The Evanston City Council voted 8-1 Wednesday to raise its portion of Evanston’s property taxes by 7.02 percent, an amount Ald. Ann Rainey (8th) said was the highest in the more than 20 years she has been involved in Evanston politics.
The decision, which took place at a special budget meeting, will result in a 1.39 percent in each resident’s total property tax bill.
Over the past month, the aldermen slowly reduced City Manager Julia Carroll’s original proposal of 15.15 percent through various service cuts and revenue additions during budget workshops.
Some of the changes voted on by the council Wednesday night include an $80 vehicle registration fee increase for non-residents who wish to park in Evanston. The measure is expected to generate $57,000.
Another $10,000 revenue addition, suggested by Ald. Anjana Hansen (9th) and passed unanimously, divided one full-time position in the City Collector’s Office into two part-time positions. The city is expected to save $10,000 because it will not have to pay benefits for the part-time employees.
The dramatic increase in Evanston’s financial need this year is due to a $140 million deficit in the police and fire pension funds.
City officials have blamed the desperate condition of the pension funds on faulty assumptions by former actuary Ted Windsor. Critics said he used an aggressive expected rate of return on the funds’ investments, overestimated the pensioner’s expected age of retirement and also underestimated their life expectancy.
Windsor, who was replaced by the Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company firm in 2007, spoke at Wednesday’s meeting. His assumptions were not substantially different from the new estimates, he said. Rather, the two plans differed in how the city would pay the pension funds over time.
Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company’s plan “pays costs up front as opposed to down the road,” Windsor said.
But he said the firm’s reevaluation of the expected age of retirement was accurate given recent trends.
Before the council voted on the final budget, Rainey, the final vote’s lone dissenter, expressed frustration that her fellow aldermen would not support a measure in which the “prepared food and non-alcoholic beverage tax” would increase by one percent and the liquor tax would decrease by two percent. The changes would have added $500,000 in expected revenue to the city’s budget.
“I have never seen a council more complacent about raising people’s taxes,” she said, adding that had the measure passed, the 7.02 percent spike would have fallen to 5.7 percent.
Mayor Lorraine Morton, however, concluded the meeting on a positive note, complimenting the council for its consistent efforts to reduce the budget. Never before during her career as mayor has each member been so active in the budget review process, she said.
