Two hundred forty years ago the Founders of this country declared independence for the colonies.

It was not a safe act.

As many of us learned back in grade school civics, John Hancock reportedly signed the Declaration of Independence with so prominent a signature because he wanted King George III to be able to read it without his glasses. What many of us may have forgotten, however, is that Hancock’s signature was a declaration of war and an act of treason punishable by death – which Ben Franklin alluded to in his quote:

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Those 56 men who signed the Declaration knew that they were putting not only their own lives in danger but, also, the lives of their families. All for the sake of the liberty we’ve enjoyed for 240 years. 

But for how many more? 

What those Founders did took a virtue that seems sorely lacking in government today, especially here in Illinois: courage. 

The role of courage as central to freedom and happiness is a recurring theme throughout history. 

The Greek historian Thucydides observed that: “The secret to happiness is freedom… And the secret to freedom is courage.” Twenty three centuries later, Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis attributed the same philosophy to the Founders, stating that they “believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.” 

To Harry S Truman, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.” 

Even America’s most well-known duke, John Wayne, weighed in with: “Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.” 

Unfortunately, even back in the 1960s President John F. Kennedy warned that “a nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.”

He was right…and prescient.

Today, when it comes to government at every level, courage seems to have been replaced by the three “C”s: conformity, cowardice and compromise.

Conformity, as demonstrated by public officials whose first question when confronted by a problem is a rote request: “What do other units of government do?”

Cowardice, as demonstrated by public officials constantly holding their moist fingers to the wind and seeking informal “consensus” rather than proposing their own fully-formed ideas for an up-down vote.

Compromise, because those officials know that the more sets of fingerprints on a bad idea, the more people there will be to share the deniability and blame.

Conformity, cowardice and compromise are not virtues but vices. And as Texas politician Jim Hightower once said: “Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

On this day that we honor the monumental courage of the Founders, we should also dedicate ourselves to proving worthy of their courage with courage of our own – and to demanding the same from our public officials, while remembering Thomas Jefferson’s encouraging words: 

“One man with courage is a majority.” 

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It’s “Presidents’ Day,” a relatively modern (1971) holiday that merged a celebration of the birthdays of George Washington (Feb. 22) and Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) for the purpose of giving workers and school children more three-day weekends.

Although this day ostensibly honors all U.S. presidents, we’re traditionalists who prefer to consider it a celebration of just the two aforementioned POTUSes.

The patrician Washington is believed to have been our wealthiest president: he owned over 8,000 acres of prime Virginia farmland tended by more than 300 slaves, with an estimated net worth in today’s dollars of $525 million.

Despite his personal wealth and popularity, he did more than any of his successors to honor the Constitutional role of the office of president as he believed the drafters and ratifiers of that document intended, refusing to stretch or contract its powers to suit his personal or political purposes: “The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon.”

Washington wisely and humbly recognized that he “walk[ed] on untrodden ground” and that “[t]here [was] scarcely any part of [his] conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.” Accordingly, while he could have been president for life, he chose to relinquish the office after two terms – a precedent that stood until Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1940, believed his leadership to be indispensable in this country’s run-up to World War II.

Only a leader as exceptional and well-respected as Washington could have chosen for his Cabinet, and then struck the necessary balance between, two of the greatest intellects – and their competing philosophies of government – this country ever has known: Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. The result has been an enduring Constitutional republic in which Hamilton’s central government has shown itself to be strong enough to unify and protect the various states, but not so strong as to unconstitutionally infringe on the rights of each sovereign state and its people that Jefferson championed.

In contrast to the patrician Washington, Lincoln was the rough-hewn rustic whose background and appearance belied his uncommon sense and practical genius – embodied perhaps most notably in his taking of Washington’s Jefferson/Hamilton precedent one step farther and selecting some of his own political opponents as Cabinet members, a strategy that served as the focus of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magnificent book, Team of Rivals.

