Vernon Hills gets to budget nitty-gritty

Students who participate in government day in Vernon Hills won't receive food or T-shirts next time, a gesture that will be temporarily discontinued because of budget cuts.

The annual employee awards luncheon will be held as scheduled, but allotted expenses will be cut in half. A shift to electronic village newsletters to save postage and printing costs is another in a series of relatively small, one-time cuts designed to help keep the 2009-10 budget in the black.

"I can't imagine anyone is insisting (assistant village manager) John (Kalmar) and I go to an out-of-state conference," Village Manager Mike Allison said of another one-time cut informally approved by the board.

It's all part of an ongoing process made difficult because of a drop in sales tax revenue, a major source of income for day-to-day operations.

Trustees already have cut about $1 million in capital projects, for example, and on Tuesday informally agreed to trim another $180,000 in nitty-gritty items.

"A lot of little stuff, but a few bucks here and few bucks there adds up," Trustee Thom Koch said. This budget, he added, is one of the most scrutinized since he joined the board in 1993.

"This has been the most pronounced just because we want to be proactive in case things get worse in sales tax."

And trustees have yet to review individual departments. Other potential pitfalls include an expected but undetermined drop in the village share of state income tax, which this year is about $2.1 million.

As it stands, expenses in the proposed $25.5 million budget are down 12 percent from last year. Revenues overall are down slightly, but sales tax is dropping more precipitously.

Allison said December sales were down more than 11 percent from December 2007. Projections for 2009-10 are 9 percent, or about $978,000 less than 2008-09.

"The real issue to me is how long does this continue?" said Finance Director Larry Nakrin.

Compared to some other communities, Vernon Hills is in relatively good shape, with a surplus of $200,000, not including the cuts informally approved Tuesday.

That would have been an $800,000 deficit, however, had it not been for the pending $1 million sale of property. This year, the budget review will be ongoing.

"You can put in what you think you're going to spend and not spend it, but you can't go back in and spend something you don't have," Koch said. He noted sales tax receipts are only projections at this point.

"When we start to work on real revenue (figures) we might have to say, `This has to go or that has to go,'" he added.