Any reader of this blog knows that we were no fans of former Fire Chief Mike Zywanski – ever since the night he sat silently in a City Council meeting while then-mayor Dave Schmidt asked who from the City signed off on a set of ridiculous “ground rules” for contract negotiations between the City and the firefighters union that Zywanski not only signed off on but which he actually proposed.

So we were delighted when Chief Z retired and Jeff Sorensen took over as chief in 2014. And we’re still glad he’s the chief.

But we must confess to more than a little disappointment in reading his June 13, 2016 Agenda Cover Memorandum in which he claims to be “looking to the Council for some direction” in addressing what he claims to be “salary compression” – whereby “over half our lieutenants make almost as much as our battalion chiefs” while the former get better benefits and overtime.

Our initial disappointment arises from having a matter of this financial significance being brought up only a couple of months after the City budget was finalized. The budget process is when this discussion should have occurred, yet we recall no mention of “salary compression” in any of the Fire Dept. budget materials or during any of the discussions of the Fire Dept. budget.

So if there’s a good reason this wasn’t done as part of that process, than Chief Sorensen owes the Council and the taxpayers an explanation of what that reason might be. Because there’s nothing in his memo to suggest that this situation just sprung up overnight out of thin air.

We’re also disappointed in the gruel-thin analysis that the Chief presents in support of his conclusion that he and “all of our non-union personnel are paid far below the average for their rank and position as compared to our neighboring departments.”

Take the four MABAS salary surveys he attaches – for chief, deputy chief, captain and battalion chief – attached to his memorandum. While they show disparities in salaries, they omit key information that might provide insight into the raw salary data, such as: size of force; department budget; years on the job; years in that position; starting salary; number and amount of raises; and vacation/leave days.

In other words, these surveys appear to be apples to oranges comparisons, at best. Or maybe apples to watermelons.

We believe Chief Sorensen is better than this kind of propaganda would suggest. We also believe that he should, and can, do better than that.

But until he does, it’s up to the taxpayers’ representatives on the City Council to deny such requests while demanding a better and more-timely work product from the Chief and his senior staff.

And that “better” work product should start with some additional information that relates solely to our Fire Dept. personnel, irrespective of other communities’, that would permit our taxpayers to decide if our personnel are under-compensated, starting with a calculation of the annual pensions each of the affected personnel will be receiving; and at what age they will qualify for those pensions. Because the simple truth is that while a $130,000 salary is pretty darn good all by itself, a $97,500/year pension (75% of $130,000) with a 3% COLA is basically the gold standard – especially if one can start taking it at age 55 and can expect to pocket a whopping $3.2 million just for living to age 85.

That beats the $%@& out of Social Security and the vast majority of Park Ridge taxpayers’ 401(k)s! And those pensions and COLAs are GUARANTEED under the Illinois constitution, unlike the 401(k)s the rest of us have.

Let’s also not forget that dirty little secret rarely even whispered about when discussing firefighter pay: moonlighting income.

Thanks to the typical firefighter schedule of 24 hours on, 48 hours off, many/most firefighters moonlight at other jobs, often well-paying ones like construction. That’s all well and good, but it’s something most of our salaried taxpayers making even the $64,000 starting salary of a Park Ridge firefighter can’t pull off without the convenience of a 3-workdays-out-of-every-9-calendar-days schedule.

And while a 24-hour shift could conceivably be a significant challenge, we’d be willing to bet some decent cash that here in sleepy old Park Ridge, most of our firefighters average 6 to 8 hours of shut-eye out of the typical 24-hour shift. That’s not intended as a a criticism, just an observation.

The bottom line is that firefighters, like police, perform an essential and potentially life-risking service to our community. We owe them a debt of gratitude and fair compensation.

But that means looking at the entire compensation package, not just salaries – however further “compressed” they may have become thanks to the Chief and/or his deputies having just negotiated a 4-year contract providing 1.875% average annual raises, in addition to “step” increases based on seniority.

Which means looking long and hard at those gold standard pensions, and considering the golden opportunity for the moonlighting income that a 24-on, 48-off schedule makes possible.

In the end, however, the best test for determining how “fair” the compensation is might be to look and see how many of our firefighters – and police, and public works personnel, and teachers – flee their Park Ridge employment for similar jobs in those nearby communities held out as comparables.

Because over the past 28 years we have yet to hear the whoosh of multiple departures.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Once upon a time Park Ridge was a sleepy little inner-ring bedroom community of single-family homes and “conservative” values – so conservative, in fact, that one of its standout high-school students (who would later become a rich, famous and powerful Democrat running for president) was reportedly a “Goldwater Girl.”

Back then local government was also sleepy, run by something called the Homeowners Party that was more a social club than a political organization. The HOs not only openly ran City Hall but they also indirectly ran the park board and both school boards, the latter two through their unofficial affiliate known as the General Caucus of School Districts 64 & 207.

Park Ridge City government remained sleepy until April 2003, when the HOs lost five out of seven aldermanic races and subsequently went out of business.

Since then, local politics has become much more a contact sport than cocktail party. But the result is that local government has become vastly more transparent and accountable to the taxpayers who fund it. Not as transparent and accountable as it should be, mind you. Just more than it has ever been – even at those bastions of opaque, closed-session Star Chamber government: the D-64 and D-207 school boards.

