Every so often one of our public officials or a resident comes up with a really ridiculous proposal for one or another of our local governmental bodies.  Which is why today’s post is about the letter to the editor [pdf] in this week’s Park Ridge Journal from Park Ridge resident Ken Balaskovits (“Time To Adopt Village Form Of Government,” March 17) in opposition to a possible citizens’ referendum to restore the Park Ridge City Council to 14 members. 

Balaskovits not only opposes going back to 14 alderman from the 7 the City Council was reduced to in 2006, but he advocates changing Park Ridge from a city into a village, “with six to nine trustees, elected at large.” 

That may be the most cockamamie idea about City government we’ve ever heard – even worse than former mayor Howard Frimark’s successful plan to cut the City Council in half, which we recall Balaskovits supporting.  Nevertheless, Balaskovits is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own set of “facts.”  And, frankly, his whole letter appears to be based on nothing but fiction.

Let’s start with his reference to the “study” he describes as having been done by “[t]wo aldermen” that he claims found only one other suburb (Elmhurst) with two aldermen per ward.  Try as we might, we could not find any mention of such a “study” anywhere.  We did, however, find a “study” by one former alderman – Jeannie Markech (2nd Ward) – in the 11/2/06 edition of something called the “Markech S’up Date,” which we understand she occasionally sent out during her brief term (2005-07) in office. 

The relevant “S’Up Date” pages [pdf] tell quite a different story from Balaskovits’ tale, as Markech identifies 11 suburbs that elect two aldermen per ward. 

Whether you choose to believe Balaskovits or Markech on this point is up to you, although we note that Markech’s “S’up Date” provides chapter and verse while Balaskovits’ letter is basically generalities and bare conclusions.  But even if we judge Balaskovits’ arguments for turning Park Ridge from a city into a village just on their own merits, those arguments appear to be based on more false information and just flat-out wrong.

For example, he contends that an “at-large” election of City officials would be better than the current ward-by-ward elections because “[w]e just do not have a sufficient number of candidates who are able and willing to serve as aldermen” in each of the 7 wards.  Once again, Balaskovits provides no data to support that contention, perhaps because the available data actually disproves that contention.

According to the Cook County Clerk’s election website, for election years 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, a total of 45 candidates ran for 25 City vacancies, with 39 of those candidates running for 21 aldermanic seats.  Contrast that with the “at large” elections held for the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Board and the District 64 School Board, where during that same period the Park District produced just 13 candidates for 11 vacancies while the School Board produced a mere 17 candidates for 15 vacancies.

That causes us to wonder whether Mr. Balaskovits is merely an incompetent researcher or someone who will outright lie to make his point?

As for his claim that “[t]he issues in Park Ridge are not all that different from ward to ward,” we suggest he try telling that to the flood-prone folks in those six designated areas of Park Ridge that the City’s flood consultant has deemed most in need of flood relief.  Or to the people beefing about the airplane noise under the approach to new runway 9L27R.  Or to the folks in the 1st and 2nd wards whose airplane noise has lessened since the new runway was opened.  Or to the anti-billboard group in the Second Ward near the Tri-State.

Balaskovits fares no better when he delves into “policy” with his argument that “[t]he purpose of an election is to provide the citizen with choice so that we have a representative government.”  No, Mr. B, the purpose of an election is to give the voters a means for conferring their governing authority on their chosen representative, thereby binding the social contract which John Locke described as “government with the consent of the governed” that the Founding Fathers adopted in our Constitution.

While contested elections give the voters the benefit of choice, an official elected in a contested race has no greater legal authority than one elected in an uncontested one.  After all, it’s not the candidate’s fault if nobody else cares enough to run against him, is it?

We think Balaskovits also is all wet when he writes that turning Park Ridge into a village “would place us more in conformance with surrounding communities” – without identifying so much as one other community that he contends is better managed, or better governed, than Park Ridge.  So why should we mindlessly mimic those communities, especially given the uniqueness of Park Ridge and the many differences between it and its neighboring communities? 

But our personal favorite bit of Balaskovits silliness is his closing pitch for making Park Ridge a village: “It is a time for change but not for change that takes us backward but rather for one that deals with the realities of today and moves Park Ridge forward.” 

