Excerpts from the chicagotribune.com:
North Chicago’s police and fire department employees can breathe easy, for now, as a looming threat to cut their staff has officially been taken off the table when the City Council voted this week to pass the 2018-19 budget without any layoffs.
Council members had been stalling approval of the new fiscal year’s budget, which began on May 1, unsure of which recommendations presented would trim a $1 million deficit without eliminating emergency services and cutting wages to its non-union employees.
Prior to the 5-2 vote Monday to approve a budget that includes no cuts to wages, Ald. Carl Evans said, “I refuse to cut anybody’s salary.” However, the package does add a salary freeze to personnel who fall under the city’s salary ordinance.
Those affected by the freeze include roughly 32 employees in managerial positions in the fire and police departments, as well as non-union comptroller department personnel and the deputy city clerk.
An earlier version of the budget initially included laying off three firefighters and the sale of a ladder truck, along with wage reductions and furlough days for 17 non-union employees, among other cuts.
At the time, the mayor said everything was on the table and all departments would have to look at what could be reduced to get the budget down to $23.9 million.
Going after businesses and residents who are behind on paying water bills is one option the city could take toward generating those future funds.
Once the salary freezes are factored into the approved budget, the city’s $1.31 million deficit will be reduced to an estimated $1.25 million
The impetus for the aggressive look at reducing the budget was a pension fund dispute between the city and its Firefighters Pension Board. In early April, the board appealed to the Illinois comptroller to divert a delinquent $863,677 the city owed for fiscal years 2016-17. The city and the board then settled on $150,000.
A researcher at the University of Chicago who has studied the Illinois pension funds crisis, said a law was passed in 2011 impacting pension systems throughout Illinois. Under the new funding plan starting this year, fund managers can report their municipalities to the state Comptroller’s Office. The state comptroller has to then divert tax funds the municipality is slated to receive to the pension fund that appealed.
“This new funding enforcement mechanism states that pensions be 90 percent funded by 2040, and so North Chicago can end up in this exact scenario again and again if they don’t continue to pay into their pension funds,” Kass said.
According to data from from the Illinois Department of Insurance, in 2016, the city’s Firefighters Pension Board was funded at 35.3 percent, while the Police Pension Fund was funded at 33.8 percent. Both pension funds were down from previous years.
