Tag Archives: deficit

City Council, City of Peoria

Council faces grim budget realities

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The Peoria City Council had their annual retreat Wednesday night at the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center on West Main street. All the council members, the Mayor, and City department heads attended the retreat.

I was unable to attend the entire retreat, but did get there for roughly half of it. Based on materials distributed at the meeting, revenues are down again, and they’re expecting another ten to eleven million dollar deficit. They also appear to be anticipating a possible decline in population. One of the slides labeled “Key Expense Drivers” stated, “5,000 Loss in Population equals Approximately $500,000/yr of per Capita Income — 1 person = $100/capita.”

The Journal Star reports that revenues are down for a few reasons: (1) “reduction in property tax revenues because of a slump in the city’s equalized assessed valuation” caused by “assessment devaluations of commercial properties throughout the city,” (2) “January’s sales tax figures dropped by 10 percent from their November and December numbers,” indicating a troubling trend, and (3) “state income tax revenues are down from a year ago.” Nothing but bad news from the finance director.

By the end of the meeting, the following “next steps” were established, which are nearly identical to last year’s budget process:

  1. City Manager: Sit down with the professionals and come back with a budget that shows the cuts that can be made.
  2. Look at all forms of revenue growth — everything is on the table.
  3. Department heads to sit with staff and consider additional budget modifications.
  4. Challenge to the staff to consider new, alternative, and creative forms of service delivery to reduce costs/enhance revenues.

Translation: Expect higher taxes and/or fees, the possible invention of new fees, and more cuts in services. The Mayor especially made it clear that he believes the budget hole cannot be filled by cutting alone — new revenue will have to be generated.

City of Peoria

Scroggins: Deficit could be $12 million

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At the policy session Tuesday night, Finance Director Jim Scroggins was speaking and casually said something about a “$10 to $12 million deficit.” Councilman Sandberg stopped him mid-sentence after that and said, “Did you say $12 million?” Scroggins: “Ten to twelve.”

Can I just state the obvious here? The difference between ten and twelve million dollars is not trivial. Two million dollars can pay for a lot of city services. The council has been proceeding on the assumption that the deficit is going to be $10 million, and there’s already rhetoric that budget cuts are going to have to be made “with a chainsaw, not a scalpel” and it’s going to be “bloody.” I shudder to think how much worse it will be if the deficit grows another twenty percent.

One thing we can be sure of, though, is that the city will continue to protect unnecessary and expensive developer welfare like the $39.5 million they’re planning to give Gary Matthews to build a huge addition onto the Pere Marquette and affiliate with Marriott Hotels. They’re going to continue to protect money-losing “quality-of-life” amenities like the Civic Center and the proposed downtown museum, neither of which have been asked to sacrifice a penny. And they’re going to continue to annex more land to the north and west even though four decades of annexation has never produced the gravy train of revenue that was promised.

Instead, they’ll cut basic services, like police protection, code enforcement, animal and litter control, road maintenance, and the like. In tough economic times, it’s important to have priorities, you know.