At this past Monday night’s Park Ridge City Council meeting, the Council did the right thing on a resolution that didn’t even deserve the dignity of a place on the Council’s agenda.

The Northwest Municipal Conference, one of the many clown cars masquerading as governmental or quasi-governmental organizations in the State of Illinois, promulgated a resolution supporting immigration reform for its members.  Or, more accurately, a resolution endorsing specific goals and processes that some people consider “immigration reform.”

Leave it to the mopes at the NWMC to find yet another thing outside their bailiwick on which to waste time while matters squarely in their collective wheelhouse are ignored or allowed to lie fallow.

NWMC bills itself as “one of the premier regional councils of government in the nation.”  If that’s so, we weep for the future of our nation…because by our reckoning the next thing NWMC does of major significance for most of its member communities will be its first.

This immigration resolution reportedly is intended to be sent to the president, vice-president, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, the speaker and minority leader of the House, and to each member of Illinois’ Congressional delegation.

Can you say: “Spit into the wind”?

The last thing Illinois needs is any more units of government – or quasi-governments like the NWMC, the Illinois Association of Park Districts, the Illinois Association of School Administrators, the Illinois City/County Management Association, Illinois Association of Municipal Management Assistants, etc.  These fluff and stroke societies are little/nothing more than networking opportunities for public officials exploring job openings, and occasions for discussing new and improved ways to bamboozle and fleece their respective bodies of taxpayers. 

But getting back to the NWMC resolution, it was such a brain-dead idea that even the Council’s gold-dust twins, Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st) and Jim Smith (3rd), could see the pure tomfoolery of it – with Sweeney suggesting the Council “dispose of it, get rid of it and forget about it”; and Smith calling it “none of our business” and something that neither the City Council nor the NWMC should “be wasting their time on.”

That’s exactly right, guys.

You’ve got more than enough on your plate dealing with 100% local Park Ridge issues.  And that’s what you were elected to deal with.  Those of us with strong opinions about immigration can send our own letters to our various federal officials without your – or the NWMC’s – help, thank you.

However, given what a dumb idea the resolution was, as evidenced by the Council’s ultra-quick and unanimous rejection of it, we have to wonder what was going through Acting City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton’s mind when he recommended the Council pass it.

Mr. Hamilton, you’ve also got enough on your plate that you have no need to concern yourself with resolutions dealing with federal issues.

Especially if they come from the Northwest Municipal Conference.

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