Buffalo Grove may borrow $6 million to catch up on road work

Buffalo Grove could borrow $6 million next year to catch up with street maintenance needs, under a plan outlined before the village board Monday.

The board likely will take action on the proposal in mid-2016. If they agree to the borrowing plan, the owner of a home with a market value of $300,000 could expect a $35 increase in the amount of property taxes owed to the village, officials said.

The proposal comes three years after the village board issued $6 million in debt to address the town's street maintenance backlog. The village was able to resurface about 10 lane miles that year.

Trustee Jeffrey Berman said village staff has made a fairly strong case for a bond issue, and he is not opposed to it in this instance. But he also voiced concern, saying this is not "a strategy that can be invoked repeatedly in the future.

"At some point we have to find a way to reconcile the street maintenance needs with appropriate revenues," Berman said. "We need to be working in a different direction, so that we're not sitting here three, four years, five years from now with compiled debt where staff is asking for more debt to do the same thing."

The village owns approximately 120 lane miles of streets, with an average life span of 20 years. Ideally, officials say, the village would resurface six miles of streets every year, at a cost of nearly $4.3 million.

Finance Director Scott Anderson said the revenue stream the village has been using to fund the work - motor fuel taxes and a 20-percent transfer of home rule sales taxes - has only been providing $1.7 million, leaving a $2.6 million shortfall.

The village hopes to keep up with repaving to avoid more costly road reconstruction, Anderson added.

With a $6 million bond issue, the village's debt would increase to about $16 million, a figure Anderson said was an "extremely low level of debt for a community our size, with the amount of infrastructure and assets we have."

However, in response to a question from Trustee Dave Weidenfeld, Anderson said bond issues for road work will be necessary in the years ahead.

"At this point, the way it projects out, we would be here likely every four to five years," he said.