One shining/glaring example of that “New Way” of government is that the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate published not one but TWO online stories this week about the three recommended appointees to the Library Board that were approved just the night before by the Mayoral Advisory Board (the “MAB”) comprised of the chairs of the City Council’s four standing committees: “Alderman, former trustee clash over Park Ridge Library Board attendance,” (June 7) and “Two incumbents, one newcomer recommended for Park Ridge Library Board” (June 7).

Prior to the 2009 election of the late mayor Dave Schmidt, there was no MAB. Library Board appointments, like virtually all other City board and commission appointments, were the prerogative of the mayor; and his choices were regularly rubber-stamped by docile and complicit councils, with little discussion. As a result, ordinary citizens never read or even heard about the mere “applicants” for Library Board appointments. If they heard anything at all it was usually just the names of the appointees once they were confirmed by the council. And that was only if the citizens were really paying attention, and if the local media even reported it.

Contrast that with the process implemented by Schmidt that, over the past several weeks, saw 11 residents have their applications and resumes posted on the City’s website for all to see and comment on – followed by three nights of open-meeting interviews by the MAB, culminating in the open-meeting discussion and selection of the three recommended nominees before last Monday night’s Council meeting.

Transparent process? Check.

Accountability of the four MAB aldermen? Check.

In fact, the process was so transparent that several residents, led by Walter Szulczewski, showed up to monitor those meetings. And a pre-emptive strike against the reappointment of incumbents Joe Egan and Char Foss-Eggemann was launched by a June 3rd letter to all seven aldermen from three former Library Board members (John Benka, Patricia Lofthouse and Richard Van Metre) and the Library’s former business manager (Kathy Rolsing).

Those cabal members trained their fire on the meeting attendance of Egan and Foss-Eggemann because they apparently didn’t have the nerve or the ammo to challenge those two incumbents on their respective records of performance and policy decisions – records which the cabal strongly disapproved even though the City Council and, presumably, most taxpayers, did not.

Despite the confusing attendance figures presented by the cabal, Egan’s lawful attendance at regular meetings was 30 out of 37, or 81%; and 53 out of 63, or 84% for committee meetings. Foss-Eggemann’s numbers were 31 out of 37, or 84% for regular meetings; and 37 out of 56, or 66% for committee meetings.

Further corrections to, and explanations of, those numbers were submitted to the MAB by both Egan and Foss-Eggemann.

I served on the Library Board with all three of those former trustees: with Van Metre for 1 year (2011-12), with Lofthouse for 2 years (2011-2013), and with Benka for three years (2011-2014). All three of them are smart and affable folks who were perfectly suited for the old-Homeowners style of opaque, un-accountable rubber-stamp government. In fact, Benka ran unopposed as an old-HO candidate for Second Ward alderman and held that office from 2001-2005 before being appointed to the Library Board by then-mayor Howard Frimark.

When it comes to the Library, the collective legacies of Benka, Lofthouse and Van Metre can pretty much be summed up as a cumulative 27 years of unquestioning go-along-to-get-along deference paid to the Library staff, highlighted by: Chronic neglect of the Library structure; years of irresponsible deficit spending; open hostility to, and ridicule of, then=mayor Dave Schmidt and the then-City Council as “those guys across the street”; the endorsement of management without meaningful measurement; and a “vision” of the Library based on 20-90 hindsight instead of 20-20 foresight.

In Benka’s case it also included a vote to close the Library on summer Sundays in 2014 – consistently the busiest or second-busiest day of the week based on average visits per hour – so that the Library could use that money to give raises to some employees. Those closings and raises were tacitly endorsed by the other three cabal members, none of whom voiced even a peep of an objection either in person or in writing.

Not surprisingly, Egan and Foss-Eggemann opposed each and every element of the cabal members’ legacies. And they also opposed giving away thousands of dollars of Library money each year on the foolish Food For Fines program, giving away free office space to for-profit tutors, and giving away free computer and Internet time to non-residents. And unlike the cabal members who preferred to deficit spend and then blame the city council for not giving the Library more money, Egan and Foss-Eggemann supported the 2014 Library tax levy referendum that will provide the Library with an extra $4 million by the time that levy increase expires in 2018.

Fortunately, the members of the MAB aren’t old Homeowners and don’t subscribe to those old-HO principles. That’s why Egan and Foss-Eggemann have been recommended to Acting Mayor Maloney for re-appointment. Should they be reappointed they can be expected to continue to help drive the Library into the 21st Century and make it a  better institution for even more Park Ridge residents, especially the many thousands who have not been using it.

Meanwhile, expect Van Metre to keep showing up at Library Board and City Council meetings to demand my resignation or replacement, respectively. Or to rail about Egan’s attending some Library Board meetings by “calling in from third-world countries” like…Phoenix AZ. Or to kvetch about Foss-Eggemann. Or to warn the other Library trustees about agreeing with the three of us on anything.

As a sporting proposition, he’s welcome to bring the rest of his cabal along with him.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

[DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the editor and are not intended to represent those of the Park Ridge Library, its staff, its Board of Trustees, or any other individual trustee.]

UPDATE (06.12.16): A former alderman has advised that a “Mayoral Appointment Board” was created by former mayor Mike Marous (2003-2005). Although we have not been able to independently verify that fact, we consider this alderman as a credible source of such information; and, accordingly, we deem it worthy of inclusion in this update.

To read or post comments, click on title.

On this solemn day we reprint our post from Memorial Day 2013.

