Winter 2012 Bedford David R. Brady President Carol Lumpkins Village Clerk Trustees: Katrina Errant Anthony W. Kensik Robert S. Regep Gail P. Rubel Edward J. Salecki Constantine V. Toulios 2, 3 4 5, 6 7 8 Public Works Department News Industrial Area Personnel Residential Village News Eagle Scout Project Dwelling Regulations Police & Water Department News Dear Residents: We hope 2012 has started as a happy, healthy and successful year for you and your family. This year promises to be a very busy one for the Village. We have a number of major projects planned. First, we plan on updating our residential streets. This will include grinding, resurfacing and redoing damaged areas. Improvements and expansion in parking along 67th Street behind the Park District s baseball fields will also be part of the project. Bids on the project will be sought in March with the planned start of the project set for early summer. We will notify the residents of the work schedule to help with parking issues. Second, we hope to update our Police station, Village Hall and Fire training facilities, with work possibly beginning as early as this fall. Our police station needs expansion of storage, locker room, holding and training facilities. The Village Hall work would include improving the efficiency and flow of office facilities. The possible improvement for Fire will include a training tower. The scope of these projects will depend on projected costs. The residential street improvements have funds allocated and are part of our 5 year capital projects plan. Funds for the facilities updates are allocated through savings that have been made in our capital projects fund due to less than projected costs for completed projects. Our third planned project will be development of a Veterans Memorial on the vacant land on Archer just south of Southern Belle. This land has environmental and egress issues that limit its use. The memorial project was designed by Josh Griffin who is the son of a Bedford Park Firefighter as part of his Eagle Scout project. We are working with the Park District on the project and looking at a possible summer dedication. Information is enclosed on a brick purchase plan. All other projects planned under our 5 year plan should proceed on schedule. The Village continues to look for ways to reduce our costs. As we stated in earlier information distributed to the residents, we had an efficiency study completed on Village services. We have started to implement some of the recommendations from this study. The study was completed by a nationwide firm, Sikich Accounting. Our goal is to retain the quality of services that we provide but lower our tax rate. We feel that this is necessary to continue the incentives we offer our residents and businesses and still maintain an attractable tax rate to allow us to continue to attract business. The Village Board is committed to retaining our residential tax rebate program and other residential and business incentives. If we need to make any personnel adjustments, continued
we will do so, if at all possible, through attrition. Snow and parking continue to remain issues. By ordinance, vehicles parked on residential streets shall be removed after a 2 inch snowfall. We will continue the practice of allowing the residents the opportunity to move their vehicles from the streets by 9 AM. Residents will be notified by the Reverse 911 system to remove the vehicles and when they can return. Vehicles that are not removed will be ticketed. Our Public Works Department and Police Department do a super job of cleaning the streets and meeting the needs of our residents. Please cooperate with this process so that we can continue with the high quality of snow removal we enjoy. If you have not signed up for the reverse 911 service, please contact our Dispatch at (708)458-3388, extension 0 to do so. We did hire a new company this year for our senior snow removal program. We had 4 complaints during the first snow storm and 3 during the second storm. If you have an issue with the service please contact our Public Works staff (708-458-4038) or me (708-514-2398) and we will do our best to rectify any problems. As you have probably noticed the Village purchased a foreclosed home on 66th ST. Because the Village had levied numerous upkeep fines on the home the property and its tear down costs were less than $ 20,000. We will continue to try to market the vacant lots to try to attract new home construction. Information on this is attached. Annual spring inspection of residential homes will begin in late March or early April. We greatly appreciate everyone s cooperation in keeping their property in good shape. Have a great spring! Dave public works department Greetings from the Bedford Park Public Works Department. Even though it is the middle of February, we hope everyone had a nice Holiday Season, especially with the nice weather we have been enjoying. With a little luck and some cooperation from Mother Nature, maybe we can get past these next few weeks on into March without too much snow, if any at all. The beginning of March usually signals the end of any major snowfalls, and hopefully before we know it the buds will start to grow back on the trees and the grass will start to turn green again. Think Spring!! We started out the winter without much snow at all, but the few incidents we did have caused a bit of confusion as far as snow plowing in the Village, both with the plowing of streets and the plowing and shoveling of the homes of the participants in our senior snow program. As far as Village snowplowing, flyers were sent out explaining exactly when people will have to move their cars and when they can return them in front of their homes. The call will be made by the Supt. of Public Works, and will be sent on to the residents through our reverse 911 program. When the all-clear is given, this will also be sent out via the 911 system. Please be advised that moving your car from one side to the other will not mean that you won t get a ticket-your car should be put either in a garage, in a driveway or in one of several parking lots available to you. These would be the Swanson Center parking lot (which is actually 67th St. and Village owned), the north Library parking lot and/or the Village Hall Parking lot. Our goal is to get the streets clean from curb to curb as fast as possible. As a courtesy to your neighbors on both sides of the streets, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of these lots. We all have to work together to reach a common goal, which is to provide a clean and safe spot for everyone to park their car or cars. Industrial Area The Village is continuing efforts to beautify our Industrial area. All of the information signs are now in place, and the response to them has been very positive. We have started to put planters on the median strip area in various locations on 65th St., with two being installed last September. More planters are coming as part of our beautification of this area, hopefully seen as incentives to bring businesses into this area. Street projects are continuing in this area as well. Grinding and resurfacing will take place on Central Avenue from 65th St. to 67th St., and LaVergne Avenue will be resurfaced from 65th to 67th St. There will also be some sewer pipe replacement done, one in the 65th St. area and another in the 75th St. area on the other side of town. Personnel The Village would like to welcome two new employees to the Public Works Dept., Marcin Michalek from Bedford Park and Joseph Infusino of Oak Lawn. It was a highly competitive process that led to the hiring of these two new employees, and we congratulate them and welcome them to the Public Works Department. If you see them around town, please introduce yourself to them and welcome them to our team!! 2 Winter 2012
