When Ronald Reagan opposed President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential campaign, he asked the crucial question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” It was a key question which led to Carter’s landslide defeat.
On Tuesday, February 22, East St. Louis voters will go to the polls, in their city-wide primary election, to choose a new mayor, treasurer and to fill three city council seats.
ESL Mayor Alvin Parks Jr., in seeking re-election, must face the same question as Jimmy Carter, as ESL voters ponder the question of whether or not they were better off before Alvin Parks walked into the mayor’s office four years ago.
Several candidates have filed to oppose Parks, including current City Councilman Delbert Marion and former ESL mayor Carl E. Officer.
In terms of popularity, experience, leadership ability and talent, Officer is clearly the most qualified challenger for Parks to whom he lost the mayor’s seat by a slim margin of less than 35 votes four years ago.
The difference, in this election, is that Parks now has the baggage of an indefensible and lackluster record.
I can vividly remember Parks’ campaign theme of “Life More Abundantly” (a theme that he has the audacity to recycle and reprise in his re-run of a campaign). So much for creativity.
As I recall, among Parks’ first acts as mayor was the hiring of his sister Lauren (as executive assistant), her husband Rocco Goins (as director of the Emergency Service Disaster Agency) and cousin Tommy Dancy (as Director of Regulatory Affairs), in keeping with his campaign pledge of making life more abundant, indeed, for HIS family!
Later, brother-in-law Rocco “you’re doing a helluva’ job” Goins would botch the response to a major toxic powder spill in East Boogie and would, eventually, lose the accreditation for ESL emergency disaster services.
But that was only the beginning of the train wreck that would become the Parks administration.
Another of Parks’ appointees, Deputy Liquor Commissioner Walter Hill (who reported to Parks) was indicted, convicted and sentenced to five years in federal prison for his role in shaking-down liquor establishments and liquor license holders, illustrating Parks’ poor judgment in selecting competent staff and appointees.
The tragedy in that episode was that, despite Parks’ admission to being informed (about Hill’s misdeeds), he did NOTHING about it, further exemplifying his ineptitude and lack of leadership as mayor.
Then there was Parks’ pledge to Post-Dispatch reporter Doug Moore, back in 2007: “This time next year, there will be a lot of construction in the city.” We’re STILL waiting on that one!
Fast forward to 2011, and I think that Parks probably wishes that he hadn’t opened his big mouth. For, on Mayor Parks’ watch, there has been more destruction than construction in ESL.
On Mayor Parks’ watch, ESL’s only hospital (Kenneth Hall Regional) was lost and is nothing more than a glorified waiting room and shell of its former self.
During the last four years, nightclubs in ESL became deadlier while Parks dithered, vacillated and refused to revoke liquor licenses or crack down on irresponsible nightclub owners, fearing the loss of liquor license revenues over the preservation of human life.
Parks’ ineptitude extended to ESL’s fiscal demise, after repeated unbalanced budgets and missed deadlines forced the state Financial Advisory Authority to intercept all state funding for ESL.
And what about all of Parks’ flowery talk of “ethics” and being above reproach? Apparently, the mayor forgot all about that rhetoric when he defended the rehiring of federal vote fraud felons (and Charlie Powell accomplices) Jessie Lewis and Sheila Thomas, at City Hall, upon their release from prison.
So, for the past four years, Parks’ talk has been inconsistent with his walk. And if ESL voters are honest with themselves they will conclude that they are worse off, less safe and more frustrated than they were four years ago.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com.
