Clarendon Hills Business Owners Pledge to Fight New SSA Proposal

Business owners in downtown Clarendon Hills are pledging to fight the creation of a special service area for sidewalk snow removal in the village's central business district. Currently, sidewalk snow removal services are paid for out of the village's general fund, but Village Finance Director Peg Hartnett said the village can no longer afford to continue offering those services.  "Due to the current economy, income taxes—the village's second largest source of revenue—are down by over $100,000, and the state owes the village four months worth of income tax disbursements."

Dan Schultz, a banker who represents the building owners at One Walker Ave., which is home to Scapa Italian Kitchen said the cash flow impact on his building would reduce its value by $43,000. "It's the wrong time to add a tax. It's the right time to look at cutting costs. We'll shovel the snow ourselves. I'll roll up my sleeves and shovel the snow."

This sentiment was echoed by others in the audience such as Neil Hansen, owner of Fitness Werks at 154 Burlington. "I'm certainly all for taking care of our building.  We can do it ourselves. I own a fitness facility there.  It'd be a great workout."

About 14 other business owners and residents came to a public hearing at the village  board meeting Monday night to voice their opposition to the creation of the SSA. The SSA would allow the village to assess a tax of $0.55 for every $100 equalized value of their property to cover the costs of snow removal services, among other maintenance costs.

Perhaps the most vocal of those attending was Tom Wich, a resident at the Burling Court condos. "I have petitions here signed by many members of our building. We actually represent 33 out of 103 parcels in SSA 16 (the proposed SSA), which means all we need is 19 more signatures by the merchants, and we will defeat this.  We are going to fight this. We will lead the way on this."

Wich asked why all the residents of Clarendon Hills were not being asked to "pay their fair share to help bring the burden down for everybody?"

Village President Tom Karaba responded, "That day is coming. We have been putting that off. We've been researching for the past several years everything we can to find alternatives to that solution but at the end of the day, we will have to go to the voters to ask for a general rate increase. I'm not going to commit for when we're going to do that, because we have not finished our analysis of our options, and let's face it, we don't want to do this. We've been doing everything in our power to avoid increasing our tax rate."

Owners and residents in the proposed SSA area have 60 days to submit their objections to the proposal.  The support of 51 percent of the land owners in the current SSA and 51 percent of registered voters residing within the current SSA is required to adopt the new proposal. If no valid objections are filed within the next 60 days, the village will adopt the ordinance establishing the new SSA on Dec. 6.

Karaba stressed that the village was not trying to force the creation of the proposed SSA. "We're just trying to be helpful while at the same time being fiscally prudent… Is it more advantageous to you to have this cost or do you want to go out and get your own service? I don't think the board cares which way this goes."

If the proposal is defeated, the current SSA will continue until its expiration in 2011, but the village will discontinue sidewalk snow removal services for the downtown business district this winter.