Oak Brook Board of Trustees Meeting of July 20, 2009

The meeting was called to order at 6:30PM. The video podcast is available at http://bit.ly/92O3D/ Trustee Saiyed was absent. Al Knuth was the first resident comment. He supported the board’s cuts to balance the budget. Chuck Shemley noted the previous board had cut over $1M from the budget beginning nearly a year ago. The new board created a Citizen’s Finance Advisory Committee and Trustee Aktipis demanded the Village Manager find another $1.5M of cuts. He said that the Citizen’s Finance Advisory Committee should be allowed to do its work before more drastic cuts were made. He questioned whether there was some undisclosed reason for the urgency of the cuts. Mario Vescovi asked to have all Village employees’ salaries and benefits posted on the Village web site. He suggested following Mayor Daley’s lead and require new Village employees (except fire and police) to live in the Village. He said he had several neighbors in Fullersburg who would take jobs for the salaries being paid to current employees. Village Manager Niemeyer responded that comparative studies of Village pay to neighboring towns indicated they were just above the median for municipal government in the area. He stated the average salary was $72k per year and that the police and fire pension benefits were abnormally high to compensate for the stock market losses suffered last year. This was dictated by the state and the village had no control over it. Trustee Aktipis responded that the Finance committee was set up to look at long term issues and it was the responsibility of the new board to react to the crisis facing the village and after the closed meeting it would be revealed what cuts were being made. When they came out of closed session, Trustee Aktipis proposed $1.26M of staffing cuts from every department of the village except for the library. Trustee Zannis seconded and it was approved. Trustee Aktipis then proposed the Reduction in Force Policy, again with Trustee Zannis seconding and this passed. They adjourned with no comments from anyone. The cuts are detailed at the village web site at http://bit.ly/Y5uCj/
The Doings article on this is at http://bit.ly/OzwE5/