Buffalo Grove Village Hall says it will have to go further into debt to pay for its regular street repairs this year.
And until revenues go up by a few million per year, officials say that taking out bonds to resurface the roads will likely be the regular plan.
Buffalo Grove’s public works crews expect to resurface 120 lane-miles of locally owned streets in 2016. Village finance director Scott Anderson said that if they could afford to keep that rate up, they would be able to resurface every street once every 20 years. The objective, he said, is to maintain all their roads at a pace that will keep them from needing a much more expensive, from-the-gravel-up rebuild.
It takes about $4 million to resurface 120 lane miles, Anderson said — but, on an average year, Buffalo Grove only has about $1.7 million to use for that purpose. About $700,000 comes from the village’s sales tax, the other $1 million comes from the state sharing its gasoline tax.
But Anderson said $1.7 million annually will not allow the resurfacing of roads once every 20 years — so, this spring, Village Hall will likely issue about $6 million in new debt on the bond market to bring their maintenance schedule back up to speed.
“Every five or six years, we’re likely going to have to borrow,” Anderson said. “We continue on that path, and we don’t have to do a more costly rebuild.”
He said rebuilds tend to cost three or four times more than resurfacing —an expense big enough that adding to the village’s debt every few years for resurfacings was still a savings. He said Village Hall last went out for bonds for this program in 2012.
The Village Board discussed this program in December, and approved the 2016 budget with the assumption of $6 million in new bonds. During that conversation, trustee Jeff Berman registered his dissatisfaction with the idea of adding to the debt as part of a regular maintenance schedule.
“I can only urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to find another way,” Berman told Anderson during that meeting.
On Monday, Anderson said he and others on the staff were searching for a better solution.
“We’ve been having this conversation with the board for several years now,” Anderson said. “We haven’t come up with anything that’s going to fix the funding gap yet.”
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer
