We’ve never been shy about stating our belief that the taxpayers benefit from contested elections.

Representative government is best served when aspirants and incumbents alike are forced, in the course of actual campaigns, to have their views, ideas and records challenged. So even though we think Park Ridge Alds. Dan Knight (5th Ward) and Marty Maloney (7th Ward) have done fine jobs in their first terms around The Horseshoe and would have prevailed in contested elections, it’s too bad their respective constituents won’t get a chance to hear them defend their 1st term records and articulate their visions for the next four years in an adversarial forum.

Our belief in contested elections is why the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story reporting on the challenges to the candidate petitions of Park Ridge Park District Board candidate Cynthia Grau and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board candidate Kristin Gruss (“Park District trustee challenges petitions of newcomer candidate,” Jan. 6) leaves us with mixed emotions.

If Grau is removed from the Park District ballot, all three incumbents – Jim O’Brien, Mary Wynn Ryan and current Board president Mel Thillens – will be able to coast to new terms of office without breaking a sweat. At least D-64 will still have four candidates vying for three 4-year seats even if Gruss is launched, while appointee Board member Bob Johnson will be running uncontested for the 2-year seat he was given in semi-secret Board action when Terry Cameron resigned.

Meanwhile, six candidates are seeking the four 4-year seats on the Maine Township High School District 207 Board.

Our preference for contested elections, however, does not engender any sympathy for the challenged candidates, or antipathy for their petition challengers. After all, complying with the rules for circulating and filing nominating petitions isn’t that darned hard to do – as evidenced by the fact that almost every candidate seems to get it right, election after election.

The H-A article reports that Grau’s petitions are being challenged because (a) she failed to properly staple her petitions – we’ve heard she used one of those black metal binder clips – and thereby might not have complied with a requirement that petitions be securely fastened; and that (b) her statement of economic interest does not state that she is running for the “Park Ridge Park District” board.

According to the H-A article, the objections to Grau’s petitions were filed by Park Ridge resident Charlene Foss-Eggemann, who explained that “[i]t’s important to protect the integrity of the electoral process, including the details.”

That’s exactly right.

Like it or not, many things in life are decided by the “details” – so much so that it has given rise to the classic aphorism: “The devil is in the details.” And whether it is a sports contest or a legal proceeding, outcomes often are decided by compliance and non-compliance with what some folks demean as “technicalities,” sometimes even at the expense of the more substantive issue.

Just ask any attorney who has blown a statute of limitations by filing his/her case just one day later than the law permits and thereby nukes his/her client’s substantive claims.  Or think back to the game-changing significance of something as seemingly trivial as the “hanging chad” in the 2000 presidential race.

Maybe it’s because Foss-Eggemann is an attorney with an appreciation for rules and technical requirements. Maybe it’s also because she herself has been a candidate for public office – she ran for and won the position of Maine Township Republican Committeeman by an impressive 63%-37% margin last March – and has had to comply with the same technical petition-filing requirements as Ms. Grau.

[SIDEBAR: Foss-Eggemann serves on the Park Ridge Library Board with, and is a social friend of, the editor of this blog, who also has contributed to her campaign fund.]

So when candidates who claim they want to serve their community can’t/won’t even comply with the basic rules for becoming a lawful candidate, we have to wonder just how committed they are to the effort; and how diligent and intellectually rigorous they will be if elected.

Not surprisingly, Grau is “disappointed” that her petitions containing more than 250 signatures were even challenged, according to the H-A article.

“I think kicking me off the ballot is not giving voters a choice…[i]t’s the voters who lose when they don’t have a choice.”

You haven’t been kicked off the ballot yet, Ms. Grau. The hearing on those petition challenges is scheduled for this Friday, January 9, at the Cook County Clerk’s office in Chicago. And the outcome of such hearings is not something that anybody should take for granted, one way or the other.

But if you are kicked off the ballot, it will have been your inattention to the fundamental “details” of the nominating petition process that has deprived the voters of a choice involving your candidacy.  For want of a staple?  For want of a correct name?

Too bad you didn’t care enough about the voters to get those simple details right.

UPDATE (01.10.15)  Because the Park District employee who accepted Grau’s petition (and, therefore, is a key witness) was unable to attend yesterday’s hearing, the matter was rescheduled to next Friday, 01.16.15, at 9:00 a.m.

To read or post comments, click on title. 

As the new year arrives with its blank slate and tremendous potential, here are a few of the things we would like to see, and not see, during the coming year, in no particular order:

1. A flooding solution. That doesn’t mean an end to flooding – we’ve read too many Flood Control Task Force and Burke reports to believe that anything less than Park Ridge’s own “Deep Tunnel” project will ever guaranty no more flooding for all residents. And there will never be enough funding for that.

But the City Council can pass the proposed storm water utility (“SWU”), a long-term plan to fund the upgrading of the City’s sewer system while also addressing the most problematic flood areas: Mayfield Estates, Northwest Park and the West Country Club. The folks in those three areas, however, need to disabuse themselves of the notion that they are entitled to 100-year flood relief – NOW! – at the expense of all other City taxpayers. Unless, of course, they are willing to let all those other taxpayers cast a referendum vote on such major bonded expenditures.

