Happy Independence Day! 

Although we have come to celebrate “Independence Day” on July 4th – the day that the Continental Congress approved the wording of the Declaration of Independence – the vote declaring independence from Great Britain actually occurred on July 2nd, 1776, when the Congress adopted the following resolution of independence on motion of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: 

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.

That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation. 

This language was incorporated into the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which ends with those Congressional delegates pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the principles of independence.  And after approving that Declaration, those Congressional delegates went out and acted on those principles to build this great nation. 

That’s why, as we have done in the past, we mark these patriotic days with a call for Park Ridge residents to live their patriotism more fully by getting involved in local government. 

Sure, it’s easier to sit around with friends and beef and moan over coffee or stronger drink about what’s going on in Washington or in Springfield.  But rather than wringing your hands about those things, you can accomplish a lot more by rolling up your sleeves and getting involved in the governance of the City of Park Ridge, the Park Ridge Park District, and School Districts 64 and 207.  

And to bring home that point, we offer the following: 

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”  Thomas Carlyle
 

“The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.” Justice Louis Brandeis
 

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”  Albert Einstein

On this Independence Day weekend, give some thought to what you can do to make our local governmental bodies better.  Nobody’s expecting you to pledge your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor to that cause. 

Just pay closer attention, go to some meetings, and demand accountability from the people we elect to govern on our behalf.

Cut The Fireworks?  Some residents are wondering why, in these tough economic times with all sorts of budget cuts still being debated, the City would spend any money at all on its 4th of July fireworks show, traditionally held on July 3. 

Although local business (and holder of the City’s website design contract) Americaneagle.com is paying the cost of the fireworks themselves (approx. $18,000) for the second straight year, the show will still cost public funds for police, fire and related City services – despite this year’s event being shifted to Friday, July 2, to avoid overtime costs for weekend duty. 

Should the City cut the fireworks entirely, even with the fireworks donation, in order to avoid those personnel and related City costs?  That’s something the mayor and the City Council surely can talk about in connection with the mayor’s budget veto. 

Or maybe the folks at Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) can offer to cut some of its $23,000 subsidy from the City to help out with the cost of the fireworks show?  Or is the $3,000 Taste Inc. reportedly is paying Rainbow Hospice for the gorilla “in the park” (is it really going to be “dressed” in one of those orange “Tastee” t-shirts?) all the “charity” Taste Inc. can afford this year? 

The Early Line On Veto Over-ride.  According to this week’s Herald-Advocate article (“Mayor keeps promise to veto ‘unrealistic’ budget,” May 4), 1st Ward Ald. Joe Sweeney and 2nd Ward Ald. Rich DiPietro have said they will vote to uphold Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of the recently-passed City budget.  Sweeney voted against passage, but DiPietro apparently has reconsidered his “yes” vote. That leaves Schmidt’s veto one vote short of being upheld. 

Third Ward Ald. Don “Air Marshall” Bach could have been expected to be that third vote, given that he voted against the budget the first time.  But according to the H-A article, Bach is “speaking with more residents before deciding how he will vote in response to the mayor’s veto.” 

Hey, Don, are those the same residents who you said told you to support the $2.4 million giveaway to a going-out-of-business Napleton Cadillac after you indignantly told Bill Napleton you would never buy another Cadillac from him?  Or has your newest BFF (and former Frimark, current Mulligan) political consultant, Linda “Linda Ski” Sczepanski moved into Park Ridge? 

You Go, Girl!  Maine Twp. H.S. Dist. 207 has not been covering itself in fiscal glory lately, having somehow “missed” a $17 million shortfall that caused it to lay off 75 teachers.  So we need to give a Watchdog bark-out to Dist. 207 board member Margaret McGrath for giving us hope that at least somebody over at District headquarters “gets it.” 

