Our endorsements:

Mayor of Park Ridge:            Dave Schmidt

Park Ridge Park District:      Rick Biagi
                                          Scott Duerkop
                                          Pawel Matula

School District 64:               None of these

School District 207:              Marijo Bustos
                                          Eric Leys
                                          Margaret McGrath
                                          Edward Mueller

Police Station Ref. No. 1:      No

Police Station Ref. No. 2:      No

Irrespective of whether you accept or reject these endorsements, make sure you vote!

Polls close at 7:00 p.m. 

Cop Shop Referendums: “No” and “Hell, No!”

There are three advisory referendum issues on Tuesday’s ballot.  Two are limited to the City of Park Ridge, and relate to a new police station, while the third addresses Todd Stroger’s ludicrous Crook County sales tax.

The first question is the citizen-initiated police station referendum:

“Shall the City of Park Ridge replace its current police facility with a new, larger structure at a cost of at least $16.5 million plus additional, but currently unknown, costs for the land on which it will be situated and bond interest?”

That’s really the only legitimate referendum on this issue, placed on the ballot by over 70 resident signature gatherers during the dead of winter after the City Council’s six Alderpuppets sat on their thumbs when Ald. Dave Schmidt proposed putting that question on the ballot by simple Council resolution.

The second question is the attempt by newly-stringed Alderpuppet Frank Wsol to confuse the voters with something that sounds less expensive and harmful than the first question – in the hope of getting a “Yes” vote that he can say negates the “No” vote that the first question is likely to draw:

“In adopting a capital project to improve the administrative/public and police facilities, shall the City of Park Ridge require as conditions of issuing any bonds for such improvements that the total spent, absent interest and operational costs be less than $16.5 million dollars and the facility be located at 505 Butler Place with land already owned by the City?”

Voters need to remember that Wsol has been a new cop shop “whore” since his campaign against former cop Bob Kristie back in 2007, when Wsol supported the 40,000 square foot “Taj Mahal” cop shop to match Kristie’s support of such a facility.  Since that time, and in response to public opposition to such a plan, faux fiscal conservative Wsol has tap-danced around the issue with various twists and tweaks designed to sneak the biggest cop shop he can get away with past the taxpayers – after not wanting to go to referendum with it at all.

The bottom line to both of these referendums: The City is in a financial crisis that nobody but Ald. Dave Schmidt is willing to admit.  Every dollar spent on a new police station is one less dollar that can be spent on more important things like sewers, flooding control, streets and other essential infrastructure items.

Consequently, we strongly encourage a “No/No” vote on both referendums.    

Don’t Waste Your Vote On Caucus’ Dist. 64 Charade

We here at PublicWatchdog have been unabashed critics of what is known as the “District 64 and 207 General Caucus,” that quasi-official “organization” that rises from its slumber every other year to hand-pick and endorse a collection of generally decent but malleable residents who can be counted on to rubber-stamp pretty much anything the administrations of High School District 207 and Elementary School District 64 want to do.

The Caucus so dominates the election process for District 64 that we rarely even have contested races for those school board seats because the Caucus effectively scares away anyone who might consider challenging its candidates.  And from what we understand, this year there weren’t even contests for the Caucus endorsement, as only four people sought the four Caucus slots. 

So it looks like the voters of Park Ridge, who have seen the District 64 portion of their property taxes soar while the District’s overall academic performance and achievement stagnate, once again have no choice for the District 64 Board. 

But maybe we have more of a choice than looks would suggest.

If you are fed up with this monopolistic Caucus system and the unimpressive results it has posted both as to candidates for the District 64 Board and in the classroom, we suggest a protest vote…or, actually, a protest non-vote: When you go to the polls, vote on all offices and referendum issues except the District 64 Board candidates.  That won’t stop them from winning, but it will effectively reduce the electoral “mandate” that these gofers can claim when they get into office.

