A habit the Elmhurst Park District has of updating an aging playground in one of its parks every year might have to be modified if a $400,000 state grant doesn’t come through.
A review of discretionary spending by Gov. Bruce Rauner means the matching grant that had been earmarked for renovating the playground and making other improvements at Butterfield Park might be in jeopardy.
Park District director Jim Rogers said the playground they want to renovate in Butterfield Park is in need of improvement. It was installed in 1998. The park land was acquired in 1930 and was developed in 1958.
Rogers said the district plans to use this year for planning and engineering the improvements and to do the construction in 2016.
Elmhurst is not the only community wondering if it will feel the pinch of a loss of funding. Plans for improvements or development of parks are in a holding pattern in communities across the state, including in Oak Brook where a renovation of Central Park is planned and in Westmont where the Park District wants to develop a 4.76-acre park on Wilmette Avenue.
The matching grant that Elmhurst and others are hoping to receive is the Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development grants, a program that began in 1987.
Rogers said the district will continue with planning and engineering this year, but will phase construction of improvements if the OSLAD grant funding falls through.
“We’ll go back and look at ‘Can we phase the work?’ and try to fund it through different sources down the road,” he said.
As his term was coming to an end, former Gov. Pat Quinn announced Jan. 3 that $26 million in state grants would be awarded to 75 local park projects across the state. The grants included $400,000 to upgrade the playground at Butterfield, improve the quality and connectedness of walkways in the park, resurface and replace lighting at tennis courts, and improve drainage and grading.
But when Rauner took the reins of government days later, he issued an executive order freezing a variety of discretionary spending, including the awarding of the park grants, which are administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
“Years of bad decisions have put Illinois in a financial crisis,” Rauner said in a Jan. 12 news release.
As Rauner prepared to unveil his first budget proposal Wednesday, local governments across Illinois remained in the dark as to whether they would ever see the park grant dollars they were promised under Quinn.
The freeze reflects Rauner’s warnings that his plans for solving the state’s dire financial woes will require some unpalatable choices and sacrifice from all Illinoisans.
Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly declined to say when the financial review would be completed.
“Gov. Rauner signed the executive order because Illinois is in a financial crisis and wants to make sure every penny the state is spending is on essential services,” she said.
Rogers said he hopes the spending review will result in a recognition of the value of the OSLAD grant.
“It’s really something that’s helped build parks in Illinois,” Rogers said. “We hope as they go through their review they will see how beneficial it is.”
The majority of this year’s grant money — $24 million — comes from the 35 percent cut of Illinois’ real estate transfer tax proceeds that the grant program receives annually, IDNR spokesman Chris Young said.
The remaining $2 million comes from a federal land and water conservation program, Young said.
The state program pays up to half of local government costs for the acquisition of land or development of parks and public spaces, according to the program’s website.
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Proponents of the program hope that Rauner’s review will reveal the program’s merits as a job creator with a dedicated funding source that does not rely on the state’s general revenue.
Because every state dollar is matched by the grants’ beneficiaries, “the state gets twice the return for its investment,” said Jason Anselment of the nonprofit Illinois Association of Park Districts.
The program has been reviewed in the past and found to be money well spent, said Anselment, who called the program “a win-win” for the state.