As regular readers of this blog know, the City of Park Ridge recently reported a $1.7 million deficit in last year’s budget and the prospect of an equivalent deficit – or worse – in this year’s budget.  Not exactly the kind of news you want to hear in the middle of a recession and with “For Sale” signs continuing to pop up all over town like mushrooms, is it?

So if you’re concerned about how City finances and your tax dollars are being managed (or mismanaged), you might want to stroll over to City Hall tomorrow night (Tuesday, November 25, 7:00 p.m.) and catch the City Council’s Finance & Budget Committee meeting.

As best as can be discerned from the Agenda [pdf] and the Background Memorandum [pdf] for that meeting, one of the topics will be a review of the City’s financial results – including the Uptown Tax Increment Finance (“TIF”) district – for the first six months of FY 2008-09.  And one of the TIF topics that will be discussed is the relocation of Coldwell Banker Residential Realty from its current location next to the former Hollywood Video store on Touhy over to one of the recently-completed Target Area II buildings between Northwest Hwy. and Touhy, just west of Prospect. 

From the applicable Agenda Cover Memorandum [pdf], it appears that Coldwell Banker is going into one of the “retail” spaces fronting on Northwest Hwy., which means that yet another of those “retail” spaces in Target Area II won’t be generating any sales tax, although PRC will pay the City $18,168 annually as a form of subsidy because it couldn’t put retail into there.  That’s better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it sure doesn’t add to the “mix” of stores that were supposed to create that “vibrant” Uptown retail dynamic all of our public officials were blubbering about when this project was being sold to the taxpayers as a property tax savior.

Which is why we would like to see Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark, Alderpuppet Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) and all those former aldercritters – like Rex Parker, Sue Bell, Mark Anderson, Dawn Disher, Mike Marous, Mary Wynn Ryan, etc. – who insisted that Park Ridge would become a magnet for retail if only we built enough new retail space, show up Tuesday night to explain exactly what they were smoking when the spouted what now appears to be nonsense.  The same goes for Uptown Advisory Task Force chair Ellen Upton and the rest of her task force members who started the Uptown Redevelopment “Retail” drum beat. 

But we’re not going to bet the ranch on that happening.  Public officials who make bad decisions tend to cut and run at the earliest opportunity and not look back, so it is unlikely that any former officials would return to the scene of the crime and accept accountability for their handiwork.

On a related note, another highlight of tomorrow night’s meeting will be a discussion of the fact that the Uptown TIF Fund now owes the City’s “General Fund” $3.8 million to repay the money the TIF district has had to borrow because the TIF district is not generating enough revenues to pay its own way.  We can’t wait to hear that explanation, although we’re betting it will sound a lot like “it’s too early” in the life of the TIF to expect positive cash flow, but that it will “soon start turning a profit.”

That’s the standard TIF story, and you can expect all the TIF proponents to stick with it.

And talking about funds and fund balances, there should also be a discussion of the fact that four of the City’s operating funds – Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, Municipal Waste, Emergency 911 and Alley Paving – are “overdrawn” by almost $3 million.  We’ve always considered governmental “fund accounting” to be like a shell game, but with a lot more than the standard three shells.  So while we’re not sure what exactly is the practical effect of a fund being “overdrawn,” we have to assume that it can’t be good. 

All in all, it makes for the prospect of some interesting moments during tomorrow night’s meeting, especially with a mayor and city council that keeps on talking and acting like we can easily afford to spend in the neighborhood of $20 million for a new police station but somehow can’t afford relief sewers to reduce the flooding, or to pave our streets to reduce the potholes.

With The F&B Show, there’s always entertainment; and it usually involves both smoke and mirrors.  

Third Ward Alderpuppet Don Bach went on record in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Was planning session worth the cost of hiring facilitator?” Nov. 20) as believing that spending $19,500 for last weekend’s “strategic planning” sessions was “a good expense of $20,000.” 

