Time for the ‘Dog to offer a few shout-outs to the “locals” who deserve them:

To John Heyde and the District 64 School Board…for hiding in closed session while they interviewed candidates to replace departing board member Russ Gentile.  What’s so secret about those interviews that you folks have to go Star Chamber on us? 

To Don Bach…for his out-of-the-blue announcement at Monday night’s City Council meeting that he won’t run for re-election as 3rd Ward aldermen because of the success of his business.  Sounds like a win/win to us.  

To Five Guys and Romano’s…for opening their doors in spaces that have not had the best rate of success.  We sure hope they succeed, because Park Ridge needs both their tax revenue and their contributions to achieving the kind of economic “critical mass” for Uptown that Edison Park enjoys - assuming that’s the kind of “vibrant” Uptown a majority of Park Ridge residents want.

To the Private Community Groups…most of whom appear to have received more in “donations” of taxpayer funds from 4 (or 5) aldermen Monday night then they get from the 37,000 taxpayers themselves during the rest of the year.  Hey, folks…have you stopped to think why that might be?

To the Seniors from the Senior Center…who got a $32,500 handout (the second biggest amount) from the Council even though their “club” (Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc.) had $114,000 on hand as of year-end 2008 (per their latest GuideStar Form 990-EZ) and they only pay $35 a year in dues for the use of that nifty clubhouse that cost the taxpayers $190,000+ last year alone.  Great job feeding at the public trough, seniors! 

To City Manager Jim Hock…for getting away with a 1st quarter financial report that provides a bunch of numbers without actually answering the questions: “Do we currently have an operating surplus or a deficit; and how much?” and “Do we currently have a surplus or a deficit measured against the budget; and how much?”  Or did we just miss it?

To Acting City Finance Director Linda Lazzara…for warning of another possible year-end deficit if the current trend continues.  That probably didn’t add to her boss’ comfort level but, assuming it’s an accurate analysis, it’s a refreshing bit of candor from City Hall.

To Ald. Jim Allegretti…for proving that the Council can make fiscally irresponsible decisions without him.

To Ald. Rich DiPietro…for proving that politics means more to him than principle, by voting for something (certain of the community group handouts) he says he’s against just to pass it so the mayor can veto it.   

And, last but not least, to Taste Inc.’s Albert Galus…for not producing the “final number” (whatever that means) for this year’s Taste of Park Ridge that he told the Park Ridge Journal he would have six weeks ago.  Hey, Albert…did you guys net another $65K from this year’s event?  And what are you planning to do with all that cash now that you changed your status so you can use it for lobbying and running political campaigns?      

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.

About 40 fans of Oakton Pool won a stay of execution for that facility last evening: they persuaded Park Commissioners Richard Brandt, David Herman, Stephen Vile and Mary Wynn Ryan to reject Director Ray Ochromowicz’s recommendation to close Oakton after the current season. 

Their winning argument was an interesting amalgam of emotion, nostalgia  and self-interest, with a marked aversion (if not outright hostility) to facts, figures and dollars.  But pleading the case for a decrepit and overlooked facility that has lost an average of $85,000 in each of the past three pool seasons – more than the other three outdoor pools combined – leaves few other options. 

Two positive things may have come out of that meeting, however, assuming those Oakton Pool Fans (“OPF”s) and the Park Board take full advantage of the opportunity presented. 

First and foremost, the OPFs need to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  They need to come up with realistic ideas either for making Oakton Pool financially solvent “as is,” or for selling the District’s voters on a replacement facility.  And they should do it NOW…in time to turn those ideas into one or more referendum questions that can be put on the November ballot, thereby giving the Park Board some community-wide input in time to make an informed decision on whether to re-open Oakton for the 2011 season. 

In that same vein, if the Park Board is going to keep Oakton open, it should create a commission comprised of OPFs and entrust it with the management of Oakton Pool for next season.  Give it authority (albeit with Staff and Board oversight) for the planning, programming and executive-level management so that it can implement all those magic-bullet ideas that were flowing last night for getting more people to Oakton, such as more/better advertising, better programming, better maintenance, better swimming instruction, strategic partnerships with other swim clubs, corporate sponsorships, etc. 

Why?  Because the Park District has shown itself to be incapable of managing Oakton any better than what we’ve seen over the past three years.  If the OPFs can’t do a better job, the conclusion would become virtually inescapable that Ochromowicz, Board President Jim O’Brien, and Commissioners Rick Biagi and Marty Maloney are right: Oakton’s day in the sun has come and gone. 

