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