Memorial Day 2013: “Go Tell The Spartans…”

At the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., a Spartan king and 300 of his personal bodyguards sacrificed their lives to delay the advance of a massive Persian army and to cover the retreat of more than 3,000 of their non-Spartan allies.  As reported by the historian Herodotus, that heroic effort led to an epitaph at the battle site which translates as:

Those Park Ridge residents who oppose the principles of H.I.T.A. (“Honesty, Integrity, Transparency, Accountability”) espoused by our late Mayor Dave Schmidt got an early Christmas present a couple of weeks ago when relatively new City Attorney Julie Tappendorf proclaimed the City’s unique contribution to open government – the open-session performance evaluation of the city manager – violated the Illinois Personnel Records Review Act (the “PRRA”).

You can watch and listen to her sparse explanation of why that is by checking out the 05.16.16 meeting video, starting at the 1:36:10 mark and continuing for about 9 minutes.

Tappendorf pointed to a 2010 amendment to the PRRA which provides that “disclosure of performance evaluations under the Freedom of Information Act shall be prohibited.” You can read not only that provision (highlighted in yellow) but the entire PRRA by clicking here.

Tappendorf is no bumbler: she knows municipal law, including its various permutations like the PRRA and the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”). But she makes her living exclusively by representing governmental bodies and by telling the public officials who run those bodies – both elected/appointed and bureaucrats –what they want to hear. Those officials generally are as enthusiastic about transparency as vampires are about sunshine. So the best way for her (and most/all other government-centric attorneys) to stay on good paper with those officials is to find ways to help them hide, and hide what they’re doing, from their constituents who pay the freight; i.e., the taxpayers.

When Park Ridge, with its iconoclastic City Council, was added to AG’s stable of governmental clients last year, it must have dawned on Tappendorf and her partners that they might have problems justifying our Council’s several year old process of reviewing the city manager’s performance in open session – with the individual aldermanic evaluations published on the City’s website so that each of those aldermen could be held as accountable for how HE evaluated the city manager as the city manager was being held for HIS performance – to their other government clients whom they’ve encouraged for years to run into closed sessions and hide such reviews from their constituents.

That meant Tappendorf couldn’t continue to let the City Council operate in the sunshine. The solution: steal our sunshine.

And not just by scaring our acting mayor and his six fellow aldermen into not publishing their evaluations on the City’s website with warnings about lawsuits, fines and the heartbreak of psoriasis. She also tried to stampede them into conducting the actual evaluation discussion itself in closed sessions, going so far as to suggest that the consequences of what the City Council has already done might be so dire that they shouldn’t even be talked about in open session where the unwashed public might actually hear the reasoning behind her opinions.

That reasoning could prove mighty interesting given that Tappendorf appears to be extending Section 11 of the PRRA – which was enacted back in 2010 and is expressly limited to FOIA requests – to City Council meetings held under the provisions of IOMA which permit but do not require ANY closed session discussions.

And although Section 11 has been in effect for more than five years now, we could not find one Illinois court decision interpreting or enforcing that Section consistent with Tappendorf’s opinion and advice; nor could we find any Illinois Attorney General opinion supporting Tappendorf. In the world of law and litigation, attorney opinions and arguments without the support of such authority are regularly disregarded by the courts, and should be.

That might explain Tappendorf’s desire to hide her reasoning in closed session, where the only alderman who might have the legal chops to challenge her opinions and advice is Ald. Nick Milissis, an attorney. But with Milissis’ expertise concentrated primarily in national security and terrorism matters, he likely would not be able to go toe-to-toe with Tappendorf on a matter such as this.

So far the only support we’ve heard for Tappendorf’s advocacy of a return to Star Chamber government, at least when it comes to evaluating the City’s CEO and highest-paid official, comes from known disciples of the pre-Mayor Dave “old style” of Park Ridge government, where the elected officials who weren’t content to simply bury their heads in the sand did their best to thwart transparency, scrutiny and accountability not only for themselves but also for their bureaucrat buddies drawing good salaries and accruing even better pensions on the taxpayers’ dime.

You can tell those supporters by their description of the open-session evaluation of the city manager as horrific, embarrassing, cruel, unthinkable, and a form of public humiliation.

Of course, that’s the same mindset that considers a lack of transparency and accountability by public employees, and annual raises unrelated to performance, as an acceptable form of entitlement. And that’s the same mindset that has prevailed, and continues to prevail, at the Star Chambers that pass for school boards at School Districts 64 and 207.

Tappendorf’s predecessor, former city attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill, described our City Council as “a unique outfit” with “an antipathy toward closed sessions” which Hill conceded might very well be “a real healthy antipathy” despite its being unlike anything he had observed in any of the various governmental bodies for whom he provided legal services. You can read more about Hill’s comments in our 02.02.15 post. While we disagreed with Hill on more than one occasion, that kind of acknowledgment by a long time public-sector attorney was itself unprecedented.

And accurate.

If this Council truly believes in H.I.T.A., and if its antipathy to closed sessions and unnecessary secrecy is as sincere as it is “unique” and “healthy,” it should demand that Tappendorf provide a memo (publishable on the City’s website) in which she sets out her complete argument – with supporting Illinois case decisions, if any exist – demonstrating that Section 11 of the PRRA: (a) legally prohibits the City’s voluntary publication of the city manager’s evaluations by each alderman, unrelated to any FOIA obligation or request; and (b) legally prohibits the Council’s open-session evaluation of the city manager even though such a discussion is permissible under IOMA.

