Mayor Dave Schmidt has already talked about the need for the City to begin work on the 2010-11 budget. He also has publicly vowed to veto a budget that isn’t balanced – or that is “balanced” by deceptive public fund accounting tricks.
So we noted with interest the report in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that Naperville is trying to close an $11 million budget deficit this year by eliminating 49 jobs to save $3.6 million a year (“Naperville cuts 22 employees, won’t fill 27 vacant positions,” Jan. 9). These latest cuts come on the heels of Naperville’s elimination of 43 other positions a year ago.
Park Ridge’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year is “only” a little over $2 million, but so far City government has only cut 4 jobs even as the City has operated irresponsibly for the past several years by not raising its approximately 10% share of our property tax bills to cover all those expenses it refuses to cut, or even increases – as it demonstrated by reacting to the current $2 million-plus deficit budget by increasing the cash the City gives away to private community organizations that have come to expect annual handouts of tax dollars to make up for what they can’t or won’t raise on their own.
Schmidt talked a good game several weeks ago when he proposed that the City adopt some form of zero-based budgeting (“ZBB”) requiring the City’s various departments to take a fresh, square-one look at: (a) what they currently do and should be doing (only, perhaps, better and more efficiently); (b) what they currently don’t do, but should be doing; and (c) what they currently do but should not be doing. The lack of enthusiasm from a majority of the City Council and City Staff, however, combined with the departure of Finance Director Diane Lembesis, quickly turned ZBB into a “wait ‘til next year” idea, if then.
With the State of Illinois trailing only California in the race to bankruptcy, we can’t expect much in the way of financial assistance from Springfield. To the contrary, as a community we’ll be lucky if we don’t start hearing more howling from our local schools because today’s Tribune reports that the state owes local school districts $1 billion that it cannot pay – to go along with the $775 million it owes universities and community colleges, and the $478 million it owes various municipalities.
Last May we suggested a variety of ways for the City to balance its 2009-10 budget which were ignored, leaving the $2 million+ deficit untouched. And there was nothing in that budget for things like flood relief, O’Hare noise monitoring, and other expenditures that a number of Park Ridge residents consider vital – at least to themselves.
There are no attractive options available at this juncture, especially with a City government that has refused to even own up to its financial problems and embrace such common-sense solutions as passing through to water users 100% of the cost of the water the City purchases from Chicago, or cutting handouts to private organizations over which the taxpayers have no control.
These are precarious financial times, folks. Unfortunately, unrealistic expectations combined with financial mismanagement over the past several years have put us in a situation that will be difficult and painful to properly resolve – even with that billboards “snake oil” Ald. Jim “Billboards” Allegretti and his colleague Frank DiFranco are trying to peddle.
9 comments so far
Good points all, Pubdog, but even if the city council had taken all your suggestions for budget cuts and filled the two million budget gap, there still wouldn’t be any money for flolod control.
So when is the mayor, or the city manager, or the council, going to tell us that there will be no flood control unless either taxes are raised or a lot more bond debt taken on?
7:40am…
What do you need? A hand written note?
There will be no major flood control without higher taxes or a debt offering. This is a surprise??? Did you think that money for flood control was going to just fall out of the sky?
The issue in this post is not about when will we get flood control… whatever that means. And, by the way, there are plenty of people who do not think flood control should be issue #1 as far as the budget is concerned. The issue in this post is more about the basics of the annual budget, about balancing real expenses against real cash inflows and availability and not draining reserves, about coming to a realization that the city needs to make some fairly significant cuts in its expense base to balance the budget – just like so many other cities across the spectrum have had to do. The issue is about the fact that we can no longer stick our heads in the sand and hope things get better, or that those dollars will fall from the sky because it isn’t going to happen. The city needs to make some tough choices about the payroll it carries and the services it provides and the City Manager and the rest of them need to be intelligent about how they do this. Intelligent, I say, as opposed to the willy-nilly bullshit we have witnessed this past year as additional expenses have been thrown into an already deficit budget and services like branch pick up have been cut mid-season. Really… these guys have to get more organized.
So 7:40, get your mind off of flood control and when you might hear about the $2500 hand out that’s been discussed or the $40 million bond offering because neither is likely too soon. Better to focus on some basics like getting a balanced budget, living within our means and undoing some of the damage that’s been done over the last several years leading up to now.
Yes, there are many people who feel that the sewers and flood control should not be our top priority. Just as a reminder, the Mayor is not one of those people – or at least that is what he said during the campaign. He goes on about infrastructure being number one and uses the sewer system and flooding as his prime example.
http://www.electdaveschmidt.com/mayor%20of%20park%20ridge/OnTheIssues/Infrastructure/tabid/78/Default.aspx
Anon on 01.12.10 9:51 am:
You are exactly right. This mess didn’t happen overnight and it’s not going to be solved overnight. Actually, from what we’ve seen of this city staff and council, we’ll be damn lucky if things don’t get even worse than they already are.
10:16am… 9:51 am here… you are right to point out what the candidate for Mayor said as he campaigned for the office. I will say this though, no matter what he said then or says now if we do not have the money for major repairs and if the citizenry rejects a referendum for significant bond debt (which if one goes to referendum I will bet would fail by a significant margin) there will be no money for the kind of repairs or remediation I am assuming you are looking for. In that case we will have to make due with what is available in the normal course of city operations… and that will be meager and that will be that.
Why will a referendum fail? Because there are not enough people that suffer from flooding that will vote to take on the debt and +/-20 years of payments that come with it. And be sure of this… neither the Mayor or the a concensus of the Aldermen are going to stick their necks out for a debt offering to solve a flooding problem that affects so few but leave so many paying.
Where does that leave (you?) those who do suffer from flooding? Best bet is to get out and get that home flood system / back check valve installed ASAP… especially before all of this snow melts!!!
Everyone wants something for nothing or on credit. All the credit problems in the economy now should be the best recent learning experience but it looks like alot of people were asleep during the lesson.
For the Mayor to get done all he said he wanted to get done and all he criticized Frimark for he will have to offer deep cuts to nonessential expenses and he will have to raise taxes.
We will all be paying one way or another whether or not the city decides to raise our taxes directly or borrow money which our taxes will also have to pay for. Issuing bonds would be the faster way to get flooding controls done but it won’t be free.
This city council will make things worse no matter what because none of them understand basic arithmetic and don’t want to do anything to make even a single resident upset. They are weak and have no core values.
2:33:
I agree with you completely!! There is no way that people in this town are going to vote to pay for fixing it!! I always thought Frimarks’ big mistake related to flooding wasn’t not fixing the issue. It was not communicating the possible solutions and costs. If he had done that, people would have been unwilling to pay for it but he would have been on record as having tried. That seems to be Schmidt’s plan. He seems to in tune with many in PR to honestly believe they will pay for this. I think he is banking on people giving him credit for the flood committee because there will be nothing substantial accomplished by the next election.
Agreed. This is the major issue facing this city right now. Unlike some of the more highly visable controversies – billboards and block parties – this affects every one of us equally, and it doesn’t look good. While it will not be easy to solve, in spite of Hoover’s comment it can be solved quickly. We need to cut non-essential city jobs and city services. The rest of the city staff will have to pick up some slack for the losses. This is exactly what has been done for the last 18 months in the private sector. Time for our elected officials to make the hard decisions.
And I would guess that any new infrastructure projects are off the table until the budget is in check.
Of course that leads us to the definition of “non-essential”. Based on some of the conversations I have heard in this town related to services as they exist already, or even in the past when their was less of a budget issue, that conversation should be a hoot!!!!!
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>