[0:01] Okay, well, thank you so much for joining us for our second workshop

[0:06] meeting of our 2027 budget series. So, last meeting we were talking about

[0:13] our status of revenues in 2026 and our early projections of revenues for 2027.

[0:19] Today, we're taking an early look at what expenses could potentially look

[0:24] like in our general fund with our fiscal year 27 expense workshop general fund

[0:29] preliminary assessment. So, today we're going to start off with

[0:34] the current year fiscal year 26 projections for the general fund. So,

[0:38] that just means how on track we are this year.

[0:41] So, for fiscal year 26, we have an estimated year-end expense of

[0:47] 25,803,370

[0:51] dollars. And then, the original

[0:56] budget revenue level, so that 25,800,000,

[1:00] that's what we're anticipating for revenues. We only budgeted for

[1:05] 24,125,000

[1:08] and those, so we've got that

[1:13] expenses below budget at 167

[1:17] Oh, 1,677,481

[1:21] dollars. So, what this means is that for fiscal year 26, we're actually in a very

[1:25] good financial position. We are going to be able to cover our expenses quite

[1:30] easily as things are projected right now. And

[1:34] that means that we're likely to have a general fund surplus. As you may

[1:37] remember, we made a policy decision that we have surplus exceeding 35% of fund

[1:43] balance is currently moved in portion to the downtown revitalization fund at 80%

[1:49] and then the community park fund at 20%. So, as you move into fiscal year 27,

[1:58] Some of the external context that we're still dealing with, some external

[2:01] influences, you may realize remember from previous meeting that the grocery

[2:06] tax went away this year in 2026, and that's going to continue forward for us

[2:11] as we're going into 2027. That's an estimated loss of about $438,000,

[2:18] and that's going to be ongoing. In addition, one of our red light cameras

[2:21] is still down. And so, in total, those are estimated to have an impact of 1.118

[2:28] million loss due to things that were decided by the state of Illinois, and

[2:32] ultimately weren't within our control. Now, we're looking at our expenses for

[2:38] 2027. Now, these are very preliminary expenses. So,

[2:43] at our last meeting, we talked about the fact that in 2025, when we were

[2:46] preparing our budget for 2026, we also tried to estimate out estimate out 2027

[2:52] and 2028 expenses. Now, those are rough numbers. Now, that

[2:57] we're in 2026, we're taking another shot at that and estimating 2027 based on

[3:02] very early department numbers. So, with that, we just want to start off

[3:09] and kind of go over some of the departments because in 2024, we actually

[3:12] had some changes. So, we have the city council, city

[3:16] administrator's office, business and community relations, which is a newer

[3:19] department created in October 2024, community development, finance, police,

[3:24] and public works. And then, within those departments, we have kind of sub focuses

[3:29] or divisions.

[3:32] So, for 2027, the departments put forward their kind of base operation

[3:36] budget, and then we incorporated a couple of the things that you may

[3:39] recognize from the big swings list last meeting.

[3:43] And with that, we have kind of our actual for 2025 was a little bit shy of

[3:48] 25 million. 2026, we budgeted around 24 million. And then, 2026 is estimated to

[3:58] end a little over 23 million. That's due to a combination of factors, including

[4:03] quite a few vacancies in staff as we had retirements, and some position changes,

[4:07] as well as some projects where we're going to have to defer those into 2027.

[4:12] So, as we're looking at our proposed for 2027, early estimates we're looking at

[4:17] just over 26 million. So, 26 million 87,546

[4:23] dollars. So, as we move through this

[4:26] presentation, we can take a little bit of a closer

[4:29] look at that. So, for 2027, we're anticipating of that 26 million, about

[4:35] 18 and a half million to be salaries and wages, five and a half million

[4:40] contractual services, about 1.1 million commodities, and then 924,000

[4:46] of capital outlay. So, this proposed version of the budget

[4:51] is an 8.5% increase um 2,044,707

[4:58] dollars from the 2026 budget to 2027. So, a little bit of context.

[5:04] Uh CPI was 3.4% over that time frame. So, that means what we are talking about

[5:10] an 8.5% increase, 3.4% was inflation during that time frame.

[5:17] So, the increase is accounting for some of those inflationary costs, as well as

[5:21] some of the items that were in big swings of new service requests, and

[5:27] responding to community needs.

