An article in the online Park Ridge Herald-Advocate dated March 6 bears the title: “Park Ridge mayor calls veto of firefighters pact ‘matter of principle.’” 

It goes on to discuss the Council’s over-ride of Mayor Dave Schmidt’s veto of an after-the-fact change in the firefighters union contract that effectively allows the firefighters to double-dip one extra paid holiday – compliments of bungled contract negotiations led by Fire Chief Mike Zywanski, under the should-have-been-watchful-but-really-was-blind eye of City Mgr. Jim Hock.  The cost to the City’s taxpayers: $6,400.

Schmidt admitted that if his veto were upheld and the firefighters union filed for arbitration rather than voluntarily give up one of the double-dip holidays, just the City’s legal fees for that arbitration would exceed $6,400…even if the City won.  Schmidt’s reasoning for opposing the contract change?  “It sets a bad precedent, and it sends the wrong message to the other unions by showing weakness and inviting them to employ the same tactics.”

We agree, which should come as no surprise to anybody who has read our posts about those negotiations and how Chief Z and Hock helped keep negotiating details hidden from public view until the contract had become virtually a done deal.

But at least six aldermen – Sweeney, DiPietro, Smith, Raspanti, Bernick and Maloney – apparently didn’t agree with Schmidt’s concerns about “bad precedent” or about encouraging certain unions to employ such tactics in the future.  Or maybe they didn’t want to risk having to spend the money to arbitrate.  Or maybe they just didn’t care. 

Unfortunately, we don’t know – because while Schmidt explained his reasoning, the Override Six weren’t talking. 

Ironically, that same H-A article reported the Council’s over-ride of another of Schmidt’s vetoes – this one of more donations of tax dollars to Center of Concern, Maine Center for Mental Health, and Meals on Wheels.  The Council over-rode as to the CofC and Maine Center handouts by a vote of 6-1 (Knight dissenting), but then sustained it for the $3,168 donation to Meals on Wheels by the bare minimum of 3 votes needed to sustain: Knight, Sweeney and Smith.

Which brings us back to the issue of “principle” – about which Jefferson once wrote: “In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.”

As with the firefighters contract, Schmidt has stood like a rock on this community group funding, always articulating his reasoning – as he did when he announced his veto of these latest donations at the February 20, 2012 meeting: “It is wrong to compel taxpayers to support any private entity, no matter how well-meaning the group, unless that group is providing an essential city service which the city cannot.”  Knight has been equally staunch and has articulated that same reasoning on several prior occasions.  That sounds like a “matter of principle” to us.

When it comes to Sweeney and Smith, however, their votes seem more like a matter of schizophrenia – as evidenced by their previously having voted both for and against “community group” funding. 

As recently as the February 6th meeting (with Sweeney MIA), Smith voted for donating to Meals on Wheels the exact same $3,168 on which he is now, just one month later, voting to sustain the mayor’s veto.  Yet just last June, Smith voted to override Schmidt’s veto of the Council’s budgeting $65,776 for all three of those groups, while Sweeney voted to sustain that veto.  And, going back to August 23, 2010, Sweeney voted for donating $7,040 to Meals on Wheels but against donating $6,600 to Maine Center. 

If you can discern any controlling principles of public policy or municipal governance from that kind of behavior, you’re a lot sharper than we are – or just as bollixed up as Sweeney and Smith seem to be.  Judging from their public comments and votes, they could very well be Marxists…albeit of the Groucho variety: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”

Unfortunately, most of the other aldermen have yet to voice or display any discernable consistency in their approach to the many issues confronting City government that would suggest more developed principles of public policy and governance than Sweeney’s or Smith’s.  Heck, Rich DiPietro’s been an alderman since 1995, and the “principle” of municipal governance he has demonstrated most consistently during all that time is go-along-to-get-along.

Modern leadership guru Stephen Covey distinguishes “reactive” people from “proactive” ones by the latter’s ability to “subordinate an impulse to a value.”  Reactive people are “driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment” while proactive ones are “driven by values – carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.”

Looks to us like a proactive mayor and one aldermen, surrounded by a bunch of reactives.  And the results speak for themselves.

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