The day after Evanston City Council passed its 2004-05 budget, some people in the city said they were not satisfied with the outcome.
Northwestern officials said Tuesday that they were unhappy the City Council included a new tax on natural gas to balance its finances and used money from the settlement of a city-university lawsuit differently than NU officials intended.
“We’re very disappointed,” said Lucile Krasnow, NU special assistant for community relations, about the new gas tax, which affects users of wholesale gas. NU officials expect it will cost the university about $200,000 more per year. “It was not good public policy.”
Although it was not a particularly tough financial year for the city, cuts in state money put Evanston back more than $600,000 and high insurance costs meant even more difficulty as aldermen began the budget creation.
Because of previous outcry from residents, and reaction by the council, city staff chose to look for ways to balance the budget without cutting services.
At the council meeting Monday night, Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) said NU was not contributing enough for the services it receives from the city, such as fire protection. The gas tax will bring in about $600,000 from major users, including nonprofits such as NU, which do not pay property taxes.
He said the near “Fortune 500 salaries” paid by NU show it does not have the same financial problems as Evanston. He did not support a suggestion to lower the new tax because the university and other nonprofits do not carry the same tax burden as residents.
“(Administrators) have plenty of space in their budget to do some belt tightening,” Newman said. “There’s no good reason here for a compromise.”
Krasnow and residents said they would like to see the city cut programming expenses rather than raise taxes. The new budget also included a 6.85 percent increase in the city’s portion of property tax bills.
“It appears that the Evanston City Council tries to find additional revenue for its budget, as opposed to look at more difficult issues they might want to review,” Krasnow said.
Evanston resident Dick Stillerman had a similar view. He said he might not be hit very hard by the increase, but he thought residents on fixed incomes or those who have lost their jobs might be heavily impacted.
“It’s easy to raise taxes because we have no choice but to pay them,” he said.
Stillerman said other local and state governments have had to make cuts in hard times.
“I don’t think Evanston should be exempt from that,” Stillerman said. “They took the budget as presented by the city manager and basically adopted it with very minor changes.”
Aside from the budget, the council moved a $700,000 payment, which was received from NU to settle a lawsuit over the creation of a historic district including university properties, to an insurance fund.
NU officials had hoped the council would use the money to pay for improvements to lighting in the area bounded by Emerson Street, Sheridan Road, Central Street and Ridge Avenue, which city staff said will start this spring.
“We just have to agree to disagree on this,” said Eugene Sunshine, NU’s senior vice president for business and finance. “If they do the lighting on the western side (of Sheridan Road) as they say they’re going to do, we’re happy. That is what we were after — a quick start to what is a very important project.”
The Daily’s Malavika Jagannathan and Matt Lopas contributed to this report.
