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.

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Most people are familiar with the plaintive cry: “Don’t just stand there, do something.”

When it comes to government, that call often proves an irresistible Sirens’ song to the aim-to-please politicians and path-of-least-resistance bureaucrats.  And when doing “something” can be accomplished with other people’s money (“OPM”), the sky is often the limit on how much OPM will be spent.

The City of Park Ridge currently is hearing the steady drum beat from certain residents who want “something” – anything – done about flooding.  And we’re with them…to a point.

Since his election in April 2009, Mayor Dave Schmidt has pushed for some form of solution to at least the worst areas of our chronic flooding problem.  He formed the Flood Control Task Force and staffed it with a number of knowledgeable volunteers who produced some solid work product, with the exception of a penny foolish, pound foolish mis-step: recommending that the City’s taxpayers subsidize individual homeowners for their installation of “private” flood control devices like overhead sewers and check valves.

Blame it on OPM intoxication.

The City Council also engaged Christopher B. Burke Engineering to study the flooding problem and devise a seemingly comprehensive flood remediation program.  Unfortunately, it appears the entire Burke program would cost the City $100 million or more, which might make some kind of sense if it provided the entire City with protection from the 100-year floods we seem to be getting every year or so.

But it doesn’t.

Instead, it provides a handful or so of areas with protection against only 10-year floods.  And, frankly, spending multi-millions of dollars on multi-year bonded debt merely for 10-year flood protection is, in a word, “irresponsible.”  And if that word’s not enough for you, try “wasteful.”  Or “stupid.”

Unfortunately, access to OPM often inspires ideas that fit those descriptions.

And for people with flooding problems, the only questions seem to be: “Why not?” and “How soon?”

Certain folks around The Horseshoe at 505 Butler Place have indicated their concern about spending that much money for what looks to be very little relief for a relatively few people.  City staff promptly held its collective finger to the wind and then suggested that the City hire another engineering firm to “validate” the Burke report.  Or, failing that, hire another engineering firm to provide a “second opinion” of the Burke report.  Or simply decide to move forward on the Burke recommendations, costs be damned.

Fortunately for City taxpayers, this mayor and these aldermen – unlike so many of their predecessors – seem to understand that difficult problems needing expensive solutions require serious thought and sound judgment.  That’s why we hold out hope that they won’t let themselves get stampeded by the folks who want to blow millions of tax dollars on half-baked flood control measures of dubious value.

Which includes any 10-year flood solution, for starters.

As best as we can figure it, the only ways to achieve meaningful flood control are to: (a) pump the water out of Park Ridge; or (b) safely store it in Park Ridge – what is commonly called “detention.”

Pumping it out of Park Ridge, however, requires a cooperative receiver of that water.  And from what we’ve seen over the years, when flooding hits this area there seems to be a decided shortage of neighboring areas pleading: “Send us your run-off, your back-up, your stagnant ponding yearning to flow free.”

To the contrary, in almost every such situation the widespread suspicion among Park Ridge flooding victims is that somebody – the IEPA, the MWRD, the Army Corp of Engineers, or Satan himself – is actively preventing the evacuation of water from Park Ridge by every avenue.

That leaves detention as the most dependable way for Park Ridge to independently manage its flood water.

Under the Burke flood control program, two of the three main projects involve storm water detention: at Northwest Park and at the Park Ridge Country Club.  And it might be part of the Mayfield Estates project, although that would require the City to acquire and demolish as many as 8 of the 23-homes in that neighborhood, at a cost of several million dollars.

Residents living west of the Park Ridge Country Club want the City to build a detention area on Country Club property.  But that would cost at least $23 million and would only address 10-year floods for approximately 165 residences.  Adding the splitting of sanitary and storm sewers to the Country Club detention area would benefit 680 properties, but would drive that cost up to almost $49 million and still protect against only 10-year floods.

That kind of money for merely 10-year flood protection should be considered D.O.A. by the Council…unless the residents of those affected areas would be willing to turn them into Special Service Areas (“SSA”s) that would be separately taxed to cover the cost of what appear to be expensive and incomplete solutions to localized flooding problems.

For those 165 properties west of the Country Club, 10-year flood protection would cost them around $140,000 each, while the amped-up $49 million project for 680 properties would cost a relatively bargain-basement $72,000 per property.  That’s without debt service costs, of course.

