of Park Ridge.  Can’t we assume that until Frimark dialed them up complaining, Oberweis management – in the exercise of its best business judgment – was willing to accept whatever risk one might imagine from allowing a group of local political activists intent on circulating referendum petitions to rub elbows with some of their neighbors equally intent on hot fudge and whipped cream?

Since Frimark claims credit for virtually anything for which credit can be claimed, we’ll concede a remote possibility that because St. Howard the Protector was on the job last Friday morning, a potential catastrophe may have been averted.  And as St. Howard himself explained the purity of his motive to the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate: “I don’t want to see any business in Park Ridge hurt by political activity in their business.” (“Mayor intercedes to block petition circulators,” January 14) 

But if we take him at his word [insert your comment here], we have to wonder if St. Howard considers local businesswoman Amy DiGrazia, the owner of clothier New Prospects, chopped liver.  That’s because, like Oberweis, she too agreed to let Egan and the Circulators set up their petition operation in her store on Saturday.  If the potential carnage from a dairy versus democracy encounter is frightening, the mind positively reels at the horror of letting referendum petitions mix it up with palazzo pants and power panties. 

But unlike the dairy giant, DiGrazia got no warning from St. Howard of the disaster that might befall her business if she played host to an exercise of First Amendment rights.  All she got was a phone call from an unidentified woman (Frimark political brain Linda Ski, effecting a Linda Fiorintino throatiness?) urging her not to let petition signatures be collected in her store – a request DiGrazia ignored. 

Thankfully, while the First Amendment rights of our citizens took a shot to the chops Friday and Saturday, courtesy of our mayor, there were no other casualties; and New Prospects remains open for business.

So let’s light a candle to St. Howard the Protector…and see how long it takes him to claim credit for its heat.

As this is written, Park Ridge is looking at only its second contested mayoral election in more than two decades, with incumbent Mayor Howard “the Coward” Frimark and Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) already announced and campaigning.  But last week’s Park Ridge Journal reported some additional intrigue, as an unidentified woman showed up at City Hall to pick up not one but two nominating packets.

From our years of watching Park Ridge government and politics, we know that many things are not as they appear on the surface.  That’s why somebody anonymously picking up two candidate’s packets a scant couple of weeks before the filing deadline raises a number of questions, especially where there already are two mayoral candidates who have staked out positions which provide the voters with some pretty clear choices.

So we’re going to take a page out of the kinky political playbook of our neighboring community, Daley-ville, and rhetorically pose the most fundamental (albeit compound) political question to that mystery woman: “Who are you, and who sent you?”

That’s an important question because a third candidate entering into an already-contested mayoral race will inevitably take votes away from one candidate or the other – which is why the kinky political tactic is for an existing candidate, usually the incumbent, to welcome into the race a third candidate (known as a “stalking horse”) whose positions will align more closely with the opponent’s and thereby divide voters hostile to the incumbent into two minorities which will be easier for the incumbent to defeat, often with less than 50% of the vote.

The fact that the mystery woman took out two nominating packets, however, is unusual because it is unlikely that two candidates competing for the same office would send in one person to get their packets.  Instead, it suggests that each of the two packets was for a different race; i.e., one was for mayor and the other for city clerk. And that suggests the possibility of a return of the Homeowners Party, or perhaps a clone of it operating under a different name.

The Homeowners (or “HO,” for short) Party was founded in the 1970s and led for almost two decades by the late Park Ridge mayor and state senator Marty Butler.  Under his leadership, the Party actually stood for something [pdf]: preserving the residential character of our community, maintaining a level of excellence in our infrastructure and services, protecting our homes and businesses, the tight control of spending for maximum effectiveness at a reasonable cost, and accepting responsibility for the results of their stewardship.

But by the time of Butler’s death in 1998, the Homeowners Party had become unfocused, complacent and irrelevant – ignoring Butler’s founding principles and becoming more of a social club where who you knew was more important than what you knew and believed.  And with titular party leader, then-Mayor Ron Wietech, obsessing over all things O’Hare and ignoring most else, by the April 2003 election the voters had had enough.

They rejected five of the six Homeowners candidates involved in contested races: Anita Rifkind garnered only 32% of the vote in the 1st Ward; Brian Kidd, 14% in the 4th; incumbent Steve Huening, 28% in the 5th, Vince Fontana, 47% in the 6th; and Steve Henley, 17% in the 7th.  The only HO to win a contested race that year was incumbent Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward), whose margin of victory was a slim 21 votes out of a meager 575 cast.   

After that, the remnants of the Homeowners Party basically went underground and have not run a slate of candidates since.  But the Illinois State Board of Elections reports that the HO organization – known officially as the “Homeowners Campaign Committee” and overseen by Chairman (and former Park Ridge alderman and Dist. 207 board member) J. Roger Crawford and Treasurer John Heerman – still had almost $16,000 in its account as of its latest public filing [pdf].

