Would you sign a multi-million dollar contract to employ a number of people for several years without reading it closely and carefully?

Neither would we.

But that appears to be what four of our elected Park Ridge Park District commissioners – Board president Mel Thillens and commissioners Joan Bende, Richard Brandt and Mary Wynn Ryan – did at a “special meeting” on June 26th that mysteriously started at 5:30 p.m. rather than the Park District’s customary 7:30 kick-off for Board meetings.

That odd kick-off time, alone, should have raised a question about what was going on. Another attention grabber should have been the Agenda, which consisted primarily of 4 innocuous-sounding amendments to the District’s personnel and administrative policies that didn’t seem to implicate any sense of urgency worthy of a “special” meeting.  Until Item 7, which should have been the red flag.

“Closed Session.”

Those two words on a local government meeting agenda should be viewed by every taxpayer as interchangeable with “WARNING!” and “DANGER!”

If you’re looking for something kinky in any local government meeting, you’ll rarely go wrong by investigating closed sessions. That’s where scheming bureaucrats and feckless elected officials run and hide anytime they’re trying to conceal things from the taxpayers – even though the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) doesn’t require closed sessions for anything, or require that anything said or done in closed session be treated as secret or confidential. And because bureaucrats and politicians hate it when anybody points that out about IOMA, we take every opportunity to do so.

Defenders of closed session usually argue that any “official action” (i.e., a vote) resulting from closed-session maneuvering still must be taken in an “open” meeting after the closed session, which is true as far as it goes. But often that public vote is on some vague-sounding motion or resolution that reveals little, if anything, to the average listener about the substance of what actually is taking place – or what took place in the closed session.

In this case, the Park Board’s “Closed Session” agenda item carried no reference to the IOMA section under which it was being conducted, so Item 8 served as the only hint: “Reconvene…to take action, if any, on the matter of approval of a collective bargaining agreement between the Park Ridge Park District and Service Employees International Union Local #73.”

What collective bargaining agreement, you might ask?

Who knows? No collective bargaining agreement/contract was part of the Board packet published on the District’s website on June 26, and none is there even now as this post is being published.  And if that’s not bad enough, watch the Special Meeting video and you will discover that the Board hadn’t seen it, either!

If that sounds to you a lot like Nancy Pelosi telling Congress it needed to vote on the ACA before its members could read the whole act – which has become known in some circles as “The Pelosi Way” – you’re not alone.

At the 10:49 mark of the meeting video Thillens moved to go into closed session to discuss the collective bargaining agreement. Biagi immediately voiced an objection to the closed session, however, which started a 7-minute discussion during which Thillens, several staff members and the District’s counsel tap-danced around what they could/should and couldn’t/shouldn’t say in open session; and whether they could run into closed session any time something problematic popped up.

It was during that discussion that Commissioner Mary Wynn Ryan asked the $64,000 question:

“What is more important, transparency or getting the best deal for the taxpayers?”

While it’s a great question, it causes us to wonder whether Ryan thinks those two things are mutually exclusive?  Or was she just buying into the “sizzle” being sold by the bureaucrats who negotiated the new contract, H.R. Director Diane DiGangi and Building & Grounds Supt. Terry Wolf (in whose department most of the SEIU-represented employees work), who self-servingly (?) proclaimed it “a great contract” and seemed to suggest that it might somehow be jeopardized without immediate Board approval?

Ryan’s question was initially answered at the 18:10 mark of the video, when the Board voted 4 (Commissioners Thillens, Biagi, Ryan and Brandt) to 1 (Commissioner Bende, with Commissioners O’Brien and Phillips absent) against going into closed session.

That led to about 35 minutes of open-session discussions during which we learned, among other things, that the SEIU wanted to dump three positions from its bargaining unit, thereby perhaps costing those employees their jobs.  Dumping bargaining unit members is almost unheard-of because most unions normally push the limits of the law to add members to their bargaining units. But further along in that discussion it came out that those employees being dumped favored the decertification of SEIU as the bargaining unit’s representative.

So much for how the SEIU deals with dissent in its ranks.

But that must have been just a bit too much transparency for the Board, including Ryan, because at the 52:10 mark Biagi inexplicably made a motion to go into…you guessed it!…closed session. And despite no explanation of why closed session was desired, the Board voted 5-0 to run and hide.

When the Board members emerged approximately 25 minutes later they promptly voted 4 (Thillens, Bende, Brandt and Ryan) to 1 (Biagi) to approve the contract they apparently still hadn’t read, before adjourning.

What went on during that 25-minute closed session is a mystery. We assume it involved the contract that the Board at that point still hadn’t seen. But unless the Board votes to make the recording and/or the minutes of the closed session public, we likely will never know what was said and done in that closed session.

We sincerely hope the contract the Park Board approved in such a NON-“transparent” fashion truly turns out to be the “great contract” DiGangi and Wolf insisted it is. But voting to approve a multi-year collective bargaining agreement without seeing the final contract, and without giving the taxpayers an opportunity to read and comment on it before it is voted on, is a totally horse-bleep way to do The People’s business.

And since such an insult to transparent government occurred under the watchful eye, if not at the behest of, the Park District’s executive director, we’ve got a name for it:

“The Mountcastle Way.”

To read or post comments, click on title.

If you’re a top-ranked bureaucrat employed by one of our local governmental units, you are pulling down a six-figure salary and benefits such as a taxpayer-guaranteed pension that’s more than double – and sometimes even triple – what their private-sector courterparts will get from Social Security.