To their credit, Biagi, Maloney and O’Brien tempered their votes for closing Oakton with support for putting one or more Oakton referendum questions on the November ballot by Board action rather than requiring citizens to run a petition drive…so long as the OPFs can come up with meaningful ones.  Hopefully, at least one more commissioner will sign onto that idea and make it a reality. 

Several commissioners noted that last night’s turnout was the biggest in the history of the Oakton Pool drama that has been ongoing since the diving well imploded back in 2005.  But one night does not a plan, a program, or a strategy make.  

Are the OPFs up to the challenge, or are they simply buying time with the taxpayers’ money?

For quite awhile the Park Ridge Park District’s “management” of Oakton Pool has reminded us of Yogi Berra’s comment about his team’s performance: “We made too many wrong mistakes.” 

That’s why we were gratified to read the front page story in today’s Park Ridge Journal, which reports the likelihood of the Park District making a decision on whether to close Oakton Pool at the Park Board’s June 17, 2010, meeting (“Closing Pool ‘Right Thing To Do’” June 9).

The story’s headline comes from a statement by Park District Executive Director Ray Ochromowicz, who correctly has identified Oakton Pool as a financial albatross around the District’s neck, flushing tens of thousands of scarce and precious tax dollars down its drains every summer.  And Ochromowicz has provided data that makes yet another compelling case for Oakton’s closure, including that in 2009 alone Oakton Pool:

*  accounted for 12.4% of the District’s revenue aquatic attendance but consumed 30% of the District’s aquatic expenses;

*  cost $10.93 per patron, versus $5.60 for Centennial and $5.28 for Hinkley; and

*  has lost more money than the other three outdoor pools combined over the last 3 years.

Ochromowicz also understands that Park Ridge has too much outdoor water for a community its size, especially when so little of it is of the water-park “entertainment” variety that caters to the current demand for aquatic “fun” at the expense of swimming for exercise or competitively. 

Sure, Oakton is our only pool designed for “competitive” swimming.  But it’s time to face the fact that neither Oakton nor any other outdoor pool in a climate like Chicago’s is going to become a breeding ground for competitive swimmers to rival places like Mission Viejo, CA or Coral Springs, FL.  Like it or not, the era of outdoor swimming facilities like Oakton has come and gone; and it’s not likely to return anytime soon, especially in places where outdoor swimming is confined to three months a year.

Oakton Pool has been a white elephant for at least the past five years, and probably longer.  That’s why we’ve been criticizing the Park District Board and Staff for letting Oakton manage the District rather than vice versa – letting it limp along under a “do not resuscitate” order because they didn’t have the guts to stop the bleeding and close a facility that was taking money away from other facilities.  It’s nice to hear Director Ochromowicz voice some of those same concerns in pushing for a proactive decision.

But as Yogi once said: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”  And as Ochromowicz also realizes, “[t]he closing of this pool will be unpopular to some” - which means that June 17 may be an interesting evening over at the Maine Leisure Center. 

That “some” to which Ochromowicz refers includes folks who tend to talk about how “important” Oakton Pool is, or how it provides a unique swimming opportunity, or how it hosted the Olympic trials decades ago, or how it is the “neighborhood” pool for that part of town.  We suspect a number of them haven’t even so much as dipped a toe into Oakton Pool in years but are happy to indulge their whims and nostalgia so long as somebody else pays most of the freight.

And then there are those relatively few Oakton swimming die-hards for whom the declining attendance figures provide the benefit of turning that facility into somewhat of a private club – but at no extra charge to them.  Many of them lament that the other pools are “too crowded” – but without the “Nobody goes there anymore” prelude that created another of the more famous Yogi-isms.

What we don’t hear from any of them, however, is their willingness to sign on to pay a premium fee per Oakton visit and to guaranty enough visits to bridge the $5+ per visit expense “gap” between Oakton and the other pools.  That’s because ”money talks and b.s. walks,” a non-Yogi saying that seems especially true for the active users of taxpayer-subsidized government services and facilities who seem to pride themselves on getting more out of the government than they pay in.
 
So when Ochromowicz says that Oakton Pool “is draining tax dollars that could be put to better use,” he is speaking words that we wish his counterparts heading the other local governmental bodies would learn to pronounce.  

But first he has to teach them to his own Park Board.

Way back in October 2007 we wrote our first post – “The Old Oakton Bucket (10/16/07) – criticizing the waste of hundreds of thousands of tax dollars by the Park Ridge Recreation & Park District in keeping the grossly under-used and over-expensive Oakton Pool operating.

As we wrote back then, the Park District has “failed to display the brains necessary to come up with any ideas for increasing attendance and operating that pool more profitably…or the guts needed to make the sound business decision to close the pool and find another use for that site.”  That missing combination generally is deadly in private business, but it seems to be standard operating procedure with local government.