As reported in this week’s H-A (“Delay in money from state prompts review of finances,” May 4), Dist. 207 is still facing a deficit of between $4 million and $9 million, depending on how much state revenue the District actually receives.  Rather than wish and hope, Ms. McGrath wisely is arguing for more restraints on spending: 

“There’s a negative impact to borrowing a lot of money to spend short-term,” she warned, while advocating for controls on expenditures so that fund balances can be maintained to prevent annual borrowing 5-10 years down the road.    

Exactly, Ms. McGrath.  That’s the kind of common sense viewpoint we were hoping for when we wondered, immediately following your election in April 2009, how long it would take for you to become “a real force” on the Dist. 207 board.

Park Ridge resident Ken Balaskovits is at it again.

This week’s Park Ridge Journal carries another letter from Kenny B (“Council Must Stay At Seven,” April 21) arguing against restoring the City Council to the 14 alderman size it had for close to 100 years – before it was cut in half through a referendum initiated by former mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark.

Although he would never admit it, we’re pretty certain that cutting the Council in half was Frimark’s strategy for making it easier to control City government: it’s easier to elect a 4-alderman majority than an 8-alderman one.  And Frimark was instrumental in recruiting and helping elect the current Council majority Alds. Jim Allegretti, Don Bach, Robert Ryan and Tom Carey in 2007 – another one of Frimark’s “gifts” to the City that keeps on giving – who, 2 years later, returned the favor by contributing over $3,200 to Frimark’s unsuccessful re-election campaign.

The central thrust of Balaskovits’ letter is his more-aldermen-mean-more-uncontested-elections spiel, which ignores the fact that the 14-member City Council produced more contested races in the past decade than the other three 7-member local governmental bodies (School District 207, School District 64, and the Park Ridge Park District) combined!  From 2001 through 2005 (the last election year for the 14-member City Council), the Council had 35 candidates for 21 seats, compared to 16 candidates for 12 seats on the Park Board, 13 candidates for 12 seats on the District 64 board, and 14 candidates for 11 seats on the District 207 board – and that’s including 2001, the last year of Homeowners Party domination, where 6 of the seven HOs ran uncontested.   

But Kenny B was never one to let facts get in the way of a totally bogus argument, especially one of his own.

Balaskovits warns readers of his letter: “Do not sign this petition and, if you have, make an effort to have your name removed.”  In other words, don’t let the matter even get on the ballot.

Frankly, we think a referendum on restoring the size of the City Council is worthy of voter consideration…certainly a lot more worthy than at least one of the 3 referenda proposed by Ald. Bach: Whether to reinstate the position of City Treasurer, which was a worthless one before it was eliminated in 2005 and has no realistic prospects for providing any greater value if reinstated.

So we applaud the restore-the-Council petition circulators for their efforts; and we encourage the voters to help them put this important issue on the November 2010 ballot. 

Today we are taking a break from the financial travails of one public body (the City of Park Ridge) and looking at those of another: High School District 207.

As reported in yesterday’s on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“District 207: Teachers union rejects job-saving concessions,” March 9), the teachers union voted “no” on a School Board request that they re-open their contract in order to save some or all of the 75 teachers being laid off to help fill a $17 million budget hole.

Why doesn’t that surprise us? 

This vote confirms that simply foregoing raises – rather than actually taking wage cuts, as is happening for so many who toil in places other than the fantasyland of unionized government employment – is unthinkable to those union teachers who feel entitled to their roughly 8-month work year, their virtually guaranteed employment, and benefits that private sector workers don’t even dare dream about anymore. 

But while the hopelessly naïve among us might think the union “no” vote makes the 75 lay-offs a done deal, we’ve been around these kinds of goings-on too long to jump to that conclusion.

The first clue that it ain’t over ’til it’s over was Supt. Ken Wallace’s comments (as reported in another H-A story from March 2: “District 207: Looking for a few good financial experts”) that the District provided the union with “probably 10 different scenarios” for saving those jobs, and then iced the union’s cake even more by publicly admitting that: “We’re in no position to turn almost anything down.  If they come with some sort of offer, it’s something we’d have to consider.”