Apparently Mr. Balaskovits doesn’t know that Park Ridge once was a village…prior to 1910.

Or maybe he’s just one of those “one step forward, 100 years back” kind of guys.

Are Billboards Back?  At Monday night’s City Council COW meeting, Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti resumed his fight to get “supermajority” re-defined so that it requires only 5 aldermanic votes rather than the current 6 votes from a combination of the mayor and all 7 aldermen.  That’s a pretty clear indication that Allegretti and his newest best friends at Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) will be back trying to end-run the Planning & Zoning Commission’s rejection of billboards for GGI.

With Allegretti’s having voted Monday night against increasing water rates, we can’t wait to hear him renew his impassioned pleas for the needed revenue that GGI’s billboards will bring into the City.  And when that time comes, we hope he brings along his public-spirited law officemate, Frankie DiFranco, whose sincere concern about the City’s financial welfare mysteriously evaporated when the billboard deal fell off the table.

District 64’s Got A Secret  Sounds like the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board has narrowed its choices for the replacement of retiring Supt. Sally Pryor down to five candidates, at least according to a story in this week’s Park Ridge Journal (“District 64 Supt. Search Down To Five Candidates,” Feb. 24).  But we find it strange and troublesome that those candidates weren’t identified in that Journal story.

Whether the cause of that omission is incompetent reporting by Dwight Esau or intentional concealment by the District 64 Board, we see no good reason for this kind of secrecy – especially for any of the candidates who already are Dist. 64 employees and whose application for the superintendant’s position would not cause the same kind of concern by their bosses that an application from another district’s employee might cause his/her bosses.   

Richie D. Talks Trash  This week’s Journal also quotes 2nd Ward Ald. (and Finance Committee chairman) Rich DiPietro about the new budget, thusly: “If I had my way, we’d try to get [the new budget] done by Easter (Apr. 4).”

That’s just a bunch of hooey. 

Why wasn’t Richie D demanding the acceleration of the budget process back in November, December or January – when it might have mattered.  And just as significantly, April 4 is only 3 weeks before the deadline for passing the budget, so Richie D’s “way” is pretty much just more of the same old same old.  Which means we shouldn’t expect a better budget this year than in the past.

Maybe Fifth Ward Ald. Robert Ryan didn’t realize the full implication of what he was saying near the end of Monday night’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting, when he took the opportunity to once again trumpet his idea for a citizens finance task force/committee to do the work City Staff and the City Council seem to be so incapable of doing…or doing right.

Ryan, mustering all of his stiff upper lip resolve, stated that “there is one taxing entity in this town that doesn’t have financial problems” because “they have a tremendously strong financial committee.”  The object of his ardor: Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64.

That’s right, folks.  Ryan wants the City to create a citizens finance task force/committee because the one over at District 64 has done, according to Ryan, “a super job advising the District 64 School Board.”

We don’t know whether to laugh or cry over a statement like that, because we can’t tell whether Ryan actually believes that ridiculous beeswax, or whether he knows it’s beeswax but is just trying to sell it to naive, uninformed Park Ridge residents – like the ones who bailed out District 64 with a massive tax increase 3 years ago in response to that administration’s and Board’s mismanagement of its finances even with the advice of a citizens finance committee!  

Ryan didn’t mention that referendum, which he supported.  And he didn’t mention the $5 million in working cash bonds the District issued without a referendum back in 2005, effectively replenishing the District’s depleted reserves and preventing the Illinois State Board of Education from taking over the District’s finances after several years of it being on the ISBE’s “early warning” or “watch list” for poor financial performance – tied in no small measure to the District’s drawing down its reserves to fund its regular operations, just like Ryan and his buddies have enabled the City to do in the wake of recent budget deficits.

But we suspect that what Ryan really doesn’t want taxpayers remembering is how the deterioration of District 64’s finances can be traced back to the construction of the new Emerson Middle School – for which then-District 64 Board Member Ryan was one of the main cheerleaders – that replaced what was then the newest school in the District.  As best as we can tell, the debt service on that new building and the costs of its operations were underestimated and/or misrepresented in the course of the successful “Yes/Yes” referendum campaign.