Or those affected residents can accept the creation of three separate Special Service Areas (“SSA”s) under which the City will cover a base-level cost of flood control and the affected homeowners will undertake the remaining costs through a special tax assessment against their homes. That will separate the solid citizens from the freeloaders.

2. A more-informed public. Winston Churchill once said: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Sadly, this appears true here in Park Ridge where, from the nature of the comments from residents (and even some of our public officials), too many folks seem abjectly ignorant of even the most fundamental goings on of our local governmental bodies.

Based on those comments, we’d bet good money that at least 50% of voting-age Park Ridge residents couldn’t name their alderman, or identify the ward in which they live, if their lives depended on it. Which makes them easy targets for boondoggles like the Uptown TIF, a decade-plus of top-shelf prices for middle-shelf education, the resultant inability to fund necessary infrastructure maintenance and improvements, and other ills.

Fortunately, local government-oriented blogs like this one and Park Ridge Citizens Online not only have created their own readership, but they have forced the “mainstream” media (e.g., the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, Park Ridge Journal and Trib Local) to raise their games significantly, albeit still not nearly enough to produce a truly “informed” citizenry.

But maybe 2015, a local election year (with Election Day on April 7, 2015, in case you’re one of the clueless) and some spirited campaigns will help accelerate the pace of that change.

3. A better Library. Last month Park Ridge taxpayers voted to raise the tax levy, and their taxes by as much as a few hundred dollars per year for the next four years, in order to give the Park Ridge Public Library extra money to replace the funds that had previously been contributed by the City Council until the City’s own budget woes made such contributions impracticable.

The Library came up short because, once the City Council cut the City funding a few years ago, the Library chose to deficit-spend itself to the point where it could no longer do “business as usual.” And when the political machinations of the former Library Board majority – such as browbeating the Council to restore the funding, and closing summer Sundays to tick off users – failed, the City Council decided to let the taxpayers vote on whether they were willing to contribute more taxes for Library operations.

And, ‘lo and behold, a majority of them said “Yes!”

With that four-year vote of confidence, however, comes a responsibility: the Library Board and Staff owe those taxpayers and the entire community a duty to make the Library not just as good as it was before funding was cut, but better. Because four years from now when this latest referendum funding increase expires, the taxpayers will be looking to see just how wisely the Library Board and Staff have managed the extra funding before voting the Library another tax levy increase.

4. More retail…or not. Like Capt. Ahab obsessed with a certain white whale, various Park Ridge factions – the Chamber of Commerce, local retailers, and the few public officials in their thrall – seem to be able to think of nothing but what the City can do to bring “more retail” to Park Ridge. Even if they have to drag it here, kicking and screaming; or bribe it here with sales tax revenue sharing and other financial emoluments.

So when Mayor Schmidt created the Economic Development Advisory Task Force in 2011, many of the suggestions ran toward throwing tax dollars at target retailers to bring them her and/or keep them here. And when the Council didn’t go along with that foolish strategy, it got barbecued by several EDATF members, especially when the Council refused to give in to the Whole Foods developer’s demand for a couple of million dollars of sales tax sharing.

Not surprisingly, Whole Foods (and Mariano’s, and the new fitness center that will be built on the old Napleton site at Touhy and Cumberland) ended up proving the Council right and those EDATF members wrong. Hopefully, those EDATF members, Chamber members, and certain local retailers have learned something from those situations, as well as from the disastrous throw-money-at-it Uptown TIF, although we’re taking a wait-and-see approach to see if old dogs can learn new tricks.

5. No more “giving back” candidates. Over the years a number of candidates for local offices have explained their candidacies thusly: “I just want to give back to the community.” And virtually every candidate who has offered that lame and vague explanation has gone on to say little-to-nothing else meaningful about what he/she stands for, or what he/she hopes to achieve if elected.

The voters deserve to know not only who a candidate is, what he/she believes about the role of the governmental unit to which he/she is seeking election; and what he/she intends to accomplish if elected. They don’t need any more candidates who think merely serving in elective (or appointive) office is an achievement in its own right.

And, frankly, any candidate who “just wants to give back to the community” is undeserving of the office he/she is seeking.

6. More referendums. It seems like everybody who wants more and bigger government hates referendums. And we can understand why. Referendums demonstrate by counted votes what the public wants or doesn’t want. And most folks who want more and bigger government, or more fiscally-irresponsible government, don’t need or want that kind of objective, measurable evidence of public opinion.

A couple of years ago the Park Board and senior Staff were so afraid of the voters that they refused to go to referendum on their $8 million Centennial water park, presumably because the voters had convincingly turned down on less expensive proposals on two prior occasions. And D-64 Board members are so terrified of referendums that they recently borrowed approximately $8 million to do long-neglected work on Field School, rather than use some of the District’s stockpile of cash on hand, because using cash on hand might have forced D-64 to go to referendum sooner than planned.

That’s right, they BORROWED $8 million to avoid the taxpayers’ getting a referendum vote on that $8 million for Field School AND to avoid having to go to a general funding referendum earlier than they would like.

The passage of two significant referendums in the past two years – the Park District’s youth campus park referendum and the Library’s tax levy increase referendum – prove that this community is willing to vote for borrowing and spending when it believes there are good reasons for it. Which suggests that those public officials who dread referendums may not think all that highly of their own pet spending/borrowing plans.

