7th Ward Alderpuppet Frank Wsol wants the taxpayers to buy a new police station he can take credit for.  And after three years of scheming his way to that goal, he’s still at it.

First, he came up with his confusing, misleading, dishonest and unnecessary cop shop referendum question after a bunch of private citizens had already put a legitimate cop shop referendum question on the ballot. To many Council observers and those citizens who braved the cold and Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark’s interference to get their question on the ballot, it sure looked like Wsol was trying to marginalize the results of the citizens’ referendum because he knew that it was going to lose big-time.  And it did, 83.39% to 16.61%. 

So in last Thursday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Schmidt wants Park Ridge house studied for police,” April 9), Wsol was already deceitfully “spinning” the 53.20% to 46.80% defeat of his referendum question into a bass-ackwards “victory.”  

“I think it’s pretty clear that if we do have the funds available after taking care of our infrastructure, a fair of amount of citizens understand that we should do something (about the police station),” Wsol said. “I’m positive about the response to the second question, because it shows people understand, at least in principle, the concepts that were proposed are sound: a fixed budget, no new land purchase and an addition onto City Hall.”

Of course, Wsol had no dollar figure for what “taking care of our infrastructure” might cost, or even what it might entail.  And that means that he had no idea of when any funds for a new cop shop might be “available.”  All he was trying to do was look less like a deceptive weasel than he might otherwise appear to the many voters who wondered why he would come up with such a last-minute piece of junk to put on the ballot.

Having watched Wsol with interest since he “inherited” his aldermanic seat in 2005 from retiring alderman Larry “Mr. Infrastructure” Friel in an uncontested election, we have found him to be pretty much of a “RINO” (“Republican In Name Only”), especially when it comes to City finances.  He also seems to fancy himself a “politician” – in the worst sense of that term – which would explain why talking honestly to Park Ridge taxpayers about the cop shop is not very easy for him.

Three years ago, Wsol led the “Hallelujah” chorus when the City’s hired-gun consultants recommended a 40,000+ square foot “Taj Mahal” police station with shooting range, work-out room and indoor garage.  And when Mayor Frimark was negotiating sweetheart deals with the owners of various sites on which the new cop shop could be built (including a site owned by Frimark campaign contributor Napleton Cadillac, and the 720 Garden parcel owned by a Frimark friend), Wsol happily voted for the closed sessions to keep the taxpayers in the dark and keep the project moving forward.

But when citizen opposition increased, Frankie The Politician started tap-dancing.  He came up with a new plan to cap the cop shop’s purchase price at $16.5 million, which he calculated could be financed for roughly the same annual debt service as what we have been paying for the past 10 years on the expiring Public Works Building bonds.  What he tried to hide, however, was that the new bonds would be for 23 years instead of 10, raising the total cost of the project to $28 million, without any land costs figured in.

That’s one of those kinds of lies that the courtroom oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is designed to prevent: telling the “whole truth” would have required The Politician to actually acknowledge that $28 million cost figure, which he consistently refused to do. 

He also failed to tell the “whole truth” when he and Frimark claimed that the new cop shop bonds wouldn’t raise our taxes because they would just be extending the annual debt service payments we’re already making.  Telling the “whole truth” would have required them to admit that while taxes won’t have to be raised to continue to pay that same level of debt service, even for the next 23 years, they will have to be raised if the City wants to do things – like flood control or street re-surfacing – that it otherwise might have done with the $1.2 million in the unallocated cash that would become available once the Public Works bonds were paid off.

According the the H-A article, Wsol says he is not going to bring any new cop shop proposals to the Council – at least not for the time being.  Said The Politician: “I think we need to wait for our new mayor to help us answer that question.” The “whole truth” is that the voters already gave Wsol and the rest of the Alderpuppets the answer to that question, and that answer was “No!” 

As for “our new mayor,” he already came up with a suggestion: renovating the City-owned house at 229 S. Courtland.  That makes it time for City staff to explore whether that option is viable and cost-effective, and to give the Council a recommendation on it which the Council can either endorse or reject.

But whatever the outcome, it’s way past time for Frankie “The Politician” Wsol to stop shoveling the “sugar” and start telling the residents the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the cop shop - both what it will cost and what other important projects it will prevent.

Or he can keep on tap-dancing.