Home Rule Committee Gets Real-World Perspective

After discussing home rule in general at its first two meetings, the Clarendon Hills Home Rule Research Committee heard from a municipal leader with first-hand home rule experience.

Warrenville Mayor David Brummel spoke to the committee at Village Hall Wednesday night and said his city put forward a home rule referendum in 2004 to deal mostly with revenue issues. The community needed three additional police officers at the time and didn’t know where to find money to budget for it. 

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According to Brummel, home rule—which provides a municipal government certain powers normally reserved for the state government—has allowed Warrenville to have more freedom with its sales tax rate and how it uses that revenue—be it for hiring police officers or fixing roads—while also allowing the city to establish a food and beverage tax and a hotel/motel tax. 

“We have tried to find ways that those taxes are shared by outside people and are not solely on the backs of residents,” Brummel said.

Brummel said going to home rule–which can only be attained with the support of the municipality via a referendum—hasn’t changed the day-to-day lives of Warrenville residents or noticeably increased municipal government control, but has given the municipal government opportunities it did not have pre-2004.

“It’s like having a tool box with a couple more tools than before,” Brummel said.

Committee member Wilfrid Freve said Clarendon Hills does not have the office parks and hotels that Warrenville does, meaning the village won’t reap the same level of benefits from sales-tax freedoms under home rule that Warrenville has.

And while Warrenville made a pledge to its residents when it went to home rule that their property taxes would not be raised, all of the committee members seemed to agree that Clarendon Hills has to increase property taxes as the village’s revenues and expenditures are set to cross in the next five years, leading to a structural budget deficit.

According to village trustee Paul Pedersen, who serves on the committee, it’s not about if taxes will be raised, but how they will be raised.

Home rule, Pedersen said, will allow the Clarendon Hills Village Board to raise property taxes year to year based on real-time numbers instead of a front-loaded property tax referendum, the apparent alternative, that would guess at where the village’s numbers will be 10 years from now. 

Committee member Bill Baum, a landlord in Clarendon Hills, repeatedly voiced his concern that while home rule would allow for flexibility in the village board’s tax raises, it would also give the board powers he perceives as potentially dangerous, such as increased building inspections and the establishment of new taxes.

Baum worried that six trustees and a mayor will have too much power.

Pedersen did not deny Baum’s premise, but said that board members are Clarendon Hills residents, too, and wouldn’t want to violate their own rights. He said major policy changes would still be publicized and go through public hearings as they currently do.

“The perception is your biggest enemy,” Pedersen said. “There’s plenty of room for mischief the way things are now. Nothing’s going to happen without you knowing about it, without it being vetted.”

The next meeting of the committee was tentatively planned for Sept. 13. There, members will give their opinion on the appropriateness of home rule for Clarendon Hills. Village Manager Randy Recklaus will then put the committee’s ideas onto paper in time, he hopes, for the village board’s Oct. 1 retreat, when home rule is one issue they will discuss.