So when Ryan praises the District 64 finance committee, what he’s really saying is: “The City needs the same kind of committee that let District 64’s finances go down the drain before recommending a sneaky $5 million bond issue without a referendum, followed by a referendum for a multi-million property tax increase.”

Why didn’t you just say so, Robert?

A multi-million dollar tax increase would solve many of the City’s financial problems.  And, unlike District 64, which has to go to referendum to raise taxes above a modest amount, the City – as a home-rule body – can raise our taxes by mere resolution.  If that’s what Ryan and his fellow big-spenders on the Council are trying to achieve by continuing to jackpot the City treasury, they should have the decency to just say so.

Meanwhile, since neither Ryan nor Finance Committee Chairman Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd Ward) seems capable of figuring out how to cut the budget in lieu of raising taxes, here’s one free bit of advice for moving forward on the budget while awaiting Hock’s draft document: Tell each department head to cut 10% of the current year’s expenses for the upcoming budget year 2010-11.  Such an exercise might not provide a final answer, but at least it’s more of a start than we’ve seen from the Council so far.

And it didn’t even require a citizens finance committee.

Monday night the District 207 Board of Education unanimously said “No” to the Maine Teachers Association, a/k/a the teachers union, when it voted to go ahead with its plan to cut 137 jobs, including 75 teaching jobs.

That was the fiscally responsible decision, and we applaud it – even though Board member Eric Leys was visibly uncomfortable bucking the teachers, and Board member Sean Sullivan sent yet another clear signal of the Board’s pliability when he noted that this decision could be rescinded later this month if there were “negotiations.”

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the fiscal buffoonery of our local governments – especially our two school boards – over the past couple of decades, Sullivan’s comments mean that the Board is eager to roll over and dip into the District’s reserves in response to virtually any “concession” the teachers union might offer.

That’s because the management tradition of both the District 207 Board and the District 64 Board (members of whom are hand-picked by the District 64 & District 207 School Caucus, then rubber stamped by the voters in uncontested elections) is one of weakness and fuzzy thinking, when they think at all.  So it’s easy for them to ignore the fact that the teachers (especially the more senior ones) and most of the administrators are already overcompensated, thanks to years of mindless giveaways by teachers in “administrator” clothing and go-along-to-get-along board members.

Want proof of the weakness and fuzzy thinking? 

Just look at the “compromise” District 207 has already offered the union.  Despite saying how important it was not to dip further into the District’s reserve fund, the Board nevertheless offered to do just that – in an unspecified amount – if the union would agree to lower the pay increases that the Board foolishly gave away in the last contract negotiation, and also agree to a one-year freeze on the cost-of-living increase.

In other words, because the District 207 Board previously gave away the store, it is now begging the teachers to return a can of corn.

That’s just plain spineless, and it explains why the union responded so shamelessly, with union president Emma Visee promptly demanding that the District throw its “compromise” money (from the reserve fund) into the pot, irrespective of whether the union agrees to any concessions.

“If you have identified $2 million you can spend for the students, then do so,” said Visee.

Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll want a glass of milk. 

Except in the case of the teachers union, the mouse is more of a gorilla.  And as we’ve seen time and time again, it’s not going to settle for just a glass of milk.

So kudos for now, District 207 Board. But we’re still sticking with our prediction that you will sell out the taxpayers, once again, before this is over.

As we enter both a new year and a new decade, it’s a good time to look both backwards and forwards at not only our City government but also those other branches of government that primarily service our community, and take stock of where we came from and where we are going financially. 

The years 2000 through 2009 were characterized by spending, spending and more spending, enabled by taxing and borrowing – even though all that spending does not appear to have provided us with better quality infrastructure or services. 

For example, the City of Park Ridge pretty much neglected its sewer system for the past decade, failing to perform needed systemic inspection, maintenance and repairs – not only under Mayor Ron “Damn O’Hare!” Wietecha and the sclerotic Homeowners Party, but also under Acting-Mayor Mike Marous and the “Independents” (non-Homeowner aldermen) and even more so under Mayor Howard Frimark and his Alderpuppets.  Flood control and remediation also were ignored while new development and redevelopment actually increased flooding risks and demands on our sewer systems.

