At last Monday’s (June 6) City Council meeting, local businessman Albert Galus, vice president of the private corporation Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) that runs the annual event known as “Taste of Park Ridge” (“TOPR”), made a brief appearance to speak about the financial proposal contained in a “Memorandum of understanding” – and then hustled out the Council chambers door before any questions could be asked of him.
Given that Taste Inc. has spent the last several years steadfastly refusing to reimburse the City for the tens of thousands of dollars in City services TOPR has utilized since Taste Inc. took over TOPR in 2005, had Mr. Galus stuck around to field a few questions about the “gift” of “3% (three percent) of the amount of Food Vendor Payout,” he might have heard one or more of the following:
Question 1: Does “Food Vendor Payout” include beer sales?
Question 1a: If not, why not include beer sales in the 3% figure?
Question 2: Will that 3% come off the amount that the food vendors otherwise would get?
Question 3: Why “3%” instead of 2%, 4%, 5%, 10%, etc.?
Question 4: Why now, after all these years of stiffing the City?
Question 5: Why is it being offered only for the City’s “2011/2012 fiscal year”?
Anyone who reads this blog knows that we’ve never been shy in expressing our concerns and suspicions about Taste Inc., which was formed in June 2005 by Galus, Dave Iglow, and several other local businessmen recommended by then-mayor Howard Frimark as “volunteers” for a City TOPR committee that would run TOPR for the City’s benefit.
According to the minutes of the June 6, 2005 Council meeting at which Frimark proposed this new version of TOPR, the City gave that “committee” $23,000 of “seed money” and was going to receive all of TOPR’S profits:
“Mayor Frimark answered [that]…if there is a surplus of funds, it will come back to the City.”
And because that “committee” was going to be an arm of the City, its meetings and its operations would be subject to the Illinois Open Meetings Act:
“Ald. Cox asked if the City created an Ad Hoc Committee is it then subject to the Open Meetings Act.
City Attorney Hill answered if we create the committee it is.”
But according to the minutes of the September 27, 2005 City Council Finance & Budget Committee meeting, then-F&B chairman Ald. Don Crampton and then-F&B committee member Alds. Mark Anderson, Joe Baldi, Andrea Bateman, Jim Radermacher and Frank Wsol, after being advised that the private Taste Inc. had been formed instead of the City committee that Frimark promised and the Council approved in June, voted unanimously to hand over to Taste Inc. what should have been the City’s $20,058.36 in profits.
Ever since that bait-and-switch was completed, Taste Inc. apparently has been pocketing all the TOPR profits.
How much have those profits been? We can’t tell you, because it seems like “not for profit” Taste Inc. never filed IRS Form 990 (or Form 990-EZ) tax returns – the form of return legitimate not-for-profit entities file, and that GuideStar.org posts online for all to see – for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Which causes us to wonder whether Taste Inc. was a genuine not-for-profit during those four years.
But if Taste Inc.’s first-time IRS Form 990-EZ for 2009 – which it filed after it voluntarily dissolved itself in February 2009 and then reorganzied as a 501(c)(6) private corporation a few weeks later – is any indication, those first four years of profits may have totaled in excess of $200,000, even factoring in unexplained discrepancies between the $266,652 of “gross receipts” Taste Inc. disclosed for the 2009 TOPR on its “Recipe for Success” informational piece and the $163,391 of “total revenue” (and the $98,170 of “total expenses”) reported on that 2009 return.
Where did that estimated $200,000 go?
Once again, we don’t know because Iglow, Galus and the rest of the Taste Inc. crew – who never miss an opportunity to toot their own horns about what they do for this community as “unpaid volunteers” running TOPR – mysteriously clam up whenever talk turns to those four years of profits and what happened to that money
Is Taste Inc.’s running of TOPR kinked-up? We sure hope not.
But the simplest and best way for Taste Inc. to prove it is not with this odd “Memorandum of understanding” and its one-time 3% solution, accompanied by a misguided and arrogant-sounding claim that Taste Inc. “has sole proprietorship” of TOPR. Instead, Taste Inc. should produce its tax returns and underlying documentation for 2005-2008, along with the 2010 tax return that for some reason still does not appear on GuideStar.
And if Galus, Iglow and the rest of the Taste Inc. operators truly “possess affection for the community and seek to be of further assistance to the City” – as they claim in their Memorandum of understanding – they could prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt by closing down their private and secretive Taste Inc. corporation, turning Taste Inc.’s funds over to the City, and devoting all those same “volunteer” hours towards running TOPR exclusively for the City’s benefit, the way it was originally proposed by Frimark and approved by the City Council back in June, 2005: as an ad hoc committee of the City, subject to the Illinois Open Meetings Act?
After all, if they really are committed to volunteering rather than profiteering, shouldn’t they be able to derive the same (or even greater) satisfaction from by putting all their efforts into running the event exclusively for the City instead of for Taste Inc.?
Galus? Iglow? Bueller?
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8 comments so far
I don’t disagree with your assessment; however, 3% of sales is better than a flat fee (if business is doing well).
What the 3% fee is on is key. If it does not include alcohol, that would be disappointing.
I think 3% is a start. Nowhere near perfect, but even if arbitrary, a start.
