Mayor Dave Schmidt has already talked about the need for the City to begin work on the 2010-11 budget.  He also has publicly vowed to veto a budget that isn’t balanced – or that is “balanced” by deceptive public fund accounting tricks.

So we noted with interest the report in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that Naperville is trying to close an $11 million budget deficit this year by eliminating 49 jobs to save $3.6 million a year (“Naperville cuts 22 employees, won’t fill 27 vacant positions,” Jan. 9).  These latest cuts come on the heels of Naperville’s elimination of 43 other positions a year ago.

Park Ridge’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year is “only” a little over $2 million, but so far City government has only cut 4 jobs even as the City has operated irresponsibly for the past several years by not raising its approximately 10% share of our property tax bills to cover all those expenses it refuses to cut, or even increases – as it demonstrated by reacting to the current $2 million-plus deficit budget by increasing the cash the City gives away to private community organizations that have come to expect annual handouts of tax dollars to make up for what they can’t or won’t raise on their own.

Schmidt talked a good game several weeks ago when he proposed that the City adopt some form of zero-based budgeting (“ZBB”) requiring the City’s various departments to take a fresh, square-one look at: (a) what they currently do and should be doing (only, perhaps, better and more efficiently); (b) what they currently don’t do, but should be doing; and (c) what they currently do but should not be doing.  The lack of enthusiasm from a majority of the City Council and City Staff, however, combined with the departure of Finance Director Diane Lembesis, quickly turned ZBB into a “wait ‘til next year” idea, if then.

With the State of Illinois trailing only California in the race to bankruptcy, we can’t expect much in the way of financial assistance from Springfield.  To the contrary, as a community we’ll be lucky if we don’t start hearing more howling from our local schools because today’s Tribune reports that the state owes local school districts $1 billion that it cannot pay – to go along with the $775 million it owes universities and community colleges, and the $478 million it owes various municipalities.

Last May we suggested a variety of ways for the City to balance its 2009-10 budget which were ignored, leaving the $2 million+ deficit untouched.  And there was nothing in that budget for things like flood relief, O’Hare noise monitoring, and other expenditures that a number of Park Ridge residents consider vital – at least to themselves.

There are no attractive options available at this juncture, especially with a City government that has refused to even own up to its financial problems and embrace such common-sense solutions as passing through to water users 100% of the cost of the water the City purchases from Chicago, or cutting handouts to private organizations over which the taxpayers have no control.

These are precarious financial times, folks.  Unfortunately, unrealistic expectations combined with financial mismanagement over the past several years have put us in a situation that will be difficult and painful to properly resolve – even with that billboards “snake oil” Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti and his colleague Frank DiFranco are trying to peddle.    

The front page story in this week’s Park Ridge Journal is titled: “The City Needs Money.”  That’s what prominent local attorney and Morningfields Market owner Frank DiFranco is howling in a blatant attempt to stampede our resident sheep – including most of the Park Ridge City Council – into a questionable billboards deal.

The kinkiness of all this should have been obvious from the start, with DiFranco law colleague (and relative?) Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti not only leading the charge on the zoning code text amendments needed for the four billboards Generation Group, Inc. is seeking, but also proposing the scheme by which the City (rather than GGI or the property owner) became the “applicant” for those amendments – a scheme in which Alds. Robert Ryan and Frank Wsol were (take your pick): (a) co-schemers; (b) accomplices; (c) aiders and abettors; or (d) clueless go-along-to-get-alongs. 

Because the applicant was the City, no disclosures had to be made under the City’s ethics ordinance as to the identities of the officers, directors and shareholders of GGI or the property owner.

How convenient for them.

According to the Journal article, DiFranco wants the City to have a sit down with GGI’s Joseph Loss and talk money:  “They should be meeting with Joe Loss and trying to figure out how to get the most amount of money.”