But when it comes time for our elected officials to evaluate the performance of these bureaucrats and dole out raises, the folks we elect to keep a keen eye on our local governmental units for us usually run into closed session and hide their deliberations from taxpayer view.  Often those elected officials rationalize the secrecy by claiming that’s the only way they can have “candid” discussions – which causes us to wonder how much less than “candid” are all the discussions they actually have in open session?

Make no mistake about it, however: those closed-session evaluations are far less about candor than about avoiding transparency and accountability to the taxpayers who foot the bills.

So a Watchdog bark-out goes out today to the Park Ridge Park District Board for its current evaluation process of executive director Gayle Mountcastle.

For the first time in Park District history as we know it, the Park Board is conducting what appears to be the closest thing to an “open” evaluation process conducted by any local governing body – with the possible exception of the time the Park Ridge City Council openly discussed then-city manager Jim Hock’s failure to meet a number of performance criteria the Council had set for him near the end of his tenure.

At its March 6th meeting, the Park Board held the majority of Mountcastle’s review in open session (running from approx. 1:50:20 through 2:12:43, and then from approx. 2:19:20 through 3:15:49 of the Board’s meeting video.  Since then, it has produced for public viewing a Performance Review of that evaluation and salary recommendation that will be discussed and voted on at tonight’s Board meeting; and Mountcastle prepared her own evaluation of her goals and achievements that is also part of the packet for tonight’s meeting (7:30 p.m., 2701 W. Sibley Street) available for public inspection.

We put little-to-no stock in consultants’ studies like the one the Board commissioned from McGladrey to design a “market-based” compensation program for the District’s full-time staff.  Such studies are inherently flawed because: (a) they are not based on the specific value of a specific employee to this specific district but, instead, are based on what other districts pay their employees – for whatever reasons, based on whatever resources those other districts may have that our Park District doesn’t, etc.; and (b) they seem to assume an unrealistic level of mobility of these employees.

When it comes to government in Illinois, what “somebody else” is doing usually is no better, and often worse, than what your own governmental unit is doing.  And it’s usually irrelevant, given the substantial dissimilarities between and among allegedly “comparable” communities, park districts and school districts that consultants conveniently tend to ignore.

So adding a 3.0 % raise to Mountcastle’s current $143,225 salary in response to what appears to be a C+/B- evaluation (3.75 out of 5.0) seems both arbitrary and overly-generous, especially because the Performance Review clearly doesn’t capture the kind of specifics the taxpayers deserve about how their elected representatives actually came up with that 3.75 rating and a corresponding 3.0% raise – specifics we assume were hidden away in the closed-session portion of the March 6 meeting, or a prior one, in the interest of “candid” discussions.

But we’re not going to let a desire for “great” become the enemy of the “good” that this Park Board has achieved – under the leadership of president Rick Biagi – when it comes to shifting the paradigm from secrecy to transparency in the evaluation of the District’s equivalent of a corporation’s CEO.

And this evaluation process should serve notice on the City Council and the Boards of D-64 and D-207 that this level of transparency and accountability – and even more of it – can be achieved if our elected representatives on those bodies start showing a bit more concern for the taxpayers who pay these salaries than for the employees who pocket them.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We’re already several days into 2014 and nothing all that significant has happened in local government.

Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is purely in the eye of the beholder, as we saw from several comments to our January 1 post which ripped Mayor Schmidt and the City Council for not moving fast enough to turn Park Ridge into a retail mecca, replace its antiquated sewer system, completely solve the flooding problem, and find Waldo, generally without raising taxes.  All those failings notwithstanding, however, let’s look ahead at some of the things that arguably are teed up for 2014 and consider whether they should remain that way, or whether they should be teed down.

Let’s start with EMB signs.  Frankly, we don’t care whether they’re legalized or not.  But we think the “distracted driver” argument raised by some opponents of EMBs is bogus.  Any driver who hasn’t already bounced off the median on 294 while passing that Barnum & Bailey community commonly known as Rosemont likely is immune to the more modest distractions that might be presented if The Sandlot gets an EMB and advertises “buy-one-beef-get-one-free,” or Joseph A. Banks rocks its own EMB with a “We’ll PAY YOU to buy our clothes!” invitation.

A tougher task is predicting the effect on the City’s sales tax revenues – direct and indirect – from Whole Foods and the new Mariano’s.  Will the new stores cannibalize Jewel and Trader Joe’s?  Or will they draw in enough customers from outside Park Ridge to simply grow the total retail grocery pie?  Whatever the outcome, that’s the competition that “capitalism” is supposed to provide.  And, best of all, this City Council hasn’t given subsidies to any of them.

In a sick and twisted way, we can’t wait to see the results of the community health survey created and administered under the auspices of Lutheran General Hospital.  Judging by the few results that have leaked out – and by how long LGH is delaying the release of the results, a reliable signal that a seamless propaganda message is still being woven – we expect “results” that will be used to argue (or should we say “Advocate”) for the creation of a City mental health department.  Or, at the very least, a push for City-funding for mental health care provided by LGH personnel.