7. Appointment processes that are more “public.” When people run for the City Council, or the Park Board, or the D-64 and D-207 school boards, they are forced to become “public” figures. They expose themselves to being asked questions about their backgrounds, their experiences, and their views. But that’s not the case when people seek appointments to those same seats to fill a vacancy created when somebody resigns.

Only the City Council has held “open” appointments processes, both for filling Council vacancies and for appointments to the City’s boards and commissions. When then-6th Ward ald. Tom Bernick resigned from the Council back in 2012, the four candidates for appointment to fill his seat were interviewed by a panel of 6th Ward residents Mayor Dave Schmidt appointed (which included the editor of this blog), which interviews were open to the press and public. Similarly, applicants for City board and commission appointments have their applications published on the City’s website and their interviews are conducted by a Council advisory committee (comprised of the chairs of each of the Council’s four standing committees) in meetings open to the press and public.

Contrast that with the appointment process D-64 used in appointing Bob Johnson to fill Terry Cameron’s vacancy, which we wrote about in our July 7, 2014 post, and D-207’s process in filling Eric Leys’ seat, which we wrote about in our August 29, 2014 post.  So if D-64 and D-207 taxpayers think they are being treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and covered with manure – by the boards of both of those entities, they’d be right. And so long as those taxpayers are content to be mushrooms, that’s the way they’ll continue to be treated.

8. A “Year of the Taxpayer” after decades of years of the tax user. Any idiot can spend OPM (“Other People’s Money”), as so many of our local public officials keep proving. And no local governments spend OPM more enthusiastically with less accountability than the elected and appointed officials of our overpriced and/or underperforming schools.

We can count on one hand – with four fingers left over – the number of D-64 and D-207 Board members over the past decade who have demonstrated even the slightest concern for the average Park Ridge taxpayer, or the spine to challenge the “professional educators” and administrators on virtually any of their recommendations and expenditures. The Park District has been better in that regard (with the notable exception of the non-referendum $8 million water park) and deserves kudos for its implementation of more realistic user fees to reduce the burden on taxpayers.

But until voters begin electing the kind of taxpayer-centric officials to the school boards as they have elected to the Park Ridge City Council, taxpayers will continue to pay for BMW educations while getting Buicks. And our elected School Board officials will continue to prove Mark Twain right.

9. Treating public employees as “employees.” Anytime we come anywhere close to criticizing public employees for any reason, we get an inordinate number of comments defending those public employees in almost knee-jerk fashion.

In large measure that’s because public employee unions, along with their rank-and-file members, have been masterful at portraying their members as saints or angels – kind of like Mother Teresas laboring in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Has there ever been a better marketing ploy than the teachers unions’ “for the kids” tag line, which new D-64 superintendent Laurie Heinz has massaged ever-so-slightly into the complimentary close to her correspondence “For your children” instead of “For my $240K/year” that Heinz is being paid in her very first year of being a school superintendent.

Because money isn’t why Heinz or any teachers and administrators do those jobs, right?

It’s well past time that taxpayers collectively realized that public employees are just that – “employees,” just like all the rest of us who toil for a living wage – albeit often at higher wages and light-years better pension benefits than those of us who pay for those wages and pensions. They should be respected for what they do, but not venerated.

10. Fewer “parasites” and “freeloaders”: We’ve received no small amount of attention for our shorthand references to non-residents who try to use City services (like the Library) for free as “parasites,” and to residents who try to finagle far more in benefits than they pay in taxes as “freeloaders.”  The principal government reporters for both local newspapers have tried to make it into a cause celebre, while several of the parasites and freeloaders themselves have condemned us for using those terms – albeit anonymously.

We have used those terms for both “fire at will” and “fire for effect” purposes. But either way we are dead serious about, and fully committed to, blowing the whistle on people who are intent on exploiting the goodwill of Park Ridge taxpayers for their own personal benefit.

Which means blowing the whistle on Chicago residents who revel in the lower taxes they pay because they can use the Park Ridge Library for free; and on folks who bought highly-discounted or foreclosed property in flood-prone areas like Mayfield Estates and now want the City (a/k/a Park Ridge taxpayers) to solve their flooding problems and thereby jack up the value of their properties; and on folks who demand that taxpayers spare no expense in financing D-64 and D-207 educations for their kids at costs that those same folks would not pay for private education of that same quality.

Hopefully, by calling out these parasites and freeloaders we can discourage at least some of their parasitism and freeloading, thereby reducing the burdens they are trying to impose on their fellow taxpayers.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Today is Veterans Day – the one day each year set aside to honor all men and women who have served our country in the armed forces, whether in wartime or peacetime. It is intended to recognize the sacrifices and contributions to our national security of those living veterans, and to thank them for their service.

It’s not the same as Memorial Day. That’s the day we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of our country.

The two days are not interchangeable, nor should they be.

While we owe our dead veterans, especially those who died protecting our freedoms, an undying duty of remembrance, respect and gratitude, we owe our living veterans more tangible benefits: the care and opportunities they have earned through their service.

For those of us who still justifiably believe in The American Dream, nobody deserves it more than those veterans who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way to keep our nation and their fellow Americans safe and secure – many of whom have paid a high price for doing so.

Every veteran who has been injured in body, mind or spirit as a result of military service deserves the best medical care this nation can provide – including the ongoing care and support needed to address the special challenges of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. In that regard, we hope the overhaul of the Veterans Administration announced yesterday is not just a political stunt but an overdue and much needed step in the right direction.

