The April 9 local elections are only 1 month away, and last night provided the first event of what is the stretch drive to election day.

The Park Ridge Republican Women held their customary candidates forum Thursday (03.07.13) night at South Park Fieldhouse, and around 150 people showed up to hear the two candidates for mayor, the six competing candidates for alderman (in the 2nd, 4th and 6th wards), and five of the six Park Board candidates give short presentations and press the flesh.

Oh, yes…some of the Republican candidates for Maine Township offices also spoke, causing us to once again question why Illinois doesn’t just eliminate township government.  But that’s another story for another day.

[Because of the number of candidates running in contested elections – a GREAT THING! – the Park Ridge Republican Women will hold a second forum at the same site on March 21 at 7:00 p.m. for the candidates for the three school boards – D-64, D-207 and Oakton Community College.]

Notably, it was the first opportunity for voters to see and hear both Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt and challenger Larry Ryles in the same room – although the forum format did not give them an opportunity to spar about the issues.

That opportunity should come next week, assuming Ryles shows up, with the Chamber of Commerce luncheon debate at the Park Ridge Country Club on Wednesday, March 13 (11:30 a.m.), and the League of Women Voter’s debate at City Hall on Thursday, March 14, (7:00 p.m.).

Ryles went first and did his best to spend his entire allotted 5 minutes talking about everything but substantive City issues: his childhood in Georgia, his military service, his terrorizing local cleaners with his fluency in Korean, his insurance career, etc.  And he might have made it, too, had not the timekeeper audibly informed Ryles that he was down to his last minute – at which time Ryles began mouthing a few hollow platitudes about making Park Ridge a place his children could call home and raise their own families.

Gee, Larry, isn’t Park Ridge already that kind of place – and hasn’t it been that way for the last several decades, except when property values and/or taxes go so high that grown children can’t afford to move back?  Wasn’t Park Ridge recently declared the 72nd safest city (among those with populations over 25,000) in the entire country?  Isn’t that why we live here?

Heck, even former mayors Ron Wietecha, Mike Marous and Howard Frimark – who, not surprisingly, have endorsed Ryles, presumably in response to Schmidt’s telling the painful truth about what an economic black hole their pet Uptown TIF project turned into – consistently talked up what a great place Park Ridge was to raise a family, albeit while they were chronically deficit spending and digging us into a debt hole so deep we aren’t likely to emerge until the mid-to-late 2020s, if then.

Besides Ryles’ fluency in Korean, we also learned that there are two competing factions of Park Board candidates: the “incumbent” faction of current Board president Rick Biagi and current commissioners Steve Hunst and Dick Brandt, and the “challenger” faction of current commissioner Steven Vile and newcomers John Philips and Joan Bende – the latter apparently critical of the current board’s handling of the three-year running battle between the Park District and private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. over how the Senior Center will be managed.

Whether the “challenger” faction is more than a one-trick pony special interest ticket remains to be seen.  And we think the “incumbents” ticket owes the taxpayers a much better explanation of why the Park Board is saddling our community with a second-rate replacement Centennial Pool, and exactly how reliable are the numbers in what appears to be a smoke-and-mirrors financial plan for the proposed Youth Campus project.

We only wish that the Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters provided debate time to both the Park Board candidates and competing aldermanic candidates: George Korovilas and Nick Milissis in the 2nd Ward, J.B. Johnson and Roger Shubert in the 4th Ward, and Vinny LaVecchia and Ald. Marc Mazzuca in the 6th Ward.

Because it’s at the local level, with these local races, that the democratic process does its best work – and where grass-roots government gets done.  And this year we’ve got real differences between the candidates, and real choices.

So pay attention, do your best to attend the remaining debates, think, and make sure to vote on April 9.

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