In recent weeks rumors have been floating around that some of the HOs have been meeting and re-organizing, with the goal of fielding a mayoral candidate.  Illinois election law (as we understand it), however, requires that any party wishing to run a candidate in a local election must also field candidates for all other offices for the applicable governmental body appearing on that ballot.  So for the HOs to field a mayoral candidate, they would also have to field a candidate for City Clerk.  That could explain the two nominating packets. 

As a further sign of the oblique nature of local political alliances, back in 2003 the HOs picked Kidd over Frimark for 4th ward alderman despite Frimark’s having been a long-time HO who had even donated $450 worth of “Packers Game Tickets” back in 2001.  And in looking at the HOs’ financial reports for the last two campaigns in which they ran a slate of candidates – 2001 [pdf] and 2003 [pdf] – you’ll see names of HO contributors (e.g., Crawford, DiPietro, Huening, James Davlin, Dawn Disher, Owen Hayes and John Kerin) which also turned up in Frimark’s 2005 mayoral campaign finance reports [pdf].  That would indicate Frimark and the HOs have buried whatever hatchet may have been laying around since 2003.

So if another mayoral candidate does enter the race in the waning hours before the filing deadline, it might be worth asking him/her a variation of the question we addressed to the mystery woman who picked up those two candidate’s packets last week: “Who are you, and why are you running?”

Because we think the chances are pretty good that such a candidate very well may be a HO, either in full HO regalia or camouflaged to avoid any residual HO antipathy that may still be in the air.  And because we’re pretty sure that such a candidate, whether HO or faux, is far more likely to be a stalking horse for taking votes away from challenger Schmidt than to be the second coming of Marty Butler. 

We have referred to Mayor Howard Frimark as “Howard the Coward” for his (and his alderpuppets’) deathly fear of the advisory referendum which Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) proposed for the big, new, multi-million dollar cop shop for which Frimark has been secretly scurrying around looking to buy land, while at the same time he and his Air Marshall, Alderpuppet Don Bach, have been asleep at the wheel while O’Hare built a new runway that has planes flying through the middle of our city.

Schmidt couldn’t even get a second on his motion to put the referendum on the ballot by City Council resolution, so a group of Park Ridge citizens led by Joe Egan began a petition drive to put the issue on the April ballot anyway.  And from what we hear, they had collected well over 1,000 signatures toward the 2,300-plus that they need.

But because the deadline for filing those petitions is rapidly approaching, Mr. Egan and his merry band of petitioners made arrangements to collect signatures at Oberweis this past weekend.  To describe what happened next, however, we originally relied on two e-mails that Mr. Egan circulated Friday afternoon (which, by the way, we received from several different reliable sources other than Mr. Egan), but which we removed at Mr. Egan’s subsequent request. 

We encourage you to contact Mr. Egan directly ([email protected]) if you have any questions that haven’t been fully answered by the account of the incident published today in the on-line Herald-Advocate (“Swoboda investigates charges that officers blocked petition signing,” January 12) – which reports how the cop shop referendum petition drive scheduled for Oberweis Dairy last Friday and Saturday was cancelled in response to complaints to Oberweis corporate headquarters by Mayor Howard “We don’t need no stinking referendum” Frimark.

And if Frimark’s brazen and ham-fisted interference with a lawful citizen initiative isn’t despicable enough, the H-A also reports that some of Park Ridge’s “finest” also may have shown up in uniform at Oberweis to let the local store manager know that hosting a cop shop petition drive wasn’t the smartest idea. That’s the conduct that acting Police Chief Tom Swoboda is investigating.

In a universe of unlimited possibilities, we’re sure that some mathematician could provide calculations showing how there must be at least one plausible explanation that passes the smirk test for how (1) Oberweis corporate could give Mr. Egan permission to collect referendum signatures (2) under some kind of mistaken belief that Egan and friends were city workers taking a “straw poll” on building a new cop shop, (3) which mistaken belief came to Frimark as if in a dream (4) just in time for him to call Oberweis corporate and (5) convince said dairyfolk, based merely on his complaints, that (6) it had landed in a political briar patch (7) also just in time for Oberweis to withdraw its permission (8) before Egan et al. could collect any valuable petition signatures, (9) either before or after uniformed Park Ridge police officers paid a visit to the local Oberweis manager and (10) suggested that referendum petitions and ice cream don’t mix.

There could be a perfectly innocent explanation for all that. Yeah. Sure. Of course.

The H-A reports that Frimark did not return its phone calls on Monday.  Given Frimark’s penchant for publicity, his not returning press inquiries should have the H-A’s Jennifer Johnson either phoning Lutheran General to see if the mayor has been admitted, or dialing up his estimable political operative Linda Ski to see if Frimark has memorized his talking points yet.

