Is the don’t-ask, don’t-tell, monopoly of Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) by private corporate operator Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) coming to an end? 

From the ‘tude being copped by Taste Inc.’s top honchos – as expressed in Taste Inc. vice-president Albert Galus’ August 9, 2011 letter in response to City Mgr. Jim Hock’s July 21, 2011 invitation – that looks like a distinct possibility. 

According to Galus, neither he nor any of his fellow honchos can make Monday night’s Council meeting – or, apparently, any other Council meeting for the rest of eternity – to answer Council questions about Taste Inc. and its running of the TOPR event for the past 7 years.  So Galus wants “all questions the Council members have [to] be submitted…in writing” in order that he “may appropriately research for the correct information.”

Fatuous Albert seems to be disregarding the June 8, 2011 e-mail he received from Finance & Budget Chair (and 5th Ward Ald.) Dan Knight, in which Knight asks for, among other things: (a) an explanation of how Taste Inc. “evolved” from what was supposed to be a City committee into an allegedly 501(c)(3), and then a 501(c)(6), private corporation; (b) reasons why TOPR should continue to be run by private corporation Taste Inc. instead of a City committee; (c) all of Taste Inc.’s tax filings “since the organization’s formation”; and (d) Taste Inc.’s “cash flow statements going back as far as possible.”

Hey, Albert, how much “research” would it really take to put that information together? 

From what we’ve seen and heard (and, perhaps more importantly, not seen or heard) from Taste Inc. over the last few years, we have to wonder just how many shenanigans Taste Inc.’s operators have been pulling and covering up since June, 2005, when the TOPR “franchise” was handed over by then-mayor Howard Frimark and a semi-clueless City Council to what was supposed to have been an all-volunteer City committee that would have paid all TOPR profits to the City.

Instead of reaping those profits, however, the City has been getting stuck with the bill for all the City services that Taste Inc. has been using.  This year alone, those services cost the City’s taxpayers a whopping $20,292.41 in direct and indirect City staff expense!

Hey Albert, what happened to all the money TOPR generated for Taste Inc. over the past 7 years? 

For 2005 through 2008, Taste Inc. should have filed IRS Form 990 tax returns that would have been posted on GuideStar.org. – assuming Taste Inc. really was a not-for-profit corporation as its operators constantly claimed, and as the “NFP” (“not for profit”) in its corporate name identified it.  Producing those Form 990s would at least prove that the Tastees weren’t lying to the City Council and the people of Park Ridge all these years about Taste Inc.’s being an NFP.

We also wonder who has been running the beer tent all these years, and where all that money has been going.  We’ve heard rumors that the Maine Twp. Republican organization has a piece of that action which, if true, it presumably acquired back when Bob “The Dude” Dudycz abided as both a Taste Inc. honcho and the Republican Supervisor of Maine Township.  One thing we know for a fact, however, is that Taste Inc. displayed its appreciation to The Dude by spending $1,000 of its profits on a table at his retirement party back in 2007.

Hey, Albert, can you say “Busted”?

In addtion to whoever has been profiting from the beer tent, we wonder whether some of those unidentified TOPR vendors who have been providing Taste Inc. with various goods and services all these years may have been receiving sweetheart deals.  Could it be possible that Taste Inc. may have helped a favored few of those vendors’ bottom lines by paying a premium for things like insurance, electrical wiring and lighting, transportation, public relations, food, those nifty orange golf shirts, etc. – or even paying for stuff it never received?  After all, Taste Inc. has no actual shareholders to beef about profligate spending on such sweetheart deals.

For these reasons and more, we’re betting Taste Inc. finally has realized the jig is up and that it’s time to sneak away before the public picks up on these cues and starts demanding to know whether the Tastees have pocketed any of the profits generated by Taste Inc.’s no-bid monopoly of TOPR.  By getting out now, the Tastees can leave with all their secrets preserved, whatever money they may have pocketed undiscovered, and with the easy excuse that they were driven away by Mayor Schmidt, Ald. Knight, and even this “evil blog.”

Hey, Albert, you guys planning on using that 501(c)(6) status to finance any political campaigns with the remaining Taste Inc. funds?

Frankly, on one hand we are a little surprised that those local merchants who run Taste Inc. – Dave Iglow (Pines Men’s Wear), Galus (Academic Tutoring Centers), Dean Patras (Broadway Livery Service), Sandy Svizzero (Parkway Bank), Barb Tyksinski (All on the Road Catering), John Warnimont (Activision Electric), Jackie Matthews (Rainbow Hospice) and Mel Thillens (Thillens Service Corp) – don’t seem to have enough integrity or even the common courtesy to appear before the City Council and provide the transparency and the accountability that has been missing from TOPR since Taste Inc. took over. 

If they didn’t pocket any dough, they’ve got nothing to hide – although if they weren’t getting any direct or indirect benefits from running TOPR, they could have done it as a City committee, as the deal was originally sold to the City Council back in June 2005.

But on the other hand, Taste Inc.’s (through Galus’ letter) telling the City (and its taxpayers, many of whom are TOPR patrons) to pound sand is pretty much what we here at PublicWatchdog have come to expect from those individual Tastees. 

Thanks, guys (and gals), for not disappointing.

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