May 25, 2011
"MAYOR NO" DOMINATES PARK RIDGE POLITICS

ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART

In northwest suburban Park Ridge, the operative phrase is "Just Say No."

The principal and persistent naysayer is Mayor Dave Schmidt, whose insistence on no new spending, no new taxes or tax hikes, no new hiring, no non-essential funding (with social service cutbacks), and no more politics as usual has made him both revered and reviled.

Schmidt, a conservative Republican who was elected in 2009, is the city's self-proclaimed "Taxpayer in Chief." The mayor's fiscal ax swinging, budget chopping and ordinance vetoes so infuriated the seven-member Park Ridge City Council that five refused to run for reelection in 2011. "We needed better leadership," grumped departed Alderman Tom Carey. "He created a toxic environment."

"We had runaway spending," emphasized Schmidt. "We had economic stagnation. I ran on the promise to streamline government, and I kept my word."

Park Ridge is a microcosm of the nation's economic malaise. Just a few years ago, tear-downs and "McMansions" afflicted -- and conflicted -- almost every block. Now, new home construction is at a standstill. A sizable number of the new $1 million homes are in foreclosure or under water. Property values have plummeted by 25 to 40 percent. Home sales are a rarity. Commercial and residential development is frozen solid. Sales tax revenues have diminished, as people spend less.

Without a doubt, Schmidt ain't Pat Quinn or Barack Obama, full of dither and desperation. His minimalist view of government would be irrelevant, if not repugnant, in boom times. But these aren't boom times. "These are tough times," observed former alderman Rex Parker, an outspoken liberal Democrat who was ousted in 2007. "He's doing his best to get by."

Likewise, voters have evidenced no ire -- and, apparently, no interest. Of the seven aldermanic races on April 5, four were uncontested, and nobody even filed in the 3rd Ward. An alderman is paid $100 per month, netting $88. Given the plethora of City Council meetings and budget hearings, all scheduled at night, amounting to about 12 to 15 hours per month, an alderman earns about $6 per hour. "Nobody wants the job," Carey said. "It's endless."

In the election, a pro-Schmidt write-in candidate won the 3rd Ward seat, and pro-Schmidt candidates easily won the two contested races, giving Schmidt unanimous council support. For the next 2 years, every alderman will just say yes when the mayor says no.

"Boss" Schmidt's critics, of course, grouse that "Mayor No" and his policies are not popular. Only 1,788 votes were cast in the April ward races, a puny number in a city with a population of 37,775. City turnout in 2009 was 8,655. Wait until 2013, critics say, when Schmidt will be on the ballot and the election will be a referendum on his tenure. Then, they say, pent-up volcanic anti-Schmidt rage will erupt.

Without question, Schmidt is an "accidental mayor." After serving one iconoclastic term as an alderman, Schmidt, an attorney, launched a quixotic bid for mayor against popular one-term incumbent Howard Frimark, a Republican. Frimark had been elected alderman in 2003, when the council had two aldermen in each of seven wards, and the "Gang of Seven," composed of Democrats and independents, gridlocked city government, causing Republican mayor Ron Wietecha to resign. They cajoled Republican Alderman Mike MaRous to switch sides and elected him interim mayor.

In 2005 Frimark ran for mayor and beat a flawed Democratic alderman by a solid 4,889-3,224, getting 60.2 percent of the vote. The "Gang of Seven" kept control and stripped Frimark of most of his appointive powers, creating a pro-Frimark backlash. In a stroke of genius, Frimark put a referendum on the November, 2006, ballot to slash the number of aldermen from 14 to seven, effective in 2007, and the referendum was approved with 53.3 percent of the vote.

Not surprisingly, 10 of 14 aldermen retired in 2007, the Democratic presence in the City Council evaporated, and pro-Frimark Republicans won a 6-1 majority. But the economic downturn intervened, and Frimark's pro-development boosterism paled before fiscal reality. However, "Mayor Windsock," as Frimark was by then known, due to his platitudes, vicissitudes and vacillations, was not heaped with blame. He was deemed unbeatable, even though his support was a mile wide and an inch deep.