Over at School District 64, the most important task will be choosing the new superintendent from two announced finalists – Laurie Heinz from Skokie Dist. 68 and Robert Machak from Evergreen Park Dist. 124 – which is scheduled to occur within the next couple of weeks.  Machak will be at Emerson Middle School to meet with the public tomorrow, Jan. 9, from 10:30 to 11:00 a.m.; and at Lincoln Middle School from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m.  Heinz will do the same drill at the same places and times on Friday, Jan. 10.  Don’t blink, or you might miss them.

While this process is somewhat more transparent than was the selection of current supt. Phil Bender four years ago, it remains far less than what taxpayers deserve – especially considering that, according to Board President Anthony Borrelli (as reported in a Jan. 6 Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story), the D-64 Board will have its “serious heart-to-heart [interview] with these candidates and find out what makes them tick, so to speak” in a closed session, hidden from public view.

C’mon, Tony, that’s a fake punt right out of former pres. John Heyde’s playbook!  Sad to say, but when it comes to transparency, this looks like one step forward, two steps back

Over at D-207, the most important goal should be halting the academic ranking slide that has seen Maine South drop from its historical top-ten spot to a slot in the 20s, even as costs have continued to rise and D-207 has some of the highest-paid teachers and administrators in the state.   But we’re not holding our collective breath waiting for that discussion to take place.

The Park Ridge Park District’s main event for 2014 should be the grand opening of the new Centennial water park this summer.  Despite our vigorous opposition to that almost $8 million project’s being approved without a referendum, we hope it will be successful and not another drain on the taxpayers, especially since those taxpayers were denied a vote on such a major Park District expenditure and debt for the first time since 1992.

2014 will likely bring a first for the Park Ridge Library – or, at least, a “first” in quite a while – as the recently-passed 2014-15 budget calls for the Library’s closure every Sunday from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  Closing on those Sundays will enable the Library to give employees a 1% pay increase, and to continue to provide patrons with free use of the Library’s computers, CDs, DVDs, and free attendance at its many programs.  DISCLOSURE:  The editor of this blog is a Library trustee; and he voted against the Sunday closure as an individual budget item, and against the budget that contained that closure.

The City will also continue to grapple with that economic black hole called the Uptown TIF, which is expected to swallow another million of our tax dollars on its way to what the City’s TIF consultants are projecting could be a $27 million hole by the TIF’s expiration in 2026. Discussion will again likely focus on advance refunding, which could save the City some signficant money but which is a one-time deal and timing-sensitive.

But the toughest question any local governmental body is likely to face this coming year is flood control.  We hope there will be an insightful and vigorous debate over whether or not to bond and spend tens of millions of dollars on flood control projects that carry the promise of protecting most affected areas from only those so-called “10-year” floods.

Having already committed hundreds (thousands?) of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees to come up with the Burke recommendations, and having already undertaken 7 relief sewer projects costing $5.3 million primarily for flood control purposes, we can see how the path of least resistance might be for the Council to issue a boatload of long-term, low-interest bonds to provide a little flood control for everybody – because most of the carping about flood control to date has been in the nature of what the late, great Mike Royko called the unofficial City of Chicago motto: “Ubi est mea?” (“Where’s mine?”).

That would be the worst kind of pandering, especially since 10-year floods seem to be virtually insignificant to the vast majority of residents and not worth the $100 million or so investment that would be required to implement all those remediation projects.

But if the Council decides it wants to go in that direction, we suggest it seriously consider creating a number of special service areas (“SSA”s) where the costs could be better targeted to those most directly benefitting from such low ROI remedies.  And if it decides on proceeding with any flood control plan that requires more than $10 million of cumulative expenditures or long-term debt, the final decision should be submitted to the taxpayers via referendum in November.

The forgoing are not intended to form a comprehensive list.  We expect other issues to pop up, and one  or more of them could take on major significance.  We invite our readers to submit any that we may have left off.

But whether good, bad or downright ugly, 2014 has the makings of an “interesting” year.

To read or post comments click on title.

At Monday night’s meeting the Park Ridge City Council approved the MAP Amendment and the variances needed for the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District to commence work on its Youth Campus Park project (the “YCP”).

As best as we can tell, that was the correct result – if for no other reason than pinch-hitting City Attorney Kathy Henn’s improvised opinion that linking the City’s approval of the YCP zoning matters to the Park District’s granting of rights to the City to use Northwest Park for storm water detention might violate the City’s Zoning Code.  Not any state statute or court decision, mind you, but our own Zoning Code.

Once that opinion was given, the Council defeated the “linkage” amendment proposed by Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd) by a vote of 5-2, Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) and Milissis dissenting; and then it approved the zoning relief by a vote of 6-1, Smith again dissenting.

Whether Henn’s opinion on this issue will cause the Council to revise the Zoning Code to eliminate the arguable ban on linkage in the future remains to be seen.  But it probably deserves at least some cursory review to determine whether linkage is an arrow that belongs in the City’s zoning quiver.

The linkage issue inspired some interesting discussion/debate by the aldermen, one aspect of which deserves special mention because it was as unnecessary as it was disappointing.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that we endorsed Marty Maloney for 7th Ward alderman in 2011, and he prevailed in a 3-way race.  While we have disagreed with him significantly on several occasions since his election, he has served honorably and creditably overall – just as he served honorably and creditably on the Park Board from 2003-2011.

But in arguing against Milissis’ linkage amendment by suggesting that the Park District could be expected to cooperate with the City’s storm water detention program, Maloney disingenuously cited the cooperation of Park Boards past in accommodating the City’s installation of its two reservoirs on Park District land (Kalina Field and Hinkley Park), and the construction of the City’s salt dome at Oakton Park.