As Americans, we should all join in President Obama’s acknowledgment of the “sacred trust” we owe our veterans:

“If you put on a uniform and risk your life to keep us safe, we’ll do our part for you. We’ll make sure you and your family get the support you need. We’ll have your backs, just like you had ours.”

Exactly, Mr. President.

And thank you, veterans!

To read or post comments, click on title.

Readers of this blog know that one of our go-to quotes about government incompetence and stupidity is Einstein’s definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

For all but 2 (1995-97) of the past 31 years the voters of Illinois have given control of the Illinois House of Representatives to a collection of mopes, opportunists, carpetbaggers and scalawags that can get away with calling themselves a “political party” only in a state as politically, financially and ethically bankrupt as Illinois: the Illinois Democratic Party.

And for 29 of those 31 years, that Democratic majority of the House has ceded absolute power and authority over the House to the “human” embodiment of everything that’s wrong with this state, House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Our state has suffered horribly for it, becoming a national joke for its chronically unpaid bills, its unfunded pensions, its banana republic credit rating, and so much institutionalized corruption that its two most recent former governors were in federal prison at the same time!

Yet Illinois voters have done their best since 1983 to prove the truth of Winston Churchill’s observation that “the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

As we made clear in our 10.20.14 post, you 55th House District voters have an unacceptable choice between incumbent Marty Moylan (D. Madigan) and challenger Mel Thlliens (R. Buffoon). A vote for Moylan, however, is a vote for another two years of Madigan’s disastrous control of the State House, while a vote for Thillens is not.

Neither Moylan nor Thillens deserves your vote, but Thillens deserves it far more than Madigan does.

You 20th District voters on the east side of Park Ridge have a better choice, because the incumbent is Michael P. McAuliffe, a go-along-to-get-along mope who basically inherited the seat when his father, Roger McAuliffe, died in 1996. But at least he’s a Republican and unlikely to vote for Madigan as Speaker. Democrat Mo Khan, on the other hand, will be an automatic Madigan vote if needed.

Abraham Lincoln said that while elections belong to the people, “[i]f they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

If you vote for Moylan or Khan you are voting for two more years of irresponsible and corrupt Madigan rule.

Unfortunately, we’ll all be stuck sitting on those blisters.

UPDATE (11.05.14) 

In case you haven’t heard, Rep. Marty Moylan-Madigan defeated challenger Mel Thillens by a vote of 14,219 (52.2%) to 13,020 (47.8%). Moylan-Madigan’s win/Thillens’ loss, along with several other Republican losses in contested House contests, means that Speaker Madigan will remain Speaker Madigan for another two years, virtually ensuring that Illinois’ 30-year decline will continue despite the election of Bruce Rauner as governor.

But more importantly, and far more worse for Illinois citizens who actually care about their state’s continuing decline for the personal and political enrichment of Madigan and his ilk, Moylan-Madigan’s win/Thillens’ loss – standing alone – was enough to enable Speaker Madigan to retain his veto-proof majority in the House.

So for any of you who voted for Rauner and Moylan-Madigan, your schizophrenia helped ensure that the Speaker will remain the single most powerful elected official in the State of Illinois for at least another two years.

In that regard, we have to give a big shout-out to that gang of entrenched RINO (Republican In Name Only) opportunists that hold all the Maine Twp. elected offices: Carol Teschky, Bob Provenzano, Gary Warner, Walter Kazmierczak, Laura Morask (and relative newcomer trustees Peter Gialamas and Kimberly Jones). According to an article in last week’s edition of their unofficial newsletter, the Journal (“Off The Record: Township GOP Slate Won’t Endorse Thillens,” October 31) they refused to endorse fellow Republican Thillens over Democrat Moylan-Madigan.

According to Bobby Pro, the Maine Twp. RINOs’ main man notwithstanding Teschky’s “Supervisor” title:

“I’m neutral in this race.  There’s no way I can take sides,” said Provenzano last week. “Marty’s (Moylan) still one of my best friends. Thillens understands that.”

In other words, folks, the Maine Twp. branch of the “Illinois Combine” that Tribune columnist John Kass identified and named years ago – that cozy you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours partnership between Illinois’ RINOs and the Dems that have run Illinois into the ground for the last 30 years – is clearly alive and well, despite Char Foss-Eggemann’s thrashing of Teschky in last March’s hotly-contested Maine Twp. Republican committeeman’s race.

So for as long as the Maine Twp. Combine is in control of Maine Twp. government, it would appear that – to paraphrase the late and terminally-corrupt Dem Chicago alderman, Paddy Bauler – “Maine Twp. ain’t ready for reform.” Or at least not when there are Dem backs to be scratched.

To read or post comments, click on title.

One would think that Mary Ann Irvine would know better.

After all, she was a two-term Park Ridge alderperson from 1987 to 1995. She sought to replace mayor Marty Butler when he resigned in 1991 to become a state senator, withdrawing her name before the city council chose Ron Wietecha.

After leaving the council she became the City’s Public Information Coordinator (a/k/a propaganda minister) for another 10 years. As some point she also served on the Park Ridge Library Board, including as its president.

