When we read the headline “Park Ridge mayor rejects grant for police training in mental health” in the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate (March 26, 2014), the first thought that crossed our mind was: What kind of idiot would do that?
We know money’s tight over at City Hall and that, consequently, our elected officials have been in a constant battle since 2009 to maintain essential services while keeping annual tax increases at around 3%, even as the Uptown TIF debt continues to suck up around $1 million in debt service expense each year. Getting $59,000 of grant money to provide Park Ridge police officers with training to better deal with mentally ill individuals, therefore, should have been something the City would jump at.
So why would Mayor Dave Schmidt “reject” such a grant?
After reading the H-A article, it’s clear he didn’t “reject” the grant. But, notwithstanding the misleading headline, the article doesn’t fully explain where and/or how the grant ball got dropped.
The article reports that Schmidt was concerned about “hidden costs” of the grant such as travel and overtime charges for the officers undergoing the training. That’s a legitimate concern, especially if those “hidden costs” wouldn’t be covered by the grant funding itself and, instead, would become over-budget expenses that had to be paid out of the City’s General Fund.
“When I got it I looked it over and had questions for staff, but I never really got complete answers and the time expired,” Schmidt explained. “I never got an explanation so I never signed the form.”
Police Chief Frank Kaminski claims he promptly responded to Schmidt’s questions through City Mgr. Shawn Hamilton; and Kaminski is quoted in the article as saying he didn’t think Schmidt “didn’t want to sign” the grant. Unfortunately, the article fails to report whether Hamilton forwarded Kaminski’s responses to Schmidt fully and in timely fashion, and/or whether those responses actually did answer all of Schmidt’s questions.
More significantly, the article fails to report why the mayor needed to sign off on the grant at all if there truly were no uncovered expenses. As we understand it, Hamilton has the discretionary authority to sign contracts without mayoral or Council approval where the costs to the City don’t exceed $10,000. So if there were any timing issues that jeopardized getting the grant, why didn’t Hamilton either follow up with Schmidt or just sign off on the grant himself?
We expect Schmidt’s critics to howl that he’s prejudiced against the police department and the mentally ill. They’ve already barbecued him repeatedly for his vetoes of giveaways of arbitrary amounts of taxpayer funds to private corporations who want to use those funds to provide services to non-Park Ridge residents with no accountability to the City for those funds. Some of those critics probably insist Schmidt hates puppies, kittens and small children, too.
But we can find no mention of, nor even think of, any instance in which Schmidt has “rejected” or not supported free, no-strings-attached funding of anything that would benefit the City or its residents.
Except for one misleading headline.
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14 comments so far
It’s funny you raised the question about why the city mgr. didn’t sign the grant, because that was the first thought I had when I read the HA story.
Why do they need training in mental health?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The flippant answer would be: “Because there is grant money available for it.”
But we’ll go with the one given in the HA article: “Dealing effectively with members of the public who suffer from mental illness has been an issue for the [Park Ridge Police] department” according to Chief K. And studies abound which attribute a substantial amount of criminal behavior to mental issues running the gamut from learning disabilities and anger management to full-blown insanity; see, e.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/mental-illness-prisons-jails-inmates_n_2610062.html. Other studies are a bit more circumspect in tying violent crime to mental illness; see, e.g., http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php.
Mental health is a problem that needs to be addressed, but I would be interested in seeing just what kind of “training” is covered by this grant. The treatment of mental health problems is a medical “science,” but it is a pretty squishy one that means many different things to different people and is susceptible to many different treatments with varying-to-nonexistent levels of effectiveness.
The HA article mis-spells the grant name as “Bryne” when what I believe it is referring to is the Edward Byrne Grant program, which is run by the federal government and is supposed to address areas plagued by violent crime but which recently appropriated money to “help system
-involved individuals manage their mental illness and address their criminogentic needs” (whatever that means).
https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/ojp/grants/Documents/JAG%202014.pdf
If the end goal is to assign blame, hang the bell around the CM’s neck…..no question about it.
How ever, my first thought when reading the article in the HA is that these guys do not play well together. These are supposed to be grownups and as the clocked ticked toward the application time expiring not one of them picked up a phone, raised their hand, blew a whistle or stood on a desk to get this done?!?!
People love to talk about the public versus private sector. Well this is a perfect example. In the private sector additional information is needed to get 59K in additional business through the door it is all hands on deck. Even if someone (in the case the CM) clearly dropped the ball, the others involved will do what is necessary to get the deal done and address the “ball dropping” after the contract is signed.
In this case, it appears even though they knew the clock was ticking they all kind of just sat there. “I have not heard back….oh well”. Yes they sent an e-mail asking for or providing more information but that is only the least they could have done. There was clearly no sense of urgency on the part of any of the three of them.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The goal of this blog has always been transparency and accountability. If you want to call that “blame,” we can live with that – just as we can live with calling it “praise” for things done very well, however rare those occasions may be.
The ball was dropped here, no doubt about that. But in the private sector your “all hands on deck” approach involves people whose full-time job it is to make sure stuff gets done on time. And those “hands” are almost always the CEO, COO, CFO, et al. down the line – not the chairman of the board and board members.
