Good evening, everybody. We'll call this meeting, special meeting for November 18, 2024, to order, and if you'd rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance and
to the Republic.
Nice to see everybody tonight. And if the clerk would please call the roll.
Here.
Here. Here.
Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we move into our special business tonight, a shameless plug on my part.
Tomorrow morning, you've got an opportunity of a lifetime at Fire Station 25 to meet the chief or a new fire chief.
And ask him any questions about the upcoming rebuilds and our facility updates that are coming over the next couple of years.
So please, 730, there'll be bagels, if you want to chat with me and ask me any questions.
I'll be available as well, so see you tomorrow morning at Fire Station 25 on Dundee Road.
And with that, Trustee Bochik, I'll entertain a motion to open the public hearing for the budget, please.
Sure, I move to open the public hearing for the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget.
Second.
Motion and a second, and we need to roll call on.
No, go ahead.
Aye.
Motion's carried and this public hearing is now open on the budget.
I'll turn it over to Village Manager Bragg.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Good evening, everyone.
Good evening.
And it's a pleasure to be here for the annual budget presentation.
I thank you for the opportunity.
Trustee Widenfeld sends his regrets he could not be here.
He's not feeling well this evening and he promised me it was
not a reflection of his thoughts about our budget operations.
So tonight we will be presenting to you the proposed spending prioritization for the
coming year.
As you all know, the budget is done in a program based format, and that's the format that
we will walk through it this evening.
The budget is a lot of work, and there are several pieces that we're going to talk about, including
the financial summary, our capital projects, our three core focus areas, as well as our
enterprise funds this evening. So my presentation is complete. Do you have any
questions? No, I'm just kidding.
So the budget is published. We actually begin our
budget preparation process in June and then you see the actual detailed
budgets start to emerge around the post Labor Day period and that culminates by
the end of October with the complete budget document that was submitted to you
on October 31st. You have opened the public hearing this evening and that
public hearing will remain open through December 2nd, which will be your next
regularly scheduled board meeting when you will be recommended to pass the
budget and that time you will close the public hearing. To this evening we are
going to cover as I said the three core areas and we will get started there. We're
going to start with the budget transmittal letter which is on page six of the
budget document. There are three guiding philosophies that we continue into 2025, emphasis on economic
development, sustained community reinvestment, and forward focused planning. We've also aligned
the draft budget with the Village Board's strategic goals, including the five core focus areas shown
on this slide. I am not going to read them to you because I'm sure you are very familiar
with them. The Strategic Plan Quick Guide provides more detail starting on page 31 of the document.
But before we focus on the 2025 budget, I wanted to take a moment to review where we are today.
The village board can celebrate the accomplishment of several major initiatives over the past couple of years with even more on the way and we'll talk a little bit about that this evening.
We expect to end this year with more than $46 million General Fund reserves and nearly 60% of that is allocated for future capital projects in alignment with the board's goals.
Over the last five years, we've seen more than $224 million in capital investment and
critical infrastructure here in our community, and you can see and feel that improvement
throughout the entire community.
The village is one of the few municipalities in Illinois with a AAA rating for all of
our existing debt from S&P Global.
This year we were very excited to welcome the new Microcopark Amphitheater and Pavilion
for Buffalo Grove Days, which you showed our support from the village in funding $600,000
toward that project. We're going to see the Clove redevelopment coming to life with new restaurants,
apartments, and more developments in the works, as we speak. We also have the new Multitonic
Commercial Building in Route 83 and Lake Cook, that veterinary emergency group opened in this year,
and a cameo appearance by Wildfork, along with the new lazy dog restaurant that is quickly
under construction. We are also watching the bison crossing development take
shape with the New Tesla dealer coming along quite nicely and the residential
project to the south of that is set to be against construction in the second
quarter of 2025.
Trustee Bochek will appreciate it when I say we re-
honed our public works department and their new building is 1650 lighter lane this
year which is a major improvement for our operations for public works and our
our team could not be more proud of that building and what it means for us as a community.
And we successfully rolled out our first comprehensive branding campaign this year with broad community
support and I think you can see the effects of Molly Gillespie and her team's work throughout
the community.
Which leads us to our operational and capital priorities for 2025.
We have a general fund budget that supports about $57 million for operations in the coming
year.
In addition, we have plan draws on general fund reserves that total $7.2 million to support
capital projects and equipment replacement.
It's important to note that we do not use our reserves to cover operating costs and we
do not use one-time revenues to support our operations, reserves and debt are for capital
projects only.
The village will end 2025 with a project of $38.8 million in general fund reserves, which
to exceed our 35% reserve target just over that.
It is important to note that the drawdown
of capital reserves is not negative.
It is a positive trend for you as a board.
As we transition from debt financing
to pay as you go financing for our infrastructure work,
we will see the planned use of reserves
to support infrastructure facility
and equipment investments.
For the Public Safety Pension Funds,
we anticipate an increase of $11.5 million
in assets in the coming year.
and we are healthy funded in both the police and fire pensions.
The village will continue a tradition of aggressive liability management committing 2.65 million to retire debt principle, and we will fund above the actuarial level for both the police and fire pension funds yet again.
77% of the villages existing debt will be retired by 2035, 92% of our debt payments are serviced
by sources other than property tax, including motor fuel taxes, cannabis tax, fixed facility
fees, and other taxes. We're very proud of that.
And I think the most important news for our residents, and we'll probably, this will probably
get repeated several times tonight. The property tax levy will remain flat for the sixth
straight year here in Buffalo Grove. We've continued to utilize conservative
revenue estimates and Chris Black will talk a little bit through that due to
market unpredictability particularly with income and sales tax receipts so we
factored in any potential economic downturns there. We will continue our
commitment to the infrastructure modernization program with 36.1 million in our
IMP projects is coming here. And we have 1.8 million...
