We’re guessing that Seventh Ward Ald. Frank Wsol probably hopes most Park Ridge residents are unfamiliar with the following passage from Nelson Algren’s “Chicago: City on the Make”:

For the masses that do the city’s labor also keep the city’s heart.  And they think there’s something fishy about someone giving them a museum for nothing and free admission on a Saturday afternoon.

That’s because anybody who has heard or read it is probably savvy enough to realize that “there’s something fishy” about Wsol’s “flood rebate” proposal [pdf], which is scheduled to be discussed at this coming Monday night’s City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting (7:00 p.m.).
Wsol wants to use $420,000 of property tax reserves from the City’s rapidly depleting “General Fund” to subsidize – by as much as $2,500 per household – the cost of private flood control projects (such as overhead sewers, backwater valves, lift stations, sump pumps and generators) installed by Park Ridge residents between Jan. 1, 2008, and April 30, 2010.

For a City whose current budget deficit started at over $2 million and continues to grow, this is the kind of idea that any responsible person in government could be expected to keep to himself.  But it seems as if Ald. Wsol has some kind of undisclosed agenda that apparently involves depleting as much of the City treasury as he can, as quickly as he can.

Wsol, you may recall, led the charge against passing through to Park Ridge residents the actual increased cost of water from the City of Chicago, a bit of financial mismanagement that contributed over $400,000 to the current budget hole.  He also voted for increasing the already over-budget City funding of private community organizations, several of whom appear more financially sound (albeit on a smaller scale) than the City itself.

Even if one were to discount the fundamental public policy arguments against this kind of give-away program, there are more than enough logistical problems to make Wsol’s proposal a non-starter, including the possibility that the whole $420,000 could get eaten up by as few as 168 households grabbing the maximum $2,500 allotment.  That means that unfairness is literally built into the proposal.

And the fact that the proposal gives no indication that these reimbursements will be tied to economic need means that we could end up with what amounts to “welfare” for the already well-off.  Is that really the way most taxpayers want to see $420,000 of their money spent?

But those concerns don’t seem to have prevented Wsol from engaging in a little shameless pandering to the unenlightened self-interest of some residents when he suggests, near the end of his proposal, that those homes adding subsidized flood control systems “may see a property value increase and some corresponding increase in real estate transfer fees as well as property taxes collected.”  We wonder if he can actually say those words in public with a straight face.

Whether he can or he can’t, however, doesn’t change our belief that this proposal is about as wrongheaded as they come.  Every spare City tax dollar devoted to any form of flood relief should be directed toward the systemic analysis and systemic improvement of the City’s sewer system for the benefit of all Park Ridge residents.  And it should be done in a well-thought out, economically sound way that maximizes the value of every one of those dollars spent.

Maybe that’s why Wsol’s give-away proposal smells kind of…”fishy.”