We normally don’t comment on what other local blogs are publishing, if for no other reason that we don’t know of any other local blog besides Ken Butterly’s “Butterly On Senior Issues.”  

But his post dated 01/18/12 so clearly demonstrates just how dysfunctional and perverse the operation of the Park Ridge Park District’s Senior Center may have become that it virtually demands discussion here.

For those unaware of Butterly’s blog, it’s written by a Senior Center member who is part of what appears to be a small but vocal faction of that facility’s roughly 800-person membership.  That faction acts and sounds as if it believes that the Senior Center was officially handed over to private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“SSI” or “Seniors Inc.”, our preference) around 30 years ago, but with some kind of understanding that the Park District (a/k/a, the taxpayers) would nevertheless still foot the bill.

Butterly’s post criticizes an anticipated request at tonight’s Park Board meeting by vice-president Rick Biagi that a $300,000+ bequest by the late Betty Kemnitz to “the Senior Center” be included as revenue in the District’s 2012-13 budget.  Butterly asserts that “the Kemnitz bequest money are [sic] dollars presently in the hands of Senior Services, Inc., the legal and financial arm of the Senior Center membership.”

Think about that for a minute: Seniors Inc. is the legal and financial arm of the Senior Center membership. 

Assuming that Mr. Butterly isn’t talking through his hat, how did the Park District get to the point where users of one of its facilities have a private corporation serving as their “legal and financial arm” seeking to keep control of that facility away from the Park District?

Remember, folks, that the Senior Center is a building owned by the Park District (i.e., the taxpayers).  For at least the past six years the Park District (i.e., the taxpayers) has poured almost $1 million of public funds into subsidizing the operations of that facility because Seniors Inc.’s leadership claims that the Center’s members shouldn’t have to pay more than the $45/year “dues” currently charged by the Park District – even as Seniors Inc. sits on a private treasury of over $240,000.

We’ve addressed this situation in several posts since December 2010, including those of  12/28/11, 12/12/11, 08/02/11 and 07/29/11.

But apparently even $160,000/year in taxpayer subsidies isn’t enough for Butterly and his fellow Seniors Inc. members.  Despite acknowledging that the Kemnitz bequest “was made to the Park Ridge Senior Center,” he seems to argue that it effectively belongs to Seniors Inc., which he describes as having “run” the Senior Center until January 2011, and which currently holds those funds as the result of conduct by the “trustee” of that bequest.

And who might be the “trustee” of that bequest who put the funds in the hands of Seniors Inc. in the first place?

If you guessed former Senior Center supervisor Teresa Grodsky – until 01/01/12, a Park District employee bound by the well-established legal duty of loyalty to her employer and its taxpayers – you’d be right.

From information recently revealed through Biagi’s whistle-blowing about Grodsky’s previously secret “retirement” deal – engineered by the District’s Exec. Director, Gayle Mountcastle, and apparently approved in secret by the Park Board, including Biagi – it looks and sounds as if Grodsky’s unauthorized handing over of the Kenmitz bequest to Seniors Inc. was one of several reasons why she ”retired.”  

But in all fairness to Grodsky, her shall-we-say divided loyalty to the Park District wasn’t a solo act. 

That’s because, as also was disclosed by Biagi, she may have been assisted in her conflicted activities by Park Board member Stephen Vile, who also is a member of…wait for it…the Senior Center.  Vile himself seems to have had some difficulty deciding whether his loyalty belongs with the Park District, to which he swore his oath of office in May 2009, or to Seniors Inc, a conflict displayed in some e-mails that Biagi shared with the Herald-Advocate, the Journal, Butterly’s blog, and this blog as part of his whistle-blowing.   

For example, in an e-mail to Grodsky on 05/03/11, Vile (clearly speaking as a Seniors Inc. member rather than a Park Board member) observes that “we’ll be able to do [nothing] other than withhold any donations to the park board” [emphasis added].  And in a 05/15/11 “for your eyes only” one to Grodsky, Vile refers to Seniors Inc. as “we” and “our” when he writes: “We have tentetively [sic] agreed to relinquish our claims for previous investments” in the Senior Center.

Vile’s and Grodsky’s ambivalence is not just of recent vintage, either: it dates back almost a year earlier, as can be seen from a Grodsky e-mail exchange with Vile on 08/23/10, in which they both appear to be referring to Seniors Inc. as “we,” “our” and “us” while referring to the Park District or Park Board as “they’re,” “they” and “their.”

