Tonight’s Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting (City Hall, 7:00 p.m.) has two agenda [pdf] items dealing with land that got our attention for different reasons.

The first of those comes under the Procedures & Regulations section of the COW and is titled “Land use alternatives / 1200 Elm Street.”  The Agenda Cover Memo [pdf] contains the recommendation of the City’s Director of Community Preservation & Development, Carrie Davis, that the Council ask the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) to consider a zoning map amendment changing the old City Garage property at Greenwood and Elm from its current R-2 zoning to either R-3 or R-4.  Not uncharacteristically for work product from Ms. Davis, her recommendation provides no explanation of why this should be done, or done now.

As we wrote in our post ”Not The Time To Re-Zone Greenwood & Elm” (05.26.10), there is no good reason to fiddle with the zoning of that property at this time.  The proper time to consider a zoning change is when a real live developer comes to the City with a real live plan for that property which the City is interested in exploring.  Re-zoning in a vacuum, especially for such a unique parcel, is both premature and foolish.

But it’s the second land-related agenda coming under the Public Works section of the COW that is the more intriguing one, identified benignly as “Parking – Target Area 4.”  As stated in the applicable Agenda Cover Memo [pdf], this particular study was instigated by 5th Ward Ald. Robert Ryan, who requested Staff to look into “long term parking” related to future redevelopment of what is known as Target Area 4 of the City’s Uptown Plan. 

Instead of just coming right out and saying so, the wording of the memo by Deputy City Mgr. Juliana Maller suggests that the purpose of this exercise is to consider the City’s acquisition of the parking lot it has been renting for several years from the Scharringhausen Family.  And although Maller writes that “it is difficult to recommend land banking during these difficult economic times,” she doesn’t recommend against it but simply passes the buck by asking the Council to “Discuss and Provide direction to staff.”

We think “land banking” by the City is a bad idea, especially when the City already has shown itself to be completely incompetent at it – as it displayed with its money-losing purchase of the white elephant 229 S. Courtland property just south of City Hall a few years back.  Why should a purchase of 20 S. Fairview from the Scharringhausens turn out any better?

We questioned the sweetheart nature of the City’s parking deal with the Scharringhausens two years ago in our post ”The Politics Of Park Ridge Parking” (06.04.08), noting that it looked like the City was helping the Scharringhausens carry this asset until the right developer came along to cash them out for big bucks.  But with no developers on the horizon, is Ald. Ryan trying to get City taxpayers to cash out Scharringhausen?  After all, Ryan voted to give $400,000 to Bill Napleton to clean up his contaminated property, so using tax dollars for private purposes is not unprecedented for Ryan.

Our suspicions are raised even more by the fact that the property’s listing agent [pdf] is none other than one of Park Ridge’s consummate insiders, Owen Hayes II.  As we reported in “515 Busse Highway – The Park Ridge Police Station That Almost Was” (11.15.07), Hayes was on the verge of helping one of his clients turn a nifty $200,000 profit on what is now the Avenues to Independence building by selling it to the City…until  it was discovered that the lucky undisclosed “client” was Hayes himself.  How convenient!

As for a Ryan/Hayes connection, let’s start with the fact that Hayes was Ald. Ryan’s campaign treasurer [pdf].  Might that explain Ryan’s sudden interest in the City exploring the acquisition of property on which Hayes might earn a $35,000+ commission?  That’s not quite a Patti Blagojevich commission, but it’s not bad for sleepy little Park Ridge.

Whether these dots can be connected into a Chicago-style kinky land deal or whether they are just random circumstances coming together by mere happenstance is not yet clear – just like it’s not yet clear why Ald. Jim Allegretti has such an inordinate interest in putting up four billboard’s in the Second Ward. 

Maybe Ryan will explain it tonight.  Or not. 

When Mayor Dave Schmidt took office in May 2009, one of the first things he did was buy a camera so that City Council meetings could be videotaped and posted on-line for viewing by the public – to supplement the notoriously sketchy and even fickle meeting minutes.

But a camera is nothing without someone to man it, and Park Ridge was fortunate to have George Kirkland step forward to undertake that task.

We regularly hear about all the “volunteers” who do so much for this community.  And they do –  although some of them (including a few members of the City Council) seem to spend almost as much time patting themselves on the back as they do actually serving the community.  

Kirkland, on the other hand, performs his volunteer service the old-school way: He just shows up and quietly does his “job” – for two, three and even four hours some nights.  And that’s not just for City Council meetings, but for Committee of the Whole meetings and even special meetings like the budget workshops.  

