Entries associated with the tag "Alderman Ted Matlak":

At the meeting today of the City Council's zoning committee, 32nd Ward residents witnessed the unthinkable -- a proposed zoning change failed to pass.

On April 18, just one day after challenger Scott Waguespack eked out a win over incumbent Alderman Ted Matlak, a prominent zoning lawyer sent letters to Bucktown residents letting them know of a zoning-change proposal that would allow a developer to build an eight-story, 51-unit mixed-use condo complex with 248 parking spaces on the 1600 block of North Milwaukee.

The zoning lawyer, Frederick Agustin, is a partner in the law firm of James Banks, nephew of 36th Ward alderman William Banks, chair of the zoning committee. 

Residents were enraged, charging that Matlak was trying to rush through one last zoning change before Waguespack took office. Waguespack said if the proposal passed out of committee over his objection he might rally aldermen to oppose it on the council floor.

But at today's meeting Alderman Banks -- as opposed to his nephew -- announced that the matter was being deferred at Matlak's request. "They made Ted fall on the sword," one preservationist quipped.

Waguespack says he'll hold public hearings on the proposal before deciding whether to support it.   

On April 17 voters in the 32nd Ward went to the polls to choose between incumbent Ted Matlak and challenger Scott Waguespack in the aldermanic runoff election.

The very next day a zoning lawyer sent letters to Bucktown residents letting them know of a zoning-change proposal that, if passed by the City Council, would allow a developer to build an eight-story, 51-unit mixed-use condo complex with 248 parking spaces on the 1600 North block of Milwaukee, just north of the Coyote Building.  The condo complex would be one of the tallest buildings in the area and, as word spreads, residents are up in arms.

According to the notification sign posted at 1632 N. Milwaukee, the zoning-change application was filed on April 11, almost a full week before the election. Matlak ought to have known about it--as a matter of routine the zoning committee immediately notifies aldermen of proposals in their wards.

For his part, Michael Moran, cofounder of Preservation Chicago, doubts that the letter's timing was coincidental. "I believe they purposefully waited until after the election," says Moran. "If the zoning change surfaces before the election, it's going to be a big issue and Matlak has to take a stand."

One of the main reasons Matlak was even in a runoff was because voters were upset at him for not keeping them abreast of requested zoning changes until it was too late to mount an opposition, as happened with the Artful Dodger (PDF). If the announcement was indeed delayed purposely, it  wasn't enough to help him: Matlak lost to Waguespack, with 49.26 percent of the vote to his 50.74 percent. 

The letter was signed by Frederick Agustin, a partner of in the law firm of James Banks, one of the most prominent zoning lawyers in town and the nephew of 36th Ward alderman William Banks, chair of the zoning committee. According to Agustin's letter, the applicant is a company called 1600 North, Inc., located at 1000 N. Milwaukee.

Waguespack says he will ask alderman Banks to hold off on approving the change until the area's two leading organizations, the Bucktown Community Organization and the Wicker Park Committee, get to hold public hearings about it. "I haven't had a chance to see the proposed building; I just learned about it myself," says Waguespack. "I'd hope they wouldn't try to push it through."

There's at at least one council zoning committee and one full City Council meetings before Waguespack gets sworn in on May 21. After Matlack won, Waguespack told reporters "we took out the machine." In the next few weeks, we'll see if the machine gets in one last jab.

The thrust of challenger Scott Waguespack's recently filed $5 million defamation lawsuit against 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak has to do with accusations made against him in campaign flyers put out by the incumbent.

But the suit also charges Berwyn alderman Michael Phelan and defeated 32nd Ward challenger Catherine Zaryczny.

Billing herself as a reformer with deep ties to Ukrainian Village, Zaryczny initially ran hard at Matlak, criticizing him for, among other things, using campaign workers in the 2003 election sent to the ward by Donald Tomczak, who was convicted oftaking bribes in the hired truck scandal.

She was so persuasive that she won the endorsement of the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Workers organization.

