Carpentersville postpones budget approval

Carpentersville officials held off on approving their budget Tuesday night to give a pair of absentee trustees a chance to vote on it in person — at the next meeting.

Trustees Pat Schultz and Paul Humpfer, chairman of the audit and finance commission that helps put the budget together, were absent from Tuesday’s meeting. Schultz is looking after her ailing mother while Humpfer is out of town on business.

The board will take an official vote April 17 and doing so then will not affect its financial standing, officials said.

The proposed $44.6 million budget comes in balanced and unlike last year, officials are not cutting any programs or eliminating any staff to achieve that balance.

“The model and the goal this year was sustainability so they’re really just trying to keep services as is and spend wisely without having to do too many cuts,” Finance Director Catherine Haley said.

The general fund, which takes care of personnel, went up 2.15 percent, from $23.5 million to $24 million, as the village hired an assistant director of public works and an assistant finance director.

That fund is $1,836 more that its budgeted expenses.

At the same time, officials will keep contributing to the 2-year-old capital equipment replacement fund.

Money out of there will replace fire trucks, ambulances and public works vehicles — $600,000 is scheduled to go into the fund this fiscal year. It helps ensure the village has funds available for future equipment issues, but without borrowing money or drastically changing its operations.

“We’re planning a good financial policy,” Village Manager J. Mark Rooney said.

Fewer capital projects are also on the table this year.

Last year, Carpentersville reserved $15 million for capital projects, but this year, officials have only budgeted $2.9 million. That money will cover, among other items, a new phone system and reconfiguration at village hall, extensive improvements on Maple Avenue and a new fueling station and salt dome.

Cost-cutting measures taken last year included negotiating contracts with public works, police and fire unions that saved more than $250,000 and didn’t call for retroactive pay, eliminating four positions to save $357,000 and securing $635,000 in grants, an 85 percent increase from the previous fiscal year.

When it was time to approve the budget Tuesday, Trustee Doug Marks asked that the board postpone it until Humpfer and Schultz are present.

It wasn’t enough that officials told him the pair were OK with the budget as is.

“Voting absentee is not a vote,” Marks said after the meeting. “Five out of the seven voting on something that’s $50-plus million, we should have better representation for the people.”