Even to as smug and insulated a group as the Caucus, 4,000 votes out of 10,000 cast is a lot less convincing than 8,000 out of 10,000.  And a notably lower vote total might also serve to encourage non-Caucus candidates to step up and challenge the Caucus endorsees two years from now.

So give it a try.  All you’ve got to lose is academic mediocrity at a premium price.

It’s no secret that we here at PublicWatchdog love contested elections because they provide an opportunity for candidates for public office to show why they deserve your vote…or don’t.  So we were looking forward to the upcoming Park Ridge Park District board of commissioners election, which initially looked to be a real horse race.

Back in January it looked like there would be 10 candidates vying for the four board seats coming vacant.  Four of those candidates – Richard Brandt, Nicholas Giordano, Walter Mizialko and Peter Wachowski – reportedly were being backed by Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”), which represents more than 30 Park District employees and has been locked in contract negotiations with the Park District for almost two years.  To some people, including a few current Park Board members, it looked like the union was trying to pack the Board to get the kind of contract it hadn’t been able to achieve through negotiations.

That became a moot point, however, when the candidacies of Giordano, Mizialko and Wachowski, along with SEIU-unaffiliated candidate Meredith Wisniewski, were successfully challenged by current Park Board commissioner and candidate for re-election Nick Milissis and candidate Rick Biagi.  Those four were kicked off the ballot for petition errors (Wisniewski) or the failure to file the required “Statement of Economic Interest” (Giordano and Wachowski, both attorneys, and Mizialko). 

Another unaffiliated candidate, Stephen Vile, overcame a challenge to his candidacy and will be on the April 7 ballot.

Some people, including the editorial board of the Herald-Advocate, have branded those challenges as dirty pool and a petty way to deprive the voters of choice.  And in some ways they are.  Some of those same people have raised concerns that Milissis, Biagi, and candidates Scott Duerkop and Pawel Matula, are running as an “alliance” that is rumored to be  backed by retiring Park Board president Dick Barton and former Maine Township honcho Bob “The Dude” Dudycz.  

But we don’t have much sympathy for people who want the voters to entrust them with multi-million dollar budgets, multi-million dollar bonding power, and stewardship of substantial civic assets, yet who can’t follow simple candidate petition rules: how tough can it be to bind your petitions, to file a statement of economic interest, or to identify the correct number of years of the term of the office you’re seeking?

So while we might not be getting that 10-candidates-for-4-offices race that looked so promising back in January, it looks like we’ll still have six candidates battling for four spots on the Park Board.

And that’s two more choices than the General Caucus is giving us for the District 64 School Board.

We here at PublicWatchdog are firm believers in contested elections – where competing candidates can present, advocate and defend their qualifications and their ideas on those issues of importance to the voters.

That’s one reason why we oppose the General Caucus of School Districts 64 and 207, which acts like a de facto political party and so dominates school board elections, especially for District 64, that Caucus endorsement is tantamount to election.  Since 1997, when 7 candidates vied for 4 Dist. 64 Board seats, the voters have been able to choose among a mere 20 candidates (only 2 of which were not Caucus endorsees) for 18 District 64 Board slots.  During that same time period, the Park Ridge Park District Board had 30 candidates contesting 21 Board seats, even though the last two elections (2005 and 2007) provided no voter choice.

So while it looks like, barring some last-minute challenger, the Caucus once again has pre-empted the voters in choosing District 64 Board members, we are encouraged by reports that the Park Board will give the voters contested races.  

Although incumbent Board member Dick Barton has already announced his retirement, and incumbents Sal Raspanti, Nick Millisis and Steve Hunst have yet to disclose their plans, three candidates have already filed their petitions for four Board seats; and we have heard that other candidates are collecting signatures to get on the ballot by today’s filing deadline. 

We sure hope so, both in the interest of voter choice and because, in this instance, the three candidates already on file – retiree Richard J. Brandt, attorney Nicholas Giordano and restaurateur Walter Mizialko – are reportedly members of a slate endorsed by a special interest that could be viewed as being at odds with the common interest of Park District taxpayers: Local 73 of the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”), the collective bargaining agent for approximately 36 Park District employees.

