Every year, Forest Park’s village commissioners and department directors gather at Village Hall in July. They bring itemized lists of their budget goals for the fiscal year, which starts May 1, to go through line-by-line before submitting them to Finance Director Letitia Olmsted.
“When I was given the opportunity to become village administrator, I decided that I was going to change that process,” said Village Administrator Rachell Entler, who was previously a commissioner, in a meeting March 26 about Forest Park’s budget.
This year, the village staff is trying something different. At that meeting, Mayor Rory Hoskins, commissioners and directors met for the first of two get-togethers before turning in their official budgets. These two new meetings are more of a collaborative process and big-picture discussion about the budget before zeroing in on specific numbers.
“I remember feeling, after the last budget meeting last year, that stuff came up that was really relevant,” said Maria Maxham, the village’s commissioner of accounts and finance, in an interview before the meeting. “I wished we had more time to discuss it before it was officially implemented.”
“Just because it’s in the budget doesn’t mean we have money to spend it,” Entler said. “If the funds don’t come in to balance the revenue side, it’s hard to spend the money.”
Forest Park, like many small villages, has had chronic budget challenges. In the last few years, there has been increased budget scrutiny to consider how to cut costs and raise revenues.
In addition to continuing that conversation, this year’s first budget meeting is also the start to a long-term effort. Whereas past budget meetings have focused on finances for the upcoming fiscal year, these budget meetings plan for the next three-to-five years.
“I don’t think that we can have a serious conversation about the future of the village without seeing the bigger picture of what we’re going to need and how we start to take a look at how to fund that,” Entler said.
“We want to look a few years in the future and also look at this not just as budgeting, but sort of as strategic planning,” Maxham said. “I’m hoping, if it’s not within a year, within the next few years, to get to a point where we’re being financially proactive rather than reactive to things that come up.”
Expenses and revenues
The largest village expense, Maxham said, is employee wages. Maxham suspects village salaries are lower than those in surrounding municipalities.
“I know that ours are low,” Maxham said of wages, while pensions are quite costly. Operational costs are also a significant expense, followed by capital infrastructure debt.
“For the last however many years, we’ve always been told we have no money,” Entler said. She cites a variety of reasons, like recessions and the pandemic, but wants to find a way to increase revenues to offset village expenses.
In the 2023 fiscal year, nearly 35% of the village’s revenue came from intergovernmental revenues. Around 31% came from property taxes, and about 5% from other taxes. Charges for services, like water and waste pickup, contributed over 21% of the village’s revenue.
Brainstorming new resources and revenue streams
Village departments can buy anything they want up to $500. From there, Entler has to sign off on costs up to $20,000. Items more expensive than that require a vote from the village council.
At this year’s first budget meeting Tuesday, Entler brought sticky notes and asked those present to write down three bigger ticket items they wanted for their department or the village.
“It probably won’t happen in fiscal year ‘25,” she warned, but the practice helped staff to brainstorm what they needed down the line.
The list included:
- The Jackson Boulevard water reservoir
- A new fire engine and ladder truck
- A second ambulance since, according to Fire Chief Phil Chiappetta, Forest Park gets about 300 mutual aid ambulances into town a year, or around $650,000 in ambulance billing the village isn’t able to capture
- A consultant for the Altenheim property, which Entler said costs around $120,000
- Playgrounds, like replacing the one at the Howard Mohr Community Center, that would cost over $200,000
- Water meter upgrades for $4.5 million
- A new forestry truck and bucket truck for the public works department
- Police squad car replacements
- Police body cameras, which have a five-year warranty, will need to be replaced by 2027
Entler also asked the meeting’s attendees to list three ways the village could bring in more revenue.
Among the suggestions were:
- Increasing business license fees, which haven’t been hiked since 2007 and are $25 for a home business and $100 for something like an electrical contractor
- Selling the parking lot at Circle Avenue and Roosevelt Road, which is often empty
- Establishing an eating tax at restaurants and fast food places. “It’s one way to not necessarily tax the residents of Forest Park, but those who are coming to enjoy meals here,” Entler said.
- Increasing parking meter rates
- Installing a temporary water bill operations fee to help cover the cost of upgrading infrastructure like water mains and service lines
- Requiring permits for street parking
- Exploring home rule, which municipalities of over 25,000 residents have automatically. Those at or under that number need to pass it with a referendum, which would allow Forest Park to impose additional local taxes and fees. This could include establishing a local real estate transfer tax or sales tax, or taxing Airbnbs and car rentals.
- Reinstating video gaming, which the village council approved in 2016 and was overturned with a referendum in 2018 by a small margin, just 192 votes. Ryan Nero, commissioner of health and public safety, and Maxham both showed interest in exploring whether the referendum could be overturned to provide local revenue. Berwyn, Maxham said, makes nearly $1 million a year from video gaming.
The next budget meeting is April 22. At that gathering, village staff will start prioritizing costs and revenue streams. The meeting after that, they will approve itemized lists of each department’s budget.
“I think what goes into a budget reflects what we say we care about,” Maxham said. “This is probably the most important thing that we can do as a village.”
