A new teachers union contract is supposedly being negotiated over at Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64.  You’d be hard-pressed to prove it, though, given how typically stingy D-64 is with information concerning things that it can’t toot its own horn about.

Given the still-tough economy and the high level of compensation D-64 teachers and administrators already are receiving – last May, the Chicago Sun-Times pegged them as the 25^th and 4^th highest compensated, respectively, in all of Illinois – you might think that our elected School Board members would want to let the taxpayers know that they are committed to holding the line on compensation and benefits (i.e., pensions), especially with the District having recently identified $20 million+ in high-priority capital “needs.”

But if that’s what you thought, you’d be very wrong.

From what we can tell, the District’s minister of (dis)information, Bernadette Tramm, Supt. Philip Bender and Board president John Heyde are working together to keep the entire teachers negotiation process under a cone of silence.  So not only don’t the taxpayers know how the negotiations are going, we don’t know if those negotiations are even “going” at all. 

Kind of a variation on Brad Pitt’s admonition in “Fight Club”: The first rule of teacher negotiations is, you don’t talk about teacher negotiations. 

During budget talks last July, the District already was anticipating a FY 2011-12 increase of 6.28% in teacher and administrator salaries, totaling approximately $2.46 million; and a 20.71% increase in corresponding benefits, totaling approximately $1 million.  And if we recall the District’s policies and procedures correctly, once the District gets past a certain date (in early March?), its staffing for the next school year is basically locked in.  So if negotiations extend past that date, the District loses the leverage of potential layoffs when bargaining with the teachers union over salary and benefit increases.

All of that might explain the deafening silence on when those negotiations are going to commence.  It might also explain the rumor that District negotiators Heyde and private-sector union attorney/Board member Pat Fioretto don’t want any other Board members looking over their shoulders.

If you’re trying to hide in plain sight, you don’t want anybody looking too closely.

To read or post comments, click on title.

The New Year is a time of both goodbyes and hellos.  So without further ado, here are our thoughts on what things from 2011 we want to say goodbye to, and those things we hope to say hello to in 2012.

* Goodbye to Mayor Dave Schmidt’s vetoes of City Council actions that he viewed as fiscally irresponsible.  We applaud Schmidt for saying “no” even when he pretty much knew that the weak sisters on the City Council would over-ride his veto and say “yes, yes” to more irresponsible spending.

* Hello to more Schmidt vetoes in 2012 – if this Council continues to be as clueless as its predecessor and fails to realize that the U.S. Congress and the Illinois General Assembly aren’t models of fiscal responsibility.  The City already is increasing its share of the property tax at a rate that exceeds inflation, so it has to continue to work on figuring out how to wring more services out of what it’s taking in.

* Goodbye to giving Fire Chief Mike Zywanski authority to do anything more than manage Fire Dept. staff.  Because as a labor negotiator he was simply awful, starting with those ridiculous “Ground Rules” he proposed without even consulting the Mayor or the City Council, and which locked the City into a gag order preventing it from commenting on the firefighters union contract negotiations – and then didn’t even have the stones to admit to doing so when questioned by the Mayor. 

* Hello to what we hope will be a new era of openness in the labor negotiations for all branches of local government, starting with School District 64’s upcoming teachers union negotiations.  No negotiations should be commenced until the unit of local government decides, in meetings open to the public, how much it can afford to spend on those employees.  Whatever “negotiations” might still be needed after that exercise also should occur in meetings open to the public, so the taxpayers can see and hear for themselves whether their elected representatives or the employees – both unionized and non-unionized – are being unreasonable.

* Goodbye to closed session meetings generally?  We can only hope that the Ald. Dan Knight-led City Council’s recent rejection of a closed session discussion of City Mgr. Jim Hock’s goals and objectives helps all our other elected officials finally realize that there is nothing – NOTHING – that the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) requires be discussed in closed session, or anything discussed in closed session that IOMA requires be kept secret.  The question that should be asked and debated before any closed session is voted on is: “What harm to the taxpayers will occur if this matter is discussed in open session?”  And if the answer isn’t “a lot,” accompanied by a clear description of exactly what that harm consists of, the vote on closed session should be “no.” 

* Hello to the City starting to take some action to address the long-term power outages that seem to occur with virtually every storm that hits anywhere between the Wisconsin border and Kankakee.  Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim was designated as the City’s liaison with Com Ed to hold the utilities’ feet to the fire on its promises – until now, purely hollow ones – to upgrade the City’s power grid.  Good luck, Zinger!

* Goodbye to a Senior Center run by a small group of seniors, for a small group of seniors, subsidized by all the District’s taxpayers.  Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”), that private corporation accountable to nobody but its own operators, has built up a $240,000 treasury while feeding at the public trough.  After 30 years, it’s time to change that perverse paradigm.

* Hello to a Senior Center that either attracts a larger number of seniors and/or expands its role to serve other segments of the District’s population, while at the same time eliminating – or at least substantially reducing – those six-figure deficits the Senior Center has been posting for too many years.  And the District should look to do the same thing with all its other facilities and programs.

