December Sales Tax Total Breaks Village Record

Sales tax and census numbers delivered to the village recently brought good news and an unwelcome surprise.

Lemont residents shopped at home for Christmas, said Mayor Brian Reaves, who announced at Monday’s Village Board meeting that the sales tax total for December was the biggest ever in the village for that month.

The village will receive $216,886, an increase of $38,000 over sales tax revenue in December 2009. Lemont collects between $1.5 million and $1.6 million in sales taxes each year, said Village Administrator Ben Wehmeier.

A less pleasing figure was a count of in the 2010 U.S. Census, the results of which were released last month.

Reaves said the village will look into the figure because it is 625 people fewer than were counted in a 2007 special census.

“As the number drops, that’s less revenue from the state,” he said.

In 2000, the last regular census, 13,098 people were counted as living in Lemont.  

The census number determines how much money the state gives the village from such sources as the Illinois income tax, special use taxes and the motor-fuel tax.

Lemont has conducted two special censuses, which are allowed by the state in areas where significant population growth is seen. In 2004-2005, about 15,600 people were counted, Wehmeier said.

In other business, the village awarded contracts for a long list of water main and well projects. Wehmeier noted that low bids for all the work came in under the village engineer’s estimates, one by as much as 29 percent.

Water main replacement or extension  will be done in the area of Kim/Kip/Cherokee/Keepataw ($241,223); Bell Road ($92,242); and Houston Street ($366,457). The wells on Houston and State streets will be rehabilitated in a $1.8 million project expected to be completed in June 2012.

The village will also construct a storm sewer on Warner Avenue and Eureka Road to take storm water out of the current system and send it to catch basins in the alley behind Warner. The village needed an easement from a property owner, who has agreed to the work.