Unlike Washington, Lincoln rose from some of the humblest of beginnings, moving with his family from Kentucky to Indiana and finally to Illinois as his father sought to scratch out a living for his family. That father taught him to split rails while his stepmother taught him to read, the latter skill helping him to pretty much teach himself enough law that, when combined with his well-honed intellect and home-spun folksiness, made him a formidable trial lawyer…reportedly, however, only in those cases where he believed in the righteousness of his client and his cause.

Although considered the prototypical Republican, for most of his political life Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party, one primary goal of which was to promote economic development and the upward mobility of individuals like himself. Only when the Whig Party began breaking apart following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise did Lincoln follow the lead of several prominent Illinois Whigs and join the new and rabidly anti-slavery Republican Party

His leadership kept the country from splitting in two, albeit at the cost of more than 600,000 American lives. His Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. And his Whig-based support of the railroads as vital to the nation’s economic development set in motion their expansion westward.

He held to the belief that “[i]mportant principles may, and must, be inflexible.” Despite his economic-development philosophy, however, he famously stated that “Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.”

So on this Presidents’ Day, contemplate the virtues and the leadership of these two giants who were, perhaps, our two greatest presidents.

Then consider the midgets currently vying for the Democrat and Republican nominations for that office, and remember Benjamin Franklin’s warning in response to a question about the form of our new government:

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

After taking a bit of a holiday break, we’re going to start 2016 out on an unusual (for us) note and write a post that doesn’t involve the stupidity, ignorance and profligacy of our local politics and government, or our local freeloaders and neighboring parasites for whom “civics” is taking more out of your fellow taxpayers’ pockets than you put in from your own.

Today we’re writing a “local boy makes good” post about a young man who, by dint of extraordinary effort applied to natural talent – and while overcoming significant adversity – has achieved his dream of doing something very difficult at a very high level.

His name is Michael Mersch, he plays professional hockey for the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League, and he recently scored his first NHL goal.

Having a local kid playing any professional sport is something special, given how difficult and competitive the journey to professionalism in sports is. But it’s even more of a challenge to make the NHL, where most players are still from that traditional hockey bastion of Canada – or, in recent years, from Sweden, Finland and Russia. And most of the Americans in The League seem to be from the more hockey-oriented New England states, or the likes of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.

As best as we can tell, Michael is the very first Park Ridge hockey player to make the NHL, although we’re sure the Park Ridge hockey community will correct us if we’re wrong on that.

But what makes his story even more compelling is its “back story” – starting with the death of his father, also a professional hockey player who made it one level short of the NHL – when Michael was eight years old, leaving behind Michael’s mother, Nancy, and two younger children.

Fortunately, Michael’s father left him with a good amount of athleticism, and he excelled at most sports he played as a youth. But hockey was where he really stood out.

His mother allowed him to move to Michigan and train with the U.S. National Development program, learning to play the game at a level beyond what he could find here in Illinois. Besides honing his hockey skills to the point where the talented left-winger earned a scholarship offer from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, however, Michael worked hard enough in the classroom to complete his high school studies in only three years while earning a 3.3 GPA.

As a member of the Badger’s team he distinguished himself early enough to be drafted by the Kings in 2011. But as a fourth-round pick he chose to stay in school and work on his game at that level. He played 157 games for the Badgers, scoring 67 goals and 53 assists, developing into the kind of player who made amazing plays while earning his degree finance in the regulation four years in 2014.

His Wisconsin coach, Mike Eaves, regularly spoke of Michael’s work ethic, his focus and his mature goal-oriented approach to the game. His strength and conditioning coach, Jim Snider, called him “just a quality human being, a quality kid” who is “very genuine.” Not surprisingly, those are the kinds of characteristics needed for that long climb to a professional career.

Last year, his first as a pro, his Kings-system “farm team,” the Manchester (NH) Monarchs, won the Calder Cupt,  the minor league equivalent of the Stanley Cup. He followed that up with an outstanding performance earlier this season with the Kings’ American Hockey League club, the Ontario Reign, to earn a call-up to the big squad in December.

In an age where mere activity – and often modest activity at that – is so regularly mistaken for achievement that it is customarily rewarded with those uber-lame “participation” trophies (that delight only the non-achievers, their parents, and the trophy sellers), Michael Mersch’s journey from the Oakton Ice Center to L.A.’s Staples Center is notable in its own right.