We’re not sure of all the legal wrangling required to get these SSA referenda on an election ballot, but there’s no way all the details can be worked out and the language finalized before the filing deadline for putting them on this March’s primary ballot election.  But there should be plenty of time to get that done between now and the filing deadline for next November’s general election.

Expect to hear a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by the folks in those proposed SSAs if the Council starts moving in that direction.  Expect to hear “Why not?” and “How soon?” replaced by: “We pay taxes so why should we have to pay extra to keep our basements dry?”

That’s the kind of changed tune you get when OPM becomes YOM:

“Your Own Money.”

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Listening to the recent debates about amending the Park Ridge sign code to permit electronic message boards (“EMB”s), the chorus of a well-known R.E.M. song kept running through our mind: “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

To hear the anti-EMB folks tell it, EMBs are the devil’s tool that will turn quaint Park Ridge into a vulgar Rosemont, increase traffic accidents by distracted drivers, otherwise cause various forms of lesser mischief that erode the “character” of Park Ridge, and may even cause the heartbreak of psoriasis.   The pro-EMB folks, on the other hand, suggest that prohibitions and even significant restrictions on EMBs put local businesses at some form of competitive disadvantage and reinforce the perception of Park Ridge as “unfriendly to business.”

We like the “character” of Park Ridge, and we get the sense we’re not alone in that.  But what exactly is the “character” of Park Ridge, and how will EMBs ruin it?  And if Park Ridge is so “unfriendly” to business, explain Whole Foods and Mariano’s both opening stores here within a six month stretch?

The City’s Sign Task Force had recommended that EMBs be permitted, albeit with a number of restrictions.  That recommendation, however, was over-ruled by the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission at its September 24, 2013 meeting.  At a special meeting on November 19, 2013, and at another one this past Tuesday (12.03.13) night, the City Council entertained public debate on whether EMBs should be banned completely, per the P&Z recommendation.

As best as we can tell from Tuesday’s meeting, EMBs won’t be coming to Park Ridge anytime soon for a very practical reason: there appears to be no good way to permit EMBs with limitations that satisfactorily balances the competing rights and interests of the pro- and anti- factions without subjecting the City to an increased risk of litigation.

City Attorney Everette M. “Buzz” Hill, Jr., in a memorandum, identified a number of legal issues that appear to be irreconcilable – in light of the competing interests and agendas – other than by either a blanket permission or a blanket prohibition.  Many of Hill’s observations echo those articulated by the executive director of the Illinois Sign Association in his letter of August 15, 2013.

Frankly, while we don’t have any strong desire to see EMBs in Park Ridge, we believe that EMBs can be permitted in ways that would be constitutional and yet not be the end of Park Ridge’s “character” as we know it.  Just like allowing and even liberalizing alcohol sales, or eliminating City subsidies to private community groups, haven’t been the end of that “character,” either, despite dire warnings from opponents of those two decisions that they would.  We agree with Alds. Milissis and Knight that EMBs are a significant-enough and growing issue that the City must find ways to accommodate them if at all possible.

That leads us to the real point of this post: what appears to be a lack of efficient management of the time and resources of the City’s committees, commissions and task forces – and, ultimately, of the Council itself.

As best as we can tell, neither the Sign Task Force nor P&Z had the benefit of the analysis and opinions contained in Hill’s memorandum; and the Sign Task Force did not have the Illinois Sign Association’s letter.  That would have put both those bodies at a significant disadvantage in undertaking their tasks relative to EMBs.  It also causes us to wonder whether both bodies’ efforts and outcomes re the EMBs would have been different – or at least less time-consuming – had they had those legal opinions and insights from the beginning.

The members of the Sign Task force and P&Z – like the members of all other City citizens’ committees, commissions and task forces – are volunteers who perform valuable services to the community without compensation.  Similarly, the mayor and the aldermen provide an extraordinary amount of service and undertake substantial responsibility for nominal compensation.

But when a significant portion of the time and effort devoted to a particular task – in this case, to EMBs – by these officials may have been wasted because they lacked significant information that could have been obtained at the beginning of the process rather than at the later stages, we have to wonder why it wasn’t.

For this committee-commission-task force process to work, everybody has to operate at a high level.  It should be City staff’s responsibility to procure and provide those volunteers with the kinds of legal opinions, industry insights, and reasonable foundation of relevant data sufficient to inform those volunteers about the matters they will be addressing.  Otherwise we end up with the classic GIGO situation.

