Consensus on how to fix Danville budget elusive
DANVILLE – Aldermen studied more closely on Monday several ways of trying to eliminate a projected $1.7 million budget deficit next year, including increasing the rental registration fee, changing employee health insurance benefits, creating a utility tax and increasing the city's sales tax in conjunction with property tax relief.
Fewer than half of the city's 14 aldermen attended Monday night's second budget study session.
Aldermen bounced around to different ideas throughout the more than two-hour meeting, discussing a variety of cuts and other ways to save money, as well as various ways to increase revenues.
Aldermen Rickey Williams and Jerry Askren said that regardless of what is done, the city needs to consider more personnel cuts.
Mayor Scott Eisenhauer emphasized that the city has already done that, eliminating more than 24 positions earlier this year.
"I don't know how many times we have to do that. We've already done that. Let's eliminate a service. That's where we save money," Eisenhauer said.
He said that's why he's pushed for the city to eliminate services, where it could really save money, rather than trimming personnel here and there.
Eisenhauer offered up the services that could be cut that would make an impact on the city's projected deficit: police, fire, streets, parks and code enforcement.
At last week's study session, Alderman Ron Candido suggested about a dozen additional positions to be cut in the city, and city officials estimate that those cuts would save about $250,000, which would still leave the city with more than a million-dollar deficit.
No clear solution emerged during the session as aldermen and city officials couldn't find a consensus on any suggested revenue increases or cuts, although increasing the rental registration fee seemed to gather the majority of support from the six aldermen in attendance: Jon Cooper, Lois Cooper, Steve Nichols, Rickey Williams, Jerry Askren and Mike Puhr. Dale Brandenburg left after the first hour of the meeting.
Aldermen discussed increasing the city's current 7.75 percent city sales tax by either half a percent or 1 percent. Eisenhauer said each half percent increase would generate an additional $750,000 in revenue for the city.
They also discussed increasing the $10 rental registration fee to $100, which would generate an additional $342,000 to $368,900, depending on where the city sets a cap for apartment buildings with many units.
Alderman Steve Nichols generally didn't support increasing revenues.
"The only problem with raising revenues is there will be no pressure to decrease costs," Nichols said.
Some city officials disagreed.
Nichols said he's afraid the council will end up with a "hodgepodge" of cuts and increases without tackling the fundamental problem.
He said the problem is that the city's costs continue to grow at a faster rate than the revenues.
"So we are just putting a Band-Aid on it when we need a tourniquet," he said.
The council considered a utility tax, which could be applied to city electric and natural gas bills and water bills at various rates, but Williams, Cooper and Askren shied away from that idea, because it would have the most impact on businesses and companies that are big utility consumers.
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