We wish to make clear that we have a healthy respect and appreciation for unions.  Most of the decent working conditions we take for granted today – including workplace safety, health, welfare and pension benefits – were brought about by unions.  In the private sector, where unions began, they have always provided some measure of bargaining equality between management and labor that has fostered what still is the highest overall standard of living in the world.

In the public sector, however, unionization of the workforce has tended to create an imbalance in favor of the employee, in no small measure because bureaucrats and politicians lack the same degree of interest, incentive and competence for guarding the public purse that their private sector counterparts display in looking out for their own pocketbooks and/or for providing a reasonable return on investment for their shareholders.

Maybe that’s why, while most taxpayers working in the private sector worry about whether the plummeting value of their 401(k)s will permit them to retire at 65 or 70, unionized teachers and other government workers look forward to earlier retirement with defined pension benefits effectively guarantied by those very same taxpayers who can’t themselves afford retirement.  And many of those same taxpayers face the constant prospect of their employers down-sizing or closing completely, or their jobs being outsourced to Mexico, India or China – a concern that is foreign to most public sector employees.

So we feel justified in tempering our healthy respect for unions with an equally healthy skepticism upon hearing that the members of this reported SEIU-backed Park Board slate showed up to file their candidate petitions last week accompanied by an SEIU representative, especially at a time when the Park District has been bargaining with the SEIU for more than two years over wages and benefits. 

And we note that one of the key sticking points in those negotiations has been the union’s demand that the Park District abolish merit pay in favor of cost of living increases.  The union’s complaint about merit pay?  As reported in last week’s Herald-Advocate (“Parks workers want new pay raise system,” Jan. 22) and as can be heard on the videotape recording of the Park Board’s January 15, 2009 meeting (from minute 2:07 to 5:46), the concept of “merit” gives management too much discretion in determining pay raises.

Welcome to the real world. 

But if Candidates Brandt, Giordano and Mizialko get elected to the Park Board and turn out to be SEIU sympathizers, that real world at the Park District soon might become a brave new world where compensation based on “merit” – albeit with some perceived inequities – is replaced with compensation by entitlement. 

Update (1/27/09)
It looks like we’re going to have a real horse race for the Park District Board.  In addition to the three candidates who appear to be part of an SEIU-backed slate, we understand that six more candidates filed nominating petitions for the four open seats on the Park Board: current Board member and Homeland Security attorney Nick Milissis, attorney Peter Wachowski (who, like Brandt, Giordano and Mizialko, reportedly filed his petitions accompanied by SEIU vice-president Tim McDonald), attorney Richard Biagi, real estate leasing agent Scott Duerkop, Pawel Matula, Meredith Wisniewski and Steve Vile.

Too bad we can’t report the same for Dist. 64 – but if somebody has heard of any challengers to the latest crop of the Caucus’ usual suspects, feel free to submit a comment.

With two announced candidates for mayor and the likelihood of contested elections for the Park District Board, it’s once again looking as if the General Caucus of School Districts 64 and 207 will be effectively appointing the new District 64 School Board members.

The Caucus – a haphazard collection of individuals supposedly representing whichever local organizations wish to participate – has been responsible for every District 64 board member but one (current board member Ted Smart) for the better part of two decades – so dominating the electoral process that its candidates rarely even have any competition. 

This time around, however, only four people sought Caucus endorsement for the four available seats, and none of them are the current occupants of those Board seats: Sue Runyon, Chris Mollett, Ron James and Marty Joyce.  So it looks like that quartet will be moving on, leaving behind a legacy of higher taxes, unspectacular academic performance, and a retiring superintendant who – thanks to generous raises that appear to have upped her compensation by more than 25% over the past four years – will be retiring in 2010 after seven years at the helm with an annual pension that will be substantially more than the average household incomes of the taxpayers footing the bill.  

