Two items in this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, although seemingly unrelated, demonstrate why too many Park Ridge residents seem to be so blithely ignorant of what their City government is doing.

The first is an article titled “Despite cuts, Park Ridge City Council passes budget with $6.1 million deficit” (April 23, 2014),  which reported the vote taken at this past Monday night’s Council meeting.

That headline is almost accurate, which is a good thing.  And the article that follows almost accurately points out, in the third paragraph, that the $6.1 million deficit (actually, $6.0507 million, rounded upward to the nearest $100,000th) is the product of 61.7 million (actually, $61.6737 million) of projected revenue and $67.7 million (actually, $67.7245 million) of projected expenses.

But a reader needs to make it down to the tenth paragraph before beginning to be informed that the deficit is being created not from ordinary operations – the day-to-day business of keeping the City running – but from what amount to capital projects with long-term benefit, such as the $2.1 million deficit in the “Sewer Construction Fund” created by expenditures for sewer construction and improvement projects.

Such deficits, although sounding bad, can reflect the simple reality that expenditures for such capital projects tend to involve boxcar numbers that regularly exceed the amount collected for such projects in that same year.  Often money is accumulated in a particular fund over several years, during which time that fund might post annual surpluses.  But in the specific year in which, say, $3 million is spent for capital improvements, and only $1 million in taxes may have been collected for that fund, it appears that the City is deficit spending by $2 million – which it is, but only in an apples-to-oranges sort of way.

But as we pointed out in our last post, that’s not really explained in the budget summary provided by the City’s Finance Director.  And it’s not explained in the H-A article.  So the average reader is left with the literally accurate but functionally ignorant misimpression that the City is planning to overspend its income by $6.1 million in the coming fiscal year.

The taxpayers are owed a solid, clearly-understandable OFFICIAL City explanation of why the Council just passed a new budget with a $6.1 million deficit.  And they are owed that explanation by the Finance Director; by the City Manager, who is responsible for overseeing the Finance Director’s work; and by the Mayor and the City Council, who are responsible for making sure that the other two well-paid guys do their jobs properly.

And that explanation is already OVERDUE, because the Council already has approved the budget and misimpressions have already been created.

The second dose of ignorance is provided by a letter to the editor from prolific letter writer Jack Spatafora.

Titled “Park Ridge lucky to be where it is” (April 23, 2014), Spatafora’s letter attributes whatever success Park Ridge is experiencing – “today’s happy constellation of new supermarkets, food specialty shops, upscale restaurants, and pedigree school faculties” – primarily to its “being in the right location at the right time,” rather than to the efforts of “our hard-working City Council.”

We previously called out Mr. Spatafora on his ignorance of local government matters in our 08.14.09 post.  Since then (as best as we can tell) he has stayed within his happy-talk “those-were-the-days” wheelhouse and left the business of local government to the folks who do it, and to those who actually care enough to pay attention to and inform themselves about it.

Too bad he couldn’t have left well enough alone, because the existing level of public ignorance about local government needs no enhancements.

We may not agree with the views and decisions of some of our current and former elected City officials, or with their philosophies of government and local public policy, but Spatafora’s dismissal of them and their efforts as virtually irrelevant to whatever good things may currently be happening in Park Ridge demeans both those officials and their efforts.  And perhaps even worse, it could be viewed as effectively excusing the lazy and boneheaded efforts of mayors and councils past.

For example, we actually agree with Spatafora’s “right location at the right time” characterization for Whole Foods (assuming that’s one of those “new supermarkets” Spatafora places in his “happy constellation”).  But without the hard line taken by Mayor Schmidt and the previous Council – Alds. Sweeney (1st), DiPietro (2nd), Smith (3rd), Raspanti (4th), Knight (5th) and Maloney (7th), with then-ald. Tom Bernick (6th) MIA – against the demand by developer Lance Chody for tax revenue sharing, the City would be out $2 million of sales tax revenue.

Similarly, only by the aggressive and sometimes-painful efforts by Schmidt, the previous council and the current Council to cut expenses and reduce deficits, while keeping annual property tax increases at less than 4%, has Park Ridge been able to keep itself a place “where people want to be.”  That most certainly would not be the case had the City chosen, instead, to maintain its former spending habits by 10% annual tax increases, an extra 1-2% local sales tax and gasoline tax, and/or even higher licensing, parking and permit fees.

Park Ridge had the same location during the 1990s when the City – under then-mayor Ron Wietecha and a bunch of bobble-head rubber-stamp Homeowners Party aldermen – stagnated.  That led to last decade’s “don’t-just-stand-there-do-something” boondoggle of the Uptown TIF and the $20 million-plus faux-“investment” handout to Uptown developer PRC that has jackpotted City finances ever since.

After almost two decades (1990 – 2008) of City government done wrong, we’re finally starting to see some of the positive effects of City government done right.  But those are the product of plenty of hard work and sound decision-making by our elected City officials.

Not simple geography or serendipity.

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