Residential Area This spring there will be much activity in the residential area, as we will be milling and resurfacing all the streets. Our engineering firm has been marking areas since the fall, and we have televised, cleaned and inspected all of the catch basins and mains, marking areas that may need fixing or adjusting before the resurfacing starts. Bids for the work will be going out shortly, and we hope to begin work sometime in early May. Hopefully this work will be done with as little inconvenience as possible to our residents, and informational flyers will be distributed on a regular basis informing the residents of when and where the work will be done and updating our progress as we move along. For over forty years, Davey Tree Service has been our contractor for the evaluation, treating, trimming, and removal of Village parkway trees. We have always been proud of the canopy of trees that cover our streets, and our goal is to keep this unique look, with the removal of dead and diseased trees and the replanting of new ones. In conjunction with the Bedford Park District, we have planted over two hundred trees in the Village and Park areas, with many trees being given to both entities at no cost at year s end by several of the nurseries we deal with. The only costs that are incurred are for the planting of the trees, which is always budgeted for. We will continue to plant flowers at our Village Hall, Archer fence line, north property and railroad alley areas, with the addition of automatic sprinklers in railroad alley, to cut down on any overtime costs for weekend watering. Plants will also be hung from the light pole, but with a new type of basket that will hold water for three days, cutting that watering overtime as well. We are proud of how many responses we get in the form of calls, letters and e-mails in regards to our floral displays. We hope you are as proud as we are in keeping our town looking as best as we can. Winter 2012 3
Village NEWS Finance As stated in the introduction letter the Village is committed to maintaining the quality of service that we provide our residents and businesses but control our costs so we can have a tax rate that allows us to attract new business. The Wal Mart deal showed us that our tax rate is higher than Chicago s. All though our final 2011 figures are incomplete it looks like we ran a deficit of about $ 200,000 for the year on an approximate $ 25 million budget. This is less than 1 percent. The Village has a surplus of funds that have built up over the years so a slight deficit is not a problem. However, our annual increase in employee raises, insurances cost and retirement benefits amounts to increase of about $ 600,000 to $ 1 million per year. We are in a time of flat revenue increases. The Village Board is working hard to look at many alternatives to sustain the financial stability of the Village. We are committed to maintaining the financial incentives that our residents receive including the tax rebate program, free internet service, free garbage pick-up, free water and sewer and senior snow and lawn services. These programs cost the Village just under $ 300,000 per year or about 1.25% of our budget. We are also committed to offer our employees competitive and quality benefits and pay. Our commitment to tax relief for our businesses will continue. Residential Rental Properties By ordinances multi- family rental properties are limited to the properties listed in Ordinance 6-1 19. These properties must comply with all Village ordinances for such properties including living density and must be inspected annually. By ordinance, no further multi- family residencies can be added. There cannot be an additional kitchen in a non multi-family home. The Ordinance is attached. New Businesses We have been quite fortunate in attracting new businesses. Magna Medical, Everest College and Cermack Foods have opened on Cicero Avenue. We are close to closing on a deal with a Vertical and Tilapia Fish Farm which would open in the fall. The purchase of the facility for the Dunkin Donuts manufacturing center has been completed. We hope for a fall opening of that facility. The construction of the super Wal Mart is running way ahead of schedule and we might have a June or July opening. We are also in negotiations with a micro brewery and an environmental turf company to come into the Village. Despite our tax rate we have remained competitive because of low permitting fees, the ease and speed of our permitting and tax incentives we offer. However, to retain our competitive balance we must continue to work on our tax rate. Village Salaries/Benefits By a state law the Village must list the salaries and benefits for any employees earning over $ 75,000 per year in combined costs for benefits and salaries. This information will be available on our web site in March or April after our 2012 budget is passed. 4 Winter 2012
Winter 2012 5
6 Winter 2012
Winter 2012 7
Village of Bedford Park 6701 S. Archer Ave. Bedford Park, IL 60501 FIRST CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 96 ELKHART, IN police department Bedford Park s New K9 Officers: Officers Francisco Huerta and Ken Bernstein returned from Vohne Liche Kennels in Indiana with The Bedford Park Police Department s newest additions: two new German Shepherd Police Dogs. Both Officers have completed their five (5) week training at the Vohne Liche facilities in Denver, Indiana. Officer Huerta s new partner is Hunter a two and a half year old German Shepherd from Holland. And, Officer Bernstein is partnered with Ciro a 1 year old German Shepherd from the Czech Republic. Both are Dual Purpose Narcotics/Patrol Dogs which means they are trained in narcotics detection as well as tracking, building search, apprehension and officer protection. Vohne Liche Kennels is renowned for their production of world class working dogs. water department Water Rates As you have properly heard on media broadcast the City of Chicago has passed on a substantial water rate increase to the suburbs. Bedford Park is the third largest user of Lake Michigan water in northern Illinois behind Chicago and the Du Page County Water Commission. We sell a large amount of water to American Water which sells it to other southwest suburbs. The Village did pass the rate increase to our customers. However, the Village Board remains committed to our free water service for residents. Our water budget which is kept separate from other Village funds is approximately $ 26 million. Most of this money is accounted for in the purchase and sale of water. Water revenue by law can only be used for water related projects. 8 Winter 2012