And if that kind of fiscal insanity is your flavor of Kool-Aid, then you will probably love their four Caucus-endorsed replacements: electrical engineer Russ Gentile, who admits to only a “layman’s understanding” of District finances; union attorney Pat Fioretto, who rates his understanding of school finances as only “good to fair,” based on working with the group that supported the 2007 tax increase referendum; banker Sharon Lawson, who thinks she has only an adequate to good understanding of some school finance issues; and Kraft Foods finance professional Eric Uhlig, who acknowledges that even he will have to “get up to speed quickly” on District 64 finances.

Irrespective of the concerns we have about these four simply continuing the District’s questionable fiscal policies and practices, we really do hope that some challengers to Caucus hegemony over the District 64 Board emerge in the waning days for candidates to file their petitions.  And the same goes for District 207, too.  

That’s because we believe that uncontested races that don’t give the voters a real choice are the sign of a sick society, one which tends to get even sicker as apathy and cynicism set in.

Another reason for our desire for contested elections is that the Caucus-dominated District 64 Board, in our opinion, has consistently overpromised and underperformed since at least the 1997 “Yes/Yes” referendum that led to the construction of the new Emerson Middle School.  For most of those 11 intervening years the District was in almost constant financial trouble, even as its budget and tax bite increased. 

Facing possible sanctions from the Illinois State Board of Education for its precarious finances, the Board bought itself a little breathing room in 2005 by sneaking $5 million in working cash bonds past the voters through the use of a “back door referendum” on which we didn’t even get the chance to vote.  And it followed that sleight of hand with its well-orchestrated 2007 tax increase referendum, the effects of which are now being felt, big-time, by the taxpayers even as the values of their houses crater.

Meanwhile, and most disturbingly from our perspective, the academic performance of the District’s schools is lackluster at best for a community of our affluence.  As we pointed out in our post “Time For Taxpayers To Start Paying Attention To School Dist. 64” (10.31.08), not one District 64 school currently ranks among the top 50 in academic achievement as measured by the annual ISAT tests; and, as best as we can tell, not one has done so since ISAT (and before that, IGAP) performance rankings first appeared several years ago.

The District 64 Administration and its Board members, however, don’t want the taxpayers and parents thinking about test score rankings – only about any increases, however slight, over the previous year’s scores, either for the District overall or for any individual school(s).  And when they’re not patting themselves on the back for any increases, they are explaining away any decreases, if only with that old standby: “We don’t teach to the test.”

Well, maybe it’s time to start.  And maybe its also time that the voters, not the Caucus, got to choose the District 64 Board members.

P.S.  On an unrelated item, the police station referendum drive is in its stretch run with over 2,000 signatures but still needing a couple-to-few hundred more to ensure that the advisory referendum question gets on the April ballot.  If you can get some signatures, or if you just want to sign a petition, contact Joe Egan at [email protected].  Or you can go to New Prospects at 110 S. Prospect until 6:00 p.m. today, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, and from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday, where petitions will be available for signing.

But don’t tell Mayor Howard “The Bully” Frimark…who knows what he might try to pull?

By now most New Year’s Eve hangovers should have dissipated, but we predict that the following two political hangovers from 2008 will continue to cause headaches for the honest, taxpaying citizens of Park Ridge well into 2009:

It’s Baa-ack!  The Park Ridge Herald-Advocate reported this week that the Park Ridge General Caucus for Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 will meet January 7, 2009, in the Field School auditorium. (“School caucus to endorse candidate for 64, 207 slates,” December 30)

For those of you who don’t pay attention to such things, the Caucus is a semi-official looking but make-believe quasi-organization of unelected “delegates” that springs up every two years to hand-pick candidates for both the District 64 and District 207 school boards for whom it then collects petition signatures and, if somebody dares to run against its slate, campaigns for the slated candidates using unspecified “dues” and a war chest, the amount of which is not disclosed on its website, http://caucus.park-ridge.il.us. 

