We’re starting this post out with one tiny bit of good news: the Park Ridge City Council sustained one of Mayor Dave Schmidt’s vetoes last Monday night – nixing higher wage ranges for non-union City employees – by a 6-1 vote (Ald. Jim Smith dissenting).  

City Mgr. Jim Hock requested those higher ranges to accommodate the 3% across-the-board raises the Council approved – on Hock’s recommendation – by passing the amended 2011-12 budget back on May 25th by a 5-2 vote (Schmidt and Ald. Dan Knight dissenting, Ald. Joe Sweeney absent), and then locked in by over-riding Schmidt’s veto on June 20th by a 6-1 vote (Knight dissenting).  The Council rubber-stamped Hock’s higher wage ceilings on August 15th by yet another 6-1 vote (Knight again dissenting) which Schmidt vetoed on August 29th, setting the stage for the veto-sustaining vote. 

The worst part of these raises (and the raises for unionized City employees) is that they come with basically no articulated rationale other than that those employees have gone 2-3 years without raises.  That’s it: no discussion of improved performance, no analysis of greater efficiencies, no attempt to differentiate among the various employees.  Just a blanket, everybody’s-entitled, 3% increase tacked onto whatever those non-union employees already had been making.

What were Alds. Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd), Jim Smith (3rd), Sal Raspanti (4th), Tom Bernick (6th) and Marty Maloney (7th) thinking when they voted for these raises?  Who knows, because they’re not saying: apparently they don’t believe they owe the taxpayers any explanation when giving away significant amounts of public funds.

Although the Council’s veto-sustaining vote didn’t repeal those raises that will cost the taxpayers $185,766 this year alone, by preventing increases in the wage ceilings it thereby capped those raises at those ceilings – with the balances of the would-be raises paid out in lump sum-like bonuses that, as we understand it, are not considered for purposes of pension benefit determinations. 

Whether by blind squirrel theory or the law of unintended consequences, this Council appears to have done a good thing for Park Ridge taxpayers.  And even if it provides only a small savings this year, a much bigger benefit may result if these lump-sum payments become an alternative to those arbitrary salary increases that carry the extra baggage of increases in pension liability. 

So we’re calling this one small step for Schmidt, even if it’s no giant leap for the Council’s spending lemmings – unless, of course, they can stiffen their spines enough to start saying “no” to raises and “yes” to bonuses based on productivity and merit instead of across-the-board donations.

Which leads us to Monday night’s over-ride of the mayor’s veto of the first $15,444 installment payment to the City’s private community groups – not including the Youth Commission, which is a City (i.e., “public”) commission rather than a “private” organization.  

Schmidt vetoed this installment on October 3, 2011, noting that these donations of completely arbitrary amounts of tax dollars that are budgeted to total $61,776 this year not only violate Article VIII of the Illinois Constitution and the City Council’s own Policy No. 6, but also represent bad management – as Schmidt’s veto message pointed out:

Furthermore, if the City is to expend public funds on these privately-performed services, it should not do so in the form of donations of arbitrary funding amounts, but in the same manner that it purchases any other services from private vendors: under a written contract that identifies each service provided, to whom it is being provided, and the charge for each such service; and that also requires that the City be furnished with the information necessary for it to objectively determine whether all the services for which it is being billed have, in fact, been rendered to Park Ridge residents.

Unfortunately, don’t expect this Council – with the exception of Ald. Knight – to “get” these concepts.  Our tongue-tied aldermen seem to enjoy playing Santa Claus with our money far too much to concern themselves with something as mundane as requiring contracts from these private organizations that expressly limit their receipt of City funding to: (a) specific services to be provided to Park Ridge residents at specific unit prices; and (b) the City’s receiving a detailed accounting confirming that those services have, in fact, been provided at those prices.

What’s wrong with that, one might ask?  It would make the people running those private organizations unhappy.

And one thing we’ve learned about these spendthrift aldermen is that they don’t like to make anybody feeding at the public trough unhappy.

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