Not surprisingly, Butterly and Seniors Inc. are beating up on Biagi for outing both Grodsky and Vile.  And we wouldn’t be surprised if Biagi feels a bit of a chill over at the Maine Leisure Center (Park District HQ) when he arrives for tonight’s meeting, since neither Mountcastle nor his fellow Board members have expressed any public support so far for Biagi’s candor.  Which is not unexpected, considering how badly the District botched the Senior Center issue even before it totally mishandled the Grodsky “retirement.”

This bizarre saga, however, does provide several object lessons for how not to run a Park District (or any other branch of local government, for that matter), including:

(a) how the Park District allowed private corporation Seniors Inc. to effectively take over the Senior Center for its semi-private clubhouse;

(b) how Seniors Inc. took that opportunity to bleed the taxpayers, with the District’s acquiescence, and then shamelessly claim to be disrespected by the District when it wouldn’t agree to continue that status quo;

(c) how a trusted long-term employee (Grodsky) and a sworn elected official (Vile) seem to have lost track of their duty to all the District’s taxpayers, not just to 800 Senior Center members; and

(d) how a sworn appointed official/employee (Mountcastle) and sworn elected officials (the Park Board members) could somehow think that giving Grodsky a sweetheart “retirement” deal at the taxpayers’ expense, and then trying to keep it secret from the public, was somehow in the public’s best interest.

But perhaps the most notable lesson provided by this mess is how a “house” – in this case the Park District – can so easily become divided against itself when special interests combine with bad judgment and secrecy.  Hopefully, the folks who run the Park District for us taxpayers will learn a valuable lesson from this perverse experience.

Starting tonight.

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Some scholars trace the concept of “transparency” in government to Jefferson’s famous quote:  “Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.”

For a concept with such a noble origin, however, transparency sure has taken a long time to catch on with the political class.  In recent years, it has become almost a cliche with public officials at every level, most of whom act like they would rather conduct the public’s business from a secret bunker.  In Nepal.  Which is why, at the local level, there are a few – make that a very few – public officials who actually walk their “transparency” talk.   

At the City level, Mayor Dave Schmidt, while still an alderman, outed then-mayor Howard Frimark’s attempts (in closed session meetings, naturally) to finagle the City’s purchase of 720 Garden, ostensibly for a new police station that hadn’t even been approved by the Council, at a price hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than the City’s own appraisal valued it.   More recently, Ald. Dan Knight (5th) led what is believed to be the first-ever defeat of a City Council motion to go into closed session.

At Elementary School District 64, only Board member Anthony Borrelli has shown signs of both understanding transparency and legitimately supporting it.  That’s in marked contrast to his fellow board members who do nothing more than pay lip service to it until it’s forced on them, as when D-64 began videotaping its meetings only after resident Marshall Warren began creating cinema verite with his own camera.  And we’ve seen no push for transparency at High School District 207.

But on January 3, 2012, Park Ridge Park District commissioner Rick Biagi kicked the concept of “transparency” up another notch when he issued his own press release blowing the whistle on a secret exit deal for recently-“retired” Senior Center supervisor Teresa Grodsky.

As can be seen from our recent posts (Dec. 12 and 28) about the Grodsky situation, we took what the Park District and Grodsky were saying about her “retirement” at face value.  We even scoffed as certain members of the Senior Center were claiming Grodsky was forced out. 

Silly us. 

According to Biagi’s press release, Grodsky was “strongly encouraged” to “retire” back in October/November for conduct which may well have justified her outright termination.  But in typical “it’s not our money” government style, PRPD Supt. Gayle Mountcastle allowed Grodsky to stay on the job until year-end, earning both her salary and enough pension credits to push her into a higher pension benefit bracket.  And, also in typical government style, that exit deal’s only discussion by the Park Board was in one or two…wait for it…closed sessions, out of public view.

Shame on them…especially given the contentiousness of the Senior Center issue and the “cult of personality” that had sprung up around Grodsky through the efforts of Senior Center members like Barbara Ingolia, Helen Roppel and Millie O’Brien, and which was only exacerbated by the Park District’s concealment of the exit deal.

