Three Park Ridge aldermanic seats are being contested on Tuesday, based on the staggered system that was implemented in the wake of former mayor Howard Frimark’s successful cut-the-Council referendum in November 2007.

Second Ward:   The announced retirement of Ald. Rich DiPietro has opened up that aldermanic seat for the first time in 18 years.  And the way the two Greek-American candidates are going at it suggests Athens v. Sparta 2,400 years ago.

George Korovilas has set his opposition to the 80-unit apartment complex proposed for the corner of Northwest Hwy. and Greenwood as the flagship issue of his campaign, along with his opposition to needless City regulations – two positions on which we heartily agree with him, although we don’t view them as anywhere near the top of the City’s priorities.  We’re also not quite sure what to make of his call for a “complete audit” of City finances, in part because that already occurs every year; and his call to “reduce wasteful spending” is undercut by his failure to identify specific items of waste, including no mention of how he would address the ever-increasing personnel costs.

Over the years we have been critical of Nick Milissis, going so far as to speculate – in a less-than-kind way – that he was being groomed by former mayor Howard Frimark for a Council seat.  Consequently, his endorsement by former alds. Curt Edlund and Maureen Strauts (rubber-stamp Homeowner’s Party aldermen in their day) who also have publicly endorsed hug-meister Larry Ryles over task-master Mayor Dave Schmidt, gives us a bit of pause…as does his endorsement by current High School District 207 board president Sean Sullivan, who has been a dependable advocate for every non merit-based pay increase for teachers and administrators that has come down the pike during his tenure.

So while it would be easy for us to be wary of Milissis, as we wrote in our post for our Park District endorsements: “easy” is often, if not usually, wrong.  And in this case, we believe his engagement in City issues over the past four years and the positions he has taken in this campaign have earned Milissis our endorsement, notwithstanding his other endorsers.    

He has spoken publicly against spiraling personnel costs and other expenditures that appear more “want” than “need,” like the police station expansion and renovation project that has pushed the number one “safety and health” issue – mold remediation – out to the third year of that three-year project while more office and storage space is treated as a priority over what Chief Kaminski and his Task Force branded a serious health issue.  Really…a bike corral over mold remediation?

Millisis’ presentations at both the Town Hall meeting in February and the Republican Women’s forum in March demonstrated a comprehensive view of Park Ridge issues that his opponent has not matched.  And we fully expect that, if elected, he will not be revealed as a Frimark disciple or the typical go-along-to-get-along guy that used to be the rule in City government – and still is the rule in school board governance.

Fourth Ward:     Current Ald. Sal Raspanti is retiring after one 2-year term because of work obligations.

One of the candidates vying for the open seat is J.B. Johnson, to our knowledge the first-ever black aldermanic candidate and wife of blood-drive organizer extraordinaire George Johnson.   She is opposed by Roger Shubert, who also has a well-known spouse: Amy DeGrazio, former owner of New Prospects.

Our endorsement goes to Shubert, primarily because of his emphasis on continuing “the positive fiscal momentum in the city of Park Ridge after years of budget deficits,” not only for its own sake but also because a financially-sound City enhances its ability to provide a more credible business-friendly environment without fiscally irresponsible gimmicks like TIFs and façade improvement subsidies.  We also believe he correctly has identified the new Centennial aquatic facility as the No. 1 “4th Ward” issue, and one about which that Ward’s alderman might actually be able to do something concrete for its residents.

Ms. Johnson is an engaging person who seems to be relying on personality instead of public policy to get herself elected.  Her campaign “platform” is a crazy-quilt of platitudes, generalities, personal anecdotes and name-dropping (e.g., Bill Gates, Rand Paul, “pal” Keith Olberman).  We also wonder why her number one issue is “[m]oving Public Safety of our citizens up a notch” – especially given that Park Ridge was recently recognized as one of the safest cities in America with populations over 25,000, with an already-low crime rate that keeps declining.

Sixth Ward:    The toughest decision of the three aldermanic races is in the 6th Ward, where appointee Ald. Marc Mazzuca is seeking his first full elective term against Vincent LaVecchia.

In the interest of full disclosure, this editor was a member of the four-person 6th Ward residents mayoral committee that interviewed Mazzuca and three other candidates for appointment last summer to fill the unexpired term of then-ald. Tom Bernick, who went “over the hill” after barely a year in office.  At that time, we had high hopes for someone with an economics degree from the U of I/Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago, who seems to revel in drilling down into the most arcane data – as he demonstrated with his painstaking study of the City’s new water rate ordinance.

Unfortunately, in a couple of key respects those hopes have been dashed rather than realized, most significantly by Mazzuca’s rubber-stamping of the cop shop expansion/renovation plan that ignores the allegedly health-threatening mold problem for the next two years while new/additional office and storage space is being built; his request for a do-over and his subsequent flip-flop on the mayor’s veto of the across-the-board, non-merit based pay increases for the ICOPS; and his recent vote to give more non-merit based pay increases to the City’s Public Works employees.

Non-merit based raises are simply bad public policy, especially where each pay increase given without measurable linkage to improved efficiencies and/or enhanced employee performance actually encourages future non-merit based pay increases for other City employees, thereby perpetuating the upward spiral of the City’s personnel costs.

On the other hand, his opponent, Vincent LaVecchia, is like a cat in heat when it comes to pursuing additional retail and overall economic development.  He has stated that the first thing he would like to do if elected is to lead an economic development team and sell unspecified retailers on Park Ridge’s “great demographics.”

While his energy and enthusiasm are laudable, we’ve been hearing that kind of talk for decades.  And we have to question how he realistically believes he will be successful when both the City’s old quasi-private Economic Development Corporation and, in more recent years, its six figure-salaried City E.D. Director, produced pitifully lackluster results in selling retailers on Park Ridge’s “great demographics.”  More importantly, he hasn’t explained the fact that the most significant retailer to locate in Park Ridge in years, Whole Foods, decided to come here while the City had no E.D. person or department in place – and despite the City’s outright refusal to give Whole Foods and/or its developer the financial incentives and concessions they requested.

Under these circumstances, although each of them brings certain assets to this endeavor, we can’t give either one a clear advantage over the other.  Consequently, this is a “you-pick-‘em” race, perhaps based on what we’ll call dueling flyers: Mazzuca’s versus LaVecchia’s.

Whatever you do, however, and irrespective of whom you support, make sure you get to the polls tomorrow if you haven’t already done so.  Otherwise you’re part of the problem – apathy – rather than part of the solution.

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