Back on February 25 we published a post about two new construction projects within a block or so of each other in the Greenwood/Busse area.

One is a 25-townhouse project by Lexington Homes on the Greenwood and Elm site known as the City’s old public works headquarters (the “LEX”). The other is an assisted living facility (the “ALF”) on Greenwood between Busse and Northwest Highway.

At the City Council meeting on March 7, rezoning for the LEX – from R-2 single-family residential to R-4 multi-family residential – was defeated by a vote of 4 (Alds. Milissis, Van Roeyen, Shubert and Mazzuca) to 3 (Acting Mayor Maloney and Alds. Moran and Knight).

At that same meeting, the Council approved a “special use” to the ALF – because the site is currently zoned B-2 general commercial – by a vote of 4 (Acting Mayor Maloney and Alds. Moran, Milissis and Van Roeyen) to 3 (Alds. Shubert, Knight and Mazucca), even though the ALF will exceed the maximum 40-foot height permitted in the City’s Zoning Code by a sizable 12 feet, or 30%.

That 30% height variance is scheduled for final approval at tonight’s Council meeting.

We had no “stringer” at the meeting and we haven’t watched the meeting video. That means we’re relying entirely on the articles published in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge City Council says no to Elm Street townhouses,” March 8 and “Assisted living building gets early OK from Park Ridge City Council,” March 10), along with the Agenda Cover memos issued by the City’s Community Preservation & Development Director, Jim Testin, for the LEX and the ALF.

We’ve repeatedly been critical of the City’s unpredictable and seemingly schizophrenic way it deals with zoning. The way these two projects were dealt with would appear to be Object Lesson No. 1 in that regard.

According to the H-A articles, two of the “no” votes against both projects were from Shubert and Mazzuca.

Shubert’s objections to the LEX were traffic-related and because “[m]ost of the people [he’s] talked to were lukewarm or against this particular project,” according to the H-A article.

Mazzuca opposed the LEX – which could have accommodated up to 25 living units – on the grounds that such a multi-family development would be inconsistent with the single-family nature of that neighborhood. He opposed the ALF on a similar there-goes-the-character-of-the-neighborhood basis.

Frankly, we can see both sides of the LEX argument.

But it seems like there’s a lot more heavy lifting, policy-wise, to be done on the fundamental development issues that the LEX presents, such as: Does Park Ridge need 25 additional townhouses on land that reportedly could accommodate 11-12 single-family homes under its current R-2 zoning?

If you’re a local merchant, 25 new townhouses mean more doubling the number of households that standard single-family homes on that property could provide, which might mean roughly double the consumer sales that single-family homes might generate. The townhouses might also bring in more total property tax revenue than single-family homes, although that remains an open question.

But those same 25 townhouses also might double the number of kids enrolling in our public schools. And that might produce annual property tax deficits (per-household student costs v. per-household property taxes paid to the school districts) of ten, twenty or thirty-thousand dollars per residence per year – deficits that will need to be made up the majority of property taxpayers without kids in those schools.

Should overburdening the schools be a City concern?

We think that’s a great question that needs to be addressed by the City Council, and sooner rather than later – because only the City has the legal ability to regulate land development and thereby control the number of residences that can be built in town.

As best as we can tell, neither the City Council nor the Planning & Zoning Commission ever have had that particular “policy” discussion. And don’t expect the D-64 and the D-207 Boards to contribute much of value to such a discussion.

Over the last 25 years, neither school district has demonstrated that they either know or care about how many students they have to educate, so long as they can spend their respective districts into financial crises every so often – for D-64 it’s usually every 10 years or so (e.g., the crisis leading to the “Yes, Yes!” referendum in 1997; and the crisis leading to the “Strong Schools” referendum in 2007) – that enable them cry “Wolf!” and stampede the taxpayers into voting for yet another hefty tax-increase…“for the kids,” of course.

And irrespective of whether all that money actually improves educational quality, objectively measured.

Because both districts are masterful in manipulating and hiding the full impact of their respective financial situations from the taxpayers, however, they can pretty much dictate when those tax-increase referendums are held. That means steering them to the odd-year local elections when voter turnout is significantly lower – and can be more easily dominated by a well–organized and uber-motivated “for the kids” campaign committee – than in the general elections in November of the even years.

Which might explain why, this year, the D-64 Board appears to be hell-bent on locking in a boxcar’s worth of non-referendum debt for various construction projects (including $7 million for those not-really-secure vestibules) while also giving the PREA (teachers union) a three-or-four-year contract that will almost certainly be, once again, of the sweetheart persuasion. Such profligacy – combined with the enrollment increases likely to come from all those new multi-family residences – can help create another financial crisis suitable for leveraging into another tax-increase referendum in 2017 or, more likely, 2019.

Is there an actual plan for our community’s development; and, if so, is it actually being followed?

Does anybody know? Does anybody care?

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