Walking, jumping, visioning [?]

A WALK IN THE PARK: I think I was a hate-crime victim. Guy called me a white faggot as I walked through Scoville Park in the gloaming a few weeks ago. I didn't stop. He and his friends were irritated at my NOT stopping. They were desperate for my attention, and I refused it. This was my offense, and so I got victimized. Or was I?

All the guy did was toss out a "white faggot" to an unassuming white fellow trying hard to mind his own business. I had passed them earlier. One was jawing at another, three or four others stood chatting each other up. It's a free country, I thought, go ahead and jaw. I got a few steps past them and heard, "Hi, brother." Who, me? I'm not a brother, I thought -- except to an octogenarian in Gurnee and a septuagenarian in Arlington, VA -- and kept walking.

Again the call: "Brother." I'll bet it's me, I mused. But out of 40-year-old misty memory came a guy yelling, "Hey, you with the collar!" in an open field at 13th and Loomis on a midsummer night in 1966, as helmeted police gathered all down Roosevelt Road. The caller had me cold, I wore the clerical collar. I ignored his cry for attention. Twenty-something and intent on mischief, he had an audience of five or six teen-aged boys, to whom he would have given a lesson in how to deal with the likes of me. No, thanks, I muttered, continuing my way towards the Baptist church at the other end of the project, where do-gooders were gathering ineffectually.

Ignoring this Scoville Park greeting came easy, therefore. But my response rankled, and when I returned 15 minutes later heading the other way, I was accused incontinently of being "a snob" who "wouldn't talk" to them. I was "Sherlock Holmes" in my floppy hat (heh). I was told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. These were truly disgruntled youth. Later on Lake Street, I ran into them again. This time they tossed the N-word at a fellow African American, who was also told to commit an indecent if not impossible act. Now I ask you, were we all victims of hate crimes?.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSION: You hear a lot about the school achievement gap, but what about the basketball gap? White kids can't jump, but so what? So they don't suit up or if they do, they warm the bench. That's what happens to the American dream in a dog-eat-dog society. Look, white kids are grossly underrepresented on basketball teams not just in Oak Park and River Forest but nationally. I say enough. Let's train our sights on this gap too. And nuts to this can't-jump stuff, which is transparently racist. It's environment, folks. How many white fathers shoot hoops with their sons?

THROUGH A PRISM DARKLY: The Oak Park District 97 strategic plan draft calls schools "the educational prism through which students realize meaning and purpose in their lives." It says they are "to guarantee that each student achieves optimal intellectual growth while developing socially, emotionally and physically." That's all?

How about the prism through which students realize how to read, write, and do long division, not to mention shut up when teacher is talking and otherwise cooperate for the more or less common good? And who says schools are a prism in the first place? In what respect are they "a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light, the exact angles between whose surfaces depend on the application"? Beats me.

As for "realizing" -- learning? achieving? both, splitting the difference? -- the meaning and purpose in life, oh my. Are these schools or houses of worship? And there's a guarantee of optimal growth? Listen to that carnival barker. Maybe we would all pay more attention to a plan that made more sense. Or did not belabor the obvious, favoring "a culture of inclusion that respects and promotes diversity." This deftly undercuts the powerful exclusion and uniformity lobby, but it's also grand language impossible to disagree with, reeking of groupthink and lack of imagination, cobbled together in meetings. The good news is, it's a draft. So hello Baby, give us rewrite.

OP's industry, found at last!

Nickel Real Estate is moving into the double or triple storefront space where once was Logos Books -- and long ago in the 30s a place called The Shop, where OPRF-ers hung out wearing saddle shoes.  The father of a high-schooler in those days might warn against "Shop boys.” One did, anyhow. Seeing the Nickel sign in the window provided the shock of recognition for an OP-watcher: Of course! Retail out, real estate in! It's as simple as that.

We don't want no stinkin' stores that sell things. We want real estate offices to manage and sell our REAL PROPERTY. Some villages and cities make things, so do we. We make houses and landscapes — and schools and parks and library to go with them. It's one big conspiracy to elevate property value. The better the parks and schools and library (and cops and firemen and garbage collectors), the more incentive to make big houses and condos that sell for lots of money which in turn generate taxes. Why didn't I think of that?!

(By the way, Nickel can't be found via Web. Strange.)

Disputed condo development . . .

. . . in 400 block of N. Maple has townhouses next door, on NW corner, Superior. Across the street is a house garishly festooned with anti-war messages, including a banner in German stretching its width. This is Oak Park’s best-known incipient development because it’s too big for neighbors’ taste and they have been complaining and the village board has been discussing.

If the developer were to trade it for the also much-discussed Colt Building on Lake Street a few blocks away, as he is reported in Wed Journal to have said he might, his fame would go off the charts for at least 15 minutes, probably 15 months until he had completed transformation of the Colt into lavish condos with shooting gallery on first floor — just kidding, all you literalists out there.

Do those anti-war signs and banner violate an ordinance somewhere, somehow, by the way? Remember the Greek restaurateur who was given a hard time because he ran Greek letters across his garish awning on OP Ave. across from the Green Line stop? Commercial establishment, yes, but do we want garish signs on residential blocks? Especially one where neighbors have made such a case against a new building with too many units? I don’t know the answer, as one or other trustee has said he doesn’t know the answer to other, less pertinent, conundrums.

As for Trustee M., one who has said he does not know answers, for him I have some characteristically good advice: Go easy on your trademark frontal attack at board meetings or you lose your shock appeal. Getting in the face of the mild-mannered board president, for instant, suffers from the same law of diminishing returns that devalues currency. From respect born of discomfort, other trustees’ response could degenerate to there-he-goes-again. It’s a problem.

As it is for bloggers, who on the formality scale of one to ten come to two or three.  They have no time for vast ideas, only half-vast ones, it seems.  I don’t know the answer.

Meddling?

The developer having trouble with the OP village govt in developing an 11–unit condo building on the 400 N. Maple block has OP village govt. pretty well figured out:

"They're putting a lot of effort into controlling real-estate development," Allen said, adding that real-estate development goes with the market. "It takes care of its own." [Italics added]

This is it with markets, which government in general should leave alone.

Meanwhile, Wed. Jnl had the amazing information that Allen has said he was willing to swap his Maple Ave. property for the much-discussed and -debated Colt Building on Lake Street!  It’s one of more than a dozen village-owned properties intended for development by someone, somehow.

“In general,” because the extraordinary does arise, and like the U.S. homeland since 9/11 (somehow not attacked), OP (somehow) has not gone ramshackle like Austin to the east.  Many factors enter into both results, but to speak of OP alone, we may wonder if 1970s-style interference does NOT apply in 2006.

In any case, the board zoning allows Allen’s 11 units, and it’s too late now to stop him without spending too much money.  The village manager and staff think so, and so do I, which with $1.75 will get any one of them downtown on the Green Line.

Young black men in park at 5 p.m.

06-12-12 6:06 PM

Six or eight black kids of late high school age in Scoville Park when I walked by in the darkness about 5 p.m. on way to library, they on and around a bench opposite the monument, I on the winding path. One was going hot and heavy at another, venting. Others stood listening and chatting. the loud one was not threatening the other. As a group they were not threatening anyone.

I walked on by, glancing at them as I walked. One called out after I had passed them, "Hi, Brother." I didn't turn, partly because I wasn't sure he meant me, partly because I usually keep going in such situations. It's an instinct, as when I kept going in the open field at ABLA Homes on Roosevelt Road on the summer night in 1965 (ck) when rioting was under way over fire hydrants turned off and other matters. An adult called to me as I passed a knot of teen-aged boys: "Hey! You with the collar!" referring to me in my clerics. "Come 'ere."

I didn't but kept going toward the church at the project's southwest corner where various do-gooders were gathering. It was seven or so, and light out. But I was not about to make the young men's acquaintance at that point, even if I was a worker with youth and a teacher.

So this time I kept going even after the young man yelled again, "Brother." By now I was pretty sure he meant me but figured I did not want to turn around. He was being cheeky, I felt. But he was also being friendly in a rough way. I kept going.

Returning 15 minutes or so later on the same path, I passed the group again. They had me pegged now for a snob, no doubt about it. "White fagot," I heard as I walked guy. "Wouldn't talk to us." I wore a floppy hat: "Sherlock Holmes." The gorge was rising now: "Fuck you."

None of it was threatening. They spoke in surly, hurt fashion. I kept going again.

