Oak Forest aldermen approved a series of adjustments to the current budget to purchase new vehicles and other needed items.
Finance Director Colleen Julian said the moves of just over $640,000 would be “budget neutral,” in that the money was originally slated to be used elsewhere.
The City Council voted 7-0 in favor of the measure.
“The city’s capital improvement plan is substantially underfunded,” Julian wrote, in a memorandum to aldermen and Mayor Henry Kuspa. “This is an opportunity for the city to make capital purchases without borrowing or raising taxes.”
The funds will go ward new vehicles for the Fire Department as well as two new Ford Interceptor SUVs for the Police Department. Money for the Fire Department was able to be shifted after funds budgeted for a new ambulance were saved after the department refurbished an older ambulance. The police vehicles are able to be funded through savings in money the city originally set aside for fuel purchases, official said.
The Public Works Department also had its budget adjusted, allowing it to use more than $50,000 originally set aside for vehicle and machinery purchases to replace pond aerators and garage heating units.
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Money also was moved from the city’s sanitary sewer project to fund vehicle purchases and water main improvements.
In other business, the City Council is moving forward with the third and final year of its Living Oak Forest marketing campaign — an initiative meant to encourage people from around the Chicago metropolitan area to contemplate moving to the southwest suburb.
The campaign will cost the city $43,137 for assorted advertising to take place during spring and summer of 2018. Clear Channel Advertising will continue to handle the services.
The effort includes advertisements at Metra’s Millennium and Union stations in downtown Chicago. During the past two years, the suburb’s ad campaign signs were limited to LaSalle Street Station.
There also will be mobile digital advertising signs at Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center, and Millennium and LaSalle Street stations.
Static billboards touting the benefits of living in Oak Forest also will be erected along Interstates 80, 55 and 57, along with the Tri-State Tollway. In past years, digital billboards were erected along the Tri-State.
Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.