* Can we say “goodbye” to School District 207’s financial problems for the foreseeable future, compliments of the new Rivers Casino in Des Plaines?  As reported in the November 9, 2011, edition of the Park Ridge Journal (“Casino A $40M Value For Dist. 207”), the District’s assistant superintendant for business, Mary Kalou, is quoted as saying that the Crook County Assessor’s office “is estimating the casino’s 2011 valuation at about $12 million…[which] translates to $40 million additional assessed value for the district when the equalized multiplier is factored in.”

* Hello to a new and improved City Mgr. Jim Hock?  If he takes seriously the City Council’s direction to up his performance to a level that warrants his approx. $215,000 in annual compensation, Park Ridge will take another big step toward becoming one of the better-managed municipalities in the Chicagoland area, especially considering its lack of commercial property to bolster its tax base.  If not, then it should be “goodbye” to Mr. Hock.

* Goodbye to hundreds of thousands of dollars of uncollected City fines and fees, thanks to the diligent work of the City’s new finance director Allison Stutts, who was hired by the City in November 2010 and has been nothing short of outstanding in her short time on staff.  Not only did she blow the whistle on the uncollected funds, but she also is implementing a new budget process.  And her efforts, combined with Mayor Schmidt’s relentless pursuit of fiscal responsibility, helped the City post a $2 million surplus for FY 2010-11 – only the second surplus in more than a decade, and the first since former mayor Howard Frimark’s cut-the-council referendum chopped the Council from 14 to 7 aldermen.

* Hello to the likelihood that Park Ridge someday will have a showcase for its artistic tradition, thanks to the Kalo Foundation’s successful efforts to save the building at Elm and Northwest Highway that once housed the studio of artist Alfonso Iannelli.  The members of that organization deserve a big shout-out for their efforts, which raised the funds necessary to purchase that property from a broad range of residents…and from an anonymous donor who agreed to provide the matching fund which sealed the deal.    

* Goodbye to Oakton Pool, which had served this community well for 41 years but fell victim to cultural and economic changes that substantially reduced the demand for a traditional outdoor swimming pool in a climate that permits such swimming for only a few months a year.  We won’t miss the $80-100,000 annual deficit that Oakton had become accustomed to posting; and, hopefully, the Park District will find another, better use for that piece of Oakton Park the pool previously occupied.  

* Hello to a plan to begin remedying the chronic flooding that has plagued Park Ridge for decades but seems to have increased in recent years as more and more multi-family residential development took over from this community’s traditional base of single-family homes.  The City has approved a $150,000 contract for the design of several sewer improvement projects, the first phase of what is expected to a multi-project remediation program that is already being estimated as costing upwards of $25 million.

* Goodbye to the no-bid, no accountability monopoly enjoyed by private corporation Taste of Park Ridge NFP (“Taste Inc.”) over the City’s signature Taste of Park Ridge event (“TOPR”) after 7 years.  During that time Taste Inc. generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenues and undisclosed profits, four years of which occurred while Taste Inc. was lying to the public about being a not-for-profit enterprise.  And during all 7 years of its existence, Taste Inc. refused to reimburse the City for approximately $20,000+ a year in free City services. 

* Hello to the RFP (bidding) procedure that the new City Council, at Mayor Schmidt’s request, has implemented for the 2012 TOPR.  Three entities, including Taste Inc., have submitted proposals, all of which are supposed to include making the City whole for all of its direct and indirect TOPR costs.

* Goodbye to criminal complaints filed by one of Taste Inc.’s long-time head honchos, Albert Galus, against Mayor Dave Schmidt, Ald. Dan Knight (5th) and the editor of this blog, Robert Trizna.  Galus waited over 2 years to file a battery complaint against Mayor Dave Schmidt over an incident that Galus claims occurred at the Mary Seat of Wisdom polling place in April, 2009, although his “cyber-stalking” beefs against Knight and Trizna were of more recent vintage.  All of those bogus complaints were recognized as such by the State’s Attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute.

* Ironically, Galus closed out 2011 by saying “hello” to the FBI’s Child Exploitation Unit, which reportedly served a search warrant at his Park Ridge residence the week before Christmas and found a cache of guns which Galus had no valid FOID to possess.  According to Galus’ former employer at the Academic Tutoring Center, the search was initiated on suspicion of child pornography possession, although no such charges have been brought.

Although that’s not all of the hellos and good-byes of note, that’s more than enough to usher in 2012. 

Happy New Year…and here’s hoping the Mayan’s are wrong.

To read or post comments, click on title.

A letter to the editor in this week’s edition of the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate illustrates why local governments in Illinois tend to be little better than the insane clown posse that passes for state government down in Springfield.

That letter, by Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 superintendant “Philip Bender, Ph.D” (apparently he’s another one of those folks who wants to be called “doctor” even though he can’t legally prescribe drugs) announced how District 64 observed School Board Members Day this past November 15.

That’s right: School Board Members Day. 