And shame on them again for letting themselves be pushed into the deal by the Park District Risk Management Agency (“PDRMA”), the District’s insurer that would rather see the District bribe Grodsky with an exit deal funded by our tax dollars than run the risk of a lawsuit by her that, no matter how frivolous it might be, PDRMA would be obligated to defend on the District’s behalf, using some of the hefty premiums the District pays.

Another interesting twist to this tale is how Commissioner Steven Vile may have aided and abetted Grodsky’s alleged misconduct by, among other things, distributing Park District attorney-client privileged internal communications to certain officials of private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”), which has been battling the Park District for control over the Senior Center for more than the past year – and on whose board Vile sits.

Can you say “conflict of interest,” Mr. Vile?

The point of this post, however, isn’t just to criticize the foolish Grodsky deal.  It’s to point out how so much of that deal appears to have been done by Mountcastle and the Park Board under the radar.  That, in turn, causes us to wonder how many other such deals, or worse, have been concocted by the Park District, or by the City, or by School Districts 64 and 207, with at least the tacit approval of our elected officials after one or more closed session discussions, leaving the taxpayers none the wiser?

Frankly, we wish that Biagi had just said “no” to those closed sessions during which this whole Grodsky exit deal was hatched, like Ald. Knight did to the closed session motion at City Hall; and that, like Schmidt, Biagi had blown the whistle on the deal immediately after he found out about it.  But the bottom line is that Biagi, and only Biagi, blew the whistle on it.  And he did it big-time. 

Curiously, Biagi’s candor may have provoked the proposal for a new Park District ordinance that would impose a $1,000-per-violation fine for each disclosure of closed session information.   Fortunately, four of the five commissioners present at last night’s Park Board meeting reached a consensus not to pursue such an ordinance – which would violate the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) because, according to Page 28 of Atty. General Lisa Madigan’s Guide to IOMA, no sanction against a public body member is permitted for disclosing information or issues discussed in a closed meeting. 

Ironically, that’s the very same lesson that all local public officials should have learned – but apparently didn’t – from the “Frimark” City Council’s failed attempt at sanctioning Schmidt’s whistle-blowing four years ago.

Can anybody lend Biagi a Telestrator?

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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.

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Will articles in the on-line Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Park Ridge Senior Center manager plans own retirement,” Dec. 26) and today’s Park Ridge Journal (“Outgoing Director Grew Senior Center,” Dec. 28) finally debunk the rumors being spread by certain Park Ridge Senior Center members ab0ut the imminent departure of Senior Center manager Teresa Grodsky after 35 years on the job?

According to those articles, Grodsky is denying that she is leaving her employment by the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District against her will.  “It’s not true at all,” she said, adding: “Thirty-five years is a good career, a very good career.”

Both articles also report that Grodsky’s retirement is coinciding with that of her husband, Richard Grodsky, from his position as executive director of the Elmhurst Park District.

“We’re looking forward to traveling,” she explained.

That all makes Grodsky’s departure sound like a “retirement” to us, although we doubt even her own public statements will satisfy the small group of Senior Center whiners and conspiracy theorists – Barbara Ingolia and Helen Roppel being two of the most vocal – who contend Grodsky’s being forced out because she wouldn’t go along with the Park District’s plans for changing how the Senior Center is operated. 

And let’s not forget Millie O’Brien, who grandly claims in an article in the Park Ridge Journal (“Wills Spark Fight Between PR Seniors, Parks Over Donations,” Dec. 26) that a private corporation, Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”) is “the board that oversees the senior center” and “handles all the financial issues” – comments that brought a strong rebuke from the Park District’s public relations manager, Kathie Hahn.

“[Seniors Inc.] does not run the Senior Center,” Hahn responded.

Sorry, Ms. Hahn, but you sure could have fooled us – at least until a few months ago when the current Park Board finally told Seniors Inc. it would not renew the lapsed contract by which Seniors Inc. had asserted its decades-long control over the Senior Center.  Prior to that time, the Park District acted like the “tail” to the Seniors Inc. “dog” despite Seniors Inc.’s not even holding “affiliate” status like the other organizations to whom the District has delegated the operations of certain of its programs and activities, such as the youth sports programs. 

