In a push to meet goals set in the Climate Ready Oak Park plan, Oak Park trustees indicated they would support adding $500,000 from the fund balance to the sustainability fund for fiscal year 2025.
Trustee Susan Buchanan raised the discussion during a village board meeting Thursday, proposing a $1 million transfer from the substantial fund balance to the sustainability fund in both 2025 and 2026. As it stands, Oak Park has a fund balance of about $45.8 million.
It’s advised to keep that balance between 10% and 20% of normal prior year expenditures. For Oak Park, that’s about $11.2 million based on 2023 expenses. Trustees have decided to spend down reserves for the Oak Park Avenue Streetscape project and other upcoming capital improvements.
By doing so, the village will still have about $18 million in its fund balance. Trustees will likely have to issue bonds for bigger-ticket items, like the Village Hall remodel and new police station.
Buchanan said she’d like to use some of the excess fund balance mainly for the village’s energy-efficiency grant program for low- and moderate-income households, a new initiative that started Oct. 1. This program is intended to help residents reduce their home energy consumption, therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All buildings in Oak Park are responsible for more than 70% of the village’s emissions.
The grant program already had $100,000 budgeted until Sept. 30, 2025, from Community Development Block Grant funds.
“Rich people are going to buy solar panels anyway; they don’t need our money,” Trustee Cory Wesley. “There are folks who do need our money to replace their furnace … it benefits us, it benefits them if there’s funding for them to replace that furnace with a 93% efficiency furnace.”
In Climate Ready Oak Park, the village has set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. To reach those targets, Buchanan said the village needs to make some bold moves.
“We are underfunding the existential crisis that is climate change,” Trustee Brian Straw said. “We’re not going to get to our goals if we don’t put our money where our mouth is.”
Buchanan proposed $1 million for the next two years to help bolster this program and support other sustainability initiatives, but Chief Sustainability Officer Lindsey Roland Nieratka said she wasn’t sure if her department could spend that much in a year. But with more money and more outreach, more work can be done.
Neighborhood Services Director Jonathan Burch echoed that it’s important to make sure the village staff have the capacity to get dollars allocated to projects like this out the door efficiently. Extra staff or external contractors might be needed to do so, he said.
Trustees were supportive of allocating more money to the sustainability fund, but agreed they don’t want to budget money they can’t spend. So, they decided to allocate an additional $500,000 to the sustainability fund just for 2025 and see how it goes. The village board can always adjust the budget later with an amendment if needed.
Trustee Lucia Robinson also said it might be prudent for the board to take advantage of the support for spending on sustainability initiatives before the local elections in April when new trustees with different priorities could be sitting in the seats. Three trustees, the village president and the village clerk seats will be up for election in 2025.
“We’re running out of time in terms of support of federal government on some of these policies,” Trustee Ravi Parakkat said, referring to the 2024 presidential election results. President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and could roll back climate change initiatives. Parakkat added he wants to make their dollars go as far as possible.
During budget discussions, trustees also debated the possibility of hiring three more firefighters to help offset overtime costs, but no final decision was made.
Trustees are expected to approve a final 2025 budget on Dec. 3.