As part of the process to set a budget for fiscal year 2025, the Oak Park village board will review the recommended five-year capital improvement plan and costs for associated projects. On Tuesday, trustees discussed improvements for parking infrastructure and village equipment, as well as plans for Community Development Block Grant-funded projects.
On Sept. 26, trustees will review other plans for the main capital fund, water/sewer advancements, building improvements and vehicle fleet replacements. The recommended CIP for fiscal years 2025 to 2029 is a 240-page document available online.
“There’s not going to be enough funds to go around, for everything that we want,” Trustee Ravi Parakkat pointed out, urging the board to stay focused on specific goals and allocate funds appropriately.
So, balancing the village board’s priorities with associated project costs is the key task at hand as trustees work to approve a five-year CIP and 2025 budget.
“One of the things I’d like to focus a little bit more on is operational government rather than aspirational government,” Trustee Cory Wesley said.
Parking
Emily Egan, the village’s development services director, first outlined some priorities for parking infrastructure. Those requests include a new revenue control system for certain village-owned garages, electric vehicle charging stations, lot resurfacing, parking structure maintenance and wayfinding and parking garage signage. Other projects include vehicle replacement, streetscaping and additional sign upgrades.
Parking structure maintenance was rated as a top priority in the next five-year plan. In August, the village board approved spending up to $665,000 to complete safety repairs at The Avenue Parking Garage.
Oak Park also implemented a 25-cent-per-kilowatt-hour user fee for electric vehicle charging stations that went into effect in August. Part of that revenue is intended to go toward building new charging infrastructure, encouraging residents to drive electric vehicles and in turn decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from gas-powered cars. Work to install new stations in 2025 is expected to cost $438,000, according to the CIP.
The recommended budget for the new revenue and access control system is $650,000. Trustee Brian Straw said that number feels hard to justify and could be classified as a want rather than a need. The current system is functioning, Egan said, but has ongoing maintenance needs and technology upgrades.
As for replacing old parking signs, Sean Keane, the village’s parking and mobility services manager, said the intent is to simplify them for residents and make enforcement easier on the Oak Park Police Department.
Wesley said he wondered if new parking garage signs were needed, however. Egan said the intent is to improve the experience for visitors who may be less familiar with the area and make signs easier to read. New wayfinding and parking garage signage is expected to cost $335,000 in 2025 and $500,000 in 2026.
Straw agreed with Wesley that wayfinding signs to make the area more tourist-friendly should be a higher priority than garage signs. But Village Manager Kevin Jackson said it might be prudent to make all signage consistent. Wayfinding signs also reduce frustration and encourage walking in the downtown area especially, Village President Vicki Scaman said.
CDBG
Jonathan Burch, the village’s neighborhood services director, said the new CIP proposes $1.1 million of CDBG funding be spent in 2025. The three main projects those dollars will fund are alley improvements, sidewalk replacements and lead water service line replacements.
Alley improvements are expected to cost about $600,000 in 2025. The village typically makes about 15 to 20 alley upgrades per year based on the current funding allocated, according to Village Engineer Bill McKenna. But once they’re replaced, the expected service life is about 80 years.
Many residents have complained about the state of their alleys, according to several trustees. But there are about 660 blocks of alleys in Oak Park, McKenna said, so the village must prioritize the worst ones, meaning there’s a significant backlog. There are about 150 to 200 alleys still in “more desperate need of repair,” McKenna said.
It’s hard to choose which alleys in the same type of poor condition should be replaced first, he said. First the village considers the condition of the pavement and then its draining issues. Straw said he would like to push more aggressively for funding here.
“I’m regularly hearing from people ‘My alley has been in terrible shape for a decade, and I keep asking when it’s going to be done,’” Straw said. “And I think folks are getting pretty tired of hearing ‘Soon-ish.’”
Parakkat agreed. If the board did allocate additional funding, McKenna said, the village could accommodate the work staffing-wise with contractors. But Trustee Susan Buchanan said alley resurfacing is not a priority to her and would rather focus on funding sustainability initiatives.
McKenna said the village could also investigate using a “greener” concrete, since the use of concrete has a large carbon footprint. Straw said since the board is already investing in alleys, it would make sense to pick the approach that aligns with the goals in Climate Ready Oak Park.
Sidewalk replacements are expected to cost about $400,000 in 2025, Burch said, focused mainly on improving accessibility standards.
And lead water service line replacements are proposed at $100,000, which will allow the village to assist about 10 to 12 low- and moderate-income residents with that work in 2025. The village aided 14 homes with this work in 2024, McKenna said.
Equipment
Heads of several village departments including communications, information technology, police and fire also presented their funding requests for equipment needs to the village board Tuesday.
Fire Chief Ronald Kobyleski said the Oak Park Fire Department requests include thermal imaging cameras for each firefighter at a cost of $30,000 and a new machine to test the fit of firefighters’ respiratory face masks at $22,000.
Police Chief Shatonya Johnson said the OPPD-requested items are upgrades to body cameras, police squad car technology, parking technology and an updated records management system. Body cameras are expected to cost more than $155,000 in 2025. The proposed car technology costs more than $115,000 and parking technology is expected to cost $45,000.
A new RMS will last about 15 to 20 years, Johnson said, and the cost to replace it, estimated now at $1.75 million but could be lower based on incoming vendor proposals, will be covered by allocated federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
“We want to make sure we have the resources to get more than the baseline equipment,” she said.