We will continue the development of our branding and engagement programs with hopefully some exciting and very noticeable
We will complete the transition of the former public works building into our interim fire station so
that we can begin our fire station 25 demolition and reconstruction.
And President Smith is right, if you haven't seen the inside of station 25 before it hits the wrecking ball,
you really should.
You will have a new appreciation for what the firefighters work in those conditions.
We will begin design for the Clove Park and that will be the Keystone for the Clove Development Project.
We have major capital investment and infrastructure including major projects like the Northwood subdivision drainage improvement project.
And we will also continue our work on unified development ordinance project to modernize our regulations for building and development.
On page 65 of your budget, you will find this table that's on the screen which is our cost of services slide.
This is a great segue to give the community some context as to the cost of fees, taxes, and services here in Buffalo Grove.
As you can see, Buffalo Grove continues to deliver all of our valuable services and capital investment very efficiently when compared to our peer communities.
And we continue to be a smaller and smaller share of the property tax bill year after year.
If we look at budget by the numbers, the 2025 budget will achieve the board's stated priorities by maintaining the community's high level of public services.
in the areas of public works, public safety, and infrastructure management.
Again, providing for a zero dollar increase in the operating property tax levy and a flat
total tax levy year over year, allocating 1.9 million in capital reserve contributions
in the coming year, and funding a total $51.3 million capital program dedicated to streets,
sewer, water, and facility projects.
In total, the village's 2025 budget is 161.4 million, which is a very slight 1% decrease year over year, which includes operations, our enterprise funds, fiduciary funds, and capital projects.
Of that total, 57 million is allocated for our operations.
We do include a general wage increase of 3% for our nonrepresented employees, and we anticipate that represented employees' increases will be about the same.
For 2025, we plan a complement of 217 full-time and 38 part-time employees for a total
staffing of 255.
That is a .5 increase year-over-year.
The only staffing changes of note are the addition of a full-time social worker position
in the police department, which will complement our ever-expanding mental health support
service in Buffalo Grove.
As far as rates and fees, we have a standard 4% consumption-based increase in our water
and sewer fees established by ordinance.
We also have included a plan 10% increase for the water and sewer fixed facility fee.
This will be the first increase since that fee was implemented in 2020.
And the monthly refuse rate will increase 5% on May 1st of 2025.
As I believe you will see during our presentation your staff team is more committed than ever to delivering on the value promises to our community meeting a village boards high priorities and providing the highest quality public services.
I would like to hand over the presentation to our finance director Chris Black to deliver the budget summary.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Bragg, and before you start, Chris, I just, to any of our residents that are listening out there, I implore you you don't need to read 500 pages of this, this budget, but Mr. Bragg's summary from page 6 to 16, take a half hour, read it.
It's a fantastic summary of where we're at and where we're going and what our philosophy is and I highly recommend that.
So thank you, it's all yours.
Thank you.
I first want to give a big thanks to the staff and to the board, the office, the village manager, for all the support on this budget.
It's truly a team effort every year.
I've been in several different communities and the way we pull together and all the assistance
that's provided in terms of cooperation from operating departments and support is unparalleled
anywhere that I've been.
With the departure of Evan Mitchell, who worked, who worked, put a great deal of time kind
of pulling together the budget book.
I want to give a special thanks to Christine Berman who puts so much work into this assembly
of the book.
And also to Tyler for assistance in setting things up in Miley and Tim in particular.
You'll notice that it was the whole color scheme and the whole branding was changed throughout
the book and it took a considerable amount of work and a thank you or due to all of those
guys.
I just want to kind of add on to some of the bigger picture items that Dane walked through.
My remarks can be focused particularly on the general fund and some of the changes that
we saw there.
Overall we've kind of, we've continued to focus on using conservative revenue estimates.
You know, as we've talked about the economy over the last three or four years, we, it seems
like we're moving into that soft landing that we've, that everyone is hoping for, at least
that's what we're seeing so far.
But we always are going to be facing other threats.
That's the big thing that comes up now as we've discussed is that the state is looking
at having budget problems and we could be looking at having shared revenues cut or reduction
shared revenues, particularly the income tax.
So while he's dealing with some type of threat that we have to be prepared for, we've provided
services efficiently and effectively and really limited the growth and operating costs.
That's something that the board deserves credit and we deserve credit as a management
team.
It's very easy when revenues are performing well to expand services or add staff to provide
the services we've all been provided.
And I think we've done very well in maintaining the service that we have and expanding on them
but kind of maintaining stable operating costs.
I mean, finally, as Dave mentioned, we've taken the additional revenue and the strong revenue
performance and we've taken that extra money and we've ported into either capital improvements,
you know, reducing, you know, reducing the debt that we had to issue for the public works
building by paying cash is as well as, you know, in rather than expanding our operations.
The other items that we'll mention again the sixth year of the flat lobby
And as well as the eight, almost $8 million in capital improvements that we're providing
from the general fund.
In terms of general fund revenue, you can see here that our toll is about $57 million.
We saw a $3 million increase in grant revenue from last year.
It was kind of an accounting measure on how we handled the Rescue Plan Act funds.
If you, in that of that, a revenue's increased about $2 million or 3.6%.
property tax revenues account for about 29.5% of our overall general fund revenue, although
it's not our most popular tax and that's a lot of understatement is our most stable
than we lobby it, we feel relatively certain that we're going to collect it.
About 50% of other revenues, mainly the sales tax and the state shared revenue which includes
income tax, use tax, and then the 4% for real estate transfer fees and building permit fees.
