Monday night the Park Ridge City Council ended its 7-month flirtation with billboards, at least for the time being, when Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti led the effort to deprive Park Ridge residents of a final Council vote on whether or not to uphold the 9-0 decision of the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) against permitting billboards in Park Ridge.
After shamelessly serving as chief Council lackey for Joseph Loss’ Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) in its effort to get permits for four billboards at Renaissance Office Plaza by using the City as its unofficial agent, Allegretti took the coward’s way out: with the help of Alds. Don Bach, Tom Carey and Robert Ryan, he successfully substituted his motion to withdraw the City’s zoning change application for the pending tactical motion of Ald. Joe Sweeney to overturn the P&Z ruling.
Sweeney’s motion was “tactical” because it would have required a supermajority of six votes, something Sweeney’s and Ald. Rich DiPietro’s expected “no” votes would have prevented.
What Allegretti has up his sleeve with this latest ploy isn’t immediately clear, but with a little luck we won’t have to watch City government waste further time and effort on a billboards proposal that, even if it had been approved by P&Z or the Council, likely could have generated only a tiny fraction of the revenues Allegretti (and GGI) were promising.
The upshot of all this?
Seven months of wasted time and attention by the Council, City Staff and the public on an initiative that didn’t deserve to get off the ground – and probably wouldn’t have, if not for the votes of Ryan and Ald. Frank Wsol at the August 17, 2009, Council meeting in support of Allegretti’s motion to make the City, rather than GGI, the zoning change applicant.
With Bach and Carey absent that night, Ryan’s and Wsol’s votes were all Allegretti needed to overcome the opposition of Sweeney and DiPietro. And once that happened, the unproductive chain of events that followed was set in motion.
The minutes of the August 17 meeting (sanitized for your protection by the City Clerk, as usual) say only that Allegretti “believes this case was important enough to allow the Council to have the final word” that it wouldn’t get if GGI were the applicant and P&Z denied its application; and there’s no mention of Ryan or Wsol speaking on the motion before voting to approve it.
Try as we might, however, we can’t think of one good “public policy” reason why this case was so “important” that the City had to carry the water for GGI. Or why the Council needed to have “the final word” on it.
Although it’s easy to think of several kinky reasons why Allegretti so shamelessly pushed the GGI agenda, we have to wonder what Ryan and Wsol could have been thinking when they signed onto Allegretti’s special deal for GGI.
So we pose the following question for Messrs. Ryan and Wsol: Why did you vote to make the City the appllicant for the zoning ordinance amendments to permit billboards, especially where doing so allowed GGI to avoid the disclosure requirements of the City’s ethics ordinance that are designed to combat kinky deals?
Gentlemen, feel free to submit your explanation(s) as comments to this post – we promise to publish them.
Meanwhile, since we don’t really expect Ryan or Wsol to take us up on our offer, we invite our rank-and-file readers to offer their own explanations.
14 comments so far
I think they signed on for Allagrettis shameless billboard push because they are both retarded.
They did it because they are both retarded. I am speechless. That is sheer genius!!!!! Perhaps you should think about running for Alderman. You clearly have the kind of thinking this town needs more of.
I sense sarcasm. Do you a better idea of why they signed on?
They did it because they illustrated leadership which in this example is to allow an issue to be discussed and explored because it has potential to impact the community in both positive and negative ways. In other words, they were open minded and wanted the issue discussed at the appropriate level –the final decision makers –the City Council.
That example of leadership is appreciated by many citizens. It is the lack of leadership which the Mayor exhibits and the close mindedness of \”carpetbagger\” schmidt that many feel is detrimental.
So, I applaud the councilmen for considering the idea — That takes guts, and Ryan and Wsol have guts –unlike according to a poster from a previous post ( a schmidt supporter) who described the mayor in his defense of his actions to date as \”gutless\”
They did it because they illustrated leadership which in this example is to
allow an issue to be discussed and explored because it has potential to
impact the community in both positive and negative ways. In other words,
they were open minded and wanted the issue discussed at the appropriate level
–the final decision makers –the City Council.
That example of leadership is appreciated by many citizens. It is the lack of
leadership which the Mayor exhibits and the close mindedness of
\”carpetbagger\” schmidt that many feel is detrimental.