We’re sure glad he’s not part of the U.S. team negotiating nuclear non-proliferation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And even after the teacher’s union voted to figuratively kick District 207 in the you-know-what, Wallace’s response was more spineless than solid – starting with his blubbering about this being “a very difficult process for our teachers and teacher assistants” and his gratitude “that [the union] thoughtfully considered our request in the context of these difficult economic times.” 

All that was missing was “Thank you, sir; may I have another?”

One of the reasons District 207 is in its current fix is that for years its Board and Administration gave the teachers union pretty much everything it wanted.  That’s a mindset – on both sides – that won’t change very quickly, as evidenced by how the union members brazenly called the District’s bluff by appearing to throw their own under the bus.

That’s because they are confident that “the bus” will slam on its brakes just before impact.

And after years of watching wimpy school board members go belly-up for the teachers unions, that’s what we’re betting on, too.

Monday night the District 207 Board of Education unanimously said “No” to the Maine Teachers Association, a/k/a the teachers union, when it voted to go ahead with its plan to cut 137 jobs, including 75 teaching jobs.

That was the fiscally responsible decision, and we applaud it – even though Board member Eric Leys was visibly uncomfortable bucking the teachers, and Board member Sean Sullivan sent yet another clear signal of the Board’s pliability when he noted that this decision could be rescinded later this month if there were “negotiations.”

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the fiscal buffoonery of our local governments – especially our two school boards – over the past couple of decades, Sullivan’s comments mean that the Board is eager to roll over and dip into the District’s reserves in response to virtually any “concession” the teachers union might offer.

That’s because the management tradition of both the District 207 Board and the District 64 Board (members of whom are hand-picked by the District 64 & District 207 School Caucus, then rubber stamped by the voters in uncontested elections) is one of weakness and fuzzy thinking, when they think at all.  So it’s easy for them to ignore the fact that the teachers (especially the more senior ones) and most of the administrators are already overcompensated, thanks to years of mindless giveaways by teachers in “administrator” clothing and go-along-to-get-along board members.

Want proof of the weakness and fuzzy thinking? 

Just look at the “compromise” District 207 has already offered the union.  Despite saying how important it was not to dip further into the District’s reserve fund, the Board nevertheless offered to do just that – in an unspecified amount – if the union would agree to lower the pay increases that the Board foolishly gave away in the last contract negotiation, and also agree to a one-year freeze on the cost-of-living increase.

In other words, because the District 207 Board previously gave away the store, it is now begging the teachers to return a can of corn.

That’s just plain spineless, and it explains why the union responded so shamelessly, with union president Emma Visee promptly demanding that the District throw its “compromise” money (from the reserve fund) into the pot, irrespective of whether the union agrees to any concessions.

“If you have identified $2 million you can spend for the students, then do so,” said Visee.

Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll want a glass of milk. 

Except in the case of the teachers union, the mouse is more of a gorilla.  And as we’ve seen time and time again, it’s not going to settle for just a glass of milk.

So kudos for now, District 207 Board. But we’re still sticking with our prediction that you will sell out the taxpayers, once again, before this is over.

One of our favorite quotes, often attributed to Julian Bond, is: “In a contest between the shameless and the spineless, the shameless always win.”  And nowhere does that seem to be proved more frequently than in local government, where bumbling bureaucrats and feckless elected officials combine to mismanage our institutions and our tax dollars.

Tonight at 7:00 p.m., the District 207 School Board will be meeting at the Maine South H.S. auditorium to discuss what is looking like the latest spineless maneuver by the Board to appease its lord and master: the Maine Teachers Association, a/k/a, the teachers’ union.

As we reported in the 1/30/10 Update to our 1/26/10 post, “When The Inmates Run The Asylum,” District 207 is now planning to dip into its reserves when, just a couple of weeks ago, it was saying that it could not prudently do so.  That kind of flip flop reminds us of the classic courtroom cross examination question: “Are you lying now, or were you lying then?”