Why was that disingenous?

Because Maloney knows that no governmental bodies act consistently and predictably: he’s now been a member of two different ones.  Their actions are always the product of the personalities, policies and politics of the elected officials who oversee them, and of the bureaucrats to whom the elected officials too often delegate/abdicate too much responsibility and discretion.

The people who sat on the Park Boards that gave the City the use of Kalina, Hinkley and Oakton for City facilities are not the same people who sit on the Park Board now.  And the attitude displayed by a majority of the current Park Board members, and by its director, is not the same one that prevailed back when those three projects were done.

Maloney knows that, too, because he was on the Park Board when the new City reservoir was constructed under Hinkley Park.  He knows that the City didn’t even have to ask the Park District for the use of Hinkley Park because it was the then-Park Board that came up with the idea – and offered that site to the City – as a way to save City taxpayers the millions of extra dollars it would have cost to put the new reservoir on the old Public Works site at Greenwood and Elm, which was the City’s original plan.

Putting the reservoir at Hinkley also kept that old Public Works property available for sale by the City for what some brokers had previously guestimated to be another million dollars or more.  And it prevented the delays in the reservoir project, and the Uptown Redevelopment project that depended on relocating the reservoir, by the additional time left on NICOR’s lease of the old Public Works property that NICOR didn’t vacate until 2009.

Maloney also knows that this Park Board is different from previous ones – including the ones he served on – because his boards (with the support of then executive director Jim Lange) went to referendum four times during 2005-2006, at least twice on multi-million dollar aquatic facilities.  Those boards and that director respected the taxpaying voters of this community enough to ask for their endorsement and their tax dollars for such expensive projects with such substantial long-term impact on this community.  And they had the courage to risk being told “no,” as they were.

That’s a far cry from this current Park Board, a majority of which just a year ago arrogantly told the taxpaying voters to go scratch themselves – and the horses they rode in on – when that Board voted to build the $8 million Centennial water park without the courtesy of even an advisory referendum.  Those cowards insisted they knew that the community wanted the water park, they just didn’t have the courage to find out for sure.

At Monday night’s Council meeting, Maloney talked about obtaining the cooperation of those Park Board members voluntarily, calling on the “you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” aphorism.  But “flies” who seemingly care so little for what is fair and just for the entire community that they don’t have the decency to hold a vote on an $8 million water park, may not be “catch”-able when it comes to making Northwest Park available for storm water detention, especially now that they’ve got their YCP zoning.

After all, those are some of the same folks who turned tail and ran away from the North Park detention area project after some neighbors beefed about it.  Can they be trusted not to cut and run again if Northwest Park neighbors beef?  Can they be trusted to stand tall when the Park District’s sports affiliates show up en masse to oppose anything that might jeopardize their Northwest Park playing fields?

We hope Maloney is right with about catching flies, because the City just gave the Park District plenty of honey.

But he was dead wrong Monday night by suggesting what past Park Boards had done was a predictor of what the current Park Board might do.  That’s the kind of cheap political trickery we have come to expect from our state senators and state representatives, and from all those other two-bit professional politicians that have run our state into the ground.

You’re much better than that, Ald. Maloney.

You know it.  And we know it.

To read or post comments, click on title.

We’ve always been big on intergovernmental cooperation between/among our various units of local government – so long as that “cooperation” is a win/win for each of the units of government involved in the deal.

Keep your eye out for that “win/win” at tonight’s Park Ridge City Council meeting, when the Council is scheduled to vote on the final reading of the zoning MAP Amendment and a number of variances the Park Ridge Park District is seeking for the construction of the $13 million-plus Youth Campus Park (the “YCP”).

As best as we can tell, the Park District has done a pretty good job of designing the YCP to be neighborhood-friendly, or at least as neighborhood-friendly as an 11-acre park facility can be.  According to City Engineer Sarah Mitchell, the YCP design is in full compliance with the City’s stormwater management ordinance for a 100-year rain event – although last month Ald. Dan Knight (5th) and a couple of other aldermen expressed concerns that such compliance be clearly and unequivocally memorialized in writing before final Council approval is given.

We’re still not sure that has been done, but we trust the Council will ensure that’s the case before final approval is granted.

In looking at this YCP MAP Amendment/variance deal, we see a big “win” for the Park District but no commensurate “win” for the City.  That imbalance might be resolved, however, by a suggestion from Ald. Jim Smith (3rd) – if we understand it, which is not always the case with Smitty’s suggestions – that the Park District commit itself to making Northwest Park available for stormwater detention IF the City decides to go ahead with that portion of the Burke flood control proposal that includes such a detention area.

Obviously, the cost of making Northwest Park suitable for stormwater detention would have to be borne by the City, and would have to include a provision for an ongoing City obligation to protect that park from substantial damage caused by water detention.  Unfortunately, it sounds as if the Park District has told the City to pound sand any time such a commitment has been raised, which doesn’t sound much like the “win/win” spirit that’s supposed to be the hallmark of intergovernmental cooperation.

And Park Board members who have spoken publicly on this topic sound far more combative than cooperative.

Park Commissioner/state representative candidate (or should that be state representative candidate/Park Commissioner?) Mel Thillens has accused the City Council of “holding up a process that was politically supported by the [YCP] referendum…for no good reason.”