There's a great deal of sensitivity that goes on within our economy, and we can see
an advent flow with those revenue sources.
In terms of revenue trends, and this is a slide that you've seen in past years during
the budget process, we experience exceptional growth from 2000 through 2023, particularly
in sales tax and income tax, about 8.8 million overall, it's 6.4 million in the sales
tax gross, although we provide some of that back to business and incentives, in 2.4 million
in income taxes. We've seen some leveling off as we're trying to illustrate here in the
sales tax and income tax revenue, although the performance is still over budget. And then
on the slide to the right where we show food and beverage real estate transfer and building
permit fees. I mean you can see that the real estate transfer fees peaked in 2022. And again
we're still meeting that about a million dollars a year we budget but we're not going
to. We're unlikely at least from what we're looking at now to see the performance that we
saw in 2022.
Again with the property tax levy. We haven't seen an increase and we're not
about 16.8 goes to general fund operations and other 335,000 for debt service.
And I'll hit on it later, but we've also seen an increase in EV over the last two years.
General fund revenue growth, real simple chart here, our sales tax increase is about 1.3 million
between the home rule and state sales tax, about an 8.1% increase.
Ambulance fees have increased by about $400,000 between the EMT program and
the increase in ambulance fees.
That 0.4 million is all going to be put towards the debt service.
17.4 million bond issue that we're planning on in 2025 for
fire stations, 25 and 26.
And then investment income is up about $300,000, $300,000.
What we've tried to do strategically is we expect declining rates to invest some funds
out longer term in terms of our access funds that we're not going to need over the next
two years and try to bank some of those returns over that extended period of time.
General fund operations, this is the overall summary you can see, about 60,
you know,
is 67% is for salary and benefits as we are a service organization that the effective
expenditure increase is 2 million dollars or 2.6%.
Salaries were up 0.6 million or 2.6% as Dave mentioned, we have a 3% increase in wages
and we have the same amount of full time employees and we've increased a half part time position.
benefits increase 0.3 million again 2.6 percent we seem really continued stability and
benefits overall you know obviously as we've talked about with our public safety pension
we're over contributing so we're in a position where we're not increasing that at all
and our health insurance is state stable operating costs
operating costs are up about 10.8 percent
It's mostly driven by IT costs and then in facility operations costs and then we'll see a $200,000 increase in our sales tax incentives that comes with our increasing sales tax revenue.
And finally, the debt service transfer goes up about $0.5 million, that's related to the debt service on fire stations 25 and 26.
The use of capitol resource, which Dane mentioned, we're 2 million towards facilities.
That's mostly planned repairs at Village Hall and for the fire department, infrastructure
about 3 million, about 2.5 million of that is to the Northwood's Stormwater project, 1.7 million
for vehicles, and then about a half million for IT services.
This is all those items listed are in the capital requests summary, which will be covered
later, but on page 199.
And then finally, a projection of our year-end capital reserves in 2025 were expecting
to be at about 19.4 million in reserves.
At the end of each fiscal year, we kind of determined an actual reserve balance and allocate
the amount to the various areas for usage.
As Dave mentioned, we're contributing $1.9 million
about $1.00 towards those reserves.
About $1.1 million is going towards vehicles.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.
Otherwise, I'll turn it over to Chris Stilling
so he can present the BGS responsible section.
Good evening.
I'll be brief.
This is where the fund begins.
You'll see staff standing up here giving various presentations.
So the first one is a legislative program.
Again, this is found on page 84 of your budget book.
There are no major changes proposed for 2025.
However, there are some increases related to the fireworks and
various commission costs.
Next we have general administration, which can be found on page 88 of your budget book.
This includes four service areas with an overall budget of $1.55 million.
There are no major changes proposed for 2025.
There was a slight decrease in the budget for this year or for the upcoming year.
A few of the key strategic priorities for 2025 include enhanced hip reporting and continue with facilities planning.
With that, I'll turn over to Katie Goldbach to provide personal administration.
If any of the trustees have any questions or either Chris or Chris.
Bus in. Otherwise, we'll keep on moving. Hi, Katie. All right. Well, thank you very much.
Next slide here is going to be a personnel administration on slide 27. This portion of the budget can be found on page 99 of your budget document. There are no major changes proposed for 2025 and the proposed budget remains relatively unchanged.
and decreases related to personnel and commission costs.
A couple of key strategic priorities for 2025 include the implementation of a learning
management system along with training and development initiatives specifically as it relates
to supervisors and continuing with recruitment and retention initiatives.
At this time I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Seeing none, I would like to introduce Molly Gillespie who will go through communications
and engagement.
Thank you.
Thank you, Katie.
Good
evening.
Hello.
A communications engagement program area is found on pages 109 and 113 in your budget document.
This was a new program area that was first included in the 2023 budget following the creation
of my department.
The program covers three service areas that often overlap including marketing and public relations,
content development, and community engagement.
The total 2025 budget for this program area is $483,919, a 7% increase from the 2024 adopted budget.
The only variance of note is personnel benefits, which were conservatively budgeted previously and have been adjusted accordingly.
There are no major changes proposed in 2025.
With the expenses and operations seen, it continued focused on strategic goals involving brand integration,
the development of us communications and engagement framework and evaluation of special events and programming landscape and resources.
I'm happy to take any questions.
Questions?
Seeing none.
Trustee Cesaria.
Okay, there we go.
What do we have in here for the continuation of our rebranding?
So, actually, not in this specific program area, but in the capital facilities budget.
We do have planned, there will be an image later on Jim discusses his program area, but
the overpass signage in Route 83, we're looking to do signage on both sides with illumination
as well.
