Exactly one year ago today Maine Township Trustee Kim Jones called Trustee Dave Carrabotta into a private one-on-one meeting in a room off the Maine Twp. board room and accused him of grabbing, groping, pinching, rubbing, stroking, swiping, brushing, ogling, or just thinking about Jones’ derriere.

What was the evidence of that grabbing, groping, pinching, rubbing, stroking, swiping, brushing, ogling, or just thinking about? Nothing other than Jones’ self-serving accusations.

But that didn’t stop Carrabotta from returning to the Board room in high dudgeon, announcing an unspecified accusation by Jones, and demanding a closed session discussion of that accusation even though nothing about it qualified as a ground for a closed-session meeting under any of the statutory exceptions to the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”). And fellow “Reformer” trustees Susan Sweeney and Claire McKenzie indulged Carrabotta’s tantrum by supporting his improper closed session demand.

In the closed session Carrabotta reportedly demanded an investigation by the Township’s attorneys. And principal Township attorney Keri-Lyn Krafthefer was happy to oblige so long as her firm could conduct the investigation, notwithstanding that there may have been an appearance of impropriety, there may have conflicts of interest, there even may have been legal malpractice. And her firm did conduct the investigation, charged Maine Township taxpayers $38,000+ to find…nothing.

Jones, however, was not going to abandon her charade so long as she, Morask, their fellow RINO Township officials, Madigan sock-puppet Rep. Marty Moylan, and their unofficial public relations officer – Todd Wessel at The Journal newspapers – could keep thumping the #MeToo tub in an attempt to pressure Carrabotta into resigning. So Jones took her accusation to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions. That also got her nowhere.

So she conducted a tearful “press conference” outside Maine Town Hall and said she was contemplating suing Carrabotta in state court for something or other: Battery? Sexual battery? Aggravated mopery with intent to gawk?

A year later Jones has done nothing. Because Jones’ beef has been more of a show about nothing than “Seinfeld.”

We published a number of posts about what we labeled “Assgate,” including those on 07.17.2018, 08.06.2018, 08.07.2018, 09.24.2018, 09.29.2018, 10.09.2018, 10.15.2018 and 01.21.2019. You can read them if you want, but we don’t encourage it. The battle that we portrayed between what we called “The Reformers” (Carrabotta, McKenzie and Sweeney) and the RINO clown posse (Supervisor Laura Morask, Jones, non-Assessor Susan Moylan-Krey, Treasurer Peter Gialamas and Road Supt. Wally Kazmierczak) turned out to be little more than two tomato cans mauling each other for three rounds over a $20 purse.

Maine Township was, is, and always will be (unless the state legislature were ever to do something worthwhile and eliminate township government statewide) the fetid backwater, or the unwashed hairy armpit, of local government. EVERYTHING that goes on at Park Ridge City Hall, or with the Park Ridge Park District, or with Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, or with Maine Township H.S. District 207, or even with the Park Ridge Library, is more important than ANYTHING that goes on at Maine Township.

So don’t waste another moment of your time, your attention, or your energy on what goes on over there. It’s not worth it.

And while you’re at it, let the Illinois Republican Party/Stupid Party rest in peace, even though it may not realize that it’s been dead for years.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Ten years ago today David Faulkner Schmidt was sworn in as Park Ridge mayor.

A month earlier he had pulled not only an upset victory over incumbent mayor Howard Frimark, but also a landslide one, 4,885 (56.44%) to 3,770 (43.56%).

How did an unmarried guy who had lived in Park Ridge only about six years, had no family members living in town, coached no kids’ sports teams, belonged to none of the local social organizations, owned no local business, and served a mere two years as 1st Ward alderman after running unopposed with Frimark’s support, win such a victory?

Unlike Frimark and the members of the Homeowners Party that had dominated City government for decades based on a cult of personality – family, friendships, memberships, business and social contacts – Schmidt based his campaign and his mayoralty on actual public policy positions, and on the principles of H.I.T.A.: Honesty, Integrity, Transparency and Accountability.

He inherited a City in terrible financial straits thanks to irresponsible borrowing and spending by Frimark and his fellow social butterflies – a bunch of “nice” guys and gals who regularly passed deficit budgets, consistently neglected infrastructure, charged residents less for water than it was costing the City to buy from Chicago, and gave hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to favored private organizations who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) raise funds on their own. Meanwhile, fund reserves had been spent down to dangerous levels and the City’s bond rating had sunk.

Yet the reality of those situations was being lost on most residents because some aldermen were clueless, others were happy to lie about such things, and the local press was adept at both.

That’s where Schmidt’s H.I.T.A. came in.

He told people the truth about the City’s situation, the bad as well as the good, because he respected us taxpayers enough to tell us the truth. And unlike your typical politicians, Schmidt admitted when he was wrong while promising not to do it again, as he did in his first – and what is believed to be the City’s very first – “State of the City” address: “I personally voted for two unbalanced budgets [as 1st Ward alderman],” Schmidt acknowledged, before promising that “I will not make the same mistake again” and vowing to veto any unbalanced budget passed by the Council.