We trust our faithful readers and other observant Park Ridge citizens will remember Bach as the same diligent steward of the public purse who, back in January, ripped Bill Napleton for disrespecting the City Council and insulting the people of Park Ridge by demanding $2.4 million of our tax dollars to keep his dealerships in Park Ridge.  Bach told Napleton that he wouldn’t buy another Cadillac from him – before voting to give Napleton all the money he asked for!

So when Bach says that “[u]nless you sit a group down like this with a facilitator who has a goal in mind and a time table in mind, this 12-point plan we came up with could have taken a year,” we take it with a whole fistful of salt.  And when we consider the work product they came up with, we wonder whether Ald. Bach and his cohorts might be interested in taking some prime Florida swamp land off our hands.

C’mon, Don, did the City really have to spend $20,000 of our tax dollars for you folks to come up with “build a police station,” “keep streets and sidewalks in good repair,” and “develop and implement a plan for improving rush hour traffic flow”?  And do you actually want to publicly admit that you and the rest of City government needed a $20,000 “facilitator” to help you figure out that you need to “prioritize capital projects based on available revenue”?

If so, then maybe we’ve got a bad case of the inmates running the asylum.  Or the blind leading the blinder.

We also don’t see $20,000 of value in: “Aim for building one or two relief sewers each year, if funding permits, to further reduce chances of flooding.” [Emphasis added]  At that rate, we won’t start getting flooding under control until…let’s see now…maybe around the time that the $16.5 million in new cop shop bonds gets paid off in…hmmm…2029? 

With the City already staring at a $1.7 million budget hole from last year and maybe even a bigger one this year, however, all you folks up in Mayfield Estates and in those other areas of town that regularly flood might want to consider outfitting your basements with pool and patio furniture – or invest in some scuba gear.

But at least you’ll have a big new police station to look at.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, Ald. (and newly-announced mayoral candidate) Dave Schmidt (1st Ward) disclosed that at the December 1, 2008, meeting he will propose a resolution seeking the Council’s approval of putting the following issue to an advisory referendum of Park Ridge voters at the April 7, 2009 election:

Should the City of Park Ridge replace its current police facility with a new, larger structure at a cost of at least $16 million plus additional, but currently unknown, costs for land acquisition and bond interest?

By passing such a resolution, the City Council could give the voters their say on this issue, but without binding the Council to follow the voters’ advice.  In other words, the Council could find out what thousands of Park Ridge voters think about such an expensive public works project, yet the aldermen would remain free to accept or reject that advice.  What’s not to like?

Plenty, if you’re Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his Alderpuppets.  Which is why it didn’t take Frimark and Alderpuppet Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) long to start badmouthing the idea.

Frimark, who has spent the last two years secretly wheeling and dealing for the City to buy private property for a new cop shop – most recently the shuttered auto dealership of his buddy and campaign contributor Bill Napleton – pronounced the Alderpuppet party line on such a referendum with his comments to the Park Ridge Journal: “I’m not big on these advisory referendums…[because]…[t]he aldermen were elected to make these decisions.”

Similar comments came from DiPietro, who parroted Frimark in insisting that the aldermen are elected to make these decisions but then blustered: “[A]nd the people have the right to elect someone else if they don’t like the decisions.”

Spoken like someone who doesn’t have to run for re-election until 2011; and who, it’s rumored, won’t even be running then but will hand his seat over to one of two Frimark favorites – Nick Milissis (current Park Board commissioner whom Frimark has appointed to the City’s Civil Service and Fair Housing Commissions) or Rich Brendza (former one-term Dist. 64 board member).

We have checked all of the information we could find on the April 2007 aldermanic elections, and we were unable to discover even one candidate for alderman (including all seven members of the current Council) who campaigned on a platform of borrowing and/or spending at least $16 million (not including interest) on a new police station.  The same goes for Frimark’s 2005 mayoral campaign.  So nobody truly elected them to make this decision at all, especially without consulting the voters via referendum.

