Elmhurst Hiring Tax Hike Consultant

ELMHURST, IL – Elmhurst is poised to pay a consultant nearly $100,000 to investigate a way to raise taxes to cover stormwater debt.

On Monday, the City Council approved a proposal to seek a consultant for the job, paying between $75,000 and $95,000.

Over the next 18 years, Elmhurst is obligated to pay $50 million in debt for previous stormwater work, according to a city memo. More such projects are planned for the coming years.

In 2016, the city enacted a quarter-percent sales tax to cover the debt.

"At the time, we felt that was possibly all we would need," Alderman Bob Dunn told the council.

That turned out not to be the case, he said.

"We're quite underfunded," he said. "It's no doubt that we would have to implement some measures to fund the debt service."

Since last fall, the City Council's Finance Committee, which Dunn heads, has looked into possibilities for raising taxes.

One of the options was raising the sales tax again. But Dunn said an increase may make Elmhurst's businesses less competitive with those in nearby towns.

The committee settled on the possibility of imposing a stormwater fee on residents and businesses. A number of suburbs have such a fee. Often, it is based on the amount of impervious surface such as pavement on a property. Such surfaces are seen as causing more flooding.

Alderman Mike Brennan said stormwater projects are costly undertakings. But he said they have made Elmhurst a better city and more reliable during big storms.

He said hiring a consultant had his full support.

Alderwoman Marti Deuter also liked the idea.

"The city undertook the stormwater projects as a necessity," she said. "We were experiencing widespread flooding, not due to an increase in impervious surfaces, but because the amount of water falling from the sky in extreme storm events was more than our aging stormwater system was designed to handle."

She said she preferred a simpler stormwater fee. She said that was because the city already had policies in place to control increases in surfaces such as pavement.

"I don't think that we would be well served by a complex stormwater fee that does the same and is complicated and expensive to administer," Deuter said.

The City Council voted unanimously to seek a consultant. Aldermen Michael Honquest and Brian Cahill were absent.