And to avoid having to revisit this issue every year, or biannually with the seating of each new council, this City Council should require the next city manager appointee to sign an employment contract in which he/she expressly agrees to an open-session evaluation at the Council’s discretion. Any city manager candidate who subscribes to H.I.T.A. should have no problem doing so; and any candidate who doesn’t subscribe to H.I.T.A. doesn’t deserve the job.

To borrow a phrase from George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

And telling it publicly rather than inside the closed-session Star Chamber is a “unique” and “healthy” revolutionary act.

To read or post comments, click on title.

The sudden resignation of City Manager Shawn Hamilton last week brings to a close a worthwhile experiment that produced mixed results.

The experiment? Hiring a city manager with limited public-sector experience.

Back in July 2012, a majority of the then-city council approved mayor Dave Schmidt’s appointment of Hamilton after the previous city manager – Jim Hock, a career bureaucrat – was sacked for unsatisfactory performance. Hock was a replacement for yet another career bureaucrat, Tim Schuenke, who should have been sacked for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was helping former mayors Wietecha, Marous and Frimark mastermind the Uptown TIF debacle.

Schuenke, however, was allowed to retire in 2008 with a healthy Illinois guaranteed pension. And he promptly moved back to Wisconsin where he could keep his Illinois pension benefits flowing while pulling down another six-figure salary as the City Administrator of Delafield, WI, until his second retirement (and second government pension?) in 2012.

The buffoonery and outright malfeasance of Hamilton’s predecessors is exactly why we welcomed him, noting in our 08.01.12 post that he was “a high risk, high reward selection” because he had less than a year of public sector experience – as Grundy County Administrator with only a $14 million budget – after working in banking and management consulting.

In fairness, Hamilton did some good things for the City.

He brought some needed youth and energy into the office after his two older predecessors pretty much sucked the life out of it. And he was willing to work for a smaller salary than they did, which was still a bump-up from his Grundy County paycheck as he continued to live in, and commute from, a lower-cost Coal City.

Hamilton also had some success in addressing the myriad problems he inherited from his predecessors, not the least of which was refinancing parts of the Uptown TIF. And after Mayor Dave and the Council set him off in the right direction, he helped move the City into a better overall financial position (so that, e.g., the City no longer had to borrow from the sewer fund to make payroll) while keeping tax increases – which had been held at artificially low levels by the aforementioned Wietecha, Marous and Frimark, even as infrastructure was being neglected – tolerable.

Unfortunately, his performance never reached the level of consistent excellence needed by this community and demanded by our City Council in addressing such difficult situations like flooding. And he did not appear willing to take ownership of, and provide the necessary leadership on, projects like the Storm Water Utility, the alternate water supply initiative, and strategic planning – leaving those to the Council to battle.

In a public sector where every job seems to be treated as an entitlement without accountability, finding a new city manager measurably better than Hamilton may be no easy task, especially if the rumors are true that, within the career bureaucrat community, Park Ridge is considered a “tough” assignment because our aldermen are not mindless rubber-stampers who treat every City employee as a Lake Woebegone trifecta: strong, good-looking and above average. That alone can be the kiss of death when recruiting career bureaucrats who expect kudos and annual raises just for showing up on a regular basis and avoiding indictment.

What does that mean for getting a quality city manager? For starters it might mean a salary near the $200,000/year mark.

When Schuenke left in 2008, he was pulling down $180,000 plus a few perks. Hock’s all-in package (including perks) totaled around $200,000. And that clown car known as the School Board of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 paid rookie Supt. Laurie Heinz more than $200,000, plus perks, for an undistinguished first year (2014-15) of a three-year contract – before hiding in several secretive closed session “reviews” around this time last year before emerging to announce both a one-year extension to Heinz’s contract and even more money in her pay envelope.

At a salary of around $160,000 and fewer perks than his predecessors, Hamilton actually was a bargain, even if only for 3.5 years.

Given Hamilton’s predecessors’ compensation and the fact that Heinz oversees a budget of roughly the same $70 million-plus as the City’s while serving less than 5,000 students to the city manager’s 37,000+ resident customer base, a city manager salary in the vicinity of $200,000 might be a rough midpoint between what Heinz is getting and what Hamilton got last year. And the taxpayers can count on this City Council being much more demanding of any $200,000/year city manager than the $250,000/year-plus Heinz’s milquetoast bosses on the D-64 Board could ever be.

Although the Hamilton experiment was far from a complete success, it did demonstrate that somebody with a private sector background and just a year of public-sector experience can pretty much do as well/poorly as career bureaucrats, if not better.

Merci et bon chance, Mr. Hamilton.

And bon chance to the new Acting City Manager, Joe Gilmore, whose upgrade from City Finance Director was unanimously approved at last night’s Council meeting.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Carla Owen recently was elected as the new School Board president at Maine Township H.S. District 207.

Owen takes over from Margaret McGrath, who held that office for the past three years during which Maine South High School, the flagship of the D-207 fleet and once one of the top handful of Illinois high schools, has fallen to a most recent 45th in U.S. News & World’s annual rankings – behind even the likes of Elk Grove Village and Wheeling.

As we pointed out in our 04.22.16 post, that’s down 16 notches from its 2012 ranking, right before Ms. McGrath got the big chair on the D-207 Board. And she and this Board reacted to that news with deafening silence.

