Anybody who reads this blog with any regularity knows how critical we have been of the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District’s recent handling of two significant issues: the Senior Center and the new Centennial Pool.

The whole Senior Center debacle (including the related Teresa Grodsky termination and Betty Kemnitz bequest litigation) was about as botched as a situation like that could be, with plenty of blame to go around – most of it well-earned by the handful or so of seniors running private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.”) – and plenty of expense to show for it.

The Centennial Pool fiasco, on the other hand, was basically about the arrogance of District director Gayle Mountcastle and the Park Board members who – in breaking with almost 18 years of Park District precedent – decided to commit $7.1 million (including $6.3 million financed by 15-year bonds) to build a third-rate, 3-months-per-year outdoor aquatic facility without the decency of at least consulting the taxpayers through a non-binding, advisory referendum, an affront made especially egregious in light of Mountcastle’s and the Board’s knowledge that the last three pool referenda had failed significantly.

Not asking the taxpayers a question because you think they’ll give you an answer you don’t want to hear is the height of cowardice; and claiming that you know what’s best for the community so much more than those taxpayers that you don’t even have to ask them, is the height of arrogance.

Given just those two events, it would be easy for us to say “Throw the bums out!” and endorse the two challengers to the four current Park Board members who are running for 4 seats on that 7-member Board.

But “easy” is often, if not usually, wrong.

Which is why, despite some trepidation, we endorse incumbent Board members Rick Biagi, Richard Brandt and Steven Hunst for re-election.  They are running as a ticket against incumbent Board member Steven Vile and challengers Joan Bende and James Phillips.

Biagi has been the leader of the Park Board for much of the past four years, irrespective of where around the Board table he has sat.  That means, however, that the “buck” stops at his chair when it comes to the two gaffes we discussed above; and we hold him accountable for them.  If those were even a majority of his body of work, he would not have earned this endorsement.

But while we vehemently disagree with him on the way he and the Board handled those situations, we respect the fact that he did not shrink from the slings and arrows directed his way by this blog, by Kenneth Butterly’s “Butterly On Senior Issues” blog, and by many members of the general public.  And unlike his fellow Board members, he seemed genuinely conflicted by the competing interests of voter empowerment and Board autonomy.  His leadership, combined with Mountcastle’s generally solid management, appears to have made the District a better and more cost-effective operation – which counts for a lot in our book.

One reason for some of that cost-effectiveness may well be Hunst.  Despite sporting more letters after his name than an unsolved Wheel of Fortune puzzle, Hunst provides a wealth of analytical skills that we believe have raised the Board’s understanding of various cost-benefit situations it has addressed, to the benefit of the taxpayers.  Every public body probably needs a person like Hunst, and he’s clearly the designated wonk on that Board.

Four years ago we refused to endorse Brandt, largely because of his support by the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”) which represents some District workers.  We thought that created too great a prospect of a conflict of interest.  But in the intervening years we have seen no sign of union influence to concern us.  And except for his support of the no-referendum Centennial project, he’s been a pretty steady voice for fiscally conservative management.

That leaves one unfilled vacancy for which we cannot endorse a candidate from among the remaining three candidates, who are running as a ticket billing themselves as “The Last Three” due to their positions on the ballot.  The main theme of their candidacies, as noted on their website, is: “Our Park Ridge Seniors Deserve Better From Our Park District Board.”

That kind of special-interest entitlement mentality would be reason enough to refuse an endorsement of the entire ticket or any individual candidate on it, for all of the various factors identified in our posts of 01.27.11, 12.12.11, 01.19.12, 06.11.12 and 07.16.12.

But there are more reasons.

Incumbent Steven Vile has been an unswerving champion of tax, borrow and spend-style government.  Worse than that, however, was how he chose to work for the special interests of Seniors Inc. – of which he is a member and former board member – instead of looking out for the best interests of the Park District and the community as a whole in connection with the Senior Center/Grodsky/Kemnitz debacle.

