Glen Ellyn gives go ahead to move forward with bond issuance process

The Glen Ellyn village board gave the green light to staff Monday night to move forward with the process to issue $13.5 million in bonds to potentially fund the construction of a new police station and Lake Ellyn improvements.

The new police station would sit adjacent to Panfish Park and would cost no more than $12 million.

Finance Director Christina Coyle said the village is going to have to issue bonds to build the police station, and the question was if there were any other projects the village should issue debt for in addition to that project.

"Interest rates are at historic low levels so certainly the cost to issue debt right now is very low," Coyle said.

Village staff presented four projected funding scenarios to the board Monday night, with each offering different projects for which the village could issue debt.

The board could have issued debt for just the police station; for the police station and Lake Ellyn improvements; for the station, Lake Ellyn fixes and half of the street work planned for the central business district; or for the station, Lake Ellyn improvements and all the central business district work.

Village trustees favored issuing debt just for the police station and Lake Ellyn improvements, which totaled $13.5 million.

With that preferred scenario, staff project that the ending cash balance in the village's capital projects fund would remain positive for the next several years, but the balance would dip to "alarmingly low levels" during some years, according to board documents.

"So just one of the things that we have to be mindful of in doing that scenario is just really making sure that we monitor our revenues and monitor the performance of the fund," Coyle said.

Each of the funding scenarios also assumed the property tax levy toward the capital projects fund would increase by 3.4 percent each year subsequent to 2015. These increases would be connected to changes in CPI and new growth.

But Coyle said that increase is part of the assumption and may not occur as predicted.

The board will need to issue a parameters ordinance to allow staff to actually issue the debt.