But with teachers playing administrators/businesspersons, and elected officials playing politicians, lying and ignorant incompetence are hard to separate.

Whether the District 207 Board and administration is lying, incompetent or just plain gutless, however, is beside the point: The teachers’ union is shameless, and has been so for at least the past decade.  That’s why teachers are getting paid sizeable annual salaries for only 2/3 or 3/4 of an actual work year, depending on how you count and consider vacation days, holidays, sick days, paid leave days, teacher institute (snicker) days, etc.

And they continue to receive something so wonderful, and so costly, that it has become virtually extinct in the real, private-sector world in which most of us toil: the defined benefit pension.  And let’s not forget tenure, and a job which has positively no chance of being relocated to another state or country.

Fed up with teachers’ union greed?  One of our readers, Kenneth Butterly, is.  And he sent us a copy of his letter [pdf] to District 207 and the case study [pdf] he refers to in his letter, along with the permission to publish both of them. 

Just to show we’re not unfair, however, we are also providing the MTA’s “Myth vs. Reality” propaganda sheet [pdf], which we obtained from its website and which focuses primarily on criticizing bad budgeting, accounting and management by the District’s administration and Board. 

We can’t disagree with that.  But that alone doesn’t mean the teachers aren’t greedy and unreasonable, especially when the District’s mismanagement consists in no small measure of constantly caving in to the teachers’ demands. 

Tonight we will see whether the School Board has a spine of steel or of mush. 

We hope we’re wrong, but we’re betting on the latter.  Because we know that, once again, the teachers union will be shameless.

If you’re one of the thousands of District 207 taxpayers who don’t have any children currently enrolled in, or soon to be enrolled in, one of the District’s high schools, you probably didn’t attend last Wednesday’s budget meeting at Maine East H.S.  That’s because those kinds of meetings aren’t made for you.

They’re made for demonstrations like the one the tearful students staged to save the jobs of approximately 75 non-tenured teachers who may be cut from the payroll to help fill what is looking more and more like a $19 million hole in the District’s 2010-11 budget.  

Never mind that such a “spontaneous” outpouring of student sentiment appears to have been orchestrated by the teachers’ union – it’s still great theater.  And great theater provides an easy “human interest” story for a superficial news media, which explains why the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate devoted an entire story to reporting student comments (“District 207: ‘We are a family here to fight against you’”) in addition to featuring student comments in its only other story on the meeting (“District 207 board hears impassioned pleas to spare teachers’ jobs”).

After all, why should our local papers struggle to analyze tough issues – like why so many individual teachers are making more than the annual Park Ridge median household income despite working only 8 months a year in jobs that can’t be outsourced or relocated, with pensions and benefits better than what are enjoyed by most of the folks paying their salaries – when its reporters can interview a few teenagers and write a warm-and-fuzzy about losing their favorite teachers or coaches because other teachers wouldn’t forego their raises this year?   

Those meetings are also made for the parents of those tearful students to show up and complain that they pay taxes and, consequently, their children deserve every educational benefit imaginable no matter what the cost – and no matter that their annual tax payments to District 207 barely make a dent in the actual cost of educating just one of their children.

After all, as Maine East science teacher Dana Nixon stated at the meeting: “A quality education is more than reading, writing and arithmetic.”  Indeed it is, which is why teachers and administrators can make a case for including Mandarin Chinese, fencing, cloisonné, field trips to Machu Pichu and even embalming among the offerings of a “complete” high school curriculum.

And those meetings are made for the school administrators to put on their concerned faces and act like they know what they’re doing, even though all of them are former teachers’ union members who retain the union entitlement mindset and who lack the formal business education or experience needed to run a successful card-table lemonade stand, much less the $100+ million a year business that is District 207.

The bottom line is that, if you are the average District 207 taxpayer, there are only two things standing between you and District 207’s (and District 64’s) pillaging of your pocketbook: tax caps and your elected members school board members.