We agree…but only after GGI and the owner of the Renaissance office plaza voluntarily provide all of the disclosures required under the ethics ordinance, so the City knows exactly who it is dealing with.  And because (according to the Journal article) DiFranco “has stated he is not connected to Loss’ Generation Group corporation,” we think DiFranco and Allegretti should present ethics disclosures too, if only as a sign of their good faith and fair dealing.  

Disclosures are crucial here because some of Mr. Loss’ clients in billboard deals with other municipalities reportedly are known criminals, like former Crook County undersheriff Jim Dvorak, who did federal time for bribery and ghost payrolling scams; and Oak Brook businessman Joseph Nicosia, convicted of insurance fraud.

In a series of articles in 2004, the Des Plaines Journal details the connections between Loss, Dvorak and Nicosia in the company that made a bundle off billboard permits granted by the City of Des Plaines, ostensibly trading on Dvorak’s relationship with Bill Schneider, who himself was convicted of mail fraud in the 1990s but nevertheless overcame that impediment to become head of Des Plaines’ Economic Development Commission and then even Acting City Manager.

Once all the appropriate disclosures have been made and the City and all of its residents have some idea of with whom they are dealing, sitting down and bargaining over how much the City deserves for four eyesores and the prospect of more makes sense.  And once the money issue is resolved – and assuming the City Attorney finds a way to ensure that any deal the City cuts on these billboards can be legally enforced – the City Council can hold a public hearing where residents can opine on whether the price is right.

Make no mistake about it, folks: the City does need money.  But, in large part, that’s because of the financial mismanagement we got for the past four years under former mayor Howard P. Frimark and his favorite aldermanic lapdog, “Billboards” Allegretti, when the City posted millions in deficit budgets, spent down fund balances, and tried to add another $16 million of debt for a new cop shop – something Allegretti favored so much he didn’t even want a referendum. 

So why weren’t DiFranco and Allegretti singing the money blues back then?

Maybe they were too busy listening to Claire de Lune?

Mayor Dave Schmidt is quoted in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Mayor vows to vote against sign proposal,” January 5) as saying he will vote “no” on the zoning code text amendment to permit billboards in Park Ridge: “As far as I’m concerned, when Planning and Zoning votes unanimously on something, that sends a pretty strong message that it’s how the community at large feels.”

In case you’ve been in a coma for the past several weeks, what Schmidt is talking about is the four billboards Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) wants the City to approve for the Renaissance office complex at the northwest corner of Park Ridge, a request that has been aggressively advanced by Fourth Ward Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti’s ever since GGI contacted him several months ago to enlist his aid in getting the City’s blessing to inflict billboard blight on our community.

There is nothing attractive about a billboard, irrespective of whatever message is splayed across it – except to the people who make a bundle on them.  But we don’t exactly know who those people are, because Allegretti got Alds. Robert Ryan and Frank Wsol to join him in voting to have the City of Park Ridge be the applicant for the zoning code text amendment needed for the billboards. 

That means neither GGI nor the owners of the Renaissance complex (who likely will be getting a nice piece of change as “rent” for providing the billboard location) had to comply with the City’s ethics ordinance, which requires applicants for things like zoning text amendments to disclose their principals, partners, shareholders, officers and directors. In other words, Allegretti, Ryan and Wsol made sure that the owners and operators of GGI and Renaissance folks got a free pass from public scrutiny on this deal.

Why doesn’t that surprise us?

Allegretti continues to try to lead the cattle drive on this billboards deal, arguing that the proposed one-time payment by GGI of $400,000 represents a windfall of 20% of the reported 2009-10 budget deficit.  But even if that payment is legal – which the City Attorney thinks it isn’t – it is still just a one-time payment, not a $400,000 annuity.  Which means that if Allegretti and his fellow alderdopes keep spending millions more than the City takes in while depleting the City’s fund balances in the process, the economic benefits of that billboard deal will be a distant memory while the billboards continue to stand guard over Park Ridge. 