And the Council ends up having to re-invent the wheel.

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Since we started this blog way back in 2004, we have assiduously focused our attention on those units of local government serving the Park Ridge community.  Frankly, that has been more than enough of a challenge for our modest abilities and limited time.

But we are making a notable exception today, in advance of what we expect will be the Illinois General Assembly’s passage of a 327-page pension “reform” bill, the final text of which was circulated less than 24 hours ago to the state senators and representatives who will be voting on it later today.

Having read about, observed and even met a number of the current seat-fillers down in Springfield over the past several years, we suspect most of them would be challenged simply to read that bill in its entirety before today’s vote is held.  But to understand it well enough to meaningfully vote on it?  At least another week, but only if they had the assistance of competent legal counsel.

This being Illinois, however, we fully expect the bill to pass before sunset.

The last time Illinois public pension policy was “reformed” was forty-plus years ago, when a majority of the Illinois Constitutional Convention (“Con Con”) delegates included a provision in the state’s new constitution that guaranteed the promise of public pensions as creating “an enforceable contractual relationship” that “shall not be diminished or impaired.”

Whether and to what extent this new 327-page “reform” bill can pass that 1970 constitutional guarantee, in whole or in part, is anybody’s guess.  So is whether it will come anywhere close to saving all the $160 billion its proponents are wildly claiming it will, even over the 30 years it’s supposed to take for those savings to accrue.

Frankly, we don’t have the time or the inclination to address everything that’s wrong with just the light-speed process by which this particular piece of legislation has advanced from its skeletal form the afternoon before a four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend to its full 327-page text less than 24 hours before the expected vote.  That process alone should be viewed by the taxpayers of this state as nothing short of the insulting slap in the face its proponents intended it to be.

But that assumes a fact not yet in evidence: that it’s still possible for Illinois taxpayers to perceive insults after three decades of living in serfdom under the thumb of Darth Madigan, dark lord of the Sith.

Those encouraging this legislative rush to judgment point to its “bi-partisan” support by Madigan, his Dark Side senate ally John Cullerton and fuzzy-thinking Ewoks like Christine Radogno and Jim Durkin – four of the five “leaders” who, along with former House Minority “leader” and fellow Ewok Tom Cross, have been at the legislative helm of our listing ship of state while two of our last three governors (one from each party, furthering the “bi-partisan” theme) have been imprisoned and Illinois’ finances have sunk to a notch or so above insolvency.

Trusting such an inept crowd to successfully reform our state’s absurd pension system is like trusting a cardiac surgical team with a history of chronic malpractice to get its next quadruple bypass right.  It’s as if “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” were Einstein’s definition of sanity.

Given how crucial true pension reform is to Illinois’ future, and how complex the problems presented by it are, serious debate and deliberation on a legitimate reform bill should easily take at least a few weeks, not merely a few hours.  But with the editorial boards of both Chicago daily newspapers and a host of other cheerleaders wildly clapping and stamping their feet for speedy passage, “serious” anything is too much to ask.

To paraphrase “Senator Padme Amidala” in “Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones”: “So this is how pension reform dies… with thunderous applause.”

But on the bright side, the Illinois General Assembly makes the workings of the Park Ridge City Council, even on its worst days (and nights), seem like a beacon of light in the abyss of Illinois government.

UPDATE (12.04.13)  We wish we could claim a special gift for correctly predicting that the 327-page pension “reform” bill would pass by sunset yesterday, less than 24 hours after its final language was first circulated.  Shooting fish in a barrel with a 12 gauge, however, would have been more challenging.

Not that conclusive proof will ever be available, but we suspect that 90% or more of the public officials in Springfield who voted for the bill yesterday hadn’t even read it.  Sadly, that makes them no different from our legislators in Washington, most of whom appear to rely on staffers – or, more likely, highly-paid special interest lobbyists – to tell them what a bill says and why they should, or should not, vote for it.

That’s what we now have in this country: a government of the politicians, by the bureaucrats, for the special interests.  Or is it a government of the bureaucrats, by the politicians, for the special interests?

All we know is that the taxpayers are never one of those special interests.

