As reported in yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Churches won’t try to run shelter without PADS in partnership,” Nov. 6), the Park Ridge Ministerial Association (“PRMA”) has abandoned its efforts to open a homeless shelter in Park Ridge because its homeless shelter franchise of choice, PADS to Hope, Inc. (“PADS Inc.”), decided it can’t be bothered with complying with our zoning laws.

Apparently PADS Inc. was insulted that our Planning & Zoning Commission and our City Council had the audacity to expect compliance with our zoning laws.  PADS Inc.’s high dudgeon stems from its claim that none of the other communities on its traveling road show circuit required such compliance – further evidence that (as H.L. Mencken might have said), you won’t go broke underestimating the intelligence of most public officials.

That a carpetbagger organization like PADS Inc. would take its ball and go pouting back home to Palatine doesn’t surprise us.  The numerous legitimate questions about PADS Inc.’s operations and effectiveness in combating homelessness raised by so many of our residents and other interested parties (e.g., St. Paul of the Cross Concerned Parents) over the past nine months since the PRMA first announced that a PADS shelter was moving into St. Mary’s Episcopal clearly had an “Emperor’s New Clothes” effect on an organization that seems to have escaped serious scrutiny for quite awhile. 

But what about our local clergy who run the PRMA?  What about their “ministry” that demanded the establishment of a homeless shelter for all those Park Ridge homeless?

Well, according to PRMA spokesman Rev. Stephen Larson of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, the PRMA can’t open a shelter without PADS Inc. because that organization provides “background checks, identification cards, psychological and medical counseling, employment referrals, linkage agreements with police departments and other social services.” 

C’mon, Rev. Larson…do you really think Jesus would let those things get in His way if He really believed a one-night-a-week, six-month-a-year shelter was such an important “ministry”? 

First of all, the “psychological and medical counseling” issue is a complete red herring, because PADS Inc. did little more than a once-a-year check up for its traveling road show “clients.”  If the PRMA really cared about these health issues, however, we have to believe it could work out an arrangement with Lutheran General for health services every bit as good as, or even better than, what PADS Inc. provides. 

As for “background checks [and] identification cards,” that looks like another red herring, because we’re pretty sure PADS Inc. fans like Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and Chief of Police Tom Swoboda could arrange for the Park Ridge Police Dept. to handle the background checks and any of the other public safety services which PADS Inc. expected to secure through a “linkage agreement” with the City; and PADS Inc. fan and Park Ridge Park District President Dick Barton could arrange for the Park District to provide the picture I.D.s. 

That leaves only “employment referrals” and “other social services” as missing pieces that PADS Inc. allegedly would have provided.  Might we suggest that, if those services can’t be provided by one or more of our local social service organizations like the Center of Concern, maybe Mayor Frimark could negotiate a contract for them with PADS Inc. in much the same way as he wanted to negotiate a contract with PADS Inc. to put one of its franchises in the Public Works Service Center?

We can’t guarantee that all of this would work out the way we have suggested.  But the fact that the PRMA is so willing to walk away from what it was calling, just weeks ago, an essential “ministry” indicates that this was never really about helping the homeless but, instead, was about helping PADS Inc. to expand its franchise so that it could get more government and private funding.  And it also suggests that the PRMA was not exactly telling the people of this community the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about its support for a PADS Inc. franchise in Park Ridge.

Finally, we need to recognize one Robert O’Neill of Park Ridge, who – in an “Open Letter of Contempt” published in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate – called the people who “created enough noise to keep a homeless shelter out of Park Ridge…narrow minded jackals” and venomous “snakes,” in part, it seems, because they were also critical of his pastor, St. Paul of the Cross’s Fr. Carl Morello.

For ratcheting up the nasty rhetoric well beyond that of Fr. Morello, who merely branded those same people as practitioners of “thinly veiled racial and economic bigotry,” we bestow on O’Neill the inaugural “Pseudo-Christian of the Week” Award.  We also look forward to his next letter to the Herald-Advocate announcing that he has begun taking one homeless person into his own home one night per week between now and April.1 as his own personal effort to remedy homelessness.

Now, when can we expect to hear that same announcement from all you PRMA clergy and your White Shirted supporters?

Our property taxes are soaring.  Mortgage defaults and foreclosures on Park Ridge homes are occurring in alarming numbers.

Meanwhile, our basements keep flooding, our streets and sidewalks need repairs, our electric power is dependably undependable, we’ve got a $1.7 million hole in last year’s budget and another similar budget hole is already expected for this year. 

And, oh yeah – the country’s in a recession that the “experts” are predicting will take years to climb out of.

So why in the world has the City Council’s Public Safety Committee placed a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) for a big new police station on the agenda [pdf] for tomorrow night’s meeting?