Kirkland’s efforts (and those of Charlie Melidosian, who uploaded and hosted Kirkland’s videos on his Motionbox site for most of the past year) provided an object lesson on how much more information and insight into the workings of City government is available from videos than from the sources upon which we previously had to rely – even when those “workings” tend toward what Otto Von Bismarck compared to sausage-making.

And given City Staff’s and the Council’s historical resistance, if not outright hostility, to videotaping or televising meetings – by coming up with boxcar expense numbers that they knew would never fly – we suspect the track record of Kirkland’s mini-cam handiwork was no small factor in the City’s decision to post his videos on its website.

Because of the volunteer work of George Kirkland, we now enjoy more “transparency” in City government than ever before.

So here’s a big wag of the Watchdog’s tail to you, George…you most definitely deserve it!

For quite awhile the Park Ridge Park District’s “management” of Oakton Pool has reminded us of Yogi Berra’s comment about his team’s performance: “We made too many wrong mistakes.” 

That’s why we were gratified to read the front page story in today’s Park Ridge Journal, which reports the likelihood of the Park District making a decision on whether to close Oakton Pool at the Park Board’s June 17, 2010, meeting (“Closing Pool ‘Right Thing To Do’” June 9).

The story’s headline comes from a statement by Park District Executive Director Ray Ochromowicz, who correctly has identified Oakton Pool as a financial albatross around the District’s neck, flushing tens of thousands of scarce and precious tax dollars down its drains every summer.  And Ochromowicz has provided data that makes yet another compelling case for Oakton’s closure, including that in 2009 alone Oakton Pool:

*  accounted for 12.4% of the District’s revenue aquatic attendance but consumed 30% of the District’s aquatic expenses;

*  cost $10.93 per patron, versus $5.60 for Centennial and $5.28 for Hinkley; and

*  has lost more money than the other three outdoor pools combined over the last 3 years.

Ochromowicz also understands that Park Ridge has too much outdoor water for a community its size, especially when so little of it is of the water-park “entertainment” variety that caters to the current demand for aquatic “fun” at the expense of swimming for exercise or competitively. 

Sure, Oakton is our only pool designed for “competitive” swimming.  But it’s time to face the fact that neither Oakton nor any other outdoor pool in a climate like Chicago’s is going to become a breeding ground for competitive swimmers to rival places like Mission Viejo, CA or Coral Springs, FL.  Like it or not, the era of outdoor swimming facilities like Oakton has come and gone; and it’s not likely to return anytime soon, especially in places where outdoor swimming is confined to three months a year.

Oakton Pool has been a white elephant for at least the past five years, and probably longer.  That’s why we’ve been criticizing the Park District Board and Staff for letting Oakton manage the District rather than vice versa – letting it limp along under a “do not resuscitate” order because they didn’t have the guts to stop the bleeding and close a facility that was taking money away from other facilities.  It’s nice to hear Director Ochromowicz voice some of those same concerns in pushing for a proactive decision.

But as Yogi once said: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”  And as Ochromowicz also realizes, “[t]he closing of this pool will be unpopular to some” – which means that June 17 may be an interesting evening over at the Maine Leisure Center. 

That “some” to which Ochromowicz refers includes folks who tend to talk about how “important” Oakton Pool is, or how it provides a unique swimming opportunity, or how it hosted the Olympic trials decades ago, or how it is the “neighborhood” pool for that part of town.  We suspect a number of them haven’t even so much as dipped a toe into Oakton Pool in years but are happy to indulge their whims and nostalgia so long as somebody else pays most of the freight.

And then there are those relatively few Oakton swimming die-hards for whom the declining attendance figures provide the benefit of turning that facility into somewhat of a private club – but at no extra charge to them.  Many of them lament that the other pools are “too crowded” – but without the “Nobody goes there anymore” prelude that created another of the more famous Yogi-isms.

What we don’t hear from any of them, however, is their willingness to sign on to pay a premium fee per Oakton visit and to guaranty enough visits to bridge the $5+ per visit expense “gap” between Oakton and the other pools.  That’s because “money talks and b.s. walks,” a non-Yogi saying that seems especially true for the active users of taxpayer-subsidized government services and facilities who seem to pride themselves on getting more out of the government than they pay in.
 
So when Ochromowicz says that Oakton Pool “is draining tax dollars that could be put to better use,” he is speaking words that we wish his counterparts heading the other local governmental bodies would learn to pronounce.  

But first he has to teach them to his own Park Board.

