To people with a monomaniacal “security” mindset, the surveillance described in George Orwell’s “1984” often tends to be viewed as little more than a good start.  

So we’re not surprised that those security-obsessed folks on the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force wasted no time in coming up with knee-jerk preliminary support of the Union Pacific Rail Road’s proposal for a camera at the UP’s Greenwood Avenue crossing. 

Hopefully you’ll forgive us our first thought upon hearing of the “Crossing Cam” proposal: that the UP wants this camera added – at the City’s expense, of course – as a first step in a grand plan by the UP to have local governments implement system-wide camera surveillance to help the UP reduce its own legal liability for train accidents at all its “grade level” crossings.

On the flip side, the Park Ridge Police Dept. appears to be selling this as both a safety measure and a revenue raiser.  Officer Laura Kappler’s dog-and-pony show dangled the prospect of $92,000 per month in net revenue to the City if Crossing Cam generates 13 tickets a day – which she suggested is likely, based on a recent test which allegedly filmed 13 violations in just 3 hours. 

Kappler admitted that there is no record of a train accident at the Greenwood crossing, although there have been some car-on-car collisions when boneheaded drivers stop on the tracks and then have to take evasive action in response to approaching choo choos.

Mayor Dave Schmidt, after a little back-of-the-envelope ciphering, noted that 20,000 vehicles per day crossing the tracks at Greenwood over the past 15 years equals 110 million vehicle crossings with no accident.  He asked the obvious question that, nevertheless, apparently had eluded both the Police Dept. and those Chief’s Advisory Task Force-ers: “What problem are we addressing?”

Security, Mr. Mayor!  Or is it revenue?

Both Alds. Jim Smith (3rd) and Sal Raspanti (4th) also challenged the need for Crossing Cam. 

Smith  noted, in response to Police Chief Frank Kaminski’s comment that it would protect the school buses that cross the tracks there, that it’s S.O.P. (and maybe even state law?) that buses come to a complete stop before crossing railroad tracks, and not proceed until it’s safe to do so.  And Raspanti reported that all the resident response to Crossing Cam he has received has been negative.

For the time being, Crossing Cam has gone back to the Chief’s Task Force for “vetting.”  We expect that process will be a lot like vetting the Cookie Monster about Oreos.

We’re all for the City coming up with ways to raise needed revenue – but only after thorough vetting of those processes and only in conjunction with controlling expenses.  If the Chief’s Task Force wants to approve Crossing Cam solely as a revenue raiser and the Council wants to go along with it for that reason, however, then just say so – loudly and publicly, so that there’s no mistaking what this latest Big Brother initiative is about.

And  while you’re at it, guys, why not throw some cameras at the Prospect, Dee Road and Oakton crossings, too. 

We’re not aware of any train accidents there, either, but why leave those potential revenues on the table?

UPDATE:  A happy 269th birthday to Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.  Anybody think TJ would be a fan of Crossing Cam? 

To read or post comments, click on title.

If you’ve been conscious and even marginally lucid for the past several years, you should realize by now that decades of an unholy alliance between public employee unions and the State of Illinois’ mostly Democratic politicians (but don’t forget Republican governors “Big Jim” Thompson and George “Crook” Ryan) has saddled us with high public sector labor costs and crushing pension obligations.

But last night at Park Ridge City Hall, City Mgr. Jim Hock once again trotted out his Council Policy No. 8, which seems expressly designed to enhance the bargaining position of the City’s unionized employees, to give Hock and City staffers more authority over negotiations, and to tie the hands of the Council with even more secrecy about those negotiations.

Fortunately, six members of the City Council told Hock to pound sand, while only one alderman voted for Hock’s ridiculous policy: Tom Bernick (6th), who tried his shameless best to wheedle even one solid reason to support that policy out of the City’s outside labor attorney, Bob Smith, by punctuating his questions with the disclaimer: “I’m not a labor attorney.”

We know that, Little Tommy.  You’re a “businessman,” as you keep reminding us every time you cast another one of your un-businesslike votes to spend money the City doesn’t have.

