On Saturday, trustees and department heads in the village of Riverside will be sitting down to begin crafting the final budget for the 2009 fiscal year.
They will be doing so either under an umbrella of largesse from voters in the form of a tax increase or under some duress if voters turned aside that tax increase request in voting on Tuesday.
The debate over the referendum was cast in either-or terms. Village officials were either very persuasive in communicating a crisis and proposing the only alternative to it, or they were perceived as threatening pain if they didn’t get their way.
Despite all of the rhetoric on either side of the debate, the future does not have to be predicated on those either-or terms. Instead, this village has to find a common ground of fiscal responsibility and reality that most voters can share.
Riverside voters can read a balance sheet and can see that over the long haul, there is a structural problem with finances. Expenditures are outpacing revenues-they have been for years.
What’s driving those expenses is not an over-reliance on consultants or in buying property (although those can be argued on a case-by-case basis). The village’s budget is driven by costs for personnel-principally police and public works. Police pension costs are also a staggering financial responsibility.
Are department heads well paid? Absolutely, but you will neither solve the budget deficit nor attract the most qualified administrators by offering junior-level salaries for those positions.
For whatever reasons, public service on the municipal level comes with handsome remuneration. Unless that is somehow reversed universally, Riverside is likely to be in that same boat for the future.
To pay for the basic level of services, it’s going to take money and, eventually, that’s going to have to come in the form of a tax hike.
Because of that, village officials have to be painfully aware that such questions, in such economic times, are a real burden to taxpayers and have to carefully consider what they ask for and what they are threatening to cut if they don’t get their way.
We can only hope that on Saturday, village officials, if the referendum failed, will find a way to fund recreation and daytime fire staffing while it attempts to craft a new tax proposal.
Yes, spending away all of the village’s reserves is foolhardy, but Riverside is a long way from that eventuality.
On the other hand, if village officials were successful last night, they have a profound duty to make sure that they follow through on all of the initiatives they promised, continue to hold the line on salaries and costs and provide the maximum service for the dollars they’ve been so generously given by voters.