The proposed City of DeKalb FY 2011 budget has total expenditures going up by about $5 million over last year, mostly due to increased spending on the downtown TIF, health insurance and the airport.
The budget as drafted will be balanced IF:
Upon my first go-round — so I could have missed it — there doesn’t seem to be an expenditure for the catastrophic insurance coverage. Are we to be dangerously exposed for yet another year? Hope not.
What I didn’t miss is that the first year of the TIF declared surplus is expected to bring in $206,670 in property taxes and $547,642 in sales taxes. They always make a big deal about all the city property taxes (besides what goes into the TIF funds, that is) being applied to the pension funds, so let’s see the property tax “surplus” go there, too.
Also, the City Clerk’s office is cutting one FT employee, on condition of getting extra help during the busiest couple weeks of license processing, per the EPI financial consultants’ recommendations of a year ago. There’s no word, however, on the the really big EPI recommendation to outsource I&T, which continues to budget nearly $1 million for a department of seven.