It appears Hock came up with Policy No. 8 as a diversion in response to Mayor Dave Schmidt’s scathing criticism of the firefighters negotiating “Ground Rules” that Fire Chief Mike Zywanski boneheaded-ly proposed last year without even consulting the mayor or the Council – and then took two weeks to summon up enough integrity to actually admit he did so.  That seems to have been the motivation behind Ald. Rich DiPietro’s (2nd) pointed comment to Hock that no “ground rules” will be adopted by any negotiating team without Council approval. 

Exactly!

A few other important points about labor negotiations were made last night, thanks to questions by Schmidt, that should start to level the playing field for the taxpayers in connection with the upcoming union negotiations.

The first is Attorney Smith’s acknowledgment that the City can publicly ask the various employee unions to conduct negotiations in “open” sessions which the public and press can attend and report about.  Of course, we don’t expect the unions to agree: the last thing they want is public scrutiny of their negotiating demands and tactics.

Which leads us to the second important point raised by Schmidt in a question to Attorney Smith: in the absence of any restrictive guidelines (like those proposed last year by Chief Z) or policies (like Policy No. 8 proposed by Hock), the City can report the details of the negotiations – including the various demands and offers by both sides – to the taxpayers, so long as it is done in a “neutral” fashion.

Excellent!

Now all we need is for the Council to insist that the members of the City’s negotiating team(s) truthfully and accurately report those negotiation details so that the Council and the taxpayers are properly informed on a timely basis.  Given past performance by certain members of City staff, however, that may pose a problem all its own.  

But at least the tide finally appears to be turning a bit in favor of transparency for the people who pay for City government.

To read or post comments, click on title.

The good news about what happened at City Hall Monday night is that the City Council approved a FY 2012-13 budget that is projected to produce – if performance matches projection – what appears to be the largest surplus in the General Fund (the City’s main operating account) in more than a decade: approx. $450,000.

This watershed result can be attributed to the almost Herculean efforts of City Finance Director Allison Stutts and first-year Council Finance & Budget chair Ald. Dan Knight (5th), along with the fiscally-responsible leadership of Mayor Dave Schmidt and some fiscally-responsible followership by some of the new aldermen who, after only one year in office, already seem to “get” the budget process far better than any of their predecessors. 

What a difference a year makes!

Knight noted in his comments during the public hearing Monday night that, although the budget shows an overall deficit of approx. $4.37 million, virtually that entire deficit is the result of capital expenditures from individual funds (e.g., sewer, water, parking and library) in which substantial balances were accumulated over the years specifically for the purpose of financing such capital projects.  

But all that good news does not mean we’re out of the woods.  Not by a long shot.

As noted by Knight, the City posted a cumulative deficit of $10 million in 4 of the fiscal years since FY 2005-06 – during which time the City’s cash balance (in the General Fund) eroded by approximately $3.6 million, due to (a) past Councils’ refusal to hold down spending, or to increase taxes (and/or other revenues) to match those spending increases, and (b) the Uptown TIF’s continued cash-sucking underperformance.

In fact, the TIF is projected to suck another $773,000 out of the General Fund this coming year, effectively consuming that approx. $450,000 of operating surplus and draining an additional $310,000 in cash from the General Fund. 

That means that by FY 2012-13 year end, the General Fund cash balance will be approx. $2.74 million – or a mere one month of operating costs in reserve, compared to the City’s target of three months’ reserves.

Not surprisingly, Schmidt already has indicated he intends to veto some of the spending.  And with a little luck and the continued fortitude of Knight and at least two other aldermen, at least some of those vetoes might be sustained.

One of those vetoes will be the continued irresponsible handout of $49,500 to private corporation Center of Concern, which is such a “pet” charity of Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd) that he – along with Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st), Jim Smith (3rd) and Tom Bernick (6th) – decided all of us taxpayers should be contributing to it with our tax dollars.  Joining DiPietro in his CofC advocacy this time around was City Clerk Betty Henneman, who must have forgotten to preface her comments with the disclosure that she is one of many local political figures on the CofC Advisory Board.

We particularly enjoyed Henneman’s claim that CofC has come forward “every year” with “full reports” of the services they are providing and the residents to whom they are providing services; and her insistence that CofC “raise[s] money in every way they can think of.”