Although its academic standing generally remained stable over the decade, High School District 207 currently is trying to cope with a $17 million “structural budget deficit.”  Meanwhile, during the first part of the decade Elementary School District 64 spent itself to the brink of Illinois State Board of Education intervention [pdf] before bailing itself out with a “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue to make payroll in 2005 [pdf], followed by a major referendum-based tax increase in 2007 – neither of which has produced consistent, notable gains in student performance, even as the District has gone about restoring many of the $12.2 million in cuts it made while claiming they would not impair educational quality.  (So why restore them?) 

Even the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the smallest-budget branch of local government, continues to bungle the management of its outdoor swimming pools (which look to have booked another operating loss approaching $100,000 once the December figures are in [pdf]) and an almost $200,000 loss on the Senior Center [pdf], while still being bedeviled by the management of problematic facilities like the do-not-resuscitate Oakton Pool and the poorly-designed Community Center.

Fortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, the schools and the Park District are non-home rule bodies whose ability to raise taxes is limited by what are known (fondly to many taxpayers) as “tax caps.”  Not so the home-rule City government, where spending is limited only by whatever sense of shame City officials can muster about their fiscal mismanagement.  And for most of the past 10 years those officials have been pretty darned shameless.

So what can we expect from these governmental bodies in 2010?

Well, District 207 is proposing to cut expenditures by $15 million and raise revenues $2 million [pdf] to fill that $17 million budget hole.  Part of those cuts will come from a freeze of administrators’ salaries and from the District 207 teachers’ voluntary salary increase give-back program, which they are exploring as an enlightened alternative to the District’s cutting of approximately 75 teacher jobs.

District 64, on the other hand, recently approved an approximately 4.9% property tax levy increase for the 2009 tax year – with only board member Russ Gentile voting “no” [pdf].  And, according to its November 10, 2009, press release [pdf], the District is already starting to waffle on its pre-2007 referendum 10-year financial projections, despite amassing very healthy budget surpluses these last two years.  But what should we expect when the District’s School Board and Administration just gave the teachers’ union members annual raises of approximately 4.5% (including step increases) over the next three years, even though (as the press release acknowledges) the Consumer Price Index increase in 2008 “was just 0.1%”? 

And if what was included in the Park Board’s December meeting package is any indication, the Park District looks to be predicting its own budget deficit of between $800,000 and $1.1 million [pdf], depending on which of two revenue projections is ultimately adopted by the Park Board later this month.  It also appears that $300,000+ of that deficit can once again be attributed to Oakton Pool and the Senior Center, thereby providing further proof of the correctness of Einstein’s definition of insanity.

And the City?  At this point in time, it looks like Mayor Schmidt’s plan for some form of zero-based budgeting is a pipe dream – what with City Mgr. Jim Hock loudly objecting, City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on her way to Gurnee, and the Council majority of deficit-wallowing Alderpuppets installed by former mayor Frimark seemingly incapable of performing subtraction when it comes to City expenditures.

Last May we provided our own simple way to almost balance the City budget (“How To Balance The City Budget,” May 27, 2009) – we came up $49,700 short on the $2 million, which we left for self-proclaimed budget “hawk” Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) to take care of.  Fortunately, we didn’t hold our breath for that to occur.    

Which sets the table for Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti and his Council cronies to push through the highly-questionable Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboard deal as $400,000 of “found money” that the City would be foolish to turn down – notwithstanding the City Attorney’s preliminary opinion that such an “impact fee” might not be legally enforceable or even constitutional, and despite the whole Allegretti-engineered, City-as-applicant arrangement stinking up the entire Council chambers.

One thing does look pretty certain, however: the taxpayers likely will take a trimming from every branch of local government, to go with the ones they will take from the State of Illinois and Crook County; and that trimming will likely be accompanied by reduced services from most, if not all, branches of local government.

So Happy New Year…and welcome to the 2010 edition of fiscally mismanaged local governments gone wild.

As another year comes to a close, we here at PublicWatchdog hope that we have helped make local government more transparent, understandable and accountable to the taxpayers who fund it; and that we also have helped shine a spotlight on those who would abuse the public trust of government, or manipulate it for their own benefit to the detriment of the community as a whole.  We also promise to try to do even better in 2010.