It’s Local Government 101, however, that while the Park District’s referendum results authorized the Park District to borrow and spend $13 million-plus to build the YCP, it didn’t also require or even authorize the City to grant a MAP Amendment or a bunch of variances from the City’s Zoning Code to enable the construction of YCP.  That’s because Local Government 101 also teaches that the City Council’s job is to look out for the City’s interests and the City’s taxpayers, neither of which is exactly the same as the Park District’s.

And one of the City’s interests that can be linked to the MAP Amendment and the variances sought by the Park District is doing what it can to ensure its ability to construct the flood relief projects that already have been identified as priorities by the Burke study, like the Northwest Park detention area.

So we see nothing wrong with the City’s linking its approval of the YCP MAP Amendment and variances to the Park District’s providing an ironclad agreement to make Northwest Park available to the City for flood water detention so long as that: (a) does not require the Park District to pay for any of the conversion costs; (b) any such conversion will be done with all reasonable expedience so as not to take those athletic fields out of commission unduly; and (c) the City agrees to underwrite future repair of any damage to Northwest Park from stormwater detention.

In fact, the Park District’s agreeing to the detention area as a quid pro quo for the zoning relief it wants from the City is the very LEAST the Park District can do for the City and its taxpayers.

As Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) pointed out in response to the complaints from the Park District that what amounts to the City Council’s rightful circumspection and due diligence is costing the taxpayers money: “When you’re spending $13 million of taxpayer money to fundamentally change the land use for an 11-acre parcel, it would seem one extra meeting shouldn’t kill you.”

Exactly.  If the Park District deserves its zoning “win” at YCP, so does the City.  And that should include the Park District’s ironclad agreement to the City’s right to use Northwest Park for stormwater detention if necessary.

Before the City gives its final sign-off on the Park District’s YCP zoning accommodations.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Talk to any Park Ridge alderman and he probably can tell you about how often a Park Ridge resident complains to him about some problem involving the Park Ridge Park District, or Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.

That’s because too many residents apparently don’t know enough basic civics to realize and/or understand that the City is a different governmental body from the Park District or District 64 – or that each of those bodies is basically autonomous, with their own separate budgets and tax levies.

That means if the Park District or D-64 were to run out of money, the City wouldn’t cover their bounced checks.  And vice versa.

While most of the City’s taxpayers are also taxpayers of the Park District and D-64, the populations of all three are not identical because their borders are not the same.  For example, certain parts of Park Ridge (such as Park Ridge Pointe) are not within the Park District’s boundaries, and certain parts of the Park District and D-64 are in Niles.

Not only is this concept lost on many ordinary residents, but it seems to be lost on certain City officials, according to a story in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Officials looking into Park Ridge Baseball’s rent-free use of city building,” Nov. 21).

As reported in that article, for the past two years Park Ridge Baseball/Softball, Inc. (“PRBS”) – a private corporation that runs the Park Ridge Park District’s baseball and softball programs as an “affiliate” of the Park District – has been using the City’s former public works building at Elm and Greenwood, rent free, for winter practices.  In the process, PRBS has run up approximately $9,500 a year in gas and electric bills.  Not surprisingly, the idea was initially approved by then-city mgr. Jim Hock, which should make it suspect on that basis alone.

We have a problem with $9,500 being charged to the account of the City’s taxpayers, some of whom are not even Park District taxpayers, just so a private corporation affiliated with the Park District can have a free practice facility for its program participants.  That’s not a king’s ransom, to be sure, but it is another one of those situations where the principle is what counts – as well as the concern that, if the little things can be botched, then bigger things also are at risk of of going awry.

Like those no-bid contracts for $32,000 of fire hydrants, $150,000 of defibrillators, and million dollar-plus professional service fees for sewer and flood control consulting and design.

How do our highly-paid City officials explain PRBS’s free use of a City facility?  Like they took a crash course from the Bill Clinton School of Parsing and Dissembling.

City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton says he doesn’t think the free use constitutes a violation of the City Council Policy No. 36 because PRBS is an affiliate of another public body, the Park District; and those baseball practices constitute “approved meetings” of “other governmental bodies.”  Amazingly, City Attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill seems to agree with Hamilton, claiming that the phrase “approved meetings of other governmental bodies” can be broadly interpreted to include a gathering of baseball or softball players organized by a private corporation that effectively serves as a vendor of the Park District’s baseball and softball programs.

The silliness, if not outright disingenuousness, of such a tortured interpretation of Policy No. 36’s plain language should be obvious to any plain-speaking, plain-hearing person.  Unless, of course, the first thought that pops into your head whenever you drive past Kalina Field or Hinkley Park while a baseball or softball game is in progress is: “Gee, I didn’t know the Park Board was meeting tonight”; or “What number on tonight’s agenda is ‘runners on the corners, two outs and your .091 hitter at the plate?’ ”

Then again, you have to remember that Bill Clinton didn’t have “sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” either.

Don’t expect the absurdity baseball practices being treated the same as Park Board meetings to bother the folks who run PRBS, or the parents of the li’l sluggers who get to sponge off City taxpayers, if only to the tune of $9,600 a year, and thereby avoid having to pay the City to use the old City garage space.  That way, those parents can more easily afford to pay the $200/hour it reportedly costs to rent space at The Dome in Rosemont, or to pay the costs of “supervision” whenever PRBS uses the Park District’s own facilities.

