The Shorewood Village Board of Trustees set out to cement plans to create a TIF District for Route 59 and Jefferson Street at their Feb. 14 meeting.
The measure intends to allow the village to implement an economic development tool to spur activity by freezing the tax base within the boundaries of the project area.
In a 5-0 vote, officials approved a series of ordinances to satisfy this aim. Trustee Daniel Anderson abstained from the votes because he said he has property included within the TIF District.
Shorewood Mayor Rick Chapman gave credit to the board for working to approve these measures.
“If we’re going to look to the future, or at least have the ability to redevelop the older intersections, the TIF is going to be a very good tool for us to be able to use,” he said.
The board’s approval allows Shorewood to create its first TIF District.
The first ordinance allows the village to adopt a TIF redevelopment plan and redevelopment project. The other two allow Shorewood officials to designate the redevelopment project area in accordance to the TIF ACT as amended and adopt TIF increment allocation financing.
The village recently took language out of the state statute to certify they don’t intend to displace residents.
The village is to capture the 2015 equalized assessed valuation on property taxes for which residents paid in 2016.
Village Attorney Dave Silverman said the latter ordinance “will direct the county clerk to separate on everybody’s tax bills the amount of base tax—that we’ve discussed—and the incremental tax. As the value of properties go up, the incremental tax that will then come back to the village will go into the special tax increment fund.”
Trustee Stevan Brockman questioned what residents will find when their next property tax bill is issued.
“If those 80 properties—or whatever there was—received the notification that their valuations were going up, that would be frozen before then?” he asked.
Silverman tried to explain.
“If they received [notification] for the 2016 capture, it would go before that,” he said.
Brockman questioned when the village is to start seeing the generation of new dollars.
Silverman said it’s unclear when the TIF District will start to generate incremental funding.
“They might get some in this year, I suppose,” he said. “We get it filed by March. If there’s any increment out there, we could start to get it in with this year’s tax payroll. Those are paying on the 2015 taxes. So, there could be some minimal amounts.”
The village is currently going into their budget to prepare for TIF District’s creation.
Community Development Director Karen James said it’s good knowing that Senior Vice President for Kane, McKenna & Associates Mary Thompson “has already been in communication with (Finance Director) Anne (Burkholder), just as Anne’s been in communication with Sikich, as well our auditors, just to make sure that everything gets set up properly so that we’re prepared for that.”
The first read for the ordinances was waived, at which time the board moved to approve a series of measures to establish the TIF District.
Shorewood officials have until the end of March to submit supporting documentation to the Will County Clerk’s office.
Shorewood receives water system monitoring violation
The village of Shorewood was recently notified that one of the two water samples prepared for synthetic-organic compound testing every three years was deemed in violation of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency codes.
Public Works Director Chris Drey said residents should rest assured they’re in no harm’s way.
“It was an error with the lab,” he said. “Water is safe to drink, there’s not a problem with the water. We need to do another round of samples with the (one) that we had a problem with. They way that they were using the computer system—that helps us maintain compliance—for some reason one of the samples that we had a quality problem with got locked into one of the sample points.”
By the end of 2016, the EPA performed an audit of the village and found they were missing a sample.
“To correct that in the future, we’ve got right now the labs doing a review of their paperwork in their system,” Drey said. “They’ll give us a report totaling our displeasure with them, and they’re going to try to work through a couple things with us.”
Drey said typically, this lab doesn’t have any errors when working with the village. The first sample tested well, he said.
“Internally, we’ll look at doing a better setup with watching that schedule a little bit closer, to make sure that all the samples are coming back. We’ve relied pretty heavily on the lab with the system that they have, but it didn’t work this time.”
Drey said the village is not being fined for this violation, in part, because it is a single “minor” violation.
A public notice will go out to residents on their next water bill, which will provide a link directing them to the village’s website for more information.
A brief recap of action and discussion from the Jan. 14 meeting of the Shorewood Village Board of Trustees.
Village board action approved a phase II engineering contract in the amount of $41,815 to Christopher B. Burke for U.S. Rt. 52 and River Road improvements.
Shorewood officials amended village codes to create uniformity among liquor license establishments. The hours of operations with respect to bars, sports lounges, restaurants and packaged sales will all conform to a 2 a.m. closing time.
The board moved forward with plans to adopt an ordinance directing and authorizing the disposal of surplus property by the village of Shorewood.