[5:31] So, current proposed fiscal year 27 budget,

[5:35] we're looking at just over that 26 million. So, 26 million 87,000. The

[5:40] projected revenues that we talked about at our last workshop, 25 million 695,500

[5:46] dollars, which has us with a difference of $392,046

[5:51] as our current in the red. That might sound negative, but you may

[5:56] remember from last year that we were over a million dollars in the red at

[5:59] this stage of the budget process. So, coming in under $400,000 in the red is a

[6:05] pretty decent place for us to be, and we're hopeful that by working with the

[6:09] council and continuing to work with the departments that we can get to a

[6:13] balanced budget. Now, some of the things for us to keep

[6:16] in mind is this isn't currently balanced with revenue projections. There's no

[6:20] buffer for economic downturn or any additional state interference.

[6:24] It's got some limited expansion of services and new projects, but not the

[6:28] full amount that has been expressed an interest in. And this wouldn't provide

[6:31] the opportunity to transfer money to the downtown revitalization fund or the

[6:36] community park fund. It's also under-funding our capital equipment

[6:40] replacement fund. So,

[6:43] those are some of the things that we keep in mind.

[6:46] So, some of the new service requests that are funded as the budget currently

[6:50] stands with that just under $400,000 being over

[6:54] would be $25,000 per year for a part-time records clerk in the police

[6:59] department. Now, you may remember that this is related to the significant

[7:03] increase that we've had in FOIA requests and desire for transparency, and those

[7:07] requests are just really outpacing current staff capacity.

[7:11] We also have an opportunity for partnership in an intergovernmental

[7:15] agreement to have a shared social worker, and that would be $30,000 a

[7:19] year, and that's currently included in this budget.

[7:23] The next thing that we're looking at is that we have

[7:28] $225,000 in Main Street development site surveys.

[7:32] So, this is trying to remove those barriers to development and economic

[7:37] opportunity in our community by getting developers the information that will

[7:41] help draw them in. So, that can include environmental surveys as well as

[7:46] topograph. The next item is one of our bigger hits

[7:50] on the budget in 2027, but this has a lot of opportunity to it. So, $450,000

[7:55] is a conservative estimate for an ERP. That ERP would provide us with expansion

[8:00] of services including utility billing portal, asset management, it allows us

[8:05] to do permits and some licensing and registrations online.

[8:09] It also would allow us to have more transparency through our budget process,

[8:13] be able to pull more reports, and it will be a more effective tool. Right

[8:17] now, the operations that we do have the software, it doesn't talk. There's

[8:22] issues with getting updates. The system is often down creating challenges. And

[8:27] that $450,000, that's a one-time implementation year cost. That includes

[8:32] significant training, that includes data conversion and setup.

[8:36] In the out years, you'd be looking at something closer to around $150,000 a

[8:40] year. And that's the same price as the software that we're replacing,

[8:46] but we actually get to provide better services with the ERP.

[8:50] So, the next thing that we're looking at museum fixtures. We've been going

[8:53] through the process of upgrading the museum, encouraging the public to come

[8:57] out, increasing programming, and with that process we want to have a little

[9:01] bit more furniture and fixtures in there for display.

[9:05] We've heard a lot from the community that arts and culture are really

[9:08] important. And so, some additional ways we can do that is by funding some public

[9:12] art installations. So, we have $50,000 in there right now for that. And then

[9:17] the downtown revitalization commission recommended that we find some ways to do

[9:22] more downtown business support. And so, we have our preliminary $50,000 in here

[9:27] as a placeholder until we can determine what that support could look like. Now,

[9:31] that's specific to the fact that in 2027,

[9:34] we're going to be doing some extensive construction projects in the downtown

[9:37] and that may affect the businesses that are there. And we want to help our

[9:41] businesses succeed, so we've got this placeholder there so that we can look

[9:44] into what some of those options could be.

[9:48] Next, some additional funded service requests. We've got about 125,000

[9:52] between body cameras and fleet cameras, and

[9:55] that'll be per year, but there's also some grant opportunities to help offset

[9:59] that costs. And then our police department will be going through an

[10:03] update along with several others in the region for police records management

[10:07] system. That's about 60,000 a year. Uh one of the additional recommendations

[10:12] from the downtown revitalization commission was to look at something

[10:14] called form-based code, and that's a way to update our code, particularly in the

[10:18] Main Street area, to make it very clear what we're hoping to accomplish with

[10:23] developers, and to make those expectations up front.