By that paradigm, the two bureaucrats involved here are the full-time employees making six figure salaries, pensions and benefits – while the elected mayor and aldermen, like the chairman and board members in the private sector, are part-timers (by Illinois law) who make $12,000/year and $1,200/year, respectively. And the elected officials on the park and school boards are part-timers who make NOTHING while the bureaucrats there also pull down six figures, pensions and benefits for full-time work.
Finally, whether or not “these guys…play well together” is the least of our concerns. This City is in the financial mess it’s currently in due, in large measure, to previous bureaucrats and elected officials “playing” TOO WELL together – with the elected officials often being little more than finger puppets for the bureaucrat “experts” and rarely even daring to question the edicts and decrees of the city manager, finance director, police chief, fire chief, et al., no matter how shallow or even bizarre those pronouncements might be. And that’s a situation that still pretty much persists in the school districts, where too many school board members seem almost terrified to ask their school superintendents for even a smidge more gruel.
I believe “don’t play well together” is a valid consideration. The issue of alignment of staff and Mayor/Council has improved some since Koch was fired. At least the staff doesn’t openly defy the Council at Council meetings. But the terrible trio of Fire/Police/Buildings still doesn’t want to be told anything or to align with Council. Defibs and Salary Compaction are two solid examples.
The expense question that Schmidt asked and the police chief’s HA response that Schmidt did not want to sign is an example of the chicken s…stuff that Management routinely throws out.
The Mayor/Council deserves support from the Management. It is clear that the election did not bring the two groups together.
One of those Department heads need to be fired. Not retired. Not golden parachuted. Everybody on staff needs to see that the Mayor/Council are in charge and that there is a strong penalty for subversion driven by contempt.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nobody needs to “support” anybody. All the bureaucrats and the elected officials need to do is their own damn jobs!
Bureaucrats – especially the career variety who tend to occupy upper management – believe that they are the enduring constants of government and elected officials are merely transitory variables. Consequently, they tend not to have any inherent respect for elected officials, and such respect is actively discouraged by their various bureaucrat fluff-and-stroke organizations (e.g., the Illinois City/County Management Association, the Illinois Association of Park Districts, the Illinois Association of School Administrators, etc.) whose management tends to portray and discuss elected officials as pawns to be manipulated.
Once the elected officials take off the bureaucrat-issued rose-colored glasses and see the situation for what it is, the elected officials should be able to manage it for the taxpayers’ benefit – so long as they have sufficient brains and spines to overcome the bureaucrats’ shamelessness.
This brings up two things that were brought up in the last mayoral election:
1. The Mayor does not work well with staff
2. He is not a “full-time” mayor.
Disagree if you’d like, but these are the results directly from the above two points.
Sure, the CM didn’t do his best, but the mayor didn’t either. The result…taxpayers lose.
The only one looking good in this is the Chief. He did exactly what he supposed to do. Chief Kaminski does a fantastic job. We are lucky to have him.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It seems like the Staff doesn’t work all that well with the Mayor or the Council. And the last arguably “full-time” mayor we had was Howard Frimark. That’s all we’ll say about that – except that if you want to change our form of government to legally have a full-time mayor, you can start a petition drive and put it on the ballot either this November or next April.
Excellent and accurate retort to 3:31 at 9:26 a.m.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks.
It’s my understanding that the City Manager has an assistant. That being the case, why didn’t the CM ask his assistant to follow up and get the requested information? I know, it’s probably a rhetorical question. Oh well.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ll suggest an answer anyway: This wasn’t sufficiently important to the full-time $150K+ City Mgr. to order a wake-up call – either for himself or for the part-time ($12K/year) mayor – from the CM’s full-time assistant.
And that assumes the CM couldn’t have signed the grant document himself.
Only you could spin a city government where the CM, Police Chief and Mayor cannot even get on the same freakin’ page long enough to successfully apply for a 59K grant as a positive thing. How about we change the words and simly say the do not work well together. Apparently they do not even have a comfort level to call each other one the cell phones that they all carry all day every day and ask a question or do what was necessary before the clock expired.
I think the entire city would agree with you about “playing too well together”. I also thin they would agree that the fact that this opportunity was allowed to literally die on the Mayors desk is just flat out stupid.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nah, anybody who has watched local government for the past 20+ years could do it, because it’s not “spinning” – it’s just pointing out the sad reality of public sector employment that manifests itself in various stupid, wasteful and infuriating ways on a regular basis because nobody ever seems to hold the bureaucrats accountable for their stupidity, wastefulness and infuriating behavior.
And, no, “the entire city” would NOT agree about bureaucrats and elected officials “playing too well together.” Too many un/under-informed residents, like little tykes, don’t care whether “mommy” buys tons of stuff the family can’t afford, or “daddy” gambles away his paycheck – so long as they don’t fight about it.
And all those fluff-and-stroke public-sector “professional” associations feed that the-bureaucrat-is-always-right mentality by regularly publishing articles and studies about how “good” elected officials don’t get in the way of what the government “professionals” are doing.