That was the picture everybody liked when we went through the process.
Yes.
Very exciting.
Thank you.
Any other questions? I'll pass the floor over to Assistant Village Manager, Tyler Grace.
Thank you, Molly. So to kick off here, we'll look at the administrative services portion
of the budget, which can be found on page 105. This program did experience significant change
in 2024 with the retirement of the administrative services director. The program has been consolidated
under the Assistant Village Manager and continues to provide key support services to the
2025 budget, including reductions in wages and benefits due to the overall reduction in staff.
And additionally, it increases proposed to allow for the addition of a contracted risk manager who will focus on risk reduction opportunities and best practices.
Strategic priorities for the administrative services department include the continuation of digitizing and
automating process flows and a focus on developing interdepartmental access to key data points.
Next up is the information technology portion of the budget, which you can find on page 114.
The IT Fund's overall proposed budget for 2025 is $2.6 million.
Due to anticipated increases in software contracts, there is a proposed increase in operating expenses for 2025.
Key action items for the IT team include the development of multiple long range planning documents,
an assessment of the security of the municipal network, and
supporting the design and deployment of network infrastructure in the new station point.
I'd be happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Tyler.
With that, I'd be happy to pass it over to Mr. Black for the, to cover the financial management portion.
All right, thank you, Tyler.
The financial management section is found on page 94.
Total budget for the program is 1.6 million, a 7.1% increase from the prior year.
The primary increases are salary adjustments for cost of living and merit.
In terms of strategic priorities, new financial software research direction and
funding, and as well as police and fire pension and evaluating future funding strategies.
The next section that I'll cover here is the police pension fund on page 116.
Total revenue is about 14 million made up of investment revenue, employee contributions, and employer contribution.
The employer contribution is $3.5 million, which is 8% above the actuarly required contribution.
This supports expenses of about $6.7 million.
The police pension funding ratio at the year end 2023 is 77.8%.
Fire pension, which is found on page 118, total revenues 9.51 million made up of investment
revenue and employee contribution, as well as the employer contribution of about $2.37 million,
which is 4% above the ex-railer required contribution.
This supports expenses of about 5.4 million.
The police pension, excuse me, the fire pension funded ratio is at the end of 23 as a healthy 83%.
And then finally the debt service fund, which is on page 120, the total revenue is about $4.93 million.
This is part of his presentation.
Only about 7.7% of that is from property taxes, the $335,269.
And we're baiting slightly over $4 million from a variety of funding sources.
The majority of the increase in expenses are due to the 2020 plan, 2025 bond issue that I mentioned earlier.
If you do not have any questions, I'd turn things over to Michael Skibby to present the BG is resilient section.
Any questions?
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Chris.
And yes, Buffalo Grove is resilient.
This section covers many of the public works operating budgets, and it largely hits on strategic goal number one, right, the maintenance of effective village government.
We are physically responsible and provide outstanding responsive services.
More broadly, within public works as a whole, there are no staffing changes proposed within the budget.
And I will be covering the first three operating divisions within the general fund, including streets, forestry and drainage.
The streets budget begins on page 122 of the budget document.
Individual programs include street and curb maintenance, snow and ice control, I'm sorry, I mentioned it, I might be coming this way, and signage and striping.
Total program expenses of $1,133,964 represent a 2% increase year over year.
There are two variances listed in the street budget, while snow and ice commodities, that line items increase $73,000.
The repairs and maintenance line items decreased about $50,000, helping to offset that and
leaving to that 2% overall budget change.
We'll continue with forestry, which begins on page 128 of your budget document.
The forestry programs continue to include tree services, property and
parkway maintenance, and natural area maintenance.
We're continuing our blended service model within forestry, with outsourced tree trimming.
this year. The total program expenses are $3,052,303, which represent a 1% increase year
over year. There's one variance within the repairs and maintenance line item. This is
down about 10% year over year due to decreased plan maintenance projects that are hitting the
general fund for this year. We have the Bordeaux court area, natural area conversion. That's coming
up and you'll see that within the capital plan. And that brings us to drainage, which begins
on page 133 of the budget.
Drainage programs include storm sewer maintenance
and over channel maintenance.
The total program expenses of $798,418
represent a 3% increase year over year.
There are no program variances,
and again, no staffing changes within drainage.
Any questions on these three?
I will turn it over to Kyle Johnson,
who will continue with the engineering portion of the budget.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you.
The engineering program begins on page 137 of the draft budget.
It has an overall budget of 1.1 million, which represents no change over the previous year.
The primary impacts to engineering since 2023 are a significant surge in development activity and
turnover in staffing, which is led to the use of consultant services in the interim.
A previous reorganization of public works rolls into 2025 for engineering as we have filled the roles for day-to-day capital improvement and development inspection.
However, we're still looking for another senior level engineer.
In 2025, we anticipate the engineering team rounding out and development leveling off.
Thus, the only program variance for engineering is the result of anticipating both those will occur,
resulting in lower applicable costs, but some support will still be needed.
Strategic goals in 2025 focus on a long-term storm water management plan and
the continuation of the IMP.
I'm now happy to answer any questions.
With that, I'll hand it over to Jim Warren said.
Good
evening.
Good evening.
Good job.
We'll be covering the Building Maintenance Budget section which begins on page 142 of
the budget document.
With an overall proposed budget of $2,277,980, this represents a 10% increase year over year.
Variance is mainly due to increased costs of bringing in a new facility online.
The proposed budget allows us to continue to focus on long-term facility plans while keeping
up with our immediate roughing, HVAC, and other critical needs for our village-owned facilities.
