Town of Cicero Discusses 2022 Tax Levy And Grant Application To Identify Lead Water Service Lines
The Town of Cicero trustees during their bi-weekly board meeting on Tuesday, December 13th, 2022. April Alonso for Cicero Independiente.
By Efraín Soriano
The Town of Cicero Board of Trustees and President Larry Dominick met on December 13, 2022 for the final board meeting of the year to approve several ordinances and resolutions.
The agenda items approved included a new contractual memorandum with the Local 717 Firefighters union, the 2022 Tax Levy assessment, and a grant application for a lead service line inventory.
You can find all the documents used for this recap here. Full video recordings of the meetings can be found below or on our youtube channel.
Here’s a summary of the approved agenda items:
2022 Tax Levy
The board began by approving an ordinance for the levy and assessment of taxes for 2022. The tax levy assessment estimates the amount of funding that the Town of Cicero will need to raise through property taxes for the 2022 fiscal year. The total amount of the tax levy is estimated to be $40,460,062.
The tax levy makes up roughly 19% of the total annual budget for the Town of Cicero. Meaning that every 1 in 5 dollars spent by the Town is provided by property taxes.
In 2020, that same tax levy was $37,973,000 and in 2021 it was $37,786,974.
Police and Fire Union Agreements
The next agenda item approved was a contractual memorandum between the Town and the Local 717 Firefighters union which amends the current collective bargaining agreement to now include a retirement healthcare funding plan. This provides a path for Firefighters and Paramedics who are members of this union to contribute to a 115 Trust fund for post-employment medical expenses. You can find the entire agreement in the documents above.
The Cicero Police Department previously had a provision for retiree health insurance costs which required the Town to provide 75% of the cost of health insurance for retired Patrol and Sergeants. However, actuaries of this fund found that the Town would be unable to pay these debts if it continued to provide this benefit. The town approved a resolution that would terminate these benefits in the future for any CPD members of the Patrol and Sergeant ranks.
The Town will have to continue to provide this benefit until the police union and the town reach a new collective bargaining agreement. The previous agreement expired in December 2020, and both parties have been in negotiations since.
Town Spending
The following agenda item approved was a service agreement with Imaging Office Systems for the continued use of their FileBound system. The Cicero Building Department relies heavily on this system to electronically access the abundance of records they have on site. The agreement sets a price of $1,518 per month for the next three years.
An invoice from Diamond Graphics, Inc in the amount of $10,754 was approved by the town. Diamond Graphics provided printing and distribution services for the Town’s December 2022 Seniors of Cicero Newsletter to about 5000 homes.
The board also approved a maximum of $500 monthly for services provided by MailChimp.com in the distribution of the Town’s eNewsletter. The town hopes to reach a total of 20,000 subscribers to their email newsletter.
The final invoice approved by the board was from Air One Equipment, Inc in the amount of $21,462. This invoice covered the purchase of nine sets of new and replacement protective equipment for members of the Cicero Fire Department.
The last resolution approved was an application to receive grant funding from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s (IEPA) Lead Service Line Inventory Grant Program. If approved, the program would provide Cicero with a grant to aid in their continued reporting of the presence of lead service lines in our community water supply.
Cicero initially participated in the IEPA’s 2018 analysis of lead service lines which identified that 98% of the service lines in the community water supply were made of lead. This grant would require Cicero to report the percentage of service lines that are made of lead or other materials, and the number of lead service lines that have been replaced since the last inventory.
You can find the full video recording of the board meeting below.
Efrain Soriano is a contributing reporter for Cicero Independiente.
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