Clarendon Hills has a few changes of likely interest to residents planned for 2024, as the village gets ready to celebrate its 100th birthday.
While various activities will take place throughout the year for the centennial celebration, the actual 100th anniversary of Clarendon Hills becoming incorporated is Jan. 22. Information about centennial activities will become available throughout the year. Celebratory banners will be hung around the village.
One change taking place in the new year is that Village Hall, which has been closed from noon to 1 p.m. for lunch during a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, will instead be open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with no break for lunch.
More Top Picks Best Oled Tvs For Living Rooms
“We looked into when we are busiest and determined that late afternoon is much slower than around the lunch hour,” Village Manager Zach Creer said. “Most of our business is done online, except for more complicated permits, so we are trying to better align with the business/contractor community, which tends to work earlier in the day and often through lunch.
“Also, with work from home growth, people are more likely to try to swing by Village Hall during their lunch hour than try to stop by after work.”
The village was planning on changing its website address to www.clarendonhills.gov and email addresses to @clarendonhills.gov from clarendonhills.us, a move expected to improve security and is highly recommended by the village’s IT company.
However, the village’s application was delayed at the company that authorizes .gov sites.
“They only process so many a year,” said Vicki Pries, executive assistant, adding that the .gov address helps identify Clarendon Hills as a government in residents’ email inboxes, which prevents communication from the village from going to junk email and helps prevent phishing.
Another change for 2024 is that the village’s newsletter, which has been called “Trustee Topics,” has been renamed “The Daisy Digest” and will be printed in color, rather than in black-and-white.
“We thought printing in color for the 2024 100-year celebration would be exciting,” Pries said. “It gives us a chance to share pictures of our beautiful village in color. It is undetermined at this time if it will remain color after 2024.”
Pries said 5,300 copies of the newsletter are printed and mailed every other month. The printing for color will be $1,513.73 for each in 2024, compared to $660.73 spent on each in 2023 for black-and-white.
The newsletter is available to read on the village’s website, but interest in having a printed copy remains, Priest said.
“We have a lot of senior residents who still enjoy the paper copy, and since we send it out with our water bills we can monitor how many residents still prefer paper,” she said. “Once the number of water bills in paper format gets low enough, then a discussion about going online (only) for the newsletter will seem appropriate.”
As for the name change for the newsletter, Priest said village staff believes the “Trustee Topics” title of the newsletter doesn’t reflect its content.
“There are no trustee topics in the newsletter,” she said. “We thought renaming to kind of go with what the newsletter is and the branding of the village — the daisy — would be fun. The term ‘digest,’ meaning a compilation or summary of material or information, seemed appropriate for this newsletter, hence ‘Daisy Digest.'”
Chuck Fieldman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.