Last week’s edition of the Park Ridge Herald Advocate contained a letter from most of our local churches (and several other organizations) soliciting support for, and explaining the genesis of, the initiative that will bring a PADS (Public Action Delivering Shelter) facility to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church beginning this October (“PADS initiative was outgrowth of outreach,” March 20).

As we’ve said before on this site, we have not yet formed an opinion on this PADS initiative…for the simple reason that we do not believe that there has been the kind of full and fair public discussion that such a facility – as well as the people of this community (especially those St. Mary’s neighbors) – deserve.  Residents, especially those St. Mary’s neighbors, deserve to know how many people will be housed at St. Mary’s, what kind of problems (financial? drugs? alcohol? sexual deviancy? violence?) those people may have, what kind of treatment/care/assistance (besides temporary housing) they need and are receiving, and how they will be monitored and accounted for.  

We also question what appears to be the less-than-forthright and transparent way the PADS proponents have gone about the process of bringing such a facility to our community.  For example, the letter states that “[t]hree feature articles about the project appeared in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate,” an assertion which seems directed at a perception among at least some local residents that there has been an attempt to sneak this facility into town with a minimum of scrutiny by the taxpayers. 

We don’t know what three articles they are talking about, because we could find only one H-A article when we did a “Search” of the H-A website – from the February 28, 2008, edition of the H-A.  And that article portrayed the PADS facility at St. Mary’s as virtually a done deal (“Park Ridge to join PADS network of shelters”[pdf]), not an early-stage proposal on which the public could provide meaningful input. 

The letter goes on to recite a litany of meetings purportedly held over several years, again with the seeming intent of depicting a process that was both fully-disclosed to, and openly-discussed by, the community as a whole.  We seriously doubt, however, that many of the 37,000-plus Park Ridge residents regularly attend, or regularly receive the minutes of, meetings of the “Park Ridge Ministerial Association” – where many/most of those discussions may have taken place. 

Similarly, we don’t put much stock in a “survey” of PADS support reportedly consisting of 600-plus pew cards collected from various churches, which sounds about as reliable as Ald. Don Bach’s (3rd Ward) “survey” of a whopping 30 of his constituents that inspired him to vote for a giveaway of up to $2.4 Million taxpayer dollars to Napleton Cadillac.  Neither “survey” sounds like a good way to measure overall community sentiment or to make decisions that can significantly impact our residents, especially when only the number (“over 600”) – and not the contents – of those pew cards is reported.

But where the letter’s authors really start to sound more like politicians (insult intended) rather than religious leaders is their claim that they “sought a church that did not have a school or day care in its building” for the PADS site, and then “invited St. Mary’s Episcopal Church to consider being the host church.”  Unless we’re grossly mistaken, St. Mary’s did have a school/day care center, St. Mary’s Carousel of Learning [pdf] (now “Christie’s Carousel of Learning”), until it hastily packed up and moved over to Park Ridge Presbyterian Church with no real explanation other than that St. Mary’s “wanted to use the…space for other things.”[pdf]

More troubling still is the fact that those PADS proponents remained strangely silent and out of sight all during last Fall’s debate over whether the Carousel’s new location could safely and acceptably accommodate the expected additional traffic.  If the relocation of the Carousel from St. Mary’s was primarily to make way for the PADS facility there – as now appears to be the case – basic honesty and decency would suggest that such information should have been volunteered by the PADS proponents at that time.

So what would Jesus do about a PADS shelter in Park Ridge?  We’re not nearly as sure about the answer as the religious “pros” who support the PADS initiative seem to be, perhaps because we see a number of potential problems that have been glossed over by the PADS proponents instead of publicly aired and resolved.  But from our “amateur” reading of the Bible we do know that Jesus always told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what he was doing, and why.

For starters, maybe the PADS proponents should give that a try.