Over the past decade, only 2 non-Caucus candidates have dared to challenge a Caucus slate for any of the 18 available slots on the Dist. 64 board – only one successfully.  And that successful candidate, current board member Ted Smart, won election in 2007 in a race that was theater of the absurd: after challenging the Caucus slate Smart tried to drop out of the race, but his decision came too late for his name to be taken off the ballot; and he ended up defeating Caucus candidate Shlomo Crandus, 5,062 to 3,495.

Enraged Caucus members suggested that Smart’s election was the product of anti-Semitism, and they demanded that Smart refuse the seat to which he was lawfully elected.  Those demands were reportedly accompanied by threatening telephone calls to Smart’s home.  But in the almost two years since his election, Smart has shown himself to be the typical go-along-to-get-along, rubber-stamp Dist. 64 board member.

So expect the Caucus to once again round up the usual suspects – basically decent, unremarkable folks whose main qualification is that they are pleasant and unlikely to rock the boat despite the facts that: (a) Dist. 64’s budget keeps going up; (b) its teachers and administrators continue to receive higher salaries for jobs that are more secure, and provide better benefits, than those of the taxpayers who are paying the freight; and (c) no Dist. 64 school shows up on the annual lists of the Top 50 ISAT high achievers for either elementary [pdf] or middle [pdf] schools. 

UPDATE 1/2/09 @ 2:35 p.m.
We just received a copy of an e-mail [pdf] from Caucus Chair Phil Eichman which further illustrates what kind of farce the entire Caucus process appears to be, especially as it relates to Dist. 64: Although the Caucus claims (on its “About Us” web page [pdf]) that its candidates “first undergo a rigorous and lengthy interviewing process…[and] appear several times before Caucus delegates to make policy presentations,” Mr. Eichman’s recruitment e-mail clearly shows how the Caucus leadership seems willing to consider for endorsement anybody who fills out an application and shows up on Jan. 7. 

We can only guess that, at least for the Caucus, “rigorous and lengthy” aren’t what they used to be.

We also wonder why the Caucus hasn’t posted on its website the completed “extensive application” forms for candidates Lawson, Gentile, Uhlig, Mueller, Barsanti and Derrick, so that the public who the Caucus purports to serve can get an idea – before the endorsements are made – of exactly what qualifications and ideas these candidates bring to the process. 

Salt, Overtime, Cause Budget Woes.  The Herald-Advocate also reported this week that that the City’s Public Works department is in full budget-busting mode as it runs low on salt and high on overtime for its snow plow drivers (“Brutal December weather eats through Park Ridge salt supply,” December 30).

Due to escalating prices, the City reportedly is already $190,420 over budget while paying roughly three times the $40 per ton that it spent for salt last year.  And in order to conserve the costly salt the City has utilized more plowing, hence more overtime pay.  We don’t have a problem with that trade off, as roadway safety is of paramount importance.  But with a City budget that was already sporting a yawning budget deficit of $1.7 million – on the heals of a similar hole last year – things are not looking promising for City finances.  Again.

Fortunately, Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim still holds out hope of a “mild winter,” although he has not indicated on what information (the U.S. Weather Service?  The “Farmer’s Almanac”? The color bands on the Wooly Bear caterpillar?) he is pinning that hope.  And The Zinger doesn’t even dare to whisper how much bigger the budget hole will get once the cost of repairing all those potholes that are already springing up all over town is figured in. 

Hey, Wayne, any chance that one of the reasons many Park Ridge streets already look like they belong in a war zone is because last year’s potholes weren’t repaired correctly due to lack of money?  Or should we pose that question to Mayor Howard “The Coward” Frimark, who kicked off his re-election campaign by crowing about how well he has managed City finances?

Last week we wrote about the most recent ISAT test scores and how Park Ridge/Niles Elementary School District 64’s scores at both the elementary and middle school levels don’t seem to be measuring up to our community’s expectations or its financial support. (“Time For Taxpayers To Start Paying Attention To School Dist. 64,” Oct. 31).

