The Sycamore City Council is pondering whether to close the dampers of residential growth in the community. At Monday’s meeting, the council again will consider a proposal by Mayor John Swedberg to limit the number of residential building permits granted until 2012.

Sycamore’s population is growing at a rate of 4.7 percent and is expected to reach 23,000 in 10 years, Swedberg said. The future population may detract from the commercial tax funds needed to fuel the government.

Grace Adee, a Sycamore resident and member of Citizen Action for Reasonable Action, said this population influx will force current residents to suffer urban sprawl in the chiefly rural town.

“These big developments will cost everyone more money,” Adee said. “We have to have more policemen, more firemen, more schools, more of everything to service the people moving in.”

CARE petitioned the city to place a referendum on the March ballot to ask whether the city should stop growth for seven years, with some exceptions. The referendum was successful with more than 70 percent of voters in agreement.

Swedberg, who is up for re-election in November, proposed at the July 19 city council meeting to issue no new building permits until 2012 to curb growth. Already approved plots, totalling about 3,600, can be permitted for construction in the plan.

Under Swedberg’s proposal, the Sycamore City Council will continue to judge new annexations as they come in. The council will review the new annexations by quality of the plans and by voluntary contributions made by the developers. An appropriate voluntary contribution may be $3,000 per building lot, Swedberg said.

The 2003 Sycamore population is 13,428. In 2002, according to the 2003 City of Sycamore Comprehensive Plan, single-family residential permits jumped to 157 from 101 the previous year.

Simultaneously, the average price of a detached single-family home increased from $149,999 to $164,548.

Retail sales increased from $141.2 million in 2000 to $161.8 million in 2001.

Residents have flocked to the community because of its public schools and the its character, Swedberg said.

Swedberg said he hopes to stabilize the population boom by equalizing it with the sales tax from commercial development.

Sales tax funds collected from the commercial development represent 40 percent of all city operating revenues, he said.

“The commercial development is our tax base. It is our sales tax; that is what we derive our operational funds from,” Swedberg said.

In 2003, the city of Sycamore saw a 30 percent sales tax increase from the previous year, largely because of $300,000 from United Aviation Fuels, Swedberg said.