CHICAGO — Cook County Forest Preserves has used a $40 million yearly windfall from voters to buy up and conserve more land, pay for maintenance and add programming while bolstering its pension funds, the district reported Tuesday.

Voters overwhelmingly gave the preserves the OK to raise property taxes by 0.025% in a 2022 referendum. While at the time it cost the average homeowner about $20 a year, it was a “watershed moment” for the district, according to a new progress report on the district’s spending since then.

Because the new money was commingled with other preserve funds, it’s not possible to trace the improvements dollar for dollar, but the report puts some hard numbers on the “impressive and undeniable” benefits.

Among them: $11 million spent on ecological restoration projects, buying $4 million in new “greener” vehicles and equipment, and spending $2.4 million to expand the district’s “Conservation Corps.”

Revenues have grown only modestly after the referendum infusion. President Toni Preckwinkle is expected to roll out the 2027 budget for the preserves to the Forest Preserve board — which is the same as the County Board — on Oct. 7.

“The leap in capacity from increasing the budget in 2023 by nearly a third, and continuing that investment, has paid dividends for us all,” Preckwinkle said in a release.

District General Superintendent Adam Bianchi, hired in July 2025, inherited the district’s goals to ecologically restore 30,000 acres and expand the preserves from 70,000 to 90,000 acres by 2039. In the first three years after the referendum, the district added an “unprecedented” nearly 3,000 acres to its restoration work, Bianchi said at the district’s monthly board meeting Tuesday. Between 2023 and 2025, the district added 558 acres overall.

The district also spent $4 million to improve 64 miles of trails, $2.5 million to repair 43 picnic sites and $1.2 million to fix up more than a dozen bathroom buildings across the county. It planted 815 trees at preserves picnic groves, golf courses and campgrounds and created an accessible canoe and kayak launch at Beaubien Woods.

The district added the “equivalent of more than 85 full-time positions” across all its departments between 2023 and 2025, also boosting wages for law enforcement staff. That included 10 apprentices in the resource management crew, six landscape maintenance operations specialists, five animal specialists, a restoration hydrologist, wildlife biologists and dozens more.

Retirees also won some assurances. Before the referendum, the preserves’ pension funds were slated to be emptied out by 2041. After the vote, the preserves increased their annual payment from $4 million up to $12.4 million last year and $12.6 million this year. If the pace of payments continues, the fund is projected to be fully funded by 2054.

The Brookfield Zoo, which is housed on Forest Preserve property, got money to help renovate its 37-year-old Seven Seas/Dolphin Bay habitat and the Tropic World exhibit — including fixing up the dolphins and primate habitats. The Botanic Garden fixed up various trails, roadways, boardwalks and bridges and bought some new equipment using its roughly $6.1 million total referendum boost over the last three years.

The Forest Preserve board separately approved a new contract for the roughly 230 Teamsters members who work in maintenance positions. Their strike, the first of its kind at the preserves, lasted 16 days.

The union will receive a total of 8% raises over two years, a $2,500 one-time payment for full-time workers and $1,250 for seasonal staff, and other various provisions for workers in resource management, landscape maintenance employees and seasonal employees.

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