Mt. Prospect wrestles with impact of budget cuts

Faced with a massive deficit last year, the village of Mount Prospect was forced not only to trim financial fat, but to slice into the bone. This meant cutting employees and not filling positions.

While this resulted in a balanced budget, it also produced mixed results when it came to operating the village.

As the village hammers out the 2012 budget, it is seeing both the good and the bad.

At this week’s meeting of the village’s Committee of the Whole, trustees were given some encouraging news by the Community Development department about the aftermath of the layoff of four building inspectors.

The department’s Brian Simmons said the village has seen an improvement in response time on building inspections now that they are outsourced. Before it could be as much as two or three days turnaround. With the outside inspectors, the turnaround was reduced to within 24 hours.

“We couldn’t be happier with how the process has gone this year,” Simmons said.

Trustees asked about feedback from residents. Simmons said most of the feedback has been gleaned from people coming into the office to discuss the process.

“We have not done a formalized survey at this point,” he said. However, he said the building commissioner is responsible for oversight and added there will be an assessment of the program.

Village Manager Michael Janonis said, “We have received very few if any complaints regarding the quality of the inspections.”

In contrast, a somewhat disturbing picture was painted during the budget presentation by the fire department.

Chief John Malcolm talked about the impact of reducing the paid-on-call personnel from 18 to 16 and the reliance on a “jump company,” where two firefighter/paramedics and one officer did their jobs as well as the jobs of an officer and a firefighter/paramedic that would normally be employed by the department. The three would “jump” from their engine to the tower vehicle normally used by the other two. Malcolm said the department was running the jump company 58 percent of the time last year.

Malcolm said that in 2011, the department relied on other area fire departments through mutual aid agreements more than in previous years, with the amount of mutual aid received up by 47 percent.

Sometimes, however, that system can be strained, as was the case with a second-alarm fire that occurred in the middle of a day of record rainfall.

He said, “That was an incident there where we had multiple storms going on and the engine was out on a call … and this fire call came in on the south end of town, and we didn’t have a truck available. Des Plaines wasn’t available … Arlington was out.”

Fortunately, he said, the department had an experienced battalion chief who recognized the danger and ordered the engine back to the station “to jump to the truck.” Later, Arlington Heights and Des Plaines were able to send trucks, even though they had their own storm issues.

Not all the news from Malcolm’s report was troubling. Malcolm said the department’s paramedics have the highest number of cardiac arrest saves in the Northwest Community Healthcare system.

Another positive was last weekend’s food drive at Costco, an idea generated at an Interfaith Council luncheon where it was mentioned that the food pantries were really hurting. With help from members of the fire department and the fire union president and vice president, over a few weeks, the drive came together. Malcolm said at the collection, one person even wrote a check for $500.

“It was incredible,” Mayor Irvana Wilks said. “You can’t even describe the generosity of the people. Hundreds of people were coming up and giving food.”