Will this pension “reform” bill really save the taxpayers of this state $160 billion by 2044?  Of course not.  Only small children and idiots would believe projections like that – which are almost always wrong, and usually very wrong.  Plus, there are so many variables involved that ascertaining and analyzing cause and effect (or finding fault and placing blame) becomes exponentially more difficult with every passing year.

That’s not even taking into consideration the strong possibility that certain portions of the bill – the ones that might actually be good for Illinois taxpayers, naturally – could be declared unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court, yet “severable” from the rest of the bill rather than invalidating the whole bill.  So taxpayers could end up being stuck with all the costly “bad” parts of the bill and none of the really cost-saving “good” ones.

That’s what we assume the public employee unions are counting on, and their friends in the General Assembly (including Madigan, Cullerton and other union tools) are hoping for.  Given the way this bill was handled and the fly-speck level of integrity possessed by its major proponents down in Springfield, we wouldn’t be surprised if some of those “anti”-employee provisions were actually drafted to make them easier for the Supreme Court to pitch.

Not surprisingly, not one of the officials who voted for this bill yesterday can be expected to still be holding a seat in the General Assembly when the final results of this bill are tallied up 30 years from now.  And a substantial portion of today’s voters will be worm food by then, too – unable to say to Sen. Dan Kotowski or Rep. Marty Moylan: “You donkeys…we told you this wouldn’t work.”

Assuming Danny K and Marty M are still on the right side of the grass themselves by then.

It’s a lot like the Uptown TIF, for which proponents were projecting $20 million-plus of net revenue by the end of its 23-year term.  Now, only 10 years after it was passed and the City locked itself into tens of millions of dollars of bonded debt, not one of the elected officials responsible for passing it remains in City Hall and accountable to the taxpayers for the major economic drain it has become, or for the $20 million-plus of net deficits now being projected for it. 

Meanwhile, former mayor and TIF architect Ron Wietecha resigned his office and moved to Barrington before the TIF was even passed.  And former mayors Mike Marous and Howard Frimark, along with all those City Council members who supported the TIF project’s multi-millions of dollars of debt and subsidies to the developers, remain out of sight anytime their red-haired stepchild is publicly discussed.

That’s the inherent problem with plans based on multi-decade projections of dubious merit, using assumptions that no sane individuals would make, even when blind drunk and playing Mississippi Stud at Rivers Casino on a Tuesday night.  That’s also why even a corrupt, communistic, economically doomed governmental system like the one employed by the former Soviet Union rarely extended its projections beyond five years, thereby giving it a constant series of “five-year plans.”

But our geniuses in Springfield used a 30-year projection for this pension “reform” bill because they needed a 30-year timeline to make the math work for all their made-up numbers.

Already the “victorious” legislators, their sycophants, apologists, and what masquerades as a keen-eyed, vigorous press are proclaiming pension peace for our time.  If you could dress them all in dark Chesterfield overcoats, umbrellas in one hand and waving copies of the bill over their heads with their other hand, you might think Neville Chamberlain had risen from the dead and been multiply cloned – and totally clowned.

But at least Great Britain had a Winston Churchill standing in the wings to salvage Chamberlain’s folly.

All we’ve got are the likes of Sen. Kwame Raoul (D. Chicago) who, when urging a “Yes” vote, limply warned: “We cannot continue to be the embarrassment of the nation.”

Way too late for that, Kwame.

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Over a year and one-half ago the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force (the “PCATF”), in an obvious attempt to stampede the then-City Council into approving a $1 million-plus three-phase police station “improvement” project, issued a 75-page PowerPoint presentation – titled “Cost Effective Strategies to Address Risk Factors at the Police Facility.”

That presentation described the police station as an unhealthy and unsafe facility buried in the basement of City Hall.  And mold was portrayed as the most demonstrable of those health and safety problems – so hazardous that a discussion of it comprised Pages 33 through 38 of the presentation.

Yet remediation of that mold problem was put off until the final year of the proposed three-year improvement program, even though Chief Frank Kaminski publicly acknowledged the possibility that the Council could choose not to fund the second and/or third years of the program.

Guess what?

At its November 25 COW meeting, the City Council voted to postpone the $389,500 Phase II of the project for budgetary reasons.  That postponement helps the City hold its property tax levy increase to 2.2%.

And guess what else?

