At the village council’s last meeting in September, Mayor Rory Hoskins announced he was skipping agenda item number six.
The agenda item was to approve a grant application to partially fund a new water main on Harrison Street between Hannah Avenue and Harlem Avenue.
It turns out that village staff decided not to apply for the grant because it’s unlikely that Forest Park could fund the rest of the project internally right now; the village approved its budget for the 2025 fiscal year in July with a $9 million deficit.
“After further looking into it and reviewing, we had not actually planned for our portion of paying for that,” said Village Administrator Rachell Entler.
Approving the grant application was on the agenda because the deadline was coming up, Entler said.
The grant application would have been for the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program. The ITEP grant provides partial funding for municipal projects that enhance transportation and infrastructure by covering engineering and construction costs.
The ITEP grant also requires municipalities that are awarded it to match the amount given.
The village would have asked for over $2.9 million through the ITEP grant, according to the resolution in the meeting agenda. The village’s share of the project’s cost would have been about $860,000.
“Depending on how much they gave us, we would be on the hook for the other [half],” Entler said. “I was not comfortable taking on that amount of money at this time without having actually planned out where we would get that funding from.”
While the village won’t receive this ITEP grant, it’s still looking into other funding options to update Harrison Street.
“Eventually, we’ll have to redo the water mains and the streets, but it is on hold for now,” Entler said.
She added that the village is also looking into ways to capture water, or collecting and reusing rainwater, on and around Harrison Street.
Entler said the village may split up redoing Harrison Street in phases because of high cost.
“The whole street, from Harlem to Des Plaines, has to be done, but it’s going to be very expensive,” Entler said.