That’s why it is even more suspicious that flyers promoting GGI’s billboards [pdf], and containing several factual inaccuracies, have turned up at Morningfields Market in South Park, a business owned by prominent local attorney and legal colleague of Allegretti’s, Frank DiFranco.  The flyers claim that the City is being irresponsible if it turns away the billboard money, which coincidentally is the same argument DiFranco made at the City Council’s December 21, 2009 meeting.

But where was DiFranco for the past few years when the administration of former-mayor Howard P. Frimark – with Allegretti as Frimark’s favorite lap-dog alderman – was passing all these deficit budgets that have left the City in such a precarious condition?  Where was DiFranco’s law partner, Jeff Wilson, another pro-billboard take-the-money speaker on December 21? 

Will the next Morningfields’ flyers explain those absences?

As we enter both a new year and a new decade, it’s a good time to look both backwards and forwards at not only our City government but also those other branches of government that primarily service our community, and take stock of where we came from and where we are going financially. 

The years 2000 through 2009 were characterized by spending, spending and more spending, enabled by taxing and borrowing – even though all that spending does not appear to have provided us with better quality infrastructure or services. 

For example, the City of Park Ridge pretty much neglected its sewer system for the past decade, failing to perform needed systemic inspection, maintenance and repairs – not only under Mayor Ron “Damn O’Hare!” Wietecha and the sclerotic Homeowners Party, but also under Acting-Mayor Mike Marous and the “Independents” (non-Homeowner aldermen) and even more so under Mayor Howard Frimark and his Alderpuppets.  Flood control and remediation also were ignored while new development and redevelopment actually increased flooding risks and demands on our sewer systems.

Although its academic standing generally remained stable over the decade, High School District 207 currently is trying to cope with a $17 million “structural budget deficit.”  Meanwhile, during the first part of the decade Elementary School District 64 spent itself to the brink of Illinois State Board of Education intervention [pdf] before bailing itself out with a “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue to make payroll in 2005 [pdf], followed by a major referendum-based tax increase in 2007 – neither of which has produced consistent, notable gains in student performance, even as the District has gone about restoring many of the $12.2 million in cuts it made while claiming they would not impair educational quality.  (So why restore them?) 

Even the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the smallest-budget branch of local government, continues to bungle the management of its outdoor swimming pools (which look to have booked another operating loss approaching $100,000 once the December figures are in [pdf]) and an almost $200,000 loss on the Senior Center [pdf], while still being bedeviled by the management of problematic facilities like the do-not-resuscitate Oakton Pool and the poorly-designed Community Center.

Fortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, the schools and the Park District are non-home rule bodies whose ability to raise taxes is limited by what are known (fondly to many taxpayers) as “tax caps.”  Not so the home-rule City government, where spending is limited only by whatever sense of shame City officials can muster about their fiscal mismanagement.  And for most of the past 10 years those officials have been pretty darned shameless.

So what can we expect from these governmental bodies in 2010?

Well, District 207 is proposing to cut expenditures by $15 million and raise revenues $2 million [pdf] to fill that $17 million budget hole.  Part of those cuts will come from a freeze of administrators’ salaries and from the District 207 teachers’ voluntary salary increase give-back program, which they are exploring as an enlightened alternative to the District’s cutting of approximately 75 teacher jobs.

District 64, on the other hand, recently approved an approximately 4.9% property tax levy increase for the 2009 tax year – with only board member Russ Gentile voting “no” [pdf].  And, according to its November 10, 2009, press release [pdf], the District is already starting to waffle on its pre-2007 referendum 10-year financial projections, despite amassing very healthy budget surpluses these last two years.  But what should we expect when the District’s School Board and Administration just gave the teachers’ union members annual raises of approximately 4.5% (including step increases) over the next three years, even though (as the press release acknowledges) the Consumer Price Index increase in 2008 “was just 0.1%”? 

And if what was included in the Park Board’s December meeting package is any indication, the Park District looks to be predicting its own budget deficit of between $800,000 and $1.1 million [pdf], depending on which of two revenue projections is ultimately adopted by the Park Board later this month.  It also appears that $300,000+ of that deficit can once again be attributed to Oakton Pool and the Senior Center, thereby providing further proof of the correctness of Einstein’s definition of insanity.