Don’t expect any of the other full-time Alderpuppets to cut their strings to Puppeteer Frimark on this one, however, including semi-independant Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), who gladly drank the new cop shop Kool-Aid when he was facing a tough re-election challenge from Frimark puppet (and former cop) Bob Kristie in April 2007 and now can’t turn back.

But the real dishonesty on this matter can be attributed to Frimark, naturally, who insists that a multi-million cop shop will be “tax-neutral for citizens” because the 20-plus year cop shop bonds will simply replace the 10-year Public Works Building bonds, thereby keeping the city paying roughly the same annual debt service until around 2029.

Frimark conveniently (or deceitfully?) ignores the fact that 20-year bonds increase the total interest cost to the taxpayers by millions over what they paid on the Public Works Building’s 10-year bonds; and extending that level of debt service for another 20 years will also tie the hands of future City Councils as to what they can spend on what are truly infrastructure needs, like relief sewers, street paving, etc.  Even more fundamentally, if this were purely a tax matter, wouldn’t the taxpayers be entitled to a tax reduction once the existing Public Works bonds are retired and the debt service abates? 

But “Let’s Make A Deal” and Richie D really think the taxpayers of Park Ridge are dumb enough to buy the big lie – that losing a potential tax reduction is “tax-neutral.” And that’s also why they are so smug and comfortable telling the taxpaying voters who might want a say on such a long-term spending boondoggle, effectively, to: “Pound sand!”

Only four “ordinary” Park Ridge citizens reportedly attended any part of Park Ridge city government’s “strategic planning” extravaganza this past weekend at the Park Ridge Public Library.  But from the sound of things, the best the taxpaying residents of this community can hope for is that it was merely a waste of time and $19,500.

That’s because the “strategic” ideas coming out of the two planning sessions were pretty much just re-hashes of the “same old same old” we’ve been hearing for years.  That’s the good news.  But some of those re-hashed same olds – the ones that are going to cost us the most money and/or bury us in even more debt, of course – might have received a shot of steroids from the group-think process, making them even more dangerous than before.

Let’s start with the big new police station that Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark has been trying to build so that he can have the taxpayers throw a few million dollars at one or another of his buddies or campaign contributors who wants to dump one of their Park Ridge properties but can’t find a ready, willing and able buyer.  Say somebody like…oh…umm…hmmm…Bill Napleton?  

If we were to believe the opinions of the elected and appointed officials, along with the higher-level bureaucrats in attendance, not only do we need to spend at least $16.5 million (not including the land costs and 20+ years of bond interest) on a new cop shop, but a majority of our residents support such a project – or would support it if only they understood just how necessary it is. 

Our resident “Chicken Little,” Frimark Alderpuppet Jim Allegretti (4th Ward), reportedly went so far with his “the sky is falling” predictions that he actually suggested that (1) criminals arrested by our police might start staging slip-and-fall “accidents” on the steps into the current station just so they could file personal injury lawsuits – with the help of a network of slick P.I. attorneys who would target the Park Ridge police station as a kind of slip-and-fall “honey hole.”; and (2) our female police officers will start filing discrimination suits because of all the years of having inadequate and unequal locker room facilities.   

Gee, Jimbo, couldn’t we solve those two “legal” problems (assuming there’s even a lick of merit to either of them) for a lot less than $16.5 million? 

Not only did the big new cop shop get a ringing endorsement, but a new or expanded Library also wormed its way onto the “to do” list – although Alderpuppet Robert Ryan (5th Ward) did opine that the 2002 library referendum made clear that the citizens don’t want to see the Library moved to some other place in town, as some of the other “strategic” thinkers in the group were advocating.

Other random “strategic” ideas that came out of the brainstorming portion of the sessions included: building monument-style “gateways” to mark the entries to Park Ridge; buying up homes along the Higgins corridor and land-banking them to aid commercial developers; taking the lead on the “homeless problem”; reducing the public’s comment time at Council meetings so the meetings get done faster; doing a comprehensive sewer study to figure out what areas were flooded and what can be done to correct it; giving more economic incentives to businesses to locate here or expand their operations; more façade improvements in South Park and around the Dee Road METRA station; and better “selling” of residents on various projects and plans.