But even more troubling than the decline in rankings is the assertion, also by U.S. News, is Maine South’s 40.8% “College Readiness” figure.

Let’s be clear, however: That slide in the rankings should not be blamed entirely on Ms. McGrath’s leadership or her board’s stewardship.

Academic achievement and rankings involve many factors, with teaching quality and administrative competence first and foremost. After all, if teachers and administrators are being paid – quite handsomely at D-207, especially when salary and pension are added together (and even when they’re not) – to provide quality education, these declining rankings and college readiness figures suggest that those “educators” aren’t getting the job done.

And let’s not forget the students and their parents. If a majority of a student body is a confederacy of dunces, it’s unlikely to yield top academic performance – especially if their parents also are dunces and/or undemanding and under-engaged.

But we’re not ready to blame rampant dunce-ness, either of students or parents.

Which is why we must look to the teachers and administrators who never acknowledge that everything is ever less than than seashells and balloons at Maine South, if not at the District’s other schools.

When educational performance keeps sliding while the cost of that education keeps rising, however, it’s up to the School Board – the taxpayers’ elected representatives – n0t just to ask the teachers and administrators “Why?” but also to demand honest, understandable and unequivocal answers to that question. And to hold those teachers and administrators accountable for their failures.

That’s where Ms. McGrath and her boards, including the current one, failed.

Hopefully, Ms. Owen – an attorney who should know how to ask tough questions and how to see through evasive answers – will have more success than her predecessor, also an attorney but who, along with her fellow board members over the past three years, seemed more concerned with going along to get along with both the teachers and the administrators.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

As reported in the May 4 edition of the Park Ridge Journal & Topics (“Owen Succeeds McGrath As Maine Township High School Dist. 207 Board President”), at least two Board members seem focused on more frolic and diversions than on the basic learning that might realistically bump-up that 40.8% college readiness figure.

Per the Journal story, Board member Jin Lee and and Supt. Ken Wallace are working on an initiative to match up one or more D-207 schools with a school in Korea “to learn to share experiences, to learn cultures” which, if successful – by whatever measure they might make up – could be expanded to Europe, Africa, or South America. And Board member Mary Childers thinks that’s swell because of the District’s multicultural student body.

How typical of educators – and rubber-stamp Board members – to ignore ranking slide and the fact that more than half of their students/clients/customers aren’t college-ready when they graduate

But, hey, look on the bright side.

Rankings and college readiness might not improve, but at least D-207 students could learn how to make kimchi .

To read or post comments, click on title.

Not all that long ago the Park Ridge Library Board of Trustees was the sleepy backwater of local public service.

Trustees quietly and consistently rubber-stamped pretty much anything and everything the Library’s senior staff recommended. Rather than actively manage the Library and its collection, the trustees and staff passively let socio-economic conditions – e.g., the 2007-09 recession and the 2010-present “recovery” – do the managing.

Consequently, as recently as 2012-13 it was a notable event when any reporter from one of our local newspapers – either the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate or the Park Ridge Journal – attended the regular monthly Library Board meeting. And it was almost a portent of Armageddon when one of those reporters attended a “lowly” Library Board committee meeting.

Even getting a three-year appointment to the Board tended to be fairly quiet and uneventful.

Boy oh boy, has that ever changed.

Starting around the Fall of 2013 the Library Board suddenly became the focus of all sorts of attention. Regular meetings that were lucky to draw a couple of residents started drawing 5, 10, 20 or more.

Not only did one, and sometimes two, reporters start showing up at every regular Board meeting, but the H-A reporter began adding committee meetings to her appointed rounds. And once the Board adopted the Committee Of the Whole structure – where all committee meetings were held on one night instead of two – she became a virtual fixture at those COWs.

Tonight the Mayor’s Advisory Board begins the process of selecting nominees for the three seats whose terms are expiring this summer. There are eleven applicants – a record (?) – for those three vacancies, including the three trustees currently holding those seats: Joseph Egan, Char Foss-Eggemann and Jerome White. The challengers are: Kim Biederman, Karen Bennett Burkum, Marcin Grochola, Stephen Kahnert, Josh Kiem, William McGuire, Mary Wynn Ryan and Herbert Zuegel.

The applications for all 11 of them can be found here .

These applicants will be interviewed by the Mayor’s Advisory Board, comprised of the four City Council committee chairs: Ald. Dan Knight (Finance), Ald. Marc Mazzuca (Procedures & Regulation), Ald. Nick Milissis (Public Safety) and Ald. Roger Shubert (Public Works). The aldermen will recommend three nominees to Acting Mayor Marty Maloney, who can either accept or reject each of them. Any nominees Maloney accepts them will be voted on by the full Council, with a simple majority needed for approval.

While a few of the usual social media suspects have rattled their balsa-wood sabers over the past few months about monitoring this year’s selection process to ensure who knows what, it was left to former Library board member Dick Van Metre to make the first overt attempt to directly influence the selection process – which he did at last Monday’s Council meeting.

Van Metre is Park Ridge’s version of Bernie Sanders. He seems to share Weekend at Bernie’s view that government is the answer to every socio-economic question, with the highest and best use of private funds being the payment of taxes so that government can grow bigger – and do more “free” things and provide more “free” stuff – even for people who could afford to pay but just don’t want to.

