Back in the bad old days of Park Ridge City government – under mayor Ron “All SOC all the time” Wietecha, acting-mayor Mike “All PRC all the time” Marous and mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark – most “big” decisions (e.g., long-term, multi-million dollar projects like the Uptown TIF and Uptown Redevelopment) were made by city council fiat, without public/taxpayer opinion via advisory referendum.

That was when all the chairs around The Horseshoe were occupied by people who arrogantly insisted that THEY were elected to make those decisions, without even consulting the taxpayers.

Not surprisingly, that’s primarily why we’re stuck with the TIF that never should have been, and the Uptown project that is projected to cost the City in the $17-$20 million range instead of producing the $20+ million of “profit” Wietecha, Marous, Frimark and their sycophants were promising back in 2000-2006. Worse yet, that boodoggle handcuffed the late mayor Dave Schmidt and the “adult” Councils stuck with cleaning up their predecessors’ messes.

Perhaps the worst of those messes is a long-neglected infrastructure that has contributed to the flooding – exacerbated by the McMansions and multi-family housing enabled by our flawed Zoning Code that effectively encourages the covering of green space with gray space, thereby jacking up the density beyond what the neglected infrastructure was originally designed to accommodate.

Unlike prior councils who were content to kick the can down the road, the Schmidt councils and the current Council have responsibly studied, analyzed and vetted the options for trying to solve the City’s flooding problems on a City-wide basis.

To that end, they have come up with what appears to be a reasonable solution: the creation of a stormwater utility to generate the mega-revenues needed to fight flooding by imposing progressive fees on those properties that contribute most to the flooding problem.

All property owners would be charged a stormwater utility fee, but it would be based on several factors, including the amount of the property’s water-impervious surface area (e.g., gray space): the larger the gray space that can’t absorb water, the higher the fee. The fee will also likely depend on how much money the City needs to raise for a comprehensive flood remediation plan, with estimates already exceeding $100 million and climbing, albeit speculatively toward the $200 million mark.

Not surprisingly, the idea of a gray space-based fee has caused howls from some of those folks to whom we refer, in shorthand fashion, as “freeloaders” because we don’t want to have to repeatedly describe them as “those residents who are always looking to leverage maximum benefits for themselves, their families and their friends by shifting the costs of those benefits onto the backs of their fellow taxpayers”

A number of them are afraid that they will be charged extra because of all the water-impermeable gray area created by their oversized homes, driveways, patios, gazebos, etc. which creates the run-off that contributes to overland flooding.

If the science behind the gray versus green distinction is sound, and it seems to be, those extra charges appear to be acceptable collateral damage in the war on flooding.

Unlike the hubristic mayors and councils of old who claimed to “know better” than their constituents what was best for the City, however, Acting Mayor Marty Maloney and this current Council sound ready, willing and able to ask the taxpayers/voters to weigh in on any stormwater utility plan via an advisory referendum. And that’s exactly the way any major decision like this should be made.

That referendum, however, probably won’t be held until next November’s (2016) election.

Why?

Because the Council is still waiting for final plans and numbers for such a massive undertaking from the City’s flood consultant, Christopher B. Burke Engineering. Those plans and data probably will not be forthcoming until January – well after the legal deadline for the Council’s putting a referendum on the March 2016 primary ballot.

That’s also the right way to do something this significant. Better to measure twice – or three and even four times – and cut once, than to keep cutting without measuring. And better to hold such a referendum during a November general election, when voter turnout is always highest, in order to get the broadest possible response.

But that has many of the chronic flooding whiners – yes, Barb Gaffke, we mean you – whining even more than usual about how this is just further delay and just another way in which they’re being screwed over by this Council.

Many of them beef about water in the streets. But even Burke has indicated that water in the streets can be a preferred alternative to water in the basements. And that makes sense, despite the inconvenience that the former can cause.

Also joining the whiner chorus are many folks up in the Second Ward who bought cheap properties at a discount befitting a chronic flood zone, then built their McMansions with the expectation that they could browbeat a spineless Council into borrowing and spending multi-millions of dollars of other people’s tax dollars to provide the flooding remediation that will magically jack the value of their properties.

One local realtor we talked to confidentially opined that solving the flooding problem in Mayfair Estates could raise the value of those properties by from $50K to $100K overnight – at a cost of only several hundred dollars, at most, of extra taxes for each of those property owners. If you’re one of those property owners, that’s what is called a “no-brainer.”

So it’s no wonder they would prefer to browbeat the Council into enacting their flood relief program instead of risking a referendum vote on it, even if that vote were to be merely “advisory.”

That’s the beauty of freeloaders: they’re very predictable.

Hopefully the Council will see them for what they are, see through their predictable tactics, and move forward with a sane and fiscally-responsible, long-term flood control program for the entire City.

That sounds to us a lot like a well-conceived stormwater utility endorsed by a majority vote of the taxpayers via a November 2016 referendum.

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