Susie:
Apologies if I struck a nerve with you, but I have come to understand that you are an accounting assistant at PDHP. If you look back on Patch, you'd see that I actually am a very strong supporter of PDHP and have corrected quite a bit of misinformation regarding their status. Obviously you would not be aware that I very much benefitted from PDHP programs when I was in elementary and middle school - and strongly believe that a good Park District is necessary for any community. Now, I'm assuming you live in Highwood - and I have long been a proponent of Highwood's events - my family attends all of them as we live as much in Highwood as we do HP. However, the point is that with all of the calls for fiscal responsibility around HP, the Park District doesn't seem to respond to that call much. I'm not criticizing the fiscal responsibility of any of our city's agencies, but after the pension scandal, is something like this really the best way for PDHP to prove they are responsibly using money? It undermines the work all of us did throughout the last election cycle to protect those who were currently on the board at the time from the public outcry of uninformed individuals. Especially with this costly Rosewood Beach effort looming, sometimes you have to look at how something will LOOK, not just how much it costs, and play the politics a little bit. I was never a fan of doing that, but I'm sure many would agree with me that around here, it seems to becoming the norm quickly.

To clarify the main point: if the bunny appears to have cost too much, you will get the same type of cry that we saw with Education First and the District 113 Referendum - "they felt it necessary to pay for a bunny to jump out of a plane... now they want us to pay more taxes to build a beach house that I won't be using because I don't go to that beach? Insanity!"

Frankly, I don't agree with it, but the district is conceding to a lot of points now in order to get things done, and I feel like the Park District could learn something from that.

PS I read over the meeting minutes of the Park District every month. There are many people who bring up issues, both in and out of meetings, concerning the financial status of the Park District, the city, and the school districts.

Also, as a side note - I talked to two different journalists who cover all of the events in this city... both expressed dismay that the Park District never sent one press release noting that there was to be any special surprise about this event. Could've been great press. District 113 just hired a fantastic new communications director (from the Deerfield Patch!) and she has taken community knowledge of school events from nothing to five to eight stories per week. Just a thought.