When City Manager Roger Crum and his staff prepared the proposed 2004-05 budget, they found themselves in a familiar situation: How do they strike a balance that aldermen and residents will accept?
City staff had some good luck this year. Evanston’s fiscal outlook was not so bad as expected. But still, adjustments must be made to make up for the deficit, and this year the staff decided to take a different approach.
After seeing Evanston City Council shoot down recommendations to trim or cut city programs in previous years, Crum said the staff was more realistic.
“We’ve already talked about those,” Crum said. “We’ve interpreted (aldermen’s actions) as the city’s reluctance to make those cuts.”
What the staff recognized was the weight the city places on its budget. Every line item could determine someone’s access to a relied-upon service or how much that person will spend in taxes and fees. Evanston is a complex town with diverse needs, and when settling upon a budget, aldermen and staff must decide how to balance not just the numbers but also the priorities and values of the city.
Evanston’s populace is a prime example of economic diversity, with some areas that are wealthy and others that are poor.
“A lot of people think Evanston is a rich city,” Crum said. “But if you look at its average compared to other cities, it really isn’t.”
Although the city’s median family income, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, is above the national average, at $78,886 it is significantly lower than nearby Wilmette, at $122,515, and Winnetka, Ill., which is listed as more than $200,000.
Evanston is slightly above Skokie’s $68,000 median.
Economic diversity here is highlighted by the value residents place on social programs, such as the Summer Youth Employment Program and Mental Health Board grants, as well as services ranging from libraries to police. Those areas of funding — ones that make an immediate impact on residents — garner the most attention from residents and are difficult to cut.
“When you live in a community that has a very diverse economic population, we have needs for human services,” said Ald. Edmund Moran (6th). “When you start cutting back, you’re hitting the people who are most vulnerable not to fight back.”
If Evanston’s only challenge were providing services, the budget formulation would be easier. The process, however, is complicated by systemic problems that haunt the city’s fiscal health and force other issues to be tossed into the set of priorities the city juggles.
To retain services the city has relied heavily on property taxes. For the 2004-05 budget, the city has proposed a hike that will result in a 1.2 percent raise in taxpayers’ bills. But Evanston’s taxes are already relatively high, and some fear further hikes could price out the middle class.
The problem would not be so bad if taxes didn’t burden Evanston’s almost 75,000 residents so heavily. The city has only 7.8 square miles of land, and with the current development level, not much is available for large business or industrial centers. Having no major form of transportation, such as a freeway or freight railroad line, further isolates it from any major industries and has resulted in many companies leaving the city.
But the lack of room to grow is not the only problem with land. Northwestern — the city’s largest land owner and employer — is exempt from property taxation. It is not the only culprit, however, as the large number of nonprofits and places of worship remove 45 percent of the land base from property tax rolls.
With these parameters aldermen must consider how to balance values and devise a plan to guide the city through another year. But even when the council achieves a solution to this year’s situation, aldermen need only wait another year before the issue returns. Evanston’s systemic problems are not getting easier, and neither is the difficulty of assigning dollar figures to the priorities it values most.
The Daily’s Kristin Barrett contributed to this report.
Budget deficits to overcome
2004*: $1.8 million
2003: $3.5 million
2002: $4 million
2001: $2 million
TOTAL: $11.3 million
*projected
Sources: Daily archives, city staff figures
About this series
Evanston faces a perennial budget deficit, and the choices aldermen and staff must make to resolve it reflect the complex set of values in a diverse city. This series examines four main methods the city can use to bring balance, both to its ledgers and to the community.
Today: Property taxes, page 10
Tuesday: Operating expenses
Wednesday: Programs and services
Thursday: Fines and fees
