Brenden Moore
The State Journal-Register
The Springfield City Council passed Mayor Jim Langfelder’s $130.1 million fiscal year 2021 budget proposal Tuesday evening, which holds the line on taxes and is without significant cuts to city services.
The corporate budget, which does not include the cost to run City Water, Light and Power, is about $4 million more than last year’s ask. Much of the increase comes from employee salaries and benefits along with the continued climb in required contributions to the city’s police and fire pensions.
CWLP’s $293.3 million proposal went untouched by council members. The total budget request is about $559.3 million. In a sometimes tense meeting that stretched well past four hours, council members tweaked the proposal with a series of amendments before approving it 9-1.
Among them, they cut out Langfelder’s request for an assistant director in the Office of Human Resources, a line item of $119,350. The council also chopped the mayor’s proposal to fund a tree survey and planting from $200,000 to $50,000.
However, council members quickly utilized those savings for other initiatives, including $130,000 for two new positions in Public Works, $50,001 for the Kidzeum, $78,000 to cover the cost of new recruit education for police officers, $64,721 for an additional security guard at Lincoln Library and $61,477 for a new position at the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.
An additional $60,000 was approved and will be split evenly for engineering studies for the North Grand Avenue and Stevenson Drive corridors. And an additional $30,000 for a study of the Peoria Road corridor, which could come out of tax increment financing dollars, was approved.
Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin, who has never voted ‘yes’ on a budget proposal, was the lone ‘no’ vote, calling the budget “unbalanced.”
Though corporate fund revenue is expected to fall short of expenses by about $1.7 million, the proposal would take about $1.8 million from the city’s existing fund balance to cover the gap. Budget director Bill McCarty said this “planned use of reserves” is a result of a rollover of about $1.4 million in unspent appropriations in last year’s budget. The largest is the result of unsettled contract negotiations with the union representing Springfield police officers.
An additional $385,000 will be spent from reserves on one-time purchases, including $100,000 for 25 in-car police computers, $85,000 for Street Smart Predictive Software for the police department and $65,000 for Tasers.
McCarty said the city is projected to end the year with about a 19.8 percent fund balance, which equals about $25 million.
Some highlights of the budget include:
• $5 million for the Springfield Rail Improvements Project;
• $250,000 for the Springfield-Sangamon Growth Alliance;
• $170,000 for new “smart” parking meters;
• $12 million for major Public Works projects, such as Archer Elevator Road improvements, a pedestrian bikeway and overlay for Hilltop Road and upgrades to Stanford Ave. between 11th Street and Fox Bridge Road;
• $98,000 for police in-car cameras;
• $77,000 for air packs for the fire department;
• Full funding for the city’s “no sticker” yard waste and leaf collection program.
The budget also reflects a promise Langfelder made during last year’s mayoral campaign to hold the line on new taxes. In his first term, Langfelder proposed and the city council eventually passed a .25 percent sales tax increase, a 2 percent increase in the telecommunications tax and a 1 percent increase in the hotel/motel tax.
At a mayoral debate in March, Langfelder said the council had taken “corrective action” and he didn’t “see any need to raise any further taxes because I’ve done the heavy lift where others would not.”
Still, balancing the budget remains a daunting task as pension obligations slowly eat away a greater percentage of the city’s corporate fund. Langfelder included an unavoidable $1.4 million pension payment increase in the budget. Overall, the city’s pension payment this year is expected to exceed the city’s property tax revenue by about $1.5 million, according to McCarty.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 