As can be seen and heard from 25:45 to 35:54 of last week’s meeting video, Van Metre claims to be speaking for the “vast majority of the people who voted for [the November 2014 Library referendum]” and for “the citizens of Park Ridge [who] have no leverage with the Library Board.”

SPOILER ALERT: Van Metre mentions my name several times, never favorably. That’s probably because we often clashed when he and I served together on the Library Board in 2011-12; and because our respective views of government are substantially different – as evidenced by three of this blog’s posts (03.03.08, 04.25.08 and 07.18.08) going back to 2008.

Early on in the meeting video, Van Metre proclaims how he was part of a group that “put an awful lot of time and effort into the Library referendum” before ripping into un-named more-reccently appointed Library Board members “who seem to take the passage of the Library referendum as something of an insult.”

The delicious irony of that criticism is that there never even would have been a referendum – which raised $4 million of extra property tax revenue for the Library over four years – if it had been left up to Van Metre and his cronies still on the Board from 2011 through 2014: John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous. John Schmidt and Jerry White. Or to Director Janet Van De Carr. Their preferred way of solving the Library’s funding shortage was to beef and moan about “the guys across the street” (i.e., then-mayor Dave Schmidt and the City Council) for cutting the City’s discretionary/supplemental Library funding in order to meet the growing burden of the Uptown TIF debt.

So when I, supported by Board members Egan and Foss-Eggemann, proposed a funding referendum question for the November 2014 ballot, Van Metre’s crony-majority rejected it – with not one complaint from Van Metre, naturally. But Mayor Dave and the Council respected the taxpayers enough to give them the chance to vote on a higher tax levy for the Library. And those voters came through.

Which is how Van Metre was able to become the crowing rooster claiming credit for the dawn.

Van Metre goes on to say, again grandiosely speaking for some nebulous constituency, that “[w]e want our Library back,” which he goes on to explain as being the Library “as it has been.”

Although he offered no real details on those points, we assume he means the Library as overseen by those previous bobble-head, rubber-stamp boards whose members couldn’t stop themselves from deficit spending by hundreds of thousands of dollars even after the Council told them no addtional funding would be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. That’s the same Library whose board, despite all its deficit spending, nevertheless neglected replacement of the Library’s roof and windows until the leaks began causing interior issues.

That must also be the same Library whose board, despite being chronically short of funds, insisted on keeping the Food For Fines program that enabled Board members and staff to enhance their self-esteem by giving away thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars in forgiveness of book and material fines. And it’s certainly the same Library whose board preferred closing its doors on summer Sundays in 2014 so that it could give $20,000 of raises to some of its 90+ employees. Van Metre – who insists he’s the champion of “the people’s Library” – said nary a word about that closing even though “the people” got stiffed for one of only two weekend Library days.

He apparently also isn’t too enthused over the current Board’s pursuit of the first significant reconfiguration and renovation to the Library’s interior space in a couple of decades, a project intended to bring the building more in tune with current user needs and to attract the one-third of our residents who don’t even hold a Library card – or the almost two-thirds of our residents who don’t regularly use the Library at all.

And he clearly wants to return to days of yore when unidentified and un-regulated private tutors could run their for-profit businesses out of the Library while letting the taxpayers cover their overhead costs.

I repeatedly have challenged Van Metre – assuming he truly believes that a majority of taxpayers agree with his characterization of the new business/tutor policy as a way to “extort money from the people who were using the Library for tutoring” – to ask the City Council to put a policy repeal referendum question on the November ballot, or to collect the signatures needed to put such a question on the ballot by direct citizen action.

He didn’t ask the Council to do that last Monday night, and don’t hold your breath waiting for Van Metre or his fellow travelers to do that between now and the mid-summer deadline for such citizen initiatives.

That’s because, despite how they regularly invoke “the people” and claim to speak for a majority of them, their dirty little secret is that they are anti-democratic elitists who seem to view “the people” as rabble who can’t be trusted to vote on what they want and, more importantly, what they are willing to be taxed for. So instead of referendums where the questions can be debated, and support and opposition can be objectively measured, they anoint themselves as “the people’s” spokespersons. And they occasionally float some bogus “Survey Monkey” or “Change.Org.” survey question with for support.

At the close of Van Metre’s 10-minute spiel last Monday night, he had a semi-ominous warning for the Council:

“I and…some other people will be paying attention to what transpires from here on [regarding the Library Board appointment process]. If you continue to appoint allies of Bob Trizna to the Board, then we will have to conclude that you approve of the changes in the Library that he wishes to make and is slowly making.”

We’re pretty sure Van Metre is aware of the famous Santayana quote: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

For Van Metre and his allies, being condemned to repeat the Library’s irresponsible past is their paramount goal.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the Editor in that capacity, and not in his capacity as Library Trustee. None of these opinions should be viewed as representing those of the Library, its Board, its staff, or any other Trustees.

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Back on February 25 we published a post about two new construction projects within a block or so of each other in the Greenwood/Busse area.

One is a 25-townhouse project by Lexington Homes on the Greenwood and Elm site known as the City’s old public works headquarters (the “LEX”). The other is an assisted living facility (the “ALF”) on Greenwood between Busse and Northwest Highway.

At the City Council meeting on March 7, rezoning for the LEX – from R-2 single-family residential to R-4 multi-family residential – was defeated by a vote of 4 (Alds. Milissis, Van Roeyen, Shubert and Mazzuca) to 3 (Acting Mayor Maloney and Alds. Moran and Knight).