And H.I.T.A. was the hallmark of Schmidt’s mayoralty through his re-election in April 2013, 5,614 (62.06%) to 3,432 (37.94%), until his sudden, untimely death on March 4, 2015. As we wrote in our March 10, 2015 tribute:

Can you imagine any “politician” running on such a platform?  They’d be laughed right out of the politicians’ union. But Candidate Dave was no “politician” because he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he wouldn’t compromise principles just to make some half-baked, short-term deal that would make some special interest happy.

Since Mayor Dave’s death several local officials have invoked H.I.T.A. when it has suited their purpose, even though less than a handful of them actually have been willing to walk their H.I.T.A. talk. Ironically, the real “politicians” – an epithet to the editor of this blog – among them tend to shamelessly talk about H.I.T.A. while saying and doing the most un-H.I.T.A. things.

Which is one of the many reasons we despise “politicians.”

Whether Mayor Dave’s H.I.T.A. legacy survives remains an open question. We are seeing an increase in the number of politicians who are creatures of, and embrace, the cult of personality. They’ve already shown themselves to prefer shameless glad-handing to the hard work of grinding out solid public policy based on principle instead of expediency.

Only time will tell.

But 13.3% turnouts in hotly-contested elections – as we saw with the recent D-64 School Board election – and the number of uncontested races at D-207 and the Park Ridge Park District are not encouraging signs.

A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds ten years ago today and continued to light up the community over the next six years. Whether we stay in sunshine or slide back into darkness depends on whether the people of this community prefer day to night – and are willing to fight the darkness for the light.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Almost two weeks have passed since this year’s local elections, and here are a few observations about them.

1.  Turnout totally sucked. Despite 2 weeks (including weekends) of early voting and decent weather on Election Day itself, only 4,605 of the 34,626 registered voters (13.3%) in Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 bothered to show up to vote for all 4 contested races. That’s the worst D-64 election turnout since 2011, prompting our 04.06.2011 post which told all those MIA registered voters: “You suck!”

That goes double this year.

And as in 2011, the 1st and 3rd Wards couldn’t even produce a contested race (neither could the 7th, but that’s a slightly different story), although at least this time the 3rd Ward derelicts didn’t need a write-in candidate to avoid having to figure out what’s the procedure for filling a seat when nobody even runs. Mayoral appointment? Raffle?

Meanwhile, interest in Park Ridge Park District and Maine Twp. School District 207 boards was so poor there weren’t even any contested races – which was worse than in 2011, and makes us wonder why 4,312 voters out of the 32,044 registered Park District voters (13.46%), or 9,982 out of the 97,915 registered D-207 voters (10.24%), even bothered to vote for candidates who could not lose so long as they voted for themselves.

And the 5th Ward contested aldermanic race drew a meager 1,001 of the 7,313 registered voters (13.69%) in that ward.

For a community like ours, the April 2 turnout is nothing short of pathetic and embarrassing. Paraphrasing a line from T.S. Eliot: “This is the way democracy ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

2.  The D-64 race featured, for what appears to be the first time in Park Ridge election history, an overtly single-gender ticket of Rebecca Little, Lisa Page, Denise Pearl and Carol Sales, running as the “MOMS for District 64 School Board!” All but Page won, and Page lost to incumbent Tom Sotos by a mere 77 votes despite running what could best be described as a “stealth” campaign that eschewed yard signs and all other trappings of a serious candidacy.

We suspect that, had there been slate of candidates campaigning as the “4 DADS,” the howling about sexism and gender politics would have been so high-pitched and loud that it would have agitated every dog between Park Ridge and Indianapolis.

We’ll be interested to see if this was just a one-off phenomenon orchestrated in response to the tone-deaf arrogance and incompetence of the Tony Borrelli/Laurie Heinz Administration – and perhaps to provide sympathetic ears to the teachers’ and teacher assistants’ unions going into contract negotiations – or an actual movement by “MOMS” to take control of local government while “dads” continue to drink beer, scratch themselves and watch sports on t.v.

We’ll also be interested to see whether D-64 will become a better school system producing better academic achievement 4 years from now than it has been on Borrelli’s/Heinz’s watch.

If the MOMS-dominated (since 2013) D-207 Board is any guide, however, the answer to that will be a resounding “No!” – as evidenced by those D-207 MOMS blindly rubber-stamping 5 years of mismanagement and abject neglect of the District’s facilities by the incompetent-yet-arrogant Supt. Ken Wallace that had Maine South’s U.S. News & World Reports ranking sliding from 29th in 2012 to 45th in 2016, before falling out of the rankings entirely in 2017 and 2018.

How did that MOMS-dominated Board react to those failures? They helped Wallace pass a $300 million-plus referendum last November, and then gave him a 5-year contract extension and raise.

When it comes to competence in public service, therefore, XY appears to be no more an indicator of it than XX. And if you want more proof of that, we give you Laurie Heinz and Tony Borrelli.

(Edited 04.14.2019)

To read or post comments, click on title.

The people have spoken!

At Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, the sole incumbent (Athan “Tom” Sotos,) and three new candidates (Carol Sales, Rebecca Little and Denise Pearl) prevailed over Lisa Page, Steve Blindauer, Gareth Kennedy and Sal Galati.

