And People Thought PRU Was Rough!

We understand there's a desire among some Alderdunces to allow more billboards to be erected in Park Ridge.

How about billboards like this --



And some people thought our pictures of dead Victorian kids was bad!

Any faithful PRU readers giving the Pub-dogs a bone this week? You should be.

Think!

The PRU Crew has been watching the conversations taking place here and on other blogs with mixed reactions lately. Sometimes our readers shock us with their understanding and insight. Other times we wonder how some people manage to dress themselves every morning.

And when it comes to politicians, we always find their brainstorms highly entertaining.

If you haven't had a chance to do so, check out the Niles Underground post: Blago has another brain fart. While we aren't impressed with the newbie effort at writing, and we would strongly encourage the employment of spelling-check software, the message of the piece is bulls eye right.

Traditional Family Portraits.

Victorian Family Portraits - 'Haunted When It Rains'

Just as we do today, during the Victorian Era it was tradition to take at least one family portrait. Traditionally, family portraits can be of the entire family or just the kids. More on this tradition later...

Park Ridge is mostly a traditional community of mostly traditional families with mostly traditional values, and mostly law-abiding citizens. Park Ridge is a nice place to live and raise a family, mostly.

Another tradition is for principals at local schools to write a message for the school take-homes. Last week, a PRU reader forwarded to us a copy of the traditional message from the principal's desk at Lincoln Middle School which included, in part, the following:

From The Principal's Desk

Parents,

I am ashamed to tell you that I had the Park Ridge police come to my office yesterday complaining about the number of traffic violations that are occurring daily at Lincoln Middle School because parents, not students for the most part, are not obeying the law.

Please parents, my teachers, Mr. Gleason and I have been trained to teach middle school students and are compelled to give them the best education possible. As adults you should be doing the same by setting good examples. One good example would be to obey the rules of the road. You should have learned those rules when you earned your driver's license!

When you don't follow life's safety rules around this school, you put a child's life in danger. Follow the rules, not because it's the law, but because it will save your child's life!

My parents taught me always “to think of others more highly than yourself”. That translates to me, as drivers of a motorized vehicle, to relax. You will get to your next destination, but maybe not on time. If not, leave earlier, make better plans or just accept that on a given day you will be late and that's life. Guess what, any of those possibilities may happen on a given day, so just think of others more highly than yourself (our kids) and leave it at that. You will save lives!

With every new year we are given the opportunity to make resolutions that are designed to produce changes. Most people make at least one resolution, and I would like to propose one resolution to all of our parents that is designed to save a student, and your child's life.

I would like every parent to resolve to observe the following three Lincoln transportation safety rules:

1) I will not drop off my child on the north side of Crescent between the corner of Lincoln Ave. and the 9 spaces allotted for pickup and drop off on Crescent Ave.

2) Whether in the morning or after school students I will not drop off my child in the middle of the street either on Lincoln Ave. or Crescent Ave., which basically means you are double parking.

3) I will not park on the north side of Crescent between Knight and Western from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on school days only. This area is reserved for our busses.

Whether you make this a resolution or not, violators of the above three safety rules plus the remainder of Lincoln's transportation rules WILL BE ISSUED TICKETS. THE PARK RIDGE POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL PERIODICALLY BE AT LINCOLN TO WATCH THAT YOU ARE OBSERVING THE LAW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The remainder of our safety rules include:

o When dropping off students in the morning on Lincoln Ave. the preferred drop off site is on the west side of the street which is the side closest to the main doors.

o If parents choose to drop off their child on the east side of Lincoln Ave., they must instruct their child to cross Lincoln at the crosswalk by Crescent and Lincoln. Walking across Lincoln Ave. in any other part of the street will be considered jaywalking.

o In the afternoon, pickup is on the west side of Lincoln Ave. only. No one can be picked up on the east side unless they use the crosswalk at Crescent and Lincoln to cross Lincoln Ave.

o There is no parking on the south side of Crescent between Lincoln and Knight.

o There is no parking on the south side of Crescent Ave. between Knight and Western between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on school days only.

o When our busses have their warning arms extended and lights flashing while students are getting off and on the bus, cars may not drive past the arms when they are in the loading zone.

o Barricades are also put up on Lincoln Ave between Knight and Western from 2:55 p.m. until 3:10 p.m. on school days to help insure the safety of our students while they are entering the busses for departure from school. Cars are not permitted to drive around the barricades.

o Helmets are required if students want to ride their bike, skateboard or roller blades to and from school. We will warn a student but after the warning they may lose the privilege of riding a bike, skateboard or roller blades to school.

In case any of you Park Ridge parents out there think this is a problem only at Lincoln Middle School, we assure you it is not. We've seen some pretty piss-poor driving at ALL of our local schools.

Back to the issue of traditional family portraits... Taking a family portrait is a very traditional practice, as is the practice of including a protrait of the kids in the annual family Christmas card.