Joan Bende is another advocate of special-interest tax, borrow and spend-style government.  She disingenuously argues for the District keeping legal fees down, knowing full well that a lot of those fees were generated by the District’s litigating over the $330,000 Kemnitz bequest that former employee (and Kemnitz trustee) Teresa Grodsky appears to have improperly diverted from the Park District to Seniors Inc. – and which the Seniors Inc. crowd refused to give back even after the District agreed to use that money solely and entirely for the Senior Center.

James Phillips is the third member of this triumvirate and he, too, is basically a Senior Center one-trick pony.  No matter where we look – his ticket’s website, their campaign literature, or his candidate profile in the March 20th edition of the Park Ridge Journal – can we find him offering any actual ideas about what exactly he would do about the issues he raises, which he does in a way that makes him sound like an old Jerry Seinfeld routine, but without the humor.

The Park District also has its Park Ridge Youth Campus acquisition referendum on the ballot.

That referendum asks District voters to approve the acquisition of 11.35 acres of land previously operated as a collection of group homes for troubled youths, at a cost of at least $13.2 million of  long-term bonded debt.

Persuasive arguments can be made for both sides of this issue.  A ‘yes” vote would mean that the Park District will have additional acreage for recreational activities it currently doesn’t offer, or for which it lacks optimal space, although the luxury of that additional space will continue to keep that property off the tax rolls indefinitely.  A “no” vote, on the other hand, will likely lead to residential development that will gain for the City all the property, water and sewer taxes that can be generated by putting that property back on the tax rolls through the construction of private homes – with a downside of more kids being added to the school population and greater demands on the City’s infrastructure.

Frankly, we see this as a coin flip question, a “Tastes great, less filling” kind of issue.  But while we endorse neither a “yes” nor a “no” vote, we are troubled by a few things done by the District that seem to be both deceptive and overtly political, the latter of which is improper under state law prohibiting use by the District of tax dollars to campaign for or against a referendum.

The first is the District’s failure to include the cost of the project or the amount of the bonds on the first page of its 2-page FAQ sheet.   Instead, the first page is brazenly devoted to selling the reader “good news” about the project before the reader gets the “bad news” of the cost.  And when the cost finally shows up on page two, there’s no mention of the total cost that figures in the debt service (i.e., bond principal and interest), which means the $13.2 million total is probably at least $1 million light.

The second is the comment on page two of that FAQ sheet that, should the referendum fail, the District “would not have the resources to purchase the property.”  Not surprisingly, the District fails to mention that, had it not committed $6.3 of its non-referendum bonding power and $800,000 of cash to build a new Centennial Pool just a few months ago, it would have more than enough money to pay the $6.4 million purchase price of the Youth Campus land.  Of course, that would require the Board and Staff to actually make value judgments and prioritize their wishes and dreams, rather than recklessly indulge all of them.

Finally, we have serious doubts about legitimacy and credibility of the “Operating Budget” for the Youth Campus the Park District has published on its website, which appears to be nothing more than meaningless fun with numbers – and missing so much necessary detail that it’s almost impossible to tell just how ridiculous those numbers might be.

For example, the budget predicts $23,770 of net income from Platform Tennis (Pages 5-6)  based in part on $15,000 of membership fees, $1,000 of daily fees and $5,000 of rental income – without any detail describing how many memberships, daily users and rentals would be needed to hit those revenue numbers.  So the ability of the average Park Ridge taxpayer to form an opinion of whether those revenues are legitimate or complete pie-in-the-sky bunkum is non-existent.  And the same goes for all the rest of the budget numbers.

So for all of you trusting souls who think you will be getting the Youth Campus park for a mere $72 a year of additional property taxes on your $458,000 home, don’t bet the ranch on it.  And don’t expect Mel Thlllens to write you a check.

Coming Next:  City of Park Ridge

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