On the agenda [pdf] for tonight’s Park Ridge City Council meeting is the adoption of a resolution [pdf], the substance of which reads as follows: 

The City of Park Ridge believes strongly that continued expansion at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport will not enhance the overall quality of life for its citizens. Roughly 6,000 Park Ridge households, which is 42% of all Park Ridge homes, are affected by changes in flight paths resulting from the O’Hare Modernization Plan. The City of Park Ridge seeks mitigation solutions for noise and pollution resulting from continued expansion at O’Hare and vehemently opposes and seeks course correction on continuing expansion at the airport. 

This resolution was just adopted by the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission (“OAC”) at its May 28, 2010, meeting [pdf], so we wonder how it got on the City Council’s regular agenda so quickly, and without first being considered by the Council’s Procedures and Regulations Committee.  We also wonder why Ald. Robert Ryan (5th), who seems to have taken over from Ald. Don “Air Marshall” Bach (3rd) as the “Council Liaison” to the OAC and was in attendance at the OAC’s May 26 meeting, didn’t raise the procedural question at that time? 

Presumably the procedural issue will be sorted out tonight, but we still need to question the purpose and wisdom of such a Council resolution…and at this time. 

In the first place, we note that the OAC appears to be made up entirely of people who live in that part of town most affected by the newest O’Hare runway (9L/27R).  There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, so long as they make sure they understand and represent the interests of the entire City – which may not be the case with their proposed resolution, especially if a good number of those “6,000 Park Ridge households…affected by changes in flight paths resulting from the O’Hare Modernization Plan” have been “affected” positively, such as the residents of the 1st and 2nd wards who now have fewer flights over their households because of the new runway. 

That being the case, we would like to hear the OAC folks explain exactly why those 1st and 2nd ward residents – and residents in parts of the 3rd and 4th wards, as well – should support a resolution that would appear to endorse one of the OAC’s other goals (as also adopted at the OAC’s May 26 meeting) of “ensuring the two northwest runways [22R and 22L] are not decommissioned” – something that would ensure that flights over those wards would continue even after O’Hare modernization is completed, contrary to current OMP plans. 

Beyond the point of whether such a resolution speaks for a majority of Park Ridge residents, what practical purpose does such a resolution serve at this time? What specific benefits will this community derive if this resolution is passed now?  Or, conversely, what specific harm will the community suffer if it isn’t passed now? 

Even if it seems as if the members of the OAC don’t remember all of the resolutions (and even referendum questions) regularly generated by O’Hare obsessed former mayor Ron Wietecha, we do.  And we also remember that by 2001, when the federal government (at the behest of Sen. John McCain and several Democratic congressmen) pressured then-governor George Ryan to cut a deal with Mayor Daley on O’Hare expansion, those resolutions no longer meant a thing.  

We suspect that was one of the reasons (along with the voters’ election in April 2003 of new aldermen Don Crampton, Howard Frimark, Mark Anderson, Rex Parker and Jeff Cox – all of whom had campaigned against continued membership in Wietecha’s beloved Suburban O’Hare Commission) why Wietecha abruptly resigned his mayoral office and subsequently exiled himself to Barrington. 

So before the Council approves this kind of resolution, we think the OAC owes the whole Park Ridge community much better explanations of why this resolution is needed…and why it is needed now.

A “guest essay” by state Sen. Dan Kotowski in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate touted a new form of government budgeting as a possible solution to the “waste, fraud and mismanagement…[that] allows for unchecked spending and little accountability” in state government (“State finance woes underscores [sic] need for budget reform,” June 3).

No offense, senator, but it looks like the only thing that will reform state government is a complete housecleaning in Springfield, starting with House Speaker Mike “Machiavelli” Madigan, Sen. President John Cullerton, and continuing all the way down the line.  When 8-year old kids run card-table sidewalk lemonade stands better than you elected and appointed officials run our state, it’s time to back up the truck and look for a fresh start because the folks currently down there already have proved themselves to be more problem than solution.

But Sen. Kotowski’s endorsement of Budgeting for Outcomes (“BFO”) piqued our curiosity in the wake of a just-completed City budget process that was better than past efforts but still pretty unsatisfactory.

The unofficial slogan for BFO appears to be: “Delivering results citizens value at a price they are willing to pay,” and its purported virtues are that it starts with a determination of how much money the taxpayers of a particular governmental body are willing to spend on government services during the budget year – and then works backwards to get to that point by ascertaining essential community needs, ranking/prioritizing services and outcomes to meet those needs, setting specific measurable goals linked to funding dollars, and then devising strategies to achieve those goals in the most cost-effective ways.