As one of the “ordinary” citizens in attendance observed, if these sessions had been televised or videorecorded and shown to the public, he’d like to have the torches and ropes concession for the citizens who would march on City Hall. 

We suspect that’s a bit extreme, although we do find it interesting that the City Council chose not to record those proceedings so that there would be a verbatim record of everything that was said, how it was said, and who said it. 

But apparently our public officials didn’t want any evidence that couldn’t be sanitized for the protection of the delicate sensibilities of us average citizens.  So those of you who want to find out more details will need to wait for Jennifer Johnson’s account in this week’s Herald-Advocate, or wait for the “official” report that the highly-paid “facilitator” indicated would be forthcoming – hopefully as part of the $19,500 price.

Oh, by the way: Despite the talk about all the great things on which the City might spend bundles of money, the actual cost of things was virtually ignored. And, not surprisingly, nobody reportedly had any solid ideas for generating the revenue needed to pay for them, other than….wait for it…property taxes.  

But you knew that, didn’t you?

If you have a twisted sense of humor, a strong stomach, and some time to waste tonight and tomorrow, you might consider wandering over to the Park Ridge Public Library and watching what’s being billed as the Park Ridge City Council’s “strategic planning session.”  At the very least, you can see how $19,500 of your tax dollars are being spent.

As reported in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate (“City schedules strategic planning,” Nov. 13), the City is bringing in Robert Oberwise of Executive Partners [pdf] to “facilitate” this circus minimus, which will run from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. tonight, and resume tomorrow from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  While you will be allowed to spectate, you won’t be allowed to commentate.  But it might not take long before you’ll want to expectorate. 

The reason for this exercise?  The official party line comes from Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark himself, whose sales pitch is: “The goal really is to get the council and staff moving in the same direction, so we’re all on the same page.”

What exactly does that mean, Mr. Mayor?  Are you saying that the Council and staff have been going in different directions, or been on different pages?  If so, can you give us some specific examples – or are you just blowing smoke at us again?

The first clue that this is going to be an exercise in futility comes from City Mgr. Jim Hock, who is staring down the barrel of over $3 million in cumulative budget deficits inherited from his predecessor, Tim (“Good Riddance”) Schuenke.  Hock says he is looking “to hear from the mayor and aldermen what their most important concerns are” before he suggests any budget cuts.

Sorry, Mr. Hock, but you’re the professional city manager making in the vicinity of $200,000 a year to serve as the City’s CEO, so it’s time you started acting like one.  You’re the guy who should be proposing those cuts that your years of municipal managerial experience tell you need to be made – and then let the mayor and the aldermen react to them.  The method you are suggesting may cover your tail politically, but only because it invites politics into what should be economic decisions. 

And with the whole regional business community predicting even more dire economic straits in the near future (according to Mayor “Li’l Richie” Daley), we shouldn’t have to blow almost twenty grand for strategic planning…if our city officials have even a modicum of common sense and good judgment.

First of all, they need to stop talking about building a new $20 million-plus police station that will saddle us taxpayers with 20 years or more of relatively non-productive debt and debt service.  And they also need to tell those folks on the Library Board to stop wasting any more of their time and our money on silly half-baked surveys designed to gin up support for an addition to, or replacement of, that building.  It’s way past time that these public officials got over their edifice complexes and started doing a better job of managing the facilities they’ve been given.

But if all Mayor Let’s Make A Deal and his Alderpuppets want is their names on a bronze plaque, we would much prefer that they abandon all these foolish building schemes and, instead, buy a plaque that reads:

“Dedicated to our fiscally-responsible public officials who, unlike the bureaucratic lemmings who populate the local governments of most other communities, had the foresight, the wisdom, the courage and the discipline to refrain from wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on grand but unnecessary structures.”

And to put our money where our mouth is, PublicWatchdog will gladly pay for that kind of a plaque.