Barack Obama carried Maine Township in 2008 by 31,638-21,338 (with 59.0 percent of the vote), and he won the 44 Park Ridge precincts with more than 60 percent of the vote. Clearly, there is a liberal/Democratic/independent base in the city, but with the Park Ridge Democrats neutered, no anti-Frimark liberal emerged to run for mayor. Schmidt, a onetime "Goldwater Republican" who lambasted Frimark's "lack of transparency" in making decisions, his fealty to "special interests" and developers, his "overzealous" city spending, and his refusal to implement "pay as you go" funding for city projects, became the "Stop Frimark" candidate, assembling an incongruous coalition of "anti-Boss Frimark" independents, Frimark-hating liberal Democrats and Frimark-disgusted conservative Republicans. Schmidt became everybody's "protest vote," with nobody ever conceptualizing his possible win.

But that he did. In a mammoth upset, "Frimark fatigue" propelled Schmidt to a 4,885-3,770 victory, as he got 56.5 percent of the vote and won by a margin of 1,115 votes. Four years earlier, Frimark won by 1,665 votes. Frimark's vote declined by 1,119 votes, from 4,889 to 3,770. It constituted the desertion of pro-Schmidt conservatives. The 2005 vote received by anti-Frimark liberal Mike Tinaglia for mayor was 3,224; it increased by 1,661 in 2009, which came out of Frimark's base.

Incredibly, but certainly not inadvertently, three-quarters of Schmidt's vote came from independents and liberal Democrats who preferred a doctrinaire conservative to a "windsock." Be clear on this: It won't happen again in 2013.

Schmidt said that he expects to run for reelection, and that contest will be a referendum on him.

Schmidt has not been loathe to use his veto as mayor. The city's budget was $51.1 million when he took office. When the council passed a 2010-11 budget of $52.7 million, Schmidt vetoed it -- and was overridden by a 5-2 vote. Schmidt also vetoed the contract of the city manager and the elimination of the business facade program. In 2011 all five anti-Schmidt aldermen retired.

"This is the time for austerity, not new spending," Schmidt said. "We don't need to hike taxes to pay for $400,000 in TIF debt reduction. We don't need to spend $724,000 for a parking lot. We don't need to give every employee a 3 percent raise. I cut overtime by 12 percent, made $650,000 in line-item veto cuts, and opened all meetings to the public. I want zero-based budgeting, where every department has to justify every dollar spent."

Schmidt also cut back on staff funding, tree planting, Christmas decorations and, amid a major howl, on social service spending for community groups. "He's made a lot of enemies," observed Parker.

As for the just-departed aldermen, Schmidt disparages them as lazy. "They didn't even try to find creative solutions to fiscal problems," he said. "They took the easy way: spend more." Deriding the growing "nanny state," Schmidt said the only person "entitled to tax dollars is the taxpayer, who should keep them."

"He has utterly failed to balance fiscal conservatism with necessary management skills," said Carey, who may run for mayor in 2013. "His use of vetoes is indicative of his inability to govern," Carey said. "He's made (the city) toxic."

The outlook: There was no anti-Schmidt groundswell in the 2011 elections, but although he is engaging and likable, Schmidt is a polarizing mayor. He has built no political organization. In 2 more years, the "Just Say No" mayor may find himself as tiresome and fatiguing as Frimark was in 2009. In a one-on-one contest, "Mayor No's" base will be less than a majority, but in a multi-candidate race, with no runoff provision, Schmidt can win.

Harwood Heights: In this town of 8,297, with a large non-voting contingent of Polish non-citizens, politics is a never-ending blood sport. After Democrat Peggy Fuller's 4 tumultuous years as village president from 2005 to 2009, she retired and in 2009 Republican Trustee Arlene Jezierny beat Democratic Trustee (and Fuller ally) Mark Dobrzycki by 1,004-753, a margin of 251 votes. After that election, Jezierny's party controlled five of the six trustee seats, and it appeared that an era of stability was imminent.

But then two pro-Jezierny trustees, Jimmy Mougolias and Lester Szlendak, decided to extend bar closing hours to 4 a.m., creating a major fissure with Jezierny. Trustee Therese Schuepfer joined them, and Jezierny broke a 3-3 tie. In the 2011 election for trustee, Dobrzycki sought reelection as an independent, the Mougolias-Szendlak faction backed two anti-Jezierny contenders, and Jezierny's party ran incumbents Mike Gadzinski and Schuepfer along with Mike Holzer.

Gadzinski (with 743 votes), Dobrzycki (676 votes) and Schuepfer (596 votes) emerged victorious, which means Jezierny breaks the resulting 3-3 trustee deadlock. Mougolias and Dobrzycki are positioning themselves to run for mayor in 2013, when Jezierny's term expires. In a three-way race, with a turnout of 1,700-1,900 and with Mougolias drawing votes from Jezierny, Dobrzycki has the edge.