Because there are some “hot” items on the agenda’s of both the Park Ridge City Council and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board who are meeting TONIGHT, we’ve got our quick takes on a few of them for your consideration:
City Firefighters’ Contract: On tonight’s City Council agenda is approval of a new 3-year firefighters’ union contract. As we’ve said before, we believe multi-year contracts that effectively try to predict future local and national economic conditions by locking-in increases in compensation and/or benefits are foolish; and across-the-board compensation increases not based on greater productivity or other merit are idiotic. Worse yet, in a separate memorandum (“Appendix E”) attached to the proposed agreement, the City is being asked to give up its right to lay off any current firefighters for the three years the contract is in effect, until April 30, 2014. That means that, should the economy take a turn for the worse during the next three years, the City will be contractually forbidden from laying off firefighters irrespective of its financial circumstances!
This is bad economics and bad government, but what can you expect from a contract that was negotiated in secret because the union requested secrecy, and City Mgr. Jim Hock and Fire Chief Mike Zywanski agreed to that secrecy without even consulting the mayor or the Council? That secrecy in the negotiating process becomes even more troubling when you look at the red-lined version of the proposed contract on the City’s website and see a number of changes from the previous agreement, the reasons for most of which are not apparent on their face and are not explained anywhere in that document or otherwise. That’s just more bad government by the bureaucrats (Hock, Zywanski, et al.) for a special interest (the firefighters’ union).
Under these circumstances, any alderman who votes to approve such an irresponsible and anti-taxpayer agreement should have the decency to accompany his vote with either a public admission that he is not being fiscally responsible, and/or a public confession that he doesn’t even understand what being “fiscally responsible” means.
Washington Ave. Assisted-Living: Also on the City Council’s agenda is another episode of “How the Group Homes Turns,” the continuing saga of developer Mark Elliott’s attempt to turn his bad investment in 3 single-home lots into three group homes, purportedly for “frail elderly…who can no longer live on their own without assistance from a care giver” according to Elliott’s most recent “Updated Application Statement” – even though Elliott insists that these homes are not “assisted living” facilities for purposes of City licensing and zoning.
It is becoming clearer as this saga continues that our Zoning Code, despite an extensive (and not inexpensive) re-write several years ago, is ill-equipped to deal directly and efficiently with issues such as are presented by this type of group home concept. Which is why, if Elliott’s Updated Application Statement is factually accurate and truthful, it would appear that what he is trying to do with his property is lawful, albeit undesirable to many residents in that neighborhood who long have suffered from the anti-social behavior from residents of the adjacent Park Ridge Youth Campus.
What we need, at least for dealing with this current mess, is a formal and unequivocal legal opinion from the City Attorney stating whether the facts and the law support Elliott’s proposed use of his property or not. If they do, then – like it or not – he has the right to do what he is trying to do with his own property; and he should be allowed to do so. And then the City should get busy revising its Zoning Ordinance to correct what is looking more and more like the shoddy work product of our highly-paid zoning consultants (Camiros Ltd.) and the citizens who comprised our Zoning Re-Write Task Force.
D-64 Budget Q & A: Over at Franklin School tonight, the Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 Board will hold its 2011-12 budget “Q & A” session, a week in advance of the planned approval of that budget next Monday night (Sept. 26). Whether this Q & A session is legitimate or just a perfunctory attempt to create the illusion of transparency and accountability in the budget process remains to be seen. But, given its 6:00 p.m. start time before many residents are even home from work, much less able to grab a quick bite to eat and head back out the door, we have our doubts.
Of course, the 93-page draft budget is a pretty impenetrable document, even to accountants and attorneys trained and accustomed to dealing with such financial matters; and it lacks detailed explanations of all of the differences between the 2010-11 revenues and expenses versus those in the 2011-12 proposed budget . So exactly what kind of Qs might be asked from whoever shows up remains to be seen. But one question that comes to mind is: What specific expenses have gone up over last year (and by how much) so that an almost $6 million decrease in proposed “Capital Outlay” still leaves only a $2 million reduction in overall budgeted expenses?
But if you have any questions about the proposed budget, you had better get there on time. Because once the Board and Administration are done with any pesky questions from the taxpayers, they will be running into closed session to plan how they’re going to give away more of our money when they “negotiate” the District’s upcoming collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union – despite the appearance that the proposed budget already will be giving those teachers more than $3.2 million in salary and benefit increases during the coming budget year. And, must we remind you, that’s for only 8-9 months of actual work?
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Perhaps one of these days the City and D-64 will put on their inter-governmental cooperation hats and agree to schedule their meetings so that they both don’t hold them on Mondays, thereby forcing interested taxpayers to have to choose which one to attend. But we’re not going to hold our collective breath waiting for the D-64 Board to voluntarily do anything that might add to its transparency and accountability.
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