There was no set target date for a discussion about the state of the Oak Park Village Hall and police station construction projects included on the preliminary board meeting schedule shared with Oak Park trustees last week.
The “tentative” schedule laid out the expected key discussion topics and votes the board will expect to work through in July, August and September. It was shared with trustees and community members as a village manager’s report at the July 1 village board meeting.
The village board will not have regular meetings in August as the board goes on hiatus. Key topics the board expects to cover over the next three months include a planned vote on the Oak Park bike plan set for July 22, a discussion of the new board’s goals set for July 29 and several discussions related to property management regulations and housing issues set for the month of September, per the tentative meeting schedule.
Discussions on the current shape of the village’s own construction project, which is expected to top out at a cost of more than $100 million, have been delayed twice in recent months as the future of the project remains a hot topic in Oak Park. The project is expected to center around a new standalone police station — most likely on the patch of grass south of village hall’s parking lot — and extensive renovations to the village hall building.
The last composition of the village board had hoped to review plans for architectural designs and project financing at a March 18 meeting, the board’s last scheduled meeting before April 1’s municipal Cook County elections in which two then board members — Ravi Parakkat and Lucia Robinson — lost their seats.
Following that delay, that board, which had been working on the project for years, still expected the opportunity to vote on the direction of the project during the board’s final lame duck session on Tuesday, April 30. The Friday before that meeting, the discussion was cancelled.
Village Manager Kevin Jackson told Wednesday Journal at the time that the discussion was delayed to allow the village to ensure that the proposals prepared by its architect reflect village priorities in terms of both design and finances.
“It’s not a linear process where the consultants do the work and we just take it and say, ‘Here you go board.’ That’s why you have experts here on staff — to evaluate, opine and adjust,” Jackson told Wednesday Journal. “Our staff of experts are doing our due diligence on the analysis of the work produced so far by our consultant. They’ve done admirable, yeoman’s work; it’s just that we work together as a team. We’ve asked them to do certain things in terms of scope of work and then we go back-and-forth as we analyze it until we get a complete product.”
Issues long expected to be addressed by the architect’s proposals include how will village hall be made more accessible to people with disabilities, how will parking at the facility be impacted, to what extent will the building be renovated as opposed to reconstructed, and how can the village balance modernizing village hall while preserving its historical character.
“We’re really looking forward to what creative solutions come out of this, defining this idea of what open government looks like here for the next 50 years,” Village President Vicki Scaman told Wednesday Journal in April. “The issues on which they’re trying to creatively problem-solve haven’t really changed — they’ve been big problems.
“I trust that the seven members of the board are going to take what are continuing to be ingenious, creative ideas to solve that problem.”