And Ald. Charlie Melidosian prevailed over Sal Raspanti to represent the 5th Ward on the City Council, while Alds. John Moran (1st), Gail Wilkening (3d) and Marty Joyce (7th) won their uncontested races for their existing seats around The Horseshoe.

Meanwhile, Incumbent Cindy Grau and newcomers Jennifer LaDuke and Matt Coyne won uncontested races for the Park Ridge Park District Board, while Incumbents Teri Collins and Paula Besler and newcomer Sheila Yousuf-Abramson won uncontested races for the Maine Township High School District 207 Board.

Congratulations!

Now the real work begins. We look forward to seeing what you can do.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We begin this post with a disclaimer: The editor of this blog has known both candidates for 5th Ward alderman for many years, has dined with them, has cocktailed with them, and likes both of them and their wives.

But if the race for 5th Ward alderman between current alderman Charlie Melidosian and former 4th Ward alderman (2011-2013) Sal Raspanti were a pageant, Melidosian would be a shoo-in for “Miss Congeniality.”

Whether he’s barbecuing competitively or just for fun, whether he’s walking his mammoth beasts around Hodge’s Park or being walked by them, whether he’s pumping out somebody’s flooded basement, building Habitat residences on weekends, or chauffeuring campaign manager Jean Dietsch from Central Wisconsin back to Park Ridge to deal with a family emergency, Charlie is an undisputed social asset to this community.

Heck, he probably could qualify for sainthood if he were Roman Catholic.

As it is, however, he may be Park Ridge’s current benchmark of affability.

But the history of failed local government in Park Ridge is filled with affable people who weren’t very good, and sometimes just plain sucked, at being elected or appointed public officials

It was affable people on the City Council who blew millions of taxpayer dollars over decades of the City’s membership in the impotent Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”). Other affable people on the Council blew tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on the General Obligation bonds the City issued to subsidize the private developer of the Uptown Redevelopment Project and its TIF (“Tax Increment Financing”) district – even as those same folks routinely neglected sewer maintenance and repair, and did nothing about flood remediation.

It was a bunch of affable people on the Park Ridge Park District Board who wasted more than $20 million tax dollars on two undersized, second-rate facilities – the Centennial “Fitness Center” (f/k/a the “Community Center”) and the Centennial water park – because they didn’t want to give the taxpayers a referendum vote on those projects.

And let’s not forget those affable people on the D-64 Board who spent over $20 million (in late 1990s dollars) replacing the District’s then-newest school (the “old” Emerson), which has subsequently delivered student performance remotely close to what was advertised from the new “middle school” concept back then, or remotely commensurate with what D-64 taxed, borrowed and spent on the “new” Emerson.

Most recently, it was those affable people on the D-207 Board who so grossly neglected the District’s infrastructure and mismanaged its resources over the past 9 years that it will cost taxpayers over $300 million to make things right. And then those same affable folks gave the affable Supt. Ken Wallace – who wouldn’t last a full day as the head of any private corporation with a $120 million/year budget – a 5-year contract extension because he helped pass the $300 million November 2018 referendum after keeping the lid on his (and the Board’s) decade of mismanagement and neglect.

So much for historical background.

We supported Melidosian’s appointment to fill the seat of the late Ald. Dan Knight, which we wrote about in our 02.24.2017 post. But in the two years since his appointment, we have seen little to suggest that he is capable, or willing, to do the heavy lifting.

Frankly, we were appalled by the way he disregarded the City’s procurement policy and joined his fellow Council members in rubber-stamping Police Chief Frank Kaminski’s arrogant no-bid, sole-source procurement of $280,000 of Axon body cameras, which served as the subject of our 01.14.2019 post – which looked even more irresponsible when Niles announced that, after field-testing three body cams instead of just one, it was getting the same amount of cameras and the necessary support equipment for less than a quarter of the cost.

And we were particularly offended that Charlie attempted to justify his wrong-headed support of Kaminski’s folly by claiming that “[Charlie’s] world is H.I.T.A.” – the acronym originated by the late Mayor Dave Schmidt for “Honesty,” “Integrity,” “Transparency” and “Accountability” in local government. Charlie wouldn’t have dared pull something like that if Schmidt were alive, nor would he have dared trade on Mayor Dave’s reputation and popularity by mimicking Mayor Dave’s campaign signage.

We’ll give Charlie’s campaign manager the discredit for a cheap shot like that, along with other ticky-tacky things like: (a) portraying Charlie as seeking “re-election” when he was never “elected”; (b) claiming that his opponent has “participated in some negative campaigning, without specifying what that was; and (c) claiming that his opponent “provided misleading information to the public,” again without specifying what that was.

But that’s just the chaff.

When it comes to the big stuff, however, we don’t think the body cam fail was a one-off for Charlie. He’s just too much of a “pleaser” to be counted on to make the tough, and often unpopular, calls needed if the City is to continue on the upswing started by Schmidt and “his” councils, beginning in 2011 with the departure of mayor Howard Frimark’s alderdopes.

Ironically, Charlie’s opponent served on the citizens committee that recommended Charlie’s appointment to succeed Knight. Before that, however, Sal served on a Mayor Dave-led Council as the 4th Ward alderman from 2011-2013, until a job promotion and a related increase in world travel caused him not to seek re-election.

