To you Park Ridge voters who cast ballots in yesterday’s election: Well done!

You saw through the absurdity of union-backed Park Board members negotiating collective bargaining agreements with the union that backed them.  And you also appear to have seen through the bluster by members of the Park Ridge Senior Center, who reportedly had targeted incumbent Board members Jim O’Brien and Mary Wynn Ryan for defeat because of their refusal to add a ridiculous new sweetheart Senior Center contract to the ridiculous $180,000/year taxpayer subsidy Senior Center members already receive to keep their private “clubhouse” operating and their annual membership dues at a miniscule $35/member.

We offer our congratulations to both O’Brien and Ryan (who ran away from their “union” opponents by more than a 2-1 majority), along with our hope that they have gained an appreciation for those voters who make the effort to inform themselves about the issues and then go to the polls to vote for good government on a community-wide basis rather than for special deals for the special interests.  We also wish to congratulate newcomer Mel Thillens for his first-place finish in that race: hopefully his performance in office will mirror that lofty ranking.

We congratulate new District 64 Board members Anthony Borrelli and top vote-getter Dan Collins, who claimed two of the three available 4-year seats on that Board.  We find it noteworthy and encouraging that lack of a slate of candidates selected by the General Caucus produced the most competitive District 64 election in memory, with 5 candidates for the three 4-year seats and two candidates for the 2-year seat.  Maybe these two newcomers can help lift the veil of secrecy that has characterized D-64 operations for far too long (Hey, folks, how about entering the 21st Century and joining the City and the Park District in video-recording your meetings and posting them on your website?) – as well as start demanding academic achievement commensurate with the District’s per-pupil cost and its teacher salary levels.

Our congratulations to incumbents John Heyde and Scott Zimmerman come tempered with the suggestion that they stop doing business-as-usual – with all that faux self-esteem that D-64 is so good at generating – and start earning their spurs by actually improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of the education being provided.  And Mr. Heyde…lose the hide-and-seek gamesmanship that characterized your Board’s appointment of the new superintendent, its appointment of Scott Zimmerman as a new Board member, and the presentation of the District’s finances.  That’s just for starters.

On the City level, we congratulate Ald. Joe Sweeney on his first-time election as 1st Ward alderman by a vote of 328-200 over challenger Alana Warren.  As the appointed alderman he often talked the “fiscal conservative” talk but then inexplicably failed to walk the walk.  Here’s hoping he develops a comprehensible philosophy of City government, and then some consistency in its implementation.

And In the always-contentious 7th Ward, congratulations go to Marty Maloney, who handily defeated Franklin Ramirez and Lottie Janus 485-237-52 despite the Herculean efforts of 6th Ward resident Gene Spanos to figuratively tar-and-feather Maloney for having the temerity to say that he can’t justify throwing boxcar numbers of tax dollars at an anti-O’Hare fight for which nobody – not the City of Chicago, not the FAA, not the NIH, not the NTSB, not any of our neighboring communities, and neither our Democrat nor our Republican federal representatives – appears to be allied with us. 

Sweeney and Maloney will join with unopposed incumbent Ald. Rich DiPietro (2nd), unopposed write-in candidate Jim Smith (3rd, “the ward democracy forgot”), and unopposed candidates Sal Raspanti (4th), Dan Knight (5th) and Tom Bernick (6th) to form a Council that should be far more fiscally-responsible, transparent and accountable to the taxpayers than the current crop of Frimark holdovers.  Which is good, because the tasks they face look daunting, to say the least – especially after four years of general mismanagement by the clown-car Council heading for the exits.

Finally, as a sad counterpoint to the “congratulations” we have offered the successful candidates and the voters who helped elect them, we offer a hearty round of “boo”s to the vast majority of Park Ridge voters who couldn’t muster enough civic-mindedness to drag their sorry derrieres to the polls.  In the contemporary idiom: “You suck!”

At the very top of the “You suck!” list are the residents of the 3rd Ward, who couldn’t even produce a legitimate petition-filing candidate to actually appear on the ballot.  If this were truly a “just” system, you 3rd Ward derelicts would go unrepresented for the next four years.  But because justice appears to run second to mercy in our system, you will be represented by write-in candidate Jim Smith.

Running right behind the 3rd Ward on the “You suck!” list is the 2nd Ward, where unopposed Ald. Rich DiPietro got 501 fewer votes (723-222) yesterday than he got running unopposed in 2007.  And the bronze “You suck!” medal goes to the 1st Ward, which turned out 508 less voters for this year’s contested race than it did for Dave Schmidt running uncontested in 2007 (1,036 to 528).  Such dereliction of duty reminds us of the following quote:

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves; and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Even those of you in wards where the aldermanic seat was uncontested still had contested races for the Park Board and District 64 School Board that deserved the exercise of your franchise because, combined, they consume over $70 million of our tax dollars each year.  But because you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be bothered to vote…

You suck!

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