The Aurora City Council this week approved a $374.8 million city budget for 2018 and also OK’d increases in two utility taxes to help fund it.
As has been said throughout the budget process, the city faced several challenges, including a 12 percent increase in public safety pension payments, which the city is mandated to make from the general fund.
It also lost more than $3 million which the state normally doles out from the local government distributive fund, the personal property reduction tax and in sales tax in the form of a fee the state is charging the city to collect that tax.
“Year after year, we always say we’ve been challenged,” said Ald. Robert O’Connor, at large, chairman of the Finance Committee. “We were buffeted on all sides by increasing costs, helped by the state of Illinois. We tried to hold the line, we tried to keep it tight. But there were increases in costs from outside forces.”
It is the first city budget under Mayor Richard Irvin, and the mayor said the process was “a very enlightening experience.”
He said it was a challenge to put together a budget that started with a state-mandated deficit. He said he wanted to maintain public safety levels and keep the city’s infrastructure working. To that end, he is adding six new police officers and two new firefighters.
And he said he wanted to keep a campaign promise he made to put even more emphasis on economic development. The budget funds a new Economic Development Division with a director, and revives the Economic Development Commission.
“No one ever wants to hear that we have to raise taxes — no one,” Irvin said. “We made cuts where we could, but it wasn’t enough. We were mindful of citizens’ pocketbooks.”
The tax increases are coming in the form of an increase in the municipal natural gas tax on Nicor bills and the municipal electric tax on ComEd bills that could raise more than $4 million a year.
The actual budget for 2018 is $374.8 million, slightly less than the $378.2 million budgeted last year. With carryovers from the 2017 budget, the total amount of budgeted expenses would be $417.9 million.
The general fund, which is the city’s main operating fund, would be $177.4 million, up from last year’s $168.7 million. That increase mirrors increased revenues in the fund, officials said. One reason for that is the city is increasing the amount of money allocated from the local home rule sales tax in 2018.
Last year, the general fund had about a $2.4 million deficit covered by dipping into the city’s fund reserves. This year, the city will not cut into the fund balance and is estimated to have about an $18,000 surplus in the general fund.
The city also will get an estimated $4.4 million from the sale of the Fox Valley Country Club, which should come on the books this year. But city officials said they plan to use that money to seed a capital projects budget for 2019.
Next week, aldermen are set to vote on a $75.9 million 2017 tax levy that is about $2.9 million, or 3.97 percent higher, than the 2016 levy. It is the 2017 levy on taxes payable in 2018.
The council also will vote on the separate library budget of $9.5 million that, if realized, would be $635,784 higher than it was this year. However, the library might not get. The final number will be determined when the assessed value of property in the library’s coverage area is known in March 2018.
The City Council Finance Committee this week recommended the tax levy, which will be voted on at the Dec. 19 City Council meeting. It also will go before the council at Committee of the Whole the same night. The council meeting was rescheduled to be on the same night as Committee of the Whole because of the Christmas holiday.
Some of the things in the city budget approved this week include: $3.35 million toward the Transportation Center project, including the pedestrian bridge connecting the east and west sides of the Fox River near RiverEdge Park; $1.8 million toward the Aurora Arts Centre project, which is actually pass-through funding from several federal programs; $4.5 million toward the new public safety emergency response system; $400,000 in right-of-way projects in parkways, sidewalks and gutters; $950,000 toward the Mastodon Lake project, some $450,000 of which is coming from a state Open Space and Land Acquisition Development grant; and about $7.3 million in road projects (compared to $6.9 million in 2017).