In his two years on the Council, Sal’s greatest achievement – in our opinion – was standing tall with Schmidt and a then-Council majority in rejecting the demands of the various local business interests clamoring for the Council to give developer Lance Chody a sweetheart deal in the neighborhood of $3 million of tax relief in return for bringing Whole Foods to Park Ridge. We wrote about that in our 05.17.2012 post

Although he was never a rubber-stamp for Schmidt, he supported many of Schmidt’s efforts to dig the City out of the deep financial hole their affable Council predecessors left behind, to go with a sinking bond rating and unsustainable commitments of tax dollars for questionable projects and programs.

That’s why we believe that Sal, while decidedly less affable than Charlie, is more ready, willing and able to actually walk the H.I.T.A. walk, and not just talk the H.I.T.A. talk. And that’s why we endorse Raspanti for 5th Ward alderman, while leaving sainthood for Melidosian.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We apologize for the lateness of this post, but we spent much of last week dealing with technical problems on the site, and the past 3 days reading, analyzing and cross-referencing all the campaign materials, websites and Facebook pages of the two candidates for the vacant 2-year seat, Gareth Kennedy and Rebecca Little; and of the five candidates for the three vacant 4-year seats, Steve Blindauer, Sal Galati, Lisa Page, Denise Pearl and Carol Sales (We eliminated Athan “Tom” Sotos from contention in our previous post).

We also read, analyzed and cross-referenced their answers to the SPED-parents’ and Go Green questionnaires. And we listened to the 1 hour, 41 minute audio recording of the Action Ridge candidates’ forum…twice, as well as those portions of the SPED-parents’ forum surreptitiously recorded by an attendee.

Frankly, it was stultifying to the point of physical pain.

Most of the candidates’ spiels were virtually indistinguishable from the others’: How many times, and in how many different ways, can candidates say “better communication,” “rebuilding trust,” “professional development,” “student focus,” “innovation” and “socio-emotional learning” (or “SEL”) without sounding like a bunch of parrots? And on those rare occasions when someone actually said the word “taxpayer,” it was usually as a throw-in merely to round out the full complement of “stakeholders.”

But we soldiered through, and here are the conclusions we drew:

The 4-year seats.

There’s an old political axiom that “yard signs don’t vote.” And that’s absolutely correct.

But yard signs say something very important about a candidate’s legitimacy and commitment: That he/she is proud enough and serious enough about his/her candidacy to promote it in the most visible way; and that he/she has gone to the expense and effort of convincing other residents to publicly identify themselves with his/her candidacy, also in the most visible way.

Both Galati and Page showed up at forums. They both answered questionnaires. And they both have websites/FB pages. That’s commendable, and some day that might be enough. But today is not that day.

That leaves Blindauer, Pearl and Sales.

As readers of this blog know, this editor favors private-sector unions but is a conscientious objector when it comes to public-sector ones – for the same reasons articulated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”) and, years later, by the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany (“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”). We wrote about the major problems of public-sector unions in our Labor Day posts of 09.01.2013 and 09.07.2015.

Back in 2011 this blog endorsed three candidates for the Park Ridge Park Board – Mel Thillens (can you believe it!), Mary Wynn Ryan (can you freakin’ believe it!) and Jim O’Brien – primarily because they were running against a slate of “union lackeys” endorsed by the same union (the SEIU) that represented Park District employees with whom they would be bargaining, ostensibly on the taxpayers’ behalf, if elected to the Board.

Three years later, in our 12.05.2015 post, we applauded then-Mayor Dave Schmidt and the City Council for standing up to Operating Engineers Local 150, their inflatable rats, their “Veto Schmidt” signs, and their unprecedented (in Park Ridge, at least) $1,000 contribution to the campaign of Schmidt’s opponent.

And two years ago, we heartily endorsed two of the candidates running against a de facto slate of husbands of D-64 teachers whom we dubbed the “3 Hubbies” because, had they been elected, they could not be trusted to bargain for the taxpayers and against their and their Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA,” the teachers union)-member wives’ joint economic interests.

This year, the Park Ridge Teacher Assistant Association (“PRTAA”) has endorsed Blindauer, Pearl and Sales for the 4-year seats. Unions, not unlike businesses, rarely endorse candidates unless they believe those candidates, if elected, will be soft touches when it comes to doing favors. And with a new PRTAA contract coming up for negotiation, the PRTAA’s endorsement makes no bones about “want[ing] to negotiate our next contract with [Board] members we feel respects [sic] us and value what we do for the students” – according to the endorsement posted on the campaign FB page of 2-year candidate Rebecca Little, also endorsed by the PRTAA.

That’s reason enough in our book to just say “no” to those PRTAA pawns. And, most likely, PREA pawns.

The 2-year seat.

This one pits Rebecca Little against Gareth Kennedy. We could endorse Kennedy solely because of the union argument made above.

But there are other reasons as well.

Kennedy first came to our attention as one of the two runners-up (out of 8 applicants) for the appointment to fill the 5th Ward aldermanic vacancy after the death of Dan Knight in December 2016. When a few of the sitting aldermen criticized the citizens’ nominating committee’s recommendation process at the February 6, 2017 Council meeting at which Charlie Melidosian’s appointment was to be approved, Kennedy spoke up in defense not only of the process but also of the Melidosian recommendation itself.

