Of course, since the last update, a lot has happened. First, I want to thank everyone for their well wishes as well as their hard work during my recent run for Congress. The outcome was not what I had hoped, but I am remain blessed to be the Mayor of Orland Park, my hometown, the town where I raised my own family and the best suburb in Chicagoland.
At the last meeting we approved several routine items, including and intergovernmental agreement with Cook County to expand our fiber network, traffic studies for the parks master plan, and amendments to the Bluff Pointe subdivision.
We also approved the site plan and elevations for Wild Fork restaurant which will be replacing the IHOP that closed on LaGrange Road some time ago.
We also approved the contracts for water meter replacements that will be ongoing in 2023 and 2024 throughout the Village. In the future, expect communication from the village on replacing your water meters with upgraded equipment. This is needed as our water meters are at the end of their useful life. Rather than doing this over a 10-year time period, it is more cost effective in the long run to do all of them over 2 years, and they will last over 2 decades.
The big news of the meeting was that we approved a project for a 46,000 square foot Silver Cross medical building at 171st and LaGrange Road. They expect to add another building in the future as well. This week we also held a ground breaking ceremony on the site and they are hoping to pour concrete for the foundations next week. This is a tremendous win for the village and will add to our already strong revenue base.
Early this week we also held a budget meeting and approved our planned budget. It is not yet official, but some of the highlights include:
- Adding three full time police officers to fulfill District 135’s request to add three resource officers to the junior highs and neighboring elementary schools. Unlike the state government, we feel that school resource officers are an outstanding benefit for the community. Under the agreement, District 135 is covering these costs.
- We were given a presentation that showed we saved $3.5 million by bonding early for the two parks projects that are under way.
- The budget is larger than normal because of rollover projects from the 2022 budget. These projects were not completed because of supply chain issues and the strike that caused material shortages that impacted our road projects.
- This year we are renovating 7 more parks. Since 2019, this brings the renovations in almost half of our parks. Next year we will conduct another assessment and it will hopefully show that we are nearly caught up with upgrading our parks and getting to a more normal annual cycle.
Also, on a positive note, we finally received funding for a portion of the 143rd project. It has taken 22 years to get funding for this project. Moreover, from 2006 to 2016 we received a total of $2.2 million in grant money for projects. Since 2017, we have secured $18 million toward projects with another $7 to $15 million secured for the next 5 years as well.
The efforts made to secure these grants during my tenure have helped the village make significant progress on our capital project needs that were ignored for the previous decade and a half.
Lastly, our Development Services Department informed us that 180 businesses opened over the last year. That makes almost 800 new business since 2017 and demonstrates that the Village of Orland Park is a place where business want to be.
As I stated in the beginning of this update, I am proud to be Mayor of Orland Park and proud of what has been accomplished since I was elected in 2017. I look forward to the coming years and seeing the many projects that were approved over the last year come to fruition.
Keith
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