Mere stupidity or outright corruption?  We can’t tell for sure, but Park Ridge Mayor Howard Frimark is sure making it a tough choice. 

As we previously reported here, the real estate appraiser hired by the City of Park Ridge came up with an appraisal of $770,000 for the American Insurance property at 720 Garden, the most recent flavor-of-the-month site for the big new police station the City wants to build.  Because the appraiser had the wrong square footage (how does an appraiser get the square footage wrong?), however, former City Mgr. Tim Schuenke (good riddance) adjusted the price upward to $888,000, which he then rounded up to $900,000 before inexplicably recommending that the City offer $1.1 Million for it! 

But just when we thought that process couldn’t get any more fiscally irresponsible, Mayor Frimark has kicked it up a notch to theater of the absurd: He has announced that he wants the City to get a second appraisal done – because he claims the City’s first appraisal was too low! (“Mayor wants second appraisal on land,” Herald-Advocate, March 13).

Is it merely stupid, or outright crooked, to offer $200,000 above your own appraiser’s stated value for a piece of property the City has the right (by eminent domain) to condemn and purchase at its provable fair market value?  And is it even more stupid, or more crooked, to then demand a second appraisal that you have already decreed must be higher than your first…especially when you’re the buyer?   
 
We’ve suspected for quite awhile that there were real estate deals being secretly worked out in the area south of the tracks known as “Target Area 4″: Although the City has proposed cop shop sites willy nilly, for some unknown reason it seems fixated on Target Area 4 – even though the City has not even attempted to determine the ideal geographic location for a new police station.

We here at PublicWatchdog are unrepentant capitalists.  We have no problem with anybody making a lot of money – even from the City – so long as it’s done honestly and  in plain view.  But when a city manager first gooses up an offer by $200,000 more than the City’s corrected appraised value of the property, and then the mayor wants a completely new appraisal because he claims the first one was too low, something smells.

It also causes us to ask: “Just who’s side are you on, Mr. Mayor?”