After three years as village administrator for Burr Ridge, Doug Pollack, is retiring on Nov. 6.
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Pollock has been with the village for years, beginning as a city planner in 1995 and while he is stepping away from administration, he said he hopes to return to city planning _ his first love _ in a part-time capacity.
Pollock said he loves the creativity that comes with city planning.
“I spent my entire career doing planning and zoning administration work and that’s my true passion and that’s what I want to get back to doing,” he said. “And in this retirement, I can do some part time work or some consulting work focused primarily on planning. I will be looking for opportunities to do that. I have already had some prelim talks with Mayor (Gary) Grasso working on some planning for Burr Ridge.”
Grasso said Pollock’s retirement is something of a win for the community.
“Doug was, frankly, at the high end of his salary, so we can probably save a considerable amount of salary on the administrative side and get a very qualified planner on a part time salary,” Grasso said.
While an administrator focuses on the day to day operations of running a city, a city planner focuses more on shepherding development projects to fruition within the best interests of the community and the desires of the developers and investors. Pollock said he enjoys this sort of creativity.
“I spent my entire career up until the last three years doing planning work,” Pollock said. “I enjoy working with developers and with residents, working out a plan to create great communities. It’s a creative side that I like about it.”
As a planner, Pollock has been instrumental in a number of Burr Ridge commercial projects, including County Line Shopping Center, the Village Square and, Grasso hopes, the TCF property, a 16-acre plot of land in downtown Burr Ridge that has yet to be developed.
All told, Pollock said, retirement was not a tough decision.
“It was not that tough,” he said. “I had been thinking about it for some time and it was just kind of running the numbers on the financial aspects of it and all that and I just decided over the summer the time was right and I talked with Mayor Grasso about it and we ended up where we are now.”
Grasso called it a great decision.
“He was likely going to retire in 2021 anyhow, and then he came to us with what I think is a great idea,” Grasso said. “He can retire early and we are then going to need another village administrator and the village administrator will likely not be a planner and we need a planner because we have the Village Center, the County Line Shopping Center, the TCF property which is 16 acres downtown. All that needs planning and development in order for us to stay viable as a village, and who better to have than Doug Pollock.”
Pollock, it should be noted, has also guided the village through difficult financial straits as COVID-19 destroyed the annual budget. With the lockdown and with many stores closed or opened at a reduced capacity, local sales taxes took a nosedive and, as across the nation, Burr Ridge had to right its budgetary course.
Pollock led that realignment in April.
“I am quite proud of this budget that we were able to put together this year,” he said. “All of our budgets have been balanced and reflected a prudent and sound approach. This in particular was a challenge because we started looking at lost revenues from the pandemic and . . . we made $1.8 million dollars’ worth of cuts from the draft budget we made before the pandemic and we did it in a way that really didn’t impact any services. We postponed some salary adjustments, some capital projects and hidings. That was a big accomplishment.”
The next administrator, who has not yet been named, will face even more of the same uncertainty however. Pollock said he decided to retire in November so the new administrator could step in prior to December—the month the village typically begins to consider the next fiscal year’s budget. Typically, the next fiscal year’s budget is based on the last year’s incomes and expenses but, with COVID, nobody yet knows how long the pandemic will last and what effects it will bring.
“That will be a challenge for sure, because of the unknown more than anything,” Pollock said. “Typically, you run revenue projections based on past years’ trends and that type of thing, but it was a challenge back in April when we revised the budget and it will be an even bigger challenge now, because we just don’t know when the economy will cover and our revenues will stabilize.”
That said, the village has done a good job in saving money. Pollock said Burr Ridge has $5.5 million in reserve funds, if it comes down to it.
“Someone said that money is for a rainy day, and Its been raining pretty hard,” he said.
As for the next village administrator, Grasso said that will be discussed later this month at the second board meeting. Pollock praised longtime assistant administrator Evan Walter as a worthy successor, though Grasso would not confirm whether or not he would be tapped to replace Pollock.
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Still, Grasso did offer some hints.
“We already have somebody in mind for that,” the mayor said “The name would be very familiar to you.”