According to an article in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“City Council postpones Park Ridge police station improvements,” 11.29.13), in response to Mayor Dave Schmidt’s recent request that City Staff re-assess the air quality of the police station and formulate a cost-effective proposal for addressing the mold problem, Chief K said that problem might be remedied by hiring a cleaning company to clean the cop shop at least twice a year.

Golly, who would have figured that this hazardous mold problem that supposedly needed more than one-half million dollars of preliminary work – via the first two phases of the three-year project – before it could be addressed can now be remedied after just one phase by…wait for it…cleaning?  Okay, cleaning at least twice a year.

Why wasn’t  “cleaning” – even four times a year – the FIRST solution that occurred to Chief K and the PCATF?  Could it be that mold was just the most convenient scare tactic available to people who cared more about the ends – one million dollars-plus of non-essential wants rather than needs – than about the honesty and transparency of the means?

We sure hope not.  But we find it hard to believe that Chief K and the PCATF members could be so clueless.

Ald. Nick Milissis (2nd) proposed the postponement, suggesting that Phases II and III of the cop shop project might be reconsidered after the City decides whether and when it will sell two City-owned buildings: the old public works garage at Greenwood and Elm, and the Fire Dept. house/office next to the Devon Avenue fire house.  That’s the kind of fiscally-sound thinking the taxpayers need to see more of from aldermen other than Milissis and Ald. Dan Knight (5th).

Our concern, however, is that now that sale of those two properties has been identified as a possible source of revenue for Phases II and III of the cop shop project, there will be a new single-minded push to get those properties sold without any thought given to the City’s future property needs.  According to the H-A article, Chief K already is talking about selling the old public works building “as soon as we can”; and a property needs analysis is underway, with completion scheduled for February-March 2014.

That raises our suspicions even further.  Hopefully, this Council won’t allow itself to be sold the same lame bill of goods that so easily bamboozled a majority of the previous Council back in 2012.

Ronald Reagan is known for his “trust, but verify” admonition.  When it comes to anything involving the Park Ridge police station, however, the Council should drop the “trust” part and just go with “verify.”

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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.

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Fifty years ago today this country lost the promise of a limitless future.

It wasn’t really limitless, of course.  As Einstein taught us, the only two things that are limitless (his term was “infinite”) are the universe and human stupidity.  But to people of a certain age, attitude and experience back in 1963, if felt limitless…and exhilarating!

President John F. Kennedy – “JFK” – wasn’t a great president.  No president can become “great” in less than three years on the job.  Even the few true “greats” (with the exception of Lincoln) needed at least two full terms.

And JFK had enough political failures (the Bay of Pigs fiasco), misadventures (his foray into Vietnam) and trepidations (his wariness on civil rights) to, arguably, disqualify him even from consideration as one of the “greats” – notwithstanding his deft/brilliant statesmanship in defusing the Cuban missile crisis that effectively pulled the whole world back from the brink of nuclear war.

But he had a gift for inspiration no subsequent president has been able to match…marked by an amazing combination of wit, charm, intelligence and style not seen in any politician since.

In just his inaugural address alone, he opened minds, galavanized wills and touched hearts in speaking of “[t]he torch [that] has been passed to a new generation of Americans” willing to “pay any price, bear any burden” to spark a fire of freedom, the glow from which could “truly light the world.”

But the exhortation in that inaugural address that defined JFK’s presidency and the public spiritedness it inspired were the immortal words:

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

On this 50th anniversary of his tragic assassination, we here in Park Ridge – not unlike all Americans – should ask ourselves why we have we not had leaders with JFK’s ability to inspire us toward pursuit of the common good rather than toward the pursuit of individual, private advantage?  Sadly, the answer probably lies less in the quality of our leaders than in the quality of those of us who elect them.

On a local level, until we once again think more about what we can do for our community than what our community can do for us – and what private advantages we can gain at others’ expense – we have no hope of recapturing the spirit, the optimism and the vision JFK inspired.

And until we can put aside all those foolish partisan, social, racial and other divisions and embrace the spirit of his admonition “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer,” government and politics on every level will remain mired in the unproductive, zero-sum games that have come to predominate.

We need more givers and contributors, less takers and users.  We need more focus on the common values and experiences that unite us rather than on the forces that divide us.  And we need to be idealists, but without illusions – as Kennedy once described himself.

