We have previously mentioned Park Ridge 6th Ward resident and anti-O’Hare gadfly, Gene Spanos, in our 08.17.09, 11.16.09, 12.11.09,  12.18.09, 03.08.10, 06.30.10, 04.06.11, 02.10.12 and 06.25.12 posts.  In each of those posts the subject was O’Hare, except for that June 2012 one in which we identified him as one of several residents who were reportedly recruiting Larry Ryles to challenge Mayor Dave Schmidt in the April 2013 election.

Even that post was related to O’Hare, however, because Spanos – who had backed Schmidt in 2009 – had soured on him as the result of Schmidt’s opposition to throwing boxcars of our tax dollars at fighting O’Hare expansion and all the problems that it creates for Park Ridge.

Schmidt realized, as did the members of the City Council and almost everyone else who has been paying attention and can do political head counting, that neither our state government representatives (Sen. Dan Kotowski and Rep. Rosemary Mulligan; and, since 2013, Rep. Marty Moylan) nor our federal government representatives (Sens. Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky) were ready, willing and able to go to the mat for Park Ridge…and actually get something accomplished.

That’s because O’Hare is a gold mine not only for Chicago but also for most neighboring communities whose industrial bases are comprised of businesses heavily served by, or that serve, O’Hare.  Park Ridge, on the other hand, has almost no industry and, therefore, no real economic benefits from O’Hare to off-set the detriments from what Spanos regularly described as “Mayor Daley’s Air Force” back when that evil dwarf was pushing his O’Hare Modernization Program (“OMP”) to expand his major economic/tax revenue-generating engine.

We haven’t agreed with Spanos’ spare-no-expense approach to fighting the O’Hare leviathan, and we still don’t.  But we think he has really gone off the tracks with his recent ethics complaints against 6th Ward Ald. Marc Mazzuca and the City’s O’Hare Airport Commission chairman Jim Argionis.

Spanos’ beef against those two fellows is that they have been attending meetings of the Fair Allocation in Runways (“FAiR”) Coalition, a coalition primarily of Chicago northwest side neighborhoods (and the suburbs of Harwood Heights and Norridge) that are substantially impacted by the OMP and are ostensibly looking for the same kind of relief as Park Ridge has been seeking.

Mazzuca admits to having attended two FAiR meetings last year, noting that the members of FAiR have problems similar to Park Ridge’s.  Argionis concurs, rightly pointing out that neighborhoods comprised of Chicago voters have the best chance of influencing policy and behavior of the governmental body that owns and controls O’Hare.

But according to a recent article in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, Spanos is sickened by “an elected official [Mazzuca] and an appointed official [Argionis] assisting the city of Chicago and a group of residents in the 41st Ward in their work in seeking relief.”

Say what, Gene?

What passes for Spanos’ reasoning on this issue gets even cloudier with his admission that he doesn’t have any idea whether or not what Mazzuca and Argionis have done is actually an ethics violation:

“I don’t know.  I don’t know if there’s a violation…I don’t know the city code, but as a retired law enforcement officer, I know you must always tell the truth, and what’s happening here is these FAiR group families are not telling the truth and they are being misguided by Park Ridge officials.”

That’s stone-cold flippin’ brilliant…NOT!…especially because City Attorney Everette “Buzz” Hill has advised the Council that Spanos’ apparently clueless beef is considered an “ethics” complaint for which the City Code requires the hiring of an independent attorney to investigate.

Spanos’ complaint about the FAiR folks not telling the “truth” appears to be related to his claim that the FAiR folks are “sandbagging”: encouraging and provoking the making of extra noise complaints to the Chicago Dept. of Aviation’s hotline.  Ironically, we recall Spanos himself encouraging Park Ridge residents to do the same.

Spanos’ misguided view of this situation very well could be sincere.  On the other hand, it could also be the product of a rivalry arising from his self-proclaimed “leadership” of an alleged-but-never-proved “500-family” group called “Citizens Against Plane Pollution” (“CAPP”).  As best as we can tell, CAPP has achieved no measurable reduction in O’Hare-related noise or pollution for Park Ridge or its residents since its inception.

It may also be telling that Spanos reportedly cancelled a February CAPP meeting at the Park Ridge Public Library because FAiR had scheduled a January 25 meeting at the Summit of Uptown, which Spanos seemed to suggest was FAiR’s unfair attempt at stealing CAPP’s thunder.  Amazingly enough, Spanos is demanding that FAiR reimburse CAPP for the meeting fee it paid the Library.

GFL with that, Gene.

What he and his fellow anti-O’Hare fanatics don’t seem to grasp is that Park Ridge lost any leverage it had over O’Hare back in 2000, when Sen. John McCain – then chair of the Senate’s influential Commerce Committee – figuratively stared down fellow Republican Rep. Henry Hyde and decreed that local Illinois politics must yield to either an expansion of O’Hare or the construction of a third Chicago airport.  That’s all Richie Daley, desperate for more revenue to conceal the consequences of his financial mismanagement of Chicago, needed to hear.

From that point, even then-mayor Ron Wietecha – the pony for whom opposition to O’Hare had been his one and only trick – realized that the anti-O’Hare ship had sailed.  He shifted his attention to Uptown Redevelopment before jumping ship entirely, resigning on a Friday evening and shortly thereafter moving to Barrington.

His next two successors, Mike Marous and Howard Frimark, ignored O’Hare and focused on satisfying their own edifice complexes by bringing Wietecha’s Uptown vision to fruition.  By the time the first new OMP runway (9L-27R) opened in November 2008 after 3 years of construction, Frimark actually seemed surprised to learn that it was bringing numerous additional flights over areas of Park Ridge that previously had been unaffected by airplane noise.

Since then, things like supplemental environmental impact studies, lobbying the FAA, and full-blown litigation have been considered and found seriously wanting in one way or other.  And only time will tell whether the noise monitor at Maine South yields any worthwhile results.

Instead of condemning Mazzuca or Argionis, anti-O’Hare folks like Spanos – and the taxpayers of Park Ridge – should be applauding their efforts to forge a working alliance with a group that would appear to have the greatest potential for bringing about an outcome far more beneficial for Park Ridge than the heretofore fruitless, if not outright worthless, lip service paid to our predicament by our elected officials at the state and federal levels.  And far more beneficial than the heretofore fruitless, if not outright worthless, activity by Spanos and CAPP.

Unless, of course, running up the City’s legal bill to investigate boneheaded ethics complaints constitutes an achievement.

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