Oak Brook Board of Trustees Meeting of June 15, 2009

The meeting was called to order at 7:00PM. The video podcast of the entire meeting is available at http://www.oakbrooktv.org/. All Trustees were present. The first item on the agenda was public comment. Three people, Roberta Petz, Lois Miller, and Marian Sharli, commented on consultants for saving money at the Library. They all opposed any cuts at the library. Lois Miller suggested that this meeting had inadequate notice and library supporters had not had enough time to organize and mobilize library supporters. Clerk Pruss noted that any resident could request they be emailed agendas for Village meetings. Trustee Wolin noted that the village needed to cut costs for every function of the village. Over the last 10 years the sales tax revenue had been flat while expenses kept growing. The library would need to share in the cost reductions all departments would have to bear. The next agenda item was review of employee health insurance plan for renewal. The proposal was to increase the employee share to the premium from 10% to 12.5%, increase the deductibles and co-pays and to eliminate the standard PPO option for new employees and replace it with a very high deductible $1500 singles, $4500 family) including a medical savings account. Trustee Wolin supported the proposal while suggesting that the employee share of the premium increase to 15% instead of 12.5%. In the discussion that followed Trustee Zannis proposed increasing this to 20%. Trustee Aktipis suggested 20% might be two much, so Trustee Wolin suggested a 17.5% compromise, which Trustee Zannis accepted. This passed with a request to staff to further investigate other options. The next item was the budget review, presented by Trustee Aktipis. Sales tax continues to fall short of the budget but now the village’s share of income tax from the state is also falling behind budget. The total deficit for the year is projected to be $1,860,000. The newly elected board members have been meeting with the village manager and don’t believe revenues will improve in the foreseeable future. Many of the expense reductions proposed by the village manager are postponements of expenses or temporary cuts and not structural cuts in ongoing expenses. In Trustee Aktipis’ evaluation, even with the proposed reductions in expenses the budget will be $879,000 in the red. He thought that the village should make budgets cut of one and one half to two million dollars. Trustee Zannis asked if the average village employee cost $100,000. Manager Neimeyer said he could not say for certain. He proposed making projections for the 2010 budget and developing proposals for several levels of further cuts. He suggested the board have a special meeting the week of July 6 to focus on the budget. Next Trustee Wolin presented the Library Associates contract. For $4800 they would interview the library staff and make recommendations on how much the library budget could be reduced while still providing good service to library patrons. Their report would be done in 30 days. The meeting was adjourned without closed session.