THE APPROACH TO THE 2015 GENERAL GOVERNMENT BUDGET
Since incorporation in 1989, the Village has taken a consistent and steady approach to balance economic development, residential growth and recreational resources. The goal of this approach was to foster financial, social and environmental sustainability.

For many years, the Village Board and staff have been working to ensure that the base structure of each core service we provide remains stable and viable. Given the impacts of, first, the recession and, now, our national economy’s slow recovery, this year, department heads were asked to consider a slightly different context when planning for near-, medium-, and long-term municipal needs.

IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL PITFALLS
Department heads were asked to consider events or circumstances that could potentially occur that would have a negative impact on their departmental budgets and their ability to provide service. An example of a circumstance with a negative impact could be experiencing a series of winters with uncharacteristically heavy or frequent snowfall or experiencing a storm with devastating effects.

PLANNING FOR RESILIENCY
Staff was then asked to consider whether their budgets could manage the financial impact of such events without compromising the provision of services. Village Administrator Mike Pollocoff explained, “Given some of the experiences we’ve had in recent years related to the economy, levy limits, and weather events, a sustainable approach alone is no longer enough. It is time to draft a budget in such a way that we can modify as we go based on the challenges we encounter in a given moment.”

Pollocoff continued, “We looked out several years and tried to anticipate the types of challenges or pitfalls we may face and how we can become nimble or flexible enough to accommodate them without compromising our stability. We don’t just want to respond to challenges in the moment, we want to be resilient and nimble enough to recover from them quickly and fully.”

THREE MAIN FOCUSES
“As a municipal government, our work is to provide services to our citizens. By its very nature, it’s a labor intensive undertaking,” explained Pollocoff. “We work to create a high quality community, and we get this done with high quality staff – front line staff that provide the services and support staff to help the front line operations." With this budget and others going forward, the Village will have three main focuses to help the community remain resilient and enable it to deal with future uncertainties as they arise. The focuses are: maintaining high quality staff; ensuring that new development will add value to the Village; and ensuring that any remaining developable land in the Village achieves its highest and best use in order to help the Village maintain its value in the long term. The second and third focuses above relate directly to a core philosophy that Village leadership has followed for many years - that new growth or development should pay its own way and not become a burden to existing taxpayers. “We feel very strongly that new development must pay its own way. Existing taxpayers should not have to pay for the service demands created by new growth,” stated Pollocoff.

For example, when a developer approaches the Village with plans to build a new project (a subdivision, a retail store, etc.) one factor planners take into account is the level of service this type of development will command (police/fire/rescue visits, heavy truck traffic, etc). Planners consider whether the property tax paid by the new development would be enough to cover the expense of providing the added service. If the property tax paid by the new development was not enough to cover the expenses of the services it would require, the burden for covering the difference would fall to existing taxpayers (meaning they would either receive less service for their tax dollars or the service would become more expensive). One of the ways the Village has worked to keep property taxes lower has been to ensure that new growth and development is high quality enough to pay its fair share.

PROPOSED BUDGET/PUBLIC HEARING
A copy of the 2015 budget presentation to the Village Board is available by clicking here. A public hearing regarding the proposed budget has been scheduled for Tuesday, November 25 at 6:00 p.m. in the Village Hall Auditorium. Following the hearing, the Village Board will make a final determination on the budget as proposed.