The budget-cutting scissors are being sharpened.
Now that the dust has settled on Naperville’s approach to improving its financial health over the long run, attention has turned to the anticipated $1.8 million budget shortfall in the short term. City staff has been instructed to come up with proposals for spending cuts and new revenue streams that will erase the projected deficit as planning for the city’s first calendar-year budget gets underway.
The City Council gave the go-ahead to the fiscal calendar change earlier this month, moving the start of the budget year from May 1 to Jan. 1, beginning in 2016.
After earlier looking at a $6.8 million budget gap in the coming year, the council at the same meeting approved billing residents for the full $12.35 monthly cost of garbage collection, for which they now pay $2. The new user fee will mean a $5 million annual boost to the general fund, according to staff estimates.
“Moving forward, we’re really going to look at the budget to see what things aren’t necessary,” Councilwoman Patty Gustin said of the remaining $1.8 million shortage.
Gustin was one of four council members who initially opposed the new 0.5 percent city sales tax, which also passed at the mid-September meeting, and then reluctantly supported it after acknowledging it had enough votes to pass.
The new tax, to be put into effect Jan. 1, 2016, is intended to help the city catch up on its debt, rebuild its cash reserves and pay for capital projects. The retail tax rate on most purchases made in the city will be 7.75 percent with the arrival of the new year, but it will reduce to 7.5 percent in June, when a 0.25 percent sales tax now collected for the DuPage Water Commission expires.
Council members have remained unanimous in their push for spending reductions. Saving money in the upcoming budget year might involve collaborative work with other governmental agencies, Gustin said, or looking into outsourcing such things as dispatching services.
“Why don’t we look at that and see if there are some cost savings?” she said.
No decisions for reduced departmental spending have been made yet, but ideas are being floated.
City Manager Doug Krieger said in a Sept. 15 memo that draft proposals have been submitted and are under review.
“Preliminary cuts/revenues include reductions in overtime in the Police and Public Works departments, reduction in salt expenditures, elimination of a vacant (Americans with Disabilities Act) coordinator position, and charging fees for meeting rooms,” Krieger reported, adding that spending cuts also are likely for organizations that depend on operational revenue from the general fund or property tax income.
The call for tighter public belts isn’t new. The city’s fiscal 2010-11 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report noted that the recent nationwide economic slump had sharply shifted municipal finances everywhere.
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“All forms and levels of government are facing declining revenues creating dramatic budget deficits and resulting in service reductions to minimum levels and layoffs in all governmental positions including public safety,” the CAFR stated.
The city already had cut payroll, its single largest expense, at that point. A 92-person net reduction in the employee head count in 2009 and 2010 involved 50 positions that already were vacant through attrition and other voluntary moves, but the other 42 eliminated jobs required permanent layoffs.
The Police Department also has taken steps to contain its payroll costs in the past, including reassignment of school resource officers in the summer, when school is out, switching them to downtown patrols at night, when activity ramps up around the bars and restaurants.
Overtime expenses for officers had been rising after a series of violent incidents in the downtown in 2011 and 2012 that included two stabbings, one of which was fatal, so the increased spending on pay was considered worthwhile. The beefed-up police presence was credited for the decline in crime that was logged by the start of 2013.
Other overtime costs, including those for Public Works crews, are only partly controllable. Weather can be a wild card, and officials are always hopeful for moderate conditions.
By the end of February 2014 — midway through a winter that the National Weather Service later would determine ranked as both the third coldest and the third snowiest on record for the Chicago region — the harsh conditions already had cost the city $650,000 more than it had budgeted for seasonal operations, city records show, most of that for overtime pay. By the time spring arrived, the tab for dealing with snow, ice and cold reached $3.47 million, which was nearly 42 percent more than the average for those expenses.
Salt didn’t come cheap that year, either. The city began the season with 14,000 tons on hand and soon had to order more, eventually spending nearly $1 million on salt.
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