Essential Garage Budget Section begins on page 144 of your budget document.
An overall proposed budget of $1,957,335, this represents a 2% increase year-over-year.
The overall Central Garage Program continues with our blended fleet model service that started in 2021.
one. This program allows us to staff for the values and contract for the peak workloads.
This allows us to pivot based on future opportunities and needs. With that, any questions?
The picture on page 144. What is that?
Holes in the ground.
There are no other questions. I'll turn it over to Chris Black.
All
right, we have the parking lot fund, which is on page 146.
As we've discussed in previous years since the onset of COVID-19 parking revenues decline requiring a general fund subsidy to mitigate annual fund deficits.
Total fund revenue this year is 221,000, the 3% increase over the prior year, daily parking fees have been increased by $18,000.
The revenues plan, the revenues include a plan support from the general fund totaling $160,000.
Expenses increased by 3% to 220,100.
The last payment on the parking lot fund was this year during 2024,
the lease agreement expires in summer of 2025.
We've budgeted additional funds for either a lease or a transition cost as part of the budget.
If there are not any questions, I'll now turn things over to Chief Buds to present the BG is safe section.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
Good evening, everybody.
EG is safe.
The lease department's budget section begins on page 149 of your document.
As you see, the three major services for police are patrol, investigations, and traffic.
The patrol service is accounting for 81% of this.
You'll see a slight budget, overall increase of 4.6% for 2025 in this program, which is mostly due to salaries, benefits, and capital.
There are small increases to some of our operating expenses, but they only account for 0.35% of the overall budget.
There were no significant variances to note beyond salaries and benefits.
In community services on page 155 of your document,
25, the police department will be adding a second full-time social worker to better serve the community.
Can you continue to rise exponentially, increasing the workload of our current police social worker?
By integrating additional full-time social worker into the police department,
The department can more effectively address the complex social issues that impact residents ultimately leading to a safer and more cohesive community.
This will enhance the capacity and effectiveness of social services, ultimately benefiting clients, the community and the police and fire departments.
There are no other proposed changes to our community services program in 2025.
I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Chief.
I will turn it over to Fire Chief Kane.
Thank you.
Good evening. Good evening. The 2025 fire department budget is found on pages 159 through 168 of your budget
book. The Buffalo Grove Fire Department services are broken down into the two programs of public safety,
fire, and emergency management. Public safety fire has four major service areas, which are listed
on page 159. These service areas are fire prevention, emergency medical services, fire suppression,
and special rescue teams. These critical public services are provided by 57 full-time sworn personnel,
including two current vacancies, along with four full-time and two part-time civilian personnel.
There are no requested staffing changes for 2025. The Public Safety Fire Program portion found on
page 162 of the 2025 Fire Department budget is $16,55,842. The variance is listed on page 162 of the budget
document aligned with projects and advancements to accomplish goals set forth in the village's
strategic plan, as well as address the cost increases in new maintenance contracts for EMS
equipment, up-contained breathing apparatus certification equipment and atmospheric meters,
as well as an increase in general vehicle and equipment repair costs and a decrease in
consultant fees due to the initial payments for the strategic plan being accounted for in 2024.
The emergency management program is found on page 165 and is two service areas, community
emergency response team or SIRT and mobile com.
These two services are coordinated by one third time emergency management coordinator
with approximately 69 community volunteers.
Emergency management portion of the 2025 requested fire department budget is found on page 166
and is 163,000 by 125 dollars for the two fire department program areas.
The total 2025 requested fire department budget is 16,189,367 dollars.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Seeing no questions, following me, we'll be Nicole Woods with the community development portion of the budget.
Thank you, too.
Good evening.
Hello.
I'm excited to be here tonight to present the Community Development Budget for 2025.
The 2025 budget represents no changes in terms of our staff positions.
We look to maintain our 12 full-time positions which we had budgeted in 2024.
Our total budget is approximately 2.3 million which represents roughly a 9% increase
compared to last year due to changes in benefits.
Now I will provide a brief overview of the budget breakdown within our three program areas.
First, building and permitting program area, which starts on page 169.
This program area focuses on permits, plan review, inspections, property maintenance,
and our rental program, as well as speech therapy, as a joke, because I messed up.
It does not, it does not.
Yeah.
There are no major changes proposed for 2025, the budget for this program is 1.26 million.
Second is our planning, zoning and development program area, which starts on page 173.
This program area looks at implementing our long-term visions and plans.
It also works with our planning and zoning commission on development projects as well as special
uses and variations.
There are no major changes proposed for 2025, and the budget for this program is around 799,000.
Thank you.
Finally, is our Environmental Health Services Program Area, which starts on page 178.
This includes food and health inspections for various businesses.
Again, there are no major changes for 2025, and the budget for this program is 287,000.
That's it.
And if there are no comments or questions, I would be happy to pass off.
Sure.
That does.
However, I'm going to amend that.
I think the entire budget for runs the whole gambit as I say to our high school students,
we do everything from soup to nuts from when it starts at an inception of an idea
to the final break to the final inspection to the certificate of occupancy.
So yes and no.
and speech therapy. What a deal. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions?
Thank you, Nicole. Thank you. Now I'll introduce Jeff Talison to talk about golf.
Hey, Jeff. Starting on page 183 of the budget document, the village's golf operator
is continuing to see excellent revenue growth through to a re-birth and demand for golf.
