Open Letter to My Fellow Senior Center Members – 03/31/2011

For weeks, I’ve been urged by friends of PRPD’s current Board to tone down the rhetoric in order to give current Board Members and the new Executive Director a chance to work their magic, to solve the Board’s self-created “senior center crisis”. For the most part, I have done so.

Now this from PRPD Board Incumbent-Candidate, Mary Wynn Ryan!

The following email was sent to me today. The emailer clearly intended my sharing this with you, or else this email would not have come to me.

The Email

“… Hi, Barbara -- just heard that the event this evening is from 6:00 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., firm (the Library closes at 9). I thought it was 7 to 9 p.m. Maybe it's my misunderstanding but I thought you'd want to know. Also, what is going on with Helen Roppel? I have never spoken with her in my life. What are these "widely rumored comments" she is accusing me of? You know my position on senior programming and services -- we need more, and that's the Park District's mandate and promise, which does NOT depend on any deal with the fundraising foundation. (In fact, I'd like to have Senior Senate play a bigger role. But that's just me.) I will be there tonight, but I sure hope you can pass the word that I am not the bad guy. In fact, anyone who votes for anyone else in hopes that the old deal will come back is going to be disappointed. No one except Steven Vile is in favor of it. But everyone is in favor of more productive and enrolling senior programming to reduce the deficit, and that's a fact! See you tonight. Best, Mary”

Now we know the truth.  Now we know where this Board stands on passing or rejecting the Senior Services/Park District created proposal, and right from the horses-mouth no less.

Based on Ms. Wynn Ryan’s written appraisal of the current situation, Seniors will have:

• no contract
  • no force of law to protect their interests, only nice sounding words and empty promises
  • no security
• no  up or down vote
• no independence
• no trust!

Seniors have been told, in my opinion, to surrender their hard-won creation, the “Senior Center”, into the hands of of what appears to be an incompetent, uncaring and now untrustworthy Board of which  Ms. Wynn-Ryan is a leading figure.

We are told that the “Resolution”, passed earlier this month, is all that is required to calm our fears of future betrayal. You don’t need the force of contract law to protect your interests, your creation; we are assured.  All you need are our good intentions!

To that I say, BULL!

Now, the ambiguity is gone.  We now know, should we believe Ms. Wynn Ryan, the voting intentions of six of seven Board Members.   Another thing we learned about the Board is their inability to handle anomalies.  A contracted relationship with the Seniors is different  than the other partnering relationships they maintain, an anomaly.  If something doesn’t fit in their predetermined single-sized box, they apparently can’t deal with it.  They apparently don’t want it!   I wonder how previous Boards were able to handle these things over the last 30 years?

This inglorious Board wants control. 

This Board wants to control:

• the “club house”
• the money
• all the activities under their authority.

Fair enough.  I say, let them have it.  All of it!

Let them control the money; what little there will be.  This isn’t about money anyway.  Our continuing to fork over 60k in yearly contributions toward their expenses doesn’t seem to mean a thing.  We even offered to take out the one sticking point, the deal-breaker.  A reimbursement clause possibly worth as much as 300k in PRPD savings.  Instead of closing the deal and going to contract, instead of making the Seniors feel happy and secure with a limited contract with no downside potential to PRPD, Board members went home empty handed, probably thinking of ways to extract more.  Now they blame the Seniors for stopping the talks while leaving the Park District vulnerable to the reimbursement repayment! 

Let them control and be responsible for all the activities within the building. The Park District has been trying unsuccessfully to increase utilization for months.  I was told by candidate Hunst that the responsibility of increasing the utilization of the building belongs to the building’s manager.  Rubbish!  It belongs to the Board, Executive Director and her immediate staff.  This is a PRPD marketing problem not local building management or a local senior center service problem. 

Let them use the building as an additional pool-side services center when they close the Oakton pool or as additional storage for the Community Center such as was described by Ms. Wynn Ryan last night.  The Board wants the building.

Let them have the whole bloody thing!   The Board Members can have their “club house” back; it was always theirs. The Senior Center is not a building. It’s an idea!  It’s people! 

These idiots just don’t get it.

It’s time to rethink this relationship.

Would you live with an abusive partner; one that thinks so little of you, takes your 60k a year, while they refuse to tell you their true intentions?  Well that’s what they are and that’s what they’ve done; at least as I see it. 

One more thing. 

I went to a “meet the candidates meeting” at the Park Ridge Library last night.  I watched with fascination as Ms. Wynn Ryan opined to a stunned audience the Boards frustration over a perceived lack of communication within and outside the Park District organization.  To illustrate her point, she told her story of how the PRPD Board learned of the latest PRPD/Senior Services proposal, and how it was allegedly created by their Board-chosen employee, without the Boards prior knowledge. 

In her opening remarks, Ms. Wynn Ryan went to great lengths to convince her audience of her competence by focusing on two primary political illustrations; her time spent as Park Ridge Alderman and her current stint as Park Ridge Park District Commissioner.

At the end of her tale, I found myself wondering how a person at this experience level, along with other PRPD Board Members, some of whom claim to possess equal or greater managerial or leadership experience, would have have allowed herself to be so removed from the process, that an agreement of that nature could have been created without her, let alone another, Board Members knowledge.  

At the completion of her yarn the gathering was treated to beautifully timed supportive comment voiced by Board Vice President Biachi and simultaneous nod of agreement by Commissioner Brandt.  Mr.’s Biachi and Brandt were in the audience, I suspect, in support of their colleague.

Legitimate question to ad hominem attack.

Lastly, some of us at that meeting were really taken aback at Board members Biachi and Mary Wynn Ryan’s uncalled for ad hominem attack on former Park Ridge Mayor Howard Frimark.  Their stormy public ridicule of his administration was boorish and in my opinion, Biachi and Mary Wynn Ryan need to publically apologize to him in writing.  I’m certainly not a Frimark fan but he was asking a reasonable question regarding the Boards decision to give the former Executive Director a bonus while at the same time talking “poor”.  This clear overreaction by these current Board Members to reasonable questioning is typical of what I call, executive decision discomfort.    

So here’s the question.

Who will you be voting for on April 5^th?