And the City?  At this point in time, it looks like Mayor Schmidt’s plan for some form of zero-based budgeting is a pipe dream – what with City Mgr. Jim Hock loudly objecting, City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on her way to Gurnee, and the Council majority of deficit-wallowing Alderpuppets installed by former mayor Frimark seemingly incapable of performing subtraction when it comes to City expenditures.

Last May we provided our own simple way to almost balance the City budget (“How To Balance The City Budget,” May 27, 2009) – we came up $49,700 short on the $2 million, which we left for self-proclaimed budget “hawk” Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) to take care of.  Fortunately, we didn’t hold our breath for that to occur.    

Which sets the table for Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti and his Council cronies to push through the highly-questionable Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboard deal as $400,000 of “found money” that the City would be foolish to turn down – notwithstanding the City Attorney’s preliminary opinion that such an “impact fee” might not be legally enforceable or even constitutional, and despite the whole Allegretti-engineered, City-as-applicant arrangement stinking up the entire Council chambers.

One thing does look pretty certain, however: the taxpayers likely will take a trimming from every branch of local government, to go with the ones they will take from the State of Illinois and Crook County; and that trimming will likely be accompanied by reduced services from most, if not all, branches of local government.

So Happy New Year…and welcome to the 2010 edition of fiscally mismanaged local governments gone wild.

As another year comes to a close, we here at PublicWatchdog hope that we have helped make local government more transparent, understandable and accountable to the taxpayers who fund it; and that we also have helped shine a spotlight on those who would abuse the public trust of government, or manipulate it for their own benefit to the detriment of the community as a whole.  We also promise to try to do even better in 2010.

In that spirit, we offer the following quotes:

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.  It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.”
            Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
            Edmund Burke

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”
            James Madison, Federalist No. 51

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government”
            Thomas Jefferson

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.  It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
            Robert Maynard Hutchins

And with that, we wish all of you a happy, vigilant, active, passionate, engaged and well-nourished New Year.

After watching the minutes of the 12/21/09 City Council meeting posted on the Melidosian Motionbox site, we can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is more to this Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboards deal than meets the eye – although we’re still unclear about whether the missing part of the equation involves stupidity, corruption, or a little bit of both.

Is there a smoking gun that we can point to? 

No…because stupidity (or ignorance masquerading as stupidity) of public officials is, sadly, so commonplace it is almost expected, especially when the management of public funds is involved.  And when it comes to political corruption, even iron fists like the U.S. Attorney’s office and the F.B.I. usually have to resort to “flipping” corrupt insiders to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 

But one would have to be hopelessly naïve to think that Park Ridge is somehow immune to political graft and corruption, if only because we’re talking about a unit of government within what is commonly known as “Crook County,” situated in what the Chicago Tribune has branded the “State of Corruption” – and bordering on a city that has been so corrupt for so long that the term “Chicago-Style” has become more identified with kinky government than with hot dogs.

So when considering the billboards deal proposed by GGI, we think that a little background information might be useful – and we suggest a line of stories from the Des Plaines Journal about that city’s experience with a billboard company, Premere Outdoor, Inc., that has at least one thing in common with GGI.

Back in 2003 when Premere Outdoor got permission from Des Plaines to erect 10 billboards, its attorney happened to be…surprise!…Joseph Loss, one of the attorneys (along with the ubiquitous Park Ridge insider, attorney Jack Owens) for GGI.  And…surprise again!…one of Premere Outdoor’s shareholders just happened to be Heather Loss, reportedly the wife of Joseph Loss.  And two other Premere shareholders just happened to be convicted felon (and former Crook County undersheriff) James Dvorak, and the wife of convicted insurance fraud schemer Joseph Nicosia.

Not the most savory cast of characters, is it?