[10:28] And so by generating that, we're hoping that we can make sure that whatever

[10:32] projects do end up getting developed align with what the community is looking

[10:36] for, and represent West Chicago well. We've got 10,500 fire safe cabinets to

[10:42] protect our records and transparency, uh $150,000

[10:46] for a Washington site plan. While some of those expenses are set to start this

[10:50] year in 2026, we anticipate that that 14-15 acre site off Washington,

[10:57] that's going to be an intensive project, and there's going to be more designs and

[11:00] more planning that will occur into next year, and we want to make sure we have

[11:03] the funds set aside for that. Uh we've had some requests to look at

[11:07] opportunities to support business incubation with smaller vendor stalls,

[11:12] so we have an initial placeholder of $50,000 in that, where we might be able

[11:16] to find a location and set up a couple stalls, and help smaller businesses

[11:20] succeed. And we have $10,000 in for some podcast services as part of our

[11:24] continuing communication efforts. Here are some of the unfunded requests

[11:29] that we originally received that, as the budget currently stands, we haven't been

[11:34] able to account for. And that would be a community policing officer at 165,000.

[11:40] Community development asked for some part-time assistants at $25,000, and

[11:45] that's help with responsiveness and customer service. Our business and

[11:49] community relations department was seeking an assistant director.

[11:54] Administration was seeking someone to assist with community engagement and

[11:58] additional administrative support at 95,000.

[12:02] Administrative support is also being requested for business and community

[12:05] relations at 115,000. And then there were a couple things that

[12:09] we were hoping to clean out this budget cycle. So, there's a lot of very basic

[12:13] operational public works expenses that had found their way into the CIP or the

[12:17] capital improvement program, and those really do make more sense and finance

[12:22] best practices for those to be coming out of the general fund. And those are

[12:25] about $150,000 a year. At this point, we haven't had the funding within the

[12:30] general fund to make that switch, so that's why it's reflected as an unfunded

[12:34] request. Uh the historic depot, that's the structure

[12:39] that we're hoping to include as we continue with the West Washington

[12:42] redesign area. And if we do reuse that structure to something fun

[12:47] and interesting for the community, we're going to need to do some design services

[12:51] for that. And then next, we work our way towards

[12:53] the futsal project. As we're moving ahead with discussions on that, there's

[12:58] also some things that we have to consider from the structural success of

[13:01] that, such as accessibility. So, making sure that there's ADA access with the

[13:06] sidewalk to get to that site, we wanted to put about 125,000 placeholder in

[13:11] there for that. And then the next item was the Washington market design that

[13:17] we'd be looking at construction costs in 2028-2029

[13:20] and the 2.8-2.9 million, but preliminary design in 2027

[13:26] of around $100,000. But, that's currently not funded,

[13:30] although that project does have some grant opportunities, so we want to keep

[13:34] that on the radar.

[13:37] Now, last meeting we talked about revenue options. We can see that there's

[13:40] a lot of interesting expenses and opportunities

[13:43] that the community could take part in. And while we aren't in a terrible place

[13:49] with the budget, if we want to continue funding these new items, we do need a

[13:52] little bit more revenue to get there. So, some of the revenues that we have

[13:57] previously discussed include a home rule sales tax increase would estimate to

[14:02] bring in about 1.2 million. It increases resources for community priorities.

[14:07] Uh the rate would put us higher than some of our peers. It does include

[14:11] luxury items, clothes, and it would not apply to

[14:15] titled assets. For us to do that, we would have to make a decision and have

[14:19] it postmarked by October 1st for it to start collecting in January to hit that

[14:23] $1.2 million number.

[14:27] The next item that we've talked about is a grocery tax. We had one, it was taken

[14:31] away by the state of Illinois. We do have the ability to re-implement that.

[14:35] That would get about $438,000.

[14:39] But, we would be adding it back after 1 year of the community not having that

[14:43] tax anymore. That tax has been adopted by about 700

[14:47] communities. It does target necessities like food. However, SNAP recipients are

[14:52] exempted. This has the same postmark deadline.

[14:56] So, this table here, a little bit of context.