None of this, however, changes our opinion that the current mayor is a coward for trying to prevent the voters of Park Ridge from showing their support or opposition for the proposed new cop shop at the polls on April 7.  Or our opinion that mayoral powers can turn even a coward like Howard into a bully.

Update 1/14/09
Today’s Park Ridge Journal reports (“Bullying Charges Fly,” January 14) that in Mayor Frimark explained his call(s) to Oberweis Dairy owner Jim Oberweis as having been motivated by concerns about the effect of referendum petition gathering on the dairy’s business: “I was shocked that businesses would become politically active, possibly hurting their business.”

So if we are to believe Frimark [Insert your own comment here], we wonder if the folks over at Morningfields [pdf] understood the risk they were taking by hosting Frimark’s own campaign kick-off party back in December? 

One further bit of inanity reported in the Journal article relates to a Library staff member forcing a referendum petition circulator off Library property last Sunday.  When questioned as to the authority of Library staff to take such action, City Attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill admitted that there was no such restriction in the City Code, but that there was an “internal” Library policy prohibiting any “solicitation” within 50 feet of the Library entrance, a policy he defended by asserting that “[t]he library grounds are not what are known as a traditional public forum,” permitting Library Staff to regulate the time, place and manner of the exercise of free speech on those grounds.

What this sounds like to us is a twisted version of a scene from the movie “Animal House,” with Librarian Janet Van De Carr (in the Dean Wormer role) putting the Deltas (the referendum petition circulators) on “double secret probation” (the internal Library no-solicitation policy).  So to take this absurdity to its “logical” conclusion, maybe the petition circulators should turn out en masse at tomorrow night’s Library Board meeting, have petition drive leader Joe Egan upbraid Board President Shlomo Crandus (as Greg Marmalard), Van De Carr/”Wormer,” and the rest of the Board for their First Amendment-mocking “internal” rule, and then have Egan (in his best Eric “Otter” Stratton manner) assure them that “we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America” – while his fellow petition circulators hum “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Meanwhile, we invite Buzz Hill to explain the legal authority for his opinion that the 50 feet surrounding a public library entrance cannot be considered “a traditional public forum” for our citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights.

When we first read the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate’s article on the City’s latest attempts to impose its will (or whim) on the development of the “Higgins Corridor” (“Park Ridge studies new uses for Higgins corridor,” December 25), we wondered: “Who in their right mind would trust Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, his Alderpuppets, and our City bureaucrats to come up with a “plan” for successfully developing anything?”

That’s because Frimark has already demonstrated his support for trying to sell out Park Ridge taxpayers through give-aways to campaign contributors: e.g., an eight-unit zoning variance to Norwood Builders/Bruce Adreani for Executive Office Plaza; $2.4 million in environmental clean-up and sales-tax sharing to Bill Napleton/Napleton Cadillac; and his wanting to offer hundreds of thousands of dollars above the City’s own appraisal to the owner of 720 Garden.

And from what we’ve seen, the vast majority of local government officials and bureaucrats seem totally incapable of making basic economic judgments that even the most novice private developer can make routinely…without benefit of a pocket calculator.

So when you read that that City is going to formulate a “Higgins Corridor Plan” that will “describe Park Ridge’s vision of the future development of the Higgins Road corridor and provide strategies for its implementation,” even you non-Catholics should get yourselves a rosary and start praying that the City’s economic give-aways won’t be catastrophic or fatal.

Try critically reading the Plan developed by hired gun consultants Camiros, Ltd. and Valerie Kretchmer Associates, Inc. [pdf]: You will chuckle, you may laugh, and – if you take it seriously – you will probably cry.  And when Community Development Director Carrie Davis starts throwing around buzzwords and phrases like “TIF”s, “Special Service Areas” and “outside grants” so that the Higgins Corridor Plan “doesn’t have to be a city-funded project,” that’s a pretty good clue that a city-funded project is exactly what it will turn out to be by the time the smoke clears and the mirrors are stowed away.

Just the Camiros/Kretchmer Plan’s “vision statement” – built on such Developer 101 marketing clichés as the Higgins Road Corridor becoming a “vibrant southern gateway to the City of Park Ridge” – let’s you know that you’re in for the proverbial snow job. 

Remember how “vibrant” was the adjective of choice for the gushing consultants and developers (and their local governmental cheerleaders like then-acting mayor Mike Marous, then-alderman/current Mayor Frimark, then-alderman “Retail Rex” Parker, et al.) of Uptown’s “Target Area 2.”  We still haven’t seen anything close to what we would consider “vibrant” emanating from Chico’s, Jos. A. Banks, the noodle joint, or the rest of those “retailers” that we were told would flock to Uptown and turn it into a rockin’ place that would deliver bushels of sales tax dollars to the City treasury. 

