Disparity In Elmhurst's Road Projects: Official

ELMHURST, IL – An Elmhurst alderman on Monday said a disparity existed in how the city spends money on roadwork.

During a City Council meeting, Alderman Michael Bram said the city spent nothing on concrete resurfacing during three years in the last decade. Under a proposed budget, the city also zeroed out the money for 2024.

Many of those streets are in Bram's northeast Ward 3, north of Interstate 290.

In 2014, Bram said, the council voted for a plan to resurface the city's concrete streets by 2026. Now, the city says such work will not be done until 2032.

Meanwhile, the city proposes increasing the budget for resurfacing asphalt streets to nearly $4 million next year, up from $3.3 million.

"We said we need to do fair budgeting," Bram said. "How is that fair budgeting?"

In 2005, a city study rated some concrete streets as being in poor condition, Bran said. Yet Bram said he documented several years after that study in which no money was spent on concrete streets.

"There is a disparity here," he said.

He proposed the city spend $540,000 on concrete streets next year, reflecting the number in 2022.

Others seemed sympathetic to the idea. But they said they wanted the city to figure out the budgetary effects, particularly if the money came from the line item for asphalt work.

Stan Balicki, the city's public works director, said he was concerned about the impact of removing money from the asphalt budget. If some asphalt streets aren't resurfaced soon, he said, the city may have to rebuild them, which would be a lot more costly.

"It's a little bit of a domino effect," Balicki said.

Ward 7 Alderman Mike Brennan said "my gut" was to support Bram's proposal. But he said he wanted an analysis first.

Aldermen unanimously voted to shelve the proposal until the council's meeting next week. Alderwoman Tina Park was not present for the vote.