In that spirit, we offer the following quotes:

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.  It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.”
            Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
            Edmund Burke

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”
            James Madison, Federalist No. 51

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government”
            Thomas Jefferson

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.  It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
            Robert Maynard Hutchins

And with that, we wish all of you a happy, vigilant, active, passionate, engaged and well-nourished New Year.

Over the years, District 64 has been a test site for a number of academic and administrative “pilot” programs, many of which never got off the ground or which crashed and burned shortly after becoming airborne.

But Monday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune carried an article about a kind of “pilot” program (“School districts retooling how they evaluate teachers,” by John Keilman) that should be a must-read for the school board members and administrators at Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 – but, given the District’s track in matters like this, probably won’t be.

According to that article, Evanston-Skokie School District 65 has embarked on a program of evaluating teachers using a two-part process that will include an appraisal of classroom teaching style and an examination of the test scores of the children taught by that teacher.  The test-score portion is based on the difference between test scores at the beginning and at the end of the school year.

For a teacher to earn an “excellent” rating on a scale of “excellent,” “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory,” he/she is expected to enable no less than one low-scoring child to improve one grade level, while also enabling the rest of the class to gain a full year’s worth of educational growth irrespective of the level at which the child started the year.  And to be fair to the teacher, a child’s test scores can be discounted for appropriate cause – for example, if the child missed a significant portion of school due to illness. 

In order to receive a “merit” pay increase, the teacher must receive at least one “excellent” rating over a period of several years.  That sounds a little like an escape clause, but we can’t tell for sure.

One impetus for such performance-based teacher evaluation is coming from the New Teacher Project, a non-profit group based in Brooklyn, N.Y. which focuses on improving teacher quality.  In a recently-released study, it found that administrators tend to give top ratings to teachers even at schools with miserable test results.  Consequently, teachers are rarely fired, and merit-pay rarely is based on true “merit.”

Ah, yes, the insanity of “tenure” (a/k/a “guaranteed lifetime employment”) for elementary and high school teachers.

Obviously, a change like this will be neither simple or easy, especially when dealing with an industry – and, make no mistake about it, public education is an “industry” which, in Park Ridge, consumes almost two-thirds of our property tax dollars when both elementary and high school are included – that has virtually institutionalized non-accountability of teachers, administrators and the school board itself.

But perhaps one small benefit of the current economic crisis is that such sacred cows as ever-increasing teacher and administrator pay, pensions, etc. are being held just a tad less sacred.

Given the relatively mediocre performance of District 64 students on the ISAT tests which, rightly or wrongly, get the most attention from parents and the media, we think the District owes it to its students and the taxpayers to give a serious look at “piloting” this kind of teacher evaluation – and a program of merit pay based on such evaluations.

Because with homes on the brink or going into foreclosure at record levels and residents hurting financially to an extent not seen in decades, District 64’s business-as-usual just isn’t cutting it anymore.

P.S.:  We want to give a big Watchdog bark-out to Dist. 207 Supt. Ken Wallace for foregoing a $26,950 merit-based pay raise as a symbol of his commitment to reduce District 207’s $17 million “structural deficit.”  He joins Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt, who has foresworn his entire $12,000 annual mayoral salary, as two local government leaders who are at least showing some recognition for real-world employment insecurity and fiscal responsibility, two things about which the pandering politicians, bureaucrats and lifetime government employees too often seem oblivious.

Well done, Mr. Wallace!

It’s no secret that we have been critical of Park Ridge-Niles District 64’s performance on standardized tests.  We continually question why students from an affluent community like ours seem to underperform comparable districts when it comes to the ISATs, which – like it or not – appear to be the standard by which school districts are judged.

So the article in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“District 64 students perform well on state exams,” November 3) gives us yet another reason to question what’s going on with ISAT scores, and why the District continues to blow smoke up the taxpayers’ collective skirts on this issue.

Can any of our readers confirm whether spin-meister Larry Sorenson giggled or smirked when he said how “exciting” it is that the majority of our District 64 students “continue to meet or exceed state standards on the ISAT”?  Shouldn’t exceeding state standards be expected from District 64 schools on a regular basis, not a cause of excitement?

If the article is an accurate presentation of Sorenson’s test score dog-and-pony show, we see a lot of cherry-picking of results, perhaps because only those excite the District’s administrators.  And he doesn’t disappoint when he reminds us, as the District administrators and teachers seem to do every year – that “it’s important to share with the [school] board that ISAT is just one assessment that we give to the students.”

