With the early voting period ongoing and Election Day coming fast on Nov. 3, voters are being asked to weigh in on Brookfield’s referendum question.
“The purpose of the referendum is for the village to establish a consistent and permanent funding source for roads. The way we do it now, we can raise about $3 million a year in our general operations budget,” Village Manager Tim Wiberg told the Landmark. “We need about $5 million to maintain a 25-year replacement schedule for our roads. If we don’t have the referendum money, we’re basically on a 50-year replacement schedule with just our existing funding source, and 50 years is not good for asphalt roads.”
If the referendum passes with more “yes” votes than “no,” it would increase Brookfield’s limiting rate for levy year 2026 to a degree that would allow the village to capture an additional $2 million in property tax revenues, which it would dedicate to maintaining roads and potentially improving alleyways. Due to the cumulative nature of tax extensions, the additional $2 million would be collected every year beginning with the 2026 tax bills due in 2027.
Brookfield issued a series of bonds in 2016, 2018 and 2020 with voter approval to maintain roads until this point. The tax extension would apply at the same time as the bond debt from 2016 falls off, meaning taxpayers won’t experience an increase or a decrease on the village’s portion of their tax bills.
“This is a unique point in history. The timing of these bonds going off, there’s no other time I can think of, ever, that I can say, as a local government representative [when this has happened],” Wiberg said. “We gotta maintain the roads. We can have a reliable funding source for probably forever without raising your taxes. We can do that right now.”
If the referendum fails, taxpayers will see a decrease on their tax bills through 2029 as the bond series expires and Brookfield no longer needs to pay back its debt. But that would leave Brookfield in a situation to once again seek a referendum to take out bonds, which would see taxes increase further than the temporary abatement, Wiberg said.
That method would also be less efficient, Assistant Village Manager Stevie Ferrari said, as Brookfield would have to pay legal fees related to the issuance of the bonds. That money could instead be put directly into maintaining roads if the current referendum is passed, she said.
Otherwise, Brookfield’s roads will slowly deteriorate faster than the village could afford to improve them, they said.
“A ‘no’ [result] will drop median home value of $300,000 by about 300 and some dollars. I’ve heard this out in discussions: ‘I’d rather have the $300 now in this economy,’ and I get it. That’s gas. That’s rent. That’s car and phone bills,” Ferrari said. If the referendum fails, “Yes, you do get some dollars back, but it does not solve our road improvement problem.”
Wiberg and Ferrari said they’d both heard skepticism from residents online and in-person that Brookfield might not use the new revenue for the purpose of maintaining roads like officials say it will.
The village board is expected to pass a binding resolution on Monday, Oct. 28, committing to using the new funding only for roads, and beyond that, there is no legal way for Brookfield to use the funds elsewhere, Wiberg said.
“We operate under what’s called fund accounting. You have the general fund, the water fund, TIF funds. By law, we cannot commingle those funds, and how does the public know that? How do they protect it? We get audited every year, a state-required audit,” Wiberg said. “There are very stringent state guidelines of how we spend our money. If Doug Cooper, our finance director, if he tried to commingle these funds, he’s going to get busted.”
Beyond the legal mechanisms restricting Brookfield’s use of funds, Wiberg said he would be personally held to account for a misuse of referendum funds.
“I report to my bosses: the mayor and village board, [who] are elected by the public. If there was any inclination or proof that I allowed Doug to use this money [for other purposes], guess what? We’re going to not only get fired but probably arrested,” Wiberg said. “There are all kinds of checks and balances.”
Ferrari said the village is held to account not just in its yearly audit but at the semi-monthly village board meetings that are open to the public.
“Anybody can take a look at [our revenues and expenditures] as part of our board packet” in the form of the corporate warrant, she said. “If you see an expenditure and you find the description too vague, [like] ‘Craft supplies, $300,’ you can pick up the phone and say, ‘The next warrant has craft supplies for $300, but I want to know what that is,’ and we’d have to pull it up, and we’d have to tell you.”
Wiberg said he hoped Brookfield staff had proven themselves to residents as reliable stewards of public funding through their efforts in recent years to replace lead water service lines and water mains far ahead of the state-mandated schedule. The state doesn’t require municipalities to start work until next year in 2027, when Brookfield is set to finish its village-wide replacements.
To do so, Brookfield raised its water rate by 18.5% in 2021 and another 14% in 2022 to fund the service line and water main replacements, Wiberg said.
“Then, knowing that we have this funding source, we went out and got [Illinois Environmental Protection Agency] no-interest loans, the most fiscally responsible way we could do this,” Wiberg said. “I would hope that we’ve demonstrated that we know how to do this kind of stuff.”