To think he did it while skipping a grade and earning a degree from Wisconsin makes it even more notable.

So we salute Michael’s success and wish him a long and successful career of all-star performances.

Except when the Kings play the Blackhawks.

UPDATED 01.15.16.  We have been informed by one of our readers that Craig Anderson, goaltender for the NHL’s Ottawa Senators, is orginally from Park Ridge. He was with the Blackhawks organization from 2001-2006.

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This is our last post for 2015, so we’re looking back at the year that’s ending and forward to the year ahead – the former with profound sadness, the latter with perhaps unjustified hope.

The sadness of 2015 relates to the sudden death of Mayor Dave Schmidt on March 4.

Mayor Dave was a larger-than-life figure with an almost ferocious joie de vivre. He truly loved Park Ridge and being its mayor, whether it meant poring over draft ordinances at 1:00 a.m., attending his third or fourth charitable event of the week, cutting the ribbon for a new business, teaching a little City civics to 4th graders, or laughing at a giant inflatable rat with a “Time To Veto Dave Schmidt” sign in front of City Hall.

He was a man-child in the best sense of that term, able to throw a curled-lip glower or to crack an impish smile with equal ease. And he seemed as “at home” in a bare-knuckle political brawl as in his regular seat at Orchestra Hall listening to his beloved CSO.

More importantly, in his almost six years in the big chair at The Horseshoe he changed business-as-usual at City Hall – most definitely for the better, and hopefully for the long-term.

He won the office by articulating his philosophy of Honesty, Integrity, Transparency and Accountability (“HITA”); and by actually doing what his three predecessors (and so many other local elected officials) merely talked about: putting the taxpayers first..

That made him some enduring enemies – including those three predecessors and the few handfuls of former aldermen who also endorsed his last opponent, for whom “business as usual” pretty much maxed out both their interest level and abilities. But it made Mayor Dave even more friends and supporters – the proof of that being the increase in both his vote total (from 4,897 to 5,601) and his winning percentage (from 56.3% to 62.06%) from his 2009 election to his 2013 re-election, while at the same time generating a larger voter turnout.

Mayor Dave’s principled way of doing the City’s business also attracted a group of aldermen who shared his principles and his priorities. Consequently, his passing did not spark the petty partisan politicking, horse-trading and jockeying for position that followed Wietecha’s dark-of-night resignation in September 2003 and led to acting mayor Marous and his Uptown TIF boondoggle. Instead, these aldermen checked their egos at the door and unanimously chose Ald. Marty Maloney as acting mayor, an office Maloney accepted with the pledge to treat the next two years as “the rest of Mayor Dave’s term.”

And that’s the way it has been, a City government directed by principles and pragmatism instead of preening and profligacy.

So as the clock ticks down on 2015 we offer one last “ave atque vale” to Mayor Dave.

                  *                                    *                                    *

Looking ahead to 2016, the one thing we hope to see more of is HITA.

And nowhere is that more needed than from those two Star Chambers masquerading as Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 and Maine Township High School District 207.

That’s because while the City will continue to struggle valiantly to overcome the weight of the Uptown TIF debt and the difficulties of coming up with a cost-effective solution to the flooding problem, the last thing we need is for what passes as “leadership” at D-64 and D-207 to continue to fiddle while their schools’ objectively-measurable performance and rankings continue to slide in comparison to those other affluent suburbs competing with Park Ridge for long-term home-owning residents.

Superintendents Laurie Heinz and Ken Wallace, respectively, know that controlling the flow of information to the public is the single best way to: (a) end-run HITA; (b) dominate their feckless school boards; (c) manipulate the parents of their students; and (d) bamboozle the taxpayers while avoiding any accountability for their own highly-paid-but-mediocre performances. And if Heinz’s and Wallace’s own instincts in that regard aren’t quite up to the obfuscation tasks at hand, they both have taxpayer-paid propaganda ministers to assist them in Bernadette Tramm (D-64) and Dave Beery (D-207).