In fact, the closest we’ve seen to “vibrant” in TA2 is at flagship retailer Trader Joe’s, although that often consists of nothing more than a double handful of middle-aged Park Ridge matrons dropping a couple of bottles of Two Buck Chuck, several kinds of organic goat cheeses and a bag or two of “Wasabi Wow” trail mix into their carts.  Maybe “vibrant” is another one of those things that isn’t what it used to be.

And when was the last time the City advertised exactly how much sales tax all of those TA2 businesses are actually generating?

But back to the City’s “Higgins Corridor Plan” as devised by Camiros/Kretchmer, where we found the following passage: “Within the corridor as a whole, commercial establishments can be appropriate uses as sites redevelop.  Restaurants in particular are able to serve the day-time population, guests at the hotels across the street and the nearby residents, with quick casual restaurants the most appropriate type of eatery.” 

Wow! (or maybe “Wasabi Wow”!)  How much is that kind of insight costing us…and do we get a rebate for each time they use it again with some other towns collection of bureaucrats?

Ald./Mayoral Candidate Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) suggested one or more hotels in the corridor west of Cumberland, and the City’s economic director Kim Uhlig said developers have expressed interest in building a hotel, but it would have to be taller than the three-four stories permitted under the City’s zoning code.  So in typical don’t-think-outside-the-box bureaucrat fashion, it looks like City Staff decided this was way above their pay grades and folded their tents; and our elected officials, lemming-like, promptly followed suit.

Here’s an idea, folks, and you don’t even need to pay us for it: Like it or not, the developers who are putting up the money will end up calling the tune on what’s built down there.  So if there are developers already interested in putting up a hotel, why not invite their proposals and see whether it’s worth considering?  Like most local governments street-walking for cash because they can’t ever seem to live within their taxpayers’ means, the City of Park Ridge already should know what it is – so why not try to get the best price for its “favors”?

Or putting it a different way: Let’s not let City government blow off the big bucks and other benefits that can come from a “vibrant” moderate-sized hotel (like the Hyatt at Devon and River Road) and then try to nickel-and-dime us to death with sweetheart variances to “friendly” developers, like the eight extra condo units at Executive Office Plaza.

Because if we want to go big, we can’t keep thinking small. 

Ronald Reagan was dubbed “the Teflon President” because it seemed as if nothing bad stuck to him but, instead, slid right off.  Today we write about “the Teflon Mayor” – who is trying mightily to achieve that same effect here in Park Ridge.

Over the holidays we looked high and low for any evidence of Mayor Howard Frimark ever accepting responsibility for anything bad or unfortunate that occurred in Park Ridge.  We found none.  To the contrary, it seems that nobody in any branch of local government is as adept at deflecting blame than our mayor.

That skill was on display this past Saturday (Jan. 3, 2008) at the meeting of ORD-REST, the newly-formed citizens group that is trying to do, belatedly, what Frimark and the City Council neglected over the past four years: minimize the adverse affects of the new O’Hare runway, 9L27R. 

Frimark, sitting next to his political crony, state Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, in the Park Ridge Library’s downstairs meeting room, said little during Saturday afternoon’s two-hour meeting.  We notice, however, that Frimark appeared to become particularly tight-lipped when Mulligan began ripping into local “Democrats” on the City Council a few years back who voted not to keep Park Ridge a member of the Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”) – even though her own community, Des Plaines, bailed on SOC years earlier. 

Frimark apparently wasn’t eager to share with that particular audience the fact that, as a newly-elected 4th Ward alderman in July, 2003, he was (arguably) the deciding vote for the 7-6 majority (only 13 votes, because then-6th Ward Ald. Michael Marous recused himself) – as we reported in our December 22, 2008 post (“Just The Facts Ma’am”).  Nor did Frimark choose to advise those approximately 90 residents about how he did nothing to involve himself or Park Ridge in the planning or construction of the new runway, or to work with the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (“ONCC”) or the City of Chicago to reduce the adverse impacts of that new runway or of O’Hare “modernization” generally.

Of course, that’s not the kind of information Frimark wants the voters to know about, especially now that he’s in full re-election mode and claiming full credit for anything good that’s happened to Park Ridge since May 2005, much like the rooster who claims credit for the dawn just because he’s the one crowing loudest about it.  But just because Frimark might prefer to keep the truth buried on his neglect of O’Hare expansion doesn’t mean we have to go along with him – which is why we took a quick look at Frimark’s record on O’Hare expansion since becoming mayor. 

Let’s start with Page 2 [pdf] of the August 2005 issue of our tax-financed propaganda rag, “The Spokesman,” in which Frimark brags about how he and Alderpuppet Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) “met with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley at his office in Chicago’s City Hall on June 22,” during which Frimark claims to have asked Daley that Park Ridge “be kept informed about all airport developments that will effect the citizens of Park Ridge” – a request with which Daley agreed, or so Frimark says.