Along with complimentary weather this year, both facilities have reached over
are 3.5 million in revenues, which is a 5% increase over last year actually. Starting
with Buffalo Grove Golf Course, which you can see on page 184 of the budget document,
the FIS programming is 7% increase in total revenues for next year, which will be offset
against a 4% increase in total expenditure. The increase in revenues will be driven by moderate
rate increases charged with a lot of patrons. All our largest variance and expenses for Buffalo
Club Road will be capital outlay to reinvest back into the course to better the experience
for the customers. Moving on to the Arboretum Golf Club, which is on page 185 of the budget
document, staff are planning for an 8% increase in total revenues, which would be offset
against a 3% increase in total expenses. The increase in revenues will be a result of increase
rates being charged, while still positioning the Arboretum as an attractive option in the premium
of course market and we have no variances on expenses within the conclusion staff is pretty confident both budgets position golf operations and a positive financial position for fiscal year 25 and I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thanks, Chef.
Turn it over to
Pop.
Thank you.
We'll continue on page 186 of the draft budget with the water
program. As mentioned by Village Manager Bragg, revenue shows a 4% increase in the water consumption
rate. 2025 will also bring about our first program increase to the fixed facility fee.
This fee was originally codified as the aggregate of the CPIU over the last five years.
Rather than follow that mechanism at over 22%, staff was recommending a 10% increase for 2025.
Another adjustment to water revenue is that Piccara water sales are expected to come
online in quarter one of this year, not exactly a full year but close to.
Water has an overall expense budget of 15.9 million.
This represents an 18% increase year over year.
This increasing cost is largely represented by the $2 million increase, $6.7 million total
capital outweigh.
Moving on to the sewer program on page 191, there are no significant changes within the
sewer program, sewer has an overall budget of 8.6 million, which represents a 14% increase
year over year. This increase in cost is largely due to the $900,000 increase in capital
outlay. As you have heard tonight, 2025 will be a big year for the Infrastructure Modernization
Program. As projects will look to connect across all infrastructure needs. Overall, the Water
Sewer Capital projects are 9.7 million in total cost. These are entirely funded by the Water
sewer fun on a cash basis. This work is generally comprised of the Bernard Drive West utility
replacements, a kickoff of the Mill Creek neighborhood, significant skater upgrades
and software improvements, and design of future water main and sewer improvements. As most
of these projects will integrate into roadway improvements as well, I'll go into more detail
on the work later on in the presentation during the CIP section. Now, happy to take any questions.
So if you separate out, you've got the consumption rate, which really speaks to the operation,
the purchase of water sale, the fixed facility fee speaks to having the infrastructure
in the ground, the ability for the water or sewer to make it tour from your home, whatever
it's supposed to do.
So having that tap that service available to you is what the fixed facility fee speaks
particularly to, which is how we keep up that infrastructure and maintain it long-term
right.
Correct. Correct. I mean it may go to a portion of the debt service that's speaking
to the long-term use of it but again for water and sewer to your point.
Our rich man,
Refuse can be found on page 196 of your budget book, and it includes a budget of roughly $1.2 million.
There are no major changes proposed for 2025 as we are in the second year of our contract extension,
which we will see a slight increase in rates come May 1 of 2025.
Unless there are any questions, I'll hand it back to Mr. Powell.
Thank you.
Thank you for the introduction.
The capital improvement plan begins on page 198 of the draft budget.
The program is 53.1 million overall.
Starting in 2024, there was an emphasis on facility work and the resumption of the
infrastructure modernization program.
2025 will see a continuation of those efforts.
While the CIP represents the largest in the village's history, over 17 million is in grants
and other sources.
Starting with the capital projects streets, there is over 26 million program for this year.
This represents an increase over 14 million from the previous year.
We can contribute these costs to a high level of opportunity management, which is the result
of leveraging other fund sources to get more work completed for each village dollar spent.
Overall, the village's commitment is around 14 million, which is supported by contributions
from the general fund, motor fuel tax, cash reserves, and a proposed $8 million bond issue.
Projects included in this year's program include the Bernard Drive West project at approximately
$10 million.
This includes 5 million in STP funding and 1.8 million in ITEP funding.
This will complete a full rehabilitation of the corridor, including road reconstruction,
box culvert replacement, like path addition, storm sewer improvements and water main replacement.
Another major project is the Mill Creek Contract 1.
this will start to approach the Mill Creek neighborhood much like we did
Cambridge a few years ago. This approach will aim to complete all the work
necessary, lowering the long-term burden to residents in the area as we move
through. And contract one will focus on Dundee Road and the Northern section of
the neighborhood. Another significant project is the Northwood Street and
Stormwater project. This was pushed from a late 2024 start to an early 2025
start. However, all work is still planned to be entirely completed in 2025. This
This will address the areas need for both street and storm water improvements.
The project will be completed in partnership with Lake County SMC, the Buffalo Grove Park
District, and Vernon Township.
Another project is a village-wide resurfacing program.
This will aim to resurface streets that are beyond their usable life or over 20 years old.
The focus is to find logical connections of roadways, generally those that make up a neighborhood
and complete all the work at one time.
Also in 2025, we'll start a phase one engineering study for Checker Drive.
This will follow the same playbook as Thomson,
Brandywine, and Bernard in an effort to pursue federal funding.
And lastly, general maintenance projects such as sidewalk maintenance,
pavement patching, bike path repair, and many more will be included on the street side.
I'm now happy to answer any questions.
With that?
Oh.
With that?
I'll hand it over to the game one step.
Oh, again.
All right.
The Capital Projects Equipment and Vehicle Budget Section begins on page 266
of your budget document.
With an overall proposed budget of $2,579,617, this represents a 9% decrease year-over-year.
The variance is due to the decrease in equipment and vehicles purchased for 2025.
The anticipate that availability for equipment and vehicles will stabilize in 2025 with the
return of many state and cooperative purchasing contracts.