[15:00] This shows kind of the current general merchandise sales tax rates. So, West

[15:05] Chicago is currently at 8.75%. So, in that case, we're higher than

[15:12] Naperville's baseline and Wheaton's baseline,

[15:15] but we're in alignment with the Batavia DuPage portion, and Glendale Heights and

[15:21] Downers and then you'll see some of the others

[15:25] that are higher than where we currently are. So, the Bartlett DUPAGE portion is

[15:29] at 9%, Addison 9%, and then if we were to look at, for example, Lombard's

[15:34] Yorktown business district, they're at about 9.25%.

[15:38] If which Chicago were to do that 0.25 home rule sales tax increase, that would

[15:43] put us at 9%. So, while we would be on the higher end, we wouldn't be the

[15:46] highest example. But, it would have an opportunity to

[15:49] generate about 1.2 million in revenue. Some other considerations that we've

[15:55] discussed would be cannabis dispensary, which early estimates, if one were to

[15:59] locate here, would be about $200,000 per full year of operation.

[16:07] Look, a business locating here is not guaranteed, and it would require policy

[16:10] changes to even allow us to go down that route. There are public safety concerns,

[16:14] as well as market saturation, as there's several located in nearby communities.

[16:19] And overall, that revenue source has been decreasing statewide, but $200,000

[16:24] early estimate. Amusement taxes, we could look at doing

[16:27] a streaming tax that would bring about $50,000 in per year. Package liquor tax,

[16:32] this is something that we didn't talk about at our last revenue workshop, but

[16:35] if we were to increase it by 1%, so from the current 2% to a 3% package liquor

[16:41] tax, we get about 80,000, maybe 85,000 dollars a year estimated, and um that 3%

[16:49] would still be pretty well in line with what a lot of other communities that are

[16:52] peers would do. The additional option, if we were to go

[16:56] to highest level that we're able to find in the rate range of 3.5% liquor tax,

[16:59] we're estimating at $245,000 in revenue for that.

[17:05] And then some of the other considerations that we've talked about

[17:07] with infrastructure is that we do have the challenge that we have a decent

[17:11] number of business operations that have heavy trucks with large outdoor storage

[17:15] sites, and those can strain the local road system and our infrastructure, and

[17:20] the property taxes for those sites might not be matching that with the

[17:24] appropriate economic return. So,

[17:28] we could look at creating an infrastructure preservation tax, which

[17:32] would be an annual tax on outdoor storage of commercial vehicles,

[17:35] equipment, and materials. That's one option, and then another

[17:39] option that we could also look at would be increasing the diesel motor fuel tax.

[17:43] Uh that would be estimated to generate about $50,000 a year.

[17:49] So, at this point, this is just a very early update in our process. We continue

[17:54] the transparency that we started last year, where we highlight

[17:58] some of the expenses that we're looking at, how is the budget coming along so

[18:02] far. We'll actually have another workshop here in a couple weeks, where

[18:06] we'll bring back more solidified numbers in the general fund after we have more

[18:11] time, more data that we can pull together, and we get feedback from the

[18:15] community and elected officials. So, at this point, I'm going to see if

[18:19] anybody in the room has any questions related to the budget or any comments.

[18:29] Okay, I'm also going to check the online chat and see if we have anything. I do

[18:32] see that there's one comment. And that comment is just letting

[18:37] attendees know that we do have a translation software available for this.

[18:41] So, I'm going to give a few more moments in case anyone online wanted to share

[18:44] any comments before we wrap up. And thank everyone for participating in

[18:49] this session. It's always great to get the community engaged, and we're excited

[18:53] to have the opportunity to really show you how we go through the

[18:56] decision-making process for the budget and

[19:00] how all the pieces come together and some of the challenges that we

[19:02] experience as we're trying to balance revenues, expenditures, but also

[19:06] positive community services, and quality of life.

[19:12] So, I do see

[19:17] someone that has done a wave.

[19:25] See who we have here.

[19:30] All right, I'm going to do a last shot that if somebody wants to type a

[19:34] question into the chat, if not, we're going to wrap up for the day and I

[19:38] appreciate everyone that is watching this video either live or on YouTube

[19:43] afterwards.

[19:48] Okay, well, thank you so much and have a great evening.

August 26, 2026 City of West Chicago FY2027 Community Budget Information Session

Transcript