Orland Park Mayor Pekau Update

The following is an update on the October 1st board meeting and the October 10thbudget meeting. The board meeting started with the Orland Park Police Department receiving a number of awards for traffic safety.  We were named the number one department for departments between 50 and 100 sworn officers as well as the number one overall police department for the entire state of Illinois.  This is a testament to the leadership of Chief McCarthy, the commanders and other members of the leadership team, and the officers who they lead.  Congratulations on a job well done! We also received an update from Tom Dubelbeis, the golf committee chair, on the results of the golf outing.  As you know the Mayor’s golf outing was renamed as the Veterans Golf Classic and was held last month on September 11th.  In total, the outing raised over $30,000 to be donated to veteran’s groups and used for veteran’s programs in the Village of Orland Park – the most successful Mayor’s golf event ever!  This was done with ALL volunteers on the day of the event.  Thank you to all of the volunteers and Tom for a job well done! Additionally, we discussed the village official’s budget which is handled out of my office.  Over the past several weeks, I repeatedly asked the Trustees to go directly to me with any requests or questions.  I received one question from Trustee Ruzich and addressed it.  Nobody else reached out to me.  However, there were anonymous requests and demands made from “The Trustees” through the Village Manager’s office and Trustee’s assistant.  One of these requests was for all of my expense reports.  At the board meeting, I had staff give copies of my expense reports to every board member, every member of the press and had additional copies for any citizen that wanted a copy. I reminded the Trustees that “anonymous” requests are unacceptable.  My requests are not anonymous, nor are the public’s.  I asked who requested this information.  For some time, it was completely quiet, but eventually Trustees Ruzich and Carrol spoke up and said they DID NOT ask for the information.  After more silence, Trustee Fenton finally admitted that she asked for the information.  I asked her “for what reason?”  The mayor’s office has always handled the official’s budget and apparently this has never happened in the past.  The closest thing I received for an answer was when Trustee Fenton offered that the board has never had to make cuts before.  Think about that, almost 26 years on the board and never, until I took office, has Trustee Fenton weighed in on the official’s budget.  I suggested that we discuss the Official’s budget and it was agreed to not discuss it at that time. I reiterated that these requests should never be anonymous and the Board should not put staff in the middle of any disagreements between board members or myself.  I also reminded Trustee Fenton that she has my phone number, I have always been willing to talk to her and all she had to do was ask as I prefer to deal with issues directly.  The information is public and I have nothing to hide.  Hopefully, going forward, this message has been received. There wasn’t much else for the board meeting, so I will shift to the budget meeting.  The summary is as follows:   In total we reduced expenditures by $1.8 million.  This included staff reductions from early retirements and re-organization savings of over $730K.  Some of the additional expenditure reductions included savings resulting from the LED lighting upgrades I pushed for earlier in the year and the board supported.  The only program that was cut was the PACE dial-a-ride program which I will discuss in more detail later. Total additional revenue is $0.5 million.  Of this $280K comes from gaming revenue, and $31K from raising the hotel tax from 4% to 5% to match all of our neighbors.  The remainder comes from sponsorships, booking fees and permitting that we expect to increase next year.  As you can see, no restaurant taxes, no amusement taxes and no property tax increases in these numbers! The staff reductions of $730K in 2019 will increase to over $1.6M in 2020.  This is due to the timing of retirements in 2019 as well as the accrued vacation, sick pay and other payments required to new retirees in 2019. The goal was to maintain a 20% operating budget reserve through 2023.  In the past, the Village only looked at the reserve for the upcoming budget year.  We are now looking forward five years.  The changes this year will maintain the reserve over 20% through 2022 and slightly below (18.5%) in 2023.  During the budget meeting we discussed several items: The first was a proposed cut to the theater program.  The direct savings of cutting the program is approximately $6K.  In the last three productions 30 residents and 40 non-residents participated.  Additionally, over 2,000 tickets were sold to the performances.  The program apparently has been declining the last several years.  After a lot of discussion, I commented that $6K is rounding error in this budget and suggested that we keep the program for another year, involve the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board and strive to improve the program in terms of participation and financially going forward.  The board agreed to keep the program with Trustees Ruzich, Calandriello and Dodge joining me to vote to keep it.  Trustees Carroll and Gira voted to eliminate it, while Trustee Fenton could not decide which way to vote.  We also discussed longevity pay.  This a significant cost, over $350K per year, to the village and has been in place since the 1990’s.  Currently, $314K of this is contractually obligated in union contracts.  However, we are taking steps to eliminate these payments to our non-union employees.  I agree with Trustee Fenton who said “in the real world, who gets this.” Additionally, we discussed cost of living (COLA) increases.  These also cost the village over $350K per year.  I pointed out that the COLA increases over the last 5 years are a total of 4.9% more than the Social Security COLAs given to our seniors by the federal government.  The COLAs have been too high and we need to correct this going forward.  Again, there are contractual obligations to our union employees but a COLA increase for our non-union employees was removed from next year’s budget to begin to close that 4.9% gap. Lastly, the Village Manager had been receiving more questions from Trustees about the Official’s budget and asked if we wanted to discuss this budget.  None of the Trustees were interested and since I submitted it, I am happy with it (by the way, it’s a small budget that we trimmed significantly last year with more cuts this year.  The only program that was cut in this year’s budget was the PACE dial-a-ride program.The rationale for this is as follows: The net direct cost of the program is a loss of $130,000 per year. The projected indirect costs are higher than the direct costs (including equipment maintenance, scheduling, phones, etc.) In the last year there are 24 different people who use the program. The subsidy per ride is over $12 for a total cost per ride of over $15 per ride. There are several other options for these riders including the Orland Township Senior dial-a-ride program, PACE bus disabled rider services, insurance reimbursements for medically related rides as well as private services such as Uber and Lift. Our Village Manager and I agreed to have either my assistant or the Trustee’s assistant directly help all 24 of these riders find alternatives.  This will include personally helping fill out any paperwork needed.  Ultimately the costs for providing this service are unacceptable when there are several other agencies that provide duplicative services.  We are doing everything we can to help all 24 people identify the appropriate alternatives. In summary, this budget is a HUGE VICTORY FOR THE RESIDENTS OF THE VILLAGE!  Prior to this year, only the next year’s budget was looked at.  This year we looked forward 5 years.  The 5-year projections prior to this budget were to have no cash reserves and needing to borrow in 2023.  The changes in this year’s budget will keep our target reserve balance through 2023, without borrowing.  This was accomplished through expenditure cuts, staffing cuts and without a restaurant tax, amusement tax or more property taxes.  Congratulations to Village Staff and the Village Board for a job well done! There are several important meetings coming up that I encourage you to attend or watch on Facebook live.  These include the October 15th board meeting at 7PM, the October 22nd board meeting at 6PM and the November 5th board meeting at 7PM.