In last Friday’s post about Mayor Dave Schmidt’s “State of the City” address, we predicted that any response from his City Council “opponents” would be short on competing ideas and long on “petty personal criticisms of…his ‘confrontational’ style of leadership.”

So today we give a big Watchdog bark-out to Ald. Robert Ryan (5th Ward) for his brief but insipid rebuttal at the end of Monday night’s Committee of the Whole meeting that made us appear prescient, even though predicting what the alder-dwarfs will do isn’t really all that tough.

We admit to being surprised, however, that Ryan was the “opposition’s” designated hitter – if only because he was MIA a week ago when Schmidt gave the address.  We assumed any rebuttal would come from somebody who actually attended and who could be expected to be more combative, like Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward).

But Ryan got the nod, and his comments were so…so…vintage Robert.

First he claimed that he and his fellow aldermen “are very concerned about the budget.”  Pardon our guffaws.

Unlike Schmidt, neither Ryan nor his colleagues have publicly admitted fault, or accepted responsibility, for the last two budgets and the several million dollars of deficits that have left City finances in shambles.  And five of those aldermen (Allegretti, Bach, Carey, Ryan and Wsol) are the same guys who most recently demonstrated their “concern” about the budget by increasing the deficit spending and then over-riding Schmidt’s veto of that increased spending.

And if they had gotten their way, we also would be saddled with a new $16 million+ police station that would be adding another million or so of annual debt service expense to the wrong side of the budget.

So if that’s what Ryan means by their “concern” about the budget, we’d sure hate to see  their “indifference” to it.

Ryan then mentioned Bach’s heretofore meaningless calls for unspecified personnel cuts, before slamming Schmidt for not embracing Ryan’s own pet initiative: the creation of a “finance committee” of residents to help the Council make “informed decisions” about the budget and City finances generally.  In other words, Ryan is ticked at Schmidt for not appointing a committee to make finance and budget recommendations which Ryan and his Council cronies can then rubber-stamp, thereby gaining plausible deniability – and a handy scapegoat – for whatever difficult and unpopular cuts will have to be made.

On a Council loaded with lightweights, Ryan is its Willie Pep.

But that’s typical “public official” Robert Ryan who, while on the District 64 School Board, led the effort to replace the District’s then-newest school, Emerson Jr. High, with the current Emerson Middle School – a project so financially ill-conceived that it set the District on a road to fiscal ruin before a $5 million non-referendum bond issue in 2005 and the 2007 multi-million dollar tax increase referendum salvaged it, at least temporarily.

Ryan ended his rebuttal by chiding Schmidt: “Don’t undermine, don’t divide.”

What Ryan can’t seem to grasp is that this Council has produced nothing to “undermine” – other than those multi-million dollar deficit budgets and the emasculation of the Planning & Zoning Commission that should have been “undermined.”

As for “dividing” City government, Ryan (along with Allegretti, Bach, Carey and DiPietro) drew the first line in the sand when they signed onto former-mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark’s ridiculous “condemnation” of then-Ald. Schmidt’s totally legal whistle-blowing on the Council’s closed-session briefings about Frimark’s secret negotiations to buy 720 Garden for $200,000 more than the City’s own appraisal valued it.

Ryan and those other four turned that line into a trench when they collectively pumped over $3,800 into Frimark’s re-election campaign (with Ryan’s $864.51 contribution trailing only Allegretti’s $1,500) in their unsuccessful effort to keep their buddy “Let’s Make A Deal” in the big chair at City Hall.

From what we’ve seen over the past few years, the main “divisions” between Schmidt and the Council majority seem like the divisions that exist between common sense and foolishness, between prudence and irresponsibility, between candor and artifice, between courage and cowardice.

People of Park Ridge, the choices are yours.