At the last work session concerning the City budget at the end of June, the budget as it stood after all the adjustments made during the weeks of hearings was presented. Mayor Soliman then followed with questions of the council members regarding their opinions on various budget issues. The final budget was approximately $300,000 in deficit even after every fix was made.
The Mayor kicked off the questions by asking each Council member individually if they would support increasing the utility tax on electricity and natural gas or the sales tax. The City Administrator and the Mayor discussed the rates in surrounding communities to justify that Crest Hill is below average in taxes and should catch up. The majority of Council members supported doubling the utility tax to bring in a little of $100,000 of additional revenue annually. This will be enacted in the near future since the Mayor got the support he needed to raise it. The Council was also open to raising the sales tax, but recognized that it would be years before any additional revenue would be seen, since the tax would need to be approved by the voters and they would need to do a long educational campaign before there would be any chance of getting it passed at referendum.
The Mayor then asked each member if they were comfortable with the budget being in deficit as it stood. A number were comfortable with it either because they felt that it was the best that could be done under the current circumstances, felt that a great effort had been made and it was much better than it could have been, or recognized that a large part of the deficit is due to one time costs due to switching insurance. Others were uncomfortable with it, but were challenged by the Mayor and council members who pointed out that there had already been weeks of discussion and that a budget had to get passed. There seemed to be an attitude of this is the best that we could come up with so everyone should be comfortable with it.
The final question each alderman was asked was if they had any ideas to fix the budget. A number of members advocated tightening on small expenses such as costs of conferences, the purchasing coffee and disposable cups for City Hall, and the Mayor's gas and petty cash expenditures. These items would not make a huge dent in the budget, but were looked at as every penny counts and making sure the Council was feeling some of the pain as well as the city staff. Alderman Sternisha spoke on some of the suggestions he has made to the Council early on in the hearings regarding freezing salaries and not hiring more employees, but he did not have the whole list because the Council had not been expecting this line of questioning at this particular budget hearing. Alderman Convery for some reason decided to attack Sternihsa's suggestion of not hiring more employees and kept asking him to be specific as to who not to hire. Convery did not seem to grasp the idea that not hiring any additional employees did not mean to firing recently hired employees, but instead meant that from that point forward not hiring any more. The Treasurer also spoke on some of his ideas for furlough days for city employees and creating an annual business license as opposed to the current license that is good forever. He was pointing out that Menard's paid $25 for a business license that is good forever, while many households pay more than that each year just to get city vehicle stickers. The City Clerk got quite upset at this since her office would have to issue the permits and she had not been consulted.
The Mayor gave everyone an insight into his thinking just in the order of the questions and how he presented them. His first thought was to raise taxes, then to gauge comfort with being in deficit, and lastly to looking for other solutions. This city needs leadership who put finding solutions and alternatives first and put raising taxes as last resort. Unfortunately, Mayor Soliman looks to our pocketbooks first and makes it clear that higher taxes come before all else.
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