Unfortunately for the taxpayers who have been watching the District pour their hard-earned money down that same hole in the ground for years, nothing seems to have changed since we wrote that post: As the Herald-Advocate reports: “Oakton Pool will live on for another summer” (“Oakton Pool gets one-year reprieve,” May 4).

After sounding like he was going to take the bull by the horns and deal with a facility that annually hemorrhages red ink, new Park District Director Ray Ochromowicz seems to have fallen under the spell that mesmerizes Park Board members and staff alike into letting Oakton manage the District instead of vice-versa. 

Back in March and April, Ochromowicz was talking positively about how “[t]here is enough water in Park Ridge to make up for the loss [of Oakton Pool].  But as the H-A reports, Ochromowicz’s initial “bang” has turned into a whimper.

“There has not been any discussion about altering that course of action for 2010,” he is quoted as saying – “that course of action” being keeping Oakton alive and losing approx. $100,000 a year.  Why not, Ray?  Isn’t promoting these kinds of discussions and making these kinds of decisions what your job is all about, especially in tough economic times?  Or are you so captivated by the enrollments in the District’s tax-subsidized summer baby-sitting service (a/k/a, its “summer camps”) that the $100,000 loss is acceptable collateral damage?

Ochromowicz also offered lukewarm pablum about wanting the Park Board to make a firm decision this Fall about whether Oakton should operate in 2011.  That sounds suspiciously like the “firm decision” the Park Board made in December 2006 before rescinding it when overcome by the warm-and-fuzzies of an approaching new swimming season, as the H-A article points out.

Oakton Pool has been an under-performing and expensive asset for far too long.  And it clearly does not have anything close to the customer base necessary to justify its continued operation: last Summer its attendance was only 17% higher than the South Park ”baby” pool’s, despite Oakton’s capacity being almost 700% larger.  

And if a lack of customers isn’t bad enough for the “as is” Oakton, the voters said “no” to a new $13 million Oakton aquatic center by a 70%-30% margin in an April 2005 referendum, and they said “no” to a new $9.98 million aquatic center by a 57%-43% margin in a November 2006 referendum.  We doubt even a less-expensive plan for replacing Oakton pool would do that “well” today.  So why not stop the bleeding sooner rather than later - keeping Oakton open already has cost the taxpayers net losses of almost $500,000 since 2005.  Is it remotely close to fiscally-responsible to eat another $100,000 loss this year, too?

But what the heck…it’s only the taxpayers’ money.  If every other governmental body in this state can waste it, apparently so can the Park District.

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. 

A page one story in this week’s Park Ridge Journal asks: “Will This Be Last Year For Oakton Pool?”

More than two years ago, in our post titled “The Old Oakton Bucket” (10/16/07), we called for that year to be the “last year” for Oakton.  We criticized the Park Board and Staff for not having the gumption to close it down, or the ability to come up with any ideas for operating that pool in a way that eliminated, or at least reduced, the $75,000 operating loss it was booking back then.

The Journal story reports that last year the District’s five pools (including the indoor “lap” pool at the Community Center which was built both too short and too narrow to even host a swim meet) lost more than $135,000, with Oakton alone accounting for $95,000 of that unhappy total. 

Oakton’s 2009 attendance [pdf] was only about 17% higher than South Park’s wading/”baby” pool – despite being the District’s only Olympic-sized lap pool, with a capacity more than 6 times that of South Park’s.

Fortunately, new Park District director Ray Ochromowicz appears to understand that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to swallow $95K of red ink annually just to cater to the nostalgia of a relative handful of Oakton/swimming fanatics.  He noted that “[t]here is enough water in Park Ridge to make up for the loss [of Oakton]” – and we don’t think he was referring to our flooding problems.

Better yet, the Journal article reports that “most…[Park District commissioners] said they were ready to make a final decision on the pool’s future soon.”  Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like they will have the guts to turn “soon” into 2010, so District taxpayers can expect to see another $95K disappear down the drain.

But old attitudes and inertia die hard, which is why the sound of push-back was heard from Commissioners Mary Wynn Ryan and David [identified as “Steve” in the Journal story] Herman, in the guise of concern about where the District’s summer campers will swim if Oakton doesn’t open this year.

Deep-six the hand-wringing, Commissioners.  If you won’t close Oakton because of the campers, the simple solution is to roll all the costs of keeping Oakton open another summer into the cost of the camps.  After all, the District brags about the “fantastic price” of those camps, which range “from $4.28 per hour to $6.08 per hour.” 