As a result, Seniors Inc. was able to keep Senior Center annual membership “dues” at $45 even as it was building up a nice fat private bankroll ($241,000, according to its 2010 IRS Form 990-EZ), and at the same time the Senior Center was ringing up $160,000+ annual deficits that the District’s taxpayers were subsidizing in order to maintain the semi-private clubhouse for about 800 Park Ridge seniors.

Now Seniors Inc. is rumored to be fighting the Park District tooth and nail for control of a big bucks bequest by a deceased Senior Center member, Betty Kenmetz.  According to the Journal “Wills” article, O’Brien “felt the deceased would have wanted the money to go to [Seniors Inc.] to benefit the [Senior Center].”  If that’s truly what Ms. Kenmetz wanted, however, she could have been spelled it out in her will or trust document along the lines of:  “I, Betty Kenmetz, bequeathe $X to Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc., to be used solely and exclusively for the benefit of the Park Ridge Senior Center facility.”  But did she?

We can’t wait to hear how this one comes out.

Meanwhile, we wish Ms. Grodsky a long, healthy and enjoyable retirement. 

And we hope that the Park District will finally bring an end to Seniors Inc.’s taxpayer-funded entitlements – and any other special-interest entitlements that pick the taxpayers’ pockets without a compelling reason.

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We’ve been critical of the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District/s operation of the Senior Center for awhile now, primarily because that facility is operated like a semi-private club for about 800 Park Ridge seniors while sucking around $160,000+ out of the District’s taxpayers each year in subsidies so that members can get away with paying a paltry $45 in annual dues – even as they whine about how unfairly they’re being treated by the Park District.

That’s $45 for a full year’s unlimited usage of the Senior Center facility and many of its activities.  Compare that to some of the Park District’s other facilities, activities and programs:  the Community Center costs $363/year for an unlimited usage membership; youth soccer costs $100 for a 2-3 month season of 2-3 day/wk field usage; and an ice skating pass costs $65/yr. for a maximum of 18 hours/wk. of open skating usage.

But for the past year or so the private corporation whose members seem to think they run the Senior Center, Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”), has waged a propaganda campaign against the Park District and its Board.  The original focus of that campaign was the District’s unwillingness to sign a new contract giving Seniors Inc. a continuing (some might call it a “controlling”) say in the operations of the Senior Center.  And one of the vehicles for that propaganda campaign has been a blog called Butterly On Senior Issues.

According to the November 29 post on the Butterly blog, long-time Senior Center manager Teresa Grodsky has been forced into retirement by the Park Board – reportedly for siding with Seniors Inc. in several of its disputes with the District.  Grodsky’s retirement apparently has become the newest cause célèbre for those Seniors Inc./Senior Center members who are looking for any leverage they can find to help them hang onto their sweetheart Senior Center deal.

The Butterly blog has given Seniors Inc./Senior Center members such as Barb Ignolia, Helen Roppel and Ken Butterly himself the opportunity to castigate the Park Board, and especially Board officers Mary Wynn Ryan, Rick Biagi and Richard Brandt (himself a Senior Center member), for allegedly throwing Grodsky and them under the bus; and new District Director Gayle Mountcastle and her staff for aiding and abetting the Board’s effort by planning for non-senior programming of the Senior Center to help reduce that $160,000+ annual deficit.

In comments to the Butterly blog, Ignolia calls Grodsky “the heart and soul of the Center,” while Roppel quotes scripture: “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”  No word yet on when they will commence Grodsky’s canonization proceedings, but Butterly has raised the specter of a new “Senior Center” being formed, ostensibly in response to the shoddy way these seniors believe they and their favorite Park District employee have been treated.

While Seniors Inc. now appears intent on creating a cult of personality around Grodsky, however, that effort should not obscure the real issues here: control and money.

As the legal owner of the Senior Center building, the Park District is charged with legal custody and control over that facility and its operations.  But for too long the District – both Staff and Board – effectively let the Senior Center “inmates” run that particular asylum, a situation that continued despite those substantial operating deficits piling up year after year without the District’s even trying to push that facility towards a break-even point. 

Consequently, many of those Senior Center members developed an entitlement mentality, talking and acting as if the District’s taxpayers – including the vast majority of the District’s seniors who don’t belong to the Senior Center – owe them their clubhouse and the programs that come with it, all for the token payment that masquerades as annual “dues.”  Meanwhile, Seniors Inc. has accumulated over $241,000 (as shown by its 2010 IRS Form 990-EZ); and we hear it’s looking to add to that total by battling the Park District over a bequest from the estate of deceased Senior Center member Betty Kenmetz.

