The Trustees and I have agreed that due to the economic climate, we will not borrow funds this year to implement a full scale capital improvement program. Rather, we will make modest improvements with monies on hand. Traditionally, the Village borrowed in the million dollar range for such capital purchases as police cars, garbage trucks, all varieties of Public Works equipment, computers, road paving and curbing and parking meter supplies. The idea employed in our annual capital improvement program is to finance equipment, repairs and improvements over the life of their usefulness as opposed to paying for these kinds of items in an annual budget. This year we have cobbled funds together through State grants, State highway funds and closeouts of old projects on our books that were deemed not critical to the functioning of the Village to put together a modest program. Many of the police and public works vehicles and administrative electronic equipment will simply have to last another year. We were able to secure the funding for a much needed police car by requesting grant money that was allocated from the State through the efforts of our State Senator Jeffrey Klein. In addition, we received our yearly Consolidated Highway Improvement Program or CHIPS funds from the State in the amount of $99,988.14, a 1.05% increase from last year. This money must and will be used for road resurfacing this summer. As a result of a thorough review of all our accounts and close-outs of projects that were no longer timely nor deemed critical, we will have in the neighborhood of $250,000 for road resurfacing and curbing. In years of better financial condition, we had accelerated the paving program to over $400,000 per year.
