The 4th Ward's Aldermoron, James Allspaghetti, is sounding a lot like a whiny cry baby these days.
Last week we told you about Allspaghetti's whiny response to the proposal that the city council consider a recall ordinance for local elected officials. An article in the November 15th edition of the Herald-Advocate quoted Allspaghetti as saying that if an aldermoron had to face a recall election he may say, "This job ain't that great -- see ya."
In an article in the November 14th edition of the Journal & Topics, about Discussions Could Be Limited To 30 Minutes At Council Meetings, we read that Allspaghetti was again whining about the job demands of being a Park Ridge Aldermoron. This time Allspaghetti was quoted as saying, "I don't want to be there for two-hour, three-hour presentations anymore."
Two city council meetings in the last 6 months have lasted considerably longer than the usual 2+ hours that council meetings normally take. And both of those meetings dealt with issues of serious concern and potential impact to the Park Ridge community; one meeting on July 16, 2007.pdf included an address by Nicor about PCB contamination to residences in Park Ridge, and another meeting on August 20, 2007.pdf included one and a half hours of citizens commenting about Allspaghetti's and 3rd Ward Don DreadBach's zero tolerance idiocy, as well as a presentation by Norwood builders for their condominium development at Executive Office Plaza.
From our reading of both those sets of meeting minutes, it appears to us that what extends the length of meetings is the back and forth debate and questions from and among city council members, as well as increased citizen participation. We don't view any of that as being a bad thing, nor as too demanding of representatives' time.
But from all the whining Allspaghetti has been doing lately, it would appear that he feels sitting through the seemingly rare "two-hour, three-hour presentations" at city council meetings - the only venue where the public can have almost as much access to applicants and information as the city council has - is just too much time for Aldermoron Allspaghetti to have to spend on doing the public's business, in public.
Hey, Allspaghetti! We agree! We don't want you to sit through two-hour, three-hour presentations anymore either! You could save yourself from all the demands of being an elected representative, and save the people of Park Ridge from having to listen to you whine like a cry baby about it, and just leave office. The job you're doing ain't that great -- see ya!
November 26, 2007
Kwitcherbellyachin'!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
26 comments:
Bad form to sign up to be an alderman--twice--and then complain about the workload.
oh, please let him LEAVE! I will personally host the party at my home...in the 4th!
It is definitely becoming more of a dictatorship then a democracy.
Don't televise the meetings, we don't want them to know what we are doing!
Don't allow the citizens of our community to recall us!
Limit the amount of time that anyone can present or talk at a meeting!
Didn't former alderman Jeff Cox want to end meetings by 11:00 so that he could catch the second half of Letterman? But at least he wasn't whining about actually doing his job.
Indeed...very bad form to complain about the workload after having been warned that the workload would double with 1/2 as many Aldermen.
Who would have guessed that the "more efficient" Council of 7 would be making those "quicker decisions" because Mayoral puppets would be seeking to limit the public process and publicly shared information...?
Well, "quicker decisions" going forward perhaps...? ...if limits on presentations are accomplished... Afterall, there was the entertaining 5 deferrals on the EOP extravaganza...
Speaking of Alderman Cox, he was the one who pushed for the meetings to start earlier, and to move "Citizens Wishing to Address the Council" from the end of the meeting to the front.
Bring back the days of somewhat responsive--and responsible--government. Get rid of Howard's hacks.
I never thought I would say this, but I miss Ron Wietecha.
ok...........so some alderman don't want to be there for 2-3 hours.
Some alderman don't want to be
branded. Some alderman refuse to come out of the closet - " Dems"...I see you.......
So....the solution as I see it ..let those alderman - leave - now!
Save us the time and effort in seeking a reliable, honest, trustworthy, dependable, god fearing American to serve our community.
Its time to take back this country, take back this community, get rid of the non-hackers, non voters, and the like.
Get out now - while the gettin' is good !!
Sutcliffe: I won't say it. Let's just say that the three mayors I served with would grade out at D, A, and F-minus.
Back in the oldin' days....when an Atty was enroute for a proper burial up at boot hill...they all wondered why the horse snickered......while pulling the hearst!
Who are these "Dems" of which the anonymous commenter writes? Dave S. is a solid Republican. Rich D. is a moderate Republican. Don B. seems pretty Republican to me. Likewise Tom C. Robert R. is probably the most liberal of the bunch--a Rosemary Republican, I think. Jim A. is obviously a Republican. Frank W. is a solid Republican. Howard F. is a solid Republican. Who does that leave?
As to whether all of them are reliable, honest, god-fearing and dependable, that's open to discussion.
Finally, who are these people we need to take back the country from? I always thought the people were the country.
Hooray for the Bill of Rights.
Gitanjali 35:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
First a Sandburg reference, now Tagore. All this highbrow crap is going to ruin our carefully cultivated irreverent and unrepentant reputation!
So "m. anderson" is "Mark Anderson" the formoer Fifth Ward alderman. And if his mayoral ratings are chronological, Wietecha was the D, Marous was the A and Frimark is the F-. But what made Marous an A, Mr. Anderson, especially for those of us who aren't in love with what's being done with the Uptown Redevelopment he foisted on us?
I bet that the citizen comments will be moved to the end of the meeting and start when the aldermen put on their coats to leave
beaver:
Of course, the grades are subjective. You may a different perspective, of course.