Given all those years in and around City Hall, she should have learned how representative government is supposed to work in a municipality such as ours – even though we recall her as one of those many rubber-stampers who filled most seats around The Horseshoe between 1991 and 2003, when the Homeowners Party ran local government more like a social clique than a true political party with policies, principles and platforms.

But in a letter in this week’s Park Ridge Journal, Irvine displays an ignorance – or maybe just an arrogance – of City government and aldermanic power that warrants some discussion because it’s so plainly wrong.

We’ve included what the Journal has set up as a kind of point-counterpoint presentation – both Mayor Dave Schmidt’s criticism of a previous Irvine letter published in the October 8 Journal slamming the City Council for this election’s Library referendum, and Irvine’s reply to the mayor’s criticism – so you can read them for yourselves (and think about how Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd might present it back in their old Saturday Night Live days).

Before we get into Irvine’s reply, we must point out that Schmidt and Irvine both supported Howard Frimark in his successful run for Park Ridge mayor in 2005. They parted company when Schmidt successfully challenged Frimark in 2009, however, and she was one of the twenty-five former aldermen who, along with the three former living mayors, formally endorsed Larry Ryles for mayor over Schmidt last year.

As best as we can tell, she abhors the way the City is governed under Schmidt.

So when Irvine starts her reply to Schmidt with “[t]he mayor and I must have different philosophies about serving on the city council,” she isn’t kidding – even if the rest of her letter demonstrates no grasp whatsoever of Schmidt’s philosophy of government as repeatedly expressed and practiced by the mayor over the past five years he’s been in office, as well as during the two years before that when he served as 1st Ward alderman.

Distilled to its essence, Irvine’s position is: (a) she wants the Library to get more money from the City; (b) the Council sucks for not giving the Library more money; (c) the Council is using the referendum to avoid responsibility for any Library–related tax increase; and (d) the Council worded the referendum question so that it would fail.

The wording of the referendum, as Schmidt points out, is prescribed by state law and was fashioned with the assistance of the City Attorney and debated at no less than five public meetings in May, July and August of this year. One of them was a joint meeting between the City and the Library Board. A quick Google search reveals that there also were numerous newspaper stories about the referendum and referendum language during that period.

So where was Irvine with her criticisms of the referendum wording during the three months when they could have made a difference?

Contrary to Irvine’s complaints, the Council hasn’t “dodged” any responsibility for funding the Library. The aldermen expressly decided not to give the Library all the funding it requested, instead treating the Library like many other City departments and cutting its budget in an attempt to manage the entire City budget without unduly hiking taxes.

Rather than pull a “we know what’s best for you ignorant taxpayers” move like the Park Board did with its no-referendum $8 million water park decision in 2013, however, the Council – in response to the Library’s and some citizens’ complaints about that funding decision – chose to give the taxpayers a chance to prove the Council wrong through a binding referendum vote.

In other words, unlike an arrogant Park Board and the arrogant way Irvine thinks a City Council should operate (so long as it agrees with her ways of spending taxpayer money, of course), these current aldermen are actually inviting the taxpayers to publicly second-guess their decision of what is the prudent amount of Library funding, and whether taxes should be raised for that purpose.

Imagine that!

Irvine takes a parting shot at the Council for eliminating more than $550,000 from the Library’s budget since 2009 but not giving the taxpayers a tax reduction in that amount, asking: “Where have those funds gone?”

Try the same place that a boatload of other tax dollars have gone: into that black hole otherwise known as the Uptown TIF. Irvine should remember the Uptown TIF because she spoke favorably of it and promoted it while she was the City’s paid propaganda minister.

Whether the Library referendum passes or fails is up to the voters – but only because these aldermen, after deliberating at length and making a tough decision, weren’t so arrogant that they couldn’t acknowledge they might be wrong about their constituents’ willingness to pay additional taxes for the Library; and because they weren’t so cowardly that they were afraid to let the voters prove them right or wrong by an actual vote, rather than by rumor, innuendo, or some half-baked survey.

This is the way local government should operate, and the mayor and the City Council should be applauded rather than pilloried for it.

Irvine, on the other hand, thinks quite differently. And she may still be carrying a grudge from when the voters rejected the $7 million Library expansion referendum she favored back in November 1992; and/or when the voters rejected the brand new $20 million library referendum she also favored back in November 2002

No matter what the outcome of this referendum, however, this editor – in his role of Library Board member – will continue to do his fiduciary duty and work to ensure the Library is managed as well as it can be for all the taxpayers and residents of Park Ridge.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

Early voting starts today and continues for the next two weeks.

We think early voting is a really dumb idea, maybe one of the dumbest ideas ever invented by politicians. And that’s saying something.

Worse yet, those politicians have been able to convince their more gullible constituents that early voting is really for the voters’ benefit rather than to make it easier for the politicians to allocate their campaign resources. As if polls open from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on election day don’t provide enough voting opportunities for the average voter who actually cares about doing his/her civic duty. And as if traditional absentee ballots for people who truly can’t make it to the polls on election day aren’t a sufficient alternative.

Among the many thoughtful critics of early voting, Northwestern University Law professor and public intellectual Eugene Kontorovich may have stated the case against it most succinctly:

More fundamentally, early voting changes what it means to vote. Voting then becomes an incoherent summing of how various individuals feel at a series of moments, not how the nation feels at a particular moment. This weakens civic cohesiveness, and it threatens to substitute raw preferences and momentary opinion for rational deliberation. Of course, those eager to cast early will be the most ideological — but these are precisely the voters who would benefit most from taking in the full back and forth of the campaign.

