The Common Sense Chief. With the often mindless “nanny state” mentality encroaching into our daily lives with increasing frequency, we want to give a big Watchdog bark-out to Park Ridge Police Chief Frank Kaminski for his common-sense approach to the problem known as “distracted driving.” 

Chief K was asked to look into whether a hands-free cell phone ordinance like the one the demented midget who runs Chicago instituted might be worth enacting here.  Instead of blindly jumping on that misguided bandwagon, Chief K wisely noted in his memo [pdf] that such an ordinance would pose compliance/enforcement problems.  But where we give him extra credit is for his recognition that “the data also proves that this [distraction] occurs whether cell phones are hand-held or hands free” – not unlike it occurs for those nitwits who apply makeup or shave while driving.

Good call, Chief!

Just Do Your Job.  During Monday night’s City Council discussion of zero-based budgeting, Fifth Ward Ald. Robert Ryan suggested the formation of a citizens task force to help the Council (and Staff?) figure out ways to balance the City budget after yet another multi-million dollar deficit that Ryan voted for.  

Sorry, alderman, but formulating a balanced budget is something that City Staff is being well-paid to do, and competently overseeing that effort is something you and your fellow alder-critters signed on for when you ran for your seats around The Horseshoe.  Since we don’t recall any of you professing fiscal incompetence when you were running for office, don’t now try to push your responsibilities off on people who neither sought, nor have taken the oath of, your offices.

If the Staff and/or the Council can’t or won’t do the jobs they signed on for, then we need to find that out sooner rather than later and take appropriate steps to replace them.  What we don’t need are private citizens being conscripted to effectively serve as enablers and concealers of City governmental incompetence.

It’s Coming!  Next Wednesday (December 16) night the Gene Spanos/Joe Karaganis traveling road show is coming to the South Park Field House, as flyers [pdf] in this week’s Park Ridge Journal are announcing.  According to those flyers, the meeting will address “our next step toward a class action lawsuit for all who are impacted by the negative side effects of the ORD re-configuration – 2014 O’Hare Plan.”

We strongly encourage a big turnout for this meeting so that as many Park Ridge residents as possible – from all areas of town – are present to hear about what we suspect will be a grand and glorious plan to take on all comers in a litigation death match: the City of Chicago, the FAA, the EPA, the airlines, the ONCC, etc.  And we hope questions are asked about how much that plan is going to cost, and how it’s going to be paid for.

It’s Unanimous!  Maine South’s University of Indiana-bound running back Matt Perez recently made it unanimous when the Chicago Tribune concurred with the Chicago Sun-Times’ selection of him as the Player of the Year in high school football.  Perez not only excelled while running and catching the ball, but he also was a defensive standout and special teams force for the Hawk’s repeat state championship squad.

Over the past two years that he has played a starring role in his team’s achievements, we repeatedly have heard about his dedication and work ethic.  So it’s great to see how he has successfully turned all that hard work into such outstanding performance that it earned the recognition he is receiving. 

Well done, Matt!