Faux fiscal conservative Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward) continues to lead the fight to keep Park Ridge water usage rates artificially (and irresponsibly) low by refusing to pass through to water users the full cost the City pays for the water it buys from the City of Chicago.  Wsol wants property taxpayers to continue subsidizing water users, an unsound policy even if judged solely (no pun intended) on economic grounds.

But where it becomes borderline insane is when you actually realize who are the primary beneficiaries of this manipulation of water economics: the City’s Top Ten biggest water users [pdf].

Which means that under Wsol’s subsidy plan, all you senior citizens, all you middle-aged empty nesters, all you single-person households, and all you water conservationists continue to pay a portion of your property taxes so that Lutheran General Hospital, the Park Ridge Park District, School Districts 207 and 64, and Resurrection Nursing Home don’t have to pay the full cost of all the water they use. 

And guess what’s even worse, folks?  Those five entities don’t pay property taxes!

At this past Monday night’s City Council meeting, Wsol smugly questioned whether any previous City Council (including the ones that Wsol has been sitting on since 2005 and which have produced deficit budgets every year except one) “[has] voted on how much of a surplus we should accumulate in the water fund of taxpayer money?” – knowing full well it had not. 

But even if that’s the case, so what, Frankie? 

That question is about as worthless as Ald. Robert Ryan’s customary “What do other municipalities do?” whenever he’s confronted by an issue which brings that quizzical-to-blank expression to his face signaling the same condition as the flashing “vacancy” sign in front of a cheap motel.  Let’s get this straight once and for all: what other municipalities’ collections of plodding bureaucrats and rubber-stamp elected officials do has yet to be proved the “magic bullet” of fiscally-responsible municipal governance. 

While Wsol actually gets something right when he notes that the water fund, an “enterprise” fund which exists to provide a defined payment source for water, currently has an approximately $3 million surplus, that observation deserves another “So what?”  Suggesting that a water fund surplus provides a good reason for not charging water users the full cost of that water is an apples-to-oranges analysis, and one that’s intellectually dishonest to boot.

It also disregards the fact, as reported by former City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on a couple of occasions within the past year, that cash from the water fund has been needed to cover the City’s payroll, thereby saving the City from incurring the cost of having to borrow that money from outside sources.  So depleting the already-dwindling water fund surplus is bad management on yet another level.

Unfortunately, Wsol is not alone in this folly.  Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) is so clueless he actually attempted to justify his opposition to full-cost water rates by stating that he “would not like to see the average 65-year-old homeowner have to pay a couple more cents a gallon.”  Hey, Don…wake up!  That’s what’s already happening, except that your average 65-year-old homeowner is also helping pay for the water being used by the likes of Lutheran General, the Park Ridge Country Club, and even Dominick’s. 

At this point, only Mayor Dave Schmidt seems to “get it.”  And he’s not even entitled to vote on the budget, barring the unlikely event of a Council deadlock over its approval.

Try as we might, we can’t see even one good reason why all Park Ridge water users should not pay the full cost to the City of the water they use, or why anybody’s water usage should be subsidized by the City’s property taxpayers.  Such a policy is both penny and pound foolish, with not an ounce of wisdom to be found.

Maybe it’s because we live in the State of Corruption, County of Crook that when we see something as ridiculous as Wsol’s and Bach’s water subsidy, we find ourselves asking whether the motive behind it is stupid or just plain crooked.  

And, in this case, we also find ourselves asking: “Just whose water are you carrying, Ald. Wsol?”