Village of
Westchester From the desk of Village Manager Paul Nosek
FEBRUARY, 2022
PUBLIC WORKS
3
POLICE DEPARTMENT
4
FIRE DEPARTMENT
7
LIBRARY
9
SCHOOL DISTRICT
12
PARK DISTRICT
15
SPOTLIGHT ON SENIORS
16
As the calendar year closed on 2021 the Village looks back at successful results on many different fronts while working on the projects that you, the residents, approved. The bond referendum that was passed in November 2020 authorized the Village to issue bonds up to $42 million for streets/sewers and infrastructure projects, including flood mitigation for the town. The Village issued the first set of bonds for approximately $18 million to cover the first 2 years of projects, rather than issuing bonds for the full amount. This was done so that we were not paying interest on debt that we weren’t going to use for several years. This Village will be issuing more debt most likely early in 2023. Utilizing the funds mentioned above, the Village accomplished the following; Budgeted Amount Actual Amount Over/(Under) Budget Street Program $3,325,000 $3,022,575 ($302,425) Sewer Lining $3,200,000 $2.789,127 ($410,873) Green Alley’s $1,100,000 $548,318 ($551,682) In House Paving $250,000 $176,921 ($73,079) Asa result of the savings obtained with the street pricing, we were able to add 2 more streets. We were also successful in obtaining much better pricing for the sewer lining which allowed us to complete all of the sewer lining that we were going to do over a 5 year period in just this year. The Green Alley Project came in significantly under budget because we were able to obtain Grants for part of the project. The in-house paving that our Public Works is able to complete saves us about 2/3 of the cost of outsourcing. Overall cost savings mentioned above total over $1.3 million. Below you can see the map of the various projects and their locations.
The second part of the projects that the Village completed were funded from Motor Fuel tax funds that we received as a grant last year. Budgeted Amount Actual Amount Over/(Under) Budget Microsurfacing $200,000 $182,055 ($17,945) As of this writing, the Public Works department is getting ready to go out to bid for the 2022 Calendar Year projects and we will be publishing a list of those when finalized in March or April. On the Economic Development front, the Roosevelt Rd. TIF which was established in 2020 is starting to come to fruition with Letters of Intent being signed by a major Coffee shop and a major sandwich shop and with another 2 fast casual restaurants in the works. The first two mentioned we expect to have the signed leases in place prior to April 1, 2022 as we already have letters of intent and agreed upon sigte plans. They will be along Mannheim road just north of Roosevelt Rd. along with another fast casual restaurant and one more fast casual restaurant that will be located on the site next to the Village hall that is currently an empty lot. We anticipate issuing permits for construction for this development towards the end of this summer with construction to be completed by Spring of 2023. The current Village Hall property will be vacated this summer and demolished to make way for a national grocery store which has already given the Village a letter of intent. They are doing their due diligence and awaiting our departure and the demolition of the Village Hall property and post office. We are currently working with the post office to help them relocate along Roosevelt Rd. to a smaller retail location. We are also working with the County to obtain a piece of property in Westchester to relocate the fire department. We expect that the Grocery store will be up and running by summer of 2024 and we anticipate filling the out lot with another restaurant where the post office is located. All of these projects are privately funded with no money coming from the General Fund of the Village. We are actually cost neutral on the sale of the Village Hall property and purchase of the new location at 2315 and 2305 Enterprise Drive. The remodeling of that property is going on now and we anticipate being moved in by mid-summer 2022. That project was funded with a grant secured last year working with the Speaker of the House, our own Chris Welch. He was able to obtain $2 million in funds for the remodeling. The primary reason for the move was so that the Village could generate more revenue by attracting new retail operations on what vacant land and our Village Hall. We recognized that the traffic that goes past Roosevelt and Mannheim would be very attractive to a retailer. We were correct in our assumptions and our current projections are that when it is fully developed by 2024 we will be generating close to $500,000 in additional sales tax and $500,000 in additional property tax. That is just the beginning of the development of the Roosevelt Rd. corridor, we Continued on Page 3