If you happen to be one of those simplistic local partisan Republicans (we’re leaving you simplistic local partisan Democrats alone today) who thinks that replacing our current representative in Congress will magically make our O’Hare problem better, you were probably a bit disappointed by what you heard from her Republican challenger last Wednesday night at the Park Ridge Library.

Joel Pollak seems like a bright, earnest and pleasant fellow.  He’s got whatever cachet comes from undergrad and law degrees from Harvard.  He may yet give Jan Schakowsky a run for her money.  But when it came time for the rubber to meet the road on O’Hare, he didn’t have any more horespower under the hood than the incumbent.

Pollak’s message?  Try to get a seat “at the table” and see what we can negotiate, because lawsuits don’t have a likelihood of success and chances aren’t good that the airlines will observe any City Council-declared “no fly” zone over Park Ridge.

Unless City Hall starts deploying Stinger surface-to-air missiles to those embattled residents in the Belle Plaine corridor.

Even the double handful of local Dems salted throughout the audience waiting to pounce on any Pollak flub had little to squawk about.  Pollak noted the pre-emptive role of the FAA (a/k/a, the “Feds”), which is the 800-pound gorilla on whom Richie Daley relies to keep ‘em flying at O’Hare and pumping more cash into Chicago’s coffers that have been depleted by decades of his administration’s mismanagement, cronyism, and outright crookedness.

But if Pollak’s message was lost on anybody last Wednesday night, last night’s City Council dog-and-pony show by Irvine, California attorney Steven Taber should have been a bucket of cold water to all but those afflicted with terminal O’Hare Fever. 

We quote from Taber’s August 9, 2010, memorandum to the mayor and City Council concerning O’Hare-related litigation:

“While there is potential for causes of action that would affect the OMP, and thereby prevent or reduce the noise over Park Ridge, the time for filing project related lawsuits has essentially passed.”

The same appears to go for lawsuits other than those directed against the OMP as a whole.  As Taber notes in his memo, even suing to get a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) is viewed as having a probability of success that is “not very high, even with significant evidence supporting noise in excess of levels predicted by the EIS.” 

We don’t like airplane noise and pollution any more than the next guy or gal.  But, as we’ve said on this blog before, the time for getting after O’Hare expansion and the new runways via lawsuits (if there ever was any realistic opportunity) came and went years ago – while Mayors Howard Frimark, Mike Marous and even O’Hare-obsessed Ron Wietecha busied themselves with other things (in Wietecha’s case, figuratively -and futilely – baying at the O’Hare moon at virtually every City Council meeting). 

And let’s not forget all those Belle Plaine folks who were asleep at the wheel regarding OMP until they got a 757-sized wake up call. 

There may be numerous reasons to prefer Joel Pollak to Jan Schakowsky as our representative in Washington.  But from what we heard last week at the Park Ridge Library and what we heard last night at City Hall, an effective plan to provide Park Ridge with relief from O’Hare is not one of them.

And throwing $165,000 of City money at the problem is just a waste.