CofC’s “full reports” are a joke, as we discussed and demonstrated in our 05.16.11 post about CofC’s 2011 application for City funding, which didn’t provide any cost per service unit figures or any identification (even to the City administration) of the alleged 6,770 City residents who received CofC services.  And an even bigger joke is CofC’s meager “fundraising” efforts, which we also wrote about in that same post.

Unfortunately, Park Ridge has a number of private “community groups” which seem to prefer living on the public dole while using their “private” status to keep most details of their operations secret.  As Knight correctly pointed out Monday night: “When any 501(c)(3) hangs out its shingle, I think the last place they should be depending on getting funding from…is government.”

Exactly! 

And Knight also properly called out self-proclaimed “Libertarian” Ald. Smith for the incongruity of his branding the $49,500 for CofC as a “relatively small” amount of money while arguing that the General Fund needed the $14,000 the Council voted for the license-plate recognition camera the police department wanted. 

Meanwhile, Ald. Marty Maloney (7th) showed some flashes of the savvy that earned him our endorsement last April when he encouraged a comprehensive policy-based review of why the City gives money to certain community groups and not to others, noting that the only rationale seems to be “because we’ve always given money to these groups.”

No discussion of City Council business, however, would be complete without an anecdote or two about the Council’s self-appointed court jester, Bernick.  In response to comments about how human services are funded in the State of Michigan, Little Tommy called that state a “dump” and claimed he wouldn’t want to live in Indiana, either, despite both states’ better financial standing than Illinois’.   Oh, and neither of them have even one of their ex-governors ensconced in a federal Graybar Hotel.

Bernick also took a shot at Schmidt’s opposition to taxpayer funding of CofC when he questioned whether the mayor had personally contributed to CofC…before telling Schmidt not to answer when it was pointed out that such personal questions are out of order.

But by our scorecard Bernick got at least two votes “right” Monday night: his joining Knight and Maloney in a losing “no” vote on 2% pay increases for those non-union City employees who simply meet performance standards; and his winning “yes” vote – joining Knight, Sweeney and Smith – in favor of a remote water meter reading system that is supposed to address the loss of over $400,000 a year in water revenue. 

For Bernick, even just two “rights” in one night is an all-star performance.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Tonight the Park Ridge City Council is supposed to adopt a budget for FY 2012-13, which begins on May 1.

For those of you who just started paying attention to the City’s budgets, you might find the process a bit arcane and confusing.  But don’t feel bad about that.  Many/most of our elected officials over the past decade (or two?) appear not to have understood it, either, which is why the City’s finances are in an iron lung and looking to get worse as the $39.8 million Uptown TIF debt begins to suck even more money out of the General Fund, beginning in 2013-14.

Take Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd), for example.  He has been on the City Council since 1995 and has served as the Council’s Finance & Budget (“F&B”) chair as recently as last year.  He’s participated in, by our count, the creation and passage of 17 City budgets…and the property tax levies that help fund all those budgeted and unbudgeted expenditures.

And yet, when it comes to budgeting and levying taxes in an economically-sustainable manner, DiPietro talks, acts and votes like someone who is…well…clueless.

Which could explain why DiPietro consistently has voted for higher and higher expenditures without commensurate increases in revenues, causing an erosion in the General Fund balance to its current critical level.  Clueless would also explain why, as recently as last Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, DiPietro was arguing for including in tonight’s vote on the FY 2012-13 budget a vote on the property tax levy…for FY 2013-14.

Despite explanations from Finance & Budget Chair Ald. Dan Knight (5th) and City Finance Director Allison Stutts, we’re not sure DiPietro is any clearer on the concept that budgets and tax levies are passed separately.  Or that he already voted on the property tax levy for the 2012-13 budget being approved tonight…back in December.

But ignorance about this process apparently can’t stop DiPietro from trying to add a couple of budget amendments to jack up spending: a $49,500 handout for one for his personal favorite private corporation “community groups,” Center of Concern; and $19,445 for raises for salaried City employees, based on some as-yet undetermined standard for measuring whether particular employees are “achieving or surpassing expectations.”