While our equipment and vehicles make up $1,792,000 of the CIP, the remaining funds are
programmed for fire and IT items.
The Capital Projects Facilities Budget Section begins on page 269 of your budget document.
With an overall proposed budget of $13,560,000 and $33, the main projects include $10,8 million
dollars for the design and construction of the fire station 25 as well as park improvements
at village rotary green park and the planning for the park at the clove. Also included
it as the overpass signage.
That Molly had mentioned previously to bring the overall concept of the new branding forward to the community. And with that, any questions?
Okay. Seeing none, I'll turn it back over to Chris Black. All right, we're almost to the end here. State Motor Fuel Tax is on page 270. The total revenue is about 1.95 million an increase of 7%.
From the previous year, we typically use estimates provided by the state.
Total fund expense is $1.9 million, $875,000 is dedicated to annual debt service on the 2020 bonds.
This plan and then the remainder will be used for MFT, eligible infrastructure projects.
And then finally we have the local model fuel tax fund revenues from the 2% per gallon tax is 640,000 a decrease of 6% from the prior year.
A total fund expense is only $246,900 and that's dedicated again to annual debt service on the 2020 bonds as well as some debt service on the
the plan $8 million street issue for 2025.
And if you don't have any questions on those two items,
I will turn it up over to Mr. Bragg for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Chris.
Well, there's nothing quite as exciting to close on as local motor fuel tap.
What is there?
All right, right, right.
Well, I want to thank you all for your time this evening.
and I just want to give a high level recap of where we're at.
Overall our operating budget is going to remain very efficient with very modest changes in our commodity cost wages and benefits.
You can see year over year.
Our reliance on bond and reserve funds is limited to planned capital projects and equipment replacements and accordance with your adopted financial policies.
Our fund balance reserves exceed our minimum and meet our optimum requirements.
Our tax levy will remain flat for the sixth consecutive year of factoring in death service pensions public safety expenditures as well as debt service abatements.
Our net tax rate will remain flat or decrease year over year.
The capital program is funded at $51.3 million for 2025.
We have $1.9 million in capital reserve transfers into the reserves program for 2025 with the opportunity to reserve additional funds.
if they're available. Our General Fund reserves are projected to decrease slightly year over year, about $7 million for capital related projects.
And we're continuing our plan to provide for sustainable, cost-efficient, and reliable services.
I think we put together the most responsible spending plan that you could ask for, frankly.
And I cannot tell you how proud I am of the ability that we've had to control the impact on the property tax levy
or the last five going on six years.
I think a lot of credit goes to you guys as a board.
You've been resilient and we've pushed through a lot
in the last few years.
Sometimes a lot of uncertainty we've pushed through.
But we hear the compliments from our community
for the investment that you're making
to make Buffalo Grove and even better place to live.
I want to thank all of you as well as all of these
It's wonderful people sitting out here this evening.
They put in a mountain of work into this process, and I would love to tell you that I can
just make all the operating costs stay really tight and flat, and I have some magic one.
But the reality is it's all the people here, and all the people who work for them working
very diligently every day to manage costs and make sure that we're delivering the best
value that we possibly can for you.
So thank you to each one of you, I appreciate it very much.
I look forward to your comments and questions, and I recommend approval, request approval of the 2025 budget at your December 2nd Village Board meeting.
And that completes my comments and my presentation, and we are happy to answer any questions that you guys have at the board.
Thank you Mr. Bragg, appreciate it, questions, comments, trustee Stein.
And
there we go, this is my 14th budget that I have sat through as a village trustee and I want to say that over the years that this has definitely morphed into something that is very understandable, something that a layperson can look at and see what's happening and I truly appreciate in the direction that it's gone.
I appreciate all of your staff's work in putting a budget together that allows us to go six
years in a row without having to raise our property tax portion of the levy.
Being that this is my last time up here, I just want to say that I hope that with the continued
guidance of the board that you will be able to continue to bring the value that you bring
to our residents going forward and I am enthusiastically looking forward to voting to approve
this budget.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Trustee Stein?
Trustee Adenheim?
Thank you.
I want to echo a lot of what Trustee Stein said, but Andy and I've been sitting up here
a long time, probably longer than anybody.
And Mr. Bragg and staff, I want to give you a compliment and that is since she started doing
this. Each year it's gotten simpler and simpler and easier and easier for us to understand,
which means you've put a lot more work into it because it makes it easy for us. But
I appreciate the ease of which you could look at this document and understand what is going
on. It seems to me that each year when you ask for questions there's less and less questions.
And I think that's a compliment to you as well because it means that you're well prepared,
you anticipate the questions, and you know what we're going to ask and you answer them,
so I want to thank you very much for that as well.
Thank you.
Thank you, Trustee Annamar.
Trustee Sariah.
I would ask you to harken back to when you join the village and compare the reserves today with
that era. How do they look at that?
You know, I want to say the magic number that we had when I got here was about 9.4 million
in reserves in the general fund.
You know, it was and trustees,
Ottenheimer and Stein came on in 2011
and it was a pretty difficult time for us
as an organization.
We were faced with some very long-term
and systemic financial problems
that really required us to make some
very difficult decisions in a very short window,
So frankly, in order to balance the budget and be accountable to our community, to our
residents, as we said, we would do.
And some of you have been here longer, some of you have been here less time.
But we have come out of that, I think, much, much stronger.
You can see it on our balance sheet.
You can see it in our bond ratings.
You can see it in our audits.
you can see it in the type of work we're doing in the community.
So you guys are, as a board, I think now have that opportunity to be much more proactive.
And it's great to have the kind of reserves that we do have,
not because we don't want to utilize our residents' money,
but because we want to make sure that we're not utilizing it in terms of debt
and not managing our finances well, we want to utilize it to reinvest in our community.
