Evanston will begin its annual budget season this week with a new approach to familiar problems.
Evanston City Council must approve this year’s budget by March 1, the start of the next fiscal year. City Council will begin reviewing the budget at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Evanston Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave.
Though Evanston has built up cash reserves for the past few years, one suggestion in City Manager Roger Crum’s proposed budget calls for using $500,000 of reserves from the city’s general fund — a move that Director of Finance William Stafford said he would not usually advocate.
“We think this is going to be the bottom year in terms of the economy,” Stafford said. “We think this is a prudent amount.”
Stafford said the city’s past fiscal discipline has produced excess reserves in the general fund. He also added that $500,000 is modest compared to what some neighboring suburbs plan to draw from their savings.
In past years the city manager has proposed program cuts, such as closing the south branch of the Evanston Library and South Beach, but this year’s plan does not suggest these types of cutbacks.
“We’ve reviewed potential major program cuts in some detail and said they would change the quality of life in the community,” Crum said.
Crum said the aldermen still have the option of cutting these programs if they choose.
Program cuts in the past two years were coupled with a program to scale back city staff. Crum said this year many departments could not reduce personnel any further.
“We’ve done a major cut in the past two years and cannot get by with cutting into administration,” he said.
And Stafford said the city will have to be even more efficient to compensate for rising costs of health insurance and the overall cost of living for staff members.
To offset some of the losses in revenue, Crum proposes two primary tax revenue approaches — only one of which will significantly affect homeowners. The budget offers a 6.85 percent increase in the city’s portion of the property tax, which is about 18 percent of the total property taxes paid by an individual. This means a proposed 1.2 percent overall increase in a property tax bill.
Stafford said this tax increase is comparable to last year’s budget and is mainly the result of the state-mandated increases in the police and fire pension funds.
The other tax approach involves equalizing natural gas taxes between those who use Nicor, Inc. — the city’s official provider — and those who buy gas from other companies. This idea was brought up during a series of council meetings in November, but aldermen delayed voting on the plan because of its possible impact on the business community.
Though numerous business leaders said the gas tax equalization is an affront to free market competition, Stafford said it would not affect Evanston’s traditionally smaller businesses, which usually do not buy gas on the open market.
“We think it mainly hits institutions, not small businesses,” he said.
Northwestern does not use Nicor, meaning the university would be affected by the proposed tax hike.
Both Crum and Stafford also said statewide fiscal austerity will limit city resources, but recent development and stable sales taxes have kept Evanston’s economy in better condition than nearby suburbs.
“Ours is solid because we’ve got more restaurants and shops and don’t have huge shopping centers,” Stafford said. “Our revenues do better in bad times, and less well in the best times.”
Budget basics
City Manager Roger Crum’s proposed budget includes:
* a total operating budget of $164,609,193 — an increase of $10,116,467 from last year
* a 6.85 percent increase in city property taxes, meaning a 1.2 percent increase for individuals, and
* possible use of $500,000 of the city’s reserve funds.
