Village suspends Sixth Street rebuild

There will be no special service area to help pay for an all-brick Sixth Street, at least for now.

At Tuesday night’s Hinsdale Village Board meeting, trustees voted to terminate the plan to increase property taxes for residents along the roadway between Grant Street and County Line Road to bridge the funding gap for the reconstruction. The decision was made after Congress failed to pass a 2025 federal budget that was expected to include a $1.1 million grant for the project. A stripped-down stop-gap measure to fund the government through March was passed instead, Village President Tom Cauley explained.

“(Congress) basically agreed to fund the government day to day and push everything else off until March,” Cauley reported. “I think that the best thing for us to do at this point is to withdraw the SSA and restart it after March when we know for sure that we’ve got the $1.1 million.”

He said village manager Kathleen Gargano received encouraging signals from U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-4, Chicago) that the funding ultimately will come through.

“(Garcia) still thinks the $1.1 million grant is likely to be awarded, but we won’t know for sure until March,” Cauley said.

As part of the $4.5 million project to reconstruct the four-block stretch, the village had planned to spend $800,000 on brick intersections and at the meeting points with Garfield and County Line, and use asphalt for the rest of the street. But residents urged the village to preserve the entire brick-surfaced stretch, which would cost an additional $2 million.

The SSA idea was introduced last fall to bridge the gap. At a public hearing in December, the possibility of the grant emerged. The federal funding would reduce the residents’ burden from $2 million to $900,000 and reduce the average cost to an SSA homeowner from $7,262 a year to $2,300 a year per parcel. Residents can defeat the SSA by collecting petitions signed by 51 percent of property owners and taxpayers.

The delay means the work timeframe, which had been set for this year, has been pushed to 2026. Cauley noted the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is keen on the village separating the sanitary and stormwater sewers as part of the project.

“We’re going to get an extension from (the IEPA), I don’t think that should be a problem given that the apple cart was upset by what Congress did,” he said.

Cauley also downplayed the potential for cost increases due to the delay, projecting that price hikes seen during COVID will subside.

“We’ve conservatively estimated the budget, so any likely cost increases will be encompassed in the budget we’ve already put forth,” he said.

If and when the SSA process is restarted, a new public hearing will be held, village officials stated.

“Everything we talked and thought about in December will remain the same,” Cauley said. “The only thing we’re really doing is putting it off until the $1.1 million grant is actually dispersed.”