Early voting also encourages voting without important information that often comes to the fore in the final weeks of the campaign, whether through debates, late-breaking events, or even crass political tactics like “October Surprises.”

If we employed early voting principles for jury trials, individual jurors would be permitted to return their verdicts anytime after opening statements. Some jurors might render their verdicts immediately and leave without hearing any evidence at all, while others would vote and go home after hearing only some of the evidence.

Would that be a reasonable way to run a justice system? Of course not.

Unfortunately, that’s the kind of incomplete decision-making early voting encourages. But since we’re stuck with early voting for the time being, we feel compelled to issue our one and only candidate endorsement in this election – in the race for state representative of the 55th District – for all you early voters instead of waiting until a day or two before election day.

Once upon a time, before Mike Madigan became Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and began cutting all those foolish and kinky deals with Republican In Name Only (“RINO”) governors “Big Jim” Thompson, “Slim Jim” Edgar and George “No. 16627-424” Ryan that have helped turn Illinois into the banana republic of American states, we actually had elections between very good and good candidates. That slipped to elections between good and mediocre candidates, and then to between mediocre and bad candidates, and then to between bad and worse candidates.

Republican Mel Thillens v. first-term incumbent Democrat Marty Moylan presents a choice between terrible and horrible – like choosing between congestive heart failure and metastasized brain cancer.

In any rational world, neither Thillens nor Moylan would be allowed to run for anything more significant than home room rep to their high school student council. This editor has the dubious distinction of having talked government policy and practice with both of them within the past six months, allowing him to both hear and observe firsthand that what these two may lack in stupidity they more than make up for with ignorance.

They are, on their absolute best days, political hacks who represent the worst of the slim pickings their respective political parties have to offer the voters of this state.  It’s hard to fathom exactly how low that goes, but just the concept is scary.

There is one crucial difference between them, however, that accounts for today’s endorsement of Thillens.

The simple truth is that a vote for Moylan is a vote for continuing Speaker Madigan’s corrupt stranglehold on State government. So long as the Democrats hold a majority in the Illinois House, they will continue to elect Madigan speaker. And Illinois will continue its slide toward bankruptcy that started the moment Madigan became Speaker in 1983.

That’s right, folks, 1983. For twenty nine of those thirty one years (the exceptions being 1995-96, when the Republicans gained control of the House for a measly two years), Madigan has been the one constant in Illinois state government and the intractable mess it has become.

People are slowly starting to figure out that Madigan is the albatross, however, which is why Moylan doesn’t want the voters to think of him as Madigan’s sock puppet – despite the fact that Moylan can’t speak whenever Madigan is drinking water. So Moylan’s campaign is going out of its way to stress a few issues on which Moylan seemingly has split with Madigan.

Don’t be fooled. Moylan’s next original thought will be his first.

Ironically, back in 1999 Madigan attempted to recruit this editor – then in his first term as a Park Ridge Park District commissioner – to run for state rep against the then-incumbent one-trick (pro-abortion rights) pony, Republican Rosemary Mulligan in 2000.  Madigan’s recruiter back then was his political operative Rob Biederman, a Niles resident who subsequently moved to Park Ridge after his wife’s failed bid for Niles mayor in 2009.

Biederman promised this editor plenty of financial support from Madigan and assured him that Madigan tolerated independence from his minions except on certain key votes, such as when it came to electing the Speaker. When this editor rejected the pitch, Biederman turned his sights on then-Park Ridge Library Board member Mary Beth Tighe.

Madigan delivered on his promised financial support, and even produced U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin for a Tighe fundraiser at the home of Laura Morask – who was elected to the Maine Township Board the following April (2001) as a Democrat but soon flipped to the Republican side.

Mulligan beat Tighe by 1,300 votes, making it Rosie’s toughest re-election race until her botched petition drive two years ago led to her being blown out by Susan Sweeney by over 2,000 votes in a write-in Republican primary. Mulligan turned around and endorsed Moylan, thereby joining Morask in demonstrating that what Tribune columnist John Kass branded “The Combine” is alive and well in Maine Township politics and government.

So much for the stroll down memory lane. We’ve got more than enough challenges in the here-and-now.

The first is to convince as many voters as possible to envision the name “Madigan” on every green and white “Moylan” sign, and to treat every Moylan vote as a vote for Madigan himself. Practice by referring to them, interchangeably, as “Mike Moylan” and “Marty Madigan.”

The second is to make certain nobody deludes themselves about Thillens. He is NOT a fiscal conservative, as his three year tenure of tax, borrow and spend practices on the Park Board has amply demonstrated. When it comes to public policy, Thillens’ only principles are whatever will get him elected. And, like Groucho Marx, if you don’t like those, Thillens has others.

Voting for Thillens, however, does have one other positive effect beyond depriving Madigan of a vote for Speaker: if Thillens wins, we understand that he has to resign from the Park Board. As a first-term state rep he probably can’t do as much damage to Park Ridge taxpayers from down in Springfield as he can from Park District headquarters on Sibley, judging from the $20 million-plus of long-term debt he helped the Park District run up in the last 18 months or so.