So GFL getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth out of those spinmeisters.

Too bad truth will be even more important, and less likely, in 2016 when it comes to D-64’s expected closed-session “negotiation” of a new contract with the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”), a/k/a, the teachers union.

Four years ago, then-board members John Heyde and Pat Fioretto hid in secretive closed sessions while giving the PREA a sweetheart deal that included “step” (longevity) and “lane” (continuing education) increases unrelated to either individual teacher performance or student performance. That put the taxpayers on the hook for starting salaries that increased over the contract’s four-year term from $45,780 to $48,582 for total out-of-the-box newbies, and from $101,374 to $107,579 for the most experienced. You can see the 2015 salaries for teachers, by name, by clicking here.

And remember: that’s just for 8-9 months of work, with no chance of D-64 packing up and relocating to Indiana, Wisconsin, or Mexico.

And also remember that it comes with those constitutionally-guaranteed pensions that can kick in as early as age 55, with annual COLA increases that carry the possibility of generating more income for teachers in retirement than they made while actually teaching.

See how your Social Security and 401(k) compare to that!

Unfortunately, the current D-64 Board is only marginally better than the one that gave away that sweetheart deal four years ago: Hang a bell around Heinz’s neck and president Tony Borrelli, vice-president Scott Zimmerman, Secretary Vickie Lee, and Bob Johnson would follow her anywhere, with little more than an occasional “moo.”

Even among “veteran” Dathan Paterno and newcomers Mark Eggemann and Tom Sotos, only Eggemann has regularly displayed any measurable HITA – voting against most of the unnecessary closed sessions and being the only vote against the recently-increased tax levy that will enable D-64 to continue to spend about as much to educate 4,500 kids as the City of Park Ridge spends to run the whole city of 37,000+ people: approximately $70 million.

With creatures of the dark Borrelli and Zimmerman reportedly heading the D-64 negotiating team, you should bet the “over” for what kind of contract the PREA will be able to wheedle out of them in the…wait for it…closed-session negotiations. After all, it was in closed sessions that Borrelli and Zimmerman hashed out the one-year, $250,000 contract extension and raise for Heinz – based on allegedly outstanding mid-year and year-end “reviews” that not only weren’t published to the taxpayers before the deal was cooked, but which we understand weren’t even given to Eggemann or Sotos before they were asked to approve the deal.

And which still can’t be found anywhere in the public domain as best as we can tell.

With D-64 and D-207 grabbing almost 70% of our property tax bills, versus the City’s roughly 10%, we’re hoping taxpayers in 2016 finally will start figuring out where more of their limited attention should be paid, and where the most basic HITA is so sorely lacking.

Here’s hoping that situation can be substantially corrected in the coming year.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Back when the State of Illinois actually had a “middle class” worthy of the name, most of its unionized employees worked in the private sector and were heirs to the proud tradition of private-sector trade unionists like William Sylvis (iron molders), Samuel Gompers (cigarmakers), John L. Lewis (mine workers), Walter Reuther (auto workers) and George Meany (plumbers).

But while Illinois ranks 7th (behind New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and California) in public-sector unionization with 54.7% of its public-sector employees belonging to unions – up from 38.4% in 1983 – less than 10% of Illinois’ private-sector workers are unionized, down from approximately 22% in 1983. And that’s even as private sector employment has grown by 30% versus only 3% in the public sector.

Meanwhile, the public sector expansionists and apologists bemoan the shrinking “middle class” – which in Illinois is generally described as a household income between $37,500 and $112,500.

Which means that here in Park Ridge many/most households with two public-sector incomes exceed “middle-class” status and become “upper-class” after only a few years.

If those incomes were all merit-based and the product of fair arm’s-length negotiations, we’d have no problem with them.

Unfortunately, the proud tradition of private-sector unions got lost in translation as the public-sector unions turned collusion with politicians of both Democrat and Republican stripes into a quasi-pornographic art form – while also becoming adept at manipulating soft-headed “non-partisan” local politicians who lack the backbone to aggressively negotiate contracts on behalf of their taxpayer-constituents.