That one incident showed us more character than most Park Ridge public office seekers ever display, especially when their personal ox is being publicly gored.

Undeterred, Kennedy sought and obtained appointment to the Library Board in June 2017, and has served there with distinction ever since.

Little, on the other hand, claims on her campaign Facebook page that she has “been attending D64 meetings for about a year and a half….” Yet when we reviewed the minutes of every D-64 Board meeting (regular and special) during all of 2018…SURPRISE!…we could find not one mention of her name or one shred of evidence of her attendance at even one such meeting. So if she actually was in attendance, she apparently contributed nothing  worthy of inclusion in the meeting minutes.

Or she was simply lying.

But what we found even more troubling about Little’s attitude toward our D-64 schools and Board service are her comments in response to Question 9 at the Action Ridge forum asking why non-parents of D-64 students should be concerned about who gets elected to the D-64 Board. Little’s response – from 1:12:18 to 1: 12:40 of the forum audio – focuses on leaving Park Ridge, presumably after she finishes taking out over $350,000 in “free” public education (3 kids for 21 combined school years @ $17,000/kid in current dollars) paid primarily by her fellow taxpayers between now and 2030:

“You have to care if you ever want to sell your house.” And “[i]f you ever want to leave, you have to care.”

Those brought laughs from the forum attendees, many/most of whom presumably share Little’s strategy of sucking out as much “free” stuff as possible (with Kathy Meade’s alibi that “we pay taxes!”) before leaving, not unlike swarms of locusts stripping fields of everything worth consuming before moving on.

Kennedy, following Little in answering that question, recognized that unchecked taxes can be detrimental; and that there must be “a balance between educational excellence and fiscal responsibility, and it’s a fine line” which “must be carefully walked.”

We’ll take a fine-line walker over a swarm of locusts any day.

Kennedy is heartily endorsed and deserves your vote.

But no matter what candidate(s) you favor, make it a point to go to the polls and vote.

To read or post comments, click on title.

A rule of thumb among trial lawyers is that selecting a jury is actually more about de-selecting those prospective jurors who might be hostile to your client. In a similar vein, today we suggest that one candidate for the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board deserves to be de-selected because he not only is hostile to the very concept of “good” representative local government but, also, he is an incompetent public official to boot.

That dubious distinction goes to incumbent Athan “Tom” Sotos. And what follows is actually the short version of the many reasons for this recommendation.

Sotos may be a decent guy in his private life: The vast majority of local public officials over the past three decades this editor has lived in Park Ridge have been decent individuals in their private lives. Some of them have even led exemplary private lives. But as Abraham Lincoln so insightfully observed: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Based on what Sotos has done with the power of his D-64 Board office these past four years, he hasn’t proved up to the test.

Sotos fancies himself a “politician” which, here in Crook County, means blabbing incessantly without actually saying anything meaningful, trying to be all things to all people no matter how many inconsistent or contradictory positions that requires you to take, and even lying when it suits one’s purpose.

Over the past four years we’ve watched countless D-64 Board meeting videos and read even more board packets and meeting minutes, all of which have revealed Sotos to be incapable of even comprehending, much less dealing effectively with, both the educational and the fiscal issues at the heart of Board service.

That was first observed only a few months into his term when he voted to give rookie Sup’t Laurie Heinz a one-year contract extension (on her remaining two-year deal) worth a whopping $250,000 before, only minutes later, voting against giving her a $4,200 raise. We wrote about that in our July 6, 2015 post, and you might find it interesting to hear how Sotos adopts the rationale of the subsequently-discredited Dathan Paterno – from 4:12:51 through 4:15:25 of that June 22, 2015 meeting video – in justifying $250,000 but not $4,200 more.

Our April 24, 2017 post addressed Sotos’ inability to grasp school finance issues – or his irresponsible stewardship of the District’s finances, if you prefer – based on his vote authorizing the District to issue $9.25 million of non-referendum, high-interest debt certificates even though the District was sitting on an operating fund balance of over $48 million, two times the District’s 30% fund balance target. Sotos’ most salient question during that colloquy: “How does using bonds differ from going to referendum?”

Yes, he actually asked that in response to a resident’s inquiry about D-64’s debt, starting at the 13:13 mark of the April 24, 2017 meeting video.

Our February 13, 2019 post discussed how Sotos, despite having been on the Board for almost 4 years, had to admit at the January candidates’ forum (as reported in a 01.28.2019 Herald-Advocate article) that he was unaware of the dysfunction of the District’s Special Education (“SPED”) program because he “didn’t see it happening” due to the fact that he was “not in that world” – a stunning admission of cluelessness from somebody who has pretended to be on top of all things D-64.

Worse yet, he lacks even a 5th Grade civics-level grasp of the basic principles of representative government – as he proved during the September 12, 2016 Board meeting that we wrote about in our September 19, 2016 post. That night, resident Jayne Reardon challenged the Board to publish the 2016-2020 teachers’ union (PREA) contract so that taxpayers could see and comment on it before the Board voted to approve it, and Sotos decided to challenge Ms. Reardon.

Big mistake.

