The village board met on Tuesday, July 29th at 6:30 pm. The agenda items for this meeting can be found here. As always, village meetings are open to the public and we strongly encourage residents attend to make their voices heard about things that are important to them.
This month, we had the pleasure of seeing a promotion within the Minooka police department. Officer Chris Presler has been promoted to Sergeant. We’re grateful to Sergeant Presler’s dedication to serving our community and keeping our residents and businesses safe. Sergeant Presler had many of his fellow officers in attendance and he was pinned by his wife and children. Congrats to Sergeant Chris Presler on his promotion!
This month we did have to perform some emergency repairs to a controller relay at Well 9. Maintaining safe and reliable drinking water is one of the highest priorities of the village, and staff & the board worked quickly to ensure that repairs were made to ensure no major disruptions of service.
Earlier this year, the village renewed its contract with our waste disposal provider for 7 more years, and as part of that the board had to update our ordinance to amend the updated rates that will be charged over those 7 years. The village has worked diligently to keep costs affordable and securing extra benefits for the community, such as storm debris removal after heavy storms.
One agenda item that struck me personally was a contract amendment with an auditor who helps the village ensure its receiving the tax money it is supposed to. They are suggesting the state is mis-applying the law regarding utility tax, and were seeking support in having the state reinterpret the law (at a cost to the village that was not budgeted for). The end result would be increased utility taxes on residents and businesses with solar generation. I voted against that, and it did ultimately fail to be passed by the Village. Ultimately, the auditor will likely go to the state with the support of the other villages and the state may choose to change their interpretation of the law anyways. However, voting no now means we’re not spending unbudgeted tax dollars to encourage the state to have residents and businesses with solar pay more taxes. To me – this suggested interpretation of net-metering utility tax felt akin to charging residents the grocery tax for tomatoes they were to grow in their garden. It didn’t feel right and I didn’t support it.
I ran for trustee saying I would work to lower taxes where possible, and not supporting needless tax increases is just another way I aim to keep my promise to the people of Minooka. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope to see you at our next village board meeting.
~Josh