What came out of that meeting?  Nothing that we could find, including no further meetings or correspondence between Frimark and Daley, or Frimark and anybody else from the City of Chicago or the FAA prior to the new runway opening.  And although the ONCC listed Frimark as Park Ridge’s representative [pdf] back in 2005, we are aware of only two ONCC meetings he attended prior to the new runway opening, as he preferred to pawn off his attendance (between May 2005 and their leaving office in May 2007) on “alternates” then-2nd Ward Ald. Jeannie Markech and then-7th Ward Ald. Jeff Cox.

Not surprisingly, we hear that Frimark is already trying to blame them for his negligence of all things O’Hare.  But the records we could find tell a very different story.

For example, Page 3 of the September 19, 2005, City Council meeting minutes [pdf] show Markech reporting on the ONCC agreement and the O’Hare gate report.  Then, as reported on Page 2 of the December 5, 2005, meeting minutes [pdf], she distributed new noise contour maps, warned of increased noise in the 4th, 6th and 7th wards, and asked Frimark to start attending ONCC meetings – which she followed up with a Valentine’s Day 2006 Memorandum to Frimark and the Council in which she again expressed her belief that his “presence at the general meetings [of ONCC] for the purpose of representing all Park Ridgians is imperative.”  And, as reported at Page 3 of the May 15, 2006, City Council meeting minutes [pdf], Markech again asked Frimark to attend ONCC’s general meetings.

This last plea may have had some effect, however, as Frimark finally attended an ONCC meeting in June 2006, although he reportedly did nothing but kibbitz with Des Plaines mayor Tony Arrredia.  And as far as we can tell from the ONCC meeting minutes [pdf] published on its website, from February 2007 (the earliest posted minutes) through November 2008, Frimark attended only one other meeting: On October 5, 2007, where the minutes reveal his only two acts to have been voting to approve ONCC’s September 2007 expenses, and seconding Mayor Arredia’s motion to adjourn.

So for all you ORD-REST people who are spending all of your waking/sleepless moments scrambling to do something, however belatedly, about those planes screaming over your heads, you might want to thank Mayor Frimark for having done nothing but sit on his thumb for the past four years while Chicago built its new $500 million-plus O’Hare runway and the control tower with which to operate it. 

Just don’t expect an acknowledgment or an apology from him.  As we’ve seen from the past four years, the Teflon Mayor doesn’t do accountability.

By now most New Year’s Eve hangovers should have dissipated, but we predict that the following two political hangovers from 2008 will continue to cause headaches for the honest, taxpaying citizens of Park Ridge well into 2009:

It’s Baa-ack!  The Park Ridge Herald-Advocate reported this week that the Park Ridge General Caucus for Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 will meet January 7, 2009, in the Field School auditorium. (“School caucus to endorse candidate for 64, 207 slates,” December 30)

For those of you who don’t pay attention to such things, the Caucus is a semi-official looking but make-believe quasi-organization of unelected “delegates” that springs up every two years to hand-pick candidates for both the District 64 and District 207 school boards for whom it then collects petition signatures and, if somebody dares to run against its slate, campaigns for the slated candidates using unspecified “dues” and a war chest, the amount of which is not disclosed on its website, http://caucus.park-ridge.il.us. 

Over the past decade, only 2 non-Caucus candidates have dared to challenge a Caucus slate for any of the 18 available slots on the Dist. 64 board – only one successfully.  And that successful candidate, current board member Ted Smart, won election in 2007 in a race that was theater of the absurd: after challenging the Caucus slate Smart tried to drop out of the race, but his decision came too late for his name to be taken off the ballot; and he ended up defeating Caucus candidate Shlomo Crandus, 5,062 to 3,495.

Enraged Caucus members suggested that Smart’s election was the product of anti-Semitism, and they demanded that Smart refuse the seat to which he was lawfully elected.  Those demands were reportedly accompanied by threatening telephone calls to Smart’s home.  But in the almost two years since his election, Smart has shown himself to be the typical go-along-to-get-along, rubber-stamp Dist. 64 board member.

So expect the Caucus to once again round up the usual suspects – basically decent, unremarkable folks whose main qualification is that they are pleasant and unlikely to rock the boat despite the facts that: (a) Dist. 64’s budget keeps going up; (b) its teachers and administrators continue to receive higher salaries for jobs that are more secure, and provide better benefits, than those of the taxpayers who are paying the freight; and (c) no Dist. 64 school shows up on the annual lists of the Top 50 ISAT high achievers for either elementary [pdf] or middle [pdf] schools. 

