If you were one of the 10 people (including 2 aldermanic candidates, 2 Library representatives presenting the Library’s capital expenditure requests, and intrepid volunteer videographer George Kirkland) sitting in the gallery for last night’s initial City of Park Ridge 2011-12 budget workshop, you heard nothing that should make you or any other City taxpayers feel optimistic about the coming budget year. 

First of all, the Council and City Staff were operating off sets of documents that never made it to the City’s website or to the sign-in table at the Council chambers, so the citizens in attendance had nothing with which to follow along.  Whether that was by design or negligence, it was disrespectful to the public and should not be repeated. 

But that may have been the least discouraging aspect of the workshop, as early on it was announced that the City is facing a $1 million increase in its pension funding obligation.  That increased obligation alone represents a 6.47% increase in the City’s roughly $16 million piece of our property tax bills, which means the City’s new Finance Director, Allison Stutts, should already be looking for that much in additional revenue or cuts. 

That pleasant announcement was followed by the presentation of a series of various proposed capital projects.  Unfortunately, they did not appear to be presented in any ascertainable order of priority because – as City Mgr. Jim Hock explained – Staff wants the Council to prioritize them! 

Memo to Mr. Hock: Prioritizing expenditures, at least in the first instance, is the job of those City officials making more than $1,200 a year! 

But Hock saved the “best” for last, when he discussed the proposed expenditure of $405,000 to hire…wait for it…Sente Rubel Bosman Lee Architects Ltd. (“SRBL”)…”to develop plans for a renovated police facility, with [a 10,000 square foot] addition” to be built sometime in 2015-16 at a cost of approximately $6 million – not including debt service, of course. 

For you readers who don’t remember, SRBL is the firm of police station design “experts” that previously told the City it needed the 37,859 square foot, $16.5 million (without debt service) cop shop that the voters nuked by a 6,821 to 1,364 landslide in the April, 2009, citizen-initiated referendum. 

But according to a Memorandum written by Police Commander Lou Jogman, pursuing a renovation of the current station and an addition that will almost double its size is justified by the fact that a similar referendum question on that same ballot, initiated by Ald. Frank Wsol at the 11th-hour, lost only 4,338 to 3,827.  Jogman contends that those results show that “there is significant enough consensus that improvements are needed, although not a self-standing, $16.5 million dollar facility.” 

Nifty spin, Commander. 

Can we assume you also drafted the “Police Facility Renovation/Expansion” capital budget proposal that warns of unspecified “potentially hazardous” conditions in the current facility that jeopardize the “safety of the entire department” and “pose considerable liability issues” – presumably by “placing visitors at risk”?

Disingenuous, but clever nonetheless – even if not one incident of that “considerable liability” has been identified as arising from conditions at the police station.

At this point it’s unclear whether this cop shop expansion plan is a serious budget item or just something ginned up by Hock, Jogman, et al. as a bargaining chip or two when budget discussions begin in earnest after the first of the year.  The renovation of the existing space is estimated at between $888,000 and $1,165,500, not counting equipment and furnishings.  The rest would go for the addition.

But the fact that it’s being discussed at all suggests that this year’s budget process may be an even bigger goat rodeo than last year’s. 

As we said in yesterday’s post: “Something appalling.”

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