Roads, Development Among Big Investments In Frankfort Budget

FRANKFORT, IL — Frankfort residents can expect to see a lot of work being done over the next year on its roads, improvements to its water and sewer facilities, and a new software system for the Village that will allow residents better access to services, such as utility payments, permit applications and home inspections.

The Village of Frankfort released Wednesday details of its fiscal year 2022-2023 budget. The budget represents a general fund revenue of a little more than $23 million, an increase of about $3.5 million from the previous year, according to Village documents. It also represents an operating surplus of nearly $4.7 million, which will be used to fund a portion of the Village's Capital Development Fund.

The Village has $7 million budgeted for road resurfacing projects. There are 130 miles of road in the village to maintain, according to Frankfort Mayor Keith Ogle.

"We had fallen way behind the maintenance curve," Ogle said. Going back to 2017-2018, the Village only had around $400,000 budgeted for roadwork, he said.

Investing in road resurfacing now will ultimately save the Village money so that resurfacing projects don't turn into road rebuilding projects, which would cost the Village one-and-a-half to two times what resurfacing costs, Ogle said.

The Village passed a non-home rule sales tax referendum in November 2018 and began seeing that revenue in 2019, Ogle said. That money collected from the sales tax was specifically targeted for roadwork and infrastructure improvements, and to hire additional police officers, Ogle said.

In addition to the money set aside for roadwork, the Village has around $3.9 million budgeted for the extension of Pfeiffer Road from U.S. Route 30 to Colorado Avenue. That extension will open up a corridor for development that could range from new housing to new businesses to new recreational areas, Ogle said.

"This is a major thing for us," Ogle said. "That will connect near the library at Route 30 and will connect to Colorado Avenue, which will open up that entire area from, basically the library down to Mariano's, which we're calling The Central Route 30 Corridor, as identified in our [2040] Comprehensive Plan, opening that up for development."

Ogle said he expects bids to begin going out in June for The Central Route 30 Corridor development.

This year's budget also includes $4.5 million for improvements to the new Elsner Tower well and iron removal facility, as well as funding for the continued replacement of water mains, lead service line replacements, and sewer system improvements, according to Village documents.

One item in particular that Ogle said he's most excited about is $300,000 budgeted to upgrade the Village's 20-year-old computer system. The upgraded system, called the Enterprise Resource Planning software, will offer residents a simpler way to pay bills, apply for permits and search public records, among other tools offered by the software.

"The financial things will all be tied together, the various departments will actually be able to talk on a single system," Ogle said. "So, it's a huge thing we've been looking at for the past year."

Completion of the Enterprise Resource Planning software is expected to take about 10-12 months, Ogle said.

He added that although costs for nearly everything have gone up, especially in the past two years, the Village has no plans to reduce any of its services to residents. In fact, the budget includes allocations for connecting bike paths and parts of Old Plank Road Trail, and even a street sweeper for the Public Works Department.

"We want to keep everything here clean and welcoming, and this is just a continuation of that process," Ogle said. "We're looking forward to some really good things in the future with us."

Readers can view the full budget details online by following this link.