Additional cuts could be in store for Carpentersville
Less than two months after approving a balanced budget, Carpentersville officials are again eyeing cuts to the spending plan, this time over fresh concerns Springfield might reduce the village's share of income tax revenue.
"One possibility is always layoffs," Village President Ed Ritter warned Tuesday. "Another possibility is service cuts."
Ongoing talks in Springfield about lowering municipalities' portion of state income tax revenue has prompted village officials to rethink plugging a portion of its $429,000 deficit with reserve funds.
The village has roughly $5 million in reserve funds and the board was putting an estimated $201,000 toward closing the budget deficit. Officials also plan on using $750,000 from the same fund for emergency road repairs.
But if the hammer comes down from Springfield, Carpentersville might need its reserves to survive, Ritter said.
"All I could say is that some trustees have indicated that they are not that excited about fund balance money being used (to balance the budget)," Ritter said, adding that the road repairs will likely continue. "Some people were still thinking that maybe we needed to trim some more."
Village Manager J. Mark Rooney is looking into what can done, but declined to get into specifics because he doesn't discuss personnel matters.
"There's still some budgetary changes that are going to happen throughout the year," Rooney said.
In April, the board approved a cost-savings package that included laying off three part-time employees, eliminating several vacant positions, shelving plans for a $30,000 dog park and moving a portion of an administrator's salary to another fund.
Officials also planned on laying off two full-time firefighters to save up to $110,000, but reached an agreement with the union to keep those two jobs while reducing $85,000 in annual overtime expenses. Rooney and Ritter said that deal changed the budget dynamics.
"The firefighter layoffs would have saved us more money, but the deal we struck with the firefighters was a good balance between what we needed to save and what we needed to do to keep things on a harmonious basis," Ritter said.