Double-Talker?  As readers of this blog know, we are no fans of Ald. Jim Allegretti’s successful efforts to weaken the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission and change our zoning code to make it easier to bring billboards to Park Ridge.  But we found it perversely humorous to read in this week’s Park Ridge Journal (“Residents Speak Out Against Billboards Mulled,” Dec. 16) that one of the more outspoken critics of the billboards is none other than Diane Schmidt-Garvey.

For those of you who don’t remember Mrs. Schmidt-Garvey, she was one of the more outspoken “White Shirts” condemning the City Council for daring to require that the proposed PADS homeless shelter actually comply with zoning regulations.  But now she’s a born-again regulator, demanding that our zoning regulations be enforced to the max to keep billboards from blighting the view from her townhome, whining: “It’s going to make our property values go right down the tube.”

Gee, Mrs. S-G, isn’t that one of the same arguments you mocked when it was made by the neighbors of St. Mary’s Episcopal, the first proposed PADS site, just like you mocked the concerns of St. Paul of the Cross School parents when they voiced their concern that PADS – by its own admission – would be importing people with drug, alcohol, mental and emotional problems into our community? 

Another Double-Talker?  We don’t know where Gene Spanos was hiding for the past decade when the new O’Hare runway was being planned, designed and built.  But the sound of Richie Daley’s Flying Circus over his house has sure brought Spanos out of the woodwork and pushing for what is looking to us more and more like expensive and ill-conceived, ready-fire-aim piece of…litigation.

As reported in this week’s Journal, Spanos admits that a lawsuit is “not going to be cheap” but contends that it is vital to the viability of our community. (“Fed Up, Residents Consider Suing O’Hare,” Dec. 16)  Most of the rest of his quotes, however, sound almost schizophrenic; and they sure don’t provide anything in the way of insight into how such a lawsuit is going to achieve anything more than what he refers to as the “lose-lose situation now if we do nothing.”

What we find most curious, however, is that while he “[w]ants some restitution and …to send a message all across the country” via this expensive lawsuit, he admits that his house is currently up for sale and that he’s moving even if a lawsuit is filed and settled. That doesn’t sound like the level of semper fi commitment we would expect from someone who has put so much effort into this issue, at least over the past 12 months.

Spanos describes the effect of our decreased property values as “[t]he vultures are circling.”  But the analogy of rats leaving a sinking ship might be more appropriate.