A front-page article in last week’s Park Ridge Journal reported Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Director Ray Ochromowicz’s dismay with “misinformers” – Senior Center members who were (according to Director O) disseminating inaccurate information about the Park District’s plans for the Senior Center (“Misinformers Try Park Director’s Patience,” Nov. 24). 

Apparently some members of that semi-private club are unhappy about the Park District’s exploration of ways to operate their clubhouse more cost-effectively, such as by running non-senior programs at that facility in order to reduce its $190,000 operating deficit that the taxpayers have been covering each year.  That such a deficit is being rung up for an operation with a little over 1,000 members – a good number of whom aren’t even Park District residents – suggests the need for some new management ideas. 

Running more programs out of there is one way.  We understand that the Park District has been running a summer KinderCamp out of the Senior Center, although we also understand that the Park District inexplicably has not included those revenues and expenses in the Senior Center’s accounting.  Why not? 

But if the seniors really want to preserve their age-based (55 and over) exclusivity, we again suggest charging Senior Center members more realistic membership “dues” than the measly $35/year currently on the books.  Dues of $225/year (the current $35 plus $190 more) would make the deficit vanish, and the seniors could keep their exclusive clubhouse for what amounts to about 60 cents a day per member. 

At this point, however, that doesn’t appear to be on the Park District’s radar. 

Instead, Director O and his staff remain engaged in “negotiations” with what we understand to be representatives of Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.”), another one of those private 501(c)(3) corporations that seem to like to call themselves “community groups” because it sounds so much nicer than “corporation” when they show up asking for their annual handouts of public funds.  Up until this current fiscal year, Seniors Inc. was getting thousands of dollars from the City of Park Ridge despite sitting on a tidy bankroll – $114,000 at year-end 2008, the last time Seniors Inc. filed an IRS Form 990. 

So why negotiate with a special interest that, in theory, should be totally under the control of the Park District?  Why hasn’t Staff and the Park Board, representing all the District’s residents and taxpayers, simply come up with a better plan and implemented it? 

Could it be because politicians (and the public officials who answer to them) tend to bend over backwards for seniors who vote in far greater percentages than other groups?  That might explain, at least in part, why Park District Commissioner Stephen Vile – who we understand to be a Senior Center member himself – recently argued for the Park District’s increasing its Senior Center subsidy to make up for Seniors Inc.’s loss of City funding.  

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, Commissioner Vile?

Or just trying to placate those misinformers?

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