But we’re not going to hold our breath waiting for City Hall to call us on our offer, because we realize there are more “benefits” – wink, wink – to the construction of a new cop shop or a new library than just a plaque on the wall, “benefits” that often escape the attention of the average taxpayer. 

After all, Park Ridge does sit right next to Richie Daley’s Chicago, and snugly within the boundaries of Crook County.

We recently had an inquiry from a Park Ridge taxpayer concerning the current “streetscaping” project on Summit Avenue, just South of the Library.  The general tenor of the question was: “With a horrible economy and the City’s million dollar budget deficit, why is the City spending all that money on something so unnecessary?”Good question.

But first things first.  The budget deficit for 2007-08 is reported to be $1.7 million, not merely $1 million.  And City Mgr. Jim Hock is predicting a similar deficit for the current 2008-09 budget year.  That’s a total of $3.4 million of red ink that our City Council let former City Mgr. Tim Schuenke bamboozle it into when it accepted his inflated revenue projections, and which it has to find a way to cover.  Let’s see now: will City Hall raise our taxes some more, add to our municipal debt, simply cut corners on essential but already-neglected infrastructure repairs…or all three?

So why is the City spending a bundle of our hard-earned money on streetscaping? 

In the first instance, because it was recommended by our own collection of bureaucrats known as City “Staff,” as can be seen from the August 18, 2008, Agenda Cover Memo [pdf] to the City Council by Acting Director of Community Preservation and Development, Carrie Davis. 

Ms. Davis has mastered the bureaucratic art of making grand pronouncements without any facts to support them.  In this case, she concludes that this streetscaping project “will improve sight lines and safety” – “safety” being the magic word because it’s a sure-fire way of provoking an unthinking, knee-jerkingly favorable reaction – without one shred of explanation about how this project will improve “safety.”  Not only that, but in her very next paragraph she makes the seemingly contradictory statement that “[t]he goal of this project is to continue the design of the City Commons streetscape improvements”  [Emphasis added], which suggests that the project is really more about appearance than about safety.

But if you really want to see the bureaucratic mind at work, check out the second page of her memo, where Davis attempts to explain away the over-budget cost of this project with four “reasons” (using that term loosely, as very little actual reasoning is at work here), including a repetition of her conclusory “safety” argument (this time, the more specific but no better explained “pedestrian safety”) and the recitation of one of the most loathsome of all bureaucratic excuses:

“Construction costs are expected to continue rising, making it more expensive to do the work each year the project is delayed.”

In other words, buy everything you want today because it’s going to cost more tomorrow!

Unfortunately, the members of our City Council must have been mesmerized by the total inanity of this explanation and whatever additional “pertinent details” Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim came up with, because without even one question or comment they approved spending $1,553,341 on this project by a 7-0 vote at the Council’s August 18, 2008, meeting, as evidenced by the relevant excerpts of that meeting’s Minutes [pdf].

If the term “fiscal responsibility” is to be more than a tired cliché when applied to local government, we’ve got to get rid of this buy-it-now mentality which treats our tax dollars like Monopoly money, and treats non-essential amenities as if they are necessities. 

And if our bureaucrats and elected officials can’t embrace the concept of a “wise and frugal government” that Thomas Jefferson advocated in his first inaugural address over 200 years ago, then it’s time to get rid of them, too.

For the many Park Ridge residents who welcomed an end to the wrong-headed efforts of the Park Ridge Ministerial Association (“PRMA”) and Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark to bring a PADS to HOPE, Inc. (“PADS Inc.”) homeless shelter franchise to Park Ridge, last week’s announcement to that effect was good news.

But before the opponents of that flawed shelter plan declare victory, they may want to look at what the City’s Human Needs Task Force is up to.  Because “PADS” appears as an item on the agenda [pdf] of that group’s meeting tomorrow morning (Nov. 11, 8:30 a.m. in the Mayor’s Conference Room).

