Wilmette Park Board commissioners agreed Monday on the Gillson Park construction jobs they want to do, and which they believe district residents have told them via a recently-completed lakefront survey to do: replace Gillson’s beach house, improve the beach parking lot, and repair and replace park roads and sewers.
Once they have a firmer idea of the cost – which could be roughly $5 million, according to rough initial estimates from district staff – they will need to decide how to pay for it, Board President John Olvany said at the July 11 board meeting.
Then, he said, the financing proposal they ultimately back should go to the public in a referendum that could allow the district to start on the projects before the end of 2017.
“Philosophically, I’d rather have a say as a taxpayer in what I want my money spent on,” he said, when he backed a referendum.
The four projects were supported most strongly by people who responded to the park district’s lakefront survey earlier this year. They represented the so-called “top tier” of projects, Olvany and other commissioners said.
Park District staff used construction cost estimates developed before the failed 2015 referendum on a larger lakefront master plan to make rough projections of how much the district might have to pay for those projects. Replacing the beach house and upgrading the beach parking lot could cost about $3.5 million, staff estimated, and fixing Gillson’s eroded roads and sewers could take about $1.5 million, plus another $265,000 for professional fees from architects and contractors.
The board’s financial planning committee looked at those estimates at its June meeting.
“I get nervous throwing numbers around,” Commissioner Stephanie Foster said Monday. “But I think that $5 million means we can get some things done.”
Olvany said the lakefront committee must now try to come up with more concrete cost estimates, which can then go back to the financial planning committee so that it can look at payment plan options.
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Whatever those final estimates might be, and whatever payment options the finance committee eventually develops, the final proposal should go to district voters in a referendum, Olvany said.
“I strongly feel we were told clearly, ‘Come back to us with a better plan, show us a better plan,'” he said.
Gordon Anderson, who chairs the financial planning committee, opposed a referendum. The committee reviewed staff revenue projections and they show that the board could pay for the core projects from fund balances, he said.
“This is what they elect you guys to do…and looking at referendums, they don’t have a good track record recently, no matter how good a reason they have behind them,” Anderson said. “This is moving at a glacial pace. Let’s just go do it.”
Olvany disagreed, saying that waiting until the board had enough in reserves to do the projects would mean waiting until at least the end of 2018, according to the financial figures Anderson’s committee reviewed last month.
“If we went to a referendum, we could do this in 2017,” Olvany said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy