Last week’s Herald-Advocate carried a story on City Finance Director Diane Lembesis’ report to the City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting last Monday night (“Finance director says $5.4M deficit not as bad as it seems,” Sept. 29). 

In addition to the 2009-10 budget year deficit having grown to $5.4 million, Lembesis also reported that the City’s General Fund – its principal operating fund – had to borrow money from other funds last week in order to make payroll!  But fear not, Park Ridgians: she expects the deficit to shrink approximately $3.2 million, down to around $2.2 million, by year end. 

Why?  Well, the H-A story doesn’t say. 

But if you check out the video of that COW meeting on Park Ridge Underground from Sept. 29th, you’ll hear Lembesis say that such a reduction is based on her “experience” – although her rambling response to Ald. Don Bach’s question is far from confidence-inspiring, and sounds a lot more like guess-timation than information.

For example, when talking about her hopes for a big increase in sales tax revenues this year, she states: “I know Trader Joe’s, I think that…every time I’m in Trader Joe’s it’s doing great business. I know Jason’s, every time I go in there I have to wait in a long long line.” 

Those kinds of stories may be gratifying to those of us who would like to see a lot more sales tax revenue being generated by local businesses, but we expect the City’s director of finances to rely on hard, cold numbers, not on warm and fuzzy personal anecdotes.  And we expect our elected representative on the City Council to demand them.

Another thing not reported in the H-A story is the identity of those other City fund(s) from which the money to meet payroll was borrowed.  But, once again, the COW video on PRU captures Lembesis saying that payroll was met by the City borrowing from the Water Fund – which, as best as we can tell, is currently the only City fund with enough of a balance to make such rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul loans.

Ironically, the Water Fund is the favorite whipping-fund of  Ald. Frank Wsol (7th Ward), who continually refers to it as over-funded because of its $2 million-plus balance.  Wsol continually cites that balance in chiding anyone (e.g., Mayor Schmidt and City Mgr. Hock) who advocates for passing on to water users the full cost of the increase in water prices charged to Park Ridge by the City of Chicago.

But maybe with Lembesis’ identification of the Water Fund as the City’s de facto “lender,” Wsol – the self-proclaimed “fiscal conservative” who can’t seem to understand that pay-as-you-go is one of the benchmarks of fiscal conservatism – might finally appreciate the wisdom of stopping the subsidization of water use, especially when that subsidization disproportionately benefits big water users at the expense of those who use less, or who actually conserve water.  That’s because not only is charging users for the full cost of the water they use the fairest thing to do, but the increased water revenues will help replenish the “bank” from which the City borrows.

And in case Ald. Wsol doesn’t understand why the City needs to borrow to make payroll, it’s because Wsol and his Council buddies can’t seem to stop aiding and abetting City bureaucrats in spending more than the City takes in.  Go figure.

“This is not gloom and doom,” said Lembesis. Maybe not, but it sure sounds a lot closer to “doom and gloom” than it does to a sunny day at the beach.