Yesterday’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate features a letter by Park Ridge resident Bob Simoncini (“Mayor was not my first choice,” April 30), in which he takes a shot at Mayor-Elect Dave Schmidt for what Mr. Simoncini considers Schmidt’s un-qualifications for mayor.

Among those un-qualifications are many of the same criticisms outgoing Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark voiced during his unsuccessful re-election campaign: that Schmidt has not lived in Park Ridge very long, that he didn’t go to school here, that he hasn’t raised a family here, and that he wasn’t endorsed by the two local “mainstream” newspapers. 

We believe most of those so-called “qualifications” are window-dressing that should take a distant backseat to principles, policies, ideas and integrity – and the voters apparently agreed when they elected Schmidt over long-time resident and consummate organization member Frimark, who received 1,000 less votes this time around than he got back in 2005.

Speaking of 2005, Simoncini was among the Frimark supporters who showed up at City Hall and (according to the official minutes of the May 3, 2005, City Council meeting) praised Frimark as being “independent, fiscally conservative, a wise businessman who cares about people and will be a successful mayor.”

The “fiscally conservative” Frimark will be leaving office with the City’s finances in shambles, thanks to two consecutive years of million dollar-plus budget deficits – and a third one currently in the works – engineered by a City Council which he packed with his Alderpuppets in 2007, a task made much easier after he successfully snookered the voters into cutting the City Council in half through a November 2006 referendum.

And the damage would have been even worse if Frimark had been successful in his quest for the big new police station, a project that hopefully has been derailed after being nuked, 6,821 votes to 1,364 votes, in the citizens’ referendum Frimark opposed. 

Simoncini closes his letter with: “But, we have Dave Schmidt. God help us.”

Given the mess that Frimark is leaving in his wake, and given that the Council will still be stocked with Frimark’s Alderpuppets for the next two years, what Simoncini should have said is: God help Dave Schmidt.