Riverside’s Village Board is now faced with the task of determining which services to cut or how to raise revenue due to the failed referendum Tuesday Nov. 4.

Village President Jack Wiaduck said the board has been prepared to deal with the outcome whether the referendum passed or failed. He said this outcome does not take away the fact that the village has a deficit and it won’t be easily resolved.

“I am disappointed that the message that the board was trying to convey with this request was not received favorably,” Wiaduck said. “This isn’t a profit-making business; it is to deliver services that are necessary and required by the community.”

According to the Cook County clerk’s Web site, about 81 percent of voters rejected the tax hike.

Mike Gorman, member of the Riverside Community Alliance group, said the message residents sent to the village was clear — stop spending and realign the budget to preserve Riverside’s future.

“The village has the money to preserve the services they threatened to cut, in the short term,” he said. “I would have supported it if it was necessary but this tax increase was not needed nor necessary at this point.”

Wiaduck said the village should be collecting enough revenue, which is collected by taxes, to pay for the operating budget. But the village is in a deficit of $111,000.

Cutting services is not something any residents want to see happen, Gorman said, but that was never what was being debated.

“Now it is up to the board to respond to what the residents just told them,” he said. “The village has the money to preserve these services for the short-term. We (RCA) encourage the board to do so, but also to look for longer-term solutions that do not focus exclusively on increases in spending.”

The board is prepared to deal with the results and if that means cutting services, they will be cut, Wiaduck said. The reserve money the village has is limited, according to Wiaduck, and they might be able to get a year out of it but that is postponing the inevitable.

“Collect more (revenue) or cut services,” Wiaduck said. “The community decided they don’t want to provide revenue.”