Normal Mayor Chris Koos is answering criticism of the town council decision's to move ahead with the Uptown underpass project despite steep price increases and a larger town share of the $40.3 million cost.
Two Uptown restauranteurs have argued the amount of the increase that will force the town to pay $12 million more than originally planned suggests the town should have either tabled the project, or waited until more state and federal funding becomes available.
Speaking the day after the council voted 4-3 to proceed with the project, Koos said that kind of thinking extrapolates to zero change.
"Everything is more expensive. So, the question is do you just not do anything because everything is more expensive? And not doing anything becomes more of an imperative because things continue to get more expensive," said Koos, who broke the tie vote to proceed with construction of the underpass, and related costs, at Monday's meeting.
Restaurant owners have complained their customers will be hurt. Ryan Fiala of DP Dough and Fiala Brothers Brewery, and Steve Marifjaren of Windy City Wieners suggested a general sales tax to spread the pain and pay off the project as quickly as possible followed by a sunset provision.
But to pay for the $12 million bond issue needed to complete financing, the council approved increasing the rate for the hotel-motel tax from 6% to 8%, and the food and beverage tax from 2% to 2.25% With the sunset provision, the rates will revert to the lower figures in 2051. Both increases take effect April 1, 2026.
Koos said the increase is not that much.
“A quarter percent sales tax is a minimal sales tax. On a $100 ticket in a restaurant, the tax is 25 cents," he said, adding the town tried to minimize the impact on local citizens.
“Most of it's focused on hotel, motel tax, which is paid by people from outside the community. There were other ways to do it, a sales tax increase. We didn't feel that was appropriate. We could have done property tax increase. We know how well that plays. We felt this was a way to get the dollars to sustain the debt,” Koos said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Further questions centered on the rise in the town’s share of the project from under $3 million to nearly $15 million, a 63% state and federal and 37% local cost split. Fiala and Marifjaren raised the prospect of waiting for a more favorable grant climate.
Koos had different math that he suggested still makes the project a good value for the town.
"If you take into account the fact that the hotel-motel tax is paid by people from outside the community, this project is potentially 80% funded by money that does not come from our citizens," said Koos.
He said the town is "very cautious" about taking on debt and makes sure it has identifiable revenue streams to cover the bonds.
Other questions have come about the compressed five-day timeline from announcement of the tax-hike plan that included the $12 million in borrowing on the bond market, and final passage. The town usually builds in more time for public comment and discourse.
Koos acknowledged that was not optimal.
“That's not our preferred path on how to how to do that, but we were facing two very, very significant issues," he said. "One, if we didn't start the project quickly. I mean, in the next couple of weeks, we didn't feel safe that we'd be able to honor the timeline for the [federal] BUILD grant, and if we didn't honor the timeline with the BUILD grant, there could be claw backs of that money. And the second one is our contractor was getting nervous about holding the bid and facing a rebid. It would have come in probably higher.”
The town opened submitted bids last November and has since spent time reducing the scope of the project by several million dollars to reduce costs and the gap in funding, leading to the question of why not make the funding choices public earlier?
Koos said some of the delay came from the Federal Railroad Administration [FRA].
“It was difficult for us because the grant amendment that we needed from FRA was not clear that we would get that. And if we did not get that grant amendment [changing the deadline to expend federal funds], there would be no project. We didn't feel like we were going to bring this forward to the public if we didn't have a project," said Koos.
He said when the town received approval of the new timeline, it moved to schedule a council work session as soon as possible.
“The FRA was saying because of the DOGE reduction in [work] force that happened at FRA and going into a government shutdown, it took a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations to get that to move forward, and we were told all along that it probably would be months before we would get that amendment agreement. And without that, by going into months, they meant, you know, December, January, February,” said Koos.
Koos reiterated the case for the underpass as a project that is about more than moving people from one spot to another to catch a train. He said it’s a quality-of-life enhancement that includes two new park spaces as well as facilitation for future economic development south of the railroad tracks.
“What those spaces give us is the ability to increase some of the events that we're doing, things like Corn Festival, Sugar Creek Arts Festival, and Make Music Normal," he said.
"We always have more demand for participation than we have space for. So, it does that. It also allows the Children's Discovery Museum and Parks and Recreation to do additional programming because we have different spaces to do that. We have concerts in Uptown during the summer months, and it gives us another venue to do those kinds of things."
Fiala and Marifjaren suggested Uptown South can wait until other projects in Uptown are done.
“I understand that thinking process, but we just don't see that you can only do one project at a time," said Koos. "If there's an imperative or an incentive to do a project while another one's trying to be done, there's no reason to say you can only do one thing at a time.”
He said the town is not close to topping out its capacity to handle multiple projects.
At Monday's council meeting, the head of the firefighters union said the project would further drain other safety efforts in the town. He indicated existing safety shortcomings — possibly referring to the need for another fire station.
Koos rejected the assertion that building the underpass puts safety issues in jeopardy, or on the back burner.
“It does not. It does not. We do not sacrifice public safety and vital core services for the cost of wants, if that is what you call them, or fun things to do. We don't. We don't do that, and we will never do that,” said Koos.
He noted the town council also approved refinancing existing bonds at the same duration to gain a lower interest rate and save about $2 million on interest costs. Koos said the town takes seriously decisions on what it can afford.
