Until about 20 years or so ago, manufacturers regularly advertised new iterations of their existing products as “New & Improved!”

But as American society became more youth-oriented and superficial, and less analytically critical, “improved” was subsumed into “new”: So long as something was novel or different from its predecessor, it no longer needed to be better.

Unfortunately, that type of superficiality has come to typify our politics even more so than our commercialism.

In our last post we talked about the difference in local government experience between Acting Park Ridge Mayor Marty Maloney and his challenger, Lucas Fuksa – a difference so stark and striking that there should be no reasonable choice between the two…IF experience were the only thing that matters.

But as we noted in that last post, great ideas can sometimes be a worthy substitute for experience.

So in this post we’re going to look at some of Fuksa’s more significant criticisms of Maloney and City government, and Fuksa’s ideas behind his slogan “We can do better” and his sketchy-bordering-on-flimsy flow chart that purports to show us what he plans to do without explaining HOW he intends to do it.

Let’s get started.

Flooding: As reported by the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge mayoral candidates differ on issues during first debate,” Feb. 24), at the Chamber of Commerce debate on February 22 – the only real mayoral “debate” because the Evanston ladies who run the League of Women Voters apparently fear confrontation and, consequently, ran their March 2d event as a “forum” – Fuksa argued that the City didn’t need any more flooding studies but needed to take action funded by low-interest loans and grants. He also ridiculed the proposed Storm Water Utility (“SWU”) as “an illusion” because the fee structure for the SWU has not been established.

Interestingly enough, Fuksa made no mention of the total amount of those low-interest loans the City would have to borrow for City-wide flood remediation. Maybe that’s because the number has consistently been projected at well over $100 million since at least the end of 2013, not even including the additional tens of millions of dollars of debt service that would be needed to finance such a mega-project. It could be that Fuksa just didn’t know that number, considering how he had been MIA until late last year when he decided to grab for the brass ring and run for mayor.

At any rate, there is nothing new or improved about his positions on this issue: The folks most affected by flooding, especially those who bought their properties in known flood-prone areas (Hello, 2d and 3d Warders!) at a discount because they were in flood-prone areas have been clamoring for the City to do whatever it takes, at whatever it costs, for years. And they don’t give a rat’s derriere whether or not anybody else in Park Ridge gets flood relief, so long as they get theirs.

More Retail: Fuksa took his Chamber appearance – and every other opportunity, for that matter – to deride Maloney’s and the City’s alleged inability to bring more “national” and “regional” retail businesses to Park Ridge. With a mantra of “retail is driven by retail” and the recent closing of the Jos. A. Bank store in Uptown as his poster-child, Fuksa told the Chamber folks that he would push for the hiring of an economic development director and for making the City friendlier to businesses, except when it comes to non-retail businesses opening in the Uptown “retail” district.

We’ve repeatedly pointed out – most notably in our posts of 07.31.09 (about “Farcical Façade Improvements”), 05.17.12 (about retail “crapitalism”), 02.26.13 (about the shoddy EDTF report), 03.19.13 (about retail “quacks”) and 11.30.16 (about retail “bribery”) – and been proved right by the likes of Whole Foods and Mariano’s, as well as by the disappointing performance of what was supposed to be our retail salvation, the Shoppes of Uptown, national and even regional retailers know where they want to be (and why) far better than any bureaucrat, including any six-figure economic development director the City might hire. Which is why Whole Foods was willing to drop its (or its developer’s) demand for a $2 million-plus bribe in the form of “tax revenue sharing” when then-Mayor Dave and that council said “no.”

Once again, there’s nothing new or improved about Fuksa’s “take” on retail: Four years ago mayoral challenger Larry Ryles claimed that he would (a) lure retailers to Park Ridge by showing up at national retail conventions with a promotional DVD, while (b) retaining local businesses with “a hug and a handshake.” He also identified several specific retailers he wanted to lure to Park Ridge. Voters didn’t buy that nonsense, but it’s still far more of a plan than Fuksa has proposed.

Parking: Fuksa told the Chamber folks to “forget about building [parking] decks” because the City’s parking problems can be addressed by “valet stations”: “You just pull your car up to the valet station – and the city actually makes money on these things.”

Will these “valet stations” be run by David Copperfield or Criss Angel, both of whom have been known to make all sorts of vehicles disappear and reappear? If not, then those valeted vehicles need to be parked somewhere, presumably in Park Ridge. If there are no parking places for the owners/drivers, in which parallel universe will the valets stow them?

For those of you still keeping score at home, valet parking is not new; and making cars disappear is not improved, just goofy.

Evanston Water: Fuksa claims Maloney and the Council sat on their hands instead of actively pursuing a plan to join with Niles and Morton Grove to bring in our Lake Michigan water from Evanston rather than from our longtime source of the City of Chicago. But according to a news story dated September 20, 2016, being promoted by Team Fuksa, Niles and Morton Grove pulled out of the original deal they contemplated with Park Ridge – building a brand new pipeline directly from Evanston – for the reduced cost of getting that “Evanston water” indirectly through Skokie’s existing distribution infrastructure.

We wrote about the fool’s gold nature of the original Evanston water proposal in our posts dated 04.21.15, 07.13.15 and 10.12.15, all before Niles and MoGro bolted for the cheaper – for them – Skokie option that we understand was not available to Park Ridge because Skokie lacked the infrastructure to service the extra demands from Park Ridge. And a March 10, 2017 e-mail from the Morton Grove Village Administrator corroborates that understanding.

Cluless or dishonest is neither new or improved.

76.22% City RE Tax Increase: Fuksa recently produced a “hit piece” mailer claiming that the City’s share of property taxes has gone up 75.22% during Maloney’s six-year tenure on the Council. An article by the Park Ridge Journal’s Anne Lunde (“Fuzzy Math Enters Park Ridge Mayoral Election Picture,” March 22) succinctly depicts most of the errors in that argument.

This kind of bogus math may, indeed, be “new” – but it’s also as clueless or dishonest as Fuksa’s Evanston water comment, rendering it most definitely not “improved.”

Bring Property Taxes Under Control: After saying he wants to move ahead with over $100 million in flood remediation alone, the idea that Fuksa will be better than Maloney at controlling RE taxes is, in a word, ludicrous. Needless to say, the reason there are no dollar signs attached to any of Fuksa’s “Ready, fire, aim!” proposals is likely because he can’t reconcile their costs with his “I’ll end our taxes-gone-wild” narrative.

Besides, the City’s portion of our RE tax bill is around 11%, which is barely the tip of the Titanic-sinking tax iceberg compared to the 70%+ of our taxes that School Districts 64 and 207 gobble up with not even a fraction of the honesty, transparency and accountability regularly demonstrated by the City since Maloney was elected 7th Ward alderman.

We’ll stop here because, frankly, we’ve pretty much covered “Fuksa’s Greatest Hits” – his ideas new and old that seem to be the meat and potatoes of his campaign. Perhaps had Fuksa done something more for this community over the past 6 years than seek a variance for his illegal pergola, he might have something more than the foregoing tripe to offer the voters as counterpoints to Maloney’s wealth of experience.

But he didn’t. And he doesn’t.

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