After several years as, God help me, an Evanston City Council watcher, I’ve concluded Evanston city staff are the most unappreciated people on the North Shore.
If residents are the heart of Evanston and the council the brain (councils, like brains, vary in their intelligence), staff constitutes the city’s eyes, ears and hands. They handle the tough job of managing a city of 74,000 on a day-to-day basis. They crunch numbers, prepare reports and ensure the garbage gets picked up. They keep Evanston running.
I have seen them sitting at endless Monday council meetings and unending Saturday budget workshops, explaining complicated issues to aldermen and then explaining them again. Aldermen usually patronize them instead of thanking them for their expertise.
When you work for city government this comes with the job, and staffers handle it professionally. But the job description should not include being forced to beg for the tools necessary to do your work.
At this past Saturday’s budget workshop, aldermen discussed expenditures in the capital improvement fund, which covers infrastructure upgrades ranging from street lights to sewers. This year it included $4 million earmarked for a new financial software system for the city.
The aldermen’s skepticism was immediate and intense. Why did staff need this new system? What was wrong with the old one? Didn’t someone tell them there was a $4 million budget deficit?
Finance Director William Stafford explained that the present system is 20 years old, and there are concerns about its integrity. The staff has to do some work manually that could be accomplished more efficiently with a new system.
Now let’s think about this. Stafford isn’t asking the council for a bubble machine and martini lunches. (Although if the council adopts the employee pay raise cuts they’ve been discussing, they would be wise to consider some vodka-steeped consolation prizes to head off revolt. It worked for the Russians.)
No, Stafford is asking for a tool to do his job better. And the council is balking.
Aldermen will say they are only forcing staff only to make the same case for their expenditures that all Evanston residents must make during this tight budget season. But in reality, the staff has to make a stronger case than anyone else because, as Ald. Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd) said during the same workshop: These sorts of expenditures are difficult to explain to the public. Aldermen want staff to tell them how to justify this software system to their constituents.
Ah, politics.
The benefit of this new software will help only a handful of anonymous toilers at 2100 Ridge Ave. Who wants to give away $4 million in the dark? Certainly not a politician during a budget crisis.
Contrary to what every aldermen wants to believe, this is not a frivolous request. According to City Manager Roger Crum, this system is more important than a lot of other budget items, and he of all people knows there’s a deficit.
No one would ask a carpenter to build a house without a hammer. So why should staff be asked to build a budget with antiquated software?
To deny staff this system not only would inhibit their ability to perform, it would send a message about how little the council values their needs.