We noted how, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, no Dist. 64 school cracked the Top 50 schools in ISAT scoring, losing out to schools from districts that spend on average as much as $4,100/yr per pupil more than we do (Glenview, $14,858 v. Dist. 64 $10,755) and as much as $2,500 less than we do (Western Springs, $8,172).

So when we hear that Dist. 64 has decided to spend $39,000 on a “long-range strategic planning” consultant, we have to wonder just a little bit about where the administration’s and school board’s focus is.  And when we read about the things this consultant is already saying about the District, we wonder even more about the administration’s and board’s judgment. 

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Dist. 64 Planning For Long Term,” Oct. 29), Dist. 64 hired The Cambridge Group, and it sounds as if lead consultant “Dr.” Howard Feddema (why is it that educators with Ph.Ds seem so obsessed with calling themselves “Doctor”?) is already blowing smoke up our collective skirts. 

Feddema wasted no time in praising Dist. 64 for “operating at a high level…financially” even though the District’s newly-abundant cash reserves are not the product of highly-competent “operations” but, instead, of a windfall of tax revenues resulting from last year’s referendum – which helped avert the financial crisis that D-64’s School Board and Administration created with their financially inept “operations” between 1998 and last year.  

So excuse us if we don’t break out the champagne upon reading that Feddema is comparing District 64 to an “organism” that could be viewed (because of its newly-flush financial status) as being at its peak “10” level – but which needs his strategic planning services to avoid the plateau-and-decline tendency of such “organisms.”

We’re also skeptical when we read on the Cambridge Group website about Feddema’s strategic planning model for school districts, which was created by Cambridge Group president and founder “Dr.” William Cook, and that promises to “dramatically improve student learning over time.”  Maybe our skepticism is because “over time” for many consultants tends to mean at some point in time after the consultant’s service contract expires and he/she has moved on to another project.

The dead giveaway for us, however, is when Feddema claims that the success of his work “depends on collaboration among teachers, administrators, board members, parents, and community leaders to identify long-term strategic direction and link that direction to the development of annual operating plans that drive daily practice in schools.”  Spreading responsibility over that many different factions ensures that nobody – and especially not the consultant – can be held accountable if/when the strategic planning falls short of its goals.  

Nevertheless, the District is already set to form its “30-member planning task force” early next year to work with Feddema.  You can bet that task force will be composed primarily of well-meaning but over-matched residents (not unlike the District’s Community Finance Committee) who can be expected to go along to get along with the handful of group “leaders” who are clued into the District’s desired outcomes, even if those outcomes are nothing close to what the District actually needs.

But hiring consultants and rounding up the usual suspects is just what the elected and appointed officials at Dist. 64 need to avoid accountability to the voters and the taxpayers.

Park Ridge/Niles Elementary School District 64 is the single biggest recipient of our property tax dollars.  Nevertheless, it usually succeeds in keeping a low profile and avoiding serious scrutiny, which helps explain how it could spend itself to the brink of financial crisis from 1998 through 2006 without much notice or criticism – until it came time to panic-peddle last year’s tax rate referendum.

The District’s finances were so mismanaged after five straight years of deficit spending that in 2005 the Dist. 64 Board had to sneak $5 million in non-referendum “working cash bonds” past the taxpayers in order to begin restoring its decimated fund balances and avert a possible takeover of its finances by the State Board of Education after several years of appearing on the State Board’s “early warning” or “watch” list. 

But from what we’ve seen those folks inhabiting the ESC at 164 South Prospect, now flush with referendum cash that has helped our property taxes soar, haven’t really changed their tax, borrow and spend ways.

That the Dist. 64 School Board and Administration can’t seem to manage its finances (even with the help of its 34-member “Community Finance Committee” formed in 2004, and apparently still headed by the triumvirate of Craig Elderkin, Phil Eichman and Diana Stapleton), however, is even more troubling in light of the District’s rather lackluster educational achievement.