JFK’s presidency embodied a spirit of unity and confidence that could nurture credible prospects of an ever-brightening future.  Whether that spirit can be recaptured 50 years later is an open question that many politicians and special interests already have answered: “No.”

But we owe a duty to ourselves and our posterity to try.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

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We here at PublicWatchdog are committed to public education.  In fact, that’s the principal reason we barbecue the local school boards, administrations and teachers when it looks like our children aren’t getting the quality of education they deserve – and the taxpayers aren’t getting the quality of education they’re paying for.

But today we’re going to take a slightly different tack and turn up the heat a bit on parents as well as the school board and the administrators.  Or, more specifically, on those certain parents of Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 students who reportedly are “boycotting” the District by refusing to pay the fees assessed for things like textbooks, supplies, technology and activities – according to a recent story in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate by education reporter Natasha Wasinski (“District 64 parents boycotting school fees, PTA president says,” Nov. 3)

“Boycotting” actually may be a misnomer.  That term suggests the parents are keeping their kids out of, the D-64 schools.  Instead, these parents are sending their kids to school and availing themselves and their children of the textbooks and other accoutrements for which they’ve been charged an average of approximately $260 per student, but without paying for them.

In other words, these “boycotters” are really deadbeats.

Or scofflaws.  Or mooches.  Or parasites.

As reported in the H-A article, as of October 17th the fees for approximately 525 students remained unpaid, for a total of $121,037.  And D-64 is owed another $94,000 for previous years of non-payments.  That’s a total of $215,000+ that should be in D-64’s coffers but is still sitting in the pockets of parents.

In fairness to those parents, many of them claim that their refusal to pay is because the District isn’t giving them an itemized list of the specific items for which they are being charged.  That’s an eminently reasonable request.  Apparently the fee notices sent to the parents do not such provide detail, and it’s also not available on the District’s website.

C’mon, D-64!  What the heck is wrong with you?  How tough can it be to give people an itemized bill for what you’re charging them?

Whether it’s arrogance or stupidity, the idea of charging people a couple hundred bucks without providing chapter and verse of what that covers is unacceptable.  But so is letting the inmates run the asylum by allowing kids to attend school for months, or even years, after the payment of these fees was due.  D-64 may owe the parents an itemized bill, but it also owes the taxpayers diligence in collecting the fees owed.

If that involves denying attendance to the kids of the deadbeats, so be it.  And if that can’t be legally done, and each debt has to be sent to collection instead, so be that, too.

We applaud the approach of resident and parent George Korovilas who, while warning that he won’t pay the fees next year if itemization is not provided, has paid the fees for his three children this year.  Hopefully he won’t have to make good on his warning a year from now.

On the other hand, we question attitudes and comments like the one of resident and parent Max Fadin, who is quoted in the H-A story as finding it “suspicious” that somebody paying $20,000 in taxes also has to pay $1,000 in fees.

First of all, anybody who is paying $20,000 in taxes to D-64 would be paying total property taxes of around $60,000 annually.  We are unaware of even one Park Ridge residence that is taxed that high, so we have to assume that Mr. Fadin is talking about someone whose total property tax bill is $20,000 annually – meaning that about $7,000 of taxes goes to D-64.

A parent paying $1,000 in fees presumably has 4 children in D-64.  Those 4 children are getting around $52,000 worth of education a year for $8,000: $7,000 of taxes and $1,000 of fees.  So that parent is effectively picking the taxpayers’ pockets for $44,000 a year in subsidies.

Taking $44,000 in subsidies AND at the same time stiffing the District for $1,000 in fees is just plain wrong.

And calling it a “boycott” doesn’t make it anything close to right.

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Do the people running the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 schools understand that they may not be getting the job done?

Judging solely by the article in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“District 64 Responds To ISAT,” 11.06.13), the answer to that question appears to be a resounding “No!”  According to Lori Hinton, D-64’s Assistant Supt. for Student Learning, D-64’s student performance “remains strong, with a majority of students meeting or exceeding standards over the past seven years.”

Bragging about a majority of Park Ridge students “meeting or exceeding [state] standards” is like bragging about a majority of Park Ridge residents not going to bed hungry every night.  It’s damning with the faintest of praise.

