One would think that Mary Ann Irvine would know better.

After all, she was a two-term Park Ridge alderperson from 1987 to 1995. She sought to replace mayor Marty Butler when he resigned in 1991 to become a state senator, withdrawing her name before the city council chose Ron Wietecha.

After leaving the council she became the City’s Public Information Coordinator (a/k/a propaganda minister) for another 10 years. As some point she also served on the Park Ridge Library Board, including as its president.

Given all those years in and around City Hall, she should have learned how representative government is supposed to work in a municipality such as ours – even though we recall her as one of those many rubber-stampers who filled most seats around The Horseshoe between 1991 and 2003, when the Homeowners Party ran local government more like a social clique than a true political party with policies, principles and platforms.

But in a letter in this week’s Park Ridge Journal, Irvine displays an ignorance – or maybe just an arrogance – of City government and aldermanic power that warrants some discussion because it’s so plainly wrong.

We’ve included what the Journal has set up as a kind of point-counterpoint presentation – both Mayor Dave Schmidt’s criticism of a previous Irvine letter published in the October 8 Journal slamming the City Council for this election’s Library referendum, and Irvine’s reply to the mayor’s criticism – so you can read them for yourselves (and think about how Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd might present it back in their old Saturday Night Live days).

Before we get into Irvine’s reply, we must point out that Schmidt and Irvine both supported Howard Frimark in his successful run for Park Ridge mayor in 2005. They parted company when Schmidt successfully challenged Frimark in 2009, however, and she was one of the twenty-five former aldermen who, along with the three former living mayors, formally endorsed Larry Ryles for mayor over Schmidt last year.

As best as we can tell, she abhors the way the City is governed under Schmidt.

So when Irvine starts her reply to Schmidt with “[t]he mayor and I must have different philosophies about serving on the city council,” she isn’t kidding – even if the rest of her letter demonstrates no grasp whatsoever of Schmidt’s philosophy of government as repeatedly expressed and practiced by the mayor over the past five years he’s been in office, as well as during the two years before that when he served as 1st Ward alderman.

Distilled to its essence, Irvine’s position is: (a) she wants the Library to get more money from the City; (b) the Council sucks for not giving the Library more money; (c) the Council is using the referendum to avoid responsibility for any Library–related tax increase; and (d) the Council worded the referendum question so that it would fail.

The wording of the referendum, as Schmidt points out, is prescribed by state law and was fashioned with the assistance of the City Attorney and debated at no less than five public meetings in May, July and August of this year. One of them was a joint meeting between the City and the Library Board. A quick Google search reveals that there also were numerous newspaper stories about the referendum and referendum language during that period.

So where was Irvine with her criticisms of the referendum wording during the three months when they could have made a difference?

Contrary to Irvine’s complaints, the Council hasn’t “dodged” any responsibility for funding the Library. The aldermen expressly decided not to give the Library all the funding it requested, instead treating the Library like many other City departments and cutting its budget in an attempt to manage the entire City budget without unduly hiking taxes.

Rather than pull a “we know what’s best for you ignorant taxpayers” move like the Park Board did with its no-referendum $8 million water park decision in 2013, however, the Council – in response to the Library’s and some citizens’ complaints about that funding decision – chose to give the taxpayers a chance to prove the Council wrong through a binding referendum vote.

In other words, unlike an arrogant Park Board and the arrogant way Irvine thinks a City Council should operate (so long as it agrees with her ways of spending taxpayer money, of course), these current aldermen are actually inviting the taxpayers to publicly second-guess their decision of what is the prudent amount of Library funding, and whether taxes should be raised for that purpose.

Imagine that!

Irvine takes a parting shot at the Council for eliminating more than $550,000 from the Library’s budget since 2009 but not giving the taxpayers a tax reduction in that amount, asking: “Where have those funds gone?”

Try the same place that a boatload of other tax dollars have gone: into that black hole otherwise known as the Uptown TIF. Irvine should remember the Uptown TIF because she spoke favorably of it and promoted it while she was the City’s paid propaganda minister.

Whether the Library referendum passes or fails is up to the voters – but only because these aldermen, after deliberating at length and making a tough decision, weren’t so arrogant that they couldn’t acknowledge they might be wrong about their constituents’ willingness to pay additional taxes for the Library; and because they weren’t so cowardly that they were afraid to let the voters prove them right or wrong by an actual vote, rather than by rumor, innuendo, or some half-baked survey.

This is the way local government should operate, and the mayor and the City Council should be applauded rather than pilloried for it.

Irvine, on the other hand, thinks quite differently. And she may still be carrying a grudge from when the voters rejected the $7 million Library expansion referendum she favored back in November 1992; and/or when the voters rejected the brand new $20 million library referendum she also favored back in November 2002

No matter what the outcome of this referendum, however, this editor – in his role of Library Board member – will continue to do his fiduciary duty and work to ensure the Library is managed as well as it can be for all the taxpayers and residents of Park Ridge.

Robert J. Trizna

Editor and Publisher

Member, Park Ridge Library Board

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