Villa Park road repairs will have to wait

Villa Park voters narrowly rejected a sales tax increase to pay for repairs to the village's crumbling side streets.

With all precincts reporting, the tally was 53 percent to 47 percent against the .5 percentage point increase. The measure would have generated up to $1.3 million a year for street repairs with about 60 percent coming from the pocketbooks of out-of-town shoppers.

Village officials used that as a selling point, but it wasn't enough to persuade voters.

“Everybody is always saying they'll support fixing the roads anyway they can, and yet this has lost twice now,” said Village President Tom Cullerton.

Voters turned down the same sales tax increase in April. Also on the ballot last spring was a plan to borrow $27.5 million to pay for major street repairs throughout the village.

“We're going to have to regroup and figure out a new strategy,” Cullerton said.

The additional funds would have been used to tackle high-priority projects such as Kenilworth Avenue between Ardmore and Harvard, and Michigan Avenue from St. Charles to Division. The village also would have been able to catch up with its backlog of resurfacing projects within two years.

Now, there is little chance of doing much beyond pothole repair and patching during the next couple of years, officials said. Streets that need to be completely rebuilt will have to wait, they said.

The proposal would have raised the sales tax from 7.75 percent to 8.25 percent.