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!
8 comments so far
Why Karaganis? His track record is less than stellar. Aren’t there any other attorneys with airport experience that might be better able to assist with the issues Park Ridge is experiencing? Or am I missing something?
Funny how sometimes it is not the idea in and of itself but rather the persons whose name is attached to the idea.
I just love your comments under the heading “just do your job” and, in general, agree with them. What I find funny as hell is that most who come to the blogs (in general supporters of Schmidt) lauded the idea of a flood task force. Now there is progress from the Mayor!! We have a task force of citizens and we will finally make progress!!!! I see ZERO difference between a flood task force and a cut the budget cimmittee. Flood control is a task that our city staff and elected officials (including the Mayor) are hired and paid to do. It is a part of the job they all decided to run for. You can take your entire paragraph you wrote and insert flood control where you wrote budget and it it the same freakin thing!! Of course it was suggested by someone who folks here generally support so it was a good idea. It appears to me the biggest problem with this idea is that it was suggested by an Alderman rather than the Mayor.
I wonder if Karaganis is going to offer another “investment” opportunity to this new group of suckers?
Anon 9:58,
You make a valid point except what the flooding problem requires is real expertise and we are fortunate to have some people with engineering degrees in Park Ridge.
I think Ryan is looking to hide behind some committee recommendations like he always does. Ryan is always asking for a recommendation for something or what other towns do. What is needed for the budget is to decide which programs or people to keep or cut and the ability to add and subtract. That is it. That is all. Why form a committee for it when we have elected representatives who are supposed to do the job.
:51:
I would ask you to answer your own question. You ask…”Why form a committee for it when we have elected representatives who are supposed to do the job.” We have a Mayor and Alderman, and we have an entire Public Works Department with many people who have a great deal of experience. Just like with the budget, we have a Mayor and Alderman and the city staff.
I do not disagree with you premise about committees providing a place for politicians to hide but I am amaze about your selective application of this concept. I will again state that this has more to do with who suggested it than the idea itself. You think a flood task force is OK (not being used to hide behind)??? Is it not true that a major reason Frimark lost is that he did nothing on the Flooding issue?? So now we are almost a year into the new Mayors term and look at all the things that have been accomplished related to the flooding issue!!!! Anyone??? Hello?!?!?! Here is what Schmidt said during the campaign…..”I will support accelerating the program for building relief sewers and modernizing and repairing our existing sewer lines in an effort to prevent potential catastrophic flooding problems in the future. I will also ask the Public Works Department to investigate using a new type of porous asphalt which allows water to percolate through the pavement instead of pooling or creating run-off and contributing to flooding.” Where are we on these issues???
I do not mean this to be a rant against Schmidt. I voted for him and have had some very pleasant conversations starting with the day he knocked on my door in a freakin’ blizzard to talk about issues. But it drives me crazy when people have this opinion about an issue until their guy does the exact same thing and then it is OK – When Bush did it it was EVIL but now that Obama is doing it it is OK.
Anyway….have a good weekend!!!
Anon 4:46,
I will explain to you the differences I see.
We do have a Public Works department but very few of them are engineers. I think we might only have one city engineer. The flooding problem is something we need an army of engineers to figure out how to fix because the problems are very special and very big.
The mayor and the aldermen can’t begin to do that job. The Public Works isn’t able to do that job either.
The city budget is a job the mayor and aldermen can do. The addition and subtraction problems should not be beyond their abilities to understand. Deciding which programs to keep or cut should also not be beyond their capabilities either.
I see it like the difference between home maintenance and building a house. I can do home maintenance projects but if I wanted to build a house I would hire a general contractor.
The jobs are different and need different abilities. Maintenance of the city budget and city services is why we elect these people. If they are going to hide behind committee recommendations to do the job they ran for and we elected them for then I say they should leave now and that has nothing to do with who made the proposal.
I also don’t see why you are so bent out of shape about it either. Something moving slow doesn’t mean it isn’t better than where we were with nothing. I think you are being impatient and unreasonable. You see it as the exact same thing but it’s not because what’s needed for accomplishing the different jobs are different levels of knowledge. Though maybe you think the mayor, aldermen and city staff can’t do math? I could maybe agree with you there.
anon 12.11.09 4:46 pm
As it was explained to me by an alderman who is not a fan of Schmidt, the flood task force was intended to study the problem and come up with a one-time “solution” that will need to be implemented over a number of years. That makes flood control something other than a basic annual function of city government like the budget.
My answer to your question re whether a major reason Frimark lost is that he did nothing on flooding is “No.” IF that was any reason at all, it was less of a reason than that the more people saw of him the slimier and sleezier he appeared, when he wasn’t looking like he was tyring to bully anyone who disagreed with him. And less of a reason than because of his support of the new police station we can’t afford, and his opposition to the Egan referendum. And because of the deal he tried to give Napleton. And because of his support of no restrictions on the PADS shelter.
Finally, George W. Bush was too stupid to be truly “EVIL” – which makes him different from Obama.
Thank you.
12.12.09 11:46 am – the PADS shelter was a big part of Frimark’s defeat, because it got a lot of us who weren’t paying attention to city politics interested and going to meetings, where we saw Frimark jumping into bed with the ministerial association (I think he was just looking for their votes, so I’m glad he lost more votes than he got for that).
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