They May Try This Next!

By: Gary Larson, The Far Side


As regular PRU readers know, we usually post a city council recap the day after city council meetings. But yesterday we decided to bite the bullet and post about the O'Hare expansion issue -- we felt we had sat on the topic without comment for long enough. We had been looking to find something, anything, to offer PRU readers on the O'Hare issue as a beacon of possibility, so we took our sweet time researching the issue. We are grateful we didn't get a beating.

So thank you for your patience! And once again today we have a quickie council recap for you, plus a snippet.

Today's recap has been written and submitted by a guest reporter -- Naomi de Plume! We are grateful for the opportunity to publish this guest perspective.

We've got a sneaking feeling that the next move Mayor Howard and his Aldermorons may try, to get people to stop paying attention, is to feign death! We say everybody should hold out for the real McCoy!

O.k. -- we're just kidding about that...mostly.

Enjoy!

Council Recap!

Howard Frimark’s handpicked City Council started off the new year the way it spent all of 2008, thumbing its noses at the residents of Park Ridge. In a precursor of things to come, almost every matter on the agenda was designated as a “consent” item, meaning there was no discussion at all before they were approved. Get used to it.

Most of the evening’s festivities centered on the Council’s ill-conceived plan to go to a Committee-of-the-Whole process. Incredibly, Fourth Ward Alderman Jim All-spaghetti even admitted, proudly in fact, that now the Council will be able to put almost every issue on a consent agenda and forego public debate at Council meetings, because all of the discussions will already have taken place at the COW meetings!

Rubber stamps will be in short supply in 2009, because the Council will be using them all. So if you happen to be a resident who chooses to attend Council meetings to find out what the Council is up to, well you’re out of luck. When Alderman Dave Schmidtzkrieg warned that the COW process was inherently flawed because the public will have even less opportunity to follow what the Council is up to, he was told that any alderman who wants to can pull an item off the consent agenda. Right. We can see it now: an alderman will do just that, say his piece, and the others will sit there in stony silence or criticize the offending alderman for wasting their time since the discussion has already occurred. Dollars to donuts that All-spags himself will be the first guy to say just that. And what if a citizen wants to pull an item off the consent agenda? Well, tough luck. You don’t count.

Once that fiasco was through, Alderman Schmidt updated the Council on the citizens’ efforts to get a police facility referendum on the April ballot. He reported that Joe Egan & Co. have obtained over 1000 signatures despite the fact that Park Ridge experienced its most inhospitable December weather in years. Schmidt implored the Council to do the right thing and listen to the residents who want to have a voice in this matter by doing in 5 minutes what it has taken these valiant citizens weeks of braving snow and cold and rain to accomplish. The reaction from the other aldermen? Stony silence. Better get used to that as well.

Naomi de Plume
Cub reporter for the Underground


Snippet!

We've been wondering what the Journal & Topics has been up to because we hadn't seen anything come over the wires from them in a while -- now we know! They're upgrading their web site; welcome to a brave new world, Journalites!

And here's a sample of the JOURNALonline to come, along with an explanation of something we've been scratching our heads about too!