It sounds more like a tax as opposed to a gift though.
Wow. I had forgotten HO had pitched it as operating for the benefit of the City. That’s being interpreted as “for the enjoyment of the attendees,” which is warm and fuzzy but not quite the same as “for the benefit of the City.”
You will NEVER see the beer tent revenues cut by 3 percent for the City’s take because the beer revenue is the part that Taste, Inc. keeps for the campaigns of Republican candidates. It would be nice to know if the vendors will be soaked for 3 percent of their take. I’d guess yes; it’s gotta come from somewhere.
Good job, as usual, PubDog.
EDITOR’S NOTE: “[T]he beer revenue is the part that Taste Inc. keeps for the campaigns of Republican candidates.” Say what?
Sorry, but just because Taste Inc. dropped $1,000 on Bob “The Dude” Dudycz’s political fund a few years back doesn’t mean your beer money for Republicans claim passes muster.
PD:
You seem to think the event makes 50K. If you think the republican statement is over board (I agree by the way) it begs the question, where exactly is the 50K going??
EDITOR’S NOTE: Taste Inc.’s only Form 990-EZ return shows $163,391 in total revenues for 2009, $98,170 in total 2009 expenses, and year-end net assets/fund balances of $65,221 – which appears to us to be the equivalent of 2009’s “profits.”
What other profits have been earned since 2005 and where those profits have gone would seem to be the kinds of questions that Messrs. Iglow and Galus should be answering.
$1,000 for Dudycz may not be Republican funding, but it is political funding, which is not what Taste was supposed to be supporting.
Also, Republican or Democrat, Dudycz was just another in the long line of tax-sucking bureaucrats working at Maine Township, an unnecessary, expensive and crony-esque level of local government we could do without.
EDITOR’S NOTE: According to the original, pre-bait-and-switch TOPR deal, all the profits were supposed to go to the City – and that’s where they should have gone.
We also agree with you, 5th, that township government should be something that county and state government should be able to cover.
How about a counter offer to Taste Inc., 3% subject to a minimum (equal to estimated cost of expenses incurred by the city for the Taste)?
EDITOR’S NOTE: It beats what Taste Inc. is offereing, and what Taste Inc. has previously paid. But if Taste Inc. got the TOPR “franchise” on the basis of all TOPR profits going to the City, why should the Tastees get any more than that – especially since it would seem like they got a whole lot more than that for the past six years?
7:16am…
How about if TOPR NFP just “gives” the event back to the city? Very simply, almost nothing needs to change. TOPR NFP turns over / “donates” it bank account to the city and all TOPR NFP volunteers continue to do for the city, as a city sanctioned committee, exactly what they have been doing for TOPR, NFP and themselves.
In terms of its operation almost nothing needs to change to put the event on. From where I sit the only difference is that the city becomes the positive / negative beneficiary of the financial results of the event.
This is as was originally intended. Why didn’t this happen? Why can’t the city ask / demand that we get back to what was originally intended??
3 days in and only 6 posts… the silence from the Tastee camp is deafening.
It is difficult to defend an indefensible position.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, only 2 days in, but you’re right re the silence from the Taste Inc. “camp.” But, frankly, they’ve got no obligation to answer posts on this blog. So unless the Mayor and the City Council calls Taste Inc. to account publicly to the taxpayers of Park Ridge for Taste Inc.’s bait-and-switch acquired “sole proprietorship” of TOPR for the past six years, you can probably expect more silence from Messrs. Galus, Iglow et al.
“…..But, frankly, they’ve got no obligation to answer posts on this blog……”
BINGO!!!!!!!! It is the same ole’ game. Find (or make someone) a villian and the pols get a way with MURDER!!! The anger and questions should be directed at the elected officials.
For all this talk there is one thing for sure!! The Mayor will be working the beer tent this year…..as always!!!!
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re not aware of any murders resulting from TOPR or Taste Inc.’s control of it, but we can’t say the same about what looks like blatant and persistent misrepresentations by Taste Inc. about its “not-for-profit” status from 2005 through 2008, or what may be its retention of what should have been the City’s profits from TOPR – all of which Taste Inc. got away with because then-mayor Howard Frimark seems to have been part of the scheme for a revival of TOPR, and the aldermen back then were more concerned about politics and Purple Ribbons than about ensuring that the City actually got what the Council approved in reviving TOPR.
But just because “the politicians” dropped the ball on this for the past 6 years doesn’t absolve the Tastees, especially if they really were lying about Taste Inc.’s not-for-profit status; and if they really were enriching themselves and/or their businesses with what should have been City funds while the City (i.e., the taxpayers covered the costs of the various City services provided to TOPR.
As for Mayor Schmidt working the beer tent again this year, whether that can/should be considered an endorsement of Taste Inc.’s secretive/misleading/profiteering stewardship of TOPR or simply an innocuous show of support for the City’s premier community event, is debatable – although we recall Frimark and many/most of the aldermen in office since June 2005 (as well as many of their predecessors) doing so.
But until Taste Inc. comes clean, either voluntarily or by City demand, about the details of its operations of TOPR, we will view the “affection for the community” that Taste Inc.’s “organizers” claim (in the recent “Memorandum of understanding”) as being primarily directed at “the community’s” greenbacks.
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