UPDATE 1/2/09 @ 2:35 p.m.
We just received a copy of an e-mail [pdf] from Caucus Chair Phil Eichman which further illustrates what kind of farce the entire Caucus process appears to be, especially as it relates to Dist. 64: Although the Caucus claims (on its “About Us” web page [pdf]) that its candidates “first undergo a rigorous and lengthy interviewing process…[and] appear several times before Caucus delegates to make policy presentations,” Mr. Eichman’s recruitment e-mail clearly shows how the Caucus leadership seems willing to consider for endorsement anybody who fills out an application and shows up on Jan. 7. 

We can only guess that, at least for the Caucus, “rigorous and lengthy” aren’t what they used to be.

We also wonder why the Caucus hasn’t posted on its website the completed “extensive application” forms for candidates Lawson, Gentile, Uhlig, Mueller, Barsanti and Derrick, so that the public who the Caucus purports to serve can get an idea – before the endorsements are made – of exactly what qualifications and ideas these candidates bring to the process. 

Salt, Overtime, Cause Budget Woes.  The Herald-Advocate also reported this week that that the City’s Public Works department is in full budget-busting mode as it runs low on salt and high on overtime for its snow plow drivers (“Brutal December weather eats through Park Ridge salt supply,” December 30).

Due to escalating prices, the City reportedly is already $190,420 over budget while paying roughly three times the $40 per ton that it spent for salt last year.  And in order to conserve the costly salt the City has utilized more plowing, hence more overtime pay.  We don’t have a problem with that trade off, as roadway safety is of paramount importance.  But with a City budget that was already sporting a yawning budget deficit of $1.7 million – on the heals of a similar hole last year – things are not looking promising for City finances.  Again.

Fortunately, Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim still holds out hope of a “mild winter,” although he has not indicated on what information (the U.S. Weather Service?  The “Farmer’s Almanac”? The color bands on the Wooly Bear caterpillar?) he is pinning that hope.  And The Zinger doesn’t even dare to whisper how much bigger the budget hole will get once the cost of repairing all those potholes that are already springing up all over town is figured in. 

Hey, Wayne, any chance that one of the reasons many Park Ridge streets already look like they belong in a war zone is because last year’s potholes weren’t repaired correctly due to lack of money?  Or should we pose that question to Mayor Howard “The Coward” Frimark, who kicked off his re-election campaign by crowing about how well he has managed City finances?

The late French president Charles De Gaulle once observed: “Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.”

That quote came to mind as we read the letter to the editor of Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward) in last week’s Herald-Advocate (“Assess budget, police station costs first,” December 25), in which he attempts to explain why he can’t support the advisory referendum on the big new multi-million dollar cop shop initially proposed by Ald. Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) and subsequently taken up by a citizens petition drive. 

In true politician style, Wsol begins his alibi by attacking the referendum language for containing “the implied suggestion that land purchases are needed and more than $16.5 million is required” for the new cop shop, which Wsol labels as “not appropriate, nor needed.”  Apparently he didn’t expect to be taken at his word on those comments – or else he just assumed that nobody would remember how he has consistently supported a new cop shop costing more than $16.5 million on land acquired by the City specifically for that purpose.

Let’s start with Wsol’s votes – as reflected in both the City Council’s Public Safety Committee March 26, 2007, meeting minutes [pdf] and the City Council’s April 2, 2007, meeting minute excerpts [pdf] – in favor of a new building containing a whopping 37,000 square feet of “people space” and another 12,000 square feet of “secured vehicle parking” that would be paid for by the issuance of up to $19 million of debt/bonds. 

And as reported in the Public Safety Committee’s October 2, 2008, meeting minutes [pdf], now-Chairman Wsol himself pegged the cost of the new cop shop building at “16.5 million plus interest” – with that “interest,” according to calculations [pdf] obtained by the City from William Blair & Company at the end of November, totaling just a shade under $12 million over 21 years, driving the cost of the new cop shop all the way up to $28,489,950…without figuring in the price of the land.   

So if De Gaulle was right, maybe the fact that Schmidt took Wsol at his word in proposing a referendum question based on Wsol’s $16.5 million figure stunned Frankie into silence at the Council’s December 1 meeting, a silence that continued until last week’s letter to the editor.  

And if De Gaulle was right, Wsol’s alibi about the cop shop referendum might not be the outright lie it appears to be.  It might simply be the product of Wsol’s not knowing or even caring what the truth of the matter is, so long as whatever he says is politically expedient – a situation that becomes more likely from reading the entirety of Wsol’s politically expedient but questionable-to-misleading statements in his letter, annotated with our comments and questions [pdf].  

Wsol’s letter, however, does make a few things clear about the alderman from the 7th ward: He’s a pretty shallow thinker when it comes to a project like the new cop shop; he’s no fiscal conservative; and he has the same disregard for hearing from Park Ridge voters that Mayor Howard “The Coward” Frimark and his Alderpuppets have displayed. 

But it does look like he has become a politician. Too bad for Park Ridge. 

In our original Howard The Coward post, we noted how Mayor Howard Frimark was afraid to let his constituents vote on an advisory referendum about whether the City should spend millions of dollars on a new police station.

