The promised forensic audit report (now being called a forensic assessment for some reason) of City of DeKalb’s tax increment financing funds has been released by the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office. The report details miscalculations, missing documents, and other failures of due diligence occurring across the 10-year period examined. Much of the fireworks over…
Tag: budget
Fixing the hiring spree
I’m still posting occasionally in the City Barbs Facebook group, and would like to share this item about DeKalb city council’s budget workshop Tuesday evening: Discussing elimination of positions as a budget-balancing measure. And here’s the memo.
DeKalb’s financial forecast through 2023
You need to know what that hole is, even if you can’t solve it right now. ~Larry Kujovich, Executive Partners, Inc., addressing the DeKalb city council on strategic planning (2013). Last week, DeKalb’s finance department shared an operating budget forecast through 2023 with the finance advisory committee. Having obtained a copy, I’ve created a graphic…
Regarding DeKalb Library’s other loan
Here’s an excerpt from my latest at DeKalb County Online: Thanks to recent discussion of DeKalb Public Library’s plan to pay back taxpayers for emergency help with its expansion project, much of DeKalb knows about DKPL’s $4.5 million bank loan to keep construction going during Illinois’ budget impasse. Not many know about the bank loan…
City of DeKalb does not want you to come to this meeting
Tonight is a special meeting of the DeKalb city council. Unlike all other council meetings, this meeting will not be recorded on video. That’s because the city does not know how to video-record meetings outside of council chambers, and council is not meeting in chambers tonight, even though this is the only city meeting scheduled.…
Shooting oneself in the foot at the DeKalb airport
We’ve been talking about fuel sales at DeKalb’s airport recently. This was in the context of DeKalb’s new marketing practice of deeply discounting fuel in order to bring in new customers, and perhaps reaching at some point the same successful level of sales of 2013, the good old days when net sales more than covered…
DeKalb’s airport fuel sales were better in 2013
City of DeKalb is extremely happy with airport fuel sales over the past few months, and according to the 2018 draft budget is estimating $416,000 in gross fuel sales for 2017. However, the recent increase is due to deep discounting of fuel, and fuel sales were better in previous years. The airport in DeKalb began…
Reasons to allow the city manager’s contract to expire
City council is expected to vote tonight on a resolution to “amend” city manager Anne Marie Gaura’s employment agreement, which currently expires at the end of this year. My main concern with the vote itself is that it involves the removal of the expiration date from the contract, even though the DeKalb Municipal Code says…
DeKalb’s failure to fund capital projects looks familiar
Mulling over our current the lack of funding of capital projects and fleet needs, I ended up deciding to contrast the spending from three different time periods, as expressed by transfers (or in the case of 2018, expected transfers) out of the General Fund into the Capital Projects and Fleet funds. I’ve also placed rough…
Let’s discuss right-sizing of City of DeKalb’s workforce
Last night during DeKalb’s budget meeting, the city manager said that DeKalb has 235 employees. She contrasted this with 2007, when she said we had 257 employees. Perhaps she meant full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), but the methodology for those calculations have changed. I do not understand them anymore, so am looking at things in a…