More than a year ago we wrote about the abysmal condition of the City’s commuter parking lot along Summit Avenue (“‘Management By Walking Around Should Start With Stroll Along Summit,” 08.03.12).

Virtually 100% of the pavement was crumbling back then, some of it revealing formerly paved-over tree stumps.  That it was allowed to deteriorate to the point where the lot’s condition would have been an embarrassment to economically-distressed communities like Bellwood, Robbins or Waukegan suggests that somebody(ies) at City Hall had been asleep at the wheel for a number of years.

So there’s finally some good news to report: the rebuilding of that parking lot, along with the curbs and the installation of sidewalks, is beginning today.

The bad news, however, is how the City is choosing to deal with the problems the construction will cause.

Last Wednesday/Thursday, parkers along Summit returned to their cars in the evening to find a flyer stuffed behind their cars’ windshield wipers, announcing the commencement of the project and that there will be NO PARKING in that Summit lot between Prospect (on the West) and Ridge (on the East) for the approximately six weeks the project is supposed to take.

No mention of where these displaced resident commuters might find alternative parking – presumably because the City has made no arrangements for such alternative parking – or even where the other City parking lots are located.  Just a basic “parking lot will be closed for 6 weeks.”

And an implicit: “F U” to the folks who regularly use that lot.

We’re talking well over 100 spaces that are used 8-plus hours a day, 5 days a week.  Many of the people who regularly park in those spaces have never parked anywhere else in connection with their daily commute.  They probably could have used a small map of what City lots are closest to the METRA station.

But commuters got no map.  They got no alternatives.  All they got was a bare-bones announcement.

Oh, yes, and they got one more thing: not one but TWO mentions on the flyer of “Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd. (CBBEL)” – the City’s engineer on this project.

Hmmm, how curious.

We’ll match our governmental “transparency” and “accountability” advocacy against anybody’s, but wouldn’t one mention of “Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd. (CBBEL)” on this flyer have been enough?  Especially since “CBBEL” seems to have become the newest most-favored-vendor for City engineering services, with its fingerprints already all over the City’s various flood control projects.

Or is somebody at City Hall shilling for CBBEL?

Back in October, 2011, Mayor Dave Schmidt and Alds. Joe Sweeney (1st), Rich DiPietro (2nd) and Dan Knight (5th) expressed reservations about the circumstances surrounding the selection of CBBEL as the provider of engineering services for the initial phases of the City’s sewer improvement (a/k/a, flood control) plan.  According to the minutes of the October 10, 2011 Committee of the Whole meeting, Schmidt questioned then-city manager Jim Hock’s playing golf as a guest of CBBEL, especially when the City was negotiating with CBBEL over its services for the multi-million dollar flood control projects.

Hock’s gone, so we know he didn’t author the flyer promoting CBBEL.  So that would appear to mean that CBBEL has another “friend” (or two) in City Hall.

And when it comes to government, especially here in Illinois, such “friend”-ly relationships usually mean trouble for taxpayers.

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