Following the village’s projection earlier this month of a $15 million deficit in the 2026 fiscal year — and the village council’s rejection to residential zoning changes in June — Maria Maxham, commissioner of accounts and finance, called attention to Forest Park’s dire financial and development situation at the Aug. 11 council meeting.
“As you all know, we are carrying a $15 million overall deficit, and the most urgent part of that is over $6 million in our general fund alone, which is a huge problem,” Maxham said during her commissioner’s report at the end of the meeting.
The village accesses its general fund for the majority of its day-to-day expenses. Over $2 million of that $6 million deficit in the general fund was borrowed from other funds, which Maxham says is legal but not sustainable.
“If we need to fill $2 million of an operational budget with money from another fund, that’s a really big problem,” Maxham said. “That’s $2 million that we need to pay back to that fund someday, and we don’t have a plan in place to do that.”
She added that the village’s revenues have gone up 17% since 2022, but its expenses have gone up 26% during that time.
During her commissioner’s comment, Maxham also brought up the possible place of eating tax. Village staff have previously discussed creating a 1-to-2% tax at restaurants and eateries in town to create more revenue for Forest Park. But after all four public commenters at a July 28 meeting discussing possible new forms of revenue expressed concern over the potential tax, commissioners agreed not to explore it further at this time.
“I listened to all the business owners, and I’ve talked to business owners too. I know that that would be a huge burden for them,” Maxham said of the place of eating tax. “But what we need to be more concerned about is the burden on the village right now.”
“We can’t just say no because we don’t want to hurt other people,” Maxham added. “It’s hard to ask people to sacrifice, but we’re here to do really, really hard things to make this town sustainable, and we’re not doing that.”
Maxham agreed with the editorial Dan Haley wrote in the Aug. 6 edition of the Review — where Maxham previously worked as editor — about the village punting the place of eating tax. Officials estimate that a 1% tax would bring $500,000 to the village, a 2% tax garnering $1 million.
“We didn’t even negotiate,” Maxham said. “What about three-fourths of a percent? It was just a flat out ‘No, we’re not even going to talk about this.’ That, to me, feels like a really big failure.”
Residential zoning code complaints
After addressing her concerns about the deficit, Maxham turned to development issues.
“We can’t keep saying no to things, and that includes development,” Maxham said during her commissioner’s report. “A few months ago, the council majority voted down another opportunity for revenue and development, and that was with the proposed zoning code changes.”
Forest Park’s building department and its planning services consultant Muse have been working to update batches of the village code. Amended residential zoning would have brought over 2,100 of the village’s 2,828 residential lots into compliance with the code, allowing those property owners to refinance or implement any building changes. Without the residential code changes, they won’t be able to because their properties don’t align with the current zoning code.
After three meetings with the planning and zoning commission last year about the residential code changes — and a tabled vote in October after Commissioners Michelle Melin-Rogovin and Jessica Voogd had unanswered questions — in May, Voogd and Mayor Rory Hoskins voted against the residential zoning changes, and Melin-Rogovin abstained from the vote. To bring the code changes back to a council vote, they must first go back to the planning and zoning commission.
Commissioners Melin-Rogovin and Voogd said they had concerns about how the residential code updates would affect stormwater management and create unwanted density. Commissioners Maxham and Ryan Nero, who voted in favor of the code changes, said they encouraged appropriate development that could serve as a source of revenue for the village.
“That was a really big step back for development,” Maxham said of the rejected code changes. “I’m hearing about that from residents who wanted to do work on their houses and from developers who wanted to come in and develop in this community.”
“Property tax revenue through development is critical, and we left a pretty big hole,” Nero said during his commissioner’s comment. “There were some significant opportunities that potentially were squandered that I hope we can get things back on the rails at some point.”
“Our finances and how we address them as a council should be our number one, highest priority before anything else we do. We should always be asking ourselves the question, ‘Does this move us closer to financial stability or push us further into the red?’” Maxham added. “Because we are so far in the red right now that it’s really scary. And if you guys aren’t scared, then maybe I’m on a different planet.”
“I am not panicked. I am not scared. I don’t think, for myself, those things are helpful. I am trying to analyze and understand what is necessary in the decisions that we need to make over time. I’m not judging anybody. I think we all come to this from very important places,” Melin-Rogovin said during her commissioner’s comment.
She continued, “I think the measured approach that our village staff takes has put us in a very good position to be able to analyze some of those questions and to think in the short term and the long term about how we can make effective decisions and then look across our skill sets to be able to say, ‘What kinds of things can we do in the legislative space, in the property tax space, in working together with our business community, in all the pain points that we have?’”
Commissioners Voogd and Hoskins did not speak to either the village’s budget or zoning code changes during their commissioner’s reports.
At the end of her commissioner’s comments, Maxham repeated a call to action by Nero at the July 28 meeting to discuss new sources of revenue. She asked residents to suggest ideas about how to dig the village out of its financial hole.
“I think anything should be on the table, because the status quo is not working and is not going to fix this,” Maxham said.
“If it wasn’t the place of eating tax, there’s a handful of other things, and we should push those past the goal line to see where we could be financially moving forward,” Nero said during his commissioner’s comment. “But we can’t let up on that.”