Okay, Larry, can you tell us which specific assessment is considered more important than the ISATs…and why?

According to the H-A article, the District’s ISAT report claims the District doesn’t have the information to rank itself against other school districts in terms of ISAT scores.  May we suggest that the bureaucrats at the ESC check out the Chicago Tribune’s and the Chicago Sun-Times’ rankings, which have been out for over a week now and which provide two different methods of ranking?   

We’re not educators, but we are taxpayers and homeowners.  So when our kids aren’t regularly scoring among the top fifty schools and are being outperformed by kids from less affluent communities and/or districts that spend less per pupil, something needs to be done – starting with some honest explanations from the District’s educators, administrators, and its school board members. 

Let’s start with stopping this nonsense about “We don’t teach to the test.”  If the test is how the districts are measured and compared to each other, then it’s just plain foolish not to “teach to the test.” 

It might also help to get a little intergovernmental cooperation going between District 64, Maine South and Maine East.  Since those high schools end up educating the vast majority of District 64 grads, maybe their educators can identify if, where and how District 64 students are coming up short.  How about a detailed “white paper” on the subject, backed up with hard, irrefutable data rather than anecdotes?

Given that District 64 consumes approximately one-third of our annual property tax payments, and in view of the fact that every time the District wants more money it tells us how important good schools are to maintaining our property values, the taxpayers deserve some serious and specific answers now – not months from now when these scores are just a dim memory – that include a specific, nuts-and-bolts plan for how they will do better next year and the years thereafter.

School Rankings Time Again. Today’s Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times each have feature articles on the annual ISAT scores registered by our public school systems.

As usual, Maine South is on both lists of the top high schools, tied for 12th position (with Lake Forest H.S.) on the Tribune’s “Top 50” list, for which the rankings are a function purely of the percentage of test scores that met or exceeded state standards; and ranking 13th (several spots below Lake Forest) on the Sun-Times’ “Top 100” list, which uses a more complex formula that the S-T claims “allows for more definition among top schools.”

But for the first time in recent memory, a District 64 school makes an appearance, with Carpenter Elementary School ranking in a tie for 49th on the Tribune’s list, although no District 64 school shows up on the S-T list.  But it’s a start.  So a big wag of the Watchdog’s tail to the folks at Carpenter – maybe you can share some tips with the other schools in the District that were, once again, notably absent from the lists of ISAT achievement.

Walk On By.  They’re ba-ack.  “They” are those residents who want their own special deal at the Park Ridge Community Center: they want $2 per visit punch passes so that they can walk around the Community Center any time it is open because they don’t want to pay for one of the several kinds of Community Center memberships that were created after numerous other “limited-use” memberships wisely were eliminated several years ago in an effort to make that facility’s operations more efficient and cost-effective.

The problem with limited-use privileges at the Community Center is that the facility’s ridiculous “open” layout can’t reasonably accommodate anything but full-facility membership.  Too many residents found it too easy to buy some low-price, limited-use membership and then expand their use into areas where they weren’t supposed to be – causing migraine headaches for staff, irritating members who were paying full-fare, and ultimately cheating the taxpayers. 

Commissioner Mary Wynn Ryan claims to be offended that people might drive to Golf Mill to walk if they can’t have their $2-a-visit walking pass. 

We here at PublicWatchdog disagree.  If folks would rather drive to Golf Mill than buy a Community Center membership, let ‘em – just add them to the list of all the other people who go elsewhere because the Park District doesn’t offer something they want, like the golfers who drive to Tam in Niles or Chick Evans in Morton Grove to play a round of golf; or the sailors who drive to Lake Opeka to Hobie Cat; or the mini-golfers who drive to Des Plaines or Skokie; or the skiers who fly to Vail or Steamboat….

Not With A Bang But A Whimper.  We hear that City Attorney “Buzz” Hill and the Park Ridge City Council will be spared the agita and potential embarrassment of having to decide whether to prosecute former mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark for violating the City’s ethics ordinance by selling/brokering insurance for the Uptown parking garage in which the City has an interest. 

