In a moment when the debate is over government at all levels doing more with less, Oak Park is having curious discussions about spending $20 million to build two new government edifices. One would be a shared headquarters for the elementary schools and park district. The other would be an indoor pool and fitness center, which one avid taxpayer wants OPRF to pay for.
Let’s break these down into individual cases:
Sharing is good, to a point
This evening, representatives of the park district and District 97 schools will host a forum at village hall to present the concept of the two entities building a shared headquarters on the parking lot behind village hall. The price tag — $6-10 million — is as vague as this plan.
We’re all in favor of the parks and schools sharing a headquarters, and we would strongly suggest it be the current park building at 218 Madison St. That location has been pretty much the assumption since we supported the parks clearing space at the headquarters and buying and building a new gymnastics center at Lake and Humphrey.
The current headquarters offers plenty of space and was renovated into office space only 25 years ago. Between them, the parks and schools have $3 million to retrofit the space into perfectly good offices. Plus you get the benefit of clustering three critical local governments within spitting distance on the east side of town.
What you don’t get is a price tag twice or three times as high, a gigantic parking headache at village hall, a fresh call on limited TIF dollars and another empty building on a commercial strip, which is already littered with them: Madison Street.
At a meeting last week when this high concept was proffered to the village board, all parties were gaga over sharing the current village council chamber for their various meetings. It is a fabulous space and with its cable technology in place would allow the broadcast of all public meetings. How about we just do this anyway? We don’t need to spend $10 million to share the council chambers. Let’s rearrange some meeting schedules and start this arrangement on Jan. 1. Now that would be intergovernmental collaboration.
Overall, new construction is a bad idea that needs to be nixed.
Deep end of the pool
Meanwhile, with enviable moxie, a River Forest resident who has been promoting the concept of an indoor pool and fitness center, has now gathered 3,800 signatures and wants OPRF’s school board to put the idea on an advisory referendum come April. And, by the way, she also wants the OPRF board to pay the $11 million she estimates the project would cost.
We’d allow that at some point the high school is going to need to come up with a solution to its decrepit and increasingly obsolete swimming pools. We also know the park district seriously studied a major indoor pool and fitness concept when it first began discussing the overhaul of Ridgeland Common a few years ago. There were talks with the high school about a shared project. But, wisely, the park district said the total cost was far too high and will move ahead in March with a more modest renovation of the pool, ice rink and park.
If this referendum effort has any immediate benefit, it will be to focus taxpayers’ attention on the absurd reality that the high school is currently sitting on $100 to $110 million in financial reserves.
Build a pool, cut taxes, issue a rebate. But hoarding tax dollars in this tough economy is just wrong.