Not surprisingly, long-time PRBS czar Garry Abezetian calls the arrangement “a great partnership” that “saves the kids and families in the program from having to rent space.”  He must have taken the Bill Clinton course, too, because all partners in a “partnership” are supposed to benefit from the “partnership’s” activities; and, try as we might, we can’t see what benefit the City and its taxpayers are getting out of this deal.

According to Abezetian, PRBS has paid for some “improvements” to the old City garage, like “new carpeting and lighting and a fresh coat of paint.”  Of course, all of that just happens to benefit…wait for it…PRBS!  The City previously was able to rent that facility to NICOR for $250,000 in the last year of NICOR’s tenancy, without any of those “improvements.”  We seriously doubt any prospective purchaser of that property is going to care one whit about, or pay one dime more for, those amenities.

We don’t begrudge PRBS, or any other community organizations which satisfies the eligibility requirements of Policy No. 36, the use of City facilities.  Section I (A) of that Policy, however, permits non-City use of City facilities – other than the current Public Works Service Center and the Library – only for “[a]pproved meetings of other governmental bodies (i.e., Maine South Clinical Government Class and the Cook Co. Zoning Board).”  Kids’ baseball practices and games are not “approved meetings,” nor are they conduct of another “governmental body.”

That means we have yet another instance of “what’s-in-it-for-us?” private mooching – like with those D-64 “boycotters” we wrote about in our 11.18.13 post.  And our City officials don’t seem any more inclined or competent to deal with such moochers than are our D-64 officials.

So just stick that $9,500 of gas and electric charges on the taxpayers’ bill, and chalk it up to the shameless once again prevailing over the spineless.

Who, in this instance, also have shown themselves to be clueless.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Late December we published three posts (12.05.12, 12.13.12 and 12.19.12) critical of the Park Ridge Park District’s arrogant approach to spending over $7 million – of which over $6 million was borrowed through the issuance of non-referendum bonds that depleted the District’s non-referendum bonding power – on the new Centennial water park, a facility that can be used only about 3 months a year.

That’s about as dumb an idea as building an outdoor ice rink in Orlando.

Our main beef about that facility, however, wasn’t its stupidity.  Or its cost.  Or the way it was being financed.  Or the substantial change it works on Centennial Park.

It was that the Park Board, while insisting that the project had overwhelming support from the entire community, refused to hold an advisory referendum to let the community prove its support for spending that kind of money, and undertaking that kind of debt, on that kind of project – especially while another $13 million of bonded debt for the Youth Campus park project was already on the horizon.

That’s almost $20 million of bonded debt on projects for which the District’s version of “business plans” look like they started with a “break even” result followed by revenue and expense numbers pulled out of thin air to reverse-engineer themselves into that “break even” result.

And there was no bigger cheerleader for both projects than Park Commissioner and Board member Mel Thillens.  Not only was he 100% behind the no-referendum water park, but he was a leader of the Our Parks Legacy campaign – which, by the way, he was legally entitled to be, notwithstanding his position on the Park Board.

But that was then.

Now Thillens is running as the Republican candidate for state representative against Democrat Marty Moylan.  And suddenly Candidate Thillens has found religion, talking that fiscally-responsible talk expected from Republican candidates…even the fake ones – that he never talked as Park Commissioner Thillens.

So when you go to his “About Mel” campaign web page you’ll find him touting himself as the candidate whose parents taught him “[t]o not spend what we don’t have” – despite his whole-hearted support for spending almost $20 million of bonded debt (a/k/a, money “we don’t have”) that will burden the District’s taxpayers for the next 15 years.

Ironically, borrowing money for unnecessary, frivolous and even wasteful reasons is a hallmark of our General Assembly in Springfield, so Mel could fit right in.

As an ally and tool of Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.

Candidate Thlllens also brags on his web page about how he “respect[s] the taxpayers…[and] the people of our community too much to fall so short on promises while bleeding them dry.”  Just last December, however, Commissioner Thillens didn’t respect those taxpayers enough to give them even an advisory vote on the Centennial water park – nor did he seem to think too much about them before sticking them with a 5%-plus tax increase to help cover the debt service on those non-referendum bonds.

But that was then.

Now Candidate Thillens is saying he regrets that tax increase vote, and he is balking at the District’s proposed 2.8% tax hike Park District Superintendent Gayle Mountcastle is pushing because, according to her, “[t]here’s so many things out there that we’re hearing the public wants, but we’re not able to give it to them because we’re not building up the capital” in the District’s slush fund.  Mountcastle would like to add a few more achievements to her resume and see what bigger, higher paying park district might come a-courting.

After having supported the borrowing of almost $20 million in just one year for two non-essential (and one downright foolish) amenities that are unlikely to even pay the cost of their own operations, and having voted to increase taxes by over 5%, Candidate Thillens is now questioning a $15,000 electric gate at the District’s garage, according to a story in this week’s Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge Park District proposes 2.8 percent tax-levy hike,” 10.22.13).

Now that Commissioner Thillens has become Candidate Thillens, expect to hear a lot more double talk from him as he tries to sound fiscally responsible while still pandering to the special interests who want whatever Park District facilities and programs they can get other people to pay for.  And there’s still more than a year left before Candidate Thillens can go back to being plain old Commissioner Thillens.

Or state representative Thillens.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Just when we thought it was safe to believe our local elected officials had finally figured out – thanks to well-publicized discussions and a vote by the Park Ridge City Council – that giving away (a/k/a, “donating”) public monies and property to other governmental bodies or private entities is a misappropriation and/or waste of the taxpayers’ assets, along comes the Park Ridge Park District with a proposal on this Thursday night’s agenda to do just that.