At that same meeting, the Council approved a “special use” to the ALF – because the site is currently zoned B-2 general commercial – by a vote of 4 (Acting Mayor Maloney and Alds. Moran, Milissis and Van Roeyen) to 3 (Alds. Shubert, Knight and Mazucca), even though the ALF will exceed the maximum 40-foot height permitted in the City’s Zoning Code by a sizable 12 feet, or 30%.

That 30% height variance is scheduled for final approval at tonight’s Council meeting.

We had no “stringer” at the meeting and we haven’t watched the meeting video. That means we’re relying entirely on the articles published in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge City Council says no to Elm Street townhouses,” March 8 and “Assisted living building gets early OK from Park Ridge City Council,” March 10), along with the Agenda Cover memos issued by the City’s Community Preservation & Development Director, Jim Testin, for the LEX and the ALF.

We’ve repeatedly been critical of the City’s unpredictable and seemingly schizophrenic way it deals with zoning. The way these two projects were dealt with would appear to be Object Lesson No. 1 in that regard.

According to the H-A articles, two of the “no” votes against both projects were from Shubert and Mazzuca.

Shubert’s objections to the LEX were traffic-related and because “[m]ost of the people [he’s] talked to were lukewarm or against this particular project,” according to the H-A article.

Mazzuca opposed the LEX – which could have accommodated up to 25 living units – on the grounds that such a multi-family development would be inconsistent with the single-family nature of that neighborhood. He opposed the ALF on a similar there-goes-the-character-of-the-neighborhood basis.

Frankly, we can see both sides of the LEX argument.

But it seems like there’s a lot more heavy lifting, policy-wise, to be done on the fundamental development issues that the LEX presents, such as: Does Park Ridge need 25 additional townhouses on land that reportedly could accommodate 11-12 single-family homes under its current R-2 zoning?

If you’re a local merchant, 25 new townhouses mean more doubling the number of households that standard single-family homes on that property could provide, which might mean roughly double the consumer sales that single-family homes might generate. The townhouses might also bring in more total property tax revenue than single-family homes, although that remains an open question.

But those same 25 townhouses also might double the number of kids enrolling in our public schools. And that might produce annual property tax deficits (per-household student costs v. per-household property taxes paid to the school districts) of ten, twenty or thirty-thousand dollars per residence per year – deficits that will need to be made up the majority of property taxpayers without kids in those schools.

Should overburdening the schools be a City concern?

We think that’s a great question that needs to be addressed by the City Council, and sooner rather than later – because only the City has the legal ability to regulate land development and thereby control the number of residences that can be built in town.

As best as we can tell, neither the City Council nor the Planning & Zoning Commission ever have had that particular “policy” discussion. And don’t expect the D-64 and the D-207 Boards to contribute much of value to such a discussion.

Over the last 25 years, neither school district has demonstrated that they either know or care about how many students they have to educate, so long as they can spend their respective districts into financial crises every so often – for D-64 it’s usually every 10 years or so (e.g., the crisis leading to the “Yes, Yes!” referendum in 1997; and the crisis leading to the “Strong Schools” referendum in 2007) – that enable them cry “Wolf!” and stampede the taxpayers into voting for yet another hefty tax-increase…“for the kids,” of course.

And irrespective of whether all that money actually improves educational quality, objectively measured.

Because both districts are masterful in manipulating and hiding the full impact of their respective financial situations from the taxpayers, however, they can pretty much dictate when those tax-increase referendums are held. That means steering them to the odd-year local elections when voter turnout is significantly lower – and can be more easily dominated by a well–organized and uber-motivated “for the kids” campaign committee – than in the general elections in November of the even years.

Which might explain why, this year, the D-64 Board appears to be hell-bent on locking in a boxcar’s worth of non-referendum debt for various construction projects (including $7 million for those not-really-secure vestibules) while also giving the PREA (teachers union) a three-or-four-year contract that will almost certainly be, once again, of the sweetheart persuasion. Such profligacy – combined with the enrollment increases likely to come from all those new multi-family residences – can help create another financial crisis suitable for leveraging into another tax-increase referendum in 2017 or, more likely, 2019.

Is there an actual plan for our community’s development; and, if so, is it actually being followed?

Does anybody know? Does anybody care?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Count us among the folks regularly amazed by all the wondrous structures Pete Nelson and his “Treehouse Masters” crew can build in all sorts of trees.

But even though some of the designs can be a bit exotic, we’ve never seen anybody come to blows over them.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for what has become Park Ridge’s most famous/infamous “treehouse” at 916 N. Western Ave. Unlike the lush canopies in which Pete and his crew construct their dwellings, however, this one isn’t lodged among serveral sturdy limbs. Instead, it’s perched on what looks to be a five-foot stump. So it’s actually a “stumphouse” rather than a treehouse, despite its almost 15-foot height.

With its elevated walkway and slides, and at a reported cost of $26,000, we’re surprised the owners didn’t spring for some artificial leafy branches – and maybe even a few Ewoks – to complete the tableau.

A few fake leafy branches, however, probably wouldn’t have been enough to smooth the feathers the stumphouse has ruffled among some of its neighbors.

As reported in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Support for Park Ridge treehouse led to fistfight, neighbors say,” March 1) and on last Tuesday (March 1) night’s WGN news, an altercation occurred between the stumphouse’s next-door neighbor, who posted a yard sign supporting the structure, and another neighbor whose critical review of the stumphouse was a one middlefinger up. The result: battery charges pending against the supportive neighbor.

