As has been previously reported, Ald. Dave Schmidt’s motion for a resolution to put the issue of the proposed new police station on the April 2009 ballot as an advisory referendum died for want of even a second (“Frimark, Council Stiff Voters On Cop Shop Referendum”).  None of our elected City officials other than Schmidt want to give the voters of Park Ridge even the opportunity to advise (but not bind) the Council as to its plans for a big, expensive new cop shop that will put the City multi-millions in debt for the next 20 years or so.

Given that kind of arrogance and disregard for what those taxpaying voters think, resident Joe Egan has started up a citizens petition drive to put the issue of a new cop shop on the ballot anyway.  As reported last Thursday on Park Ridge Underground (“Comment in the Spotlight”), Mr. Egan is seeking recruits to help him get the required number of signatures.

We have repeatedly challenged the need for a new cop shop – as opposed to a remodeling/renovation of the current space, with or without a modest addition – and the wisdom of incurring more than a million dollars a year of debt service on such a facility that will burden our taxpayers for the next two decades, especially given all the more immediate infrastructure needs that are not being met, such as street paving and relief sewers. 

We have also criticized the less-than-forthright way the proponents of the new cop shop are going about justifying their fiscal recklessness: That they won’t be raising taxes for the new cop shop because all they really will be doing is just “extending” the annual debt service payments that the City has been making (using our tax dollars, of course) for the past 10 years or so on the bonds that financed the Public Works Building, after those bonds are paid off next year.

We also don’t agree with Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his Alderpuppets when they claim that they were elected to make these kinds of decisions, presumably without first measuring their constituents’ views on such a project in the best way available: By votes cast on the issue itself.

What a crock!

We encourage everyone who thinks there are better ways to spend our tax money, and/or that the voters deserve to be heard at the ballot box on such a significant and expensive matter, to contact Mr. Egan and volunteer to gather signatures, as many as you are able.

Because if we don’t get a vote on this issue, we can be sure that Frimark and the Council will push this project forward – and they will do so with their standard alibi that they “talked to [a handful?] of their constituents” and found “overwhelming support” for this cop shop boondoggle.