According to the meeting agenda, the Park Board will be considering the adoption of Ordinance No. 13-8 “[a]uthorizing the sale or donation of used personal property owned by the Park Ridge Park District (2001 GMC Sonoma pick-up truck and 2000 GMC K2500 pick up truck)” [Emphasis added]

The proposed ordinance does not mention “donation,” but it expressly gives Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle absolute discretion to determine how, and at what price, those “surplus” vehicles will be disposed of.

Does that mean Mountcastle could sell them for $1 each to the Maine Township Emergency Management Program (“MTEMP”), that pet subsidiary of Maine Township/Team Provenzano government that was turned down for a similar “donation” of a used SUV last month by the City of Park Ridge, thanks to some clear-headed thinking by Mayor Dave Schmidt and Alds. Nick Milissis (2nd), Roger Shubert (4th), Dan Knight (5th) and Marty Maloney (7th)?

Or maybe a $1 sale could be made to some “charity” – like Kids Around the World, Inc., a Christian-based organization that was given the Centennial Park playground equipment, allegedly because it had no market value (an undocumented claim, of course) and the District was just darn fortunate to get that organization to disassemble the equipment and cart it away?

Or, given the ordinance language that allows Mountcastle to advertise (or not) and auction (or not) the pick-up trucks, could she steer the sale to one or more favored buyers through a process designed to look like competitive bidding, the way City Staff appeared to do recently in sending bid solicitations for fire hydrants to only six preferred(?) vendors – resulting in the Council’s criticism of the process and its rejection of the sole conforming bid?

We’re pretty certain the two pickup trucks the Park District is getting rid of have some value, although we can find nothing in the meeting packet that discloses what that value might be.  But whatever that value, it belongs to the taxpayers; it deserves to be maximized; and it is not properly “donated” to anyone anywhere.

Once again, it’s the principle and not the money.

Which causes us to wonder just how totally clueless and bereft of even the most basic understanding of their oaths of office do our local officials have to be when they blithely give away tax dollars or taxpayer assets?  And just how narcissistic must they be to think that they are more capable than the taxpayers of determining what charitable objectives are worthy of donations – especially when the funds those officials donate are confiscated from the taxpayers through taxation, or generated through the use of tax-funded activities?

Giving away OPM (“Other People’s Money”) doesn’t mean you’re generous.  And public officials who give away the taxapayers’ money are worse than common thieves – because they steal from the taxpayers under color of law, with minimal risk of criminal prosecution or conviction.

To read or post comments, click on title.

It’s no secret that we here at PW consider the current administration at the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District something decidedly south of a paragon of local governmental virtue.

So it probably should have come as no surprise to us to read in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate that the Park District’s new Centennial water park is now going to cost taxpayers nearly $600,000 more than the District was telling us last December, when the Park Board was passing the resolutions to green-light what was then billed as a $7.1 million project – without giving the taxpayers an opportunity to vote on it via an advisory referendum. (“Centennial Pool renovations will cost extra $600K for Park Ridge Park District,” August 12)

That’s because the parks and recreation “professionals” running the Park District know that you never put two park district funding referenda on the same ballot, or in consecutive elections – as the Park District could have done by putting the Centennial project on the November ballot and the Youth Campus project on the April ballot, if it didn’t want both of them on the April ballot – if you want to pass both of them.  When referendum questions are paired up in that way, the conventional wisdom is that the voters tend to pass the first and reject the second, or reject them both.

And being told “no” by the voting taxpayers is a capital offense to career government bureaucrats.

So Park District Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle and her staff, aided and abetted by a profligate and complicit Park Board, masterfully delayed consideration of the Centennial pool/water park project until months after the deadline for putting a referendum question on the November ballot, into the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season when most taxpayers customarily are distracted.  That way, the District could commit almost all of its non-referendum bonding power to the less-marketable project and save its best sales pitches for the more-marketable “legacy” Youth Campus Park referendum.

The bureaucratic reasoning was that, with the voters lacking any memory of recently having voted to issue $6.3 million of bonded debt for a $7.1 million Centennial water park, it would be much easier to convince them to vote for issuing $6.8 million of additional bonded debt for a $13.2 million Youth Campus project.

And the bureaucrats were right!

But the news of the $600,000 cost over-run for the water park just as ground was being broken has raised a few hackles from the thinking taxpayers who are realizing that they got conned even more than they originally thought.

We tend to derive perverse entertainment value from listening to the propaganda ministers of our various local governmental units try to spin performance dross into political gold.  And, according to the H-A story, Park District minister of disinformation Kathie Hahn didn’t disappoint – dismissing the original $7.1 million figure as “early on in the project” and then applying a layer of populist varnish to the $600,000 up-sell: “When we went to the public hearings and input meetings, we heard from the public about certain things they wanted at this park so we made our best attempt to include those items.”

Pretty slick, Ms. Hahn!  But exactly what “items” are you talking about?

As we understand it, the District had already cut the single most-wanted feature of the new water park (according to the half-baked resident “survey” provided by…wait for it…the designers of the new facility, Stantec Consulting) even before the Park Board approved the project: a lazy river connecting the various pools.  So we’re curious about what new “items” are being added to the project that would account for the additional $600K.