In a span of just 9 minutes, Sotos was left on the canvass bleeding worse than Chuck Wepner after dancing almost 15 rounds with Ali back in 1975. We encourage you to watch the video of that colloquy (from 1:03:18 to 1:12:20) to understand what passes for “transparency” in Sotos’ parallel universe:

 “When you ask us to release [the contract], are you asking us to release it so that you and the public would have their opportunity to give their opinion on the contract, or is it so that you can just have it viewed prior to us making our, or voting on it?”

 “So if I get 6, or 10, or 50 people that come in and say I absolutely don’t like [the contract], am I then, as an elected official, am I then to take those 50 people and take their opinions and allow that to change the way I felt about the contract prior to them reviewing it?”

“Where is the number [of residents] that I have to wait to hear from the public to change my mind, the mind that was elected by the individuals to make this decision for them in the first place?”

Reardon’s responses to Sotos’ questions could have been excerpts from “Civics For Dummies” that Sotos probably doesn’t comprehend even now.

That video also provides an insight into Sotos’ duplicity when he tells Reardon: “I would love to publish [the contract].” Two weeks later at the September 26, 2016 Board meeting, however, Sotos – after issuing more pandering “thank yous” than a drunken Oscar recipient before being played off the stage – voted to approve that contract without even one word about publishing it first. If you have a strong stomach, you can find his bloviation from 1:03:22 to 1:08:34 of that meeting video.

And who can forget the phony/absurd display of sensitivity when Sotos, the owner of a Loop gin joint that we’ve described as “Braveheart with cleavage,” admonished women addressing the Board for using the word “vagina” because it was “not being used in a positive way.” Yes, he actually said that, too – which is why we wrote about it in our February 20, 2017 post; and why we started referring to him as “Tilted Kilt Tommy.”

All that was well before Sotos went into full campaign mode (“FCM”) and began fighting for one of three 4-year seats against a de facto slate of 3 women – Lisa Page, Denise Pearl and Carolina Sales – who, either directly or through supporters, have targeted him as unfit for further Board service due to his “Tilted Kilt” ownership.

FCM now has him insisting to Ingrid Groening Czech in a recent comment on the Park Ridge Concerned Homeowners Group FB page that he “fought against [“secures” (sic) vestibules”] from day one” – a lie demonstrated by a March 8, 2016 H-A article reporting how Sotos actually supported the highest-cost not-really-secured vestibule at Lincoln Middle School, stating: “I don’t want to go to bed at night and say ‘I voted not to approve that one school’ and then something happens at that school.”

In another comment under that same FB string, FCM has Sotos bragging to Michelle Fiore-Cwiertniak about the $40 million of school renovations “without the need to raise taxes by way of referendum” – but failing to mention that part of that questionable achievement was made possible by the aforementioned issuance of over $9 million in high-interest, no-referendum debt certificates that will end up costing D-64 taxpayers an additional $3 million in interest.

And in that same comment to Fiore-Cwiertniak, Sotos reveals his most unprincipled nature by shamelessly offering to be a power-brokering “tiebreaker member” of the future Board with no allegiance to either “the 3 current members” of the Board, or to the “new candidates who are all running as a single voice.”  In other words, Sotos believes he has identified two separate Board factions and is already cynically starting to play them off, one against the other, with no regard whatsoever for any individual issues or policies that either faction, or any of the individual Board members, might espouse. That’s Crook County politics at its worst.

In our opinion, that makes Sotos the sleaziest local public official since Howard Frimark. And that’s why we believe Sotos needs to be de-selected from the D-64 Board this Tuesday, April 2nd.

To read or post comments, click on title.   

After a couple of posts about the Park Ridge City Council’s incompetent procurement mismanagement – and its outright disregard for the City’s procurement rules on a $280,000 body cam purchase – we decided our readers need some comic relief.

And where can you find more comic relief in local government than Maine Township, where the clown-car full of Township officials keeps circling that clown-car known as Maine Township.

We know, we know: We said we were done writing about that Lilliput of local government. And we are.

But after our multi-part “Assgate” series we feel duty-bound to continue to track the further developments in its continuing saga, in this case the fully-expected dismissal by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) of Trustee Kim Jones’ (RINO, Park Ridge) complaint against Trustee Dave Carrabotta (Moron, Niles) for allegedly groping, brushing, swiping, touching, ogling or just thinking about Jonesie’s “ass” (her word). Check out the December 12, 2018 article by the Maine Township RINOs’ unofficial public relations flak, Todd “The Wet Sprocket” Wessell, published in his very own Park Ridge Journal newspaper, titled: “No Recourse For Jones-Carrabotta Issue, Trustee Told.”

According to that article, Jones claims the EEOC – as well as state and Crook County officials – told her that “[L]ocal officials are not a protected class” when it comes to sexual harassment. So, according to Jones: “[P]eople like Dave Carrabotta can sexually harass other elected officials with impunity”; and that her only alternative was to sue the Township and Carrabotta.

Remember, folks: That’s solely according to Jones. We’ve seen or heard nothing from the EEOC itself to corroborate anything The Journal is reporting. And after the woeful lack of evidence supporting her accusations against Carrabotta, her credibility is somewhere between that of the Little Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” (before the wolf showed up) and Chicken Little .

As of the date of the article, Jones was undecided on whether to file such a suit. Frankly, we really wish she would.

