Comments on: City Government By Delegation And Avoidance

By: anon

anon — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:10:01 +0000

Wondering:

You are right. If the alderman do not want to do as you suggest, they should resign. Lucky for us there is a long line of public spirited citizens lining up to take all their places. I guess our biggest dilemma will be picking among all the qualified people clammering to be aldermen.

If I am not mistaken, even with all the controversy of going from 14 to 7 etc., 3 alderman ran unapposed and turnout was very low. Maybe it will be different this time.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:46:01 +0000

Good point about the lack of information about the qualifications of committee and commission members. I don’t know who most of them are, but some of those I do know don’t seem to have any special qualifications (including one who is a friend of mine) for the job.

By: Steve Macko

Steve Macko — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:54:11 +0000

As far as Frimark is concerned the lower the number of people making decisions, who are directly accountable to the voters, the better. Less is better. Seven is better than fourteen. Zero is better than seven.

I can hear our Alderman now……”I see no point in going over this again. Our esteemed and knowledgeable committee of fellow citizens have studied this issue and came to a well thought out conclusion. It would be a disservice to them to question their outcome”.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:29:15 +0000

I’m glad Ryan, Bach and Allegretti aren’t my aldermen. Carey is my alderman. Even though I know that he was Frimark’s handpicked guy to defeat Rex Parker, every so often it sounds like he’s not entirely under Frimark’s control as much as the other three.

I agree that we shouldn’t have all these non-elected people doing the work that the city staff or the aldermen should be doing.

By: Wondering

Wondering — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:26:04 +0000

Great post.

Little doubt that being a Park Ridge alderman is a time consuming and often thankless job done for essentially no pay. That said, if Ryan or any of the other aldermen don’t want to spend the time studying background material or working with the city staff to get up to speed on issues that come before their committee’s or the full council then they need to resign their seats.

I am a 5th ward resident and I am sick of Ryan. With his previously publicized absences and his continual promotion of this “outsourcing” of aldermanic duties idea us 5th warders are really being under-represented. IMHO we need to go back to two aldermen per ward… that way when one is asleep at the switch at least there’d be a chance the other might be paying attention.