Bah Humbug Grab Bag!

The PRU Crew is in a bad mood. Sorry. Not really.


For our faithful PRU readers who look forward to viewing the City Council meeting videos, it appears you may have to wait longer than usual. The City did manage, after 48 hours, to post a 3 minute video of the Special City Council meeting -- aren't they all? -- from Monday night, but hasn't managed to post the video of the regular City Council meeting as of 10:00 AM this morning. We may have thought somebody would get a clue and realize that 3 video views in 24 hours means people aren't very interested in what's been made available, and are instead waiting for something more substantive than the Council rubber stamping approval of the tax levy. Apparently not.

The PRU Crew is wondering if any of the people posing as our representatives in local government have bothered to inquire about the delay.


For our faithful PRU readers who thought there was any hope of city officials getting the message through your majority votes on referendums, guess again. As covered in an online article by one of the local rags, we learn "no" does not mean "no." Just ask the O'Hare Airport Commission people -- they'll explain it!

And remember, way back when, we explained why Police Dept. brass was willing to keep on keepin' on with "the golden fleece boy, who answered the siren's call - hi there, Hoopty Lou, how's it going in traffic? - [who] can be kept safe for future use as a PRPD pitchman; there are not too many coppers with the ability to speak and write impressive sounding bullshit as well as Hoopty Lou can."

A new proposal for renovation and expansion of the Park Ridge Police Dept. was offered for review at the City Council's budget workshop on Tuesday night. And the PRU Crew now understands very well why no supporting documents were included on the City website for review prior to the meeting.

The PRU Crew is again wondering if any of the people posing as our representatives in local government have bothered to inquire about the lack of supporting documents being made available for public review -- and the limited demands of the law should not be an acceptable excuse.


Covered in another online article in one of the local rags is the anatomy of a travesty. While the PRU Crew more than understands the legal questions, as well as the risk of precedence, we cannot get past how thoroughly and completely the City process screwed the Vine Ave. residents.

We don't know what the answer is, but we know we haven't heard it yet. And we strongly encourage the City Council and staff to find a way to make those residents whole. What has happened to them, throughout this saga, is unacceptable and should never be allowed to happen again.


Finally, the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District Board will be meeting tonight (agenda .pdf). They are scheduled to go into closed session, which is expected to last a very very very long time. We hope the discussion includes talking really really really bad about these people!!!

In all seriousness, we wish calm heads and reasoned consideration for the Park Board as they contend with the task ahead -- it's certainly a loss, but not the end of the PRRPD world as we know it.

Good luck.

The Joker Writes for Pioneer Press!

In today's edition of the Herald-Advocate we are treated to a view of the inner workings of what passes for the mind of the Herald-Advocate editor.

In the editorial, Referendum rules work against input on airport question, the PRU Crew came away feeling as if the editor simply could not bring himself to give Alderman Frank Wsooooolman (7th ward) and the majority of the city council a well deserved whack on their heads for approving a referendum question that essentially duplicates if not completely confuses the issue before voters on whether or not to build a new police station.

Instead of rightfully condemning Ald. Wsooooolman and the rest of the lapdog council for their display of "political showmanship" at the 11th hour, which can be deemed as equally responsible for shutting out the possibility of a referendum question about funding to fight O'Hare expansion, the editorial suggests that it is those opposed to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's sales tax increase who have somehow done a grave disservice to voters by proceeding to accumulate measurable voter reaction to Stroger's fiscal folly.

The PRU Crew feels that kind of thinking is evidence of mental retardation.

PRUdos to anyone that takes on one of Crook County's biggest idiots, Todd Stroger. PRUdos again to anyone who backs up their opposition to one of Crook County's biggest idiots with countable votes which will then provide voter-backed ammunition needed to undo Stroger's fiscal folly.

The Herald-Advocate editor blew it again -- just more noise from one of the local rags.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychoanalysis -- a practice, in part, by which a person's ego is analyzed and motivations are discerned. According to Dr. Freud, the ego will pursue the attainment of something to compensate for something else felt to be missing.

Sigmund Freud assigned to women a desire for compensation, of what was "missing" from them, as penis-envy. The PRU Crew has never bought in to that psychobabble, because we feel very deeply that with what women do have, they can have as many penises as they want. We know this. We know this because offers have been made. And rejected -- even after major effort has been made to explain to them what they're missing. We can only conclude Dr. Freud is completely wrong on this women with penis-envy thing, because people do not reject offers for things they envy and supposedly want.

However, the PRU Crew isn't ready to summarily reject the entirety of Freud's theory of an ego's desire for compensation.

If we go looking for an example of Freud's theory in practice, close to home, we feel it can be found in 7th Ward Alderman Frank Wsol's police station referendum solution -- or Wsolution, as the PRU Crew is preferring to call it.

In an article in today's Journal and Topics, 'Wsol Pitches Idea For Police Referendum Wording', we read that Ald. Wsolution is quoted as saying, "I think I have a solution, and I'm going to be asking the City Manager to put this on the schedule for next Monday." Alderman Wsolution is pitching two referendum questions to the voters of Park Ridge --

1. -- "In adopting a capital project to improve the administrative/public and police facilities at 505 Butler Place, shall the City of Park Ridge require as conditions of issuing any bonds for such improvements that:The annual bond payment will not cause an increase in City taxes/fees or service reductions as of 2008 levels (adjusted for inflation); the total spent, absent interest and operational costs will not exceed $16.5million; the facility improvement will not require new land purchases and the facility improvements will, where economically appropriate,include "green engineering" for the purpose of lowering on-going operational costs."

2. -- "Shall the City of Park Ridge adopt a policy that all non-emergency debt and all non-emergency budget increases above the CPI-U (CPI-U decreases will not apply) shall require voter approval by referendum vote?"

The PRU Crew is wondering what Ald. Wsolution is trying to compensate for -- is this really the best he can do? The PRU Crew has to admit we aren't even sure of what a yes or no answer means for each of those questions, as one of our commenters pointed out yesterday.

We know there are those who feel the condition of the police station is fine and there is no need to address the shortcomings in the facility. The PRU Crew strongly disagrees with that position.

We know there are those who feel we can't afford the expense of an entirely new station. The PRU Crew feels that position has some merit, at this time. But the City of Park Ridge has mucked around about the police station for so long, under much better economic conditions, that we are beginning to feel we may never see a real solution to the problems of the police facility in our lifetime!

The PRU Crew is a fairly uncompromising bunch on nearly every issue. We tend to take a look at things and make a judgement about what we feel is the right course of action.

On the issue of our police facility we feel we could swallow some kind of compromise. We don't know exactly what that is, but we know that the current condition of the station is unacceptable.

We're hoping the politicians can stop their ego compensation games for a little while and get to work on a real solution. We've had just about all we can stand of their dicking around.

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!