As best as we can tell, this particular faux special day is the creation of something called the Illinois Association of School Boards (“IASB”) or its parent organization, the National Association of School Boards.  According to the IASB’s website, observance of School Board Members Day is intended “to build a stronger relationship between school board members and the community” – and if that communty can’t figure out the best way to celebrate it, IASB will furnish a “proclamation,” “sample marquees,” a “tip sheet of suggested activities,” and various other gewgaws to help.

Frankly, if we’re looking for a pre-fab special day to celebrate, we’ll take Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19).  At least the people responsible for that day, unlike their counterparts at the IASB, don’t appear to take themselves seriously.

The last time we checked, school board members were elected by the voters of their community.  That fact alone would seem to suggest that they already have a sufficiently strong “relationship” with that community – or at least strong enough that the community’s voters were willing, however wisely or foolishly, to entrust them with oversight of a public school system which consumes approximately one-third of our property tax dollars.  If not, shame on the voters.

A faux special day to recognize elected public officials, however, is exactly what we would expect from a superfluous organization like the IASB, a…wait for it…“private not-for-profit corporation” (i. e., having no shareholders and, therefore, no real financial accountability to anybody) whose “mission” purports to be “excellence in local school governance in support of quality public education.”  We’re surprised they could exercise enough self-restraint to stop before adding: “at any price.”

We haven’t read any shining reviews about the quality of Illinois public education lately, so we’re not sure exactly how successful IASB has been in achieving its “mission.”  But from a couple visits to its website, we suspect it considers itself quite successful, thank you. 

And while Supt. Bender writes about the D-64 Board members’ ”vision and leadership on student achievement, academic programs, funding, and school facilities,” we can’t put our finger on any particular demonstration of Board “vision” or “leadership” over the past 10-15 years, especially when it comes to ”student achievement” – at least not as measured by objective standards like ISAT scores. 

Which may explain why School Board Members Day sounds to us like just more of the same old faux self-esteem that’s been baked into our culture for the past 20-30 years, presumably so that everybody can feel like Garrison Keillor’s fictional children of Lake Woebegone: “above average.”

But what a fluff-and-stroke organization like IASB and a we’re-fine-just-ask-us cheerleader like Supt. Bender don’t seem to get (or don’t seem to want the “above average” citizen to get) is that a public office like school board member, alderman, or park board member, although often described in terms of representing a “civic duty,” actually is an honor and a privilege – so much so that the folks who have sought and been awarded those offices by the voters owe their constituents a debt of gratitude and recognition, not the other way around. 

The public trust inherent in those public offices is one of the few “sacred” things in our secular society.  Thomas Jefferson considered the public trust of such importance that he believed it transformed those who hold it: “When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself a public property.”

So if being accorded that honor and privilege isn’t “recognition” enough for the D-64 Board members (or aldermen or park board members), we doubt that any silly, superficial special day will fill the gap.

Except for silly, superficial people.  And silly, superficial not-for-profit organizations.

To read or post comments, click on title.

At its November 14 meeting, the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board proposed a 4.73% overall increase (4.99% increase on those “capped” funds) in next year’s property tax levy over this current year’s levy, pushing its property tax request up to $62,306,681.  That levy will be the subject of a public hearing at the meeting on December 12, and is expected to be approved by the Board at its December 19 meeting.

That’s the Christmas gift the Board will be giving itself at the expense of us taxpayers, presumably so that it can give a belated Christmas gift – a new contract – to the teachers union sometime next year.   

Want to know how Board president John Heyde rationalizes this increase?

“No one expects we’ll actually receive that.” 

Which may be true because, thanks to the tax caps, D-64 is likely to get no bigger an increase than the rate of inflation, plus whatever additional taxes can be assessed on whatever “new construction” has become taxable in 2011.  That’s got District Business Manager Rebecca Allard predicting an overall 1.5% increase, plus that new-construction differential.

In fairness to the folks running D-64, the property tax process in Crook County is arcane at best.   But that doesn’t excuse the kind of shameless spending that has characterized D-64 for more than a decade – ever since it decided in 1997 to demolish its newest school building to make way for a newer $20 million Emerson Middle School that has never produced $20 million of educational quality, at least as measured by the ISAT scores that are commonly used to compare interscholastic educational quality.   

As can be seen from the District 64 tax collection history for the period 2000 to the present, the 2007 tax increase referendum gave D-64 an $8 million tax bump for the 2006 tax year, and another $7 million bump for the 2007 tax year.  But that $15 million wasn’t just two years of extra cash infusions to fill a hole created over the 10 previous years, as the District officials (and their “Citizens for Strong Schools” propaganda arm) sold it to the voters. 

Instead, that $15 million bump created a new tax “floor” for the future tax increases that have followed since then, which have helped enable D-64 to crank its budget up to a projected $70 million for the upcoming fiscal year.  Which might also help explain the 4th highest paid administrators and the 25th highest paid teachers in the State of Illinois – according to an article printed by the Chicago Sun-Times back in May.

D-64 spends almost $20 million more each year to educate 4,300 children than the City of Park Ridge spends to run an entire community of 37,000+ people.   And the City, despite cutting the multi-million dollar deficits it had been posting in recent years, could definitely operate a whole lot more cost effectively.

So what does that say about D-64?

To read or post comments, click on title.

