We respect Carla Owen.  She is a smart person who seems to care deeply about this community. 

So when the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate recently published one of her guest essays, and when she sent us a copy of her and Barbara Hemeder’s letter to the editor of the Park Ridge Journal, we promptly read and analyzed their contents – even though we already had given plenty of thought and devoted plenty of pixels to the ongoing dispute over the Park Ridge Senior Center and the $330,000 Betty Kemnitz trust bequest to the “Park Ridge Senior Center,” including our posts of 12.01.10, 01.27.11, 07.29.11 and 04.16.12.

But after reading that essay and that letter, we are more convinced than ever that Ms. Owen and that not-so-merry band of seniors who run that private corporation known as Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc. (“Seniors Inc.” or “SSI”) are totally and unequivocally wrong about who should be running that facility at 100 S. Western, how it should be run, and who should get the Kemnitz trust money.

Let’s start with Ms. Owen’s essay, which is an endorsement of the seniors’ illegitimate power and control over the Senior Center. 

It begins with the totally false premise that the “Senior Center” is not the building on Western but, instead, is some sort of “organization” of its members.  That’s like saying the Park District’s Community Center on Touhy isn’t the building but, instead, is some organization of all the people who work out or otherwise recreate there.

That’s just plain goofy.  But without such a goofy premise, Ms. Owen’s and Seniors Inc.’s arguments for control of the Senior Center collapse because any “Senior Center” organization is not a legal corporation like Seniors Inc., or a limited liability company, or a similar form of corporate entity.  At most, it’s an unincorporated association; and Ms. Owen, a licensed attorney, knows that this particular unincorporated association has no legitimate claim on the use of that Senior Center building.

That is borne out by the several contracts between the Park District and Seniors Inc. (not the “Senior Center” organization) going back to 1980, the last of which is dated December 31, 2005, and expired on December 31, 2010, over 18 months ago.  Not surprisingly, there is no mention in that Agreement of anything called the “Senior Center” organization, or of any “Senior Senate” that Ms. Owen claims is “the elected governing body of the Senior Center.”   

Simply put, Ms. Owen is insisting that the Senior Center building owned and operated by the Park District (on behalf of all the Park District’s taxpayers) should be run by some “elected governing body” of some “organization” with no contractual or other recognized legal right in that Senior Center building.  And then she has the audacity to condemn the Park District for not going along with such an absurdity!

While Ms. Owen’s essay is about power and control, her letter is about plain old unvarnished greed – the greed displayed by this suspect “Senior Center” organization and Seniors Inc. in their venal attempt to hijack the $330,000 Kemnitz trust bequest to the “Park Ridge Senior Center,” a/k/a, the Park District’s building at 100 S. Western.

Ms. Owen, on behalf of Seniors Inc., writes that “we believe we are the rightful recipients of the Kemnitz bequest.”  Why?  Because, as she modestly explains it: “we are better able to judge how Betty [Kemnitz] would like to spend her money.”  

Says who?  Why, Teresa Grodsky, of course!

Grodsky, the long-time Park District employee and Senior Center supervisor who left the District under a cloud several months ago, is the trustee of the Kemnitz trust.  As best as we can tell from the available information, while still employed by the Park District, Grodsky went rogue and didn’t even notify her then-employer of the bequest before distributing more than 2/3 of it to Seniors Inc.   Once the Park District discovered the bequest, it raised its objections; and Grodsky responded with the pending lawsuit.  

If Ms. Kemnitz wanted Seniors Inc. and its leadership – and not the Park District – to decide how her $330,000 bequest should be spent, she easily could have had her attorney draft that bequest to “Park Ridge Senior Services, Inc.”  But she didn’t: It was drafted to “Park Ridge Senior Center.”  And the only “Park Ridge Senior Center” we know of is at 100 S. Western, owned and operated by the Park District – whose board already has said it would use that money solely for that building and its senior citizen operations.

That sure sounds to us like exactly what Kemnitz wanted. 

In light of that offer, the demands of Ms. Owen and Seniors Inc. that the Park District “drop this lawsuit immediately” and let Seniors Inc. have the money to use as it wishes are not only wrongheaded and shameless, but border on despicably greedy.

PublicWatchdog initially addressed this Senior Center situation solely because we objected to the Park District’s spending approximately $160,000/year in taxpayer money to subsidize the operation of the semi-private Senior Center clubhouse so that its 800-1,000 “members” could continue to enjoy their measly $45 annual “dues” when a fee structure comparable to the District’s other facilities should have put those dues at around $225 – still a bargain, especially in light of such a large taxpayer subsidy they’ve been receiving for such a small number of users.

That’s one reason why we think the Park Board was being far too conciliatory in offering to walk away from Kemnitz’s $330,000 in return for a mutual general release from Seniors Inc. and the questionable “Senior Center” organization.  Nevertheless, we considered it an acceptable settlement of a lawsuit that could cost a lot more in attorneys’ fees and costs to litigate.   And if the relationship between Seniors Inc. and the Park District is as dead as Seniors Inc. and its spokespeople like Ms. Owen say it is, then mutual releases serve as appropriate eulogies. 

But it seems that the Seniors Inc. crowd’s greed, combined with their desire for power and control over the Senior Center, motivated their rejection of that overly-generous settlement offer.  Which means that these issues will likely need to be litigated in the courts, although we understand that Judge Peter Flynn earlier today ordered the parties to mediate their disputes before going into full-blown litigation.

Whether mediation is of any value to the taxpayers depends on whether Seniors Inc. finally gets real, gets a conscience, and displays some good faith – which will be demonstrated by nothing less than acceptance of the mutual releases previously offered by the Park District.  That still won’t be fair to the taxpayers, but it will be a big step in that direction on a going-forward basis.  And it will stop the legal fee meter from running. 

Thanks in large part to Ms. Owen’s essay and letter, the taxpayers now have an even better insight into the entitlement mentality that has prompted the greedy Seniors Inc. leaders and their equally greedy senior constituency to try to beat the Park District out of money rightfully belonging to the District and its taxpayers.

Hopefully, this misbegotten goat rodeo also will serve as a lesson to the Park District (and to other local governing bodies) about how an otherwise worthwhile public-private arrangement – if instituted in a half-baked manner and allowed to spiral out of control due to lack of effective government oversight – can, and will, go bad, usually to the detriment of the public rather than the private entity.

Meanwhile, the honest, decent taxpayer gets ripped off a little bit more by a cadre of the greedy masquerading as the needy.

To read or post comments, click on title.