Deer Park starts discussion of building finances

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Updated: February 27, 2012 8:42AM

Deer Park’s end-of-year budget surplus has sparked officials to begin strategizing their spending for the next 10 years.

At Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting, Trustee James Denny expressed interest in spending what he presumes will be a continued budgetary surplus on a decade’s worth of construction costs for a new village office building.

“No one in this village has addressed the 10-year plan in a long time, and I think it’s time we did it,” Denny said.

He shared with the board a document he put together that used the village’s current numbers as a basis for next year’s outlook, as well as recommendations that the board feel less shameful about funding seemingly expensive projects to improve the town’s quality.

“The message I want to give the board is that we don’t have to be as conservative as we have been this fiscal year—squeezing the dollar so tight that we can’t consider a better long-term option for our village,” Denny said. “We can afford to construct a better option for our office building.”

Denny predicted a monetary excess for the current fiscal year’s fourth quarter, given that the third quarter (which ended December 2011) finished with surpluses in multiple areas.

Money set aside for tourism and commerce expenses resulted in a leftover $200,723; the Motor Fuel Tax Fund had $23,876 left; and the General Fund contained $275,304, largely contributed to Kildeer paying $118,427 for a boundary agreement.

Provided that their next fiscal year does not expect any major expenses, Denny predicted the surplus trend to continue.

The document he presented showed Deer Park spending about $750,000 in total for a new office building.

Trustees had been considering cheaper options in meetings prior, of which included a temporary trailer office.

Original estimates of about $375,000 for new construction about doubled in the spreadsheet to overestimate for safety when planning the budget.

“This is my estimate, and I’ll take the tarring and feathering,” Denny said. “It is my estimate to get us talking and planning.”

Village President Robert Kellermann and the rest of the board felt that Denny’s plan and outline for future spending was a good exercise to spark conversation and future planning that would lead to stable fiscal responsibility.

“I think this is the greatest exercise we’ve have,” Kellermann said. “It’s a shame prior administrations

didn’t do these exercises; we wouldn’t have started off with such a negative system.”

Kellermann later noted that Vehe Barn improvements were a road block for past trustees when trying to consider spending in other beneficial areas.

Trustees plan to continuously send Denny capital outlay planning and ideas for him to compose a spreadsheet of compiled ideas. The next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 20.