Yes, invertebrate board members at School Districts 64 and 207…we mean you!

Fortunately, rookie Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner’s small but significant victory last week over Illinois’ Dark Lord of the Sith, Michael (“Darth”) Madigan, is the first sign in decades that an Illinois governor not only isn’t in the pocket of this state’s public-sector unions but, also, that he might be able to go toe-to-toe with those unions and their Sith co-conspirators.

Rauner was able to beat back Madigan’s and his Dem sycophants’ efforts to override Rauner’s veto of a bill that would have stripped the governor of the authority to negotiate contracts with Illinois public employee unions, particularly AFSCME, and would have empowered some unaccountable arbitrator (very likely a Madigan stooge) to impose on taxpayers his/her idea of what’s a “fair” deal for the unions.

Our local Dem puppet, Rep. Marty Moylan, voted for override while RINO Rep. Mike McAuliffe voted a gutless “Present.”

And that victory over Madigan was essential, considering that the Illinois Senate led by Madigan lackey, Illinois Senate president John Cullerton – assisted by his Senate sub-puppets like Park Ridge’s own, Sen. Dan Kotowski and Sen. John Mulroe, both Dems – had already overridden Rauner’s veto.

Rauner was right to fight that battle, and Illinois taxpayers are lucky he won it. Because every time Illinois’ public-sector employees have their compensation and benefits, including their $100 billion-plus underfunded pensions, juiced up without a commensurate increase in productivity, Illinois becomes less attractive to the private industry and investment needed to pay the taxes that fund such arguably overpriced employees.

But Rauner is dead wrong when he tries to lump private-sector unions together with the public-sector ones and treat them similarly. The former are bound by inherent capitalistic checks and balances of the free marketplace, including real risks such as termination, employer relocation and bankruptcy – while the latter operate on unchecked socialistic principles and captive markets with few, if any, of those risks.

And the longer the public sector continues to dominate the private sector, the tougher it will be for our children and their children to pursue the American Dream.

So as we wrote in our Labor Day 2013 post: “consider spending a few minutes contemplating how we can restore to prominence the private sector labor and management that built this country – while reducing the growing dominance of the collusive public sector labor and politics that is undermining it.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

The Republic given us by our Founders 239 years ago today is among a handful of the greatest governing documents the world has ever known.

But it seems as if those of us who are the beneficiaries of their work too often forget, and take for granted, the document that embodies it. So we think it’s time, once again, to remind ourselves and our readers of the giants who gave it to us, and the risks to their own and their families’ “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

As American historian Walter A. McDougall so well described the importance of this day:

“It is a day when Americans, especially young ones, must reflect on how absurdly implausible the birth of this nation was, how its survival hung by a thread on many occasions, and how its Founders were emboldened because – be they Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Deists, or Freemasons – they believed the Author of History meant this to happen.”

And we take this opportunity to remind our local elected officials that, as Jefferson wrote: “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

So whenever those elected officials intentionally hide from their constituents and hide what they’re doing from their constituents, those officials aren’t just disrespecting those constituents.

They are insulting the memory of the Founders and the spirit of their Declaration.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Memorial Day is supposed to be a day of remembrance of our many fellow Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and for each of us.

But for too many of us beneficiaries of that sacrifice, Memorial Day is just a three-day weekend – the start of summer, an excuse to eat the extra hot dog or hamburger and to drink the extra beer. Memorial Day ends up being all about us, our families and our friends.

That’s wrong, but here’s a simple and easy way to make it right.

The traditional Park Ridge Memorial Day parade steps off this morning from South Park at 10:00 a.m. and ends at City Hall. Show up along the parade route. Applaud the veterans who will be marching in place of those whom we honor.

But don’t let it end there.

Following the parade there will be a short memorial service at the monument in Hodge’s Park. Spend a little extra time to attend that service.

Firing up the grille, or pouring that first Bloody Mary, can wait another half-hour.