That’s why we’ve decided to ask you to hold your nose when you go to the polls and cast your vote for Mel Thillens. Put on one of those ebola-proof hazmat suits if that’s what it takes for you to feels safe enough to vote against Moylan, the 55th District’s proxy for Illinois’ Dark Lord of the Sith. Because Illinois government will NEVER improve, E-V-E-R, so long as the Democrats keep control of the Illinois House and keep anointing Madigan as Speaker.

And with a little luck, maybe between now and 2016 the Republicans might actually find a qualified candidate to challenge Thillens’ re-election bid in the Republican primary.

To read or post comments, click on title.

What difference can one or two votes make on any of our local governmental bodies? Plenty.

Back on April 4 and April 14, 2014, we published posts criticizing the Park Ridge Library Board’s endorsement of the Staff’s recommendation to close the Library for 14 Sundays this summer. The vote on that decision was 6 to 3, with Trustees John Benka, Audra Ebling, Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Hynous, John Schmidt and Jerry White voting “yes,” and Trustees Joe Egan, Charlene Foss-Eggemann and Robert Trizna voting “no.”

But at the very first Library Board meeting after Patrick Lamb and Dean Parisi replaced Benka and Schmidt, that summer Sunday closing was reversed by a 7-1 vote (Hynous dissenting, White absent). And the Library reopened for the remaining summer Sundays on July 27.

Similarly, in our October 3, 2013 post we criticized the Library’s “Food for Fines” (“FFF”) program as a misuse of taxpayer dollars (estimated at $7,000 last year, because Library staff kept no record of exactly how much in fines was being forgiven) that also demeaned the voluntarism, generosity and public spiritedness of Library patrons by effectively suggesting they would contribute food to the Kiwanis food drive only if they received a quid pro quo forgiveness of their Library fines.

We also noted that $7,000 isn’t chump change for a Library that chose to close for 14 Sundays this summer in order to save approximately $20,000.

Last year, when the FFF came up for what may have been a first-ever “consensus” vote, the resolution to cancel the program lost by a 4-4 tie: Foss-Eggemann, Hynous, Trizna and White voting “yes”; Benka, Ebling, Harrison and Schmidt voting “no”; and Egan absent.

But this past Tuesday night the FFF program for this year was cancelled by a 7-0 vote (Parisi and White absent) – although the Board indicated that it was happy to have the Library serve as a collection point for food donations from those altruistic patrons whose generosity doesn’t require any quid pro quo fine forgiveness.

Those two votes produced outcomes directly opposite from what the previous Board had decided, arguably because of just two changes in the composition of the Board: Lamb and Parisi in place of Benka and Schmidt. That change in composition even appears to have changed the minds of Ebling and Harrison, who either found religion or just decided to opportunistically jump on the new bandwagon in both instances.

Whatever the reason, however, it’s the result that counts.

Some of you might not like these changes. We’re pretty sure there are some unhappy Kiwanis members out there, including the ones who showed up and spoke in support of the Library’s continuing the FFF program at the January 21, 2014 Board meeting, as reflected in the relevant excerpts of minutes of that meeting.

That’s not too surprising, given all the special interests out there who want to get their hands on taxpayer money – starting with many of our private “charitable” groups that seem to have figured out that it’s a lot easier to raise money by snookering or guilting our local elected and appointed officials into picking the taxpayers’ pockets on those groups’ behalf. That way, those groups can still claim the fundraising credit for themselves without even having to break a sweat, and without having to account to the taxpayers for how those funds are spent.

These two Library issues are just the very tip of a pretty good-sized iceberg, however, and there’s still a lot more work for the Library Board to do. Irrespective of whether or not the Library’s November tax increase referendum passes, giving all Park Ridge taxpayers the biggest bang for their Library buck will require a lot more innovation and fiscal discipline than the Library has consistently demonstrated over the past decade.

But maybe, just maybe, it now has a Board majority that is up for such a challenge.

And that might be because of just two new faces.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.

Every person who calls him/herself an “American” knows, or should know, that the Declaration of Independence was drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson, with a little help from his friends: Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.

That Declaration lays out a series of grievances against the king of England, while also stating what some historians have called the “American creed”: the natural right to political independence and self-governance based on the consent of the governed – which right, in turn, is founded on the individual human rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Years later, Jefferson wrote that these principles were the common-sense “expression of the American mind” – an expression clearly unique to its time and place, yet ultimately transcendent of both.

Two hundred thirty-eight years later, those principles still serve as the cornerstone of our republican form of government, embodied in a Constitution that has required the sustenance of only 27 amendments, 10 of which form the Bill of Rights enacted within two years of the Constitution’s ratification.

This country’s Founders were not without personal flaws, most of which have already been well-documented and critiqued. For example, although the initial draft Declaration presented to the Continental Congress by the “Committee of Five” (Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston) included a condemnation of Britain for introducing the slave trade to the colonies, that passage was rejected by a combination of northern and southern representatives – the former because of economic interests in the slave trade itself, the latter because of the use of slaves to maintain their agricultural economies.

But despite their flaws, they were exceptional men who fortuitously came together at the same time and in the same place to chart a new course of human existence, growth and development unequalled before or since. And they did it at mortal risk to themselves, their families and their friends.

How many of us, finding ourselves in a sultry Philadelphia during the summer of 1776, would have pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” in support of the Declaration’s principles?