And where does DiPietro propose that extra money come from?  He doesn’t.  He’s just expecting City Mgr. Jim Hock to come up with the $68,945 total, presumably in other cuts.

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Whether DiPietro can get the three additional votes he needs to pass these amendments remains to be seen.  We figure he can count on dependable spendthrift Ald. Tom “The Businessman” Bernick (6th), but whether he can pull two more votes may depend on how many Center of Concern supporters once again show up with their hands out to cajole and/or guilt the cash out of the Council.  

Meanwhile, the Council already is talking about increasing the City’s share of property taxes for FY 2013-14 by as much as an 11% – to be levied this coming December, Ald. DiPietro – and about a deceptively smaller tax increase combined with the institution of a separate charge for garbage collection.  Whatever form that increase takes, however, won’t even do anything to address the upcoming increase in Uptown TIF debt service costs.

Unfortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, DiPietro and Bernick seem to be either in denial or just unconcerned.  The question tonight will be: how many other aldermen share those same problems?

To read or post comments, click on title.

Tuesday’s post addressed a lack of candor by Park Ridge City Manager Jim Hock in connection with the City’s labor negotiations.  Hock’s efforts to keep “the public” in the dark about what our City officials are doing when it comes to employee compensation is, in or opinion, reprehensible.

But Hock is not alone in his apparent disdain for “the public” and it’s need – and right – to know how its government operates, and at what cost.

Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 makes City government look like transparency central when it comes to much of its activities.  And when it comes to the District’s negotiations with the teachers union known as the Park Ridge Educational Association (“PREA”), transparency is so lacking that – as we understand it – not even all School Board members are welcome at those teacher contract meetings. 

That’s because the PREA, with the spineless acquiescence of the School Board, foolishly built into the current teacher contract (signed in 2009) a provision requiring non-disclosure of negotiations information.  Chalk that up to the handiwork of Board president John Heyde and member Eric Uhlig, rubber stamped by the remainder of the board at that time.  

We’d like to be able to report exactly how the PREA negotiators and D-64 negotiators Heyde and member Pat Fioretto are conspiring to shake even more shekels out of D-64 taxpayers, but we can’t.  And neither the Illnois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) nor the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) are any real help in getting that information.

So as D-64’s ISAT scores stagnate in mediocrity, as Carpenter School continues to play musical principals, and as taxpayers try to figure out what they are getting for the tax dollars they pour into the District’s coffers, Heyde and Company play footsie with the teachers union.

And “the public” remains none the wiser.

To read or post comments, click on title.

As our regular readers will attest, we’ve got more than a few complaints about how City Mgr. Jim Hock is performing (or neglecting) his duties as the City’s highest-paid – by far – public official.

The subject of one of those complaints was on full display at last night’s City Council COW meeting, where the discussion of Hock’s revised draft “Council Policy Statement 8: Labor Negotiation Policy” provided a good measure of entertainment – if one’s idea of “entertainment” is having bamboo splinters jammed under one’s fingernails.  

Policy No. 8 is the latest iteration of what started out as Hock’s “Labor Negotiations Guidelines,” which he drafted in a manner so skewed toward keeping secret the terms of City union contract negotiations that it actually demanded that City Council “closed session discussions must remain confidential” [emphasis added] – even though such a confidentiality requirement would appear to violate the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”).

What Hock trotted out before the Council last night was a slightly toned-down version.  Instead of requiring that closed session discussions “must” remain confidential, the new version provides only that they “should” remain confidential.  But it does delete “the public” from those entitled to receive “timely and accurate information about the negotiations.”   

Which raises the question: Why is Hock so flippin’ concerned about keeping the City’s union negotiations secret – especially from “the public” – after years, if not decades, of the City never having any labor relations policy at all?

We suspect it has something to do with the upcoming (in May) union negotiations, especially given how much flak Hock and Fire Chief Mike Zywanski caught from Mayor Dave Schmidt over the botched firefighters union contract negotiations, where Chief Z (with either Hock’s blessing or his neglect) locked the City into a set of negotiating “Ground Rules” that effectively gagged City officials and prevented them from reporting the progress of negotiations to the taxpayers.