But even more interesting is what’s reported in the draft minutes [pdf] of that group’s October 14th meeting, in which – with Frimark’s encouragement – they tentatively approved sending a letter to the City Council endorsing the PRMA’s efforts to bring a PADS shelter to Park Ridge.  

That group also wanted to include a plea that the homeless shelter go into St. Paul of the Cross “without restriction or license,” but that point was abandoned when it was suggested that it might “make it difficult to get this project to move forward.”

What’s disturbing, however, is how the Task Force – in what was an open meeting – nevertheless attempted to cloak it’s plan for a PADS endorsement letter in secrecy by getting PADS opponent Missy Langan to agree “not to discuss this letter with anyone”! 

Whether Langan actually agreed to that bit of deception or went along with it is not currently known.  But those minutes reveal yet again how the Culture of Secrecy permeates local government, especially City government under the administration of Mayor Frimark – in this case, with an assist from former 2nd Ward Ald. John Benka, who should have known from his Council days that the Illinois Open Meetings Act doesn’t permit such secrecy. 

And those minutes also suggest that the Human Needs Task Force members may have their own agenda to keep the PADS shelter issue alive for the foreseeable future, waiting for just the right opportunity to help bring it onto the front burner and push it through.

Meanwhile, one of our readers provided us with a copy of “Fr. Carl’s Corner” [pdf] from yesterday’s St. Paul of the Cross bulletin, in which Fr. Morello once again uses the church’s “pulpit” as a forum for his personal political views on PADS and to pat himself and his PRMA associates on their collective backs.  Especially amusing is his admonition: “do not judge others.”

Do you mean like accusing people with whom you disagree of engaging in “thinly-veiled racial and economic bigotry”?  

As reported in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Churches won’t try to run shelter without PADS in partnership,” Nov. 6), the Park Ridge Ministerial Association (“PRMA”) has abandoned its efforts to open a homeless shelter in Park Ridge because its homeless shelter franchise of choice, PADS to Hope, Inc. (“PADS Inc.”), decided it can’t be bothered with complying with our zoning laws.

Apparently PADS Inc. was insulted that our Planning & Zoning Commission and our City Council had the audacity to expect compliance with our zoning laws.  PADS Inc.’s high dudgeon stems from its claim that none of the other communities on its traveling road show circuit required such compliance – further evidence that (as H.L. Mencken might have said), you won’t go broke underestimating the intelligence of most public officials.

That a carpetbagger organization like PADS Inc. would take its ball and go pouting back home to Palatine doesn’t surprise us.  The numerous legitimate questions about PADS Inc.’s operations and effectiveness in combating homelessness raised by so many of our residents and other interested parties (e.g., St. Paul of the Cross Concerned Parents) over the past nine months since the PRMA first announced that a PADS shelter was moving into St. Mary’s Episcopal clearly had an “Emperor’s New Clothes” effect on an organization that seems to have escaped serious scrutiny for quite awhile. 

But what about our local clergy who run the PRMA?  What about their “ministry” that demanded the establishment of a homeless shelter for all those Park Ridge homeless?

Well, according to PRMA spokesman Rev. Stephen Larson of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, the PRMA can’t open a shelter without PADS Inc. because that organization provides “background checks, identification cards, psychological and medical counseling, employment referrals, linkage agreements with police departments and other social services.” 

C’mon, Rev. Larson…do you really think Jesus would let those things get in His way if He really believed a one-night-a-week, six-month-a-year shelter was such an important “ministry”? 

First of all, the “psychological and medical counseling” issue is a complete red herring, because PADS Inc. did little more than a once-a-year check up for its traveling road show “clients.”  If the PRMA really cared about these health issues, however, we have to believe it could work out an arrangement with Lutheran General for health services every bit as good as, or even better than, what PADS Inc. provides. 

As for “background checks [and] identification cards,” that looks like another red herring, because we’re pretty sure PADS Inc. fans like Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and Chief of Police Tom Swoboda could arrange for the Park Ridge Police Dept. to handle the background checks and any of the other public safety services which PADS Inc. expected to secure through a “linkage agreement” with the City; and PADS Inc. fan and Park Ridge Park District President Dick Barton could arrange for the Park District to provide the picture I.D.s. 