Reading the Journal article might also have taxpayers feeling like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into an “Alice in Wonderland”-like world of edu-babble that makes the honest simplicity of Humpty Dumpty’s “a word…means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less” refreshingly direct.  Once we get past all the acronyms (“NCLB,” “AYP,” “PARCC,” “MAP”) that seem to serve primarily to bamboozle readers into thinking D-64 is doing great, we’re still left with the fact that not even one D-64 grammar or middle school was ranked in the Top 50 in either category.

Meanwhile, other districts, many of which compete with Park Ridge for residents, are placing one or more schools on those lists.

Hey, D-64!  Are you telling us that the schools in places like Elmhurst, Deerfield, Glenview, Northbrook, River Forest, Wilmette and Western Springs whose kids consistently outperform ours on the ISATs are educationally inferior to D-64 schools?  Are you saying that those other districts are irresponsibly “teaching to the test” rather than actually educating their kids?  Or do you just want us to believe that ISAT scores and rankings are irrelevant?

We don’t expect to hear D-64 administrators answer those questions.  They never answer questions about D-64 test scores versus those of other districts.  But the answers should be pretty obvious.

So what’s the number one way Park Ridge taxpayers can change D-64’s chronic acceptance of mediocrity and improve the quality of education it’s delivering for all the money the taxpayers are pouring into it?

Improve the quality of the D-64 School Board.

Those 7 people are the ones who are supposed to be telling all our highly-paid administrators what the taxpayers deserve for their $70 million a year, and then demanding that we get it.  And those 7 people are all that stand between our wallets and the special interests that seem to have succeeded in hi-jacking the system for their own personal benefits.

Public education has five principal constituencies, three of which are clearly “special interests.”

The first “special interest” is the parents of the students.  They generally want no expense spared to get what they believe to be the best possible education for their kids OPM (“Other People’s Money”) can buy.  For the typical D-64 student, his/her parents pay around $4,000/year in property taxes to D-64 in order to get an education worth $13,000+.  That’s a $9,000 “profit.”  And because raising the cost of that education by another $1,000 per kid adds just pennies to the tax bill of those D-64 parents, they can be counted on to vote for whatever tax increases come down the pike.

The second “special interest” is the teachers – the only self-proclaimed “professionals” we know of who not only have a captive market for their services but also receive collectively bargained-for, non-merit based wages and constitutionally-guaranteed, defined benefit pensions.  They, too, pay only pennies in extra taxes (assuming they even live in the District) for every $1,000 of extra pay or benefits they receive, which is why they, too, support increasing property taxes every chance they get without regard to student performance.

The third “special interest” are the administrators.  The vast majority of them are former teachers, only with bigger paychecks and without any further obligation to pay union dues.  But their pay raises customarily reflect the pay hike percentages received by the unionized teachers – so they have no incentive to bargain aggressively with the teachers union because they, too, trade pennies for dollars.  And their pay, like that of the teaches, is almost never tied to performance.

The only two public education constituencies that are not “special interests” are the taxpayers and the students.

The taxpayers foot virtually the entire educational bill for their community, irrespective of whether or not they have kids who use those schools.  If the taxpayers are lucky, the schools do a good enough job that the taxpayers’ property values remain stable or increase, thereby turning their tax expense into a kind of capital investment.

The kids, of course, are the intended beneficiaries of public education; and, at least in theory, the community as a whole benefits from their education.  If the education is good, they presumably will succeed and prosper.  If it isn’t, they’ll be the victims.

School Board members are elected to represent the community’s values, standards, aspirations and vision on the local schools – and to give taxpayers full and fair value for their tax dollars.  Unfortunately, Board members historically have served as rubber-stamp enablers of school administrators, who themselves have been little more than rubber stamp enablers of the Park Ridge Education Association (“PREA”), a/k/a the teachers union.

The result has been consistent increases in non-merit based compensation – “step” (based on nothing more than longevity) and “lane” (based on progress towards graduate degrees that may or may not have any value in producing better teachers) – with no commensurate increases in student academic achievement.  That’s because “step” and “lane” increases provide no real incentives for actual teacher or administrator achievement.

Performance-based incentives, however, are not something the PREA or its puppet administrators endorse.  And that one of the main reasons our School Board members should be demanding them, not just for the taxpayers but for the students whose futures often depend on the quality of the education they receive.

This isn’t meant as an “attack” on parents, teachers or administrators.  But it is an attempt to inject a much-needed reality check into the public perception of our educational system that has been consciously and even brazenly manipulated by public relations specialists bought and paid for by the “educational establishment”: the teachers unions, the Illinois Association of School Administrators,  the Illinois Association of School Boards, etc.

