I hope that everyone had a great New Year’s celebration this past weekend and are enjoying the holiday season in spite of the challenges.
We did have a board meeting this past Monday that included, among other things, approving next year’s budget and, as most of you know by now, a discussion and vote on a mask mandate.
One of the first things we did was unanimously approve changes to the new development going in at the old Toys R’ Us site. These changes added drive thru lanes at 2 more of the restaurants (understandable given COVID). In total there will be 5 restaurants. Currently Raising Cane’s, Chipotle (Whole Foods expanding into old space) and Panera have signed leases. This development moving forward during COVID-19 speaks volumes about the strength of Orland Park, the mall and surrounding area.
The board then had a discussion about business assistance. We decided to not require restaurants to pay for liquor licenses next year to help our restaurants that have been shuttered multiple times by the state. We also decided to take the other $260,000 in a loan fund that was never used and lower property taxes for everyone in Orland Park. Before this unanimous vote, Trustees Dodge, Calandriello and Fenton voted to amend the motion to not lower the property tax. This was defeated. After fighting against our effort to lower property taxes, the same three trustees ultimately voted for the property tax decrease in the tax levy and budget. In total, the village is lowering its property tax levy by 2.92%. This is the first property tax decrease the village board has ever passed (at least that I could find from looking back several decades).
This property tax reduction is a welcome relief for our struggling families and small businesses as we work to get through this pandemic. This would not have been possible without our work restoring fiscal responsibility in Orland Park these past four years. This is the result of four years of work driving economic development, increasing efficiencies, cutting expenses, paying down the debt incurred by the previous administration, and rebuilding our reserves.
Next year’s budget again includes increased spending on repairing our roads and parks which were neglected for years by my predecessor. It also included restructuring our debt (which saves us over $200,000). Even with conservatively projecting significant COVID-19 related negative revenue impacts, we will again be able to lower our total long-term debt by $4M. We were able to do this because of the good decisions we made in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 budgets, lowering our operating expenses by 13.9%, employees by 9.5% and reducing debt by $37 million from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2020 (even with the negative impacts of COVID-19).
We then had a long discussion on mandatory masks. In summary, the proposed ordinance would have put into place disorderly conduct fines of up to $1,000, enforced by our police, with no exceptions. You can see a presentation of pertinent information and hear what each of the trustees say by listening to the discussion, starting at approximately 57 minutes and 11 seconds, here 2020-12-21 Village of Orland Park Board Meeting – YouTube.
My opinion on the ordinance is that it is unnecessary since there is already a statewide mandate, it overburdens our police with enforcing an unenforceable mandate, and it penalizes our residents unfairly. I favor continuing our balanced, data-driven approach. All our businesses already require the use of masks. We continually educate our residents, visitors, and businesses on the importance of the personal safety related mitigation measures, and I’m very proud of our community in how we’ve continued to live our lives while being safe and respectful of others.
Let’s be clear: all this ordinance would accomplish is institute a fine of up to $1,000 for disorderly conduct for both the person not wearing the mask AND the business that did not force them to wear one. This would equate not wearing masks with things like riots, public indecency, animal abuse, making a bomb threat, etc. There were no exceptions for age, so children, toddlers and infants could be ticketed. There were also no exceptions for those who have health conditions precluding wearing a mask, for those who have already had COVID, or for those who have been vaccinated.
Proponents said this was being done to help businesses and to attract more people to Orland Park. Nothing says welcome to Orland Park like “we are going to fine you $1,000 for coming here.”
We have worked very hard to implement community policing and our police foster great relationships with the Orland Park community. How will putting them in the position of being mask enforcers help further those relationships and keep us safe long term? They have a hard enough job without this overreaching ordinance.
The truth is this is being brought forward so it can be used as a political issue against me in my reelection campaign. Remember that I previously warned everyone that we would see a lot of politics in the next several months. A statewide mandate has been in place since May, yet it is suddenly placed on the board agenda by Trustee Calandriello who was appointed to the board by my opponent—the same career politician that is making mandatory masking his number one issue. This is no coincidence and, unfortunately, we will see more of this over the coming months from the three lame duck trustees who continue to prove that they put politics over people.
The ordinance to institute a $1,000 fine to enforce the state’s mask mandate failed four to three, with the three lame duck trustees voting for it.
There was also a citizen who spoke and publicly attacked me personally about masks. Another political ploy by my opponent that we will see more of – sending people from his campaign to attack me on the board floor. Those running his campaign have conducted similar attacks in the past so I expect that this will also continue. My advice to him is to be a little less obvious than sending someone who circulated petitions for his campaign if he wants to continue pretending that these attacks are from everyday community members and not his campaign allies.
I focused my closing comments on giving an update on the vaccine. I also thanked our staff and police for all of their great work. During the pandemic, it would be easy to say, shut everything down. Elected officials in many states have been doing just that. To me this is not leadership, it’s taking the easy way out. Instead, our approach has been to determine how we can keep our small businesses open, conduct events, and live life as safely as possible while being smart and dealing with the pandemic. Here in Orland Park, we have done just that because of the dedication and efforts of our staff that instead of saying “we can’t” have said, “we can and we will, the question is how.”
My closing comments from the meeting can be viewed here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNmb8HrLyag&feature=youtu.be
I know we’re all excited to see 2020 in our rearview mirror. I’m looking forward to 2021. Together, we’ll continue to work cooperatively to move Orland Park forward!
