Forest Park will soon have a new grocery tax, but you won’t see any difference in your grocery bill.
At a June 9 council meeting, commissioners unanimously voted to pass an ordinance that would impose a 1% tax on groceries, or food that’s consumed off premises of where it’s sold. That includes food sold at grocery stores, gas stations, and the likes of Walmart or Walgreens.
Commissioners Ryan Nero and Jessica Voogd were absent from the meeting.
The grocery tax will replace the one that, last summer, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced would be eliminated statewide starting Jan. 1, 2026.Â
“This ordinance is not implementing an additional tax,” Commissioner Michelle Melin-Rogovin said at the council meeting. “It is important for us to retain the revenue that the village is receiving from that tax. It is something that village residents already experience when they go to the grocery store, and it will not change.”
When the Review reported the anticipated grocery tax cut last year, Commissioner Maria Maxham estimated that, without it, Forest Park would stand to lose about $400,000. But that accounted for average annual revenue from Ed’s Way, which closed last March. Though Aldi opened in November – joining Living Fresh Market as the only grocery-dedicated store in town – it hasn’t been open long enough for village staff to know how much it will make in grocery tax.
But Village Administrator Rachell Entler said that, with Aldi’s presence, the village will likely see more grocery tax revenue.
“Any grocery tax revenue would now include Aldi in lieu of Ed’s Way,” Entler said. “I would guess the estimate would be higher since Aldi is bigger than Ed’s Way, but we won’t know yet as Aldi has not been open a full year.”
Pritzker said the state tax elimination will save families money, but that’s only $1 of every $100 spent on groceries.
“It’s obviously going to save people who grocery shop, which is everybody, money,” Maxham previously told the Review, but the amount is fairly insignificant. “It tends to have a smaller impact on a person buying $100 worth of groceries than it does on a municipality as a whole, [which would be] losing out on a significant chunk of money that they use for all kinds of different things.”