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Suburban Life • mysuburbanlife.com • Thursday, February 20, 2014 • CD
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Winfield seeks voter support for sales tax increase By MARY BETH VERSACI mversaci@shawmedia.com WINFIELD – In an effort to maintain and sustain its roads, the village of Winfield will again reach out to voters this March to increase the sales tax in town. In April 2013, voters approved a sales tax increase from 7.25 percent to 7.5 percent. This March, they will decide whether the sales tax will go up again, this time to 7.75 percent. While upcoming major road construction will be funded by about $4.2 million of general obligation debt certificates the village issued in January, money from the sales tax increase will help maintain the roads once they are repaired.
The roads are anticipated to last 20 years, and annual maintenance will help Winfield adhere to that expectation, said Village Manager Curt Barrett. The cost of annual maintenance is about $650,000. About $225,000 of that comes from the Motor Fuel Tax, and a varying amount is taken from the general fund, which can provide no funding at all or as much as $150,000 or more, Barrett said. The additional 0.25 percent in sales tax is expected to generate between $75,000 and $100,000 for the village, he said. Medicine and groceries will be exempt. “You should be doing roadwork every year or else you get a giant backlog of roads that are failing,” Barrett said. If approved, the sales tax
increase could go into effect as soon as July, he said. The previous increase started in January. Nearly 30 percent of Winfield’s roads are in poor to failing condition. Winfield expects to fix a majority of those roads this year, with the rest to be completed next year. The village also anticipates repairing some of the larger roads in fair to poor condition this year with the help of grant funds. Because roads were not repaired for several years, extensive reconstruction is necessary to fix many of the roads, as opposed to a standard resurfacing, Barrett said. “What happened is, we fell way behind a 20-year cycle,”
he said. “We were decades behind.” The general obligation debt certificates issued to pay for roadwork will be repaid by the village during the course of 20 years through the issuance of bonds. The Village Board approved a property tax levy at a meeting Feb. 6 to pay for $202,000 of bonds that will be issued this year as the village’s first repayment of the certificates. Residents living in a $235,000 house – the village’s average home value – can expect to see a $49 increase on their annual property tax bill this year, according to village records. Over time, the repayments for the debt certificates could be supported through sales tax
revenues from new developments, rather than bond issuances, Barrett said. At the board’s Feb. 6 meeting, Trustee Tony Reyes expressed concerns that interest growth over the years that could cause the about $4.2 million that needs to be paid off to total closer to $6.3 million. “For those that are concerned about commercializing other parts of the village, this is what’s going to happen. It’s going to go from costing $4 million to costing $6 million, if we don’t do something now that could possibly bring revenue five years from now or three or four years from now,” Reyes said. “We’re going to continue to snowball this amount of money.”
Topics, dates set for remaining Engage200 sessions By NATHAN LURZ
feedback from the first meeting in January. After Wednesday’s session For more information on the initia- involving student achievetive, email engage200@cusd200. ment, the final four will cover: org, call 630-682-2000 or visit • March 26 – Programs and www.cusd200.org. services such as extracurricular activities and education programming addressed previously, commit• April 16 – 21st century tee co-chair Liz Corry said top- learning environments, inics were narrowed down after cluding technology in the
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nlurz@shawmedia.com WHEATON – The committee behind Engage200, Community Unit School District 200’s community engagement initiative, has formally announced the topics and dates of its remaining meetings. Though possible subjects of discussion have been publicly
classroom and facility issues • May 7 – Finance • June 18 – Summary meeting About 450 people attended the first Engage200 session, according to the district. Among these were a large number of residents who don’t currently have children enrolled in district schools. Corry credited this early
success to fellow committee members, including district staff and community members. “They really have done a lot of behind the scenes work,” she said. “They are the people that are there hanging out, passing things and really worked really hard to make what happens in the community engagement sessions meaningful.”
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