As we understand it, Kenmetz’s bequest was to “the Senior Center” rather than to the “Park District” or to Seniors Inc./SSI.  And, even more interestingly, Kenmetz’s executor is…wait for it…Teresa Grodsky!

Rumor has it that Grodsky wants that money to go to Seniors Inc. instead of to her employer, the Park District, notwithstanding the Park District attorney’s argument that since “the Senior Center” is part of the Park District and not a stand-alone entity, Kenmetz’s intent was that the Park District receive that bequest to use for the Senior Center.

There’s a Park Board meeting this Thursday (Dec. 15).  Whether any of these topics will be addressed that night remains to be seen, as the District has not yet posted its agenda or board packet.

But one thing looks certain: that 800-person special interest group of Senior Center members isn’t likely to let what they believe to be their power, their money and their Senior Center be taken away from them without a fight.

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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?

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A quote from the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is becoming our favorite in this age of increasing misinformation/disinformation: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  Unfortunately, the members of Seniors Inc. (a/k/a Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc.) don’t seem to buy into that concept. 

Instead, as they become more and more aggravated by the Park Ridge Park District Board’s unwillingness to continue operating the Park Ridge Senior Center according to its longstanding but increasingly dysfunctional, deficit-producing model, Seniors Inc.’s criticism of the Park Board has become a product almost entirely of fiction masquerading as fact.  And that appears designed to promote a resolution intended to let Seniors Inc.’s roughly 800 Park Ridge members pull another $160,000+ a year out of the taxpayers’ pockets so that those members can have their semi-private “clubhouse” for two more years at an annual cost of $45 in “dues.”

At the top of the list of fictions is Helen Roppel’s insistence that “[s]enior citizens make up approximately 35.9% of the population of Park Ridge” (13,000+ residents) and contribute $2,730,069 of the Park District’s $7,604,649 recreation budget.  That may be “the truth,” but only if one accepts Seniors Inc.’s definition of “senior citizens” as anyone 55 years and up.  But increase that “senior” status to the more conventional over-65 figure and the number of Park Ridge “seniors” drops down to around 20% of the population (around 7,400 residents). 

Big difference.

Another fiction is Ms. Roppel’s contention that “seniors” are “being taken advantage of” by the Park District because the approx. $172,000 Senior Center operating deficit the taxpayers subsidized (back in 2008, judging from that amount) is only a “measly 2.26%” of the Park District’s $7.6 million recreation budget, despite “seniors” (all 13,000+ of them) paying approx. $2,730,069 in property taxes toward the Park District’s recreation budget.  She conveniently ignores the fact that those taxes from Seniors Inc.’s 800 members accounted for only approx. $164,000 of that $172,000 deficit, and it would reach that level only if every property tax dollar they purportedly paid to the Park District went solely toward that Senior Center deficit and not to any other Park District expense!

What could be viewed as “the truth” but not “the whole truth,” on the other hand, is Seniors Inc. member Rita Johnson’s complaint that “many of the members of the Senior Center are on fixed incomes” and, therefore. can’t pay the higher membership dues that would allow the Senior Center to continue to cater to Seniors Inc. members, but on a break-even basis rather than burdening the taxpayers with those big annual operating deficits.

“Fixed incomes” is one of those terms used to create the impression of Social Security-only poverty.  But “fixed incomes” can – and often do, in communities like Park Ridge – include “fixed” pension benefits, “fixed” annuity payments, and even “fixed” bond coupon payments which produce income well beyond mere Social Security.  “Fixed incomes” also conveniently exclude the principal value of the annuities or investment portfolios generating that “fixed income.” 

And “fixed incomes” don’t include the value of those mortgage-free homes, many of which are still worth $400,000+ that seniors are sitting on, which put their net worth at well-above that of many still-working Park Ridge families, and which could be tapped for additional income through reverse mortgages. 

Then there’s the fiction from Seniors Inc. member Bobbi Oschger, who claims that seniors “have far fewer choices [than children and younger adults] for meaningful activities in Park Ridge…[and] far fewer ways to even be with other human beings to make life more joyful and worthwhile.”