But that’s just one nut-shell explanation: there are many others, and we encourage you to Google them and read about the BFO experiences to date in places like Fort Collins, CO, Dallas, TX, Savannah, GA and other cities that are trying it.

Whether BFO truly is an innovative way for governmental bodies to operate or just the latest fad remains to be seen.  But just as we previously encouraged the City to seriously consider Zero-Based Budgeting (“ZBB”) as an alternative to the current “incremental” budgeting that simply reinforces and rewards institutionalized expenditures, bad practices and inefficiency, we think BFO deserves similar consideration.

But consideration of such a significant change in how the City budgets and operates should start NOW…not next January when the budget deadline is only four months away.

It’s been said that there’s no amount of money government bureaucrats can’t find a way to spend.  Anybody who has paid close attention to government – especially government here in the not-so-great State of Illinois – sees proof of that almost daily (and often from Daley). 

So it was no surprise to read about how the North Suburban Library System (“NSLS”) might be shutting down because it hasn’t received the state grant that constitutes 80% of its annual funding.  With Illinois state government trailing only California’s as the nation’s most fiscally endangered (a/k/a inept), anybody expecting cash from Springfield should have a back-up plan in place, even if it involves the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, or Powerball. 

NSLS is now anticipating its next influx of state cash no earlier than November, with future payments expected to be chronically delayed.  (City of Park Ridge, School Districts 207 and 64, and the Park District, take note).  

One casualty of that cash crisis is NSLS’s “van service” – which provides interlibrary delivery service of materials throughout its 49-library system.  This service allows patrons of the Park Ridge Library, for example, to check out books and materials from other NSLS members and have those books and materials delivered to our Library without cost to the patron.  

Without state funding of NSLS, member libraries (with the exception of Des Plaines and Evanston) will individually contribute to fund that service for the next three months.  The Park Ridge Library will spend $3,400 a month on that delivery service, which reportedly will come out of the Library’s book budget.  Meanwhile, library administrations throughout the system are scrambling to find some way to maintain the service, including the possibility of “privatizing” it.  

Did any of these well-paid bureaucrats consider actually charging a fee for the convenience of this delivery service? 

We can imagine Park Ridge Librarian Janet Van De Carr and her fellow librarians wailing and gnashing their teeth at such a suggestion, after having built their current fiefdoms through a variety of free programs and free (or nominally-priced) services, many of which straddle and even cross the line between information and entertainment – with a little bit of babysitting thrown in for good measure.  

A review of the Library’s May/June Library guide reveals 18 “adult” programs, 10 “computer classes,” 21 “young adult” programs, 8 “children’s” programs, 5 programs for “all ages,” 8 programs for “school age” children, and one program “just for parents & teachers.”  All free.  That’s a great way to draw people into the building and inflate the “user” numbers that are touted at budget time to justify more funding and personnel.

So we can imagine the librarians already drawing up their lists of all the problems and inequities, real and imagined, of imposing any kind of service charge for interlibrary deliveries. 

Don’t get us wrong.  We’re big fans of the Library and believe it to be a significant community asset, well-deserving of continued taxpayer support to cover the basic cost of maintenance and operation.  We also like the idea of interlibrary borrowing, which creates synergies that should breed money-saving efficiencies – but only if that savings isn’t frittered away on the costs of the program. 

Which is why there should be a “convenience” charge that covers the actual, fully-loaded cost of the deliveries.  And while the librarians are at it, they should start looking at ways to cover the fully-loaded costs of all those “free” programs, too: if those programs truly have any value, residents should be willing to pay for it.

But we also are mindful that the age-old truism “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” has never been truer – especially in a society where, when government provides one, it seems like it’s always the shameless gluttons who eat the most.

Today we honor the men and women who gave their lives in military service to this country.  Depending on whose statistics you accept, their number runs between 1.3 and 2.1 million. 

In our opinion the best recognition of such sacrifice was given by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, in what has become known as his Gettysburg Address.  Especially timeless and transcendent is Lincoln’s expression of resolve: 

“that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Sadly, today the Land of Lincoln is a political cesspool that seems a lot more like government for the politicians than “for the people.”  But that didn’t happen overnight: it took decades of “the people” ignoring the civic rights and duties that were secured for them by those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.” 