After all, she and Carrabotta have already cost the Township’s taxpayers over $38,000 because of Jones’ unproven (and, most likely, fabricated for purely political reasons) accusations that Carrabotta did something improper in her vicinity, which prompted Carrabotta’s moronic demand for a closed-session Board meeting followed by a Township-funded (a/k/a, a taxpayer-funded) investigation.

So we’d like to see both of them start spending bundles of their own cash as a consequence of Jones’ petty politics and Carrabotta’s idiocy.

Maybe some of Jonesie’s cheerleaders – Laura Morask, Susan Moylan-Krey, Wally Kazmierczak, Pete Gialamas, Rep. Marty Moylan (Dem., Madigan’s vest pocket), Sen. Laura Murphy (Dem., Cullerton’s vest pocket), or RINO groupie Jean Dietsch – could chip in for her attorneys’ fees and costs so that Jones won’t have to shoulder that burden solo. Since Jones got all that free legal advice about confronting Carrabotta and filing the complaint that started the investigation from her friendly neighborhood Township attorney, Keri-Lyn Krafthefer (whose firm conveniently pocketed that $38,000+ to conduct the investigation), it’s about time for Jones to start paying her own way.

Meanwhile, Carrabotta – who reportedly has been paying a private attorney for advice – could look to Trustees Susan Sweeney and Claire McKenzie for donations, considering how they foolishly indulged Carrabotta’s fit of pique and voted for both his arguably unlawful closed session meeting and his stupid Ancel Glink investigation.

McKenzie, however, may not be so inclined to contribute to the Carrabotta defense fund now that she is rumored to be angling for a Crook County Circuit Court judgeship and will likely need the intercession of Jonesie’s BFF, Marty Moylan, if she wants Boss Madigan to bless her candidacy. That also might explain why McKenzie seems to have abandoned her fellow “Reformers” and is siding regularly with Morask and Jones on Township Board votes.

But much as we would like Jones to continue this Township farce with a lawsuit of her own, if only for its perverse entertainment value, we’re pretty sure that won’t happen. Whatever political masterminds (using that term loosely) have been steering Jones through this goat rodeo (Morask? Kazmierczak?) up to now have to realize that they’ve already milked these unproved accusations for all they were worth.

And the last thing they want is an actual court decision that might expressly find that Jones made all of this up, aided and abetted by the speculation and hearsay of Morask, Moylan-Krey, Kazmierczak and Gialamas.

Besides, now that Morask and Jones have lured McKenzie over to the Dark Side, the RINOs no longer need to push Carrabotta off the Board so they could replace him with RINO Kelly Schaefer (which was the only reason behind Assgate from the jump): They can now regularly outvote Carrabotta and Sweeney whenever the latter two attempt to act like “The Reformers” we believed them to be back when they had their 3-2 vote majority and were actually relevant.

So it looks like reform is dead at Maine Township.

Now, who’s going to tell Carrabotta and Sweeney?

To read or post comments, click on title.

With the election results now settled, the following congratulations are in order:

To Snow-Job and the 7 Dwarfs on your landslide (61%-39%) referendum victory: You proved that grossly neglecting the District’s school buildings for the past 9 years of Snow-Jobs reign – while at the same time amassing over $130 Million of reserves and also making the District’s teachers and administrators among the highest-paid in Illinois while the schools’ rankings sunk – could be a winning referendum strategy, at least if you spend $115,000 of the taxpayers’ money on a propaganda campaign. We look forward to a dramatic surge in both the academic performance of D-207’s students AND the District’s rankings from the spending of that $235 Million.

To those 49,669 voters who actually cast ballots in the D-207 referendum: You did one of your most important civic duties, unlike the other 46,941 slugs who failed to show up. While that means only 29.3% of the District’s registered voters authorized the referendum borrowing, it doesn’t change the outcome or diminish the mandate.

To the Illinois Stupid Party (f/k/a the Illinois Republican Party), state chmn. Tim Schneider and Crook County chmn. Sean Morrison: This was an even more insipid and boneheaded performance than we could have imagined – although Schneider’s loss of his County Board seat provided some justice. “Insipid-to-boneheaded” also describes the performance of the “rogue” faction of the Stupid Party – represented by Dan Proft, Richard Uihlein, Liberty Principles PAC and the Illinois Opportunity Project – that appears to have backed not one winner. So much for your more-flat-tire-than-inspired “Save Your Home Now” campaign and slate.

And how can we not acknowledge the absolute political mastery of Speaker Madigan, the Darkest Lord of the Sith, who now is the undisputed owner of all of Illinois – busted lock, crumbling stock and rusted barrel.

Finally, to new Gov. JB: Please hurry up and legalize recreational weed – we’ll need it to endure the next four years.

To read or post comments, click on title.

On September 27 the League of Women Voters of Park Ridge (“LWVPR”) joined with the American Association of University Women (the “AAUW”) to sponsor a debate between incumbent 55th Dist. state representative Marty Moylan (D) and his challenger, Marilyn Smolenski (R).