Catching flak from the mayor, however, doesn’t seem to deter Hock, especially since he can usually count on almost unquestioning loyalty from Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd) and Tom Bernick (6th) no matter how inept (or deceitful?) his performance.  And even Alds. Sal Raspanti (4th) and Marty Maloney (7th) have so far seemed more inclined toward averting their eyes rather than directly challenging Hock on even his more egregious conduct.

But last night Hock got grilled by the mayor and some members of the Council – including (gasp!) Bernick.  Little Tommy turned the uber-snarl he usually reserves for the mayor directly on Hock after the City Manager bumbled and stumbled under questioning by Schmidt about the draft policy, before finally admitting that he hadn’t even consulted with the City’s labor counsel (attorney Robert J. Smith, Jr.).

So the Council deferred further consideration of Policy No. 8 until Hock can meet with Smith, presumably to gin up some disingenuous explanations for why this policy (especially its secrecy provisions) is actually a good thing for the City and its taxpayers.

And we’re betting that, by then, Hock will have had a private sit-down or two with Bernick to get the latter back on the reservation.

Meanwhile, we have to wonder just how whacked out (or duplicitous?) Hock must be when he drafts and recommends a City Council policy – which by its very nature is supposed to govern only Council conduct – that goes so far afield that it actually deletes references to “the City Council, and Council staff” from the “Purpose” section of the policy! 

Do we really need a new City Council policy which doesn’t really apply to the Council but, instead, is designed to keep the public in the dark about union contract negotiations while also empowering “the City” (a/k/a the City Manager) to cut whatever deal he wants with “union representatives” over “the rules that will be used during the negotiation process”? 

Do we really need a City Manager who acts like he can go “rogue” whenever he feels the urge, knowing that if at least five aldermen don’t have the cojones to sack him “for cause” he can only be launched with $120,000 in severance – compliments of the knuckleheaded employment contract given him in late 2010 by several now ex-aldermen and current Alds. Sweeney and DiPietro?  

Is this, really, all you can get in the way of city manager services for $200,000+ these days?

To read or post comments, click on title.

It’s not often PublicWatchdog has a sharp disagreement with Mayor Dave Schmidt, but this is one of those times.

Last night’s City Council meeting was Schmidt’s last chance to veto the sweetheart Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) 2012 contract between the City and Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) which, arguably, constitutes an improvement over the no-contract monopoly Taste Inc. has held for the past 7 years.  But only because any contract usually is better than no contract.

Two weeks ago the Council endorsed, by a 6-1 vote (Ald. Knight dissenting) the deal which shamelessly perverts an ostensible 50/50 “profit-sharing” arrangement between Taste Inc. and the City by allowing Taste Inc. to pocket the first $20,000 of any TOPR 2012 “profits.”  That extra $20,000 will get added to Taste Inc.’s hefty $80,000+ bank account, which consists entirely of money wheedled out of the City by Taste Inc. – in the form of $20,000+ of initial “seed money” and another $70-90,000+ in free City police, fire and public works services since 2005.

Taste Inc. will get that extra $20,000 before the City gets dime one of “profit-sharing.”  And from what Taste Inc. has reported as its previous years’ annual “profits” from TOPR, it’s likely that profits won’t even cross the $20,000 threshold.  But, astoundingly, 6 of our 7 aldermen apparently thought that’s a fair deal for the City.

We probably shouldn’t have been all that surprised.  The contract was put together by City Mgr. Jim Hock, for whom spending OPM (“Other People’s Money”) is a lifetime avocation.  And after 7 years of prior Councils letting Taste Inc. have its lucrative way without even a question, just getting this current crop of aldermen to demand that Taste Inc. reimburse the City for its expenses was tough enough.  Their demanding profit-sharing starting with the first dollar – before Taste Inc. boosts its bank account to an unprecedented $100 grand level – would have been a minor miracle.

But, frankly, we had hoped Schmidt could muster the courage to veto the contract on that profit-sharing point.  After all, he is the same “Mayor No” who consistently – and correctly, we might add – has vetoed numerous appropriations of public funding, including $3,168 for Meals on Wheels just last month. 

