Alderman Teresinski cautions us every year that we need to address DeKalb’s “structural” budget issues. Here’s one. [table id=18 /] Do you remember how many employees DeKalb got rid of last year? If memory serves, it was 34 full-timers, for a savings somewhere between $3-4 million. But from the budget figures, you can’t tell they’re…
Another Denial of a Public Library Levy Request
Galesburg, November 2010: The Galesburg Public Library voted Thursday night to slash $20,000 from its earlier budget request in an effort to gain the City Council’s support in raising the library’s property tax levy. […] Relations between the city and the library have been increasingly strained due to disagreements on whether to increase the property…
DeKalb Public Library at It Again
Let’s review, shall we? A library DISTRICT is an independent taxing body with an elected board. Though it is attempting to function as one, DeKalb Public Library is NOT a library district. It is a public library and a component unit of the City of DeKalb. The mayor of DeKalb appoints the board members with…
Police Station & Raises
One of the things I’ve been meaning to ask about the FY2012 budget, but simply did not get around to, is about the total in staff pay raises included in the budget. We supposedly MUST raise taxes to build a police station. What if we extended the pay freeze a couple more years, as we…
Raises for Management?
The General Fund may look OK at the moment, but there are deficits in other funds, some of them deep (Workers Comp). We also have at least three other lawsuits going (airport, airport, monster truck) and a state that is late and that may still prove even more unreliable. Utility tax revenues continue their decline,…
The Switch
The City of DeKalb claimed that the hiring of Laura Pisarcik fulfilled recommendations made by Executive Partners, Inc. (EPI). This is what the EPI report recommended: DeKalb would benefit from a proactive centralized procurement program. [p. 19 of Benchmarking section] Definition of procurement, from Wikipedia: Procurement is the acquisition of goods and/or services. It is…
Voluntary Separation Agreement
The Voluntary Separation Program (VSP) agreement landed in my inbox last evening. The actual contract agreement signed by qualified individuals is the same for AFSCME union employees as for non-AFSCME IMRF/management/“Chapter 3” employees. Due to the AFSCME side letter and the difference in required numbers of service years for the two groups, I had gotten…
Reduction in Force: AG’s Review of Denial of Info is Complete
If you require a recap of last year’s Reduction in Force (RIF) plan and how the Request for Review under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) came about, please see New Developments in Reduction in Force Story. The results of the AG’s review, in short: In the matter of the denial of the cost-benefit analysis…
City of DeKalb Tax Revenues and Budget Estimates
Each of the images below represents the first portion of a three-part spreadsheet devoted to tax revenues and budget estimates for each of four tax revenue sources. The city’s new central purchasing director says this is the data she used to determine sales tax revenue projections for the draft FY2012 budget.
FY2012 Budget Questions Answered
If you watched the DeKalb City Council meeting last Monday, you know that I had prepared questions for the public hearing but was prohibited from asking them. So I sent the questions to Laura Pisarcik, who was hired as the central purchasing person but who now seems to be acting as an assistant city manager,…