The Chicago Sun-Times, in today’s edition, ranks Illinois elementary and high school districts based on average scores on 2008 state reading and math tests, using “a well-known statistical method called standardizing to analyze the ‘scale scores’ of public school third- through eighth-graders who took the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests and high school juniors who took the Prairie State Achievement Exam this past spring.”

Based on those rankings, it doesn’t look good for the home team.

Not one District 64 school cracked the Top 50 in either the elementary school [pdf] or middle school [pdf] categories, losing out to schools from Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Chicago, Barrington, Evanston, Glenview, Highland Park, Hinsdale, Northbrook, River Forest and Wilmette, to name just a few of those districts to whom we sometimes compare ourselves but who spend more per pupil (from River Forest’s $11,156 to Glenview’s $14,858) than the $10,755 average reported for District 64.

We also lost out, however, to districts who spend less than us, like St. Charles ($10,385), Palatine ($10,108), Downers Grove ($10,611), Wheaton ($10,746) and bargain-basement Western Springs ($8,172).

What gives? 

According to the story about test scores published in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate (“District 64 scores high in reading, math,” Oct. 30), we’re fine…just ask us.  But of course, there was no mention in that article about exactly how our kids’ performance compares to those other school districts, even though the Herald-Advocate is part of the Sun-Times News Group and presumably had access to its parent paper’s analysis.

We can hear the District’s spin doctors already, pooh pooh-ing standardized testing and explaining how they don’t stoop to “teaching to the tests” but, instead, focus on more meaningful measures of performance and achievement. 

Maybe they do.  And the fact that Maine South tied with Vernon Hills H.S. for 15th on the Sun-Times’ list of Illinois high schools [pdf] might even support District 64’s explanation, although we’ve also heard the argument that Maine South’s performance benefits from the kids the parochial elementary schools feed into it.

But when Park Ridge property values depend on our ability to compete with these other communities on a variety of bases, of which quality schools is one of the most important, our continually increasing taxes combined with Dist. 64’s modest performance jeopardizes not only our investments in our homes but also, ultimately, the quality of life in our community.

So what say you, Supt. Sally Pryor and Board members John Heyde, Marty Joyce, Ron James, Chris Mollet, Sue Runyon, Ted Smart and Genie Taddeo?

At its meeting on May 27, members of the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board conducted their first public review of the District’s 2008-09 budget.  What they saw should make us taxpayers uneasy, if not queasy, with thoughts of “There they go again.”

According to reports published in our local newspapers, the District’s first big gulp of our 2007 referendum-generated extra taxes will boost District revenues to a shade over $69 Million, up 14.2% from last year’s $60.69 Million.  That’s the “good” news.  The bad news is that next year’s operating expenses are projected to grow to over $60 Million from this year’s $56.78 Million.  That’s a 7.7 percent jump, folks, or almost double the growth in the Consumer Price Index over the past year.  And this year’s $56.78 Million in expenses was a 7.57% increase over the $52.8 Million of expenses in the 2006-07 budget.

Call us conservative, but outspending the rate of inflation by almost 100% does not seem to be sound fiscal policy or management.

What’s causing that big jump in costs?  Maybe it’s the restoration of a number of programs that the District cut over the past several years – totaling $12.2 Million since 2001 – as its finances were coming under increasing scrutiny by the State Board of Education.  The District assured us that those cuts would not affect the quality of education.  But if that is true, what compelling reasons have caused those cut programs to be restored?

Or maybe that big jump in costs is the result of adding five new literacy teachers, another psychologist, a new intervention services administrator, and two more months of salary for a current assistant principal at Lincoln Middle School.  We may have missed a more comprehensive explanation, but the only one we’ve seen from the District to date is contained in the minutes of the District’s Committee-of-the-Whole meeting from February 11, 2008 [pdf], in which Supt. Sally Pryor states that such staffing “is essential to meeting the goals of the District, particularly the mandated EIS/Rtl program, which will add value to learning for all students.” 

