His mayoral campaign committee is known as “Friends for Frimark” and it has collected in the neighborhood of $100,000 for Mayor Howard Frimark since it was formed in 2004.  That’s a lot of scratch to run for an office that pays a meager $12,000 a year.

Its contributors include many well-known local businesses and service professionals who could benefit from a “friend” like Frimark in City Hall, including such notables as auto dealers Joe Bredemann and Napleton Cadillac; Realtor Owen Hayes II; restaurateur Sam Markos (Crystal Palace); accountant Dirk Ahlbeck (Ahlbeck & Company); real estate developers Bruce Adreani (and his Norwood Builders), Mark Olshansky (JMM Developments) and Tim Metropulos (TMM Development); and attorneys DiFranco & Associates, Richard Larson (Larson and Edlund) and Jack Owens (Owens, Owens & Rinn).  

So it should come as no surprise – at least to those who have watched his opportunistic political career – that Frimark would try to reciprocate.  And that would explain his lobbying for Napleton (and its fellow beneficiary of the City’s largesse, PRC Partners, which was planning to build more condos on that site) to retain the $400,000 windfall the City Council authorized back in January, when Frimark himself cast the tie-breaking vote.  

But with Napleton announcing the closing of its Cadillac dealership and with the current economic downturn appearing to have put the brakes (at least temporarily) on the planned multi-family developments at Greenwood and Northwest Hwy, Executive Office Plaza and Gateway Estates, it also comes as no surprise that Frimark would look to entertain the possibility of bailing out Napleton/PRC by adding the former Cadillac site to the City’s growing stable of possible locations for the proposed $20 Million-plus police station.

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, Frimark plans to talk to Napleton in a couple of weeks about that possibility.  And doing his part is Frimark’s 5th Ward Alderpuppet, Robert Ryan, who wants the City Council’s Public Safety Committee to push forward with the planning process for the new cop shop – even as the announced closing of Napleton Cadillac already has the City scrambling to figure out how to replace Napleton’s $200,000 in annual tax revenue, as well as coping with an even bigger dent in the City’s revenues that could result if Lutheran General’s appeal of its property taxes is successful. 

And bailing out Napleton/PRC by having the City buy the old Napleton site and carry it on the taxpayers’ dime until the economy recovers and it becomes more attractive and affordable to a private developer like PRC is in keeping with Frimark’s let’s-make-a-deal-with-the-taxpayers’-money style, as evidenced by his recent demand that the City get a new appraisal for the 720 Garden property – the previous flavor of the month site for the cop shop – because the first one was too low!   

As we’ve said before, the City needs a renovated and improved police station to remedy the inadequacies of the current facility.  But the proposed new Taj Mahal-ish cop shop is a luxury that is as unaffordable as it is unnecessary: We’d rather see that money spent on training, equipment and compensation for the police officers instead of on excessive brick and mortar. 

But because his friends were there for Frimark, it looks like Frimark intends to be there for his friends.  Too bad those friends don’t include the majority of Park Ridge taxpayers.