Remembering those “honored dead” is one thing we owe them today.  The other is a renewed resolve to do a better job of making sure our government continues to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

California-based attorney Steve Taber and his law firm claim to have a litigation plan that will help Park Ridge kick O’Hare Airport’s keester.  But even though he “would love to discuss specific litigation strategies” for doing that, he claims he can’t do so openly without putting “Park Ridge legal prerogatives” at risk.  

Don’t you just love secrets like this? 

Taber suggested a closed-session Council meeting, apparently because nobody told him that under the Illinois Open Meetings Act nothing said in closed sessions is legally secret or even just confidential: it can be freely disclosed, except for information that is protected under other laws (like HIPAA, for example).  That may be why Ald. Don “Air Marshall” Bach suggested that Taber meet privately with each alderman instead of in closed session. 

Bach is one of several aldermen who have never seen a closed session they didn’t like.  But ever since then-Ald. Dave Schmidt lawfully blew the whistle on then-mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark’s closed session plans to acquire 720 Garden as the site for a new police station – and to have the City pay a couple hundred thousand dollars more than the City’s own appraisal of the property – Bach and his fellow Cultists of Secrecy have seemed a bit insecure about closed sessions. 

That’s a good thing for many reasons. 

But we have to wonder exactly what kinds of anti-airport litigation weapons Taber and his colleagues have in their arsenal that are so secret, especially since any such weapons that have already been employed in litigation – albeit with what Taber described as varied degrees of success – are now a matter of public record in whatever court they were utilized. 

After years of pouring hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million, dollars of legal fees and expenses into the pockets of the now-defunct Suburban O’Hare Commission’s legal team headed by attorney Joe Karaganis, without any significant “success,” we catch a whiff of snake oil in the claims of successful litigation strategies that can’t be publicly discussed. 

But desperate people will grasp at any straw offered, and we’ve seen fellow residents virtually suspend all reason in demanding expenditures of scarce public funds for what so far seems like nothing short of lottery odds at getting meaningful relief from increasing O’Hare air traffic. 

Case in point: In April the federal government committed $410 million to further O’Hare expansion. Our City Council has budgeted $165,000. Vegas won’t even post a line on that bet. 

And as we’ve pointed out several times before, the additional problem with this renewed effort to battle O’Hare is that it seems to pit one part of Park Ridge against another: The Belle Plaine Corridor’s loss is the 1st and 2nd Wards’ gain. 

So when it comes to secret plans to deal with O’Hare, we’re more than a little skeptical.  

Maybe that’s because we remember President Nixon campaigning for election by touting his secret plan for ending the Vietnam War.  He was re-elected and, true to his word, after several more years, tens of thousands of additional American deaths, and the waste of additional multi-billions of dollars, it finally came to fruition. 

It culminated in helicopter evacuations of the American embassy in Saigon.    

It was Thomas Paine who said: “That government is best which governs least.”  Unfortunately, that maxim tends to be honored in the breach by most units of government, often to the detriment of everybody but the bureaucrats trying to expand their “empires” and the special interests using government to leverage private benefits. 

So it was good to see the City Council’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”), after much debate Monday night, resist sending a request to the Planning & Zoning Commission for a map amendment that would change the zoning of the former City public works garage at Greenwood and Elm from the current R2 (single-family) to either R3 (2-family) or R4 (multi-family).  

Unfortunately, much of the lengthy Council discussion involved little more than idle chatter and speculation about what type of use would provide the most value to the land.  And, predictably, that led to the misguided decision to have City Mgr. Jim Hock get some “expert” advice – by collecting some appraisals of the land reflecting various types of development. 

Why is that a misguided decision?  Let’s start with it being a totally unnecessary one at this time.  

What purpose is served by the City’s changing the zoning of that property in the current vacuum – with no indication that any developer has expressed serious interest in doing anything with that property?   

As noted in the Agenda Cover Memorandum [pdf] for the April 26, 2010 COW meeting, the City’s 1996 Comprehensive Plan makes no “specific recommendations” for the property “but generally recommends that the single family character of the area be preserved.”  Whether that remains the best recommendation 14 years after the Comprehensive Plan was adopted might well be the subject to honest debate, but for the time being there’s no reason to have that debate or make a change. 

The bottom line is that, as with most things in our economy, the market will decide the value of that property – not some blue-sky appraisals without a willing developer and a willing lender attached to them.  And when the market does decide, it will then be up to the City to debate and determine whether what the market wants is what is in the best interests of Park Ridge. 

The Council has more than enough things on its plate that need attention now.  A zoning map amendment to the City property at Greenwood and Elm isn’t one of them. 