The District 207 board members may be fine people, but what proven business education or experience do they have to act as directors of a $100+ million business, especially when they are overseeing a CEO (a/k/a, the superintendant) and operations officers (a/k/a, staff) who themselves are functionally clueless when it comes to business theory and strategy? 

According to the District 207 website, three of those board members (Margaret McGrath, Edward Mueller and Sean Sullivan) are attorneys, the last of whom is also the vice-president of business affairs (whatever that entails) at Triton College; two of them (Eldon Burk and Donna Pellar) are retired teachers, one of whom (Pellar) has a masters degree in “School Administration” (whatever that entails); one of them (Joann Braam) has a masters degree in social science; and one of them (Eric Leys) doesn’t even list any college education or an occupation. 

That’s it.  No MBAs and no demonstrated private sector experience running even a small business.  Just a bunch of business-“blind” union-sympathizing teacher/administrators leading a bunch of business-“blind” school board members.  No wonder the teachers’ union runs things…and why teachers’ raises appear to be outpacing the rate of inflation even during a recession.

So don’t be surprised if all those non-business types running District 207 come up with a “solution” that will involve dipping into the District’s reserves and further jeopardizing its long-term financial future for a quick and easy “fix” today.

When will this insanity stop? 

Not until somebody stops the inmates from running the asylum.

Update 1/30/10.  According to a statement issued by the District 207 administration, it is proposing a plan to ”save” 40-45 of the approx. 75 teaching jobs scheduled to be cut - by…wait for it…”‘tap[ping] deeper into its fund balance reserve and commit[ting] up to an additional $2 million in deficit spending’ over the next two fiscal years.” (”New offer by District 207 could spare 45 teachers,” Jan. 29) 

We’d like to take a bow for calling that shot but, after years of watching shameless teachers’ unions and spineless/clueless school administrations, that kind of prediction is like shooting fish in a barrel. 

And, not surprisingly for spineless school administrators and their clueless school board overseers, the District 207 statement does not say just how deeply it will be dipping into those reserves, even as it disclosed that the teachers would still be receiving their “step” pay increases and their 3.5% cost-of-living increase (which appears to triple-plus the actual increase in the cost of living!) for the upcoming school year - in return for giving up only their 3.2% COLA the following year. 

Looks like yet another tower of jello negotiation strategy by District 207. 

We did get a kick, however, out of Supt. Ken Wallace’s mealy-mouthed, public relations propaganda statement touting this proposal:

“While this doesn’t solve our financial situation, it buys us some time to do long-term planning with various stakeholders to be in better position ourselves to deal with these difficult economic times going forward.  In light of the difficult economic times that our communities are experiencing, we hope this proposal is a win-win.”

Yes, Ken…a “win-win” for the teachers’ union, as in: “Heads the teachers’ union wins, tails the taxpayers lose.”

Brilliant!

Recently we had some kind words for the District 207 teachers when it sounded as if they were going to hold the District to its contract but kick back enough of their pay increases to save the jobs of their non-tenured teachers union members who were otherwise going to be chopped to help the District fill the gaping $19 million budget hole for the coming year.

Well, the teachers union sure fooled us.

Wednesday night at Maine East High School, union brotherhood/sisterhood went the way of common sense, fiscal responsibility and basic altruism, as union officials and tenured teachers demanded that the District draw down its reserve fund in order to keep everybody – except the taxpayers – fully employed, properly enriched and reasonably happy. 

In the process, the teachers union and its supporters appear to have callously exploited their well-meaning but naïve students, who we understand were “encouraged” to attend the meeting and voice their opposition to the District’s belated recognition of fiscal reality.  After all, it’s common knowledge that weeping teenagers are even better than puppies and kittens for tugging at heartstrings and interfering with clear-headed thinking.

Just because the union and its backers were shameless, however, doesn’t mean that that the District’s board didn’t show it could be spineless.