Just in case anybody doubts there is big money in billboards, a story in the December 1, 2004, edition of the Des Plaines Journal (“Billboard Backlash Is Concern For EDC”) reported that 42 days after Des Planes gave Premere Outdoor the rights for 10 billboards, that company was sold for $10.5 million to another sign company, Lamar Outdoor Advertising, which then sold the rights to 5 of those 10 signs to Premere Media, Inc. – reportedly, an affiliate of Premere Outdoor – before Premere Media sold those rights to Viacom, the media giant, for an undisclosed sum.

What does that mean for billboards in Park Ridge?

Well, thanks to Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti and Alds. Robert Ryan and Frank Wsol providing the 3-2 majority vote (over Alds. Rich DiPietro and Joe Sweeney, because Alds. Don Bach and Tom Carey were absent), the City of Park Ridge, rather than GGI, was the applicant for the zoning code text amendments needed for the billboards.  That meant that GGI was able to avoid being the “applicant” – which, under the Park Ridge ethics ordinance, would have required GGI to disclose the identities of all its officers, directors and anyone having a 3% or greater ownership interest in GGI.

Was the decision by Allegretti, Ryan and Wsol to make the City the applicant stupid? Corrupt? Other? All of the above? None of the above?

For the time being, that’s your own personal call. 

But to provide some kind of frame of reference, consider that 3% of the $600,000 GGI is offering to pay the City – presumably a mere fraction of GGI’s potential take on the four billboards – is $18,000.  But that same 3% of the $10.5 million Premere Outdoor got from its sale of what effectively might have been little more than 5 billboards in Des Plaines yields a nifty $315,000.

Hmmmmm.  Sniff, sniff.

Back in the 1960s the Illinois Secretary of State was a fellow named Paul Powell, who had a propensity for accumulating unexplained cash – over $800,000, back when that was “real” money – in shoeboxes in the closet of his hotel suite in Springfield.   Powell’s pet phrase when describing a sweetheart deal (at the taxpayers’ expense, of course) was: “I can smell the meat a’cookin’.”

Those in attendance at Monday night’s City Council meeting might have caught more than a whiff of cooking meat as Fourth Ward Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti did his best (or worst, depending on your point of view) to seal the deal on zoning text amendments that would permit Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) to put up four billboards along the Tollway by the Renaissance office plaza, which could bring the City $400,000 down and another $184,000 over the next 20 years.

“Billboards” has been GGI’s go-to guy on this matter since it was brought to the Council back in June, and by the August 17 meeting he was leading Alds. Robert Ryan (5th) and Frank Wsol (7th) in their successful 3-2 vote – over the opposition of Alds. DiPietro and Sweeney, with Alds. Bach and Carey absent – to make the City, instead of GGI, the applicant for the zoning code text amendments needed for the billboards, ostensibly because with the City as the applicant the Council had the power to trump any unfavorable decision on the application by the Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) that it did not have if GGI was the applicant.

But perhaps the more significant difference between the City being the applicant and GGI being the applicant, although not mentioned by “Billboards,” was what we identified in our post of November 9:

Carrying the water for GGI in this matter is 4th Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti, who seems hell-bent on changing City ordinances to enable the City Council to trump P&Z decisions about billboards.  And he appears to be “gaming” the process by getting the City to be the applicant rather than GGI, which allows GGI to avoid the disclosure requirements under the City’s ethics ordinance [pdf] that were adopted at the April 2, 2007 City Council meeting [pdf] in the face of accusations by then-mayor (and Allegretti puppeteer) Howard Frimark that more-stringent disclosures were “motivated by politics rather than integrity.”

With the City as the applicant, GGI has been able to avoid the required disclosure of the identities of its directors, officers and those shareholders holding a larger than 3% stake in the company.  And such disclosures might be problematic for GGI, especially in view of its ties – through, at minimum, the mutual involvement of Joseph Loss – with Premier Outdoor, Inc., the company that in 2003 got a deal with Des Plaines for up to 10 billboards, and whose officials back then included Loss, former Crook County undersheriff and convicted felon James Dvorak, and convicted felon Joseph P. Nicosia, Jr.  

