Politics & Government
Meeting Minutes: Oswegoland Park District Board, Dec. 28
Oswegoland Park District Board members discussed the upcoming budget and tax values on homes, among other items, at a special meeting Wednesday.
- Board members discussed a $1.8 million proposal to sell general obligation limited tax park bonds for the Park District and the counties of Kendall and Will. “We have until next meeting to solicit information from the public,” Board President Bob Mattingly said.
- The Park Board approved payables of $1,663,575.50 from Nov. 19 to Dec. 31.
- Director of Operations Mike Fee addressed Violet Patch Park expenses. Earlier this year, a group of volunteers had cleared weeds out of a section of Violet Patch Park, and Fee said he was asked to create a nursery. “We’re creating a native woodland wildflower nursery," Fee said. "Most of the plants are violets and it’s a natural green house. ... We’ll move the flowers to all our woodland areas that are in need of them.”
- Also discussed was the idea of granting employees unused vacation hours that could be carried over until April. The plan allows workers to carry about half of their days over to the next year. If an employee saved 10 vacation days, five could be carried over to the next year, but they would not be able to accumulate on top of that for the next year, Mattingly said. “We rearranged this, knowing that in the park business people are not always able to go on vacations when others are, so they can take theirs during the winter,” Mattingly said. “It makes sense in this regard. ... The employees are happy with what we came up with."
- Commissioner Deb Krase opened up the floor to discussing the levy in the district for the new taxable value come 2012. The percent of assessment reduced ranges from 5 to 8 percent, and Krase said Kendall County's average tax decrease is 6 percent. "We can’t tell the public what’s going to happen to their individual tax bill, everyone’s is different,” Krase said. “If a homeowner’s house was reduced by 6 percent or more, the tax levy we pass would help their taxes go down instead of up. If it goes up, it will be very negligible." A spreadsheet will be available online in several weeks with rough estimates for homeowners to see where their own assessed value may fall. “It all depends on different factors of location, value of property and exemptions,” Director of Finance Nancy Woods said.
- Finally, the board discussed a tentative budget for fiscal year 2012. Deputy Director Rich Zielke said the budget will discussed further at finance committee meetings before the next Park Board meeting Jan. 31. The group hopes to have a final budget in place for the board meeting in March, as there is none scheduled for February. “We’re only looking at the daily operations expenditures,” Zielke said. “Nothing big, no $2,500 tractors or any major capital purchases of the sort.”
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