One reason we have building and zoning codes is to provide some uniformity and predictability in the appearance and use of private properties in the community. Designed and administered properly, such codes smooth the rough edges and should, at least indirectly, reduce tensions between neighbors over how they use and maintain their property.

So when a structure provokes fisticuffs, it’s probably a good idea to take a closer look into how it got built in the first place. And when we checked the stumphouse documents posted on the City’s website we found some very curious things.

For starters, we found only one permit, No. B1401057 (issued May 29, 2014), having been issued for a “Deck/Deck Addition” valued at $2,400 and carrying a $156 permit fee. That sure doesn’t sound like a permit for a $26,000 stumphouse, so we dug a little deeper. And what we discovered is that about five months after that permit was issued, things started to take a turn for the strange.

According to an October 29, 2014 “Hi Joe” e-mail from the City’s then-Zoning Coordinator, Ed Cage, the permit’s “Deck/Deck Addition” description had mysteriously morphed into what Cage was calling a “deck/treehouse.” Curiously enough, Cage actually warned Solomon against seeking a “variance option” which, according to Cage, “is going to be tough because your neighbor will come to the meetings and it will not go smoothly.”

Can’t you almost see the Chicago-style winks and nods in Cage’s words?

Next, the City’s then-Building Administrator, Lonnie Spires, sent Solomon a November 24, 2014 e-mail in which Spires references the original “deck permit” as having been revised according to some unspecified “drawings.” But we could find no new or revised permit referencing a $26,000 “deck/treehouse” (or “deck/stumphouse”). Nor does it appear that the Solomons paid any additional permit fee for a stumphouse costing 10 times the declared cost of their original “Deck/Deck Addition.”

By March 2015, Cage had departed for a similar job with the City of Wood Dale, and Spires was gone to the Village of Plainfield by June 2015. As best as we can tell, their respective tenures with the City were less than three years. We also hear they were hand-picked hires of the City’s Community Preservation & Development Director, Jim Testin, although we do not yet have confirmation of that.

Irrespective of how they obtained their City employment, however, they were Testin’s subordinates. And if they screwed up, Testin most definitely should be held accountable for that.

Upon inheriting this odd situation, Cage’s successor, Howard Coppari, inspected the stumphouse before e-mailing Testin on July 6, 2015, to advise him that the Solomons’ “Deck/Deck Addition” violated Code because the “deck” was actually an “elevated walkway” more than 8 feet in the air and not attached to the house. He also advised Testin that the Solomons dropped Cage’s and Spires’ names “constantly when [he] was on their property.”

You know, the way some Chicago folks might drop their alderman’s or ward committeeman’s name in the course of dealing with some pesky inspector.

But apparently it didn’t work with Coppari, who sent an August 19, 2015 letter to the Solomons reiterating some of the things he told Testin, and calling the stumphouse “a shed” that was taller than the Code’s 12-foot height limit for sheds.

From everything we’ve been able to check, Coppari’s findings seem to be correct. Which calls into question Cage’s and Spires’ judgment, actions and motives.

The Solomons appealed from Coppari’s determination, and their appeal was addressed at the January 28, 2016 Zoning Board of Appeals hearing. At that hearing the Solomons – through their attorney – focused on the Cage and Spires e-mails, and on the verbal assurances they allegedly gave the Solomons about the structures.

Although the ZBA members empathized with the Solomons’ situation, they noted the Code violations and the gaps in the Solomons’ paperwork before choosing to uphold the Code requirements and Coppari’s decision.

Now the Solomons are saying they will take the City to court on the ZBA’s rejection of their appeal.

Sadly, this hasn’t been the first instance where the building department’s seeming incompetence and slipshod paperwork have caused rather than resolved problems.

For example, we wrote several posts about the residence at 322 Vine (e.g., 05.23.12) and how the then-Building Administrator, Steve Cutaia, since departed for parts unknown, appears to have botched the City’s inspection and certification process so badly – and reportedly gave such ill-advised verbal assurances to the owners – that the then-City attorney couldn’t even use Cutaia as a witness to prosecute the Code violations.

We can’t help but wonder if that would be the case if Cage and/or Spires were subpoenaed to testify in a court hearing regarding the stumphouse. Assuming, of course, that the Solomons actually follow through and sue the City.

And we also can’t help but wonder if the mere sight of the stumphouse would make Pete Nelson and his Treehouse Masters crew cringe.

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Mayor Dave Schmidt unexpectedly died one year ago today.

We published his obituary in our post of March 10, 2015. In it we noted how he first ran for mayor as “a reluctant Cincinnatus with a simple campaign platform: ‘H.I.T.A.'”

Honesty. Integrity. Transparency. Accountability.

His steadfast adherence to those principles not only earned him easy re-election but, also, inspired people espousing those same principles to win aldermanic seats.

Not surprisingly, therefore, upon Mayor Dave’s death those aldermen came together without ego, ambition, or rancor and selected 7th Ward Ald. Marty Maloney as Acting Mayor. And to his credit, Maloney has held himself and the Council to those very same H.I.T.A. principles.

Which is why Park Ridge City government remains THE most transparent and accountable local governmental body, by far. And why it continues to recover from the pre-Mayor Dave politics of special interests, obfuscation and denial.

That’s a big part of Mayor Dave’s legacy, to which every public official should aspire.

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