Yo!  Ms. Oschger!  Ever hear of Starbucks (Park Ridge has three of them)?  Panera?  Einsteins?  The Pickwick theater and restaurant?  Goldie’s?  Mac’s?  For a relatively modest “investment” one can spend hours among other human beings, conversing and/or being entertained at those venues and in many others around town.  Seniors could also take in all those wonderful programs the Library puts on, most/all of which are free.

Or how about getting involved in some of our community organizations like the 20th Century Club, Community Women, Toastmasters, Friends of the Library, Lions Club, Park Ridge Historical Society, or even the Park Ridge Hysterical Society if you’re looking for a few laughs?  Or governmental/political organizations like the City’s boards and commissions, the League of Women Voters, Park Ridge Republican Women, etc.?  We can assure you that there are plenty of “human beings” involved in those organizations; and membership in many of them is inexpensive or even…wait for it…free.

Or aren’t those activities “meaningful” enough for you?

If there are seniors who wish to belong to the Senior Center but truly cannot afford $200+ in annual dues – and can provide the financial statement(s) to prove it – then some accommodations surely can be made, such as through the Park District’s Park’s Foundation.  Or Seniors Inc. could use some of that $215,000 it was sitting on at last report to subsidize the truly needy seniors.

What is certain at this point, however, is that all the fictions that Seniors Inc. can manufacture cannot obscure the simple fact that this is a contest of wills between the Park District Board members elected by the voters on a community-wide basis and accountable to the entire community, and a less-than-800-member special-interest group elected by themselves, representing only themselves, and pressing their own personal advantage at the expense of the taxpayers.

If fact triumphs over fiction, the Park District Board and the District’s taxpayers will win.  And that’s the kind of “win/win” we like to see.

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The war of attrition over control the Park Ridge Senior Center continued last Thursday night (July 21) at the Park Ridge Recreation & Park District Board meeting, where about a dozen “members” of private corporation Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (what some call “SSI,” but we prefer the more corporate “Seniors Inc.”) showed up to excoriate the Park Board for not rolling over and giving Seniors Inc. whatever it wants.

As we wrote about in greater detail in “Time For A Senior Center Reality Check (01.27.11), Seniors Inc. orginally wanted a contract that not only would have locked in Seniors Inc.’s control over the Senior Center building for the next two years, but likely also would have continued the roughly $160,000+ annual operating deficits the Senior Center has been running for at least the past six years, totaling almost $1 million during that time.

So far, the Park Board – now led by President Mary Wynn Ryan – wisely has said “no” to such a ridiculous special-interest proposal, thereby incurring the wrath of Seniors Inc.  We thank those Board members who have stuck to their guns, and we hope they continue to do so.

But we aren’t yet ready to bet the ranch on it.

Why?  Because the Board has let itself be co-opted and/or intimidated by Seniors Inc. into seeking Seniors Inc.’s approval of something called the “Cooperative Guidelines…” (“Guidelines”).  In essence, the Board is asking Seniors Inc.’s permission to assert the Park District’s existing legal rights over the Senior Center, with a few tweaks to acknowledge the neither-fish-nor-fowl operating arrangement between the Park District and Seniors Inc. for that facility that existed for the past 30 years or so until its expiration at year-end 2010. 

So why is the Park Board continuing to abdicate its lawful role as the governing body of the Park District and engaging in this kabuki-like bargaining with special interest Seniors Inc. over how the Senior Center is to be operated?

One explanation – the cynical one, we admit – is that “seniors vote” (as they constantly remind us); and there are some self-styled politicians on the Board who don’t want to risk alienating any group of voters, even a special-interest group that totals less than 800 people and shamelessly sucks $160,000 a year out of the District’s taxpayers to keep its “clubhouse” operating. 

Another equally-plausible explanation, however, is that too many members of that Board – just like too many of their counterparts on the City Council and the local school boards – prefer making people happy to governing by sound public policy principles.  And the easiest way to make people happy is with give-aways of the taxpayers’ money and/or of the governing body’s power, public policy be damned.

Either of those explanations appears to be supported by the following facts about the Seniors Inc./Senior Center/Park District relationship, as we have been able to ascertain them:

1.  Seniors Inc. is not an affiliate of the Park District and, therefore, is unlike those other private corporations that “run” Park Ridge’s baseball, soccer, hockey and football programs on the Park District’s behalf.  Consequently, Seniors Inc. is not currently bound by the District’s affiliate guidelines and requirements.