That’s why we need D-64 Board members who are smart enough not to get bamboozled by the sophistry and edu-babble that the “professional educators” and their advocates regularly spout, especially when they are challenged with common sense questions.  And we need Board members tough enough not to be intimidated whenever those “special interests” – the parents and the PREA members – show up at meetings en masse, the latter usually when their new contract is being discussed and voted on.

We’ve previously praised Board president Tony Borrelli for finally bringing some common sense and backbone to the Board.  In just two years he has shown more concern for the taxpayers and for the students than every one of his predecessors over the past 20 years.  We need more Board members like him.  And we still hold out hope that Dathan Paterno will turn into the candidate we endorsed in our 04.03.13 post.

The rest of the Board?  A bunch of pleasant, arguably well-intentioned bobble-heads whose next tough question to a D-64 administrator will be their first.

When was the last time you heard any D-64 Board member tell this or any previous superintendent, on the record in a public meeting, that the academic performance of our schools is not acceptable?  When was the last time you heard a D-64 Board member tell the superintendent, on the record in a public meeting: “I want at least 1 of our 7 schools to be ranked in next year’s Top 50 for achievement, and at least 1 more in the Top 100”?  Or even: “Next year I want an overall 5% improvement in our students’ test score performance”?

We scoured the Internet and Googled ourselves silly without finding even a hint that such comments or demands have ever been made.  Truth be told, Board members haven’t held administrators and teachers accountable because WE, the taxpayers, haven’t held those Board members accountable.

We, the taxpayers, too readily accept the same teacher/administrator propaganda our School Board members accept, such as that D-64 students “continue to earn competitive scores on standardized assessments and demonstrate exceptional achievement in all curricular areas through our Educational Ends framework” (per Lori Hinton) – without pointedly inquiring: “Competitive scores” compared to whom?  “Exceptional achievement” as measured by what standard?

As a result, we keep getting the same old, same old…year after year after year.  The only changes tend to be the occasional new face in the superintendent’s or some other administrator’s chair, and a new program or initiative that promises major improvements until it proves to be as ineffective as the last one.  And the continuing increases in the property taxes that pay for it.

At least Cub fans can delude themselves with the 100-year old slogan: “Wait ‘til next year.”

D-64 doesn’t even have that.

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Once again this year, approximately 100 volunteers from an assortment of Park Ridge organizations have ensured that the City’s Uptown area will be lit up for the holidays.

This past Saturday members of the Park Ridge Indian Scouts/Indian Princesses, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Pistols Girls Softball program, and their parents – fueled by food provided by All on the Road Catering, Applauz Catering, D’Agostino’s Pizza, Houlihan’s, Jersey Mike’s Subs, Lisa’s Italian Ice and Noodles & Co., and using lights provided by an anonymous donor  – decorated the trees throughout the Uptown business district.

Prior to 2009, the City would spend thousands of dollars each year to hire private companies to decorate the trees.  But Mayor Dave Schmidt and the City Council decided that those costs could not be justified when the City was in the midst of cutting other expenses in order to reduce annual $1 million-plus deficits, much of which were caused by the disastrous Uptown TIF financing.

That’s when the private citizens stepped up to the plate, creating the Holiday Lights Coalition

The Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, however, is reporting that the lights aren’t quite as numerous or as bright as in past years– because the volunteers did not have access to a bucket lift to string the higher branches of the larger trees.

That’s a shame.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There’s got to be somebody with ties to Park Ridge who has access to a bucket lift and who can donate a few hours of its use this Saturday or Sunday.  How about the AT&T folks, who are in the process of polluting our parkways with their U-verse cable boxes?  The cost of providing a bucket lift for several hours this weekend shouldn’t cause even a fraction of a penny drop in the dividends AT&T will be paying its shareholders.

But if no such donation is forthcoming, why don’t the Uptown merchants and the Chamber of Commerce chip in to cover the cost?  After all, it’s those merchants who are the principal beneficiaries of a bright and inviting shopping and dining area.

Volunteers with no financial stake in the matter have marched the lighting effort 95 yards down the field.  Now it’s time for one more private donor, or the Chamber and the Uptown merchants, to take the ball and punch it over the goal line.

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