Oswego village trustees to look at retail, commercial possibilities for vacant land

Oswego Village Trustee Kit Kuhrt wants to see the village work more on reducing the tax burden on residents by increasing its efforts to bring new retail development to the village.

“We don’t want to be a bedroom community, because that relies on housing for property tax income,” Kuhrt said. “You need to offset it with retail and commercial.”

Doing so will reduce the tax burden on residents, he said. Kuhrt voiced his concerns during the Jan. 7 Oswego Village Board meeting.

“We keep focusing on housing during our meetings,” Kuhrt said in addressing fellow village trustees and other village officials at the meeting. “I want to see if we can get consensus to maybe talk at a future Committee of the Whole meeting about putting together a plan about business and retail.”

Kuhrt said village staff should work on making sure that vacant land in the village is plot ready for new businesses.

“Businesses could go there and start right away,” he said. “Our constituents keep seeing their taxes go up. If we don’t bring revenue in from business and industry, they will just keep on going up. So we need to start bringing in more business and industry.”

Oswego Village Administrator Dan Di Santo said the issue could be discussed at a future Committee of the Whole meeting. He noted that Oswego Economic Development Director Kevin Leighty and other staff members attend the International Council of Shopping Centers' conferences in Las Vegas and Chicago every year.

Di Santo noted that Leighty has worked together with community relations on putting together a number of property sheets on all the vacant property in town.

“Perhaps if the board wanted to discuss this at a Committee of the Whole meeting, it could be Kevin kind of walking the board through what we walk potential businesses and developers through at these conventions,” he said. “We’re going in May, so maybe doing this in advance of us heading out there in May would work.”

He said Leighty could tell the village board how the properties are being pitched for development and if there are any barriers preventing a certain piece of land from being developed. Kuhrt said he would like the village to be able to potentially fix some of the barriers.

“In business, time is money,” he said. “They’ll move on to another property that’s ready to build.”

Di Santo said Leighty could address that in his upcoming presentation.

“I think that’s what he’s wanting to do,” he said. “We could put up maps and say, ‘Here are the properties that have yet to develop and here’s why they haven’t developed.' ”

Village trustee Karen Novy thought it was a good idea.

“It would be good information, I think, to have,” she said.

Village President Ryan Kauffman agreed.

“Anything we can do to attract more businesses, I’m all in favor of,” he said.