In order to balance this year’s budget, City Council is considering raising vehicle fees and cutting raises for nonunion city employees instead of trimming programs popular with Evanston residents, some aldermen said Monday.
The suggestions came partly as a response to Saturday’s budget workshop, where the council voted to keep four programs that had been slated for funding cuts in City Manager Roger Crum’s proposed budget. Crum had proposed the cuts in order to reduce the city’s nearly $4 million budget deficit. But saving the programs means the council either must find other programs to cut or generate $600,000 in new revenue to balance the budget by Feb. 28.
“People watching don’t know where this money is going to come from,” Ald. Melissa Wynne (3rd) told the council at the workshop. “If we eliminate this people will wonder what is going to cover the cost.”
Several aldermen said they are considering cutting nonunion city employees’ annual raises from 4 to 2 percent to generate about $360,000 in revenue. The city, which employs about 800 people, usually gives its union and nonunion workers equal raises, Crum said.
About 50 percent of the city’s workers belong to unions, said Human Resources Director Judith Witt. Only the 19 police officers belonging to the Fraternal Order of Police now are negotiating their contract with the city, Witt said. The other union employees have contracts stipulating a 4 percent raise. The contracts will last until February 2003.
Alds. Arthur Newman (1st) and Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd) both said they were considering cutting the raise by 2 percent. Alds. Steven Bernstein (4th) and Stephen Engelman (7th) said they were considering it.
“I’m confident that we’ll find different ways to balance the budget,” Bernstein said. “We have to.”
Evanston city employees’ salaries are “very competitive” compared with surrounding municipalities, Jean-Baptiste said. Employees would understand because they realize the city is in a difficult financial situation, Jean-Baptiste said.
The other suggestion many aldermen mentioned as a way to create revenue would be to raise vehicle sticker fees from $50 to $60, generating $300,000. Crum originally proposed an increase of $5, which would have brought in $150,000.
“It’s a one-time sting,” Bernstein said. “People will hate it. People will hate everything. The analogy I always use is that all this money is coming out of one pair of pants. Just different pockets.”
In addition to the sticker fee, Evanston’s Parking Committee also has discussed increasing fines for certain parking violations like parking in an alley. The new fine structure would create $478,000 in revenue – $78,000 more than fine increases in Crum’s proposed budget.
Evanston residents and the council tend to prefer raising fees and taxes rather than cutting services, Engelman said. But he also said this will not fix the city’s structural problems with its budget, namely the gap between revenues and expenditures.
“While (raising fees) may be more palatable this year, we’re not going to be able to tackle the systemic problem until we look at expenditures,” he said.