Mayor MaRous and I did not always agree on issues. He was smart, a good listener, honest, courteous and respectful of his fellow officeholders and the citizens. I can't say the same for the other two. And that's how I grade.
sorry for the highbrow stuff.
I'll go back to the ganja. So sorry the aldermen are BORED. No more than we are with THEM!
I remember when I first started voting in P.R. At the primary you had to declare your party. Mom told me to "whisper" when I said DEMOCRAT. ha.
So, Mr. Anderson, Marous got an A primarily because he was polite and well mannered? You sure do have low standards.
I read that article in the journal, and couldn't tell if they were trying to impose a 30 minute limit on the entire discussion of a matter or just on the "presentation" part of it. PRU must have the real dirt on this, but when I read that article, it wasn't clear to me.
I believe there were several meetings (P&Z and Council) at which Norwood's presentation on the EOP proposal lasted over an hour, and probably a lot more than an hour. They had so many people there speaking sometimes, and it took a painfully long time for them to get through their "stuff." I think a limit on that kind of presentation makes sense, as long as it is reasonable.
I don't believe the limit should be applied to resident or alderman comments. Residents are already ordinarily subject to a 5 minute limit, and usually are not allowed to speak more than once-- though the developer was given great latitude in that regard-- their attorney even hopped back up during the "public comment" time once, which really ticked off a lot of us who were waiting to speak.
I think rather than limiting times, there ought to be some clear guidelines about when the applicants can speak, and residents should be able to reserve some of their 5 minutes to respond to previous comments.
The "dirt", as we understand it, is that Allspaghetti is simply talking about "just the presentation part" from applicants.
Even if all of Norwood's presentations at the council had been 3 hours each, the PRU crew still believes it is a big mistake to place a limit of 30 to 60 minutes on applicants and what they present before the public.
If we talk about only the 5 council meetings involving the Norwood EOP plan, and if at each of those 5 council meetings Norwood had made a 3 hour presentation - which they didn't - we would be talking about the city council having spent a total of 15 hours listening to a presentation about a plan this is going to affect nearly everyone in the city of Park Ridge for a minimum of the next 50 years.
More importantly, long presentations seem to be rare. The aldermorons signed onto this job, they should learn to deal with the demands of it without whining about it.
I agree that a proposal such as the one Norwood was making probably would require more than 30-60 minutes to make properly. It would be unreasonable to hold them to a shorter time given the scope and nature of the proposal.
But I also believe that reasonable time limits make sense. It's just more efficient, which is the likely reason that citizens are held to a five minute limit and are discouraged from speaking more than once. Why hold residents to a limit, but not presenters? Citizen input should matter as much to the aldermen as the nuts and bolts from the presenters, most of which is available to the public anyway at city hall or on the internet. What the public has to say isn't available anywhere else.
I am not disagreeing in principle with the idea that aldermen shouldn't be carp about "long meetings." I think I just would like to see a bit more parity in how citizens are treated vis-a-vis the presenters at council and P&Z meetings. There were several meetings I attended at which the displays being presented were only viewable by the council members-- they were placed on easels in such a way that the citizenry couldn't even see them, so didn't know exactly what was being discussed and therefore couldn't participate fully.
Just my 20 cents.
I didn't mean to call the aldermen carp. I meant to say "carping." Really!
That's just it - they ( some council
members) are not dems and or repub..they are for themselves !!
Ahhhhhh the price of being an independant!!!
And you're right....he process of allowing citizen(s) to speak and present their talking points...should be at a key time - the beginning.
Resepectfully.
I have lived in Park Ridge for 40 years never in my life of living in Park Ridge have the alderman Mr Jim A HAS NO CLUE whats going on in our town. I was notified from a freind that he is stopping the growth of our town and children. I heard what a great job he did conducting a heard about play ground for children. When the real issue was traffic for the area near Lincoln school and residents near there. Now comes along and resident who lives across the street crying about traffic not the real reason the play ground for our children not his own personal bitch session for lincoln traffic, I want to personal thank the ALDERMAN FOR LETTING THIS resident to speak talk about 5 hours of trash talking traffic and be little a developmental school that brings in young adults with young children, maybe Mr A and the resident should MOVE
How many kids will it take
in order to install cameras - as a dterrent !
We know folks will speed up and down our main arties/streets here.
Most of those speeders are either on the cell phone, talking with the four other Hs students in the car, have that gangbanger black music so loud that they could hear an oncoming siren....
Recently the loss of a kid over on Touhy Ave....tragic.
The Maine South Jr. who crashed his NEW camero into a tree early in the AM....tragic.
We stll hear about the drug usage at MSH......tragic.
We they leave for college - they must have a car.....also tragic.
Ever see a car load of college kids headed down the hwy on break...get out of their way....
Peace To All
We loose approx 6,000 kids per year to traffic accidents/fatals.
Until you have pulled a young kid from a car werck that lost his/her life because of carelessness...then this town will never change.
I believe that sometimes it does take a tragedy to wake up the comunity.
To Anon@12:30,
FYI:
We posted your comment where you submitted it, but we think you had a different post in mind.
We can delete the comment here and you can resubmit it to a different thread if you like.
The PRU Crew
Post a Comment