To the contrary, Board president Ed Mueller sounded like a typical politician when he seemingly blamed every external force except the Haitian earthquake for the District’s deficit, while making sure that not a hint of blame or accountability fell on him or his board.  Amazingly enough, after blaming tax caps for contributing to the District’s revenue shortfalls, Mueller bizarrely announced that the board has ruled out any referendum to exceed the tax caps – a position supported by Supt. Ken Wallace, who said it would “not be responsible” to ask the taxpayers to vote to bail out the district.

In other words, folks, what they’re telling us is that, if not for those darn tax caps, they could have gone ahead and raised our taxes to fill the budget hole without having to get our permission via referendum and without having to cut anything. 

That sounds like Exhibit A to the case for why we need tax caps!

But if revenues really are such a problem, why not at least ask the voters if they want to lift the caps to send more bucks to District 207 – before it turns into a real crisis, like the one District 64’s board caused during the first half of the last decade, when it foolishly refused to go to referendum until its finances were so shaky that the State Board of Education was reportedly considering taking over their management? 

Are Mueller and Wallace afraid a huge “no” vote might seem too much like a referendum on the board’s stewardship of District 207?  Is the teachers union afraid such a vote might be perceived as an indictment of the teachers’ greed?  Or are both sides afraid that such a vote might make it more difficult for them to tap into those District 207 reserves, which we’re still betting will end up being the dirty little deal that gets done before the final curtain falls on this particular drama.

One voice of reason did stand out above the grumbling and caterwauling, however.  Mike Bender, a Maine East teacher and softball coach who is on the chopping block, publicly asked his union to reopen negotiations with the District.  

We know virtually nothing about Mr. Bender, but he gets a Watchdog bark-out for having the courage to make such a request, albeit self-serving, in what he had to know was a hostile forum.  Not surprisingly, his request was openly mocked by his union brethren (and sistren?), who already had shown that they have no reservations about “playing chicken” with the District over the jobs of non-tenured teachers like Bender, or the long-term financial soundness of the District.  

Bender will be lucky if mockery is the only consequence of his speaking truth to power.  That’s because when it comes to our public schools, the teachers unions hold all the power.  And when it comes to their wallets, they have no use for truth.  

As we enter both a new year and a new decade, it’s a good time to look both backwards and forwards at not only our City government but also those other branches of government that primarily service our community, and take stock of where we came from and where we are going financially. 

The years 2000 through 2009 were characterized by spending, spending and more spending, enabled by taxing and borrowing – even though all that spending does not appear to have provided us with better quality infrastructure or services. 

For example, the City of Park Ridge pretty much neglected its sewer system for the past decade, failing to perform needed systemic inspection, maintenance and repairs - not only under Mayor Ron “Damn O’Hare!” Wietecha and the sclerotic Homeowners Party, but also under Acting-Mayor Mike Marous and the “Independents” (non-Homeowner aldermen) and even more so under Mayor Howard Frimark and his Alderpuppets.  Flood control and remediation also were ignored while new development and redevelopment actually increased flooding risks and demands on our sewer systems.

Although its academic standing generally remained stable over the decade, High School District 207 currently is trying to cope with a $17 million “structural budget deficit.”  Meanwhile, during the first part of the decade Elementary School District 64 spent itself to the brink of Illinois State Board of Education intervention [pdf] before bailing itself out with a “back-door” $5 million working-cash bond issue to make payroll in 2005 [pdf], followed by a major referendum-based tax increase in 2007 – neither of which has produced consistent, notable gains in student performance, even as the District has gone about restoring many of the $12.2 million in cuts it made while claiming they would not impair educational quality.  (So why restore them?) 

Even the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District, the smallest-budget branch of local government, continues to bungle the management of its outdoor swimming pools (which look to have booked another operating loss approaching $100,000 once the December figures are in [pdf]) and an almost $200,000 loss on the Senior Center [pdf], while still being bedeviled by the management of problematic facilities like the do-not-resuscitate Oakton Pool and the poorly-designed Community Center.