Which leaves us wondering: If the Mayor doesn’t believe Meals on Wheels is deserving of $3,168 to provide “bread” for needy Park Ridgians for 3 months, how can he justify giving away as much as $10,000 of profit-sharing money to another private corporation that provides “circuses” for a mere 3 days?

If Schmidt had the courage to stand against a TOPR 2012 contract that puts $10,000 in the pockets of a special interest run by a handful of folks, instead of in the City treasury for the public interest of all City taxpayers, he might have given a veto address that began with a reiteration of his oft-stated belief that public funds should not be handed out to private entities except under the most limited of circumstances and only for essential City services, not entertainment.

He might have also noted that Taste Inc. doesn’t need another $20,000, since it already is sitting on more money than it’s ever had or ever needed to run TOPR; and that all of that money is actually City money accumulated by Taste Inc.’s not paying for all those City services it received over the past seven years. 

He could have reminded his Council colleagues of their recent struggles to construct a balanced budget which, even with another 3%-plus property tax increase figured in, has required pinching pennies in order to avoid a return to the bad old days of million-dollar operating deficits, as well as to help ensure the long-term financial health of this City for ourselves, our children, and their children. 

And, if Schmidt wanted to show some real leadership, he could have coupled his veto with the request that Taste Inc. agree to amend the contract language to split any profits with the City 50/50, starting with the very first dollar of profit – a split that is eminently fair and reasonable, given this community’s unwavering and generous support of the Taste event over the past seven years.

Unfortunately, instead of courage and leadership, Schmidt displayed his inner Cub fan with what amounted to an insipid “wait ‘til next year.”

So Schmidt will sign the TOPR 2012 contract; the City and its taxpayers will receive for the first time reimbursement for City services to be provided to TOPR this summer; and the handful of folks who run Taste Inc. as their little fiefdom will once again laugh all the way to the bank at the taxpayers’ expense.

But the bright side for Schmidt is that, in return for his endorsement of the Council’s $10,000 sell-uut of the taxpayers, the Tastees will probably let the mayor work the beer tent again this summer.

Boo-yah!

To read or post comments, click on title.

Everybody knows we live in the most corrupt state in the country, and in the most corrupt county in that most corrupt state.  

It took a long time, and a lot of elections of inept and corrupt candidates, to get that way.  And the only way it’s ever going to improve is through a lot more elections, but of competent, honest, public-spirited candidates instead.

We can’t expect the U.S. Attorney to muck out these stables all by himself.  The current guy – clearly the most tenacious and apolitical one we’ve had in at least 30 years – won’t be around forever; and criminal investigations, prosecutions and convictions of corrupt officials take a lot of time and money.  Even when those prosecutions are successful and the crooks go to jail, that still leaves a lot of public offices manned by incompetent mopes who are easy marks for the next generation of corrupt opportunists.

Voting is the only remedy for this situation, although we must realize that significant change won’t happen overnight. 

But unless enough people vote, even if that means sometimes voting for the “lesser of two evils,” it won’t happen at all. 

To read or post comments, click on title.

We’ve decided to end the week with one more post about the $1 million-plus police station plan, primarily because this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate carries a letter by cop shop guru Frank Gruba-McCallister that seems so disingenuous as to require comment. 

For the sake of brevity and clarity, we’ve interlineated our comments in bracketed bold type.

______________________________

Urge officials to fund Police Station plan

Over the past several months, the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force has sought a solution to correct “the urgent deficiencies in the Park Ridge police station” [How “urgent” can these “deficiencies” be, considering that many/most of them are “structural” and have been part of the police station since it was opened? And which, by the way, houses a police department that continually receives high marks from the agency(ies) that rate police departments.] in a cost-effective way. The resulting plan was presented to the mayor and the City Council, and the aldermen have studied ways to fund it. I am one of the many volunteers who helped develop this plan and I am a longtime resident of Park Ridge. As such, I strongly encourage every citizen to study this plan (it can be found on the Police Department website, www.parkridge.us/police). It explicitly presents the deficiencies of our current police station, explains the hazards they create [Like mold infestation, which is being ignored for the first two years of the plan’s three-year duration?] and outlines a solution for a cost well under that of constructing a new station. [Does that mean, Mr. G-M, that you consider “cost effective” to be anything less than the cost of a brand new police station?] If you agree with its conclusions, I ask that you encourage the mayor and the City Council to fund it.