Unfortunately, we can’t tell exactly what “goals” she is referencing; and a search of the District’s website for the term “EIS/Rtl program” turns up “No Results.”  We also would like to know what Dr. Pryor means by that feel-good phrase “add value to learning,” but we had no better luck finding that on the District’s website, either.  Which suggests that The Culture of Secrecy is not confined to just Park Ridge city government.

Or maybe the big jump in costs is related to the increased salaries for teachers and teaching assistants, even though we were told by the District – pre-referendum, of course – that the extra referendum tax revenue would not go for teacher salaries and benefits.  Was that not quite the truth, District 64, or are we due for another lesson in the Three Card Monty game known as governmental “fund accounting,” where pieces of various costs are stashed in various funds for reasons known only to politicians, government accountants, and The Almighty (perhaps with the help of a government accountant)?

The reason we can’t tell what any of these things cost, either individually or collectively, is because D-64 apparently didn’t give that information to the newspapers.  And – “surprise!” – we can’t find a draft of the proposed new budget anywhere on the District’s website.  We did find, however, the District’s “FY09 Budget Timeline” [pdf], which indicates that the Board will review “Draft #2” of the proposed budget (where’s “Draft #1”?) at the Committee-of-the-Whole meeting this coming Monday, June 23.

So if you think your eye is quicker than D-64’s hand, you’ll get your chance to prove it Monday night.  But if you’re smart, you’ll keep your wager modest.   

On Monday we told you about tonight’s Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64’s dog-and-pony show (7:00 p.m. at District 64 headquarters, 164 S. Prospect) being put on by special invitation for our community’s “key communicators” – members of last year’s referendum committee, members of the district’s Elementary Learning Foundation (ELF), members of the community finance committee and the presidents of each school’s PTO – so they will help sell the rest of us on the District’s plan to add more than $700,000 a year in new personnel, including more administrators.

If you didn’t qualify for an invitation, D-64 might still let you in if you call and RSVP (847.318.4300).  Of course, if too much uninvited riff-raff shows up, there might not be enough room because the D-64 folks chose to stage this pro-spending pep rally at its headquarters rather than in one of its more spacious school auditoriums – presumably because that makes it easier for the Administration and School Board to control the proceedings and the listeners.

Frankly, we think limiting a presentation such as this to a select audience “by invitation” is an insult to all the rest of us taxpayers who will be paying for the new personnel the District wants to add.  And we also think it’s insulting for the District’s elected School Board members and its salaried administrators to engage in what amounts to Amway-style multi-level marketing of their fiscally irresponsible ways through a select group of unelected, unpaid cheerleaders. 

But even though it promises to be a carefully staged event (there’s going to be a Power Point presentation, after all), we hope somebody asks some of the following questions:

*  Why didn’t the District tell us about the “need” for this additional personnel during last year’s referendum campaign?

*  Why should the average D-64 administrator be paid $2,000 a year more ($67,489) than his/her counterparts in Winnetka D-36 ($65,252), $4,000 more than in Wilmette D-39 ($63,433) and $4,000 more than in Deerfield D-109 ($63,063)?

*  Why should the average D-64 teacher be paid $3,000+ a year more ($62,183) than his/her counterparts in Deerfield D-109 ($58,958), almost $4,000 more than in Winnetka D-36 ($58,706), and $6,000 more than in Wilmette D-39 ($56,020)?

*  Why is it that these schools all appear to regularly out-perform D-64 in student testing?

*  How much of the approximately $12 Million in budget cuts you made over the past few years – while assuring us they were not affecting the quality of education in the district – have been restored since the referendum passed last April?

*  Why did the District keep on raising teacher and administrator compensation while it was regularly appearing on the Illinois State Board of Education’s financial “early warning” and “watch” lists for bad financial management?

*  Why did the District use a sneaky “back door” (non-voting) referendum to issue $5 Million in working cash bonds a few years ago rather than do the honest thing and ask the voters for that money through a conventional voting referendum?

But whether you ask questions or just sit and listen, we suggest you bring your own beverage into the meeting…unless you’ve got a taste for Kool-Aid.