The best part is that it’s hardly gonna cost the rest of us anything, according to the Alderman’s calculations. Only about $90,000 per year from the Ward’s extremely limited “menu” fund. You can check out this report if you want a full run-down on how the City recommends (and residents should expect) Aldermen to spend menu funds. But the watchdogs at the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group describe the program as “the capital-spending vehicle most likely to pay for basic capital improvements in residential areas.” Unless, that is, it is being frittered away to placate lakefront whiners who believe they are entitled to special treatment.

Even Alderman Moore himself admits that menu money is typically set aside for “ward infrastructure, such as streets, alleys, sidewalks, street lights and the like.” But since that stuff’s all pretty much in mint condition around here, no harm in earmarking about 7.5% of the fund annually to appease the few at the expense of the many.

We don’t want to become a strictly anti-Joe Moore blog–Lord knows there are plenty of those already. But this really honks us off here at RPP. We suggested last time that the parking privatization lease downtown did not affect our neighborhood up here directly. And it’s still a different deal: these parking spaces being set aside at public expense for essentially exclusive use by the lakefront set are owned by the Park District, not Chicago Parking Meters, LLC. But we believe the Alderman is using this separate issue in effort to further distance himself from his decision to approve the privatization lease. They are mostly unrelated issues–save for the word “parking” is in both headlines. He’s hoping this confuses people into believing that Joe Moore is a parking populist.

It’s insulting, it’s a budgetary shell game, and it’s just plain bad news for all of us in the Ward who want menu money to be spent properly–that is, on infrastructural improvements that everyone benefits from. Call Joe Moore’s office at 773-338-5796 and/or email him to register your disapproval.

What, we ask ourselves, is the most outrageous (and hilarious!) component of the whole parking meter fracas currently tearing City government apart? Is it the Inspector General’s newly released report that pans the privatization lease as a bum financial deal for the City? How about the Mayor’s uninspired public defense of the lease and its architects? These have their entertaining moments, but they don’t quite get us there the way our zany friends in City Council do. Those jokesters, always good for some laughs!

What we are specifically referring, of course, to the solemn-faced gravity of their pronouncements about how the public trust has been violated, and that the public review for the privatization deal was far too rushed to begin with. How can the people’s chamber be expected to do the sacred work of finding the best and highest public good in these hurried cases? they cry.

Well, we suppose they could have, you know, voted against the lease. There’s that.

But, of course, almost nobody did. Eighty percent of the Council voted for the lease, and many, many of them are now backpedaling. Voting against it after having voted for it, in a manner of speaking. One guy in particular is just about falling all over himself to be counted among those most vociferously opposed to the lease that he voted to approve back in December.

As a matter of planning or policy in Chicago, the parking meter lease doesn’t directly affect the far north side. But the political fallout does call our 49th Ward leadership into some question—and in fact, Ben Jorvasky at the Reader proposes that voter dissatisfaction has the potential to ripple out so widely and fiercely as to the threaten even His Honor. This may just be wishful thinking for Jorvasky (two years yet ’til the next election is still a long way off), but we believe it is important to pay some attention to nevertheless for all the fuss it is causing.

“Is Rogers Park really as dangerous as people say?” Chicago Reader, May 21 2009.

Philadelphia is apparently taking a progressive step in holding a series of public meetings to get resident input on how to deal with their own $108 million budget hole. It turns out (promisingly, for those who care about the quality of urban life) that majorities of these participants express a willingness to bear an extra tax burden for “essential” services.

Now, depending on context, who you’re asking, and where you draw your lines as to what is essential, you’ll reach different conclusions in different cities by asking these questions. But RPP thinks that Philly gets points for simply asking. Compare our fair city, where not only we aren’t asked, but we aren’t even told–even from on high, by dictatorial fiat, whatever–what to expect. It’s like Christmas! No peeking!

Most locals around here are pleased to see Rogers Park in some ways bucking this trend: at long last the pulchritudinously-challenged vacant site of the Clark Mega Mall across from Touhy Park may be about to get a new lease on life. City Council just passed the necessary zoning variance to allow the space-hungry Chicago Math & Science Academy to move forward with occupying the site. Despite some of the requisite grumbling about possible added traffic congestion (which we at RPP are all for; congestion is the main incentive for shifting people to transit), this move is win-win-win. 1.) Some ugly, under-used community deadspace gets integrated back into positive use; 2.) the kids and teachers at CMSA get a little more elbow room; and 3.) the good folks at St. Jerome’s parish—where the Academy has been until now—get their classrooms and whatnot back.

The good news got us to thinking about what other under-used and outright abandoned sites in the neighborhood are candidates for the next transformative re-use. A quick stroll south from the Mega Mall site to Clark and Greenleaf offers two possibilities. First is the Jewel Laundry building at 1730 West Greenleaf. Built in 1917, this building was most recently owned and occupied by an interior décor company that relocated to Skokie.

Second, and right across the street, is the old (newly-old; they just left last month) fire station for CFD Engine Company 102. It’s a charmingly stout, old timey brick building that was constructed in 1915. Most recent rumor has it that there may be some deal to allow the Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society (currently located off the beaten path at 7344 N. Western) to occupy the building, which is a cute idea. Still, is it too much to dream that some kind of casually-upscale bar and grill or dine-in pizza place would sprout just down the street from where we live? They might even design and market the place around the firehouse theme, a la Evanston’s own (aptly named) Firehouse Grill.

Anyone for burgers?

Either this, or a start-up team of ghost-hunting scientists might have some use for the place, I dunno.

What other places in Rogers Park are ripe for adaptive re-use? Or what new places of business are out there simply aching for a diverse, vibrant, well-connected and walkable northside neighborhood to call home?