Ten minutes later I was returning down Lake Street heading for the park, in the block east of the Oak Park Avenue intersection. Some of the young men came along. There were others on the sidewalk. One of them had stopped another black guy, older than they by a few years and alone, two or three doors from Oak Park. One of them who had just passed me turned and yelled to the other: "Let the nigger go," he yelled. "Fuck the nigger."

A black couple also passing them looked fearful. But we not in the group, and certainly we whites, were the target of no attention at this point. We were part of the scenery, period. There wasn't even so much a threat of violence in what they said as simple cheekiness. Oddly, the group members were not unattractive, and this isn't any Stockholm syndrome I experienced or am describing. Instead, there was something going on among them that deserved attention. Can't prove it and from what I describe you wouldn't think so. Still, something was going on.

Einstein Bagels, To Be or Not To Be?

Reader G. asks my position on Einstein Bagels' remaining in OP. Well he might. I was the Northeast River Forest correspondent from Einstein's, at Harlem & North, the OP corner, for several years in the late 90s, sharply and keenly observing cops on break and other fauna -- always sympathetically, to be sure, as when they were gearing up for an uproarious Fourth in North Austin.

Alas, I have not developed my position on Einstein's, which is preparing to evacuate. For that I must consult my Filthy Capitalist Mindset, neatly balancing my deep love for community values with my Filthy Capitalist desire for maximized profits or at least enough to allow one even to stay in business (and lots of bad guys, including Great American Bagels, to name one, would like to see E. Bagels get out of their darn way), in OP or anywhere else. It's a bagel jungle out there, you better believe it. 

Talking

At Bread Kitchen, couldn't help noticing woman gesticulating to another. Giving gang signals? Describing dance moves with hands? Daydreaming with finger tic? Lunacy?

None of these, but SIGN LANGUAGE, it finally dawned on observer who couldn't help noticing. Theirs was animated, soundless conversation.

Using sign language has its pros and cons.  But if you want to learn how, you can start here.

There is also lip-reading. The most famous lip-reader I know is Henry Kisor, recently retired Sun-Times book editor. He had an editor once who barely moved his when speaking. Didn't stop Henry.  Nothing did.  He also  wrote a book about being deaf.

Shocked in OP

UK Guardian-Observer's Dan Pearson, who writes about gardens and gardening,

was shocked to see these vast, low-slung Arts & Crafts family homes littering crisp expanses of lawn in the wealthy Oak Park area on the edge of [Chicago]. Not a prairie in sight, but impressive nonetheless.

Shocked meaning delighted? I think so.  He is writing about prairies as having a comeback:

A way with the prairies [subtitled:]

When intensive farming muscled in on the American midwest, vast wildernesses were trampled in the rush. Now, says Dan Pearson, they're rising again

So he is glad to see OP’s big lawns — contrasted, we know, by Hemingway with its narrow minds — as a good sign, in fact “impressive.”

Pearson refers to FL Wright and prairie style architecture as “developed in [Chicago] suburbs.”  But he “had only known [Wright’s] wonderful, iconic Fallingwater [in Western Pennsylvania], cantilevered over a cascade in woodland,” before seeing what any of us can see any day on Forest Avenue and elsewhere in OP & RF.  So he was “shocked.”  Meaning delighted.

Busing

Among “anomalies” cited by Chi Trib in an article about school busing is OPRF High School, which “won an exemption from [state] busing requirements by demonstrating that adequate public transportation was available.”  It’s busing by Pace in the two villages or (healthily) hiking.  And since nonexistent school buses do not get stuck in snow and ice, the high school never calls classes off for weather reasons.

Meanwhile, the eastbound Metra train drops a busload of Fenwick students every morning.  That school draws them from far & wide.  And those who keep going downtown on their way to St. Ignatius find a bus waiting for them at the Ogilvie Center.  Or did a while back.

Go polar Saturday

Hey, kids of all ages, Tom Hanks's "Polar Express" is showing for free at the Lake Dec. 9, 10 in the morning. It's a grrrreat Christmas movie, part of Downtown OP's (ahem) "holiday celebration." Which holiday is just between us, OK?

But militant-Christian crack aside, the movie is marvelous. I know. I saw it Friday night on Channel 7. Kids even of an advanced age can use it to remember the realities, or ghosts, of Christmases past. Don't remember a better cartoon -- it's semi-cartoon, product of our digital wonderland -- and even the scary parts (parental presence required) thrill without chilling (I don't think, but can't be sure). Shades of "Snow White," seen when just out as a young lad.

What makes the 46% tick?

Is tribalism the issue in the matter of mainstream Dems supporting Todd Stroger, son of stricken Cook County board president John Stroger, in the recent election that gave him 46% of the Oak Park vote? This was a vote cast in the face of uncontested overwhelming evidence of budget-busting favoritism in hiring of friends and supporters with minimal regard to competence and other standard criteria, not to mention honesty in handling other people’s money.

Our ranking Oak Park Dem, state Sen. Don Harmon, was named in an 11/22 Chi Trib editorial with many other ranking Dems who endorsed Stroger.  We may assume family matters for him, though Oak Park has traditonally shown a civic sense that counts for more than one’s tribe. It often does, anyhow, but not for the 46%.

That many do not care about hiring people with minimal regard for competence, etc. Tribalism may count among us also, but more likely livelihood or career — or those ol’ social values. Chief among these is the right to abort a fetus, with gay-rights issues not far behind followed from a longer distance by gun-banning and other such matters.

This is an interesting conflict, between social liberalism and political reform. It leads to asking if it is progressive — a cherished liberal description — to support the hiring of the incompetent or less competent because they will plant signs on street corners and knock on every door.

He's the man

I’m voting a long-term contract for Comcast repairman Ernest, who came to our house the other day and solved a months-old problem that had mystified two repairmen before him.  They didn’t know they were mystified, thinking they had solved the problem.  In fact, if Comcast does not go along with my vote, I am calling for a senatorial investigation.  Our own Sen. Harmon would be a good one to lead this.  Long contract for Ernest!

Nicer this time

Newly seated trustee Galen Gockel did not always get along with V. Mgr. Swenson and V. Pres. Trappani. Taking on the assignment, he

"was intrigued by the prospect of having a cordial relationship with the village president and the village manager, a phenomenon which was not always available to me when I served my full four-year term previously."

The seating of a trustee

The seating of Galen Gockel as interim village board member last night was a dramatic event in its way. One trustee had no idea he would be sworn in right away and even checked with the clerk to see if she was ready to do so. She was, meaning she had the papers ready for him to swear to and sign, but she added that she was ready for anything, meaning apparently that she could save the papers for later, which no one in his right mind would deny her since she had nothing to say about it.

As soon as the uninformed trustee, Marsey, announced his being uninformed, two things happened rapidly: the president, Pope, who had called trustees up about his idea a few days earlier, said it was his fault, which seems accurate, since Marsey seems usually to know what's going on; and another trustee, Milstein, shot back that he knew it, leaving it for us to maybe guess that it was not Pope's fault at all. Who knows?

Milstein followed immediately with his announcement that since the president was acting firmly and with dispatch, they had no business questioning his decision (paraphrase here), to which the president responded saying he was grateful for Milstein's support -- reaching out to touch him fraternally in the next chair -- but that Marsey was within his rights to question the decision. Marsey had done so without prejudice to Gockel, whom they all know from his past time on the board, but noted that the criteria for picking him applied to two other past board members, whom he named.

He also had questioned filling the slot at all, the one left vacant by resignation of trustee Baker, who pleaded need for time with family, having earlier complained in a newspaper about length and frequency of meetings. The new trustee, not a veteran of their previous discussions, would be "a drag on the dynamic" they had achieved by these discussions, said Marsey, specifically about the budget, which will be soon calling for their approval. (Gockel said later he'd been following them on TV in the budget discussion, for which he deserves a medal in addition to his newly allocated board seat.) Marsey also questioned the "manner" of filling the interim slot.

Trustee Brock said adding the seventh trustee -- let the odd man, she said -- in was a good thing, in case of a tie vote on the budget, which is to consider a bad if not worst-case scenario, when they could not agree. Trustee Johnson presented himself as a convert to President Pope's proposal, having at first wanted a more "collaborative" process; it had taken him a few days.

This is when Marsey asked Clerk Sokol if she was ready, stating his preference for waiting two weeks. A time for public comment had looked preferable to Johnson too, he said. But he decided there was no need for it, because "we all know Galen," which if they don't now, they never will, he being probably the most prolific overall living vote-getter in Oak Park, with careers behind him on school, township, and village boards covering maybe 20 years. He was on the elementary school board in 1976, when our oldest was being prepared for kindergarten. I think I have that year right.

