By Ted Schnell • BocaJump | Nov, 24, 2011
Mayor David Kaptain said Wednesday he is encouraged by the turnout at the city’s Nov. 19 interactive public budget hearing, which saw 200 people turn out to ask questions and make suggestions about resolving Elgin’s structural deficit.
City officials are still digesting the results of the Nov. 19 hearing, where 40 people signed up to speak to or question city officials about the proposed 2012 budget. As proposed, the annual spending plan includes some cuts and a number of measures to strengthen and to diversify the city’s revenue streams to close a structural budget deficit ranging from $4.8 million to as much as $13 million.
“I think (the hearing) showed balance in the community,” Kaptain said. “We had people that have interests that really haven’t spoken up before — that was the arts community and people from social services.”
Those are the groups which face the largest immediate loss with a proposal to cut $2 million in funding from the city’s riverboat fund and divert that cash into the general fund. Prior to Nov. 19, most comments the City Council had heard in regard to the budget came during council meetings. The lion’s share of those have come from the special interest group Elgin OCTAVE, which formed with the primary purpose of pressuring the City Council to repeal the Elgin business license.
But the comments Saturday from the social services and arts groups struck a chord, Kaptain said.
“They want to know … what’s going to be the future for them as well,” he said. Kaptain explained that while the fund for these organizations will no longer remain in the city’s riverboat fund, the plan is to preserve funding for these groups.
“From the Community Development Block Grant funds, the city typically gets about $700,000 to $800,000 a year, and those are primarily used for capital projects to benefit people who are in the lower income brackets,” Kaptain said. “Our proposal is to take the construction grant fund out of that, which the city typically used for helping people who are in the lower end of the income bracket fix their porch or do repairs on their homes.”
In doing so, the city would be able to use roughly $100,000, which it normally would pocket to cover the costs of administering the program, and use it instead to provide funding for operational costs for social services agencies. The city would supplement that with another $150,000 that could be used by social service agencies for operational costs. Those agencies also could apply for the $700.000 to $800,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to cover capital needs.
“So at the end of the day, there actually would be more funds available for operating costs for social service agencies than there were in the past,” Kaptain said. Agencies would reapply for the funding each year. “So really it’s just a shift in funding.”
Kaptain said he supports Councilman John Steffen’s proposal to find a similar means of supporting the arts community in Elgin as well. Members of local arts organizations were among those who spoke on Saturday.
“I think that Elgin is going to be an arts center in the northwestern suburbs, and as part of that, we need to provide some assistance and grants for some of these organizations,” the mayor continued.
In the past, the Elgin Cultural Arts Commission has distributed about $80,000, mostly for grants of up to $8,000 to various arts groups, such as the Elgin Youth Symphony, Elgin theater groups and others. But the Elgin Symphony and other groups were included in the cuts to the riverboat fund, and that also hit social services. Kaptain said.
He said the city is looking at increasing that grant funding, adding that it would be open to applications from all local arts programs, giving other groups potential access to the funding as well.
