Mayor's Message - Spring 2015

Mayor’s Message

The actions of the new Governor of Illinois has had an almost immediate effect on the finances of the municipalities in Illinois. Gov. Rauner has a misguided understanding of local government funding sources. His recent Budget Address identified major cuts in State spending, and his cuts to local government are especially troubling. The Governor identified his intention of denying all municipal governments their full local share of the state income tax. The (LGDF) Local Government Distributive Fund is our largest source of unrestricted revenue excluding property taxes, and amounts to almost $900,000 this year. To quote the Governor out of context would be wrong so I will insert his quote; “The reduction in local government sharing in this budget is equal to just 3 percent of their total revenue budget.” This reduction is equal to 5.5 percent of the Village’s budget. I suppose this may be accurate in some municipalities in the State of Illinois, but it is painfully wrong in the south suburbs.

The Governor also stated a firm desire to protect the formula of locally funded employee pensions after denying us any viable way of funding those pensions.

I encourage all residents to call or write their representatives in Springfield and express concerns over any reduction or delay in transferring municipalities their fair share of the LGDF. Rep. Anthony DeLuca has introduced House Bill HB0365 that would protect municipalities from any delays in payments from the State, similar to what school districts are experiencing.

The Governor’s Executive Order Number 15-08 delayed us a $593,000 Illinois Green Infrastructure Grant (IGIG) awarded last year by Lisa Bonnett, the Director of the (IEPA) Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. By withholding the award of the grant until late summer, we lose the entire 2015 construction season. This delay is unacceptable to the two out-of-state companies that both chose to locate in Glenwood and construct or expand their footprint.

KLLM is a refrigerated transportation company that closed on the sale of approximately 12 acres of Village owned land adjacent to Landauer on Glenwood Road. KLLM plans to construct a 40 room hotel for new employee training and a maintenance facility on the footprint. Westside Transport is expanding onto a 14 acre Village owned footprint, which is adjacent to their existing site in the Industrial Park. Both of these sites require significant storm water detention and the IGIG grant would have been a significant incentive for this massive project. We will construct the pond with an existing 50% matching grant that we were able to obtain from the Federal Government.

The LGDF slashing that the Governor is proposing along with the loss of sales tax revenue from Wal-Mart is an immediate concern and the Board of Trustees will need to aggressively look for new funding sources for police and fire, our two largest expenses. I am confident that you, the voters, will carefully evaluate the candidates in the spring election to give the appointed staff and myself the most qualified individuals to deal with the issues we're going to face in the next fiscal year.

The current fiscal year 2015 will be balanced in a large part due to additional one time revenue streams. The sale of the land to KLLM will net the Village $400,000. Additionally the sale of Village owned property to Baker Pump netted a similar amount of revenue this fiscal year; designated to replacing capital assets. These are one time revenue enhancements that fill voids in the budget. These assets were acquired to develop and were not intended to be a replacement of any other revenue stream. We also anticipate a $400,000 repayment from an agreement with the State of Illinois (DNR) Department of Natural Resources for the local match on the Hickory Bend Park rehabilitation.

I strongly urge you to call or write your elected representatives in Springfield and explain to them why you believe funding our police and fire departments and their pensions is important to you. See below for contact information.

 

Senator Toi Hutchinson	(708) 756-0882	thutchinson@senatedem.ilga.gov
Senator Michael Hastings	(708) 283-4125	district19@senatorhastings.com
Representative Al Riley	(708) 799-4364	rep.riley38@sbcglobal.net
Representative Anthony DeLuca	(708) 754-7900	repdeluca@sbcglobal.net