With none of our local governmental bodies scheduled to meet tonight and, therefore, not playing any tricks on the taxpayers, we’ve decided to offer a few tricks and treats of our own – although, as might be expected, there are more tricks than treats:

Trick:  Former mayor Howard Frimark got his name splashed all over our two local newspapers a few months back when he insisted the City fine the editor of this blog more than $500,000 for approximately 1,100 postings using the “PublicWatchdog “banner” that includes a stylized partial depiction of the City flag.  Frimark claimed it violated the City’s flag ordinance.  But at last week’s City Council meeting – with Frimark nowhere to be seen – the City attorney reported that the flag ordinance likely was unenforceable, especially when applied to political speech.  So it looks like this trick’s on Howie.

Treat:  The Park District is reporting that it actually made a profit on its outdoor pools this year – thanks to the fact that the perennial financial albatross known as Oakton Pool no longer hemorrhaged around $100,000 of red ink this summer.

Trick:  Proving no good deed goes unpunished, a group of residents want the darkened Oakton pool replaced with a second ice rink. Of course, the proponents are already waxing rhapsodic about the need for another ice surface and how much revenue it will generate.  We suspect they’re suffering from brain freezes, but let the Park District hang a credible price tag – including any bond interest – on the idea, put it to referendum on the March 2012 primary ballot and see what the voters think of it.

Treat:  Rumors emerging from City Hall indicate that, for the just-concluded 2010-11 fiscal year, the City posted a surplus in its General (Operating) Fund, and an overall surplus for all of its funds.  That follows three straight years of deficits totaling almost $6 million by our count. 

Trick:  The ISAT scores are out, and both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times are reporting that no D-64 school ranked among the “Top 50” elementary or middle schools – despite its 4th highest-paid administrators and its 25th highest-paid teachers.  We can’t wait to hear the way the District’s spin-doctor, Bernadette Tramm, plays this bit of info, especially with teacher contract negotiations imminent.

Treat:  As reported in this week’s Park Ridge Journal, local website design firm Americaneagle.com has offered to make up a $2,900 shortfall in the holiday lights program. 

Trick:  City Mgr. Jim Hock’s admission that the City has taken no action since 2008 to collect on hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking tickets and other fines, which failure was recently discovered by new City Finance Director Alison Stutts.  It will be interesting to see how this dereliction of duty is spun and who ends up “wearing the jacket” for it.

Scared yet?

To read or post comments, click on title.

If you don’t recognize the name Benadette Tramm, don’t feel bad.  The “Public Information Coordinator” of Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 probably likes it that way.

She’s the District 64 employee whose job it is to burnish the public image of District 64 – to ensure that good news about the District gets shouted from the rooftops while bad news gets buried.  Quickly.  No matter how little useful information might be flowing out of D-64’s headquarters, it’s Ms. Tramm’s job to convince the average citizen that the sunlight on D-64 is so bright it’s time to put on the Oakleys…and slather on a little SPF-30 for good measure.

When D-64 wins the virtually meaningless “Big Red Apple” award every year, it’s Tramm’s job to make sure every local news organization knows about it the moment it’s announced.  And when the Chicago Sun-Times reports (as it did in its May 31, 2011 edition) that D-64 has the 4th highest paid administrators and the 25th highest paid teachers, it’s also Tramm’s job to convince those same local news outlets not to sully their pages with such matters.

So Tramm must have been working overtime this past week to spin the Chicago Tribune’s “TribLocal” reporter, Jennifer Delgado, into writing not one but two stories that were printed in yesterday’s edition.

The first, “D64 looks at new ways to communicate with taxpayers,” is a puff-piece on D-64’s purported embrace of increased communication and transparency “with parents, community members and taxpayers” – including improvements to the District’s website, the use of social media, and online surveys.  Delgado writes approvingly of how, just this past August, “the district started taping board meetings in response to parents [sic] complaints” – without mentioning that the District’s taping commenced only after resident Marshall Warren showed up with his own video camera and recorded the August 8th meeting.

Delgado also fails to mention that, prior to Warren’s self-help cinematography, Supt. Philip Bender was resisting video-recording of meetings and calling for an opinion from the District’s legal counsel, while Board member Scott Zimmerman proclaimed the videotaping of meetings as being “against school board policy.”  Why the oversight by Delgado?  We’re guessing she didn’t dig outside the little area Tramm had plowed for her – which means that including such information, as President Bush ’41 used to say: “Wouldn’t be prudent.”

Prudence also may be why Tramm bemoaned the expense of the community-wide telephone survey suggested by Board member Anthony Borrelli, and why a proposed District “blog” will likely contain only “one or two paragraphs or photos of school happenings” and won’t “be geared for commentary.”  In other words, D-64 doesn’t want any comments it can’t sanitize and control.

And prudence may also be why we can’t seem to find anywhere on the D-64 website the exact amount of extra dollars – not just the 44 cents added to the levy in 2006 and 2007, or some unidentifiable percentage – that the referendum tax increase took out of the taxpayers’ pockets; or why nobody at D-64 seems to be able to satisfactorily explain why its schools don’t consistently score as well on the ISATs as many suburban districts whose administrators and teachers aren’t nearly as well paid.