Today we reprise the “Howard the Coward” nickname for Frimark’s latest act of cowardice: his rejection of First Ward Alderman (and mayoral candidate) Dave Schmidt’s proposal of a minimum of eight mayoral debates, one in each ward and one city-wide.

The fact that it took Frimark less than 48 hours to just say “no” to Schmidt’s proposal is no surprise to those of us who have watched Frimark’s performance in public life, first for two years as an alderman and then during his past 3-1/2 years as mayor.  That’s because Frimark doesn’t have enough knowledge or understanding of City issues to carry him through more than one or two debates, even with as much prep work as his political brain, Linda Ski, can muster.

According to this week’s Herald Advocate article, “Schmidt wants eight debates” (December 23), Frimark’s objection to individual ward-focused debates is that the mayoral race is city-wide, so separate ward debates aren’t necessary.  Apparently “The Coward” doesn’t appreciate the fact that various areas of the City have specific interests that can’t possibly be adequately discussed in city-wide debates – unless they go for six or eight hours. 

Hey, Howard, don’t you think those folks up in Mayfield Estates might have some flooding concerns – or related concerns about relief sewers and other infrastructure elements – which are different from those of folks in the First or Seventh wards?  And isn’t it possible that the folks in the Six and Seventh wards might have a bigger stake and deeper interest in what is happening with the “Higgins Corridor” than do the residents in the First and Second wards?  

Interestingly enough, Howard the Coward has already committed to a debate hosted by the Chamber of Commerce on “economic issues,” so his objection to debates on limited issues rings hollow.

If we remember correctly, the only actual “debate” Frimark showed up for during the 2005 mayoral campaign was the Chamber of Commerce’s luncheon held at the Park Ridge Country Club on March 16, 2005 ($25 for Chamber members, $30 for non-members) – Frimark subsequently used his wife’s fender-bender auto accident as an eleventh-hour alibi to pull out of the League of Women Voters debate at City Hall, leaving then-challenger Michael Tinaglia to do a monologue for a packed Council chambers audience.

Of course, a luncheon debate at the Park Ridge Country Club that costs $25-30 a ticket is likely to limit the audience to a size and type most hospitable to Howard the Coward; and a “luncheon” duration conveniently limits the number of questions he has to answer.  

So when it comes to debates about City issues, it appears that eight is way more than enough for Howard the Coward. 

Those who remember the original “Dragnet” television series will certainly remember L.A. police Sgt. Joe Friday’s request for “just the facts, ma’am.”  And fans of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan may remember his: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Both of those messages are becoming increasingly important as more and more people confuse opinion with fact, or just plain get their facts wrong.  This seems to occur most often among people who are trying to influence public opinion, whether they be politicians, reporters in the conventional media, bloggers, or ordinary citizens. 

That problem was recently illustrated by Park Ridge resident Ken Balaskovits’ letter in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“City Officials Had Opportunity To Learn New Runway Details,” Dec. 17). 

In his letter, Balaskovits claims that it was the “purple ribbon” City Council that, back in 2003, had Park Ridge withdraw from the Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”) even as then-mayor Ron Wietcha was expressing his concern about the adverse impact the new east-west runway would have on Park Ridge.

Balaskovits gets a 50% and, hence, a failing grade, on those points.  Although Wietecha did warn about the dangers to Park Ridge of O’Hare expansion back in 2003, the purple ribbons didn’t appear until May of 2005 – part of the orchestrated campaign by supporters of newly-elected Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark in response to Frimark’s whining about how that newly-elected Council “stole his powers” by exercising its legal authority to organize its own Council committees instead of letting Frimark make them up as he chose.

But Balaskovits, an ardent Frimark supporter, appears disingenuous when he carefully shapes his indictment of the City’s withdrawal from SOC so as to avoid mentioning that one of the 7 aldermen whose vote helped carry the City Council’s decision not to renew Park Ridge’s SOC membership – by payment of the annual dues of $64,000 and a $300,000 deposit on future litigation costs – was none other than then-4th Ward Ald. Howard Frimark, a fact reported in the Park Ridge Herald Advocate’s July 24, 2003, edition [pdf].

And as we pointed out in last week’s post (“‘Citizens Take Control’ Because Mayor and Council Don’t” Dec. 17, 2008),since becoming mayor, Frimark appears to have been so disinterested in O’Hare expansion – until the planes started buzzing the southern half of Park Ridge and his phone started ringing off the hook, that is – that he attended only one meeting of the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (“ONCC”), and that was only after then-Ald. Jeannie Markech, at the December 5, 2003, City Council meeting, directly (and publicly) suggested that he and the other aldermen begin doing so.

We don’t expect Frimark to admit that he was asleep at the wheel on O’Hare Expansion.  When it comes to accountability, Frimark believes that the buck stops anywhere and everywhere but on his desk. 