So, I applaud the councilmen for considering the idea — That takes guts, and
Ryan and Wsol have guts –unlike according to a poster from a previous post (
a schmidt supporter) who described the mayor in his defense of his actions to
date as \”gutless\”
A5:24/5:26 said,
“They did it because they illustrated leadership which in this example is to allow an issue to be discussed and explored because it has potential to impact the community in both positive and negative ways”
Signing up for Allegretti’s scheme isn’t leadership, it’s enlistment. For what reason Wsol and Ryan did so is still in question.
Don’t you think the issue would have been discussed and explored by the Planning & Zoning Commissioners? Isn’t that exactly what they do?
“In other words, they were open minded and wanted the issue discussed at the appropriate level –the final decision makers –the City Council”
Maybe they were open minded, or maybe they just didn’t think about it before enlisting like good little soldiers for Allegretti’s scheme. Maybe they think applicants for planning and zoning shouldn’t have to make disclosures so they enlisted themselves with Allegretti’s scheme. If I had to guess, my guess would be the lack of disclosure didn’t even occur to them; they didn’t really think about what they were doing.
Isn’t the appropriate level for planning and zoning issues the Planning & Zoning Commission? Aren’t those commissioners residents of PR specifically tasked with the job of discussing and exploring planning and zoning issues? If the appropriate level for final decisions is always the council, then do you think we should get rid of the Planning & Zoning Commission? When is the council not the appropriate level for final decisions? Ever?
“That example of leadership is appreciated by many citizens”
Right. All the many citizens working at DiFranco & Associates, and citizen lawyer Jack Owens too.
“It is the lack of leadership which the Mayor exhibits and the close mindedness of \”carpetbagger\” schmidt that many feel is detrimental”
Can you be more specific about Schmidt’s lack of leadership? What do you have against people who move to PR, instead of having been “born” here? How long do you have to live in PR before you aren’t a carpetbagger and you’re allowed to hold elective office, in your opinion? Wasn’t Howard P. Frimark originally from Wisconsin? Did you consider Howard P. Frimark a carpetbagger?
“So, I applaud the councilmen for considering the idea — That takes guts, and Ryan and Wsol have guts –unlike according to a poster from a previous post (a schmidt supporter) who described the mayor in his defense of his actions to date as \”gutless\”
It’s a good thing Wsol and Ryan have “guts.” They need that kind of bulky ballast to weigh them down and keep their empty heads from floating them away.
Ryan does have “guts,” but not in the way 5:24/5:26 was saying. Ryan has the guts to admit that he doesn’t know much about most of what the job of alderman requires, especially city finances. That’s why he’s always asking what other municipalities do, or asking for the appointment of a task force, or looking for a consultant or some other “expert.”
From what I was hearing down in the 7th ward two years ago, Wsol wanted to be mayor but didn’t have the guts to run because he thought Frimark was unbeatable. Now I’m hearing that he’s been talking to the new party that took over the Homeowners treasury last year, and also to some of the Taste of Park Ridge people about running for mayor in 2013.
Yikes. Our budget deficit will start to resemble the national debt if he is elected mayor.
Can’t:
Yep, with “Mayor Wsol” we’d have a big new police station that we couldn’t afford to pay for, operate or maintain. More subsidized water so that LG, the Park District, the Country Club, and all the other big water users could let the taxpayers carry them. More money for those community groups that can’t support themselves.
How excellent!
Except for the police station, isn’t all of that what we have now?
Yes, because of Wsol and Co. Wsol led the opposition to the mayor’s request that the Council end the subsidy, and Wsol led the opposition to override the mayor’s veto of increased payments tocommunity groups. The mayor is again requesting that the Council end the subsidy. What will Wsol do now?
Forgive my ignorance, but why is Wsol able to lead all this opposition against the mayor’s requests?
Because he is the aldermen who professes to be a fiscal genius, and when he starts spewing his misleading numbers and twisted logic, guys like Bach, Carey and Ryan get glassy-eyed and follow him like sheep.
If Robert Ryan can’t figure out the city budget, he should stand down.
In other words: Resign, please, Ald. Ryan.
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