After seven years of the City’s giving private corporation Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) a no-bid, no contract, no transparency monopoly over the Taste of Park Ridge event (“TOPR”), the current City Council – breaking with the somnambulant tradition of its predecessor Councils – finally woke up and decided to invite proposals from other parties interested in running TOPR.

 

The good news is that, no matter who runs TOPR this year, it looks like the taxpayers won’t be footing the bill for the approximately $20,000 of police, fire and public works services the City has been donating annually to Taste Inc.’s bottom line.  Reimbursement of the City for those services is something we’ve been pushing for since July 2008, when we first started questioning the sweetheart deal former mayor Howard Frimark and the “Purple Ribbon”-phobic City Council gave Taste Inc. back in June 2005.

 

But there’s also some not-so-good news: the City Council turned the Request for Proposal (“RFP”) process over to City Mgr. Jim Hock, who – true to form – promptly found a way to throw a blanket of secrecy over the process by including the following language on Page 5 of the RFP:

 

Vendors are hereby notified that all information submitted as part of, or in support of, proposals will remain confidential until the date the date [sic] of award; thereafter the documents will be available for public inspection in compliance with Illinois State Statutes.

 

In other words, thanks to Hock, the taxpayers don’t get to know the contents of the three competing proposals until after the City Council awards this year’s TOPR, thereby producing the stereotypical “done deal.” 

 

Mr. Hock, can you spell “transparency”?  What if we spot you the “t,” the “r,” the “p,” and let you buy a couple of vowels? 

 

So when the City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) took up the matter near the end of last night’s meeting, nobody but the Council and the two applicants present (of the three who submitted proposals) had any clear idea of what was being discussed – although we did catch the part where Hock himself admitted that none of the three applicants submitted a proposal that fully complied with the RFP requirements.

 

After having reviewed the vague and slipshod RFP, we can see why.

 

But just because the RFP was poorly drawn didn’t prevent Hock and certain members of City Staff from recommending that the TOPR contract be awarded to Taste Inc., whose new designated spokesmodel appears to be Mel Thillens, now that former spokesmodel and founding Taste Inc. honcho Albert Galus reportedly has resigned under a cloud of “unusual” circumstances. 

 

Thillens continued Galus’ grand tradition of Taste Inc. self-aggrandizement while sounding like he expected the award of the TOPR contract right then and there.  Needless to say, his bragging about Taste Inc.’s being a not-for-profit corporation – in contrast to the other two for-profit applicants – conveniently omitted the inconvenient truth that Taste Inc. was a for-profit corporation from 2005 through 2008, which Thillens and his fellow Taste Inc. honchos wouldn’t even admit publicly until this past summer. 

 

Despite the Hock-imposed blackout, comments of both Thillens and the representatives of applicant Absolute Production Services suggested that: Taste Inc. wants to operate TOPR until 11:00 p.m. (v. the traditional 10:00 p.m. close); Absolute wants to run TOPR from Friday through Sunday afternoon (v. the traditional Thursday – Saturday night); Taste Inc. is offering the City a 50/50 share of any profits above $20,000; and Absolute is offering some undefined percentage of first-dollar profit-sharing.   

 

Not surprisingly, Mr. Thillens also failed to offer an explanation of whether Taste Inc.’s $20,000 threshold makes its profit-sharing offer illusory and a sham, in view of the measly $8,000 “profit” it reputedly reported in 2010, and no reporting of its “profit” in 2011.  

 

All that crude “money” talk offended City Clerk Betty Henneman, who recalled the good ol’ days when TOPR was just about “building community.”  Apparently lost on Betty is that Taste Inc. seems to have been so concerned with accumulating money that, instead of voluntarily reimbursing the City for all the services it has furnished TOPR over the past 7 years, it chose to both stiff the City while it built up what we understand to be a $70,000-plus bankroll and to refuse to open up its books and records for inspection by the City and its taxpayers.  

 

And if it wasn’t about the money, there wouldn’t even be any Taste Inc. – because TOPR would be run by a committee of the City, on the City’s dime and entirely for the City’s benefit, as it was proposed back in 2005. 

 

The Council thrashed around for about an hour and one-half wrestling with whether to: (a) direct staff to prepare a contract for Taste Inc.; (b) direct staff to prepare contracts for both Taste Inc. and Absolute; or (c) throw out the non-compliant proposals and re-start the RFP process.  In the end, it decided to defer any action on this bollixed process until the next COW meeting on January 23. 

 

Whether the three proposals will be made public before then is still an open question because – according to City attorney Kathie Henn – Hock’s secrecy provision must be waived by the applicants in writing before the City can publish those proposals on its website.  We’re not going to hold our breath on that, but we’ll be happy to be surprised.

 

Meanwhile, recalling political philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s warning that “Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government,” we have to wonder what will be the next piece of City business Hock tries to hide from the taxpayers, and perhaps from their elected representatives on the City Council as well.

  

Care to spot us any letters, Mr. Hock? 

 

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