Woodstock Council adopts lower millage rate, approves playground purchase and police off‑duty vendor; several other routine items pass

The mayor and council of the City of Woodstock voted on multiple budgetary and procurement actions at their Sept. 8 meeting, including adoption of a reduced property tax rate and approval of a major playground procurement and new off‑duty police processing arrangements.

Council adopted the 2025 maintenance-and-operations (M&O) millage rate at 5.065 mills and approved a 0.50‑mill levy for parks bond debt service, producing a combined proposed millage of 5.565 mills for calendar 2025. Staff said the adopted M&O rate is lower than the calculated rollback rate of 5.093 mills and is the lowest millage rate the city has seen in decades.

The council approved the purchase of playground equipment for Little River Park totaling $593,730. Councilmember Wolf explained that the city used cooperative purchasing through Aqualas Group and that the purchase price includes freight costs of $25,000; as a tax‑exempt entity the city also saves about $53,000 in taxes, producing an additional taxpayer savings of roughly $28,000 compared with a different procurement route.

The council also approved changes to the city’s off‑duty police staffing process. Staff presented a plan to move off‑duty job administration to a third‑party vendor, Off Duty Management, which would use an app (OfficerTrack) to post jobs and pay officers weekly; the change removes the city from payroll processing for those jobs and shifts workers’ compensation and certain liability coverage to the vendor. The security rate was set at $65 per hour and traffic direction at $75 per hour; the $5 per hour vehicle fee will be removed. The council approved the vendor arrangement conditioned on final city attorney review.

Separately, staff…