What does Ald. Robert Ryan know that the rest of us don’t?

We can’t help but wonder upon reading this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (“Debate to resume on parking lot purchase,” July 28), which describes Ryan’s continuing effort to get the City Council’s endorsement of his plan to spend $700,000+ of scarce City funds to buy the Scharringhausen parking lot that the City has been renting for around $20,000 a year. 

We also wonder if Ryan’s concept of sound municipal finance really is: “Hey, why spend $20,000 a year renting a lot when we can spend $700,000+ to own it” – especially when (according to an analysis by City staff) it generates only $22,800 in annual commuter parking fees? 

Frankly, we thought this was just a typical “insider” deal, where an established Park Ridge community member (Scharringhausen) cashes out long-term R.E. investment (Fairview lot) through connected R.E. broker (Owen Hayes II), who enlists the aid of a friendly elected official (Ald. Ryan, whose campaign treasurer was Hayes).

But it sounds like Ryan may have bigger plans than just a one-off property deal.  As the H-A reports, Ryan is talking about the Scharringhausen lot supporting “new development” within the surrounding Uptown area.  And he wants the City to spend some money on a “feasibility study” to determine whether a City-owned parking deck could fit on that site.

Unfortunately, that’s vintage Robert Ryan: Spend taxpayer money on a consultant to tell you how to spend even more taxpayer money and/or pile up public debt.  That’s why he may be the biggest, most consistent spendthrift on this Council.  And that’s saying a lot, give the drunken-sailor mentality of most of them.

For anbody who needs some help finding “dots” to connect, you can start with Ryan’s strong advocacy for sinking public funds into Uptown Redevelopment when he served on the Uptown Advisory Task Force (“UATF”) a decade ago.  Before that, as a member of the District 64 School Board, he led the charge to borrow and spend around $15 million to knock down what was then the District’s newest school building (Emerson Jr. High) and build Emerson Middle School.

That expenditure and related debt service appears to have sent District 64 into a financial death spiral that put it on the brink of the State Board of Education’s taking over its finances, until the District snuck through $5 million of “working cash” non-referendum (“back-door”) bonds as a band-aid measure in 2005, and followed that up with its big tax increase referendum in 2007.

We’ve seen what Ryan can do with the taxpayers’ money, so we think it’s time to see what Ryan can do with his own money.

If Ryan really wants to ensure that parking remains on the Scharringhausen property, he should buy the property himself and get into the parking business.  Or he could form a partnership with buddy Owen Hayes to do it.  That way, the taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill; and the property stays on the tax rolls.

Maybe they could get some of those behind-the-scenes land speculators we keep hearing about to invest in the deal.  They could all form an LLC to buy the lot and run it – which, fittingly enough, would support all that “new development” some of those same behind-the-scenes folks are reputedly looking to promote in and around Target Area 4.

If those land-speculation rumors are true, the speculators must be chomping at the bit by now to get some action on their TA-4 “investments” that were supposed to be short-term flip-jobs but have been languishing in this bad economy.

We don’t care whether Ryan is trying to help out some friends on a parking lot deal, or whether he’s trying to jump-start TA-4 – so long as it’s done with private money and/or debt instead of public funds.  That’s why we encourage Ryan and Hayes to pony up their own cash to do the deal.

“R & H Parking,” anyone?