Marsey's concerns carried no water, however. Milstein perhaps least of all would object, recalling as he said that he and Gockel had stood on the same side of a budget vote a few years back when both were on the board. This is when Milstein made his blanket avowal of support for Pope in the matter.

In a matter of minutes, the deed was done: Gockel was sworn in and pointed to his seat, with the understanding that he would not stand for election in April. He delivered a eulogy of sorts for the resigned Baker, sympathizing with him on the need to be with family. When Pope implied Gockel wouldn't be saying much right away, Gockel told him not to be sure of that.

In any case, it was a coup for Pope, who apparently was clearer on the matter with Milstein than with Marsey when informing the trustees of the proposed Gockel seating, when lining up votes for him, that is. Pope has a tentative way about him that can be deceptive and could become a Frank Paris in the office, Frank being the longtime unthwartable River Forest board president. But that's a big leap beyond last night's scenario, dramatic or not. Who knows?

Hard copy

This month’s Wed. Journal column has:

* PICKING A WINNER: I voted early this year but only twice — early at Village Hall two weeks ago, twice when the touch-feel machine wouldn't save my paper. . . . .

* SIGNS OF TIME: Meanwhile, the Peraica signs seem to be growing on front lawns. It can't be easy, I have said, for the true-blue Dem to go red-blooded Republican, even if he's a supposed reformer. . . . .

* SIGNS MISPLACED: The Stroger signs, on the other hand, came and went like thieves in the night, for instance on the narrow grassy strip on South Boulevard across from the Oak Park Avenue el platform. . . . .

* RAISING MY HAND: Was happy to contribute my two cents to the OP elementary schools recommendation fund the other day. Did it online, but don't you even think about that, because the deadline has passed. Had a few questions left over, however . . .

Read it.  You’ll like it.

Money matters

Talking budget, OP trustees considered options.  Cutting costs being one of them:

Trustee Robert Milstein said the board should be careful not to raise false expectations that they can keep spending in line.

"I don't think anyone's going to be happy if we cut a service," Milstein said.

As a revenue producer, Milstein suggested increasing fines for developers who do more demolition than was village-approved on historical homes, and implementing a tax on vacant buildings.

Let us give credit to anyone trying to spend no more than $116.7 million next year, but may we not ask what’s this about making people happy?  Since when did that happen at budget time?  Question is, will you trustees be happy — satisfied, whatever?  Not to mention, will voters be happy if spending goes over, bond rating is reduced, etc.?  And which voters?  The dumb ones?

As for those fines for developers et al., are not these people who have been in Trustee Milstein’s crosshairs for some time now?  And might he be better occupied in finding sources with eye on prize of revenue totals rather than, as one suspects, on people to be taught a lesson?  Forget killing two or more birds with one stone already.

Schools want to know

Filling out D97 questionaire about what’s important in schools, I run into “providing adequate support” for kids moving to higher level.  What is this adequate support?  Anyhow, I rated it very important on general principles.

Why do I call it not important to teach cultural etc. differences?  Because this multiculturalism is at best a distraction from teaching how to read, write, and express oneself, at worst a blurring of distinction between right and wrong and of universal standards.  (Clitoridectomy ok some places because we can’t condemn anyone?  Defended here in 1996, condemned here in 1867!)

Same for rating multicultural ed programs: big distractions, blurring of norms.  It’s inculcation of highly suspect mentality, over-the-top substitute for old-fashioned mutual respect, color-blind, etc. 

“School control” over staffing, etc.?  Apparently vs. district and board?  Maybe good idea, maybe prescription for chaos.

Open enrollment a good idea: parents, etc. choose.  Schools get vote of confidence or not.  I like the idea.

Fill it out yourself here.

Grow or decline

OP is past the point of no return as to development.  Even OP Ave. has vacancies, as its modestly position tenants leave for Forest Park or go out of business.  Lake Street problems are old news.  Question is, will OP upgrade its exclusivity — without which we are nothing — for the two thousands or not?  It has moved past the village of old, like it or not, and faces decline or growth.  The new Lane Bryant and gym-&-swim club on Lake Street — and this is no bicycling-in-the-window as at the long-gone Chi Health Club on Madison or the soon-to-be-gone OP Y on Marion, but pool, basketball arena, climbing wall and lots more, according to its brochure.  Condos are atop it all. 

But it’s the building that tolls the knell of parting village.  It’s a Loop or Mich. Ave.-style building, looming big and imposing.  Heritage-preservers can’t be happy about it, even Lane B. shoppers or gym rats.  It’s like 70 years ago, when the elegant Austin house was moved to what’s now Austin Gardens — from Lake Street, where commercial purposes were winning out.  History matters, as the historical society says, and it tells us this is no time to go wobbly with the OP future.

Motivated campaign workers

Whether T. Stroger’s campaign is “descend[ing] into chaos,” with his declining to appear with Peraica on various shows, one thing is clear in OP: his signs are popping up all over — but not on private property!  Few citizens want them, but someone is planting them on various parkways and stretches of publicly tended grass.  Yes.  Soon there will be a sea of them on the village green of Scoville Park, where frisbee is played, but not this year.  The public-minded citizens who plant signs on public property may be county employees or they may not be.  Readers are asked to decide.

More food for Dems' thought

Getting wise to scandals (sent off by Peraica campaign)

... Federal prosecutors are no longer playing along with the perverse joke that illicit patronage hiring and contracting are "just politics." FBI agents are unraveling scandals that stretch from the Capitol in Springfield to the Cook County Building to the adjacent Chicago City Hall.

And those probes may be having effects:

A few weeks ago, Democratic insiders were sure that Todd Stroger, their candidate for the presidency of the Cook County Board, could ride out the serial deceits that had put him on the ballot. Now some of those insiders are worried. Their polling shows that many Democrats have stubbornly negative opinions of Stroger.

The surmise: Those Democrats, thousands of whom voted for board member Forrest Claypool in their party's primary [as in Oak Park], want a steely reformer--the only option left is Republican Tony Peraica--who'll work with the feds to clean up Cook County. What's more, those Democrats are still angry at party bosses who repeatedly told them lies about former Board President John Stroger's medical prognosis in order to steer the previously pliable Todd Stroger onto the ticket. ... [on mark!]  [Italics and color added]

-– Editorial, Chicago Tribune, October 5, 2006

Meeting, anyone?

Jon Hale’s “One View” in the Wed. Journal could hardly have been said better. 

What's up with downtown?

Everybody and his brother and sister seems to be on board to discuss and explain Downtown OP (Marion St.) development tonight, 9/13:

Desman Associates [planning consultant, leading the meeting]; Ross, Barney & Jankowski, the architects designing the parking garage; The Lakota Group, which is responsible for area planning and streetscape; and Metro Transportation Group, working on transportation and parking issues.

I could be wrong, but it seems that this was already discussed and on the way to being done when the village board changed hands two years ago.  Are all bets off?  Some?

 

Later, from a well-placed source:

 

Tonight's meeting is an extension of the Crandall-Arambula plan for downtown, which was not specific about downtown proper — Harlem-to-Forest, Lake-to-North Blvd.  Trustees have picked up where they left off a year ago, planning now for the North Blvd. garage and the streeting of Westgate and Marion.  The problem remains what to do with the Colt Building.  Trustees will decide that issue in their 9/21 meeting.

Tangled Web woven

"The business of knitting and crocheting seems headed into a downward cycle," says Tangled Web Fibers owner Elin Thorgren, who's closing up on OP Ave. across from St. Edmund Church, adding, "And you know, there are some things going on in Oak Park, development-wise, that make it untenable to try to ride out the storm."  Of course.  A biggie is coming across the street and down the block that will utterly transform the OP-South Blvd. corner. 

I work, therefore I am

This interview with Al Gini is excellent.  Al makes sense, the writer, Tom Holmes, who covers religion etc., does an excellent job.

Davis tripped by inadequate info?

Congr. Davis repeats to the Wed. Journal that he did not know Tamil (terrorist) Tigers funded his recent trip to Sri Lanka. 

Davis . . . said neither he nor anyone on his staff were aware that any money from a terrorist organization was used to pay for his trip until the story broke in the Chicago Tribune. [He] said he first learned of the charges when a Tribune reporter called his West Side office before the paper's Aug. 24 story. The Tribune followed up with another story four days later on Aug. 28. On Aug. 25, the paper wrote a scathing editorial concerning the trip and politicians, such as Davis, who take "junkets," or trips taken by government officials and paid for with public funds.

