The balancing act of municipal finances took center stage for Naperville officials as they launched into a series of budget workshops this week.
Taking up the day-to-day costs of running the state’s fourth-largest city, City Council members spent more than four hours Monday night discussing the various departmental spending requests for the 2016 municipal budget. Comprising more than $120 million in expenditures for maintenance and operations drawn from the general fund, the budget anticipates $7.2 million more in revenue than the fiscal 2015 budget, an increase of 6.39 percent.
City staff had been charged with finding ways to pare expenses to erase an anticipated $1.8 million operational deficit in the new budget.
“Coming up with the $1.8 million was challenging,” Finance Director Rachel Mayer said as part of her introduction of the proposals. “As a whole, we really feel that we are presenting exactly the (amounts) we need to operate the city today.”
Spending reductions are in the preliminary plans for all of the city’s departments. The largest proposed cuts come from reducing permitted overtime in the Police and Public Works departments, and shifting to vehicle leasing rather than the scheduled replacement that has been policy until now.
That portion of the recommendations, which would take down total spending in the Public Works and public safety arenas by nearly $1.3 million, drew questions from council members. Mayor Steve Chirico doubted that the savings from the leasing plan could be sustainable from one budget year to the next.
Two vehicles, including a fire engine and a vactor truck, would be leased in the coming year, under the staff proposal. Mayer said it would cost about $2 million to replace the equipment due to retire.
“I don’t see where the savings occurs over time,” Councilman Kevin Gallaher said, agreeing with Chirico that the leasing plan equates to taking on new debt.
Mayer, however, said larger vehicles have virtually no trade-in value and the monetary savings of leasing – among them the end of machinery going offline while city staff see to maintenance and repairs – would develop over a period of years.
Other places where staff have proposed spending cuts include $160,000 less for public safety operating supplies for public safety, $107,000 saved from the elimination of an accessibility coordinator position in the city manager’s office, and a reduction of $130,000 for insurance, dues and subscriptions for the City Council.
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The council two years ago, before most of its current members took office, discussed at length the possibility of eliminating medical and dental insurance from the benefits provided to council members. The group was split in its final vote on the matter, which left the coverage benefit in place. The city covers 80 percent of the premium. Chirico and Councilwomen Judy Brodhead and Patty Gustin take the dental coverage, although Gustin said this week she will opt out of the benefit after learning that most of the cost is covered by the city. Chirico and Brodhead also use the city health and vision insurance.
Still in the spending proposal is a reallocation of food and beverage tax receipts amounting to 0.25 percent of patrons’ bills, to fund public safety pensions, but the proposal calls for cutting in half the allocation that doubled the funding for social services in 2013, bringing that line item back down to $250,000 yearly.
With the mayor’s office and six of the eight council representative positions turning over in last spring’s consolidated elections, all but two of the nine decision makers on the City Council are new to their offices, and five of them have not crafted a municipal budget before. Also new to the process landscape is a budget that coincides with the calendar year, rather than extending from May 1 through April 30 each year. That means the current fiscal period will end Dec. 31.
The next budget workshop, set for Nov. 9, will look at the electric utility, the library system and Naper Settlement. On Nov. 17, council and staff will discuss the water and wastewater utility’s budget and the city’s self-insurance fund. The final budget workshop, set for Nov. 23, will focus on the capital and debt service funds, and the multi-year capital improvements program.
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