But if that just doesn’t fit in the schedule, how about swinging by one of our many cemeteries and stopping by the grave of just one fallen soldier. They aren’t hard to find: all veterans’ graves should be marked with a fresh American flag, and you can pretty much tell by the date of death whether or not the soldier fell while in the service.

We can do that, and we should do that.  Because we are free men and women.

And those honored dead helped keep us that way.

To read or post comment, click on title.

Another local election has come and gone, and with it a few surprises and not-so-surprises. After listening to both the noise and the silence over the past several days, here’s what we’ve concluded and speculated about Tuesday night’s results.

City of Park Ridge: The first non-surprise is that Seventh Ward Ald. (and Acting Mayor) Marty Maloney and Fifth Ward Ald. Dan Knight won their uncontested races.

Although nobody ran against Maloney, it apparently isn’t for want of interest in that seat: we hear that at least two – and perhaps more – Seventh Ward residents have been chasing Maloney like dogs after a t-bone, pushing him to take the full complement of mayoral powers by relinquishing his aldermanic seat.

Oh yeah… and then appoint one of them to fill it.

Another non-surprise was Bob Wilkening’s defeat of Rick Van Roeyen by almost 300 votes, 418 to 120, in the traditionally apathetic Third Ward – where contested aldermanic races come along about once a generation. Given that the current alderman won by write-in when no conventional candidates filed nominating petitions, it also should come as no surprise that even this rare contested race drew fewer total votes – for both candidates combined – than were cast for just the winner of the First Ward race. And to add insult to insult, the Third Ward had a lower turnout of registered voters (9.58%) for its contested race than did the uncontested races in the Fifth (10.9%) and Seventh (9.79%) wards.

The takeaway from this race? If Wilkening can stay awake during meetings, we can call this a “Plus-One” for the City. And that’s more than Third Warders deserve because even with their first contested race this millennium they still found a way – through pathetic turnout – to prove just how badly they suck at Citizenship 101!

The “hot” City race was up in the First Ward, where John Moran posted a 16% win – 590 to 430 – over Andrea Cline.

Cline, backed by the “Go Green Park Ridge” organization/association/club/caucus/coffee klatch, garnered some noteworthy endorsements (e.g., Maine Twp. Clerk Gary Warner, former 1st Ward ald. and 2005 mayoral candidate Michael Tinaglia, D-64 Board president Tony Borrelli, 2nd Ward. Ald. Nick Milissis, and former 5th Ward ald. Rich Whalen) for what was perceived by many to be a flooding-oriented campaign – not that there’s anything wrong with that, given our chronic flooding problems.

Moran, the son of a former alderman, seemed to draw support from some remnants of the defunct Homeowners Party, as well as from a broad network of social contacts. His campaign focused more on the financial side of City government, which may have resonated with more voters because of the City’s emphasis – thanks to the late Mayor Dave – on the financial problems accumulated over the better part of two decades.

The takeaway from this race: flooding does matter, but there appears to be a growing recognition that most/all government problems are rooted in, and must be solved by, financial matters. If Moran walks his finance talk, this should also be a “Plus-One” for the City.

Park Ridge Park District: In the biggest squeaker of the night, two-term incumbent Park Commissioner Jim O’Brien edged two-term incumbent Park Commissioner Mary Wynn Ryan by only 18 votes – 2,330 to 2,312 – for the third and last of three seats on the Park Board. Interestingly enough, both O’Brien and Ryan ran similar low-key campaigns, eschewing yard signs and mailers and, instead, choosing to run on their respective records.

The leading vote getter was the only non-incumbent, Cindy Grau, another “Go Green Park Ridge” candidate who had to overcome a petition challenge to stay on the ballot. She scored a 10-vote win over second-place finisher Mel Thillens, 2,409 to 2,399, and was the leading vote-getter in 14 of the 33 Park District precincts – showing the most strength in Maine Twp. precincts 24, 25, 27 and 42. Thillens, on the other hand, was best of show in Leyden Twp. precinct 23 and Maine precincts 30, 43 and 65.

The takeaway from this race? With Grau and Ryan seemingly singing from the same hymn book, the chanteuse with the signs beat the one without. We’ll call this a “Push” for the Park District, at least until Grau shows whether she can carry a different tune from Ryan’s.

