Slander continues at the "Orland Park Patch"

The Orland Park Patch was supposed to be part of national network of local news pages, now owned by AOL. But it has turned into a killing ground for the truth. The Patch allows people to make outrageous, slanderous claims and doesn't do anything to limit the debate. Anyone can post on it. And anyone can post anonymously which means there is no accountability.
For the most part, the majority of Orland Park residents don't read the vicious attacks that the Orland Park Patch allows to be published on its pages. They voted resoundingly last year to change the Orland Fire Protection District Board because the former board leadership was spending their tax dollars at an alarming rate.
The OFPD Tax Rate is the third highest in Orland Park next only to the high school and the elementary school districts. Nearly 80 to 85 percent of the budget goes to pay salaries of firefighters and employees. The salaries are covered by the overly-generous pay hikes authorized by the former board leadership led by the disgraced former Orland Fire Protection District Board Chairman Pat Maher.
Maher and his allies on the board gave these outrageous, high salary pay hikes because they wanted to backing of the fire unions for their election ambitions. As everyone knows, Maher ran for the Cook County Board and got slam-dunked by the brilliant public servant and tax hike fighter Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth "Liz" Doody Gorman. Because Gorman backs the new new board, Maher's rogue pack of slanderers have been busy writing nonsense and lies on the Orland Park Patch.
One lie that the Path continues to allow to be published is this one. That I was hired and that I replaced three employees who did the communications work.
That's not true. In fact, the truth is simple but the Patch will not correct it because it doesn't play into the hands of the people who anonymously slander others on their web site. (I won't post comments anymore in response to the lies because all it does on the patch is encourage more slander and defamation, despite the tireless, well-intentioned efforts by Ben Feldheim to keep the debate within courteous guidelines.)
I was hired to replace Bill Figel the professional media consultant who was paid $4,000 a month. I took the SAME JOB for $3,000 a month. There is one more media consultant who does broadcast media who was hired by the prior administration who is continuing to work there and she does a good job designing the PSAs that broadcast at the Orland Theater, among others.
That's what's called a SAVINGS to most taxpayers. And saving money for taxpayers has been OFPD President Jim Hickey's primary agenda. Since last year, OFPD President Hickey has saved the taxpayers more than $1 million and prevented the budget from being increased another $1 million.
The past administration increased the OFPD budget by more than $10 million over the decade before Hickey and the new board leadership took over.
The majority of the taxpayers in Orland Park want the fire board to stop spending money like a drunken sailor, or a politically motivated machine the way it was run under Maher, the son of the Orland Park Village Clerk Dave Maher who is a political ally of Trustee Pat Gira who has been making politically motivated attacks against the current fire board leadership (but was so conspicuously silent about the actions of the firmer board she backed.)
Ms. Gira came to the board the last two meetings to comment and made outrageous and false claims against the current Orland Fire Protection District Board leadership because she was the running mate with Pat Maher! Gira's attack against the current board is selfishly motivated and you know it is selfishly motivated because when the board was spending money like crazy in the past, she never spoke up once!
Because the abuses were by her running mate, Pat Maher. But since Maher's political future has been derailed -- be his own stupidity (trying to hide a past violent criminal conviction) -- Trustee Pat Gira is now screaming all over the place because she wants to run a new slate in the next election.
John Fotopolous is also screaming about change but it was John Fotopolous' candidacy in the Orland Park village races that prevented change. Out of selfishness, Fotopolous stayed in the race and allowed Gira to win re-election by LESS THAN A 50 PERCENT MAJORITY of the vote. In otherwords, the majority of the voters in Orland Park didn't vote for Pat Gira.
But that majority of the voters of Orland Park did this:
1 - They Voted for the current OFPD board leadership
2 - They Voted to support a reduction in spending at the OFPD 3 - They Voted in support of Liz Gorman's fight against excessive sales taxes in Cook County
And that means I can say with a clear conscience that I am on the right side of this ugly slander campaign being waged on the web site of the Orland Park Patch.  (By the way, the Village of Orland Park promised to rebate every penny of property taxes to homeowners in exchange for increasing the sales tax in Orland Park. 
Under Trustee Pat Gira, the village eliminated the sales tax rebate to homeowners and they continue to collect the sales tax hike.
Those are the real issues that homeowners need to focus on, the politicians who distort issues to cover up their poor tax hike policies (Maher, Gira and the slanderers who post on the Orland Park Patch) who are lying about the current OFPD policies today and slandering Hickey and Gorman and the OFPD Board leadership.
-- Ray Hanania www.hanania.com