That’s what passes for communication and transparency from D-64.

Delgado’s second article “D64 moves quickly to bring finance committee back,” reports on D-64’s intention to quickly reconvene its Community Finance Committee (“CFC”) and recruit new members “to study subjects like spend management, student fees and taxpayer education.” 

Anytime you hear the term “taxpayer education,” think “propaganda.”  And when it comes from D-64, that propaganda likely is coming from Tramm.

The CFC, you may recall, was created in 2004 in order to address the death-spiral the District’s finances were in the years following the 1997 “Yes/Yes” referendum to replace the District’s then-newest school building with the “new” Emerson Middle School.  The CFC’s innovative response to that problem was to: (a) recommend a “backdoor” non-voting referendum that authorized the issuance of $5 million of working-cash bonds to keep the Illinois State Board of Education from taking charge of the District’s finances; and then (b) recommend the 2007 tax increase referendum.

Can you say “tax, borrow and spend?”  Or “borrow, tax and spend?” Or how about “Spend, borrow and tax?”  Did you know that’s what passes for financial strategy at D-64?

Which is why Delgado’s reporting that a CFC “subgroup” had advised the D-64 administration and Board that “the district’s fund balance would reach an apex after the referendum but then would gradually decrease, meaning the district might have to seek another referendum” made us more than a little suspicious – if only because we can’t tell from Delgado’s article whether the subgroup’s advice to which she refers occurred back in 2007, or is of more recent vintage.

When the District pushed through the 2007 tax increase referendum, it did so with the promise that the revenues produced by the tax increase, combined with the District’s more frugal management, would put off any future tax increase referendum to 2017.  At this point in time, however, we are skeptical about that promise becoming reality because we see no hard evidence that D-64’s management has been frugal…even before Board members John Heyde and Pat Fioretto start negotiating the new teachers union contract. 

Which means that the CFC subgroup’s prediction may very well come true…and sooner than 2017.

And when that time comes, expect Ms. Tramm to do her best to spin that bit of dross into pure gold.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for the past several months knows that we have been critical of across-the-board salary increases recently given out by the Park Ridge City Council (to both union and non-union employees) and by Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 (to non-union administrators).   Such increases, lacking any basis in merit or productivity, are bad public policy on several levels; and bad management of limited resources. 

We were highly critical of City Manager Jim Hock’s apparent abdication of responsibility for the firefighters contract negotiations to senior Fire Dept. staff (the “Fire Guys”).  As part of the firefighter “fraternity,” they couldn’t be expected to negotiate aggressively with their “frat brothers”; and they never should have been put in such positions of likely failure.  That bit of bad management is on Hock.

Nevertheless, Fire Chief Mike Zywanski made a bad situation much worse by agreeing (beyond his authority, and without even discussing it with the mayor or City Council) to a set of negotiating “Ground Rules” that gagged our elected officials and kept the public in the dark about the terms being negotiated.  He then compounded that gaffe by sitting silently at the May 2, 2011 Council Meeting and refusing to answer Mayor Dave Schmidt’s questions about who committed the City to those “Ground Rules.”  That’s entirely on Chief Z…and on the City Council that approved the resulting ill-advised contract.

But now the taxpayers are facing yet another opportunity to be fleeced by their public employees, this time courtesy of the negotiations between District 64 and the Park Ridge Education Association, a/k/a, the teachers union – the folks who never miss an opportunity to portray themselves as selfless “professionals” who use the slogan “it’s for the kids” as a talisman to ward off accountability and any form of criticism. 

Unlike some residents who get upset when public employees ask for more money, however, we see nothing wrong with public employees asking for higher wages and better benefits.  That’s the “labor” side of the capitalism equation.

Where the problem arises is when feckless elected and appointed officials can’t or won’t say “no” to those requests.  And, as we recently saw when the D-64 Board rubber-stamped 3% across-the-board raises for administrators hashed out in closed session on June 27, 2011, only Board member Anthony Borrelli was willing to say “no.”  That bodes ill for Park Ridge taxpayers who already pay approximately 1/3 of their ever-increasing property tax bills to D-64.

Which is why we are concerned that the District’s teachers contract “negotiating team” reportedly is being led by Board President John Heyde and Board member Pat Fioretto, neither of whom will ever be accused of being fiscal conservatives, even as that term has become increasingly diluted by those who loudly proclaim themselves as such but then quietly ignore all that being it entails. 

Heyde’s imprint on the D-64 Board has been one of secrecy – or the “lack of transparency,” if you prefer – about D-64’s operations, as we’ve previously written in posts such as: “Some ‘Over-The-Transom’ Info About District 64’s Under-The-Radar Activities” (07.06.11); “Secret Pay Raises At School District 64?” (06.30.11); “D-64 Board Stealthily Picks Architect of Record” (05.13.11); “More Of The ‘Culture of Secrecy” At District 64” (09.16.10); “Arrogant And Disrespectful, Or Simply Petty And Juvenile?” (04.07.10); and “Concealing The Details Of A ‘Fair’ Contract Raises Questions” (09.14.09).