School District 64: In the waning days of the election a flier appeared that encouraged voting for PREA-recruit Greg Bublitz, PREA-maybe Tom Sotos, and Board president Tony Borrelli. The message was clear: Anybody but Mark Eggemann.

But when the smoke cleared early Wednesday morning, Eggemann stood atop the leader board with a 168-vote margin over the second-place Borrelli, whom Sotos trailed by 242 votes. Missing the cut was Bublitz.

Interestingly, Eggemann led the pack in 20 of 36 precincts and finished second in 6 more, while Bublitz won only one precinct: Maine Twp. precinct 36 – and that by a mere 4 votes over Borrelli and 5 votes over Eggemann. Equally interesting was Borrelli’s showing, inasmuch as he conducted a low-key, yard sign-less campaign with only one mailer.

The takeaway? The PREA does a better job of manipulating Gumby-like Board members than it does the voters.  Consequently, the PREA won’t be getting another rubber stamp to replace departing best-boy John Heyde. And Eggemann, hopefully, can contribute some much-needed backbone for the rest of the Board members who have bent to the PREA’s and administrators’ wills and whims for far too long.

School District 207: The size of District 207 tends to make its Board a safe haven for incumbents no matter how inept or profligate they might be. Challengers without significant name recognition have a steep uphill battle, because the District is virtually impossible to attack on a door-to-door walking basis. So a successful challenger needs yard signs and/or mailers to level the playing field.

Only one of the three challengers to the slate of incumbents Sean Sullivan, Paula Besler and Pablo Morales had enough of those to make a difference: Teri Collins, the executive director of MCYAF who ran only 218 votes behind two-term incumbent Sullivan and 604 votes behind front-runner Besler for the third seat.

The odd incumbent out was Morales, who was appointed to the Board late last August and, therefore, had only seven months of Board service to make a name for himself. But despite having his own signs and being included with Sullivan and Besler on their slate’s signs, not only did Morales lose to Collins, but he also lost fourth place to Jill Dolan, a candidate with little name recognition and the ability to create any kind of yard-sign presence only in the last weeks of the campaign.

The takeaway? Expect the same old same old from D-207 for the next two years, even if Collins can muster spine enough to actually challenge the Kool-Aid drinking Board majority to demand better educational achievement from the very well-paid teachers and administrators. And props to Dolan and Patel for making their runs.

To read or post comments, click on title.

It’s a cold wet dreary day.  The kind of day that people who just “talk the talk” can handily use as an excuse to stay home, or go directly to the office instead of heading to their polling place and exercising the right that was earned for them by the blood of the more than 650,000 American military personnel who gave their lives on various battlefields around the world since the first shots were fired in the Revolution.

And for those of you who think our local elections are minor league events that don’t matter, today’s elections will decide who will be in charge of spending approximately $260 MILLION+ of our money EACH of the next four years at the City, the Park District, D-207 and D-64.

Anybody can talk the talk.  But real Americans also walk the walk.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Four years ago we endorsed Mel Thillens, Mary Wynn Ryan and Jim O’Brien (collectively, “TRO”) over a slate of candidates sponsored by Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”) – because we didn’t, and still don’t, believe it’s any healthier to vote employee union lackeys onto the Park Board than it is to vote teachers union lackeys onto our school boards.

TRO won handily. And now they’re up for re-election against one challenger: Cindy Grau. So just like in the D-64 race, the only question about this Park Board race is: who will be the odd man/woman out?

In a number of respects TRO have done a good job overseeing the day-to-day management of the Park District. The facilities generally appear to be well-maintained. And the District has followed the City’s lead in reducing the number those damnable closed sessions where cowardly public officials try to hide their activities from scrutiny by the people who elected them.

We also have to give a big Watchdog bark-out to the District’s having become increasingly self-sufficient, with fees and other earned revenue increasingly replacing property tax revenue. That suggests the “marketplace – i.e., the consumer – believes the District’s facilities and programs provide good value for the price. That’s very good.