But we wonder whether any of the citizens who are, with Frimark’s encouragement, scrambling to find some way to get the City of Chicago and the FAA to reduce the use of their new $500 million runway will even think of asking Frimark why, while Park Ridge slept, he did nothing either to wake us up or to lobby Chicago and the FAA for ways to reduce the adverse consequences of that new runway. 

As we’ve noted in previous posts, we still think that pulling out of SOC was a smart move, as borne out by SOC’s (now comprised only of Bensenville and Elk Grove Village) consistent and expensive failures to halt Richie Daley’s O’Hare expansion juggernaut.  So we have to give Frimark a gold star for doing at least that one thing right.

But we can’t condone his ignorance and outright neglect of the problems posed by the new O’Hare runway during the past five years while it was being planned and built.  

How about you, Mr. Balaskovits?

We usually refer to the current Park Ridge mayor as Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark because of the way he wheels and deals to get favorable City treatment (and our tax dollars) for his friends and political contributors, like Bruce Adreani of Norwood Builders and Bill “Cadillac” Napleton.

But we’ve heard a few other nicknames that also describe the mayor, such as “Photo Op” Frimark (for his ability to get in front of the camera and get those photos published), “Mr. Coffee” Frimark (for his propensity for inviting individuals for coffee) and the newest one, “Birdie” (for his use of “a little bird told me” when sharing gossip about something or, more often, somebody).

To that collection we would like to add “Howard the Coward,” because of what appears to be his deathly fear of letting the taxpayers vote in an advisory referendum on the big new and expensive police station he wants.

We suspect that such fear is caused by the likelihood that Frimark and his alderpuppets already know what the result of such a referendum would be, and they don’t like it.  Losing a referendum on the new cop shop would really cramp their style when they vote (probably within a few months of the April election) to spend a bundle of our money and pile more long-term debt on us, while claiming that a majority of the residents they talked to support it.  That would explain why they wouldn’t give Ald. Dave Schmidt’s motion for a referendum resolution the courtesy of a second.

But because they can’t control the citizens who are petitioning to put a cop shop referendum on the ballot, we’re guessing that Frimark’s political brain, the ubiquitous local political operative Linda Ski, gave Frimark and his alderpuppets – specifically Don Bach (3rd Ward) and Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) – their marching orders to start badmouthing the referendum question as premature and inaccurate.  That way, if the referendum makes the April ballot and loses big, they can dismiss that loss by arguing that the voters were misled or were the victims of scare tactics about the cost.

That’s a well-worn politician’s trick, which makes it perfect for a politician like Frimark.

But let’s take a look at Frimark’s specific objections to the referendum question, as reported in this week’s Herald-Advocate (“Frimark: referendum question uses premature information,” Dec. 17), followed by our questions/comments:
 
“I think the referendum is sort of putting the cart before the horse because we still don’t have all this information [about what type of station will be built or the cost].” The referendum isn’t about what kind of station will be built, but about the money that will be spent.  If the mayor thought that $16.5 million was too high, why didn’t he have one of his alderpuppets move to amend it to a lower number?

“Once we get to that point, I’m sure the aldermen will reach out to their constituents and get feedback on what they feel is appropriate.” What better way to “reach out to their constituents” than by a referendum, with the public debate that would lead up to it?  By a simple vote in April, thousands of residents – far more than the alderpuppets will ever be able to “reach out to” otherwise – can make their view known in a very direct and measurable way.

The police station “is still a decision the City Council has to make.”  Indeed it is, but what honest and decent people’s representative wouldn’t want the benefit of knowing what the voters think about such an important issue before making his decision?

“We need to have something definite to show the constituents in town in order for us to build a police station.”  Once again, this isn’t a question of what kind of cop shop to build: it’s a question of whether the taxpayers want to borrow and spend multi-millions of dollars for any kind of new cop shop, wherever it may be located.

“I think it’s always been the goal of the City Council to build this police station with no tax burden to the residents.”  And exactly how does the City go about doing that?  Unless we are planning to charge user fees to the cops and civilian employees who work there, to the crooks that are booked there, and to the citizens who visit there, the cost of any new cop shop will most certainly be born by the taxpaying residents.  Does Frimark really believe the taxpayers are stupid enough to fall for this tripe?

At least one resident, Mike Reardon, called Frimark and his alderpuppets on their cowardice at Monday night’s Council meeting: “If you don’t believe citizens should have input on a multi-million dollar expenditure, you should have the courage to stand up and say that.”  Exactly, Mr. Reardon.

But the bottom line is that Howard the Coward and his alderpuppets don’t have the courage – or the integrity – to say anything of the sort.  Just like they don’t have the courage or the integrity to find out what the voters think about a new cop shop.

That’s what passes for leadership in Howardville.  Or should we say Cowardville?