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2008 Property Tax Bills Are In!
Our tax rate went down again this
year to 7.1207, the lowest ever.
HOWEVER
the "Equalization Factor" went up to 1.025, which means an increase in our tax bills anyway.
(thank you Rhonda Novak's office)
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Southland towns want to form alliance on Oak Lawn water
By Elisabeth Kilpatrick, Staff Writer
reprinted from the Southtown Star
When it comes to buying drink ing water from Oak Lawn, five Southland towns are hoping to find power in numbers.
Tinley Park, Orland Park, Oak Forest, Mokena and New Lenox will vote in the next few weeks on a proposal to band together and hire a consultant to represent their combined interests when negotiating new water contracts with Oak Lawn.
The five municipalities, which make up 80 percent of the Oak Lawn water system's customer base, have contracts with Oak Lawn set to expire in October 2011.
With Oak Lawn looking at a $193 million overhaul to its aging system and corresponding rate increase for customers in the 13 towns it serves, local officials say they owe it to their residents to bring in a knowledgeable source for negotiations.
"We want to look at all our available options and make sure our constituency is served," Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said.
The five communities are downstream from Oak Lawn, which made their alliance a logical choice, officials said.
"Each town has its own particular issues, but we have more in common than not," Oak Forest city administrator John Marquart said.
The towns are looking to hire consultant Bill Balling, former chairman of the Northwest Water Commission in Des Plaines and Buffalo Grove's former village manager. Balling now runs the municipal consulting firm WRB.
"Bill's well-known, and he's unique in the sense that he has awfully good knowledge of water utility," Orland Park village manager Paul Grimes said. "He's reasonably priced, and we think we'll get some pretty good perspective."
Each town would pay for a percentage of Balling's estimated $60,000 fee based on the percentage of water it's expected to be using in 2030, according to a draft agreement.
Orland Park would pay the most at 33 percent, followed by Tinley Park at 28, New Lenox at 18, Oak Forest at 11 and Mokena at 10.
Balling will look at several options for the towns, including the possibility of forming a water commission or water purchase group, according to the agreement. Both of those options would give the five communities a greater say in how the water system is run, a change some officials feel is timely. Right now, Oak Lawn makes all decisions about the system on its own.
"It's not adversarial, but the system has graduated into a new phase, and we have an awful lot of growth," Grimes said. "Before we go to our taxpayers and ask them to pay the costs (of system updates), shouldn't we have a seat at the table?"
Oak Lawn officials say they have no problem working with a consultant on the upcoming contract negotiations.
"We actually encourage that to move the process along," village manager Larry Deetjen said.
However, Oak Lawn has made it clear that it won't change the water system's governance without a significant financial investment from the towns.
"The position of the (village) board is very, very united that we intend to operate a customer-oriented system," Deetjen said. "The mayor said if you're willing to pay for the value of that system to taxpayers, certainly you could. ... This is a tremendous asset to our community, and it has a price tag."
Elisabeth Kilpatrick can be reached at ekilpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 633-5983. Elisabeth also blogs about Homer Glen and Homer Township at blogs.southtownstar.com/homerglen.
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