 

Davis said the trip was public and that "there was nothing secretive about the trip."

 

He said some of his Sri Lankan constituents urged him to visit the country. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Census shows 44 people in the 7th Congressional District who identify themselves as Sri Lankan or part Sri Lankan.

D97 hurt by other taxers?

Here's someone who may be viewing a TIF as hurting the schools.  Compare with my most recent column in which I pick up briefly on Trustee Milstein's cooperation model as calling first of all for giving TIF $ back to schools.  This 9/12 opinion piece, by Joel Ostrow, does not quite say that, however.  In fact, it's mainly a (cogent) defense of Dist. 97 as responsible spender, except for teacher contracts, a big "except," and argument for its deserving an ok on its coming referendum -- which could not come at a worse time, with all the complaints about higher taxes. 

 

Another view-giver, Rex Burdett, does not agree.  He opposes a Dist. 97 referendum, accusing it of over-spending, nailing the League of Women Voters, whose

proposed solution (greater state funding of education) fails to quantify inevitable massive individual state income tax and, worse, ignores the root cause of the current dilemma-namely out-of-control local school expenditures due to salary increases far in excess of inflation and staffing increases disproportional to enrollment trends.

It's certainly true that schools-supporters have a mantra here, which he attacks, namely that it's the state's fault.  Maybe so, but this alternative view is in order.

Library speaker 9/9/06 part of big Muslim doings

OP’s Committee for Just Peace in Palestine speaker asked if Zionism is racism, compared Israel-Palestine today to apartheid-era South Africa — "It's much worse,” he said.  He’s Farid Esack, a Muslim theologian and author of Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression; On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today; and An Introduction to the Qur'an.

He had spoken two days earlier at Dominican U. ($10 a head) in a “dialogue series.”  DU says he’s been active in “the Call of Islam,” which as a message is said by the Muslim American Society to include this:

The Muslim regards himself as commanded by God to call all humans to a life of submission to Him, to Islam as a present participial act (42:15). His life goal is that of bringing the whole of humankind to a life in which Islam, the religion of God, with its theology and Shari'a, its ethics and institutions, is the religion of all humans.

He’s currently at Harvard Divinity, having just done a three–year stint at Xavier U., Cincinnati (where this blogger taught briefly in the late 60s).  Coming up at Dominican is a lecture 9/21 on “theological challenges and opportunities of Muslim-Catholic dialogue,” a lecture 10/30 on “Transforming the Self [sic], Transforming Society” an open meeting 11/8 of Chicago-based “Catholic-Muslim Dialogue.”

To Esack’s credit, he does not turn up in search of the Anti-CAIR or Front Page web sites, each of which has sensitive antennae when it comes to Islamism.  He does turn up in an Amazon-posted rave review of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, by Omid Safi, to which he contributed “an essay that takes the document ‘Progressive Islam - A Definition and Declaration’ as its point of departure.” In the essay he

is very critical of the views expressed by many liberal Muslims, whom he accuses of suffering from the same myopia as their fundamentalist adversaries: presenting themselves as 'authentic' interpreters of Islam and canonizing certain statements in the sacred scriptures without regard for the context. He is equally dismayed by liberal Muslims' failure to challenge that other form of fundamentalism: that US interests represent the axis around which the earth rotates. [Italics added]

Uh-oh.

TIF defended

No need for “timeout” on Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as Cook County Commissioner Quigley called for, says mayors’ group.

Oak Park's Kelo Problem, Part 2

From Death and Taxes - Monday August 28, 2006

Last week I talked about Oak Park's Kelo problem. You may say to yourself, "I understand that Oak Park likes to restrict the ability of owners of real estate to use their property, but so what?" To my mind, ... (read more)       

Whence taxes?

In a town meeting about taxes,

[Township pseudo-assessor] ElSaffar explained taxes have increased steadily due in large part to a series of successful voter approved tax referendums and residential assessment increases.

There we have it, ladies and gentlemen.  We or someone like us voted up those referendums, for good or bad reasons, depending whom you ask.  This is plain talk from ElSaffar (who is pseudo because he doesn’t assess anything but voters’ ire — worst he’s seen this time around — but explains things).

“It's partly our own fault. We've never seen a referendum in Oak Park that we've said no to,” said one taxpayer, a UIC prof, adding ominously, “We need to look very carefully at what we're voting for."*

Won’t happen.  Depends how many look carefully.  Some always have, but teachers and parents have won the day every time, including this blogger working might and main for his six kids in public schools.  As long as OP is home to a school population like this, the referendums will pass.  Trust me.

This is not a retirement village, in other words.  This also spells doom for the Perennial Outs in the April village board elections.  Shockingly In last time, they have irritatingly gone against the Expansion Grain.  This time they will lose.  Trust me.
---------------------
* Or this, from another resident, who went to the Board of Review to appeal her taxes: "The man listened to me very politely then when I was done said 'You people in Oak Park come crying to us every year. Stop voting yes for every referendum'."

Concordia what?

Concordia U.-River Forest is no more.  Now it's Concordia U. Chicago.  New web site too.

Icon slips

This just in from the 300 South OP Ave. block: The U.S. Postal Service did not deliver yesterday.  This I can confidently assume from the totally empty three boxes in our building, west side of OP Ave., a few doors north of Wash Boul.  There's a # to call, but it does not give you the local p.o., or didn't a few years ago last time I called, when same thing happened on 600 Ontario block.  S--t happens, I know, and maybe we should mainly be grateful it happens as infrequently as it does in respect to mail delivery.  There, got that off my chest.

 

3:50, having broken down and called the # (1-800-ASK-USPS), was put on hold AFTER answering the machine four or five times.  3:53, got Eric, who said give them to 5 p.m., call back with info, they will go to supervisor, etc.  Thanked him, that was it for then.

 

4:30, going outside, there she was, Ms. Mail Carrier.  I said Hi, added there had been no mail yesterday, she said she knew.  Whole tone was, she knew quite well about it, which was all I had to hear.  End of story and complaining.

Voting for Stroger

* At least one voter has decided to punt in November.  She will not vote either way, Stroger or Peraica, for county board presidency, she volunteered to this blogger/writer.  She can't stand voting for Stroger and so will NOT VOTE.

Enter Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." Good men and women, let the bad times roll!

* In a more analytic mode, here's one man's view a while back of the overall situation: "One thing Peraica needs to win is strong suburban turnout compared to the city. That's a tall order since city turnout has been greater than suburban turnout in every major primary and general election for many years."

-- Rob Olmstead in Daily Herald 06-07-31

MERCANTILISM LIVES!

"In reality . . . from Adam Smith on (and before that), monopoly was always understood as being created by government. Indeed, The Wealth of Nations was a critique of mercantilism, the system of state-sponsored monopolies, protectionism, and monetary superstition that plagued European economies at the time (1776)." [Italics added]

This is a definition I've been looking for, supplied by Thomas di Lorenzo, author of How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present -- 330.122 DIL on the Dewey decimal chart at OP library.

It's important for OP, which has been practicing mercantilism for some time now, picking and choosing commercial operators, generating arguments about which to pick and choose and inhibiting growth and prosperity even when picking winners, as anyone is bound to do now and then. Consider the hundred monkeys at a hundred typewriters and their (maybe superior, who knows?) version of "Hamlet."

Danny and the Tigers

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL, i.e. Chi & points west, including OP) made Chi Trib editorials today, lede item, “Davis' marvelous adventure”, which follows on AP and Trib (also here) and other stories about his taking moola for a seven-day trip to Sri Lanka, once Ceylon, from the terroristic Tamil Tigers, who use suicide bombers and child soldiers, according to our govt.  He says he has seen no evidence that says they put up the money — for him and an “aide.”

Given . . . incriminating disclosures [involving Tom DeLay, R.-Texas] about congressional junketeering, you'd think experienced hands such as Davis, a Chicago Democrat, wouldn't take tickets from strangers

says Trib today.  But junkets are important to Davis, who “has accepted 47 trips paid by private groups since 2000 [and] ranks 15th among the 535 members of Congress in accepting” them.  15th out of 535, wow!  He likes to travel.

Trib wants a rules change, requiring Congressmen to hit up taxpayers for such trips if such are needed.

Another question has to do with Davis’ knowing what the heck is going on, period, if he isn’t up to speed on Tigers’ doings in and out of Sri Lanka, including paying off U.S. officials, as 11 of their supporters have been recently arrested for doing.  And he was the good-govt. non-Stroger candidate for county board presidency slating!  Wow again!

