Talk to any Park Ridge alderman and he probably can tell you about how often a Park Ridge resident complains to him about some problem involving the Park Ridge Park District, or Park Ridge-Niles School District 64.

That’s because too many residents apparently don’t know enough basic civics to realize and/or understand that the City is a different governmental body from the Park District or District 64 – or that each of those bodies is basically autonomous, with their own separate budgets and tax levies.

That means if the Park District or D-64 were to run out of money, the City wouldn’t cover their bounced checks.  And vice versa.

While most of the City’s taxpayers are also taxpayers of the Park District and D-64, the populations of all three are not identical because their borders are not the same.  For example, certain parts of Park Ridge (such as Park Ridge Pointe) are not within the Park District’s boundaries, and certain parts of the Park District and D-64 are in Niles.

Not only is this concept lost on many ordinary residents, but it seems to be lost on certain City officials, according to a story in last week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Officials looking into Park Ridge Baseball’s rent-free use of city building,” Nov. 21).

As reported in that article, for the past two years Park Ridge Baseball/Softball, Inc. (“PRBS”) – a private corporation that runs the Park Ridge Park District’s baseball and softball programs as an “affiliate” of the Park District – has been using the City’s former public works building at Elm and Greenwood, rent free, for winter practices.  In the process, PRBS has run up approximately $9,500 a year in gas and electric bills.  Not surprisingly, the idea was initially approved by then-city mgr. Jim Hock, which should make it suspect on that basis alone.

We have a problem with $9,500 being charged to the account of the City’s taxpayers, some of whom are not even Park District taxpayers, just so a private corporation affiliated with the Park District can have a free practice facility for its program participants.  That’s not a king’s ransom, to be sure, but it is another one of those situations where the principle is what counts – as well as the concern that, if the little things can be botched, then bigger things also are at risk of of going awry.

Like those no-bid contracts for $32,000 of fire hydrants, $150,000 of defibrillators, and million dollar-plus professional service fees for sewer and flood control consulting and design.

How do our highly-paid City officials explain PRBS’s free use of a City facility?  Like they took a crash course from the Bill Clinton School of Parsing and Dissembling.

City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton says he doesn’t think the free use constitutes a violation of the City Council Policy No. 36 because PRBS is an affiliate of another public body, the Park District; and those baseball practices constitute “approved meetings” of “other governmental bodies.”  Amazingly, City Attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill seems to agree with Hamilton, claiming that the phrase “approved meetings of other governmental bodies” can be broadly interpreted to include a gathering of baseball or softball players organized by a private corporation that effectively serves as a vendor of the Park District’s baseball and softball programs.

The silliness, if not outright disingenuousness, of such a tortured interpretation of Policy No. 36’s plain language should be obvious to any plain-speaking, plain-hearing person.  Unless, of course, the first thought that pops into your head whenever you drive past Kalina Field or Hinkley Park while a baseball or softball game is in progress is: “Gee, I didn’t know the Park Board was meeting tonight”; or “What number on tonight’s agenda is ‘runners on the corners, two outs and your .091 hitter at the plate?’ ”

Then again, you have to remember that Bill Clinton didn’t have “sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” either.

Don’t expect the absurdity baseball practices being treated the same as Park Board meetings to bother the folks who run PRBS, or the parents of the li’l sluggers who get to sponge off City taxpayers, if only to the tune of $9,600 a year, and thereby avoid having to pay the City to use the old City garage space.  That way, those parents can more easily afford to pay the $200/hour it reportedly costs to rent space at The Dome in Rosemont, or to pay the costs of “supervision” whenever PRBS uses the Park District’s own facilities.

Not surprisingly, long-time PRBS czar Garry Abezetian calls the arrangement “a great partnership” that “saves the kids and families in the program from having to rent space.”  He must have taken the Bill Clinton course, too, because all partners in a “partnership” are supposed to benefit from the “partnership’s” activities; and, try as we might, we can’t see what benefit the City and its taxpayers are getting out of this deal.

According to Abezetian, PRBS has paid for some “improvements” to the old City garage, like “new carpeting and lighting and a fresh coat of paint.”  Of course, all of that just happens to benefit…wait for it…PRBS!  The City previously was able to rent that facility to NICOR for $250,000 in the last year of NICOR’s tenancy, without any of those “improvements.”  We seriously doubt any prospective purchaser of that property is going to care one whit about, or pay one dime more for, those amenities.

We don’t begrudge PRBS, or any other community organizations which satisfies the eligibility requirements of Policy No. 36, the use of City facilities.  Section I (A) of that Policy, however, permits non-City use of City facilities – other than the current Public Works Service Center and the Library – only for “[a]pproved meetings of other governmental bodies (i.e., Maine South Clinical Government Class and the Cook Co. Zoning Board).”  Kids’ baseball practices and games are not “approved meetings,” nor are they conduct of another “governmental body.”

That means we have yet another instance of “what’s-in-it-for-us?” private mooching – like with those D-64 “boycotters” we wrote about in our 11.18.13 post.  And our City officials don’t seem any more inclined or competent to deal with such moochers than are our D-64 officials.

So just stick that $9,500 of gas and electric charges on the taxpayers’ bill, and chalk it up to the shameless once again prevailing over the spineless.

Who, in this instance, also have shown themselves to be clueless.

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