As promised, here is the second update from the last board meeting. It focuses on the other issues that we discussed.
We approved an agreement between the village and Trinity Services that was made possible by another grant for those services. It allows the village and our police department to help people with mental health related issues. A study of the Great Recession showed that suicides increased 1.6% for every 1% increase in unemployment. Unemployment in Illinois is up 18% since February, which would mean a potential corresponding increase of 30% in suicides. These services will be particularly important given the shutdown of our economy. Thank you to our staff for securing these grants!
The village board also approved another $600K worth of road resurfacing for this year. This time, we did get some funding from the state due to the motor fuel tax increase and the capital bill. This will add the area by Creek Crossing and Long Run Dr to our plans this year. It is important that we don’t defer our capital improvements, such as road resurfacing and parks, because they become more costly to maintain and improve over time. Thank you to the board for unanimously approving.
As noted in the last update, we approved allowing restaurants to add outdoor seating in parking lots and outdoor spaces to help add capacity which will be limited when they first reopen. We are happy that the governor and his team observed what we (and a few other communities) did and decided to allow restaurants to open with outdoor seating. While this is not enough, it is a start. Outdoor seating alone will not allow most restaurants to operate profitably. I will continue to push for indoor seating to be allowed, even if seating capacity is limited. As always, we are closely monitoring restaurant and other business openings in other states across the nation to ensure our plans are aligning with current data and realities.
This was an example of staff (in this case Nabeha Zegar) bringing forward a good idea and everyone pulling together to implement it. We are also working on ways to assist these restaurants with setting up any barriers that they may need to implement to protect patrons from vehicle traffic.
Additionally, we passed a series of budget adjustments related to the COVID-19 outbreak. The governor’s economic shutdown, which has been extended twice, has had a significant impact. To date, we have lost approximately $4.5 million in revenue. For this reason, we furloughed 141 part time employees on Monday night. Fortunately, in the last 2 years we have reduced the operating budget by approximately 7.5%, shoring up our finances. We also had previously reduced full-time staff from 288 to 273 through early retirements. Due to this situation, we will eliminate nine additional full-time positions, all from early retirements, that are not back filled. We will continue to look for other operational savings as we move forward.
The board also passed a franchise agreement for Comcast. It passed 7 to 0. I point this out because it was the EXACT same franchise agreement (word for word) that I put on an agenda in November of 2017 for discussion and was voted down 6 to 1. Later in 2019, a former trustee accused me of a crime for bringing that exact franchise agreement up for discussion. Frankly, this is the kind of political B.S. that I can’t stand. As I said in November 2017, it was the right thing to do, since we have been operating without one for over a decade. I guess I was correct now that doing the right thing was more important than playing politics.
Lastly, we passed our electrical municipal program. We chose a provider that will match ComEd’s price (nobody beat it this year) and contribute $117,000 to the village for other important infrastructure programs. We will use this money to finish our LED conversions which have a payback of about 18 months due to the energy savings.
The village board continues to do its job in spite of the challenging circumstances, and I appreciate everyone’s dedication. The Illinois General Assembly finally returned to work this week. We are hopeful that they will work with the governor to modify the Restore Illinois Plan to fix its flaws.
In the meantime, please have a safe Memorial Day weekend and join us on May 25th for our virtual Memorial Day event, live at 11AM on the Village of Orland Park’s YouTube channel.
