The Finance Committee on Monday voted to recommend that the City Council let residents vote on whether to raise taxes to build a new library building.
The council is expected to vote on the issue Monday.
The question voters would see on their ballots April 3 asks for an $18.7 million bond issue to be repaid over 20 years. Those bonds would cost the owner of a $210,000 house about $70 per year, according to Library Board Trustee Wallace Hastings. Library trustees plan to use anticipated state grants and $3.3 million in reserve funds to pay for the rest of the $24 million project.
The 80,000-square-foot building designed by Lohan Associates of Chicago is an L shape, with one leg running along the north edge of the park and the other extending across Margaret Place along Prospect Avenue.
City officials have already agreed to close Margaret to accommodate the plans. They also have bought an office building at 110 Cottage Hill Drive that they intend to tear down to replace open space lost to the library building, Sadowski said. Once the Elmhurst post office finds a new home, officials hope to tear down the Post Office building and extend Wilder Park to Park Street, she added.
While library officials cite support from thousands of residents who have attended public meetings on the building plans, other residents oppose the location of the new facility at the northwest corner of Wilder Park.
Citizens United for the Redevelopment of Elmhurst has launched a new drive to preserve that area as open space, just as it did when the City Council proposed building a new police station there in the late 1980s.