But all these curious circumstances don’t necessarily mean that GGI’s proposed billboard deal with Park Ridge is kinked up.  “Billboards” Allegretti might actually be telling the truth when he insists that his keen interest in this billboard deal is simply to get $600,000 in revenue for the City’s beleaguered treasury.

After all, “Billboards” is the proven fiscal conservative who:

* voted for giving away $270,000 of taxpayers’ money to private community groups, even as the City was facing a $2 million budget deficit;

* voted for giving $2.4 million over 15 years to Napleton Cadillac, even as it was closing down its operations;

* wanted to build a new $16 million-plus police station without even holding a referendum;

* opposed passing on $400,000 of water rate increases to water users, thereby forcing the City to eat all those costs; and

* opposes the reinstatement of the City’s debt ceiling.

Just passing through the water rate increase would get the City the same $400,000 of up-front cash that it will get from the GGI deal.  And according to a story in the Sept. 22, 2004, edition of The Journal (“Convicted Felon Linked To Firm That Won Billboard Rights From Des Plaines”), two-sided billboards like the ones being sought by GGI “can fetch as much as $12,000 per month” for each of the two sides.  If those figures are still accurate, that means GGI can expect to generate $1,152,000 from its four Park Ridge billboards…each year! 

So why, exactly, is “Billboards” Allegretti so intent on locking Park Ridge into a deal that will get it a measly $30,000 a year, on average – just 2.6% of GGI’s annual take?   

Stop over at City Hall at 7:30 p.m. on January 18, 2010, when this item is next on the City Council’s agenda, take a sniff or two, and maybe you’ll catch the scent of pot roast in the air. 

For those of you wondering what happened with the “billboard” vote at last night’s Council meeting, we can report that it was deferred to a future date by a vote of 5-2 (Alds. Allegretti, Bach, Carey, Ryan and Wsol v. DiPietro and Sweeney) after well over two hours of sometimes rancorous discussion and debate. 

The deferral vote came after attorney Kathleen Henn, standing in for City Attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill, advised the Council that it would take a “super-majority” vote to over-ride the decision of the Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) rejecting the application of the City – on behalf of Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) – for zoning code text amendments that would enable GGI to put up four billboards in the “Renaissance Area” along the Tollway.  

That advice ignited an already-testy Allegretti, who angrily insisted that he had recently voted for the text amendments providing for a super-majority vote only because Hill had assured him that a super-majority would not apply to this vote on the billboard issue.  For reasons not entirely clear, locking up this billboard deal ASAP sure seems to have grabbed a top spot on Allegretti’s “to do” list. 

The deferral motion also followed the announcement by both DiPietro and Sweeney that they would be voting to uphold the P&Z decision, thereby preventing a super-majority vote for over-ride.  Had the vote proceeded and over-ride was defeated, the City could not re-apply to P&Z for those text amendments for a full year – although nothing would prevent GGI itself from immediately making its own application, something GGI and Allegretti want no part of. 

Hmmm…can anyone say “ethics ordinance” three times real fast while eating saltines? 

We will address some other aspects of this topic tomorrow, but if you want to get up to speed on it we encourage you to read our two previous “billboard” posts: “The Stench Of Council’s Rush To Billboard Deal” and “Billboard Wars: Allegretti And Owens Defeat Planning & Zoning”.

You also might want to catch Allegretti’s positively shameless shilling for GGI on the Melidosian Motionbox site just as soon as the uploading of the video of last night’s meeting is complete.

Double-Talker?  As readers of this blog know, we are no fans of Ald. Jim Allegretti’s successful efforts to weaken the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission and change our zoning code to make it easier to bring billboards to Park Ridge.  But we found it perversely humorous to read in this week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Residents Speak Out Against Billboards Mulled,” Dec. 16) that one of the more outspoken critics of the billboards is none other than Diane Schmidt-Garvey.