That’s not saying the information wasn’t communicated by the District in some fashion.  Park Board meetings aren’t covered nearly as diligently by the local press as are the meetings of the Park Ridge City Council, where “press row” is regularly filled by reporters from the H-A, the Park Ridge Journal, and the Chicago TribLocal.  And while Mayor Dave Schmidt and the Council members often engage in spirited debate over issues, the Park Board usually behaves like a rubber stamp for current Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle and her staff.

Since returning to the PRRPD after 8 years as Supt. of Recreation for the Des Plaines Park District,  Mountcastle’s agenda appears to be not unlike that of many high-level local government bureaucrats: spend money and pile up debt on facilities-as-monuments.  Those monuments earn them bragging rights at the various “professional association” networking/self-promotion conferences and conventions – like those of the Illinois Association of Park Districts (“IAPD”) and the National Recreation and Park Association (“NRPA”) – they regularly attend, usually on the taxpayers’ dime.

In fairness, up until now Mountcastle has been able to control costs and post some welcome surpluses, apparently by retaining the operating budget philosophy and strategy adopted by her predecessor, Ray Ochromowicz, during his relatively short tenure at the helm.  And from what we’ve seen and heard, maintenance and customer service continue to improve.

But whether the District can stay that course now that it’s saddled with servicing $13 million-plus of new long-term bonded debt remains to be seen.  If all those suspect revenue projections for the Centennial water park and the Youth Campus Park prove to be the kind of pie-in-the-sky that the revenue projections for the Uptown TIF turned out to be, the Park District and its taxpayers could be hurtin’ for certain in a few years when the surpluses and fund balances are depleted but the PTELL keeps the tax increases capped.

By that time, however, expect Mountcastle to have moved on to other, greener pastures on the strength of these two new resume enhancements, compliments of Park Ridge taxpayers.  And the Park Board members who rubber-stamped these projects with only one referendum instead of two will have become former public officials – just like city manager Tim Schuenke and his Council accomplices on the Uptown TIF were long gone by the time the financial chickens came home to roost on that project.

Meanwhile, however, the Park District is adding $600,000 of “switch” to the water park’s $7.1 million “bait” price, with barely a ripple of protest by our elected officials on the Park Board who are supposed to make sure that the taxpayers don’t get “had” by this kind of bureaucratic hi-jinks.

Next up: The Youth Campus Park.

Bidding starts at $13.2 million.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Every so often, almost perplexingly, one or other of our local governmental bodies actually gets something “right” – rather than just not getting it wrong.

This past Wednesday night (May 29), the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Board – after some serious deliberation – appears to have made the “right” decision on an issue we wrote about, critically, in our May 20, 2013 post: making the historic Solomon Cottage on the Park Ridge Youth Campus property available as the new home of the Park Ridge Historical Society (the “PRHS”).  And it will be done by the District’s giving the PRHS a 20-year lease of that 105-year old building at a mere $1 per year.

Yes, $1 per year.

While that kind of deal normally would have us searching high and low for undue influence on behalf of some well-connected-but-undisclosed special interest, this looks and sounds legit for several reasons – not the least of which is that the PRHS is reportedly going to initially commit approximately $120,000 of its own funds to making the Solomon Cottage “habitable”; and then another few hundred thousand dollars of private funding to turn the building into an interactive historical museum.  The PRHS also will be responsible for the utilities and routine maintenance.

In other words, this looks to be a no-cost deal for Park Ridge taxpayers.

And not only will it save this historically-significant structure from demolition but, also, it will save the District’s taxpayers the estimated $80,000 in demolition costs the District was planning to incur because operating/programming the deteriorating Solomon Cottage was not part of the District’s Youth Campus Park redevelopment plan.

Can we get an “Amen”?

Okay, let’s not get carried away just yet.  There’s still a ways to go – and a number of details to iron out – before this plan becomes a reality.  Which means there’s still plenty of time and opportunities for it to get bollixed up.  And the public still needs to weigh in on this landlord-tenant twist, because such an arrangement between the District and the PRHS was not one of the advertised features used to sell the Youth Campus referendum to the voters last month.

Additionally, whatever lease agreement is drawn up MUST totally protect, if not outright favor, the District and its taxpayers.  That means there better be a cracker-jack inspection and evaluation of the structure to ascertain the condition of its foundations, walls, windows, roof and mechanical systems before the District effectively gives the PRHS, as its tenant, the legal right to demand major repairs that could consume tens of thousands of tax dollars and turn this “deal” on its head.

As more than one Park Board member noted Wednesday night, the District doesn’t need or want another Senior Center-style public/private “partnership” boondoggle that cost the District’s taxpayers $150,000+/year in ridiculous subsidies, the $330,000 Kemnitz bequest, and a lawsuit and legal fees to sort things out.  And neither do the taxpayers.

So for now we’re giving a big Watchdog bark-out to both the Park Board and the PRHS, including its treasurer, Kirke Machon, whom we took to task in our May 20 post for being the mouthpiece for the PRHS’s earlier “Ubi est mea?” (an homage to the late Mike Royko) freeloader approach to this venture, one that would have had the Park District throwing at least $120,000 of our tax dollars – if not the whole $500,000-plus – into a deteriorating building it had no plans of ever using.

This has the makings of one of those rare win/win deals, with the private PRHS contributing a boatload of private money for the improvement of a public building.

Now it’s up to the Park District and the PRHS not to screw this up.

To read or post comments, click on title.