Among the many obligations of the city government to the citizens of Park Ridge, one of the greatest is public safety. [On that, we agree wholeheartedly with Mr. G-M. And that’s one of the reasons why we object to plans that, on their face, seem knee-jerk, half-baked and bass-ackwards.]  We enjoy living in a generally safe and secure community. Part of the reason for this is the investment made in our police and fire departments. However, our sense of safety should not lull us into complacency. Communities just as small as ours, and just as generally safe, have suffered from crime outbreaks [What kind of “crime outbreaks” are you talking about, Mr. G-M? And what communities like ours have suffered from them?] and natural disasters [What kind of “natural disasters”? Did we miss a recent earthquake in Elmhurst, or a tsunami engulfing Wilmette?] that would severely tax our present police facilities. The fact that the recent murder investigation had to be [“Had to be,” as in somebody of authority requiring that it be?] relocated to Rolling Meadows because our station was too small to accommodate outside personnel highlights its shortcomings. [Did running the investigation out of Rolling Meadows compromise it in any way, Mr. G-M? If so, how?] 

Recent fire and police budgets have been cut. As a result, both departments have fewer personnel and resources. Any time a department is asked to do more with less, no matter how conscientious and creative its employees may be in performing their duties, the risk of not being able to meet a need increases. [How much has the “risk” actually increased? What if the department had previously been over-staffed?] 

In some enterprises it may make sense to operate with a narrow allowance for the unexpected. But in regards to police and fire services, such an approach does not pay off. [Why not? What serious and/or dangerous lapses in police and fire services have occurred as a direct result of the police and fire personnel layoffs in the past few years, or from the budget cuts?] By their very nature, they are emergency services and to prepare for emergencies a community must be proactive. Being proactive means taking steps to minimize the impact of a disaster [What kind of “disaster,” Mr. G-M? Plane crash? Tornado? Carrot Top performing at the Pickwick?]; that is, not waiting until a problem crops up and then fashioning an expensive, patchwork solution. Recent economic conditions and imprudent financial decisions made in the past (e.g. the Uptown TIF) have clearly placed strains on the city budget. However, the cost incurred by just one serious incident for which we are unprepared could dwarf our present money woes. [What kind of “serious incident” are you concerned about, and what kind of costs? If you’re truly concerned about health and safety, why does your plan put off until at least its third year the remediation of what appears to be the only concrete health hazard identified in the current cop shop – mold infestation – even though Chief Kaminski himself recognizes there may not be funding available by year three?]

We all pay for insurance for our home, life and automobiles knowing that it is prudent and responsible to do so, but also hoping that a tragic event does not require our using it. An investment in our safety and well-being [Mr. G-M, are you saying that every element of your cop shop plan “insures” that no problem will arise with that element once it is implemented?] is a sound investment even if it may come at some cost. [What’s the dollar-for-dollar return on this particular “investment”] The need for a better facility for our police department is the proverbial tip of the iceberg of a need to invest more fully in those who have committed themselves to protect and serve members of our community.

Frank Gruba-McCallister

Park Ridge Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force

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Next to a big new library, a big new police station has been the most enduring pie-in-the-sky project in our community since we borrowed tens of millions of dollars several years ago to bring long-awaited “redevelopment” to Uptown.  And that project has been hemorrhaging red ink ever since.

Three years ago the voters rejected – by an 83.39% to 16.61% referendum vote – building a new police station.  Back then, proponents of the new cop shop panic-peddled dire warnings of lawsuits, unhealthy working conditions, crime sprees, and just about everything short of Al Qaeda attacks and swarms of locusts if the new cop shop wasn’t built.  Fortunately, the voters weren’t bamboozled.

And guess what?  Nothing happened.  Nothing.  Nada.