How many of us would do so today?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Seventy years ago today 73,000 Americans became, or revealed themselves to truly be, men.

They did so as part of the Allied expeditionary forces landing on the beaches of Normandy under withering enemy fire, fighting and dying to stop the spread of tyranny antithetical to our Constitution, our traditions, and our way of life.

By D-Day’s end (according to the most recent studies), 2,500 of them were dead, another 4,000 seriously wounded, and as many as 2,000 missing. None of the survivors were left unchanged by the experience.

And because of such sacrifices by our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles and cousins (and the mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts and cousins who supported the effort in non-combat roles), we remain free today – including free to openly discuss and debate local issues, to vote for and elect our local officials, and to determine through sometimes spirited advocacy and by referendum vote, the policies, procedures, practices and projects financed by our tax dollars.

So take just one minute out of your busy day today to stop and give thanks for those brave men and women, especially those who paid the ultimate price so that, 70 years later, we continue to live free.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

To read or post comments, click on title.

 

If you were one of the people who showed up at the Park Ridge Library this past Sunday looking to check out a book, read a magazine, surf the Net, or just hang out, you probably were disappointed to discover that you happened to pick the first of what is scheduled to be 14 consecutive Sundays that the Library will be closed this summer.

The official party line on the closings is that the Library doesn’t have the $20,000 it would cost to keep it open those 14 Sundays.

That’s an outright lie.

The truth is that keeping the Library open those 14 summer Sundays just isn’t a priority for the Library’s executive staff who recommended its closing, or for 6 of the 9 Library Board members (pres. Margaret Harrison, vice-pres. John Benka, secretary Audra Ebling, treasurer John Schmidt, trustees Dorothy Hynous and Jerry White) who voted to approve that recommendation.

Or you might say that it just isn’t as much of a priority as giving the Library’s employees $20,000+ of raises.

Or as much of a priority as continuing the free use of the Library’s computers instead of charging a nominal $1 per log-on.

Or as much of a priority as continuing the Library’s free programs and movies instead of charging a nominal $1 per attendance.

In fact, based on the Library’s own computer usage statistics, a $1 computer log-on fee could have generated over $60,000 – enough money to keep the Library open all 14 Sundays this summer AND next, while also giving the Library employees their raises.

And, based on the Library’s own program attendance stats, a $1 attendance fee per program or movie could have generated $30,000 – enough to keep the Library open all 14 of this summer’s Sundays and also cover 1/2 of the employee raises.

Even if computer usage would decline by 50% in response to a $1 fee (as all those financial geniuses chose to spend $1-plus on the gas for their round-trip to the Niles or Des Plaines libraries for free computer usage), summer Sundays could still be saved…and with an additional $10,000 to put toward raises or other uses.

But user fees are anathema to senior Library staff and this Board majority. And keeping the Library open Sundays this summer wasn’t a priority for them.

Actually, closing it was.

That’s because the Library’s senior staff and the Board majority wanted a very visible symbol of the Library’s financial situation to anger the taxpayers enough that they would demand that the City Council give the Library more tax money.  But after failing in that effort and now facing a Library tax increase referendum this November, the staff and Board majority will use the Sunday closings to try to sell a “yes” vote to those same taxpayers.

Interestingly enough, although that senior staff and Board majority wanted a visible symbol to motivate the taxpayers, they didn’t want to cause the Library’s core weekday user base – e.g., kids, seniors, the voluntarily and involuntarily unemployed – any inconvenience.

So summer Sunday users – the largest group, on a per-hour basis, of Library users (according to the Library’s own, albeit very flawed, data) – became expendable.  Or “acceptable collateral damage” in military parlance.

Ironically, a half-baked “Survey-Monkey” survey commissioned by the Library’s senior staff and Board, with the wink-and-nod expectation that it would reveal overwhelming opposition to any kind of Library fees, actually showed just the opposite.

As reported in a recent article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Survey: Most Park Ridge library users would pay for adult programs,” May 20, 2014), 62.8% of the survey’s 530 respondents to questions about “adult” programs said they would be willing to pay a fee to attend programs at the Library. And of the $1-$3-$5-other price range surveyed, 41.9% indicated they would be willing to pay $5 for computer classes!

Even the majority (54.5%) of the 244 respondents who said “no” to a question about paying for children’s programs was not the resounding mandate the senior staff and Board majority seemed to be hoping for, with a number of those folks indicating they’d pay a $3 program fee if it were charged.

The senior staff’s and Board majority’s response to such “Survey Monkey”-shines?

“We need to do our homework and due diligence on this, because if the referendum gets shot down, we need to come out of the gate with an alternative money source,” said Library Resources Committee chair Jerry White.

In other word: Let’s not try to salvage some of this summer’s Sundays by starting to charge user fees now when, instead, we can keep the Library closed and hope it ticks off enough voters that they pass the referendum in November, so we won’t have to start charging the user fees we really don’t want to charge.

To the people in charge of the Library, closing the Library to the entire community one day a week for 14 weeks is better than deferring $20,000 of raises for less than 50 employees.

And closing the Library to the entire community for 14 summer Sundays is better than charging computer users and program attendees a nominal $1 user fee.

Those are the priorities of this senior Library staff and this 6-person Library Board majority.

And all you Sunday Library users aren’t.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

To read or post comments, click on title.