2.  It’s not clear whether “Senior Center members” are “members” of the Park District’s Senior Center facility (not unlike Community Center members) or are Seniors Inc. members, because Seniors Inc.’s most recent IRS Form 990-EZ tax return (on file with GuideStar) reports “dues” of $27,601 on Part I, Line 3.

3.  While Seniors Inc. acts like it represents all Park Ridge seniors, we understand it has less than 1,000 “members,” more than 200 of those being non-residents/non-taxpayers of the Park District.  That means Seniors Inc.’s Park Ridge membership is less than 11% of Park Ridge’s approx. 7,400 over-65 residents, and just a shade over 6% of Park Ridge’s approx. 13,000 over-55 crowd that is eligible for Seniors Inc. membership.  So the overwhelming majority of Park Ridge “seniors” (by either measure) don’t belong to Seniors Inc. or use the Senior Center  

4.  Senior Inc. claims to have contributed approx. $1 million over the past 30 years towards upgrading the Senior Center building.  We’ve seen no proof of that total but, even if it were so, Seniors Inc. has received reimbursement of that entire amount by Park District taxpayers in covering the Senior Center’s operating deficits over just the past six-seven years.

5.  As of the end of 2009 (per its 2009 Form 990-EZ), Seniors Inc. was sitting on more than $215,000, yet back then it was still charging its “members” a paltry $35/year in “dues” for unlimited use of the Senior Center while letting the taxpayers make up the annual $160,000+ operating shortfall.

6.  Whatever previous contract Seniors Inc. had with the Park District for its use and occupancy of the Senior Center expired and is no longer in force.

Given the foregoing facts, we see absolutely no legitimate public policy reason for the Park District’s ceding any control over any of its public buildings to private corporations, including the Senior Center to Seniors Inc. – irrespective of what kinds of irresponsible giveaways other politicians may have signed onto 30 years ago and their equally irresponsible or clueless successors continued ever since. 

And this is even more true when that private corporation isn’t even a Park District affiliate, serves a very small demographic, yet generates a disproportionately substantial operating deficit for which all taxpayers have to pick up the tab – including the vast majority of “seniors” who aren’t members of Seniors Inc. and have never set foot in the Senior Center.

If the Park Board has a collective spine it will end this nonsense and tell, yes tell, Seniors Inc. under what terms it will permit Seniors Inc. to retain its current level of use of the Senior Center.  And those terms should include Seniors Inc.’s covering of all the seniors-related costs of that facility’s operation – including the cost of the Park District personnel who provide services to that facility’s senior users. 

Whether that’s done by Seniors Inc.’s increasing its “dues” for existing members, or adding a significant number of new members, or by dipping into its treasury, is something that can be left up to Seniors Inc.  But that’s pretty much all that should be left up to Seniors Inc., because the voters elected the Park Board members – not Seniors Inc. or its members – to manage the Park District and its various facilities, including the Senior Center.

Letting the inmates run the asylum is bad enough.  Letting them run it at a $160,000 annual loss is crazy.

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Yesterday the jury handed down its verdict in the long-running, sordid saga of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich: guilty on 17 of 20 counts, almost all of which involve some form of selling out the public interest for somebody’s private, personal benefit.

Selling out the public interest has been Play No. 1 in the unofficial playbook of Illinois government and politics as practiced for at least the past 30 years, primarily by the Democrats who have controlled one or both chambers of the General Assembly for all but 2 of those years - but with the willing and shameless assistance of Republican governors like “Big Jim” Thompson, “Big George” Ryan and, to a lesser degree, “Slim Jim” Edgar.

While “trickle down” economics may be a suspect theory, “trickle down” government corruption is hard reality in our state.  Watching two of our last three governors get convicted of multiple public corruption charges in which they were aided and abetted by some of their closest advisors – also public officials who owed the people of this state honest services – sends the message, at least subliminally, that government corruption is unremarkable standard operating procedure.

But corruption can, and does, take many shapes and forms, some of which seem almost benign to a populace numbed by a steady stream of “Safe Road”s, “Silver Shovel”s, “Gambat”s, “Hired Truck”s, “Crooked Code”s, and too many other assorted scams and frauds to deserve their own catchy nicknames.