So tacking enough extra onto those hourly rates to cover the entire cost of giving all those campers one more chance at the Oakton experience might be the revenue-generating idea that the District just couldn’t quite come up with on its own. 

That way, at least the taxpayers wouldn’t get stuck subsidizing another summer of other people’s child care.

Every so often one of our public officials or a resident comes up with a really ridiculous proposal for one or another of our local governmental bodies.  Which is why today’s post is about the letter to the editor [pdf] in this week’s Park Ridge Journal from Park Ridge resident Ken Balaskovits (“Time To Adopt Village Form Of Government,” March 17) in opposition to a possible citizens’ referendum to restore the Park Ridge City Council to 14 members. 

Balaskovits not only opposes going back to 14 alderman from the 7 the City Council was reduced to in 2006, but he advocates changing Park Ridge from a city into a village, “with six to nine trustees, elected at large.” 

That may be the most cockamamie idea about City government we’ve ever heard – even worse than former mayor Howard Frimark’s successful plan to cut the City Council in half, which we recall Balaskovits supporting.  Nevertheless, Balaskovits is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own set of “facts.”  And, frankly, his whole letter appears to be based on nothing but fiction.

Let’s start with his reference to the “study” he describes as having been done by “[t]wo aldermen” that he claims found only one other suburb (Elmhurst) with two aldermen per ward.  Try as we might, we could not find any mention of such a “study” anywhere.  We did, however, find a “study” by one former alderman – Jeannie Markech (2nd Ward) – in the 11/2/06 edition of something called the “Markech S’up Date,” which we understand she occasionally sent out during her brief term (2005-07) in office. 

The relevant “S’Up Date” pages [pdf] tell quite a different story from Balaskovits’ tale, as Markech identifies 11 suburbs that elect two aldermen per ward. 

Whether you choose to believe Balaskovits or Markech on this point is up to you, although we note that Markech’s “S’up Date” provides chapter and verse while Balaskovits’ letter is basically generalities and bare conclusions.  But even if we judge Balaskovits’ arguments for turning Park Ridge from a city into a village just on their own merits, those arguments appear to be based on more false information and just flat-out wrong.

For example, he contends that an “at-large” election of City officials would be better than the current ward-by-ward elections because “[w]e just do not have a sufficient number of candidates who are able and willing to serve as aldermen” in each of the 7 wards.  Once again, Balaskovits provides no data to support that contention, perhaps because the available data actually disproves that contention.

According to the Cook County Clerk’s election website, for election years 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, a total of 45 candidates ran for 25 City vacancies, with 39 of those candidates running for 21 aldermanic seats.  Contrast that with the “at large” elections held for the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Board and the District 64 School Board, where during that same period the Park District produced just 13 candidates for 11 vacancies while the School Board produced a mere 17 candidates for 15 vacancies.

That causes us to wonder whether Mr. Balaskovits is merely an incompetent researcher or someone who will outright lie to make his point?

As for his claim that “[t]he issues in Park Ridge are not all that different from ward to ward,” we suggest he try telling that to the flood-prone folks in those six designated areas of Park Ridge that the City’s flood consultant has deemed most in need of flood relief.  Or to the people beefing about the airplane noise under the approach to new runway 9L27R.  Or to the folks in the 1st and 2nd wards whose airplane noise has lessened since the new runway was opened.  Or to the anti-billboard group in the Second Ward near the Tri-State.

Balaskovits fares no better when he delves into “policy” with his argument that “[t]he purpose of an election is to provide the citizen with choice so that we have a representative government.”  No, Mr. B, the purpose of an election is to give the voters a means for conferring their governing authority on their chosen representative, thereby binding the social contract which John Locke described as “government with the consent of the governed” that the Founding Fathers adopted in our Constitution.

While contested elections give the voters the benefit of choice, an official elected in a contested race has no greater legal authority than one elected in an uncontested one.  After all, it’s not the candidate’s fault if nobody else cares enough to run against him, is it?

We think Balaskovits also is all wet when he writes that turning Park Ridge into a village “would place us more in conformance with surrounding communities” – without identifying so much as one other community that he contends is better managed, or better governed, than Park Ridge.  So why should we mindlessly mimic those communities, especially given the uniqueness of Park Ridge and the many differences between it and its neighboring communities? 

But our personal favorite bit of Balaskovits silliness is his closing pitch for making Park Ridge a village: “It is a time for change but not for change that takes us backward but rather for one that deals with the realities of today and moves Park Ridge forward.” 

Apparently Mr. Balaskovits doesn’t know that Park Ridge once was a village…prior to 1910.

Or maybe he’s just one of those “one step forward, 100 years back” kind of guys.

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.