And so it's it's been a long road, but and that was a long answer to a very short question.
I'll just and I do think calling out to our residents there's a feature to the discipline that you bring, which is when we have debt
We have dedicated revenue to attack that correct and I would say not a lot of entities
do that. Good. Can we get slide 51 up, Bill Fatt? Page 51.
All right, Tyler, this is your test. There's a picture on there because you just
heated up perfectly talking about spending our residents money.
51.
Yeah, page 51.
Oh, page 51 of the budget. I will
describe it while we pull this up. This is the
picture of the middle rate for $100 valuation. And it shows it going down year by year by year.
And we talk about the property tax being flat. When you see it looking at value, it's declining.
I wonder if it might bring that to life a little bit because when we say something's flat,
everyone has a different view of what flat is, which is almost true. So if you don't mind.
So to give a little context to that, when I got here in 2010, we were around the high 14%, almost 15% of the property tax spill as an example.
And now we're at or maybe just below 9%, we're right around that mark.
So what's happened is because we have not increased and I think this is a good thing.
And we have not increased the tax levy proportionate with inflation over the last 15 years.
So because of that, the actual rate that gets applied to whether it's a homeowner's tax bill or
it's an office owner or an industrial owner, anyone's tax bill has gotten down.
As you can see on the screen, we were over a dollar when we started and now we're down around 85 cents.
That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're talking about hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of dollars of value, that adds up very quickly on a tax bill.
17 million dollar, loving, you do that for seven, right?
Correct.
And there are two features of that, aren't there?
Number one, there's the increase in value of each property, presumably.
And number two, there's the increase in the number of properties that are taxed by the entity,
because we have more properties joining our bill.
Correct.
So annexation and development allows us to build more EV.
We, unlike other taxing districts, other taxing districts, levy a rate.
We levy a dollar amount, municipalities too.
And because of that, our levy is spread out across, you know, the taxable value that's
available in the community and there's different classes that's kind of complicated.
But I wanted to say that is when new development comes online or properties are annex and developed,
that actually spreads out the cost over more payers or more value which ultimately brings down the rate.
We've done that with record redevelopment in the village and overpaying the state mandated pension rate and all of our pension systems.
Yes, and as you will see in 2025, we are working on pension funding strategies for you
for you to come up as we approach the 2040 funding deadline.
We want to make sure that we have the best strategies in place to meet those obligations.
We have been funding above the actuarial levels.
We have some of the best funded public safety pensions around, and we have the data to prove
We're very proud of that, but obviously we want to make sure we're keeping pace with that, and we're meeting the funding targets for 20-40.
Thank you.
Thank you, Trustee Johnson.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I just wanted to speak really to the residents of Buffalo Grove.
I think if you take the time to read the executive summary, or there's a chart that compares us to all of our peer municipalities.
My feeling is that in Buffalo Grove, you get a lot of bang for your buck.
We've rebuilt some of our major collector streets,
largely with funds that don't come from the taxpayers.
We're investing over 50 million in capital in this coming year,
where we've got economic development going on all over the village,
and I expect to see more, and all of that with keeping like we were just talking about the levy flat, which you may not see that decrease on your tax spell because of increasing value, but the rate at which your taxing has actually decreased.
And we've also managed to maintain a AAA bond rating, which from my understanding we're in a group of just a handful of municipalities in the entire state of Illinois.
Because the state of Illinois makes it a little more complicated to have the financial success that we have in Buffalo Grove because of not giving us the money that we should be getting or
are placing unfunded mandates on us that cost us money and require us to spend money, yet they don't give us the funds to pay for those.
So, and then lastly, I don't think people understand the pension crisis in the state of Illinois, but when we go down to Springfield and
We see what our peer municipalities, how they fund their pension plans, and some of them are at 40%.
And we talk about being in 85 to 88%, it's a significant difference.
So to do all of this under duress is sort of how I feel.
I think we're doing a great job.
I appreciate it.
We appreciate everything that our staff has done from the clerks all the way to the top because it's teamwork to get where we are today. So, I thank you. I think our residents should be very pleased with the village that they live in and the services they get, the safety they receive. They know they're always going to get water coming out of that tap and we're not really charging the heck out of them, like some other municipalities do. So, thank you.
You know, thank you, Trustee Johnson.
Trustee Bochek?
Just real simple.
I just wanted to say that, you know,
it's kind of easy to hear zero tax-loving increase
for six years, not realizing that there's pressure
from outside, you know, our vehicle costs never go down.
Our infrastructure costs never go down.
There's unforeseeable things that come up
that have to be addressed.
And I just want to say how much I appreciate your creative solutions.
We look for grants, we look for creative solutions, money that we're not currently using to get interest off of as another source of revenue.
And in other words, we have a zero percent increase in our tax level because you are offsetting some of these
It increases in cost with other sources to bring us to zero and thank you very much because I know it's a huge, huge effort and very much appreciated.
Thank you.
Thank you, Trustee Bojack.
Any other comments or questions?
Thank you.
Thank you to everybody out in the audience.
I know it's a major undertaking.
We appreciate all the hard work and we'll keep this public hearing open until December 2nd,
where we will actually have a vote on the 2025 budget,
but thank you all so much for your hard work.
It's much appreciated.
And with that, we'll move on to public comment.
Public comments limited to items
that are not on the regular agenda.
Is there anybody from the public like to be heard tonight?
Doesn't look like it.
So emotion is in order.
So moved.
Clerk,
please call the roll.
Aye.
Thank you. This meeting is adjourned at 843.
Thank you all so much.