LaGrange Park trustees accept $600,000 in grants for public works garage

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Updated: April 2, 2012 1:55AM

By a 4-3 vote, the LaGrange Park Village Board has agreed to accept $600,000 in grants to help fund renovations to the village’s aging public works garage.

Voting in favor of the measure Jan. 24 were trustees Scott Mesick, LaVelle Topps and Patricia Rocco and Village President Jim Discipio, who broke the tie.

“The time has come we need to move forward on this,” Discipio said. “The grant money is there for us to utilize, and we do have the funds necessary to provide a $1.2 million building.

“What happened in the past, we can look at the negatives all we want, but that doesn’t help us today or help our employees,” he said. ‘We’ve got to be positive and move forward.”

Trustees Marshall Seeder, Rimas Kozica and Susan Storcel opposed the measure, because they said the scope and cost of the project weren’t detailed enough.

“What I’m in favor of is finding out what this is going to cost,” Seeder said. “We’re about to vote on this with the bare minimum of $1.25 million. I don’t think we should spend taxpayers’ money on the basis of guesses.”

The board’s vote followed a lengthy presentation and debate on the history of repairing or replacing the garage, parts of which were built in 1953. Estimate have ranged since 2006 from about $380,000 for repairing parts of the structure to constructing a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards building for $6.7 million.

More recently, the board reached consensus in October 2010 on renovating part of the garage and replacing the oldest section with a metal building totaling 6,775 square feet, estimated to cost $1.2 million. The board has set aside $600,000 to fund the project.

But trustees stopped short of spending $16,000 in February to develop detailed plans for the garage, including a more refined cost estimate and exactly what could be included for $1.2 million. Trustees wanted to learn whether the grants would be approved first, and funding was tied up in a court challenge until July.

Seeder, Kozica and Storcel said they favored having an architect draw up the detailed plans before accepting the grants. Village Manager Julia Cedillo said she would check on how long it would take to update figures on the preliminary estimates, as well as draw up the detailed plans.

Topps said he didn’t want to risk having the village lose the funding by missing a Feb. 17 deadline.

“We all want the same thing. We have to take the next step,” he said. “To wait until Feb. 17, I don’t feel comfortable. I’d rather get it in place.”

Rocco said she was confident in voting for the measure because the wording is flexible and general in scope, not committing the village to a specific plan.

“It only makes sense to accept the $600,000 grants,” Rocco said. “It’s easier to go ahead with modifications later than to change the terms of the grant. There seems to be no down side in accepting the grant funds.”

Mesick, who served as chairman of a committee studying the project, agreed.

“Now the funding is here, and it’s time to spend it wisely,” Mesick said.