Administrator’s Report
by Village Administrator / Public Safety Director JW Fairman
UCR-Uniform Crime Reporting
Statistics (Update)
- January 2016 UCR crime report graph will be sent to the Board after February 1st.
Update on Blueprint Partners
Project-BPP / Vacant Housing / Contract Components
- The Village’s master vacant list, to date, shows 475 vacant homes:
- Vacant 379 houses
- Vacant/Occupied 84 houses
- Demo list 12 houses
SVPD is the process of identifying
the 84 vacant/occupied houses as to their status.
- Several months ago legislation had been submitted to the Board of Trustees to assist staff in their efforts to control vacancy related issues. This legislation will spell out ownership responsibility on all issues of property located in Sauk Village relating to occupancy, water and sewer. The Village continues to lose a considerable amount of financial resources from vacant/occupied houses that are not paying their related cost for Village services. By year’s end this cost could well exceed $50,000. It is staff’s position that this legislation should be moved forward. We thank Trustee Burgess and Meyers for supporting staff efforts on this legislation.
- Staff has also reviewed Village’s scavenger contract to ascertain if the Village is paying the vender for acceptable services. Several obvious conclusions have been made:
- The contract provides for scavenger services for every residential house in the Village.
- The Vender will deliver those services unless otherwise notified by the Village that the number of residential units has changed.
- Staff has advised me that due to layoffs several years ago no staff, since the layoffs, has notified the vender in regards to discontinuation of scavenger services for vacant properties. The current scavenger billing for each residential property is $16.75 monthly. Staff currently pays the Vender what it receives from the billings and the underage (approximately $96,000 in 2015) is what the Village is compounding and owes the Vender.
- For compliance purposes Staff will begin sending the Vender (on a monthly basis beginning February 1, 2016) the Village’s master vacant list requesting that the Vender not bill the Village for services to properties on the vacant list.
- I strongly recommend that a liaison from the Board of Trustees have a meeting with the Vender in regards to past debt regarding services rendered to vacant houses.
BUDGET
Staff continues to prepare a draft
for the 2015/16 annual budget. When completed, the draft will be submitted to
the Finance Committee for review.