Hanover Park delays vote on rebuilding road to discuss funding it

Residents of Hanover Park's Celebrity Circle, a road officials say is in worse shape than any other in the village, will have to wait a little longer for a new road.

Hanover Park trustees on Thursday decided to possibly revisit the issue of repairing Celebrity Circle at their Oct. 1 meeting after a lengthy discussion on how the village would fund the estimated $1 million project. A vote on the project's approval was originally on the agenda for Thursday.

The village had planned to fund the reconstruction with money from its motor fuel tax fund. But Hanover Park, like other municipalities, isn't getting its cut of the motor fuel tax from the state.

Without that money, officials say, they don't yet want to move forward with the reconstruction of Celebrity Circle.

Early in the discussion, Trustee Bill Cannon said he fears the "weight of the problem is going to grow" if the village delays the work.

"Celebrity Circle is going to have to be done, one way or the other," Cannon said.

And if the board revisits the topic in October, it could be too late in the year to begin construction on the road, even if it approves the project,

"The asphalt plants close in mid-November," Director of Public Works and Engineering TJ Moore said.

While the village has money in a reserve fund it could use to pay for the reconstruction this year, Village Manager Juliana Maller advised the village to save that money for cash-flow purposes. The village is also trying to increase the size of its reserve fund, Maller said.

"If we borrow from the general funds we have no guarantee that money is going to be replenished," Maller said.

If the board decides to wait until 2016 to begin the reconstruction, the village could save money, Moore said.

"Bids come in lower in the winter," he said.

A-Lamp Road Builders was the lowest bidder for the project in August at $967,603.

If the reconstruction gets put off until next year, Trustee Ed Zimel questioned whether the ruts in Celebrity Circle would pose a threat to salt trucks and snowplows in the winter.

But Moore said, "We would be more likely to damage the road surface than the road would be likely to damage us."