The Village Board must cut about $665,000 in additional spending to balance the budget for the coming fiscal year, village trustees were told this weekend at the first of a series of budget workshops.
The village will end this fiscal year April 30 with a $570,000 deficit, and the red ink is expected to run up to $1.1 million in the 1993-94 fiscal year.
Staff has come up with $435,000 in cuts, such as manpower reductions, but the balance of the spending reductions must be decided by the Village Board, village manager Michael Janonis told trustees.
The next round of reductions should be like “using a scalpel” on the budget, Janonis explained. The village wants to avoid service reductions, which Janonis said would be like “using an ax.”
Another budget workshop is scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. A public hearing is to be held before the May 1 deadline for adopting a budget.
Janonis also recommended that Mt. Prospect find new revenue sources to make up for increasing costs for health insurance-up 18.9 percent in the first 10 months of this fiscal year-as well as for pension funds, workers compensation and refuse pick-up.
Janonis told trustees that the deficit is a “revenue problem” because of lower-than-anticipated sales tax revenues, and not an “expenditure problem.”
Indeed, the only expected increase in revenues this year would be from the sales tax. December sales were up about 5 percent from the previous year in Mt. Prospect, and the municipality has factored in a 4 percent increase in its 1993-94 budget.