A little over a year ago we first questioned why the Park Ridge City Council was simply giving away $187,000 of public funds to certain private community organizations (“Public Subsidies Demand Transparency,” 04/27/09).  The Council went on to raise that amount to $246,000 on May 18, 2009, which did its share to contribute to the past year’s multi-million dollar deficit. 

According to the published agenda and memo [pdf], at tonight’s Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting the Council will discuss the actual appropriation of the $190,080 to those various private community groups that was budgeted by the Council last month.  As you will recall, that’s one of the categories of expenditures that Mayor Dave Schmidt, in his veto message, suggested should be cut – a suggestion that got the silent treatment from every alderman except Joe Sweeney (1st). 

So we think it’s a good time to question why the Council is once again giving away indiscriminate sums of increasingly scarce public funds to private organizations, but this time with greater emphasis on the Council’s legal authority to make such donations – especially when those organizations can use the money however, and wherever, they choose with absolutely no strings attached and no requirement that they account to the City or its taxpayers for that use.
 
It seems as if our public officials – save, perhaps, for Mayor Dave Schmidt and Ald. Sweeney – believe they’ve got the authority to do whatever they want in this regard.  Either that, or they merely are blissfully ignorant of the legal scope of their authority altogether.  But we can’t find anything in the City Code that empowers the Council to donate public funds to anybody.  

And the Illinois Constitution seems to forbid such donations altogether by providing, in Article VIII, Sec. 1(a), that “[p]ublic funds, property or credit shall be used only for public purposes.”  

What specific “public purposes” are served by giving away City funds to these organizations without making darn certain that every penny is used solely for Park Ridge residents to provide specific, corresponding quid pro quo services for the money?  And where in the Illinois Constitution, the Illinois statutes, or the Park Ridge Code does it prescribe or even permit such donations? 

As we noted a year ago, the words of Congressman David S. “Davy” Crockett remain instructive on this point: “We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” 

Notably, in that same speech Crockett personally offered to donate one week’s pay to the charitable interest in question, and he encouraged his colleagues to do likewise so that the amount raised privately would compensate for, and even exceed, the public funds not being appropriated.  But, tellingly, after heeding Crockett’s words and voting down the private charitable appropriation, not one of those members of Congress who advocated donating public funds offered a dime from his own purse.  

As we’ve written before: If these private organizations can show that they provide essential City services and do so less expensively and/or more efficiently than the City can, then the City should be contracting with these organizations for specific services.  That way, these organizations could get fair value for the services they actually provide to Park Ridge residents; and Park Ridge taxpayers would finally get accountability for the money going to these private organizations. 

Why hasn’t the City Council ever done this?  

We can think of plenty of reasons, especially given the propensities of the majority of aldermen currently inhabiting the seats around The Horseshoe.  But this problem isn’t the creation of the current Council: it also was standard operating procedure for Councils past, although it escaped scrutiny because more favorable economic conditions and more of a “herd” mentality allowed past Councils to quietly ignore it. 

Even if these contributions are completely legal, however, we believe they are foolish and extremely bad public policy.  But the absence of any readily ascertainable legal authority for them makes their legality the more pressing issue. 

Will any public official have the nerve to question the legality of these donations, or will they continue to bury their heads in the sand while blithely giving away more public funds even as they cut truly “essential” City services?  

Update (05/25/10): A knowledgeable reader just directed us to a provision, (”CPS 6?)[pdf], of the City’s Policy Manual, which was only recently added to the City’s new website.

That provision permits use of public funds for private non-governmental organizations “in limited circumstances…when such organization provides a service that is deemed to be of substantial benefit to the community” – but only if the City first determines that: there is a “need for offered service(s); there will be a “benefit for [sic] such service(s)”; the level of “[p]rivate financial support for the service(s)”; and the extent of the “volunteer support for the service(s).”  

Because City policies don’t trump the Illinois Constitution or state statutes, however, we still believe the lawfulness of the City’s actions, and even this Policy provision itself, are in doubt.

Not only that, but over the past two years we have seen and heard nothing in the way of hard evidence, either from the organizations themselves or from the City, that establishes a specific “need” for, or a specific “benefit” from, any of the “services” purportedly provided by these organizations, much less any meaningful discussion of the “private financial support” and the “community volunteer support” for these organizations or their services.

In fact, we’d hazard a guess that none of those factors have been given serious consideration – and we don’t mean the “$8 of services for every $1 of City donation” idle speculation offered by Alds. Allegretti, Ryan and Wsol, among others – since this policy was last revised in 1991. 

But we thank our reader for providing this resource material.