Ask the chairman, Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), or his fellow committee members, Ald. Jim Allegretti (4th Ward) and Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward).  After all, they’re already on record as supporting the construction of a big new police station, with Wsol displaying his brand of fiscal conservatism (?) – as reported at Page 4 of the Draft Minutes of the October 2, 2008, Committee Meeting [pdf] – by talking about limiting the cost of the project to no more than $16.5 million (if located on property currently owned by the City), along with additional interest (of $5-7 million?) over the roughly 20 year life of the bonds the City will issue to finance it.

The RFQ [pdf] is being designed for the 37,000 square foot building (v. the current 9,000 square foot facility) and 12,000 square feet of “secured or underground parking” that was recommended by those hired-gun consultants who have never seen a police station or other public building that couldn’t be bigger and more expensive.

Unfortunately, this is one of the back-door ways public officials try to give these kinds of projects traction – before the taxpayers start paying attention.  Is it sneaky?  Of course it is.  Is it a waste of time?  Of course it is, unless the City is actually going to go ahead with the project.  Is it intended to get big and expensive new cop shop built without consulting the taxpaying voters?  Absolutely!   

Wsol, Allegretti and Bach need to understand that fiscal responsibility is living within one’s means – or, more accurately, the means of their constituents who actually pay the bills for the “toys” these aldermen buy.  Maintain and repair needs to take precedence over expand and replace.

But since these three gentlemen don’t seem to understand that concept, the City Council should put the cop shop issue to advisory referendum in April to find out what the voters want before embarking on this sneaky and fiscally irresponsible frolic.

Our Founding Fathers earned for us the right to vote, and millions of Americans fought and died over the past 200+ years to preserve that right.  That’s why we should consider the act of voting as payment of a debt of honor.

Here’s what a few notable Americans have said about voting:

“Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.” Abraham Lincoln

“Voting is a civic sacrament.” Theodore Hesburgh

“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” John Quincy Adams 

Now get on out there and VOTE!

Last week we wrote about the most recent ISAT test scores and how Park Ridge/Niles Elementary School District 64’s scores at both the elementary and middle school levels don’t seem to be measuring up to our community’s expectations or its financial support. (“Time For Taxpayers To Start Paying Attention To School Dist. 64,” Oct. 31).

We noted how, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, no Dist. 64 school cracked the Top 50 schools in ISAT scoring, losing out to schools from districts that spend on average as much as $4,100/yr per pupil more than we do (Glenview, $14,858 v. Dist. 64 $10,755) and as much as $2,500 less than we do (Western Springs, $8,172).

So when we hear that Dist. 64 has decided to spend $39,000 on a “long-range strategic planning” consultant, we have to wonder just a little bit about where the administration’s and school board’s focus is.  And when we read about the things this consultant is already saying about the District, we wonder even more about the administration’s and board’s judgment. 

As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Dist. 64 Planning For Long Term,” Oct. 29), Dist. 64 hired The Cambridge Group, and it sounds as if lead consultant “Dr.” Howard Feddema (why is it that educators with Ph.Ds seem so obsessed with calling themselves “Doctor”?) is already blowing smoke up our collective skirts. 

Feddema wasted no time in praising Dist. 64 for “operating at a high level…financially” even though the District’s newly-abundant cash reserves are not the product of highly-competent “operations” but, instead, of a windfall of tax revenues resulting from last year’s referendum – which helped avert the financial crisis that D-64’s School Board and Administration created with their financially inept “operations” between 1998 and last year.  

So excuse us if we don’t break out the champagne upon reading that Feddema is comparing District 64 to an “organism” that could be viewed (because of its newly-flush financial status) as being at its peak “10” level – but which needs his strategic planning services to avoid the plateau-and-decline tendency of such “organisms.”

We’re also skeptical when we read on the Cambridge Group website about Feddema’s strategic planning model for school districts, which was created by Cambridge Group president and founder “Dr.” William Cook, and that promises to “dramatically improve student learning over time.”  Maybe our skepticism is because “over time” for many consultants tends to mean at some point in time after the consultant’s service contract expires and he/she has moved on to another project.

The dead giveaway for us, however, is when Feddema claims that the success of his work “depends on collaboration among teachers, administrators, board members, parents, and community leaders to identify long-term strategic direction and link that direction to the development of annual operating plans that drive daily practice in schools.”  Spreading responsibility over that many different factions ensures that nobody – and especially not the consultant – can be held accountable if/when the strategic planning falls short of its goals.  

Nevertheless, the District is already set to form its “30-member planning task force” early next year to work with Feddema.  You can bet that task force will be composed primarily of well-meaning but over-matched residents (not unlike the District’s Community Finance Committee) who can be expected to go along to get along with the handful of group “leaders” who are clued into the District’s desired outcomes, even if those outcomes are nothing close to what the District actually needs.

But hiring consultants and rounding up the usual suspects is just what the elected and appointed officials at Dist. 64 need to avoid accountability to the voters and the taxpayers.