The weekend before the February 27 election, Zaryczny turned her attack on Waguespack, sending out a glossy flyer calling him "a patronage hack who is not who he says he is," language similar to that in the Matlak brochures that sparked the suit.

In his lawsuit Waguespack makes the curious allegation that Zaryczny "employed" Paul Foxgrover to "gather, fund and disseminate defamatory information" about him.

And who is Paul Foxgrover? He's a former Cook County Circuit Court judge who pleaded guilty to stealing more than $25,000 in court fines and victim restitution funds in the early 90s."Paul Foxgrover did not sell justice, he only stole it," a prosecutor said at Foxgrover's sentencing, according to a 1992 Sun-Times account of his sentencing. Moreover, he "continued to steal money until a week before his arrest although he knew of the investigation." The judge was disbarred and sentenced to six years in prison.

Foxgrover is also the father of Laura Foxgrover, a name you may remember from one of the more sensational political stories of recent years. The Park District official in charge of concessions, Laura Foxgrover had a baby with Matthew O'Malley, the restaurateur who got a Park District contract to run the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. As Tim Novak of the Sun-Times reported in 2005, "The Chicago Park District awarded a 20-year lease to run the swanky restaurant at Millennium Park to a businessman who got a top Park District official pregnant during negotiations." Laura Foxgrover gave birth to O'Malley's child on September 24, 2002, the paper reported. The O'Malley Park Grill deal was signed February 11, 2003.

Waguespack alleges that Paul Foxgrover's connection to Zaryczny indicates that she was acting as Matlak's stalking horse, siphoning off votes from Waugespack. It was, Waugespack continues, no coincidence that a few days after the February 27 election, Zaryczny endorsed Matlak.

Hmm. It's pretty well-known in political circles that Paul Foxgrover has ties to local Democratic Party big shots, particularly in the 19th Ward. And restaurateur O'Malley has ties to former congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Matlak's political mentor. But what's the evidence that links Zaryczny to Paul Foxgrover? Waguespack's lawsuit doesn't say, nor has his campaign produced anything to support this claim. Is the Foxgrover allegation simply an attempt to smear Zaryczny?

Matlak's spokeswoman, Rebekah Brooks, says she knows nothing about Foxgrover. In fact, she says she never even heard of him until I called asking her for a comment.

Zaryczny did not return calls for comment. 

It was only a few weeks ago that Catherine Zaryczny was blasting 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak, calling him an unresponsive and unaccountable individual whose allegiance is to the ward organization that put him in power and to the special interests that keep him in power."

That was when she was one of two candidates running against Matlak in the February 27 election for alderman. Today she pulled a surprising 180 degree turn, endorsing Matlak in the April 27 runoff against Scott Waguespack.

"Are you kidding me?" Waguespack said, when I called him for a comment. "That's the first I've heard of it."

He then jokingly asked for a few minutes to compose himself. "I have to hold on to something to keep myself from falling down from laughter," he said.

During the first round of campaigning Zaryczny routinely criticized Matlak for approving upzoning that allowed developers to overdevelop the ward. "The 32nd Ward is infamous for the present alderman's failure to meaningfully address local citizens', community groups', and businesses' concerns about development," she wrote in her response to the IVI-IPO's aldermanic questionnaire. "Development currently takes place on an ad hoc basis with no consideration for underlying transportation, congestion, and other basic concerns."

She also called reporters--myself included--to point out that Donald Tomczak, the former deputy water commissioner, had assigned patronage workers to help Matlak's 2003 campaign. Tomczak received a four-year prison sentence for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in connection with the hired truck scandal.

So why the change of heart? Zaryczny did not return calls for comment. But in a press release distributed by Matlak's campaign she said: "We cannot deny Alderman Matlak's overall record of accomplishment. The simple truth is that our ward is one of the most desirable places to live, work and raise a family."

Zaryczny pulled roughly roughly 14 percent of the vote. If every single one of her 1,122 voters follows her endorsement and votes for Matlak, he'll win. But Wauguespack says that's not going to happen.

"I think that many of the people who voted for her because of her reform rhetoric will be even more shocked that I am to hear this news," he said.