That leaves only “employment referrals” and “other social services” as missing pieces that PADS Inc. allegedly would have provided.  Might we suggest that, if those services can’t be provided by one or more of our local social service organizations like the Center of Concern, maybe Mayor Frimark could negotiate a contract for them with PADS Inc. in much the same way as he wanted to negotiate a contract with PADS Inc. to put one of its franchises in the Public Works Service Center?

We can’t guarantee that all of this would work out the way we have suggested.  But the fact that the PRMA is so willing to walk away from what it was calling, just weeks ago, an essential “ministry” indicates that this was never really about helping the homeless but, instead, was about helping PADS Inc. to expand its franchise so that it could get more government and private funding.  And it also suggests that the PRMA was not exactly telling the people of this community the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about its support for a PADS Inc. franchise in Park Ridge.

Finally, we need to recognize one Robert O’Neill of Park Ridge, who – in an “Open Letter of Contempt” published in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate – called the people who “created enough noise to keep a homeless shelter out of Park Ridge…narrow minded jackals” and venomous “snakes,” in part, it seems, because they were also critical of his pastor, St. Paul of the Cross’s Fr. Carl Morello.

For ratcheting up the nasty rhetoric well beyond that of Fr. Morello, who merely branded those same people as practitioners of “thinly veiled racial and economic bigotry,” we bestow on O’Neill the inaugural “Pseudo-Christian of the Week” Award.  We also look forward to his next letter to the Herald-Advocate announcing that he has begun taking one homeless person into his own home one night per week between now and April.1 as his own personal effort to remedy homelessness.

Now, when can we expect to hear that same announcement from all you PRMA clergy and your White Shirted supporters?

Our property taxes are soaring.  Mortgage defaults and foreclosures on Park Ridge homes are occurring in alarming numbers.

Meanwhile, our basements keep flooding, our streets and sidewalks need repairs, our electric power is dependably undependable, we’ve got a $1.7 million hole in last year’s budget and another similar budget hole is already expected for this year. 

And, oh yeah – the country’s in a recession that the “experts” are predicting will take years to climb out of.

So why in the world has the City Council’s Public Safety Committee placed a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) for a big new police station on the agenda [pdf] for tomorrow night’s meeting?

Ask the chairman, Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), or his fellow committee members, Ald. Jim Allegretti (4th Ward) and Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward).  After all, they’re already on record as supporting the construction of a big new police station, with Wsol displaying his brand of fiscal conservatism (?) – as reported at Page 4 of the Draft Minutes of the October 2, 2008, Committee Meeting [pdf] – by talking about limiting the cost of the project to no more than $16.5 million (if located on property currently owned by the City), along with additional interest (of $5-7 million?) over the roughly 20 year life of the bonds the City will issue to finance it.

The RFQ [pdf] is being designed for the 37,000 square foot building (v. the current 9,000 square foot facility) and 12,000 square feet of “secured or underground parking” that was recommended by those hired-gun consultants who have never seen a police station or other public building that couldn’t be bigger and more expensive.

Unfortunately, this is one of the back-door ways public officials try to give these kinds of projects traction – before the taxpayers start paying attention.  Is it sneaky?  Of course it is.  Is it a waste of time?  Of course it is, unless the City is actually going to go ahead with the project.  Is it intended to get big and expensive new cop shop built without consulting the taxpaying voters?  Absolutely!   

Wsol, Allegretti and Bach need to understand that fiscal responsibility is living within one’s means – or, more accurately, the means of their constituents who actually pay the bills for the “toys” these aldermen buy.  Maintain and repair needs to take precedence over expand and replace.

But since these three gentlemen don’t seem to understand that concept, the City Council should put the cop shop issue to advisory referendum in April to find out what the voters want before embarking on this sneaky and fiscally irresponsible frolic.