Where’s the money?

Residents Question

I was looking through the info you dropped off on the various village budgets. I see the budget notes $800,000 for 2025 and $5,630,000 for 2026 which says is for construction and then nothing in 2027. The FGMArchitects report has a cost of $16 - 20 million. 

Is the village proposing to increase the GO notes from $10 to $20 million to pay for this? Will this be a levy increase to pay for it? Or is there some other revenue event like excess funds from a TID?

Thanks for highlighting some of your concerns. 

My Response

Thanks for your email.  I am glad you noticed the financial discrepancies regarding the new Village Hall, as I saw many of the same things.  Like you, I keep seeing large expenditures which don’t make sense.  For example, one does not budget $800,000+ in planning expenditures unless some VERY significant community decisions have been made.  Yet, I couldn’t find those decisions, only references to a possible new DPW, Village Hall, and pool building, etc.  To make it worse, what I had found was mostly treated as stand-alone financial buckets.

For example: the Board is planning a new Village Hall including a new Police Station BEFORE they resolve the looming budget issues regarding said department.

 This election provides residents with a choice: complete the conversion to a centralized top-down linear decision-making process which I oppose, or as I support, return to the resident committees and bottom-up process – interconnecting many of these financial decisions into a whole in a way that is consistent with Village priorities and its finances... rock 

A few Extra Thoughts:

Village leadership needs to be sure of priorities, and leadership should come from the residents who will pay for the improvements, not just the Board and the administration. What I find interesting is the 2027 budget does not offer the funds to pay for the shortfall. How will that shortfall be filled? Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know there is no definitive plan for what needs to be built and by when.

The concern above illustrates my problem with the current Village leadership. For the past six or seven years, decision-making has been shifting to the Board and the administration, and away from resident driven committees. Fewer and fewer eyeballs watching bigger and bigger decisions. First, in my mind, we should know what we need (not just want), how we might fund it, and finally, we should hire experts to outline the project. Notice, the paid consultants come AFTER we, as a Village, and decided what we need.