Preparation

Being prepared means seeing what is coming and having a way to pay for it before it arrives.

The Blind Spot

For years, Village leadership had a blind spot about how the Village is actually paid for. The Village levies no property tax and no sales tax of its own. Most of what it spends arrives as shared revenue: income tax (LGDF), Motor Fuel Tax and sales tax shared by the State, plus Road and Bridge funds. The Village controls none of these amounts.

When the Village incorporated in 2007, its business model worked, as long as you didn’t count roads or police. Beginning in 2011, shared revenue, taken together, began to decline. Leadership stuck with the old model anyway, and road maintenance was deferred for years.

A Structural Problem

Our own data shows the cost of salaries and roadwork rising faster than in the past, while shared revenue keeps declining. You cannot balance that budget by saving a police car here or part-time hours there. This is a structural problem, and it needs a structural answer.

Paying for It Without a Property Tax

Village residents continue to oppose a substantial local property tax. So we have turned to fees and smaller taxes that residents find more acceptable, including taxes on utilities and streaming services, and we earmarked them for roads.

Roads

We inherited badly deteriorated roads. Fixing all of them at once would cost easily $20 million. The Village’s entire budget is about $5 million, and we spend about $1 million a year on roads. That is more than prior administrations spent, because we earmarked utility taxes and user fees for roads.

A road lasts 12 to 15 years, so no village our size can ever fix everything at once. What we can do is run a steady, aggressive program, and we have. In four years we have repaved a substantial share of Village roads. Much of that came from the leadership of our Village Engineer and the Board, especially Trustee Mike Millette, who helped make large projects grant-ready and win the grants.

• Newly annexed areas come with their own road Special Service Areas.
• An agreement with Campton Township ended itemized billing in exchange for the remaining 50% of Road and Bridge funds each year.
• Fox Mill alone will take three to four years of the road budget. We have to plan for it.

Building and Zoning for 900 New Homes

When you know 900 houses are about to be built in La Fox of Campton Hills, you organize your Building and Zoning department properly and professionally now, and you grow it as the need requires.

Police

Being prepared means understanding and accepting what a local police department demands, and planning to fund it.

Village Hall

Being prepared means managing the Village’s assets over time, so that major expenses like our badly decaying roof are planned for instead of catching us flat-footed. Before the election, the Village will have a professional building management company in place and a new roof.

More Ways We Prepared

• Created a Tax Increment Financing district so the new subdivision’s water and sewer infrastructure pays for itself.
• Established a stormwater reimbursement fund for drainage problems on private property.
• Secured Village networks and set up backups to federal CISA guidance.
• Brought in professional municipal accounting so the numbers we plan with are right.