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Don't raise property tax for pensions
The City of Evanston has appointed a Blue Ribbon Committee to research how it came to be that the Firemen and Police Pension Fund is under-funded in excess of $140,000,000.
Ultimately the committee will offer recommendations to the City Council on what corrective actions can be taken now, and they will offer a road map of sorts to avoid the problem from re-occurring in the future.
The committee members are volunteering their time and fiscal talents to better the situation. I appreciate their service and good intentions to help solve this serious budget problem.
The next committee meeting is Wednesday, June 25, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. This may be the only committee meeting where the public is given the opportunity to speak. Thirty minutes of time has been allowed for public comment at the end of the meeting starting at 8 p.m. Please find time in your schedules to attend this meeting.
The committee is not yet at a point where conclusions have been reached, but the discussion continues to suggest additional individual property taxes will be needed annually, and ear marked for the pension fund. Alternatives to raising taxes are also being considered.
I emphatically disagree with any new annual residential property tax levies to solve this or any other budget shortfall.
Government is addicted to what they view as an unlimited resource, the taxpayer dollar.
Evanston needs to become more fiscally frugal and accountable.
Tax levies are the governments' fix. When the funds run out, government simply takes more.
I would encourage the Blue Ribbon Committee and the City of Evanston to include the following as other revenue options for this and future budget shortfalls:
- Make reductions in the current proposed budget and divert the funds to the pension contribution shortfall. Include reductions in all categories except for essential city services. At each city council meeting a litany of spending issues are approved, with aldermen knowing full well that the budget shortfall is huge. It seems irresponsible, yet there is little if any debate before approving hundreds of thousands of dollars in new items at each meeting.
- Increase and create fees for any and all Evanston services provided to the Northwestern University Corporation. Evanston apparently provides Northwestern University with Fire Department and Paramedic Service at no cost. How does Evanston recoup 145 years of un-funded service?
- Work with the Illinois General Assembly and solicit the support of the Fire Fighters Association to enact an amendment to the Northwestern University Charter striking down Section IV of the First Amendment of the charter enacted in 1855, which allows university property to be free of taxation. Or...
- Establish an equivalent fee to be imposed upon Northwestern University to pay for the Evanston Fire Department Services. And ... a Send Northwestern a bill for services not paid for in the past, with interest.
- The police and firemen's pension funds are a state mandate, the details of which I know little about. Evanston does not control how the funds are invested, nor does Evanston control the markets. All investments bear risks and Evanston tax payers should not be responsible for making up the losses, but the mandate suggests we are. Some portion of the $140,000,000 deficit is likely to be a result of poor investments and a weak market. This should not be Evanston's burden.
- The Police and Firemen Associations should consider reducing some of their benefits rather than continuing to lobby lawmakers for additional benefits that tax payers cannot afford. The perspective of this issue should be clear and consider that many residents of Evanston are struggling to make ends meet.
- Property taxes and other forms of government tax levies have gone far too high, are unaffordable, and need to be lowered, not raised. Not everyone in Evanston is independently wealthy. Many families, especially lower income families, are leaving Evanston due to the ever increasing tax levies.
If the Blue Ribbon Committee's is going to make recommendations on how to fix the budget shortfall, it should include all possible, practical and fair options.
Please find time to participate in this discussion. Your voices need to be heard.
Increase and create fees for any and all Evanston services provided to the Northwestern University Corporation. Evanston apparently provides Northwestern University with Fire Department and Paramedic Service at no cost. How does Evanston recoup 145 years of un-funded service?
Oh, no, not again.
Again we hear the myth that Northwestern is costing us money. If only we could tax them, we wouldn't have any trouble with revenue. And, if we believe the mythology of the Fair Share/GDR crowd, the sole duty of the fire department is to answer false alarms from Northwestern. This is nonsense.
1. Many other cities in Illinois are facing a similar problem with funding retirement benefits. The problem is with the system statewide, and it is wrong to use Northwestern as a scapegoat. I doubt that Blago and friends will stand up to any public employees unions, though.
2. The amount of money that NU generates for the city far exceeds whatever is spent on fire services. That was evident just this weekend - the hotels and restaurants of the city were packed with parents of graduating NU students, spending money and generating tax revenue.
In addition, Northwestern provides many jobs for city residents. Not just professors, but provides many jobs for those "lower income families" that Michael is concerned about. The pay stinks, but the benefits are very good - especially for low income people with families. Punishing NU financially may just lead them to reduce their employment of Evanston residents, or effect their pay rate.
3. I suspect that the "lower income families" are, as a group, much larger users of City services than NU is. A disproportional amount of our police, school, and social services budget are used by lower income families - probably more than they pay in taxes, since they tend to live in housing with low assessments.
You cannot have it both ways: you want to criticize NU for using services that it doesn't pay for (which is not really true), and yet you also want low income families to stay in the city - even though they use more city services than they pay for.
So I hope that the Blue Ribbon Commission ignores these suggestions. The "bash NU" approach has been tried before, and it has not been successful. Our council needs to find more realistic ways of meeting our budget shortfalls. These would include cutting spending (branch libraries?) and increasing revenue (tower! tower! tower!).
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