Any wonder that the teachers union contract signed by Heyde and Eric Uhlig back in 2009 includes a provision that keeps those negotiations…wait for it…secret from the public, unless both sides agree otherwise?

But Fioretto’s role in the union negotiations might be even more problematic than Heyde’s, primarily because Fioretto makes his living as a labor and employment attorney representing unions, albeit private sector unions.  As his law firm’s website advertises:

Baum Sigman Auerbach & Neuman, Ltd. was founded in 1963, making it one of the oldest law firms in Chicago specializing in the representation of Unions and Taft-Hartley employee benefit funds. For over forty years, we have maintained our commitment to working men and women who comprise organized labor and their employers. We strive to protect the benefits earned by the labor movement as they relate to unions, Taft-Hartley employee benefit funds, and the individual worker.

While we take no exception to Fioretto’s (or his firm’s) avocation or its inherent duties, they generally tend to require the kind of pro-union “fraternal” mind-set that does not readily lend itself to aggressively arguing the “management” position during contract negotiations with other unions, as the Fire Guys recently demonstrated in the botched City firefighters contract negotiations.

While Fioretto’s position on D-64’s negotiating team might not be a classic conflict of interest, it carries the aroma, if not the actual appearance, of impropriety.  Does anybody outside of the D-64 administration and Board – and, of course, those PREA negotiators trying to stifle their grins – reasonably believe that Fioretto should be leading D-64’s negotiating team any more than the Fire Guys should have been leading the City’s firefighters contract negotiating team?

Whether this is simply a big mistake or whether it’s an inherently bad idea is irrelevant.  What is relevant, however, is that this appears to be another case of the wrong men for an important job.

And that’s why, once again, we’ll all end up paying the ever-rising costs of Heyde’s and Fioretto’s unpaid “volunteer” service.

To read or post comments, click on title.

Because there are some “hot” items on the agenda’s of both the Park Ridge City Council and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board who are meeting TONIGHT, we’ve got our quick takes on a few of them for your consideration:

City Firefighters’ Contract: On tonight’s City Council agenda is approval of a new 3-year firefighters’ union contract.  As we’ve said before, we believe multi-year contracts that effectively try to predict future local and national economic conditions by locking-in increases in compensation and/or benefits are foolish; and across-the-board compensation increases not based on greater productivity or other merit are idiotic.   Worse yet, in a separate memorandum (“Appendix E”) attached to the proposed agreement, the City is being asked to give up its right to lay off any current firefighters for the three years the contract is in effect, until April 30, 2014.  That means that, should the economy take a turn for the worse during the next three years, the City will be contractually forbidden from laying off firefighters irrespective of its financial circumstances!

This is bad economics and bad government, but what can you expect from a contract that was negotiated in secret because the union requested secrecy, and City Mgr. Jim Hock and Fire Chief Mike Zywanski agreed to that secrecy without even consulting the mayor or the Council?  That secrecy in the negotiating process becomes even more troubling when you look at the red-lined version of the proposed contract on the City’s website and see a number of changes from the previous agreement, the reasons for most of which are not apparent on their face and are not explained anywhere in that document or otherwise.  That’s just more bad government by the bureaucrats (Hock, Zywanski, et al.) for a special interest (the firefighters’ union). 

Under these circumstances, any alderman who votes to approve such an irresponsible and anti-taxpayer agreement should have the decency to accompany his vote with either a public admission that he is not being fiscally responsible, and/or a public confession that he doesn’t even understand what being “fiscally responsible” means.

Washington Ave. Assisted-Living:  Also on the City Council’s agenda is another episode of “How the Group Homes Turns,” the continuing saga of developer Mark Elliott’s attempt to turn his bad investment in 3 single-home lots into three group homes, purportedly for “frail elderly…who can no longer live on their own without assistance from a care giver” according to Elliott’s most recent “Updated Application Statement” – even though Elliott insists that these homes are not “assisted living” facilities for purposes of City licensing and zoning.

It is becoming clearer as this saga continues that our Zoning Code, despite an extensive (and not inexpensive) re-write several years ago, is ill-equipped to deal directly and efficiently with issues such as are presented by this type of group home concept.  Which is why, if Elliott’s Updated Application Statement is factually accurate and truthful, it would appear that what he is trying to do with his property is lawful, albeit undesirable to many residents in that neighborhood who long have suffered from the anti-social behavior from residents of the adjacent Park Ridge Youth Campus.

What we need, at least for dealing with this current mess, is a formal and unequivocal legal opinion from the City Attorney stating whether the facts and the law support Elliott’s proposed use of his property or not.  If they do, then – like it or not – he has the right to do what he is trying to do with his own property; and he should be allowed to do so.  And then the City should get busy revising its Zoning Ordinance to correct what is looking more and more like the shoddy work product of our highly-paid zoning consultants (Camiros Ltd.) and the citizens who comprised our Zoning Re-Write Task Force.  