Word is that Mid-America and/or the Uptown Condominium Homeowners Association (“UCHA”) decided to pull the pin on Frimark’s insurance coverage.  We don’t know whether Frimark had any say in the matter, but that “Whew!” you heard emanating from the direction of City Hall was the collective sigh of relief from elected officials and bureaucrats alike.  And that means no tap dancing or sleight of hand at the City Council meeting this Monday night, when this matter was to have been taken up in earnest by the Council.

But we wonder whether the Council will also try to sweep under the carpet Frimark’s execution of the “First Amendment” to the easement and operating agreement for “Phase III” of the Uptown project – by which, as we understand it, the City ceded some of its voice and authority in the operations of that portion of the project to the developer and the UCHA?

Go, HAWKS!  Tomorrow afternoon the Maine South Hawks start their drive to the 2009 state championship when they host Oak Park-River Forest.  We wish them well in their effort to repeat as state champs, and we encourage all Park Ridge residents to show up and support another Hawks football juggernaut, led on both sides of the ball by University of Indiana-bound Player-of-the-Year candidate Matt Perez and quarterback Tyler Benz. 

If you check out the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 website, you will find a reference to the District’s August 2009 “update” of its efforts to recruit members of five “Action Teams” to devise ways to implement the District’s “Strategic Plan,” which is currently still in draft form [pdf].

We have to confess we find that most “strategic plans” – especially those devised by governmental bodies – come off like a collection of stereotypes, riddled with clichés and salted with aphorisms.  And District 64’s seems to fit that bill, starting with a “Mission” statement that reads like it was the blue-light special in the “educational” section of Mission Statements R Us.

Instead of the gobbledy-gook that jams “inspire,” “embrace,” “discover,” “achieve, “thrive,” “providing,” “integrating” and “fostering” into one quasi-Faulknerian sentence, why not simply adopt as its mission the definition of the “supreme end of education” often attributed (some say, incorrectly) to Samuel Johnson:

Expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

But since most people pay little attention to mission statements after they’re drafted, we’re going to focus on a few of the draft plan’s “Parameters” and a couple of its “Beliefs.”

            Parameter (No. 1) says that “[n]o new program or service will be accepted unless…it[s] benefits clearly justify the costs….”  We can’t wait to see the District implement this one, maybe because in more than a decade we have yet to see or hear about anything coming out of the ESC that comes anywhere close to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis…about anything.

            Parameter (No. 2) insists that “[n]o program or service will be retained unless it provides an optimal contribution to the mission and [the] benefits continue to justify the cost.”  So not only does this Parameter reiterate cost-benefit analysis, but it also moves into the realm of that superlative known as “optimal.”  Can anybody remember the last time the District achieved anything that fit the “optimal” description?

            Parameter (No. 3) promises that performance on the ISAT standardized tests “will always compare favorably with other high-achieving districts.”  Depending on how the District defines “other high-achieving districts,” the next time this happens will be the first – as evidenced by the fact that no District 64 elementary or middle school has ranked among the Top 50 in ISAT scoring since those rankings began several years ago.

            Parameter (No. 4) promises that “[a]bsent dire unforeseen financial circumstances, the District will honor its commitment to not seek a referendum before 2017.”  We realize this reflects the “deal with the devil” the District made with the voters in order to garner enough support to pass the big tax increase referendum in 2007, but it’s this kind of foolish promise, also mentioned during the 1997 “new Emerson” referendum campaign, that pushed the District’s finances perilously close to a State Board of Education takeover during the period of 2003-2005.

But if you don’t get the warm-and-fuzzies from those Parameters, maybe you can try some of the “Beliefs.”  The two we like best are:

            Belief (No. 5), which states that “[h]igh expectations and a positive attitude result in higher performance.”  Okay, but that must mean it’s time to jack up those expectations, or get a lot more positive with the attitude – in view of the District’s lackluster performance when compared to those “other high-achieving districts.”

            Finally, Belief (No. 6) makes “[e]veryone within our community…responsible for the education and development of our children.”  Hey, we can buy into that “it takes a village” business from Park Ridge’s own Hillary Clinton, but putting responsibility on “everyone” usually results in responsibility being taken by no one.  And that’s the kind of government plan we’ve come to know and pay for, handsomely, on a regular basis.

We just never realized it was “strategic.”