Sometimes it’s public “funding” that magically appears after somebody puts the arm on a pliant or outright sleazy politician. Other times it might be a zoning variance that gets pushed through without rhyme or reason. Maybe it’s a summer job that leap-frogs earlier applicants with equal or better credentials to land in the lap of the fortunate son of a public official’s buddy.  Or maybe it’s some other similar “favor” to one special interest or another that inexplicably trumps more important public interests.

As a state with more units of government than any of the other 49, Illinois is effectively a petri dish of government-bred pathogens infecting us at every level. Which means that we can’t realistically rely on the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI to protect us from even a fraction of them, including in our own community.

What can we do with our local governments here in Park Ridge?

We can start by paying attention and questioning everything our public officials do.  Asking questions, and demanding substantive and meaningful answers rather than hot air, is a great screening device for detecting wrongheaded or kinky dealings. Public officials owe each of us an explanation of what they are doing when they act on our behalf with our money, and why they are doing it: if they can’t explain it understandably, or if it doesn’t make sense, or if it sounds too good to be true, chances are we’re getting fleeced.

And that questioning shouldn’t just be at the City level. The two least-scrutinized and least-transparent branches of local government are School Districts 64 and 207, which do not televise or videotape their meetings and which have become quite comfortable cultivating the sense that the business of education can be understood only by “the educators.” To make matters worse, those two branches of local government account for about 2/3 of our property tax bills.

The bottom line is that every time a public official “put’s his thumb on the scale” – for either his own benefit or for that of some special interest – the rest of us are being cheated out of good government. Even if that doesn’t technically qualify as “corruption,” it most definitely is not “good government.”

And it’s “effing” wrong.

UPDATE (07.01.11):  Sometimes you need to laugh to keep from crying: our new Illinois license plate and Jon Stewart “Blago” bit.

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Ever since the Oakton Pool’s diving well imploded in 2005, it should have been clear to any sentient Park Ridge resident that Oakton Pool itself was on its last legs.  

The Park Board actually voted in 2006 to close it, only to relent but institute a “do not resuscitate” policy in the event the pool required any extraordinary repair or maintenance expense. And at least once every year since, closing Oakton has been debated in the face of dwindling attendance and a steady stream of red ink. 

So we get a perverse chuckle out of residents like Stephen Murray, who have the gall to disingenuously beef about a “lack of communication” about Oakton Pool’s condition, and about its closing being “just not fair to the people who use the pool,” when he actually attended and spoke at a meeting last June where the Park Board discussed the distinct possibility that last summer would be Oakton’s final one. 

Now that the belated but sound decision has been made to put Oakton Pool out of its money-hemorrhaging misery, the Park District needs to make an even more important decision: What to do with the Oakton Pool site.

Park District Executive Director Gayle Mountcastle reportedly wants to demolish the pool and replace it with grass.  The price tag for that plan: A “rough estimate” of $170,000 for the demolition, and a six year old estimate of an additional $1 million for the “grassy park.”  

The “grassy park” was the choice of a majority of residents who participated in a District-run telephone survey back in 2005, around the same time that the voters rejected the first of two Oakton referendums – one for building a new outdoor pool, the other for building an indoor recreation center.

But before the Park District leaps to replace concrete with grass, we hope it gives some serious thought to what other, better uses that space might be put.  And if another use is realistically contemplated, let’s not waste money on building a grassy park that will just have to be converted into something else a short time down the road – like Chicago’s Millennium Park, where sod was laid, then torn up and replaced with concrete, which in turn was torn up and replaced with more sod…one of the many reasons the Park came in at hundreds of millions over budget. 

Back in 2004 when the batting cages were added to Oakton, the plan then being discussed was to also add a miniature golf course to create a true “family” recreation center: a triad of driving range, batting cages and mini-golf.  But that third component never was added, in part because no suitable location could be found.  

With the pool gone, however, space may no longer be a problem.  Or if mini-golf (or some other feature) isn’t in the cards, perhaps relocating the batting cages to a more visible location might give their revenues a much-needed boost. 

In any event, we’re guessing that a grassy park really isn’t the ultimate goal, or highest and best use, of the Oakton Pool site.  So before the Park District dumps $1.2 million or more into what is likely to be only a temporary fix, we suggest it remember the motto of television’s “This Old House”:

Measure twice, cut once.

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