(On the other hand, give Davis a hand for his work on alleviating the plight of nonviolent drug offenders, as explained here.  He’s making a push this fall for the so-called Second Chance Act, of which he is lead sponsor.  It’s considered a wedge into this matter, though it does not specify the nonviolent part.  In any case, he got favorable mention from the Drug War Chronicle, published by StoptheDrugWar.org.)

Later: Danny Davis update was supplied by Chi Trib 8/28 by John Biemer, whose account is very straightforward, and appreciated for that.  It’s a summary of what’s been done, with a nice pulling of it together.  Davis

said he went to [Sri Lanka] to see how reconstruction and aid money was being distributed after the 2004 tsunami at the behest of his constituents. But the community that prompted that weeklong trip appears to be a small one.

Forty-four people in his district, in fact, per the 2000 census.  But not they but the Tamil Tigers paid $13,150 in laundered funds, say law enforcers.  Davis said he didn’t know that, saving his thanks for a Tamil cultural organization, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America, based in south suburban Hickory Hills. 

In yet another district, the 6th, in Glendale, FBI found information that led to 11 arrests for helping to aid the Tigers illegally.  A Davis aide claimed many Tamils in his district but named none for Chi Trib.  Most of the Chicago-area Tamils are from India anyhow, according to various sources whom Biemer names.  When Davis got back from Sri Lanka, he got a $500 donation from his Hickory Hills Tamil contact.

Looks fishy.  Davis was roaming outside his district even before he roamed all the way to Sri Lanka.  Why?

Populists v. Progressives in Oak Park Politics

Jon Hale of Forum Oak Park takes issue with Dan Haley’s lumping of OP political philosophies into “a narrow range. Liberal, good government, tolerant.”  Rather, there are populists and progressives: 

The NLC/VCA side [winners in last village board election] is populist, catering to what it thinks “the people” want, often to the point of demagoguery, and distrusting the ability of professional experts to help guide policymaking. “Good government” and “tolerance” of opposing views have not exactly been hallmarks of this group’s leadership over the past year. It puts too much faith in the use of public meetings, which it expands ad infinitum until the only folks left standing on a given issue are the extremely committeds, who then are given disproportionate say over the outcome.

This is very familiar.  I can still hear the neighbor and fellow Beye School parent announcing at a PTO meeting in the 80s that he had plenty of time and would remain as long as it took to decide a certain issue.  You hang in there, asking, “Which side are you on?” until the people with lives beyond politics go home.

This side sees Oak Park not as one community, but as a collection of groups to be catered to – especially those that supported it at the polls. In general, this group finds decision-making difficult, especially on complex issues where it’s hard to discern exactly what it is “the people” want and professional expertise is considered untrustworthy.

Ah yes, we need “closure” here.  Majority rules?  How brutal.  Rather than “the people,” what you hear is “the community.”  Yeah, yeah!  Rumble, rumble.

Hale’s Forum, on the other hand, thinks

there is more to policymaking than . . . catering to what we think “the people” want.  . . . there are multiple viewpoints on every issue. A trustee is called upon to consider these public viewpoints then to . . . “revise and enlarge” the public view taking into account the whole variety of community interests, so that policy decisions are based on what’s best for the entire community, current and future.

Not quite philosopher kings, but elected representatives who do not feel need for a referendum on every decision.

This is . . . why we call our Village Board members “trustees” -- we, the people, “entrust” them to make the kinds of decisions on behalf of the entire community that any well-informed and knowledgeable citizen would make if he or she were serving as a trustee and had access to not only the public’s opinions but also professional expertise.

Sounds reasonable.

Comings, goings, hanging around

* Board meetings proliferate, trustee(s) object: Two of the OP Seven, Brady and Baker, have missed 10 and 19 study sessions respectively of 27 sessions this year. Brady is unrepentant. He was told by President Pope and Trustee Milstein, both holdovers, that being a trustee would take 20 hours a week max, but

“Anyone who reads the [local] newspapers or watches [VOP] Channel 6 knows that the trustees have essentially taken on another full-time job."

he told WJ. "Do I help my son go to sleep and read him a bedtime story, or do I rush out to the village study sessions two to three times a week?" he asked. He wants more discussion at the regular meetings, which Trustee Johnson said go longer because — it’s “the irony” of it, he said — some who missed the study session have to be brought up to speed — “we have extended the debate.”

Brady pleaded work obligations as her reason for missing meetings but noted:

"We're sometimes a little loose in study sessions. If we were more disciplined overall it would probably make study sessions more effective."

Anyone who watches Channel 6 can attest to that. Only the dedicated need attempt it. Cherchez le Milstein here, who recently had to be reminded by another trustee that a matter was "not in our purview" in discussion of which he wanted to linger — something about how to get villagers to own fewer autos! “I don’t know the answer to that,” said M., as if in a college common room or even a student dorm. He’s not supposed to know the answer to that!

Not only could Milstein try putting a sock in it, but President Pope might take half the time to say twice as much now and then. His starts and stops are enough to make a grown man fidget if not weep. He seems also at times to take Milstein’s side lest M. get on his high horse at being contradicted. He won the presidency in part thanks to revulsion at alleged high-handedness in running meetings by his predecessor. Now he has one of those who profited from the backlash refusing to attend meetings that go on and on, calling it

tedious to have read all the [information provided on an issue] and be ready to make a decision, and then spend five hours rehashing people's positions that have already been made public,

and another whom he picked pointedly criticizing how he runs things. Maybe there’s a good reason why Joanne Trappani ran a tight ship.

* Affordable housing again: Working from a 2003 report, “our bible,” says the relevant committee chairman, a village committee wants to put “more teeth” in OP’s program. One of these presumably would be hitting up developers who tear down buildings with affordable units to build more costly ones, as suggested by the woman who heads W. Suburban PADS.

Not a good approach, said Rick Kuner, who chairs the Oak Park Regional Housing Center board, He cited a recent study that showed OP as the fifth most affordable community in the Chicago area because of its access to mass transportation. Don’t build anew, he said, indirectly countering the PADS woman’s idea, but look to what’s here already.

One out of every four condos becomes a rental unit, he said, and units in two- to four-flat buildings are often big enough for families with children to rent.

* Run, do not walk to read two columns in 8/23 WJ, Jack Crowe on who authorized the expenses that beef up whose tax bills -- We did it! -- and John Hubbuch on what other kind of games we can host beside gay ones, how many ways to lose how much $ on the Colt building, and perfectly matching us with our new manager.

* "I've always been suspect of the state's tax cap legislation," says Dan Haley in his 8/8/2006 column, who surely wanted to say suspicious. It's the legislation that's suspect.

It's in this column that he says:

Would be a good moment then for this village board to swear off the insanity of the Colt Building. The proof is in-this building is a white elephant. And while the village may, or may not, have funds to pour into it from its discretionary Tax Increment Finance stash, it is still real money, still comes from local taxpayers.

And it's a week later that Milstein chimes in with his column about taxes, where he talks about courage again — this is Father Courage speaking —

Legislators typically find their courage only when they're scared to death of voter outrage.

And in which he emphasizes coordination by taxing bodies -- village trustees prompting school board members, for instance -- a utopian concept, assuming it's a good idea, and in his criticism of the village board exempts his own role in overspending by saying the board

“dithered on new development (Colt building, whether restored or razed), which prevents the village's tax base from growing to keep pace.”

Haley took strong exception. Milstein, he wrote,

seeks cover on the Colt building boondoggle. . . . Colt proponents are claiming the cost of filling this black hole would be borne out of the TIF fund, as if that isn't really tax money. Milstein actually misstates that the TIF fund is sales tax driven which is plain wrong. Property taxes diverted from the schools and parks create the TIF fund. [Ask any school board member.]

Also note that Milstein is paving the way to fill the unleaseable Colt building by suggesting it would be a good place for a children's museum. This way lies ruin.

Another Oak Parker took exception more pithily to Milstein as problem-solver. Jack Strand in an 8/23 letter tags him tellingly as a barnyard fowl. “He often reminds me of the rooster that thinks it is his crowing that makes the sun rise each morning.”

In another letter (same link), Dan Finnegan tries to help President Pope in his "reverse buy-out" plan to help people pay their taxes, from trustees repaying the village $21,000,000 “from their personal wealth” when they “spend $7,000,000 on a project and later learn that the project makes no economic sense,” to rebating “$100 per bite” to every taxpayer dinged by a mosquito “within [village] boundaries, despite mosquito abatement efforts.”

