It took the signatures of more than 2,800 Park Ridge voters to get one honest, straightforward and understandable police station referendum question on the April ballot, but it took the votes of only five Park Ridge aldermen to put an ambiguous (and, arguably, dishonest) referendum question on the same topic – penned by Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward) – on that same ballot.

So why doesn’t it surprise us to hear that the Council voted 6-1 at Monday night’s Committee of the Whole meeting, with Alderman/mayoral candidate Dave Schmidt as the sole dissenter, to spend $3,500 of taxpayer money to send a mailing to 14,500 homes for the purpose of “educating” the voters residing in those homes about…wait for it…the Wsol referendum question?

Admittedly, $3,500 is chump change compared to the much bigger bucks the City regularly squanders on questionable things like consultants and “studies” designed to tell our elected and appointed officials exactly what they want to hear.  Example: The City paid a lot more than $3,500 to architect/consultant Fred “Bigger is always better” Moyer, and then architects Sente Rubel Bosman Lee, to tell us that we “need” a new cop shop four times the size of the current one. 

Of course, figuring out things like how Park Ridge taxpayers are going to pay for such a “Taj Mahal” never seems to be part of those consultants’ job descriptions, although the Sente Rubel website advertises that Carol Sente “often assists in projects…such as…referendum campaign planning.” For the uninitiated, “referendum campaign planning” is the equivalent of “referendum propaganda mongering,” although we must concede that it sounds so much nicer the way Sente Rubel spins it.

We here at PublicWatchdog think it’s just plain wrong for any branch of local government to do anything about a referendum question other than put it on the ballot, or stay out of the way of any citizens who are trying to put one on the ballot.  We also think that it’s an insult to the voters to assume that they need “educating,” especially by their local governmental bodies who seem to spend more time concealing useful information than providing it.

If the voters want “educating” on the referendum issues, however, we think they are more than capable of educating themselves – by reading the newspapers and the blogs, by talking to their neighbors, and simply by reading and thinking about the referendum issues.  Or maybe private citizens or interest groups will form to advocate for or against a particular referendum question.  

But apparently that’s not good enough for Mayor Howard “the Coward” Frimark and his Alderpuppets, who surely can’t be looking forward to the possibility that the voters will soundly reject both cop shop referendum questions. 

That result would require the Alderpuppets to effectively thumb their noses at the voters if they nevertheless choose to move forward with the new cop shop.  So spending a few thousand easy-come, easy-go tax dollars to persuade the voters – in the name of “educating” them – to see things the Alderpuppets’ way probably makes sense to anybody that favors government by stealth and deception.

And, after all, to the Alderpuppets it’s just $3,500 of OPM: Other People’s Money.