“Nobody needs to “support” anybody. All the bureaucrats and the elected officials need to do is their own damn jobs!” “Excellent and accurate retort to 3:31 at 9:26 a.m.EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks.” Nonsense, Editor. You just assumed away the problem so you could then go on about why the bureaucrats don’t do their job. Then you got complimented for it.
Don’t you get it? Firing Koch was not enough!! “Doing their jobs” for the officials means “to hold the bureaucrats accountable for their stupidity, wastefulness and infuriating behavior.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve been “getting it” for 20+ years, and the taxpayers have been “getting it” – although in a very different way – for that long. You, on the other hand, apparently can’t tell a Hoch from a “Koch.”
Hock
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yeah, him too.
OK, well I stand by my compliment but must agree with 4:10 p.m. — in fact, I was copying and pasting the same quote when I scrolled down and saw his/hers. So here’s my version:
Who is the somebody who is supposed to replace the nobody who (n)ever seems to hold the bureaucrats accountable for their stupidity, wastefulness and infuriating behavior? Apparently you don’t think it’s the elected officials. Then who? Even the elected officials we know and love make excuses for the well-paid staff when the shortcoming isn’t something the elected official personally cares about. Witechka had O’Hare; MaRous had Judy B, Baldaccino and other NIMBYs and NOTEs; Frimark had Aldermen who insisted on ethics ordinances (incredibly, mostly Democrats, BTW) and Schmidt has the TIF and the City budget. Outside of those preoccupations, each focused on….? And the neglected concerns — often low-hanging, cheap or easy fixes that would make a big difference — are what will bite us in the behind in the next administration. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “and so it goes.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Looks like it’s time for a little Local Gov’t 101.
Under Park Ridge’s “weak mayor, strong council” form of government, the Council is the body that is responsible for holding the city manager accountable for himself and all of his underlings. The Council can fire the CM but not the CM’s underlings. Other than lobby from the big chair (a/k/a, the “bully pulpit”), all the mayor can really do is break ties and veto things he doesn’t like.
For all but the last five months of his 12-year reign, Wietecha had an almost entirely rubber-stamp, bobble-head council that he controlled through his Homeowners Party cronies. Marous was the Anybody But Frimark choice when Wietecha fled in Sept. 2003, and by playing both sides of the aisle (Homeowners and “Independents”) Marous was able to fashion a coalition of support for his pride and joy, the Uptown project. When Marous’ candidate, Tinaglia, lost to Frimark, the Independents who had been “bought” (politically, that is) stayed bought – until Frimark passed his cut-the-council referendum and installed his Alderpuppets.
When the voters showed Frimark the door, his Alderpuppets still were able to give Jim Hock a sweetheart contract before they, too, exited without even attempting re-election. And in 2011, the voters gave Schmidt some aldermen who fired Hock. Hopefully, they will hold Hamilton to a higher standard than what sent Hock packing, but that still remains to be seen.
The Alderpuppets in office now (different Mayor, different Alders, still puppets) share the current Mayor’s preoccupation with the TIF and budget cutting to the virtual exclusion of all else. As obsessions go, it’s a valuable one, but the accompanying disinterest in that evanescent thing, “quality of life,” seems to have let us blow off a “mere” $59K in free money. I cannot imagine you being so sanguine about $59K if it were for somthing you valued. Let’s face it: Any and all of these elected officials could and should have at least done some speechifying to the CM, on the record. Perhaps the neglect was due to their primitive unease with the whole notion of mental health as an issue here in Bedford Falls. If we don’t fund relief for a problem, we don’t have a problem, right? Staff knows what the elected officials care and don’t care about, and they are not the types to be intraprenurial and fix things nobody will thank them for. It’s truly that simple. Your history lesson is amusing because Mayor Schmidt is more than willing to use his bully pulpit even for partisan political purposes when the spirit moves him. He is intelligent, articulate and anything but “weak.” And if the Council is supposed to be “strong,” this crew defines it the same way Frimark’s fellas did. That is, whatever the Mayor wants is fine with them. They are ALL still making excuses for the CM they hired. But by all means, let’s blame his assistant.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Some of the current aldermen apparently never got the memo that they are Mayor Schmidt’s “Alderpuppets in office now,” otherwise Schmidt wouldn’t have had to veto several boneheaded non-merit based raises, irresponsible contracts, budget items, etc.
From what we can tell, certain members of Staff are more concerned with playing politics than with doing their jobs. Or maybe they’re just using politics to hide their incompetence. But it IS up to the elected officials to hold the bureaucrats accountable, starting at the top of the food chain.
The last two threads are very illuminating.
Give the reader the chance to be POed at their neighbor and label them freeloaders and you get 31 posts along with you leading the charge!!!
Write a post about our government pissing away a grant worth 59K and what do ya get?? 13 posts and a whole lot of defense from you.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No defense from us – we think it was a screw-up. But we still don’t know: (a) whether Schmidt got all the information he asked for; (b) when he got it; and (c) why the CM didn’t/couldn’t sign the grant. So we don’t know whether the CM or the mayor should wear the jacket for this, assuming that Chief K provided everything he was asked to provide.
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