D-64 Budget Q & A: Over at Franklin School tonight, the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board will hold its 2011-12 budget “Q & A” session, a week in advance of the planned approval of that budget next Monday night (Sept. 26).  Whether this Q & A session is legitimate or just a perfunctory attempt to create the illusion of transparency and accountability in the budget process remains to be seen.  But, given its 6:00 p.m. start time before many residents are even home from work, much less able to grab a quick bite to eat and head back out the door, we have our doubts.

Of course, the 93-page draft budget is a pretty impenetrable document, even to accountants and attorneys trained and accustomed to dealing with such financial matters; and it lacks detailed explanations of all of the differences between the 2010-11 revenues and expenses versus those in the 2011-12 proposed budget .  So exactly what kind of Qs might be asked from whoever shows up remains to be seen.  But one question that comes to mind is: What specific expenses have gone up over last year (and by how much) so that an almost  $6 million decrease in proposed “Capital Outlay” still leaves only a $2 million reduction in overall budgeted expenses? 

But if you have any questions about the proposed budget, you had better get there on time.  Because once the Board and Administration are done with any pesky questions from the taxpayers, they will be running into closed session to plan how they’re going to give away more of our money when they “negotiate” the District’s upcoming collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union – despite the appearance that the proposed budget already will be giving those teachers more than $3.2 million in salary and benefit increases during the coming budget year.  And, must we remind you, that’s for only 8-9 months of actual work?

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Perhaps one of these days the City and D-64 will put on their inter-governmental cooperation hats and agree to schedule their meetings so that they both don’t hold them on Mondays, thereby forcing interested taxpayers to have to choose which one to attend.  But we’re not going to hold our collective breath waiting for the D-64 Board to voluntarily do anything that might add to its transparency and accountability.

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If you are a responsible homeowner, chances are you have a reasonably good idea of the condition of your house, especially if you have lived in it for awhile.

You know, for example, approximately how old your roof is and whether it’s leaking or not.  You pretty much know whether your furnace is on its last legs, and whether your air conditioner should make it through another summer.  And if your windows need replacement because they’re still single-pane and the wind blowing through the sash tickles the curtains. 

Given the knowledge the ordinary homeowner has about the house he/she owns, the comment Park Ridge-Niles School Dist.64 president John Heyde made at this past Monday night ‘s (Sept. 12) meeting about the condition of the District’s buildings was, in a word, stunning.

As reported in a Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story by Tracy Gruen (“District 64 consultant to finish building needs study half-year early,” Sept. 13), during a “Roles, Goals and Controls” workshop run by representatives of D-64’s new architect-of-record, Fanning Howey Associates (“FHA”), Mr. Heyde – in response to ongoing demands by Carpenter and Field school parents for air conditioning at those schools – explained his board’s refusal to put A/C at the top of the project priority list:

“I don’t want to advance those projects to the front of the line only to find out there’s a roof that’s going to collapse somewhere.”

We’re going to give Mr. Heyde a couple of hyperbole points, if only because even we can’t quite force ourselves to believe such a Chicken Little comment was entirely serious.  

But unless it was utter nonsense, the thought that all those well-paid administrators and the seven people whom we’ve elected to be stewards of this community’s elementary education – which includes the condition of all the District’s school buildings – might not know with reasonable certainty the condition of those structures is troubling.  And even the merest suspicion that a dangerous condition might exist is just plain irresponsible.

We’ve been critical of D-64’s board and administration for figuratively fiddling while the District’s standardized test scores and other objective measures of achievement burn.  And we’ve been critical of the overcompensation of the District’s teachers and administrators, given the money the District spends on what appears by objective measures to be mediocre student achievement, despite all the subjective accolades and back-patting in which the District specializes. 

The science and art of educating children, however, is a far more complex endeavor than simply keeping tabs on the condition of buildings.  So we have to wonder just how clueless or outright negligent those administrators and school board members have been about repair and maintenance of those buildings over the past 5-10 years that Mr. Heyde might even think about something like a roof collapse? 

During that entire time period the District’s architect-of-record was the supposedly well-regarded Green Associates, which was brought in back in 1996 to help then-Supt. Fred Schroeder stampede gullible voters into replacing what was then the District’s newest school building, the “old” Emerson Junior High, with the “new” Emerson Middle Schoo; and to adopt the then-newly fashionable middle-school model of elementary education.  Almost 15 years later, neither that building nor that model appears to have measurably improved the quality of education, despite the $20 million-plus it cost the taxpayers.  

So why wasn’t the District using Green Associates’ services to keep abreast of the condition of all its facilities during that time?  Could it be that the board and the administration didn’t want to know about any facilities issues that might demand the expenditure of funds those school officials preferred spending on other things?

As we wrote in our post “D-64 Board Stealthily Picks Architect Of Record” (05.13.11), FHA seems to have been brought in as much for its referendum-facilitating expertise as for its architecture and engineering ability – not unlike Green Associates 15 years ago.  And from the looks and sounds of things so far, that’s exactly the direction in which this particular train is heading, with Heyde talking about roof collapses; his right-hand man, board vice-president Scott Zimmerman, claiming he wants to “understand the use of real estate across the district”; and FHA promoting the need to create “21^st century spaces” for students. 