But in a stretch of less than six months, TRO and the rest of their Board buried the District in approximately $20 million of long-term debt, $6.3 million of which went to build a third-rate Centennial water park usable for only 3 months a year without even an advisory referendum. And, worse yet, that involved a dishonest bait-and-switch: the District cut what reportedly was the most desired feature of the design – a “lazy river” – because it apparently lacked sufficient non-referendum debt to build it.

Why did TRO support incurring so much debt on such a cut-rate facility? Because they were too contemptuous of the taxpayers, and also too cowardly, to do what every park board since 1992 had done: ask the voters for approval of such a major debt-funded capital expenditure through a referendum.

So the taxpayers are now saddled with that water park debt which, along with the voter-approved Youth Campus/Prospect Park debt, will hogtie the District economically for the next decade and beyond. By then, however, TRO will certainly be gone from the Board. And we wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of them will have left town altogether.

That brings us back to the present and Tuesday’s election…and the question of who should be left without a seat when the music stops.

Frankly, TRO’s contempt for the taxpayers – in our book, the No. 1 sin among the 7 deadly sins of local government – curbs our enthusiasm for any of them. That contempt suggests they possess the typical politicians’ cynical view that taxpayers/voters are just pawns and dupes – to be exploited for their votes for candidates like TRO, but to be deprived of a vote on such major projects, expenditures and debt as the water park.

But we also can’t endorse Grau.

From everything we can gather from her website and articles about her in the local press, she would actually work to reverse the positive economic trend (save for that aforementioned $20 million water park bonded debt boondoggle) at the Park District. Although she makes the token one-time reference to her being “fiscally responsible,” both newspapers have reported her recent complaints about the very user fees that have made the District more economically self-sufficient and less dependent on the taxpayers.

She was critical of the fact that “[w]e make the users pay for camps and programming” (Keeping Costs Down Key To Park Ridge Park Candidates,” Park Ridge Journal, April 1) and she “could agree to a freeze in program costs” that would shift the burden of increasing program expenses onto the taxpayers. (“Park Ridge Park District candidates talk taxes, fees and flood-relief,” Herald-Advocate, March 31).

In other words, she would become the newest Park Board BFF to those special interest folks who don’t mind higher taxes for everybody (instead of user fees) so long as they can use the facilities and services enough to exhaust their tax share AND burn up the Other People’s Money (“OPM”) contributed by the vast majority of taxpayers who under-use Park District facilities and programs.

Which makes her a gold-dust twin of Ms. Wynn Ryan.

Notwithstanding WR’s flier trumpeting her “cost-effective” and “bang for the buck” attitude, she has never seen a local government that couldn’t be bigger, do more, and spend as much OPM as she can get her hands on – whether during her two years on the City Council (2005-07), during her eight years on the Park Board (2007-15), or as a member of the City’s Economic Development Task Force.

For her first four years on the Park Board (2007-2011) she led the fight to keep Oakton Pool open and, in the process, burned off about $300,000 of taxpayer money in operating losses. She also can be counted on to support annual property-tax-to-the-max levies like that 5.97% for 2012, even though she had a last-minute change of heart – most certainly campaign-related – and ended up voting against this year’s max levy. And the same H-A article that reported Grau’s complaints about fees, Ryan brags about “increasing the number and variety of free programs,” which she tries to spin into a kind of loss-leader marketing ploy.

And just today, campaigning on the Park Ridge Citizens Online Facebook page, Wynn Ryan shamelessly pandered to one of our community’s premier entitlement queens, Kathy Panattoni Meade, by saying she (Wynn Ryan) is “doing what [she] can” to reduce the price of the District’s “Beyond the Bell” child-care/babysitting service.

So coming at this race from the perspective of a non-endorsement based on who could do the most economic damage to the Park District in the next four years, that dubious distinction comes down to a classic Hobson’s Choice of Wynn Ryan or Grau. Neither one of them seems to have an intuitive grasp of the fact that government HAS NO MONEY other than what it takes from the taxpayers.

Unfortunately, one of them has to win.

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