Remember that instance a couple years ago when, if you wanted to find out what was in the new fire fighter union contract before the DeKalb council voted on it, you had to go visit the city manager? Because the contract wasn’t included in the council meeting agenda available online? Proposed state legislation co-sponsored, among…
Category: City Watch
A Peek at DeKalb’s Assets
Today we examine City of DeKalb’s assets, more specifically the relationship between capital assets and net assets in recent years, which have become an area of concern for me. I’ve developed three charts containing year-over-year data from the city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) submitted (as AFRs) to the Office of the Illinois Comptroller. The…
More Charting of the CAFRS: General and Special Revenues and Expenditures
As in the last post, I’ve gathered year-over-year information using City of DeKalb’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) as reported to the Illinois Comptroller. All governments have to do CAFRs and we ordinary citizens are supposed to be able to understand them. As a layperson I try to figure out why and how the numbers…
The Biernacki Regime: A Cautionary Tale
The City of DeKalb did me a HUGE favor. When I first went to look for the FY2013 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) earlier this month, it hadn’t been uploaded to the city’s website yet (though it is there now). So, I turned to the Illinois Comptroller’s online collection of local government reports instead. The…
One More Reason DeKalb is a Fantastic Place to Live
[Photo credit: J.p. Salovesh]
City of DeKalb Might Have a Warming Center
Last Saturday on Facebook, I crafted a “status” asking where the City of DeKalb warming centers are. There was nothing on the city’s website or Facebook page about them, and the last council agenda seemed to have dispensed with the idea entirely. Warming Centers One of the current challenges faced with the moving of the…
Final Payouts to DeKalb’s Retired City Manager
When I told you about City of DeKalb’s policy to allow staff in administrative positions to bank comp time — as well as how much comp certain employees had accumulated — I could not include the comp and other accumulations of former city manager Mark Biernacki because he’d already cashed out in mid-June. But, here…
Look Who’s NOT Getting Comp Time
The employment contract between City of DeKalb and its new manager, Anne Marie Gaura, is part of the agenda for Monday’s council meeting. I’m pretty pleased about this pick — Gaura’s resume looks the best to me of all the city manager candidates in terms of range and depth of experience — and I’m pleased…
Chronicle on the Proposed New TIF Districts
The Daily Chronicle has come out against the proposed Sycamore Road TIF District, pointing to Mayor Rey’s recent comment that two developers are interested in one of the properties even with no incentives. So why bring tax increment financing into the equation? It certainly might give the city some more money it can spend on…
DeKalb’s Compensated Absences Banking
This is more from the June 2013 Benefits Hours Report I was telling you about yesterday. [table id=79 /] You can see that the banked comp (560) truly is banked, and the administrator-depositors are enjoying nice, risk-free annual increases when raises and COLAs are applied. The caps on unused sick leave are very high in…