The pendulum swings once more in how Oak Park’s village government values, plans and prices the special events it seems to want more of – unless you want to add a bike run or 5K. Village President Vickie Scaman says Oak Park is filled to the brim with those sort of events. At a study session earlier in May, Scaman said Oak Park wants more special events that directly support small businesses and the multiple business districts that operate across town.
That makes sense. Sustaining our fragile retailers and restaurants is essential to maintaining property and sales tax revenues. And more importantly it recognizes that the sense of community our entrepreneurial neighbors build with us is core to living in this village.
Some clarity though. Downtown Oak Park – the geographically fixed area along Lake Street and Marion from Harlem to Forest, Ontario to North Boulevard – is the single Oak Park business district that is self-funded. A special services property tax was approved decades ago by property owners downtown and is paid by those same property owners. It allows the robust and quite fantastic roster of events – holidays to Thursday Night Out – that are staged by its small staff.
Every other business district in town is run solely by business owners who volunteer their time and energy. The Arts District on Harrison has long managed to self-fund a part-time marketing person, which allows several successful events each year. What’s Blooming on Harrison is coming right up, by the way.
Village staff did research on how other towns pull off events. I hope they focused on Forest Park which is ambitious and mostly successful in fronting a full calendar of events, including a huge St. Pat’s parade in March, the goofy fun Casket Races around Halloween. Then there are wine walks, makers events, the holiday walk and several more.
The tiny but mighty Forest Park Chamber is the key driver of these events. It operates on a shoestring with minimal financial support from cash-strapped village hall. The village is fully supportive, offering the services of both public works and the police department to handle logistics. And key allies such as the surging Forest Park Arts Alliance bring great energy to its projects.
Oak Park is looking at a revised approach to supporting events by cutting its fees by 25%, moving past the expectation that it will recoup all of its costs on every event, and providing these volunteer organizers with more cost certainty as they plan.
All good. We’ll need to give new leadership at Oak Park’s chamber some time to figure out where it fits in supporting the business districts and fronting its own roster of events. The village coughed up a pile of cash for the chamber to host events last summer just as its leadership imploded.
As one of the group that staged the monumental May Madness event on Oak Park Avenue for a decade, I know how stressful and exhausting this work can be — also how far it goes in growing community.