Tinley Park scraps plan to require healthy vending machine options
BY STEVE METSCH smetsch@southtownstar.com September 19, 2012 10:54AM
Tinley Park's plan to offer apples and other healthy snacks instead of Snickers won't work with the current machines at the village hall. | Larry Ruehl~Sun-Times Media
Updated: October 21, 2012 2:40PM
Tinley Park’s plan to offer healthier items in vending machines at village-owned buildings has been tossed away like an empty candy bar wrapper.
At Tuesday night’s village board meeting, Trustee Greg Hannon held off on a plan proposed in August that would require healthy options in vending machines at village-owned sites.
It’s not that the village doesn’t want to offer apples, bananas or lowfat milk.
Rather, the problem lies with the vending machines themselves.
“We do believe we’ll need new machines because an apple does not fit in the same size as a Snickers bar,” Hannon said.
The proposal would have required 50 percent of beverages and 30 percent of food items to be low in fat and calories.
“We realized we can’t put apples and oranges and things like that in there. So we’d have to retrofit the machines or buy new machines,” Hannon said.
Since there’s no money budgeted to buy new machines, the village board decided to postpone the plan until a solution — and more money — is found, Hannon said.
There are four vending machines in village-owned buildings, he said.
Also tabled was a plan to institute a worksite wellness policy for village employees because, again, there’s not enough money left in the budget to fund it, he said.
“We have a mid-year budget meeting coming up in November, so we’ll try to work on something. By that time we’ll have an answer on what machines we’re replacing, and be able to rob Peter to pay Paul to pay for the wellness plan,” Hannon said.
