In 2016, Wilmette village officials pondered ambitious long-term flood control efforts for the village’s west side, projects they estimated could cost $77 million and take roughly five years to complete. They also tackled the question of how to finance the road and alley repairs they said the village was losing ground on.
By the end of the year, elected officials hadn’t made final decisions on the stormwater project, but they had decided how to finance the road and alley work.
Trustees held several meetings on the flood proposal – something they also dealt with in 2015 – eyeing the $77 million plan presented by consultant Christopher B. Burke Engineering Ltd. as the best way to prevent overland flooding west of Ridge Road.
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After heavy rains in July, Engineering and Public Works Director Brigitte Berger said the village had to continue to improve its efforts, and invited residents to attend a September meeting about the plan. By the time trustees were working on the 2017 budget, west Wilmette residents pleaded with them to approve the Burke plan without subjecting the plan to a $120,000 second look.
“I do trust the work that’s already been completed,” Beechwod Avenue resident Julie Lipford said. “I hope we can rely on what we’ve already learned, as much as possible, as quickly as possible.”
The value engineering review of the Burke plan should be completed by summer 2017, Berger said.
As they made stormwater study decisions, trustees searched for new funding to pay for road and alley improvements. Staff working on the 2017 budget suggested a property tax levy hike of more than 7 percent to increase the annual road improvement program from $1.5 million. Instead, trustees increased Wilmette’s gasoline tax from one to four cents per gallon, and increased the levy by just under 5 percent.
“There is a natural connection between car and gasoline usage and roads, so a gasoline tax, with some correlation with road use, makes sense,” Village President Bob Bielinski said Oct. 28.
Meanwhile, there was little fanfare in late summer when M&R Development finally began work on The Wilshore retail-residential complex on the site of the former Wil-Shore Ford car dealership at 611 Green Bay Road.
Far more controversial, at least for neighbors of Loyola Academy in west Wilmette, was the school’s Feb. 1 announcement that it wanted to turn two fields into new parking lots. A well-organized opposition sprang up to fight the traffic, safety, and property value problems neighbors said the lots would cause.
In March, neighbors accused Loyola of violating a 1993 village enrollment cap and told the village that it should bar the school from building the lots. In May, Wilmette told the school it must cut its enrollment or ask for relief. In June, Loyola halted its parking lot plan; in October it announced a long-term planning process, of which the need for more parking would only be a part.
Media outlets turned their attention on Wilmette after the village’s police department acknowledged issuing a well-being check for Irish pop singer Sinead O’Connor on May 15. O’Connor, then staying with friends in east Wilmette, returned safely to her residence the next day.
The village’s sewer and flood control plans affected another government body, the Wilmette Park District, in the form of the village’s West Park sanitary sewer holding tank project. That flood project took most of 2015, but the village handed West Park back to the Park District in February, and the upgraded playfields built atop the tank were ready for use later that spring.
Park District staff and commissioners spent 2016 planning modest upgrades to the village’s Gillson Park lakefront properties, in the wake of the 2015 bond referendum loss that ended more ambitious plans.
They based much of their strategy on a community survey. In March, survey consultant Jeff Andreasen told commissioners most people wanted few changes at Gillson. Only 46 percent of survey respondents wanted improvements like a new beach house, he said: “The clear response was that most people wanted improvements, but not for $2.5 million.”
As they wrangled over how to pay for lakefront work, Board President John Olvany said in July that any financing proposal should ultimately go back to the public.
“Philosophically, I’d rather have a say as a taxpayer in what I want my money spent on,” Olvany said.
Commissioners chose a beach house designer, Chicago-based Woodhouse Tinucci Architects, in December. However, commissioners agreed in November not to tackle any Gillson construction – beach house, parking lot, or sewer and road infrastructure – next year. Instead, they budgeted just for design work.
In Wilmette Public Schools District 39, officials spent part of 2016 eyeing daily schedules. In January, school board members said they wanted to explore changing start and end times at the district’s middle and junior high schools, even though staff recommended sticking with current schedules. In September, Katie Lee, the district’s interim curriculum and instruction administrator, said one of four district goals was to restructure the school day to give teachers more time to collaborate with each other and to teach. Lee said staff would have some recommendations by the spring of 2017.
In November, the New Trier Township High School District 203 board named Paul Sally, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, to succeed retiring Supt. Linda Yonke. Sally, who starts in the post July 1, 2017, promised he would “work hard, and won’t let you down.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
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