Keys to teardown

Wed Jnl:

Atty. Heise: If the moratorium were to lapse before zoning changes were made law, "we’d be back where we started." [However, a] moratorium can be extended or shortened any time before its end date.

. . . .

Trustee Ray Johnson did not support the moratorium idea in part because of the process to enact it that was cut short in observance of the board’s month off in August.

"This is normally a process that should take several weeks, not several days," Johnson said, asking Heise to confirm. Heise said it was "not that unusual" for the board to respond quickly to an issue.

Is there more turning to Atty. Heise these days than usual? Is he being asked to do more than give legal opinion?

Johnson said the move could create an environment of uncertainty for developers, and that, taken together, this and other moves Oak Park has made might [together make] the village seem anti-development.

"There is also a lot of uncertainty when it comes to residents," responded Trustee Robert Milstein.

Gotcha.

Oak L:

"Sometimes it does take courage to say no," Johnson said, adding that he understands concerns of neighbors on the 400 block of North Maple Avenue, but thinks the moratorium goes too far.

……………

At a study session Thursday [four days before the vote], Johnson [had] said he was concerned about approving the moratorium without giving residents an opportunity to comment on it. The board heard a first reading of the ordinance Thursday and passed it Monday.

"In circumstances where we don’t have some pressing issue, it’s always preferable to allow time, as much as you can, but it’s not necessary," Heise said of public comment Thursday. "We’re perfectly within the law as a home-rule community."

Here is Heise as lawyer, essentially telling trustees what they can get away with.  It’s what a lawyer does.

Those bricks were not fine

Regarding the Schiess fine mentioned below - actually the Troyanovsky fine, he being the developer - village staff has no record of approving height changes, this blog hears.

(The building is neither the seven stories high that Schiess wanted nor the five that neighbors wanted, but six, by the way.)

As for the bricks, Schiess got two approvals, one in the ordinance giving him the go-ahead, the other of his permit application, which should be enough for any man, except they were each for a different kind of brick! Not to be outdone, he used yet a third kind, which makes him a clever fellow indeed.

Scheiss structure: How high thou art

The village board drew a line in the air above which architect John Scheiss was forbidden to rise.  But he did it, and now he pays:

Learning that the Opera Club mixed-use building at the southeast corner of South Boulevard and Marion Street was built 5½ feet higher than it was supposed to be drove the Oak Park Village Board last night to levy a hefty fine--$188,223 . . .

The Opera Club developer also has to make a parking lot on land a block away that is to be cleared.

Scheiss has apparently been making changes that depart from a 2004 agreement with the village.  The board just found out about them, such as using bricks that displease the eye on one wall.  But news of the 5 1/2–foot overbuild is what tore it for the trustees.

Trustee Ray Johnson, the most developer-friendly of the seven, called it "a serious issue," even though he had earlier said the discrepancies might have been the village's fault. 

"This takes us to another level," Johnson said. "That's a major problem for me."

A key village staffer, head of its Building & Property Standards Department, admitted that village procedure, even in measuring height, "leaves something to be desired.”  But it’s up to the developer to stay within guidelines, said village president David Pope.

The height issue had top priority at the start.  Schiess wanted seven stories, neighbors wanted five at most.  But he went with five to reap good will for the developer, he said, who has other Oak Park projects planned.

But the five-foot discrepancy was clear from the start, Scheiss said at the 8/3 meeting at which the fine was imposed, not only to him but also to village staff — who apparently did not inform the trustees — because an extra foot per floor of “unusable” space had been prescribed by the structural engineer.

[Scheiss] said he met with [Village Planner Craig] Failor and another staff member to review the plans and they talked about the height difference. Staff had the opportunity to not approve the plans, but they approved them, Schiess said.

Meanwhile, Scheiss got the OK from someone else — the above-mentioned Building & Property Standards people — for the sensible-shoes no-style brick but didn’t tell the planner.  These bricks were what had trustees’ shorts in a bunch until they heard about the five or five and a half feet — measurements differ, alas — and that’s what made the roof fall in on Scheiss and the Opera Club.

The board taketh, the board giveth away

During discussion about ending the night-time on-street parking ban, OP trustee Martha Brock “repeatedly said the village needs to find a way to reduce the number of cars residents own,” Oak Leaves reports.

"I think it's a good idea to seek to reduce the overall demand for parking," Brock said, adding that if the village creates more parking spaces, residents will continue to purchase more cars.

Of course!  People have been thinking the problem is not enough parking, when it’s too much!

Meanwhile, the board went ahead on its teardown moratorium, rushing the vote to honor its own moratorium on meetings during August.  It halts demolition of single-family houses on multi-family and commercial streets.  It’s a saving of the 200 such structures, for now, until new ordinances can be crafted, according to trustee Robert Milstein, who likes the idea very much.  He threw out the 200 figure in discussion, identifying it as his “opinion.”

The vote was held on Monday after study-session discussion on Thursday.  That’s legal, said the village lawyer, because OP is a “home rule” community.  The moratorium was opposed only by trustee Ray Johnson, who said he had got calls from worried realtors, to which Milstein and Brock responded that they had got them from not worried ones.

Milstein had said (several times) that it’s a matter of “courage” to vote for this (and do some other things).  Johnson said on Monday that it took courage to oppose it. 

Village President David Pope said he’s usually not for moratoria but would make an exception this time, calling it “a reasonable step" because of its limitations — which if it covers 200 houses can’t be so limited as all that.  Nor is it limited to 120 days: the trustees can shorten or extend that at will, Wednesday Journal reports.

The uncertainty of it all plus other recent board actions might make OP look anti-development, warned Johnson.  "There is also a lot of uncertainty when it comes to residents," countered Milstein.  In other words, you got your uncertainty, I’ve got mine.  Very high level of debate here.

Careful: mind at work

Couple incidents in the past week or so cling to the memory.  Of neither can I be sure, but both are rife with possiblity:

1. I got wolf-whistled during the recently complete gay games in OP.  Was walking around the HS stadium as athletes and others milled.  Soccer was in progress across the street, where from the sidewalk outside the big playing fields I spotted Wed Jnl editor Ken Trainor chatting with a woman whom I took to be a sort of spokesperson but might have been someone Ken was chatting up in the course of doing his story.  Back across Lake St. near the stadium, where I was looking around, I headed back and away down Lake Street away from it all.  Had just passed some soccer players as they sauntered toward the field house, where I assume they used locker rooms and showers.  Which is when I heard it and thought it was aimed at me but can’t be sure, of course.  Didn’t turn around.  A fella doesn’t, you know.

2. Week later, crossing Lake at OP Ave. 7:30 or so a.m., I waited for the light to change from green arrow, allowing five or six vehicles to go their way.  The last of them, a dark-khaki or olive-drab SUV of weathered appearance, slowed at the intersection, however, but kept turning, so as to make a U-turn and head back down OP Ave., heading south.  I glared through his windshield, barely making him out, and kept looking as he completed the turn.  Then I got across, turning to see what he was doing: he was pulling over.  I assumed he was stopping for a Caribou coffee across OP Ave. and briefly considered continuing my glare.  But I was enjoying my walking too much and so turned to go my way.  A few more steps, now curious, I turned again, and the SUV was gone.  He had stopped to give me what-for, I decided, but when I was no longer looking, he sped off.  Maybe not.  Could be wrong again.  Anyhow, it was a great walk, taking me through the park with its small hill to Grove, and thence to Chi Ave.  Returned by way of Euclid with its big houses and headed on home.

Not knowing everything

Coming out of very good conversation at George’s with old friend and liberal Dick, I think of something I might have said, namely that I don’t have positions on everything and the positions I have range from certain to perplexed.  Dick peppered me with qq about what I think about various issues.  I think I did make the point that on this or that I have no more than leanings.  Haven’t studied this one, nor that one, I said, and I think he got my point.  But it’s an important one, that we ought to look before we leap and not be too facile in adopting and defending this or that.

I did mention what I’m reading (when he asked), namely Friederich Hayek on individualism, the good and the bad kind, British and Euro.  More later on this.

He mentioned days long ago when we agreed on everything.  But those were days when I did more leaping than looking, as a young priest teacher at St. Ignatius, for instance.  But even then we probably had disagreements, and he was wrong to assume otherwise.  This is it with people: if they agree wholly, there’s something wrong.  It means they are buying too much and should put the brakes on conviction-forming.  Anyhow, too much agreement makes for boring conversation, which mine with Dick wasn’t.

