Carol Stream fire looks at ways to fill budget gap

Carol Stream fire officials have some tough decisions ahead of them.

Near the top of that list is whether or not to impose a new ambulance fee on residents to help make up for a large operating budget deficit.

At a special meeting Monday, Financial Comptroller Jim Turi painted a grim picture of the Carol Stream Fire Protection District's proposed budget for next year. Even after Chief Rick Kolomay slashed $310,000 in expenditures, the operating budget still shows a deficit of about $450,000.

How to fill that budget hole has yet to be determined.

"We are not in jeopardy of cutting any services," board President Del Miller said. "Revenues, we hope, will increase in the years to come."

During the presentation, Turi said the district's $8.4 million operating budget will run a deficit for next year, and that the board had to discuss options to close that gap.

A transfer of money from the operating budget to the capital budget - which also is in bad shape after being depleted by about $3 million to $1.8 million in two years - was among those.

The capital fund was depleted by standard equipment replacement and truck purchases, Turi said.

At next Monday's village board meeting, Kolomay plans to present trustees with several cost-cutting and revenue-increasing options.

Options include various fee increases, charging village residents for ambulance services and moving a debt payment currently covered by the operating fund and paying it from a different fund.

Kolomay stressed, however, that these are merely proposals for the board to consider that may not necessarily be implemented.

"We've never done anything like this before," Kolomay said. "We have done as best as we could balancing the operations budget and trying to divide the mandatory expenditures from the discretionary expenses and needs."

Trustee Jim Panopoulos said the board needed to take a hard look at what happened during the past three years to that caused the district's financial situation to get to this point.

He said an oversight by Kolomay, which forced the district into an $11,500 contract with a landscaping firm, was an example of a missed opportunity to cut expenses.

"I just want to make sure we can balance the budget without talking about laying off personnel," he said. "I'd rather keep personnel than have a landscape crew."