Fortunately for Park Ridge taxpayers, the schools and the Park District are non-home rule bodies whose ability to raise taxes is limited by what are known (fondly to many taxpayers) as “tax caps.”  Not so the home-rule City government, where spending is limited only by whatever sense of shame City officials can muster about their fiscal mismanagement.  And for most of the past 10 years those officials have been pretty darned shameless.

So what can we expect from these governmental bodies in 2010?

Well, District 207 is proposing to cut expenditures by $15 million and raise revenues $2 million [pdf] to fill that $17 million budget hole.  Part of those cuts will come from a freeze of administrators’ salaries and from the District 207 teachers’ voluntary salary increase give-back program, which they are exploring as an enlightened alternative to the District’s cutting of approximately 75 teacher jobs.

District 64, on the other hand, recently approved an approximately 4.9% property tax levy increase for the 2009 tax year – with only board member Russ Gentile voting “no” [pdf].  And, according to its November 10, 2009, press release [pdf], the District is already starting to waffle on its pre-2007 referendum 10-year financial projections, despite amassing very healthy budget surpluses these last two years.  But what should we expect when the District’s School Board and Administration just gave the teachers’ union members annual raises of approximately 4.5% (including step increases) over the next three years, even though (as the press release acknowledges) the Consumer Price Index increase in 2008 ”was just 0.1%”? 

And if what was included in the Park Board’s December meeting package is any indication, the Park District looks to be predicting its own budget deficit of between $800,000 and $1.1 million [pdf], depending on which of two revenue projections is ultimately adopted by the Park Board later this month.  It also appears that $300,000+ of that deficit can once again be attributed to Oakton Pool and the Senior Center, thereby providing further proof of the correctness of Einstein’s definition of insanity.

And the City?  At this point in time, it looks like Mayor Schmidt’s plan for some form of zero-based budgeting is a pipe dream – what with City Mgr. Jim Hock loudly objecting, City Finance Director Diane Lembesis on her way to Gurnee, and the Council majority of deficit-wallowing Alderpuppets installed by former mayor Frimark seemingly incapable of performing subtraction when it comes to City expenditures.

Last May we provided our own simple way to almost balance the City budget (“How To Balance The City Budget,” May 27, 2009) – we came up $49,700 short on the $2 million, which we left for self-proclaimed budget “hawk” Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) to take care of.  Fortunately, we didn’t hold our breath for that to occur.    

Which sets the table for Fourth Ward Ald. Jim Allegretti and his Council cronies to push through the highly-questionable Generation Group, Inc. (“GGI”) billboard deal as $400,000 of “found money” that the City would be foolish to turn down – notwithstanding the City Attorney’s preliminary opinion that such an “impact fee” might not be legally enforceable or even constitutional, and despite the whole Allegretti-engineered, City-as-applicant arrangement stinking up the entire Council chambers.

One thing does look pretty certain, however: the taxpayers likely will take a trimming from every branch of local government, to go with the ones they will take from the State of Illinois and Crook County; and that trimming will likely be accompanied by reduced services from most, if not all, branches of local government.

So Happy New Year…and welcome to the 2010 edition of fiscally mismanaged local governments gone wild.

As another year comes to a close, we here at PublicWatchdog hope that we have helped make local government more transparent, understandable and accountable to the taxpayers who fund it; and that we also have helped shine a spotlight on those who would abuse the public trust of government, or manipulate it for their own benefit to the detriment of the community as a whole.  We also promise to try to do even better in 2010.

In that spirit, we offer the following quotes:

“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.  It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.”
            Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
            Edmund Burke

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”
            James Madison, Federalist No. 51

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government”
            Thomas Jefferson

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.  It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”
            Robert Maynard Hutchins

And with that, we wish all of you a happy, vigilant, active, passionate, engaged and well-nourished New Year.