Teardown timeout

OP’s village board reaches out:

Oak Park trustees are looking to stop teardowns that are threatening predominantly single-family blocks in multifamily zones.

At a study session Thursday, trustees directed Village Attorney Ray Heise to draft an ordinance that would prohibit demolition permits to be issued for single-family homes and small flats in multifamily districts for 90 days.

Trustees expect to have a first reading of the ordinance at a special meeting tomorrow, and vote to adopt it Monday.

That’s fast work, but

"We have the power as a home-rule community to do it," said Trustee Robert Milstein, who led the charge for a moratorium. "We need to have some courage as a board."

We can’t let that power go to waste, can we?

Switching to Peraica

Brian Lantz, 305 Home Ave, is one of three Oak Parkers, of 10 letter-writers in all, in Sunday 7/23 Chi Trib decrying the Toddler Stroger coronation as county board president nominee. Lantz suggests secession: "We have" services we need. It’s a "duplication of county government."

Two others, Carmen Vitello and Jane Jeffries, explicitly say they will vote Republican in November. "I have always voted Democratic, but I hope there is a groundswell among Democrats to support Tony Peraica to show the party that we really want change and reform," wrote Vitello, who is not listed. "I've been a proud Democrat until last week. Now I’m ashamed," wrote Jane Jeffries, also not listed. "I voted for Forrest Claypool in the primary, and for the first time in my life, I’ll be voting Republican this fall."

Now. Is OP village board President Pope in for a dollar, having been in for a dime for the April primary, when he made calls for defeated Dem candidate Forrest Claypool? Will he be making calls for Peraica?

A taxing matter

From Nancy in Lake Bluff about OP tax-cutting:   Lower taxes encourage development, thereby increasing the tax base.  OP trustees fail to recognize this.  One only had to listen today to remarks by the new treasury secretary, as he was sworn into office, to understand the logic behind lower taxes.  He unapologetically proclaimed that lowering taxes worked for the federal government.  Tax revenues are way up and the budget deficit has gone way down. 

 

Me:  In some way or other, this would work for Oak Park.

Column up

This month’s Wednesday Journal column is up and running.  It’s about local-govt intervention in the business lives of all of us — see the recently posted Lane Bryant episode — and all-around leftist leanings in OP.

Trustees know shopping!

Oak Park

is the target of a recent lawsuit, filed after officials decided Lane Bryant doesn't fit the "kind and quality" of shops desired for the building.

Sun-Times reports.

In a downtown known for its trendy shops and clothing stores, Village President David Pope said officials want "a more broad-based retailer" to fill the building rather than one with "a niche market."

Lane Bryant specializes in clothing for women sizes 14 to 28.

Since when does local government make marketing decisions for developers?

What's the deal on Stroger? Hard to know what to believe

. . . says Mark Brown, who at the end of his description and attempt to figure out the Stroger in Wonderland happenings says something that must be occurring to lots of people beside Tony Peraica:

All I can say for an absolute certainty, though, is that this situation has been nothing but good for the Republican nominee, Commissioner Tony Peraica, who is looking more and more like a contender.

In Oak Park, for instance, lawns were loaded with signs for Forrest Claypool, Stroger’s opponent in the recent primary.  Will those become Peraica signs this fall, even in Democrat Oak Park?

OP spending money

OP business owner Paul Hamer —  has Frame Warehouse on Harrison St. — on retrieving freebies to developers through added sales tax:

People do not realize how small the sales tax pie is that goes to our village. It’s only one percent of the total 8.76 percent collected [that is, one% of purchase amount]. That means a business with a million dollars in sales only generates $10,000 for our community. The total sales tax deposited in village coffers for the entire downtown business district in 2003 was only $350,000. In our $100 million village budget, that’s nothing.

As for the Shops of OP, whose developer got lots of freebie help:

 2003 Actual real estate taxes from The Shops: $ 353,238

 2003 Projected real estate taxes with no public investment: $284.534

 Gross yearly Shops tax increase: $68,704

But there’s also the debt servicing by the village, which has led to a net yearly loss of $263,060

Would the developer have paid $6.5 million of his own money to make $20 million? [counting his recent sale of The Shops for $20 mill]  I think so. There was no need to ever get us involved financially.

Which leads to the question why the village trustees felt themselves competent in this matter in the first place.

The Shops didn’t increase our sales tax base, didn’t increase our real estate tax base enough to cover our costs, and has not led to a downtown revival—all the things that were promised to us.

………………

The TIF district tax hole that previous village boards have dug for us is deep, and it is not totally clear to me how we will be able to dig our way out without severe sacrifices to local public education or dramatic local tax increases.

Sex on the grass

Nice June evening, man meets wife for light supper at Winberie's, at Oak Park's premiere corner, Oak Park & Lake.  Quiet, tasty, reasonable.  Man and wife exit Winberie's, cross Lake to Oak Park's premiere park, Scoville Park.  White kids playing frisbie.  "Look out, people," he hears as one player warns the others about pedestrians.  Man and wife take the pleasant walk up the small hill past the monument and various people lounging on the grass, including interracial couple with little kid.  Pleasant.

 

They enter the library, where he picks up How Capitalism Saved America: the Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, waiting for him on the reserve shelf.  He doesn't even have to go to the circ desk steps away, but checks it out electronically.  Upstairs she is chatting with the part-time librarian, #2 Daughter's first-grade teacher long ago, just retired from the elementary district.  He joins for chatting.  They conclude, look at videos.  He picks one, waits for her at the huge windows overlooking the park.  What he sees horrifies him.

 

A black boy is humping a black girl on the grass.  Both are clothed.  He is holding her down, as if in a wrestling move, bouncing up and down on her crotch.  She wraps her legs around him.  A second black boy lifts a light-skinned, perhaps white girl up from behind, puts her down on her feet.  She wants to get at the boy on the ground.  He prevents her.  She leaves the three, heading to a corner of the park 100 feet or so away where others are congregated.  The humping boy gets up after several minutes.  The humped girl gets up laughing, smoothes her hair, stands there.  He gets her now from behind, standing, and humps some more.

 

"Disgusting," says the wife, approaching the same window.

 

"Let's go," they say.

 

Outside, at the corner of the park mentioned before, a dozen to 15 black teens congregate at the benches, milling about with each other, talking and laughing.  The humping couple is part of this group.  This is the group’s corner.  Elsewhere in the park are kids and adults using the park for their quite different purposes.

Not Boring

No one will ever be bored by this board, By JIM BOWMAN in Wednesday Journal of OP&RF, June 07, 2006

DIFFICULT MEETING: Oak Park Trustee Martha Brock saved the day, or night, at the village board meeting a month ago when she and Trustee Elizabeth Brady changed their minds about who should lead the Colt building redo. Brady had explained herself reasonably enough: matters of substance had combined with matters of politics. There was nothing substantive to add when Brock’s turn came.

But speaking after Trustees Bob Milstein and Geoff Brady, she saved the situation. The other two had called out an editor, a political opponent who had addressed the board, and fellow trustees in a remarkable display of pique, disappointment, and veiled or unveiled animosity, chilling the room, or at the least the one where I sat watching on TV.

Brock rambled a bit but did not hesitate. She got personal but not maudlin and not angrily defensive. Like an earlier speaker, she spoke of resigning. But she accused no one. It was not a masterpiece of argument but a candid, apparently guileless display that cooled things down. She finished, the meeting proceeded, business was completed, everybody went home.

HISTORICAL PRECEDENT: The affair was all about backing into a meat grinder. The butcher’s wife did that. The result was predictable: Disaster. So did our bold if misguided Board Majority back into a public opinion meat grinder. The result? Temporary setback apparently viewed as disaster. Two defected, leaving two others disturbing the ether with ineffectual haymakers.

But all four may take grim consolation from Oak Park political history. Officeholders and staff have had to swallow some bitter medicine over the years. At a hot District 97 board meeting a long time ago, a disgruntled parent asked a board member to step outside. (He didn’t.)

When the library board tried to close a branch, people demanded otherwise. The Village Manager Association, still chewing dust from the last election, lost a much earlier one over the firing of a garbage man. A lawsuit did the same for a hard-charging school board. Former officeholders have left town. You need insulation from the slings and arrows.

LANDMARK ALERT: Meanwhile, Oak Park’s Historic Preservation Commission convenes with statutory authority to declare your building a landmark with all the benefits and liabilities that includes—whether you like it or not.

