With the new year on us, everyone is abuzz with resolutions, predictions and fresh starts. To see what’s ahead for Riverside, the Landmark sat down with village president Douglas Pollock to talk about the top priorities for the village and the challenges awaiting ahead.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the top priorities for the village in 2024?
The Village board right now is working on adopting strategic goals for 2024 and we anticipate that those will be determined and finalized in early January. I can’t say for sure what our priorities are for 2024, but I can give you some idea of what we’ll be looking at.
Some of the items that have been brought up in this process of developing strategic goals includes our facility needs, Riverside has a need for better police and fire facilities. Some of our facilities are substandard and we’d like to improve those for our police and fire in particular. But overall, the village’s administration department also needs some better facilities, but mainly police and fire. We’re looking at what’s commonly called the youth center building, which is at kind of warehouse-looking building behind the village hall and we’ll be looking at that to see what we can do with that. That’ll certainly be a priority in the coming year.
Other items that have come up that are priority include the sustainability that we’ve been working on. We are members of C4, the cross-community climate collaborative, and I expect that we’ll be adopting a sustainability plan for the village of Riverside in the first quarter of the year, first half for the year for sure. The details of that are to be determined, but that will certainly be a priority. Other items that come to mind: We’re still working with the Army Corps of Engineers on the Groveland flood wall. That is still in progress. They’re in the design phase of that, the village is not committed to build that yet, but we’re hoping that we can get more information and reach a decision sometime soon. We’re just dependent upon the army corps of engineers is to the timing of that, as well as dependent on Metropolitan Water Reclamation District in terms of funding for that project. So that’ll be a big focus of 2024.
The only other item that comes to mind right now is the starting a planning process for the sesquicentennial of the village of Riverside. In 2025, the village of Riverside will celebrate its 150th anniversary. You may recall at a recent board meeting we appointed a committee to oversee that, the planning efforts. They’ve met once and they’ll be meeting on a regular basis here in the coming for the rest of 2024 and we’re excited about that. They will plan some events to celebrate our anniversary in 2025.
The last thing I would mention is the village board, the trustees, want to prioritize parks and recreation facilities and programs and we’ll be looking more at what we can do to enhance our parks and recreation offerings for the village.
What do you mean by that?
Well, we recently hired a consultant to do a survey of the community and that survey will lead to a master plan for parks and recreation facilities and programming, and that’ll be occurring throughout 2024. We awarded a contract at our last board meeting to a consultant to do that survey and research for us and prepare a plan for us so that we can look at where we’re meeting the needs, where our strengths are, in terms of parks and recs, as well as what some of our opportunities could be in the future to improve parks and rec. programming and facilities in Riverside. We have a lot of young families in Riverside now, and we want to take advantage of that and make sure that we’re meeting their needs as well as every other demographic group in the village.
What are the biggest challenges that the village is facing in 2024?
Well, you know, as with most villages it’s always about making the best use out of limited resources. Yeah, we have very strong facility needs, as I mentioned, financing that’s going to be a challenge. Financing facilities, the Groveland flood wall, financing that, coming up with a plan for the Groveland flood wall that will honor and respect the existing homes on the river, as well as provide flood relief for residents in that area. So yeah, financing some of these projects that we’d like to get done. Probably the biggest challenge that we face.
How are you planning to deal with these challenges?
To be determined. We’ll be looking into that as a board, trustees will be looking into that with support from our staff. We’ll have to make priorities and make decisions on how we address these issues.
Are there any other challenges besides the financial?
That’s the main thing, finding out how we can continue to meet the needs of the residents.
Are there any plans for improving the infrastructure in the village?
Oh yeah, that’s ongoing, I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s right up there with the other categories I mentioned is continuing to improve our infrastructure. We’re looking at how to fund our street maintenance program and we will be reviewing and discussing how the board wants to continue to finance that and as well how that fits in with our overall capital improvement plan.