The Lakewood Village Board agreed to post on its web site the budget passed unanimously Tuesday night.
Lakewood Village Board
During both the budget hearing preceding the regular meeting and the meeting thereafter, only Board members and staff had copies of the budget being considered.
Neighbors from Hampshire Lane attended in force.
Many expressed their opposition to the splitting of a lot on the corner of Lake Avenue to allow a house to be built behind it.
Not only did the Board agree to posting the just-passed budget, but agreed to make internet accessible next year’s preliminary budget documents.
There should to be a state law that proposed municipal budgets must be posted on the district website, and a public meeting held about the budget, prior to the meeting at which the municipal board does or does not approve the budget.
It seems there are more stringent state laws for the transparency of school district budgets as compared to municipal budgets.
When does Serwatka get sworn in?
Here are some excerpts from the Illinois Municipal Budget Law (50 ILCS 330/) regarding the public disclosure and posting of proposed budgets.
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=708&ChapterID=11
“Such budget and appropriation ordinance shall be prepared in tentative form by some person or persons designated by the governing body, and in such tentative form shall be made conveniently available to public inspection for at least thirty days prior to final action thereon.”
“Such notice shall state the time and place where copies of the tentative budget and appropriation ordinance are available for public inspection and the time and place of the hearing.”
“It shall be the duty of the clerk, secretary, or other similar officer, of such municipality to make such tentative budget and appropriation ordinance available to public inspection, and to arrange for such public hearing or hearings.”
Once again, it should be state law that proposed municipal budgets are posted on the district website, with the words “proposed budget” appearing on the home page of the district website, with a link to the proposed budget.
As ridiculous as that level of detail may seem, it’s important to be specific in the law so the budget doesn’t get buried on the district website, doesn’t have a name that’s not intuitively interpreted to mean proposed budget, or both.
And furthermore there should be a consequence to the taxing district if they do not adhere to such a law, assuming the taxing district has and maintains a website.
It seems ridiculous to even have to do any of that, just post the proposed budget on the website taxing districts, with a notification on the home page of the website, and notifications in the monthly / quarterly newsletter; let the public review the budget for 30 days; then discuss the proposed budget at a public meeting.
There are plenty of basic reforms such as this that can be implemented at many taxing districts for little cost.
This issue is illustrative of the adversarial process of local government: the government is adversarial to home-owning taxpayers.
By Illinois law, oceans of taxpayer money/equity are made available to government/statutorily empowered taxing bodies to spend/borrow against.
There are few practical restrictions of consequence on how that money may be spent.
Homeowners may not realize that we need to protect themselves against those empowered to tax.
Home ‘ownership’ must be repurchased annually from the legally empowered owners of homes and property (local government/statutorily enabled taxing bodies).
Expenditures of tax money are determinant of how much money we must pay each year in order to retain some ‘ownership’ interest in our own homes.
Renters make up a huge (by comparison to the rest of America) percentage of Woodstock inhabitants.
Rent price is largely a function of local property tax.
Renters’ monthly rent is higher than State and National average by significant amount.
Renters can move.
Investor owners of rental real estate can walk away and leave banks (actually, taxpayers) holding the bag.
Sure, owner occupants can also walk away from property, and banks will be bailed out by taxpayers somewhere somehow.
But where will you go to live?
Illinois (but especially McHenry County) has sucked so much value out of homes and land that any homeowner trying to sell here and move elsewhere will face a horrifying reality: the rest of America does not tax like McHenry County, so the home values EVERYWHERE ELSE are extraordinarily higher than here.
Historically, governmentally engineered ‘crashing’ of property value has resulted in the government-connected-insider purchase of real property for pennies on the dollar.
Here we are.
Now what shall we do?
See the entire Lakewood board meeting on YouTube. Search YouTube for “Village of Lakewood” and click on the generic blue square channel icon.
There you will find the most recent meeting in three parts.
Of note are the instructions provided to village trustees from their attorney.
Trustees were advised to NOT speak to residents over alleged “litigation”.
If the trustees, their incompetent village manager, and their president would simply FOLLOW THEIR OWN ORDINANCES instead of picking and choosing winners and losers, much conflict would be avoided.
Does this sound similar to the TIF district?
Pay attention, Lakewood.
Your village board is operating without checks and balances.
It’s time to get involved and pay attention.