Glenview trustees get tough budget news but great fire department report
On consecutive days this week, the Glenview board of trustees got the bad news first, then the good news.
The board assembled virtually Monday night for the first of what will be three budget workshops.
Village Manager Matt Formica got right to the point.
"What you're going to hear tonight is that, fortunately, revenues have performed better than we had projected, but unfortunately the impact to the village's corporate fund in 2021 is significant, almost a $6 million decline in revenues is what we're projecting," he said.
Formica projected more than a $1 million deficit in the village's corporate fund, "which is pretty substantial," he said.
The reason, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic. Glenview Finance Director Maggie Bosley noted the volatility of economic conditions because of a wide variety of factors.
They date to the onset of stay-at-home orders in March but also extend to a potential progressive tax amendment on the election ballot in November and even future tax legislation. Plus everything in between - unemployment, relief packages, subpar sales taxes.
"I will tell you that this right now is presenting more challenges than what we're used to," Bosley said.
The numbers actually were better than the board anticipated when on May 28 it estimated the pandemic's impact on 2020 revenues.
After sales tax revenues dropped 11.41% below 2018-19 levels in March and April, they improved somewhat to a 5.79% drop in May and June as pandemic restrictions loosened.
Frugal measures such as reducing overtime, not filling vacancies, delaying nonessential training and general process improvements, joined with slightly increased income tax amounts and insurance reimbursements created more cash than had been projected.
A revenue loss in late May of between $7.6 million and $13.6 million had been projected. At Monday's workshop, that total was acknowledged as less than $6 million.
The bottom line is that the 2021 proposed budget shows a deficit of roughly $1.05 million.
"We cannot adopt a budget with a deficit of a million dollars. So we are looking to close that gap," Bosley said.
The second Budget Workshop will be rescheduled from an original date of Oct. 1. A third is scheduled for Oct. 29.
At its regular meeting on Tuesday, the Village Board heard all sorts of good things about the Glenview Fire Department courtesy of Fitch & Associates of Platte City, Missouri, which finalized an evaluation of the department in February.
"Overall, when we looked at the performance of the department based on all that qualitative data and performance, the village and the residents really are well-served by your department, and they hit the mark on a great majority - if not almost all - of these things that we look at. I can tell you comparatively with the hundreds of other studies that I've personally been involved with the agencies I've run, I think you can be very proud of your department," said Fitch & Associates senior consultant Bruce Moeller.
The exhaustive study focused on a variety of operations including response time, staffing, community risk assessment and reliability. The Glenview Fire Department earned assessments above the 90th percentile or a "robust" assessment in nearly all cases.
Given the nature of Monday's meeting, the board also was intent on improving where it could, including reducing overtime and increasing the use of the already-present Medical Priority Dispatch System to more wisely allocate emergency medical units.
Learning that the sole engine at Station No. 13 was utilized only 43 minutes a day, it was even questioned whether that station should remain open, or staffed 12 hours rather than 24.
"That was kind of a shocking number to me when I saw it," Trustee John Hinkamp said.