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One cheer for the city council
Evanston's aldermen and the city manager deserve praise for finally adopting a budget this week that faces up to the city's pension obligation to its firefighters and police officers.
It's a growing burden the city has paid far too little attention to for far too long.
The bad habit of under funding public pensions is widespread across the nation and growing, as detailed in a report this morning in the New York Times.
Whatever anger we may feel about the city's failure to address the pension problem sooner, the commitment to get it right starting now is welcome.
But the aldermen deserve no praise for the shell game they played again this year, trying to fool property tax payers into thinking they've been done a favor when the council raises other taxes and fees and then claims credit for shrinking the size of the property tax hike.
Whether we pay more for gasoline, for a residential parking sticker, or to register a business or a rental apartment -- it's all an increased burden that ultimately gets spread around to all Evanston residents. And much of the cut to the property tax increase was achieved by one-time fund transfers that will ultimately make the budget crunch worse next year.
The council's efforts to rein in spending were totally inadequate. Alderman Delores Holmes, 5th Ward, was notably vigilant in trying to eliminate vacant positions across the city's work force. But just cutting vacant positions is insufficient to bring the city's spending in line with that of comparable communities.
After all the stress of the budget debate, it's fair for the aldermen to take a breather. But very soon they need to get back to work. They can't address the fundamental structural spending problem adequately if they wait till next January to start working on next year's budget.
Whether they tackle it themselves, appoint a blue ribbon panel or hire a consultant really doesn't matter. But they need to commit to bringing the size of Evanston's government into line with what its citizens can afford.
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Michael,
Some years back, Stafford, the former Finance Director, took a poll among participants in a budget session with the Council, where we were asked to rank order city services and functions. Nothing came of it.
In Value Analysis, functions of a product or service are rank ordered along with their costs and lower rank ordered functions are dropped to meet a cost requirement.
Brutal, yes.
How about a referendum where citizens rank order what they want the city to do, and services to provide, with precautions to make sure that "stakeholders" do not sway results.
Would the Council have the courage to do this? Or would they prefer to spend their time on making Evanston a sanctuary city?
Ask anyone what they would do to trim the fat at City Hall and you will get an earful.
Maybe the community should forward its ideas to the budget office where a list of the most common suggestions could be compiled.
Then we lean on our aldermen to adopt the best of those ideas. If the ideas come from the people, they would be difficult for the council to reject.
This process shifts a little power from the council to the people. After all, its our money, not theirs.
As Vito has stated this has all been done before. It takes public official willing to make cuts. At the same time it takes public officials with some knowledge of what they are actually doing. Both are lacking.
The citizens can give them ideas - but that is not what needs done. Cutting is about what is really needed and what is not needed. The one major problem is the council is not willing to tell the community to take care of something versus creating a public program.
Citizens as an example can not deal with the drug houses in their neighborhoods this needs city involvement. Yet every year the police are shutting one down and having a press conference. Council members believe with more social services they will solve this - so they add more to the budget rather than deal with the issue of changing the neighborhoods.
Interesting the city supports a program which provides legal defense to those arrested here for criminal activities which the county is also providing through the public defender. Why is this continued to be support? Is this a necessary program? One of the issues here is someone comes to the council and suggest the city should provide a service since another provider is falling short.
The funds to repair roads or fix the Civic Center they have been diverted for other uses as an example.
The list of programs and employees is quite large, but it takes a willingness for "Change" which the council members who I suspect are all Obama supporters seem to not understand his message! That is if that is really the message.
Well said, Bill. They ought to start coming up with a plan right now to gradually make cuts in services so that by this time next year the potential shock will be lessened.
Very thoughtful commentary Bill. I agree that the council members have been too scared to make a decision. They should look at the facts and have the guts to make the best decision as early as possible. I don't mind my taxes going up as long as I know they are using the money in the best way. One area they need to start investing in is more recreational services for youth. Middle school and teenagers don't have much to do in Evanston. They can start by remodeling Robert Crown and adding other winter sports to the mix. Also if I see another condo going up I'm going to scream.!
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