The Village of Manteno Board of Trustees made it clear they are still working on the village’s budget, after a public hearing on the preliminary budget was held and the budget subsequently approved at its April 20 meeting.
There appeared to be some confusion about how and when the budget hearing should occur, but eventually, Mayor Annette LaMore was instructed to open the public hearing by Administrator Chris LaRocque, and then, after some comments, Attorney Joe Cainkar instructed LaMore to close the hearing.
The board ultimately approved the budget, which Finance Committee Chairman and Trustee Mike Barry had clarified was a working budget ahead of his vote.
At the time of the village board meeting, the budget had a $1.639 million deficit, LaRocque reported earlier at the finance committee meeting that immediately preceded the board meeting.
“You can work through the whole year to reduce any of these items on the budget. It will come out in the amendment next year. Whatever money you save throughout the year will carry through to the next year,” LaRocque had explained.
“It’s going to be a work in progress, but the budget we have now, we’re going to work on our best to shave the money, as best we can to help the residents out, as much as we can,” Barry said, once the hearing was opened.
Barry took umbrage with an article published in The Daily Journal that reported the village was doing away with the property tax rebate.
“Contrary to what was read in the newspaper,” Barry said, there would still be discussions regarding the property tax rebate, and it wasn’t officially off the table. Last year, it also wasn’t in the budget, but the board voted to keep the rebate.
Trustee Peggy Vaughn then called out reporter Chris Breach of The Daily Journal, who was present, and asked why he had printed the story.
“Well, we asked officials if it was in the budget, proposed budget, and it is not,” Breach responded.
Following Breach’s response, Barry suggested the board “just go to the next thing.”
At that point, Trustee Joel Gesky chimed in to reiterate the budget was not final and could be changed.
“We discussed this at the earlier finance committee meeting and came up with some ideas of ways to shave it and be a work in progress. This is a preliminary budget or, I guess, it’s like a template. There’s always amendments to the budget throughout the year,” Gesky said, with Trustee CJ Boudreau concurring it was a “template.”
Although the budget was discussed in detail at the finance committee meeting that preceded the board meeting, it was not reviewed in detail at the public budget hearing. No public comment period was included in the formal budget hearing, but some spoke regarding budget items during general public comments.
The updated April 17 version of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget shows a number of various funds dedicated to different expenses. Expenses from the general fund totaled $9.123 million.
While the budget was presented as a work in progress, the village’s finance committee seemed to come to a consensus that there weren’t any major cuts that could be made from the budget.
Later, Breach again was called out during the trustee’s comments at the end of the meeting, this time by Barry, who noted the reporting “caused a lot of extra headaches” for people.
Finance Committee Budget Discussions
During the finance committee meeting, which immediately preceded the budget hearing and board meeting, the trustees discussed how to reduce village expenses, though no one identified any major, broad-sweeping cuts that should or could be made.
Despite that, board members engaged in thoughtful discussion and attempted to find ways to reduce the budget with multiple smaller reductions.
Barry suggested the village find ways to fund its events through potential sponsorships or other means, so they don’t have to cut any from the schedule. This way, the village could still put on the events, but they wouldn’t become an expense for the village.
Additionally, Barry suggested re-evaluating how the village’s events are managed, such as potentially changing an event or making a bigger event with ticket and vendor fees to see how big a draw it can be.
Outside of events, Barry also suggested potentially leasing some public works vehicles and re-evaluating the contract with the Kankakee County Visitors Bureau.
Both Boudreau and Gesky seemed open to exploring those options further.
“I think we’re looking for new options, and it’s not a bad idea just to try to see what’s out there, if it’s possible or not,” Boudreau added.
“I’m not opposed. I guess I’m just looking again at trying to get that grant money and see if anyone’s not opposed to seeing if we get a seat at the table, more or less,” Gesky responded.
“Honestly, there’s really nothing huge we can cut out of this budget. I mean, public works, the police overtime, people have to understand with public works it’s the overtime they put in and a lot of that money is for snow removal,” Barry said about the budget.
Barry said the budget was “the cost of doing business,” indicating most of the items were necessary, and there wasn’t much that could be eliminated.
The property tax rebate, of which the elimination has been contested by residents relying on it, and the garbage services cost the village about $1.8 million dollars, Barry explained.
“What people need to understand is that, yes, our revenues are going up a small amount, and our expenses, if you look at them, have been about the same throughout the past three or four years,” Barry said.
He explained there are no new businesses, no new sales tax revenue, and no new buildings.
Gesky added the village could save money by reducing the number of summer public works interns and working with the school district to reimburse the cost of crossing guards. Gesky also compared port-a-potty distribution to parks in Bradley, and mentioned there were opportunities to reduce the number of bathrooms because there are functioning bathrooms at the other parks.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel. We obviously can’t keep doing what we’ve done over the past, and we never intended to give the tax rebates indefinitely. We were trying to return what was the village taxpayers’ money or assets back to the village taxpayers, and that’s why we did that,” Gesky added, indicating there were properties within the village that could generate tax revenue as they are developed.
“I think what we just need to keep in mind long-term, too, is let’s say we do all these things and we find some money, all that kind of stuff, but we’re still running a $800,000 deficit, well, then we really need to look at what do we have to cut because we’re trying to trim as much fat as possible right now because we do want to maintain,” Boudreau contributed to the discussion.
“Everything you guys said, and I also want to say Trustee Vaughn had a great idea about asking some of the people in town to volunteer to help us,” noted Mayor LaMore, who added her thoughts about the budget.