Why it takes two organizations to run a debate between only two candidates is a bit puzzling, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Irrespective of the logistical concerns, the LWVPR claims to be big-time ticked off because a portion of a video of the debate taken by somebody associated with the Smolenski campaign – that portion where Moylan loudly denies (untruthfully, it appears) that he has accepted money from Speaker Mike Madigan – is being used in a Smolenski campaign ad. The LWVPR claims that’s a no-no.

Why?

According to letters to the editor by LWVPR president Mary Upson in both the October 22 edition of the Daily Herald and the October 24 edition of The Journal, “[b]oth campaigns asked to videotape the [debate] with the verbal agreement that the video could be used for internal purposes only” [emphasis added]. A “verbal agreement” is a common alternative term for “oral agreement” and is legally enforceable IF mutual assent to its terms, and the terms themselves, can be adequately established.

Unlike written agreements, oral/verbal agreements are disfavored in the law because too often both the mutual assent and the exact terms can be very difficult to prove. So if preventing the use of the debate videos or any portions thereof was so darn important to the LWVPR, one would think that it would demand that both campaigns sign a written agreement to that effect.

But guess what?

At just about the same time Upson was insisting, in her two letters to the editor, that LWVPR had a “verbal agreement” with both campaigns, she also was insisting – in two separate comments to an October 22 post on the Concerned Homeowners Group of Park Ridge FB page – that “[b]oth campaigns signed an agreement, one in [sic] which LWV Park Ridge has been using for years.” We have printed that entire FB post and all of its comments, with our various questions and challenges in red because addressing all of them in the body of this post would be unwieldy.

So which is it, Ms. Upson: A “verbal agreement” or a written one “signed” by “both campaigns”?

If it’s a written one, why haven’t you posted the signed versions to prove that you’re not just making up this “we had a deal and Smolenski broke it” whining? Are you and the LWVPR such partisan Democrats that you’re willing to fabricate this whole kerfuffle as your faux-“non-partisan” way to publicly hammer Smolenski for using a clip from the debate video in what you label her “attack ad against Marty Moylan” that actually portrays him as the lying Madigan coat-holder he really is?

But that’s not all.

Ms. Upson, speaking once again for the LWVPR, also complained in those two letters to the editor that “Marilyn Smolenski’s campaign (managed by the Illinois Opportunity Project) offered to share its video with [the LWVPR] to post for community members who could not attend”; and then she beefed that Smolenski’s campaign didn’t provide the copy of its video “despite numerous attempts to contact the campaign.”

Why don’t you name names, Ms. Upson? Which member(s) of Smolenski’s “campaign…offered to share its video”? To whom at LWVPR was that “offer” made? Who from LWVPR made those “numerous attempts to contact the [Smolenski] campaign”? And to whom with Smolenski’s campaign were those attempts directed?

Or are all those assertions just more made-up stuff with which to hammer Smolenski on a purely-partisan basis, for Moylan’s benefit?

Interestingly enough, neither Upson’s letters nor her FB comments say whether Moylan’s campaign made the same offer and followed through on it. And neither those letters nor her FB comments say whether Moylan’s campaign was asked to submit its video for the LWVPR’s website after Smolenski’s campaign allegedly failed to do so.  As of the publication of this post we could find no debate video on the LWVPR’s website or on its Facebook page.

Is your concern about informing those “community members who could not attend” the debate limited to only the Smolenski video and not the Moylan video? Why isn’t what’s sauce  for the gander (Smolenski) also sauce for the goose (Moylan)? Is the LWVPR placing greater demands on the female candidate than on her male opponent?

It sure looks that way.

That being the case, why aren’t Kim “Did you grab my ass?” Jones and her supporters demanding fair treatment for the female candidate – other than because she’s a Republican and they’re all RINOs (or Dems) who are supporting Moylan? Shouldn’t they be asking the LWVPR why it didn’t expect and demand the same video sharing from Moylan that it expected from Smolenski, especially if informing the public is the goal?

Of course they should! But of course they aren’t, and they won’t.

Why?

Because none of them are really “non-partisan.” And most/all of them support Moylan over Smolenski. They just don’t want us average taxpayers/voters to realize it.

Otherwise, the myth of a “non-partisan” LWVPR becomes the lie .

UPDATE 11.01.2018.  True to her word, Ms. Upson has shared with us the “signed…agreement” of Marty Moylan, dated October 13, 2016; and the “signed…agrement” of Marilyn Smolenski, dated September 25, 2018.

As you can see, these are not actual “agreements” but, instead, a set of “Rules” for a candidate forum. They contain no language that identifies them as any sort of legally-binding contract. Additionally, because the Rules themselves contain no language that commits the candidate, by signing, to be bound by them, the candidate’s signature/e-signature does not appear to hold any legal significance whatsoever.

Finally, the only provision of those Rules that deals with video and audio recording is the last bullet point, which merely gives “the sponsoring organizations” a right to record and disseminate the recordings as it chooses.

So we’re left with the LWVPR’s totally incredible, totally uncorroborated, totally evidence-less allegation of some “verbal agreement” by which both campaigns allegedly agreed not to use the videos they took for campaign purposes.

As the late and supremely corrupt Ill. Sec’y  of State Paul Powell used to say: “I can smell the meat a-cookin’.” What the LWVPR has cooked up definitely smells…but it’s most definitely not edible.

To read or post comments, click on title.