For those of you who don’t remember Mrs. Schmidt-Garvey, she was one of the more outspoken “White Shirts” condemning the City Council for daring to require that the proposed PADS homeless shelter actually comply with zoning regulations.  But now she’s a born-again regulator, demanding that our zoning regulations be enforced to the max to keep billboards from blighting the view from her townhome, whining: “It’s going to make our property values go right down the tube.”

Gee, Mrs. S-G, isn’t that one of the same arguments you mocked when it was made by the neighbors of St. Mary’s Episcopal, the first proposed PADS site, just like you mocked the concerns of St. Paul of the Cross School parents when they voiced their concern that PADS – by its own admission – would be importing people with drug, alcohol, mental and emotional problems into our community? 

Another Double-Talker?  We don’t know where Gene Spanos was hiding for the past decade when the new O’Hare runway was being planned, designed and built.  But the sound of Richie Daley’s Flying Circus over his house has sure brought Spanos out of the woodwork and pushing for what is looking to us more and more like expensive and ill-conceived, ready-fire-aim piece of…litigation.

As reported in this week’s Journal, Spanos admits that a lawsuit is “not going to be cheap” but contends that it is vital to the viability of our community. (“Fed Up, Residents Consider Suing O’Hare,” Dec. 16)  Most of the rest of his quotes, however, sound almost schizophrenic; and they sure don’t provide anything in the way of insight into how such a lawsuit is going to achieve anything more than what he refers to as the “lose-lose situation now if we do nothing.”

What we find most curious, however, is that while he “[w]ants some restitution and …to send a message all across the country” via this expensive lawsuit, he admits that his house is currently up for sale and that he’s moving even if a lawsuit is filed and settled. That doesn’t sound like the level of semper fi commitment we would expect from someone who has put so much effort into this issue, at least over the past 12 months.

Spanos describes the effect of our decreased property values as “[t]he vultures are circling.”  But the analogy of rats leaving a sinking ship might be more appropriate.

If what is reported in today’s Park Ridge Journal is true (“Teachers Keep Lid On Contract,” December 16), we want to give a Watchdog bark-out to the Maine Teachers Association (“MTA”) for what sounds like an innovative win/win solution to Dist. 207’s recently-disclosed financial problems.

While rejecting the D-207 school administration’s request to reopen contract negotiations for the purpose of permitting salary freezes and other reductions intended to avert cutting 75 jobs for an approximately $5 million savings, the MTA has suggested a voluntary payroll reduction which – if we understand it correctly – would divert a portion of teachers’ paychecks to the D-207 educational foundation for the funding of the positions that otherwise would be cut.

In other words, the teachers are stepping up to the plate to save their own, and their fellow teachers’, jobs.

Many private sector employees who don’t have the job, wages and benefits security provided by contracts like the ones enjoyed by most teachers have effectively done the same thing, only in a different way: by accepting wage freezes, and/or wage and benefit cuts, in lieu of layoffs.  As we see it, the MTA proposal gets D-207 to the same place.

A win/win that preserves the bargained-for contract rights while acknowledging and addressing the District’s precarious financial circumstances is a good thing.  And we would like to think that the concept of teachers sacrificing for each other – or, more accurately, for those unidentified 75 who were going to get sacked – in this way might also build some additional esprit de corps among the teachers.

This solution is not yet a done deal, however.  As MTA president Emma Visee acknowledges: “We don’t know yet how it will work.” 

Hopefully, the respective parties can overcome the devil that always seems to be in the details and make this solution a reality sooner rather than later.  Because even with a plan that provides the District with the $5 million it hoped to save by those 75 layoffs, there is still an additional $12 million in deficits that the District needs to address.  And that ain’t chicken feed.

But for the time being, this looks like a big step in the right direction which deserves a pat on the back all around.

And it should serve as a shining example to our other governmental bodies and their employees to consider as they cope with their own financial struggles.