As the notorious Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell used to say, gleefully: “I can smell the meat a-cookin’.”

So can we, and it smells like a major (and expensive) facility repair, maintenance and renovation “master plan” that will be pushed with a crisis-like sense of urgency – but not until that “master plan” is presented in June 2013.  And those of you who have been paying attention might notice that June 2013 just happens to be about a year after the taxpayers’ representatives (chortle, chortle) on the school board will have conspired with the former teachers union members/now administrators to give the teachers another expectedly-sweet new multi-year contract.

Isn’t that an interesting coincidence?

Tonight begins Park Ridge-Niles School District 64’s two-week sprint towards adoption of a new budget.  And, in typical District 64 fashion, the average taxpayer/voter is once again being treated like a mushroom: kept in the dark and covered with manure.

The most notable example is that, as of 7:00 a.m. this morning, D-64 still had not posted on its website any “reports” for tonight’s planned 3 hour-plus meeting to be held in the Emerson Middle School multi-purpose room.   By keeping the meeting materials un-posted until the day of the meeting, the Board and administration ensures that most residents won’t have any meaningful time to review whatever materials the District may end up posting later today.   Which is exactly the way this Board – and its predecessor boards, for that matter – seems to like it.

(Contrast that with the City of Park Ridge, whose materials for tonight’s meeting were posted last Friday.)

We say “3 hour-plus meeting” because the first 3 hours of the evening (from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.) will be dedicated to a catchy-sounding “Roles, Goals and Controls” workshop, followed by a “Final Budget Presentation” starting at 9:00 p.m.  For those who don’t yet understand D-64’s management tricks, these kinds of “workshops” are usually propaganda sessions – which would explain why the Board has scheduled this one for when any attendees are still wide awake, and puts off the real meat-and-potatoes part of the evening to when attendees either are heading for the exits or fatigued and half-asleep.  

We can’t even begin to imagine what kind of heifer-dust will be spread over the audience by the District’s new architect-of-record, who it appears will be in charge of the session designed to: (a) “expand community understanding of the [the District’s]master plan process” for maintaining, improving and/or increasing the District’s buildings and facilities (“D64 Plans Several Budget Meetings Next Month,” Journal, 8/31/11); and (b) explain “how plans for the future needs of our school buildings will be developed” (“District 64 board to talk finances, facilities at trio of meetings,” H-A, 9/8/11). 

But those hardy folks who can shovel their way through the opening 3 hours of shinola, or who choose to forego the propaganda and arrive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the 9:00 p.m. session, may likely find themselves watching the Board tap-dance around some less-than-wonderful information in the proposed 2011-12 budget.

According to the proposed budget’s “Comparison of Expenditures by Objects,” salaries, which represent 74.8% of the Education Fund balance, are expected to increase by 5.5%, or over $2.1 million – which appears to be the product of a 2.5% overall increase (per the terms of the teachers’ 3-year contract) plus additional teachers’ “step” (and “lane”?) increases.   Meanwhile, the benefits component of that same Education Fund’s expenditures is expected to increase 24.2%, or $1,153,668. 

If those one-year numbers aren’t sweet enough, those increases beginning with the 2008-09 budget year are $7,010,364 in salaries (a whopping 20.43% over 2008-09) and $1,392,672 in benefits (an even more whopping 30.74%). 

And that’s during the worst economic period since The Great Depression!

To help pay for these increases, the “Comparison of Revenues by Objects” projects property taxes rising by 4.4%, or $2,490,56, although total revenues for the new budget year are projected as decreasing $5,521,328 to reflect an even larger decrease in federal aid. 

Interestingly, the District’s projected total expenditures are down by $2,148,333 from 2010-11: from $72,663,447 to $70,485,114. 

Normally, we would applaud such a cut.  This one, however, appears to an illusion because it looks to be the result of an almost $6 million decrease in “Capital Outlay” – from the almost $9 million of “actual” capital expenditures that occurred in 2010-11 to to a shade under $3 million – even as the District is again refusing to budget for the heating and cooling needs of Carpenter and Field schools.

Can you say “Fun with numbers”? 

Given what we already have heard about the suspect condition of at least some of the District’s buildings and facilities, this looks and sounds almost like conscious neglect – which is one tactic for creating the kinds of crises conditions that are optimal for stampeding voters into more tax increases and/or bond issues.  And more revenue for the new architect of record, of course.

The 93-page proposed budget (updated as of 9/12/11), with all its schedules and numbers, sure is a lot for the taxpayers to comprehend (or even meaningfully inquire about) over the next 7 days until the District’s “final” budget Q-and-A on September 19; and over the next 14 days until the official “public hearing” on the budget and planned Board vote to adopt it on September 26.

One of the legendary labors of the mythical Hercules was his shoveling out the Augean Stables.  With no Hercules to clean up the mess that is D-64′s budget, however, that task is left to the mere mortals who pay one-third of their property taxes to the District.  And, historically, they have not been up to the task – which is why the cost of D-64′s schools keeps going up while its measurable academic achievements don’t. 

That means more shovelers are needed.  With bigger shovels.

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