So Park Ridge parents, keep up the irresponsible driving around our local schools and maybe it will become a re-newed tradition in Park Ridge to take a family portrait like the ones above.

You see, in the above Victorian family portraits, the kid in the first photo, the kid on the father's lap in the second photo, and the kid on the big chair in the third photo are all dead. Victorian post-mortem photography was a tradition, and often the last and only portrait of a family as it once was.

And when another kid gets killed in an accident (because it's never on purpose) near one of our schools, maybe the PTO can take up a collection to buy a gift certificate for the family to have a Victorian-style post-mortem family portrait taken - in "living" color, of course; a modern twist on an old tradition. That would look great in the annual family Christmas card, wouldn't it?

No Discouraging Words, Please.

In typical pol fashion, the mayor and city council have decided to do a citizen survey, to find out what citizens think about various subjects, but without asking the dangerous question: "Do you think Park Ridge should adopt a local ordinance that allows for the recall of an elected official?"

According the 12-17-08 city council minutes (.pdf), a randomly selected sample of 1200 households will receive the survey.

Questions will range from issues of "traffic calming" to citizen opinion on building a new police station. There will also be questions asking those 1200 residents about police conduct, despite the mayor and city council's already having determined that police conduct is an issue that requires an independent investigation at considerable cost.

But the mayor and city council DO NOT want to hear what citizens have to say about having the right to recall an elected official.

Citizen opinions that displease the pols are just too negative.

Say Cheeeeeeeeeese!

In an article in last week's Journal & Topics, we learned that 3rd Ward Alderman Don DreadBach wants the Public Safety committee to Revisit Red Light Camera Idea for various and presumably dangerous intersections in Park Ridge.

According to the article, Ald. DreadBach was prompted into action because "a driver running through a red light broadsided the son of one of his constituents at Oakton and Greenwood Avenue." The article did not say if anyone was injured, and we hope nobody was. We would like to point out though that accidents are called accidents for a reason; nobody intends for them to happen. And personal experience alone or even along with anecdotal "evidence" is rarely if ever a good basis for determining public policy.

Setting aside for the time being our own visceral reaction to the continual surveillance of citizens, and serious constitutional questions about due process...

We'd also like to point out that red light cameras may reduce accidents according to some studies, but have also been shown to increase rear-end collisions in other studies where red light cameras have been installed. And we'd sure like to know exactly who is doing which studies and coming up with which findings. However, we feel it's safe to say that red light cameras cannot prevent accidents, they can merely record them. So while the Public Safety committee gets busy talking about ________ (fill in the blank with your buzzword of choice: risk-reduction, risk-mitigation, risk-management, risk-avoidance) be assured accidents can and will continue to happen.

The last time the Public Safety committee reviewed the issue of red light cameras was in February, 2007. Alderman DreadBach said he read the Public Safety meeting minutes 2/1/07 - pdf and "found several inconsistencies in the (minutes)." We are hoping that Ald. DreadBach can point out the inconsistencies he found - we have no idea what he could be referring to. We also hope he's read the excel traffic study, which appears to indicate the type of accidents that most often occur at the intersections studied are rear-end collisions; the second highest number of accidents involve turning vehicles.

We appreciate that Ald. DreadBach has stressed that his interest is strictly a matter of making Park Ridge streets safer - that red light cameras are not intended to be revenue generators. However, many if not most of the vendors who market their products and services to municipalities are far more shameless in their promises of increased revenue. Of the three red light camera vendors previously discussed by the Public Safety committee, one of those vendors, RedFlex promises to "deliver the most innovative, and comprehensive turnkey public safety programs that provide substantial benefits for our customers year-after year." Since municipalities are the customers, not the drivers, that sounds a lot like promising revenue generation.

The Journal & Topics article goes on to report that Ald. DreadBach "is not in denial or unhappy that the plan could do both" - reduce accident risks and generate revenue for the city. DreadBach goes on to say, "If it's going to add revenue to the city's general fund and make the streets safer, I'm not going to apologize for that," he stated.

Alderman DreadBach, you don't have to apologize for that, you just have to be honest about that.

The Tao of Traffic Calming.

The city council's Public Works committee has been discussing many issues of importance. Seriously! The Public Works committee decides the philosophy of why, how, and when the largest portion of the city's more than $50,000,000.00 budget will be spent.

The Public Works committee recently discussed revisions to the Neighborhood Traffic Management Policy. Careful consideration is being given to implementing policies that are governed by "sound engineering judgement", while at the same time satisfying the desires of residents.

The Public Works committee minutes from 9/17/07 contains the following:

"Alderman Ryan stated that he agreed with #8 of the Engineering Criteria that requires a resident petition to have 75% support prior to implementation of a traffic calming measure, though he noted it was a philosophical issue."

And for multi-unit condominium developments with variances beyond the zoning code? What is Alderman Ryan's philosophy on resident support for that?