At the start of Monday night’s City Council Finance & Budget Committee of the Whole meeting, the City’s proposed 2010-11 budget was still projecting a $227,000 deficit.  Where it ended up at the end of the night is anybody’s guess.

By our very rough count, the Council added between $1/2 million and $1 million to that deficit.  But that’s without the $200,000+ in handouts to private community groups that City Mgr. Jim Hock left out of the budget, which will almost certainly be added back before the smoke clears and the budget is passed, even if it means wringing “voluntary” donations out of Park Ridge residents through a $10 increase in vehicle tags, or some other such subterfuge for another tax increase above the 5% that is already in the proposed budget.

We think it would make sense for the Council to post an oversized black/white board for keeping a very visible running tally of how the deficit goes up or down each time an alderman opens his mouth at these sessions.  That way, the taxpayers and the press – and even the aldermen themselves – could see, in “real time,” the tangible results of the various proposals, ideas and musings they were spouting throughout Monday night’s festivities and are likely to continue spouting until the budget is passed at the end of April.

But that would come too close to making the aldermen accountable.  And few politicians, even at the local level, are looking for any additional personal accountability for what they purport to do in the best interest of their constituents.

Frankly, we wish those of you who weren’t in attendance Monday night could watch the video of that meeting and see the circus for yourselves.  But now that City Staff has undertaken the uploading and hosting of meeting videos (still being filmed by volunteers George Kirkland and Charles Melidosian, fortunately), the most recent meeting you can currently (as of 8:00 a.m. today) view is the 3/22/10 COW meeting. (Feel free to insert “good enough for government work” here)

So for the time being you will need to be content with what you can read in the two local papers, as well as in what our dear friend, former mayor Howard Frimark, liked to call “the evil blogs.”

Which is too bad, because some moments lose so much in the translation to simple black print on white paper and really need to be seen to be properly appreciated. 

Like when Ald. Frank Wsol (7th) earnestly looked out at the massed police and firefighters in the audience and told them they would need to cooperate in the restoration of the personnel who were eliminated in the proposed budget – presumably by their respective unions accepting a significant number of furlough days (totaling approx. $700,000 in savings to the City) to get to what Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd) termed “budget neutral.”

Or like when Ald. Tom Carey (6th) erupted (by Carey standards, at least) at Hock for letting the Council debate and approve cutting the position of Deputy City Manager now held by Juliana Maller, and move to restore the Economic Development Director position held by Kim Uhlig, only to have Hock reveal that Uhlig had already resigned.    

Or like Carey coming up with a “formula” to give tax dollars to the private community organizations, which formula is calculated not by the amount of services to Park Ridge residents that is provided by those organizations, but only by how much money can be saved by cutting actual City of Park Ridge employees and expenses in a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” arrangement.

So make sure you get those local papers and read the “evil blogs.”  Or you can watch the video of these and other points of interest on the City’s YouTube site.

Say, maybe, in another week or two.