Last night Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt issued another one of his vetoes. Actually, it was two vetoes: of the contract negotiated with unionized City employees represented by ICOPS, and of the raises given to the non-union City employees.
Schmidt’s veto message echoed themes voiced in his previous vetoes: “you cannot spend money you do not have”; the City “cannot afford to emulate [the federal and state governments’] irresponsibility” on spending; and “the Uptown TIF debt is a financial time bomb” that is projected to be $1 million short on its bond debt payment this year.
He also claimed that his vetoes sustained by the City Council cut $500,000 of City expenditures, and that the vetoes the Council over-rode would have cut another $800,000. Schmidt owes the taxpayers some solid back-up for those figures, but we’ll take them at face value for the time being.
Two of the more interesting points in his speech involve the City’s recent hiring experiences: a whopping 98 applicants sought a single $39,000 Finance Department position; and an even more whopping 192 applicants sought 3 vacant firefighters positions.
We can speculate almost endlessly as to whether the stampede for these positions speaks to the generosity of the pay and benefits, or to the desirability of Park Ridge as a municipal employer, or to some other factor(s). But it sure suggests that City employment and compensation is highly desirable.
Notably, Schmidt ended his veto message with a general invitation for residents to submit suggestions for other expense cuts different from those Schmidt has made, or for tax increases: “I want to hear your ideas about other ways that we can pull our City out of [this] financial quicksand.”
Which brings us to resident Larry Ryles.
Mr. Ryles has declared himself a candidate challenging Schmidt’s re-election bid. He already has a campaign fund, a campaign treasurer (Paul Sheehan), and a website. So it would appear he’s a serious candidate, even though it’s too early for any candidate to submit the nominating petitions required to make his/her candidacy “official.”
As the first and only (so far) challenger to Schmidt, Ryles enjoys an outstanding opportunity to draw clear distinctions, in real time rather than retrospectively, between what Schmidt is doing and what Ryles would do with regard to various situations and circumstances facing the City.
Like the ICOPS contract and non-union employee raises which Schmidt just vetoed.
According to the “Control Taxes” page of his website, Ryles claims Schmidt has been profligate in presiding over 3 straight years (2009-11) of increases in the City’s portion of the property tax that have averaged almost 3.9%, well above the 2.4% average annual increase in the CPI for that same period (We are ignoring Ryles’ unfounded attribution to Schmidt of an 11.11% “December 1212” increase, as no such increase has been proposed or debated by Schmidt or the Council). Ryles promises to “take the lead on getting annual tax increases down below the annual rate of inflation of CPI, just like our two school districts and our Park District.”
Frankly, we like the sound of that. But we’re not too sure of its economic soundness.
First of all, those three other governmental units lack the home-rule powers the City enjoys – meaning that their ability to raise taxes is legally capped at the percentage increase in the CPI or 5%, whichever is less. And while we retain a warm spot for the Park District, everything – EVERYTHING – it provides qualifies as an amenity rather than as a necessity, such as the streets, sewer, water, police and fire protection that the City provides.
Perhaps Ryles wasn’t paying attention when Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 so mismanaged its finances following its successful $20 million-plus new-Emerson Middle School referendum in 1997 that, by the Fall of 2005, the Illinois State Board of Education’s school finance arm was poised to take over the District’s finances in response to the District’s four appearances on the ISBE’s financial “Early Warning” and “Watch” lists. That led to a sneaky “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue band-aid to tide the District over until it could organize the successful 2007 referendum campaign that added an unprecedented (?) 44 cents to the District’s tax cap rate.
He might also have been preoccupied 2 years ago when all the bad news hit about Maine Twp. High School District 207 facing “its worst financial challenge in 80 years” (according to a Chicago Tribune 01.13.10 article) that was going to require $15 million in cuts through the layoffs of 135 employees, including 75 full-time teachers.
Nevertheless, we would love to hear Ryles’ plan for operating the City with sub-CPI tax increases. So, starting today, we begin a new feature here at PublicWatchdog – “What Would Ryles Do?” (“WWRD”) – to give Mr. Ryles roughly 400-500 words to tell his prospective constituents how he would do certain specific thing(s) differently from Schmidt.
In view of Schmidt’s vetoes last night, today’s WWRD topic is:
Would Ryles veto the ICOPS contract and/or the non-union employee raises? And, if not, how would he come up with the money to pay for them?
Should Mr. Ryles choose to avail himself of this opportunity, he need only provide this blog with his written response to this topic, along with a fool-proof way for us to verify that whatever is submitted truly comes from candidate Larry Ryles, such as a telephone number and a photocopy of a drivers license or similar identification.
WWRD?
We hope to find out. And when we do, we’ll share it with you.
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