But only three short years later, the cop shop is back.  This time, however, it’s on a much smaller scale – “only” $1.1-1.3 million (best case) over several years, all the better to fly under the radar and thereby minimize the chance of a referendum where the voters might express their views in ways that can be counted objectively by the Board of Elections.  Plus, the target audience this time around is an eminently-bamboozleable City Council.

The new cop shop plan is called “Cost Effective Strategies to Address Risk Factors at the Police Facility,” a power-point presentation that appears to be the work product primarily of Frank Gruba-McCallister, Ralph Cincinelli, and some other members of the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force.  We grudgingly have to commend them on incorporating “risk factors” in the title: an up-front scare tactic never hurts when trying to create a stampede, even if only a four-alderman one. 

The rest of the 75-page presentation is loaded with enough other disconcerting words and phrases to elicit vacuous, knee-jerk agreement from most uncritical thinkers.  While it would take us far too long to identify and comment on all the half-truths and factually questionable assertions jammed into that document, you can get the flavor from a few examples (with our parenthetical comments):

Page 5:  “Prisoners – 600 to 700 prisoners processed annually.”  [PW: That averages out to under two prisoners per day.  That’s less than Andy and Barney deposited in the Mayberry jail, not counting Otis Campbell’s regular Saturday night visits and the occasional dust-ups between the Darling Family and Ernest T. Bass.] 

Page 7:  “Intake – Path using front steps…poses risks of physical injury to officers, staff and prisoners.” [PW: Virtually everything we do involves “risks,” but how many actual injuries to “officers, staff and prisoners” have been sustained on those front steps in the past 1-3-5 years?]

Page 16: “Prisoner Processing… Trip and Falls – Prisoners and Staff.” [PW: The Report is silent on how many incidents of trip & fall injury or liability there have there over the past 1-3-5 years, but it does try to scare us with several examples from…wait for it…the New York City police department.  Is that because whenever people talk about police issues, NYC and Park Ridge invariably are spoken of in the same breath?]

Back in 2008-09, when local resident Joe Egan and his allies collected the signatures needed to put the new cop shop on the April 2009 referendum ballot (after then-mayor Howard Frimark and a majority of his alderpuppets refused to do it), we asked a few basic questions in an effort to get to the heart of the new cop shop rationale, including:

Has the size and condition of the current police station impeded or jeopardized the investigation and prosecution of any crimes? 

Has the size and condition of the current police station significantly compromised the safety of the people of Park Ridge? 

Has the size and condition of the current police station resulted in any actual financial liability for the City?

Not surprisingly, not one of those questions was answered in the affirmative, either by any of our public officials at that time or by the new cop shop cheering section.  But we’d still love to have those questions answered this time around – maybe by Chief Kaminski, Mr. Gruba-McCallister, or Mr. Cincinelli?

And while they’re answering those questions, we’d love for them to tell the City Council and the taxpayers why their multi-year, million dollar-plus project puts off until Year 3 – the final year – what would appear to be the single most health/safety-threatening condition of the current cop shop: mold?

Frankly, if there actually is a mold problem (as Pages 33 through 38 of the Report insist), Chief Kaminski and City Mgr. Hock owe the Police Department employees and the taxpayers a darn good explanation for: (a) why they haven’t demanded the City Council budget for mold remediation well before now; and (b) how they can justify deferring mold remediation until the final year/phase of their new cop shop plan, behind such dubious “needs” as “bike storage”? 

Or maybe Mr. Gruba-McCallister and Mr. Cincinelli could take a crack at those questions, too?

Not that the aldermen falling all over themselves in support of this project care about the answers to questions such as these.  Led by Alds. Sal Raspanti (4th) and Rich DiPietro (2nd), they voted 5-1 (Knight dissenting, Bernick…surprise!…absent) at the February 27 COW meeting to jack up vehicle sticker charges by 30% (they’re calling it a one-year “surcharge”) so that they can move forward with the project ASAP.

Predictably, Mayor Dave Schmidt questioned the rush to judgment on a million dollar project that has not been anything close to fully vetted by the Council, while Knight opposed raising the vehicle sticker charge and wanted Hock to find the money elsewhere.

But the other aldermen are stampeding, and it looks like it will take more than Schmidt and Knight to turn that herd.

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