Despite what some officials said was “holding the line” on property taxes for Oak Park residents, trustees passed a budget Monday that includes increases in parking, water and garbage fees to help pay for capital and infrastructure improvements.
During a special meeting, village trustees voted 6-0 to approve the budget for the 2015 fiscal year, which begins Jan. 1, along with a roughly $24.6 million tax levy.
The adopted budget projects total expenditures of $124,191,895 — about 2 percent higher than the adopted budget for the current fiscal year — and total revenue of $124,133,828, according to village documents. The expenditures include a roughly 1.8 percent decrease in the general fund, which includes police, fire and other operating expenses, coupled with small increases in enterprise and capital funds, according to the documents.
The adopted 2014 levy reflects a 0.06 percent increase from the levy extended this year.
“This is a … unique budget in that we made some substantial investments here in long-term infrastructural improvements that we’ve been needing for some time,” said Trustee Adam Salzman. “We have held the line on the taxes, but we have decided to put in place some fee increases … because we felt it was the most equitable and practical long-term way to make the investments we need to make in our streets, in our alleys (and) in our sewers.”
While he voted in favor of the document, Trustee Peter Barber said he still had concerns about the increase in monthly fees, specifically for water use and garbage collection. The 2015 budget includes a 13 percent increase in the water and sewer rate and a higher monthly customer charge to help maintain the infrastructure and offset increasing costs to purchase water from Chicago.
The budget also reflects increases in waste collection fees by $1.50 per month for 64-gallon garbage cans and $2.50 per month for 96-gallon garbage cans to help offset debt service for residential alley improvements.
“These are some of the basic services people expect to be provided by village government,” Barber said. “A lot of people in our community feel that they are already paying more than they would like to pay when it comes to some of these basic services. … Our 2015 budget now makes what they’re going to be paying feel a little bit worse and that’s troubling to me.”
Barber added that he is not against increasing expenditures for water and street infrastructure but that he wanted the village to “look a little more aggressively” in the future at reducing expenditures in other areas.
“We as a board must start prioritizing our budget even more aggressively and as a result start spending more on some priorities, as we did this year with infrastructure, and spending less on other priorities, which we didn’t really do this year, not to the degree that we could have,” he said.
Other trustees echoed the need to lessen the burden on residents and look to reduce spending in 2016.
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“One of the key things that comes out of the process this year is that we’ve set ourself up for looking at a lot of our expenditures in a more critical light,” said Trustee Glenn Brewer. “We’ve laid a very good foundation for future budget discussions that will allow us to move in a direction that I think we will begin to see real cost savings in the village.”
The board also approved intergovernmental agreements with Oak Park Elementary School District 97 to allow the school district to use the Madison Street tax-increment financing plan to construct a new administration center with the tax revenues. District 97’s school board is expected to approve the agreements at a meeting Dec. 16.