That’s what Trustee Greg Marsey learned at the May 15 board meeting, where the 400 North Maple block condo development was discussed. Marsey asked and got it verified by Village Attorney Ray Heise, who admitted the coercion written into village ordinance—no, the owner cannot decline landmark status—only after noting that the owner is invited to participate in landmark discussions.

Marsey appeared stunned. President David Pope, trying to wrap up discussion, said he did not want to get into "nuance" at that point. But one man’s nuance is another’s heart of the matter. Someone can start the process for you the owner? And in the end you have to go along with commission and board decision, with drastic implications as to what you can do with your own property? You have in mind neither whorehouse nor shooting gallery nor saloon, but a spanking new building with toilets that work, but it doesn’t matter, or might not matter.

There was more. So clearly was the board moving to stop the Maple Avenue development that Trustee Baker volunteered on the spot to mediate in the matter of developer vs. NIMBY neighbors. He would recuse himself from voting when its landmark status came before the board, he offered, presenting himself as a neutral third party who would bring developers and neighbor to agreement.

But elected officials normally recuse themselves only when past activity indicates conflict, and they do it regretfully. They don’t do it ahead of time so as to adopt a new role that an official considers more important than the one he was elected to fill. Milstein dissuaded Baker from his bad idea, though without saying how bad it was.

Look out, here comes the village board

Something going on here we should know about?

The [OP village] board tabled the discussion on the zoning change until the end of the meeting, when it entered into a closed-door discussion citing "attorney-client privilege," which is not one of the 23 "strictly construed" exceptions that allow public bodies to meet in private.

When the board returned to open session at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, [President David] Pope explained the board’s position before a unanimous 6-0 vote to direct the village attorney to prepare a "findings of fact" on down-zoning the block. Trustee Greg Marsey left the meeting before the vote was taken.

The findings of fact would replace those prepared by the [village] Plan Commission in its recommendation to deny the zoning change from R-7 to R-6, which is a more restrictive and less dense residential zoning designation. The change, if it were to affect the planned condo building, would lower the four-story building by one floor and reduce its 11 units to nine.

Plan Commission, butt out.  Meanwhile, historic preservation took a hit when the relevant village commission denied landmark status to two buildings on the 400 N. Maple block

Commissioners expressed sympathy with preserving examples of more pedestrian architectural styles and with the neighbors’ plight in trying to prevent the character of their neighborhood from changing. However, most of the commissioners at the meeting found that the buildings are too badly dilapidated to retain historic architectural characteristics.

Falling-down buildings need not apply.  But landmarking the third would stop or slow down the condo development.  Neighbors are looking for “cultural”-historical reasons to save it — as if their interest was piqued in the first place by issues of crowding and making their block less livable or at least less cozy.

Meanwhile, the developer has made his plans under the wild assumption that zoning on books matters.

[Bob] Allen said he’s already spent a lot of money getting the project ready to be built, having not held back because he intended to build within allowable zoning.

But he faces a zoning change after the fact:

For weeks, Village Attorney Ray Heise has told the board that any zoning changes made now would not apply to a project for which a building permit application was received prior to the change.

Monday night, Pope would only say that the applicability of the zoning change, if approved, would be "subject to internal operating procedures of the village, village codes and state laws."

Which with $1.50 or so will get you a Green Line ride downtown or even to the South Side.  You can trust this village board as far as you can throw it. 

Trustees Geoff Baker and Robert Milstein were the most vocal in pushing the board to consider setting aside the Plan Commission to deny the zoning change request.

"I’m not going to sit by and let inappropriate zoning affect anybody," Baker said.

Milstein said the board needed "to send a new message in Oak Park that historic homes and peoples’ neighborhoods will be protected."

In other words, we can change that law if we want.  Or, to paraphrase the Red Queen, words mean what I want them to mean, period.

Crime and punishment

Tough, bold, smart Oak Park police catch a bad guy.  Breaking news from Wed. Journal:

A suspect in the rape and armed robbery of several woman in River Forest accidentally shot himself in the head during a police chase Monday night in Oak Park. The suspect died several hours later

Cops had him in the dark in Mills Park, but he

might have slipped through were it not for the instincts of off duty Oak Park detective Sgt. Juan Paladines. Paladines, who was driving in the area in his personal car, turned on his police radio when he heard the commotion. He then parked near Home Avenue at Washington Boulevard and waited. Within a minute Paladines spotted Patillo crouching behind a garbage can. When Patillo started moving south bound on Home, Paladines exited his car and followed him, radioing his position and asking for assistance. 

 

Rookie Oak Park officer Stephen Struska was the first to arrive on the scene, and joined Paladines in the foot pursuit in the 400 block of Home.

 

Struska passed Paladines, and was about to reach out and grab Patillo, Scianna said, when Patillo pulled a hand gun. He attempted to point it over his shoulder and shoot Struska. Unfortunately for Patillo, he fired too soon, and shot himself in the side of the head.

Wow.

Secret proposals, payoffs, divisiveness, scorched earth? OP is hot: Today's Wed Journal column

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS: Is it kosher for the village not to reveal development proposals (RFPs), as it did when Wednesday Journal asked for them in the matter of Colt building renovation? These are secret proposals? What about the soon-to-be-approved protocols of participation? Would the proposals be revealed to participants? One good thing: this refusal spares our village board any second-guessing by citizens with their own ideas. This is only right. Who are these citizens anyway? What trees do they plant?

 

PAYOFF: What about Whiteco paying off the village for honoring its agreement? It’s coughing up $400G for unnamed and so far nonexistent village housing programs, to say nothing of another $200G in environment-friendly additions to the already agreed-on building. That would be your cost of doing business in Oak Park, insofar as this village board is a very sensitive creature, and kid gloves are in order. It’s not under the table, anyhow.

 

TAKING OFFENSE: And hey, since when is it not kosher to ask about conflict of interest, as board President Pope asked a few weeks ago about who would plan the Baltimore Colt redo? You can’t even ask? Trustee Milstein was "offended ... deeply offended ... angered," as if he’d been told his mother wore army boots. Trustee Baker found it "repugnant." But what have board members got better to do than ask about conflict of interest? It’s what legislators do.

 

NAME GAME: These two are of the board majority, but that’s too tame a phrase for the poets among us. "Milstein majority," in honor of its stormy-petrel spokesman, does have a ring to it, though editor-columnist Trainor has the fetching "fearsome foursome of Bob [Milstein], Baker, Brock and Brady (the killer Bs)." The poets love it. But Milstein’s the man, poetic or not, so we should go with the other one, MM.

 

Indeed, board meetings and local papers offer us no small array of Milstein moments. For instance, the opposition Village Manager Association (VMA) was part of Oak Park’s "growth machine," until "swept out of power," he said some months back. Yes!

 

When this paper’s doughty editor criticized the MM, Milstein said the editor had been "smoking something," making a thinly veiled reference to hashish. Worse, this editor is a writer of "divisive columns," he said.

 

This has to stop, any fair-minded person will agree. And while we’re on the subject, isn’t it grand that we have no divisive trustees?

 

Two months ago Milstein burst forth with 1,145 words in defense of his majority, taxing developer Taxman with putting out an "unprofessional, scorched-earth press release that debases the integrity of the board." His sole VMA opposition on the board, Ray Johnson, he said "will milk every ounce of this [Colt controversy] for his re-election campaign." Johnson, moreover, wants to be "the knight in shining armor."

 

The tax appeal process—a county process?—favors businesses and apartment building owners; it’s "an onerous old-boys network."

 

These are the words of a man with a mission. We need people like that in village government.

 

Wait. That’s not right. It should read, "We need people like that in village government?"

 

HOUSECLEANING: Meanwhile, on the school scene, District 97 Supt. Constance C. apparently was not born yesterday. When she hit the ground running last fall, fresh from Zion, she called for an audit of business and personnel operations and found dirt under the rug. Better to find it now than later, when she herself would have some explaining to do. Is this standard for a new super? I don’t think so. But what a good idea in this case, when she succeeded a super of many years tenure, under whom matters got sloppy.

 

FP CALLS: And then there’s the YMCA getting ready for its big move to Forest Park, where there will be room to roam and then some. The market had to be part of that decision. Sitting on expensive land with no room to roam is a nice incentive to sell and move.

 

It’s not expensive? So why is Time & Money restaurant—sorry, Thyme and Honey—also moving to FP? Because a big building is coming to take its place, something in line with that land’s market value. Oak Park is hot, you’d better believe it.