Kwitcherbellyachin'!

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!

Bad Mojo.

People talk. We hear things. And we try to get the real scoop. Sometimes that is not easy to do.

What we hear today is that Nicor has been testing schools in district 64 for PCB contamination. We also hear they've found some and it will have to be cleaned up, and that district 64 has been notified of the problem.

We checked the district 64 website for an alert and found this - alerts - PCB sampling update 9/7/07.pdf That alert is not what we heard about.

We understand the desire for the quiet approach because who needs a bunch of hysterical panicky parents calling the district and demanding answers. But, we do feel the entire community should be alerted as to whether or not all schools have been tested, what the criteria for testing was, and what the results have been. We feel this may be of particular interest to Field and Carpenter school parents, as we heard it.

Keeping the entire community fully informed would seem to be a natural function for an organization said to be involved in the business of education.
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Thanks for the update: 9/10/07 Letter - Carpenter School.pdf