From Nadia Malik at the Daily Herald:

Glen Ellyn lays off three [unnamed] village employees to help balance budget

"We really need more revenue or there will be significant impacts to service in town," Finance Director Jon Batek said.

Oh great! I bet that means they will stop salting the streets.

Doesn't there have to be viable business in town for there to be sales revenues? All those empty storefronts won't bring in sales tax, no matter how high you raise it.

Layoffs are never easy and I emphasize with anyone needing to perform them. However - layoffs which are not accompanied by other rational cost-cutting measures are rarely effective. In reviewing past/current budgets as well as the "recovery" based revenue projections I would like to know why the village isn't taking an even more aggressive posture. Again, I'm back to personnel expenditures; have they evaluated ratable salary adjustment to offset all or some of the projected shortfall; have they evaluated move certain FT employees to PT/contract?

Why has the village communicated no coherent plan for addressing the shortfall, other than to trickle out layoff announcements? Good bad or ugly here are some ideas:

Cost Reduction
- Ratable pay cuts across the board.
- reduction and/or suspension in benefits
- renegotiate existing service contracts. --We're in a deflationary period, so service costs should be reflective of that, no?

Revenue "Production"
- Red light Cameras on Roosevelt - you run the light, you pay the fine. Oakbrook's been raking in millions doing this...
- Public/Private JV to in increase the GE tax base both residential and business

Lastly - and if there's absolutely no fat on the bone, and a sales tax "is our only hope - more than 15% needs to go back to the downtown plan.

I wonder how many merchants will be offering "cash" discounts to their customers?!

"Sorry about your job!"
"How do you like my fountain?!"

"Oak Forest's record in labor disputes hasn't been too good lately, and the losses have been costly."

"City administrator John Marquart, who was not the administrator at the time of the change in plan, said the city and union have more work to do before calculating how much the city will have to pay back."

Nice

quote:

Revenue "Production"
- Red light Cameras on Roosevelt - you run the light, you pay the fine. Oakbrook's been raking in millions doing this...

Didn't Schaumburg just remove such cameras near Woodfield, since the ill-will from shoppers was outweighing the receipts? Also, while no doubt the downtown area needs attention, let's not forget making sure the Roosevelt Road corridor is enhanced, as the businesses along that way may attract people...certainly it's good to have Trader Joe's & Binny's in town, as well as the upcoming Staples (now, the Jewel Plaza is certainly one area I'd vote to upgrade asap).

But, to do my bit for our local businesses, I'll be taking my car over to Auto Body Village for the new paint for the bumper from yesterday's rear-ending - since not only Country Ins. recommended it, I see Clamato did as well. Now I just have to figure out how to drive north of the CBD

Amazing! I just had my 2008 fire inspection in March of 2009 only to be informed that I will soon be getting my 2009 inspection in a couple of months.

Can't they use this inspection to cover 2008 (since it is now 2009 and the place didn't go up in smoke last year) and this March 2009 inspection to cover 2009 as it is now 2009?

Somethin' tells me they just want their fees?!

There is a new 'Red Light' camera at Finley & Roosevelt. Must be something Lombard installed.

a red light district could bring in the revenues

quote:

Didn't Schaumburg just remove such cameras near Woodfield, since the ill-will from shoppers was outweighing the receipts?

you might be right, but they disabled only the right turn on red camera, not the main thoroughfare redlight camera...apparently, people were getting ticketed because they needed to pull forward to see oncoming traffic; doing so triggered the camera.

Forsale, yes that is the case:

Schaumburg Red Light Camera

1M from one camera...pretty sweet.

Why no "immediate" mention of the positions that were eliminated? While I certainly feel for the people that were let go, I would expect at least a mention of what departments were impacted and how that will affect Glen Ellyn - i.e. police, public works, planning, etc.

The DH website for the story has someone commenting that 6 people were actually affected. Can anyone confirm?

From the Village of Glen Ellyn eNewsletter I just received, it sounds like more than 6 were affected to some extent:

"In addressing the current and future economic conditions, the Village has determined the need to reduce its staffing levels. In order to help address declining revenues and a projected $500,000 budget deficit, five employee positions were eliminated, one full-time position was reduced to part-time, and several employees will experience a reduction in hours. Overall, this results in a 4% staff cut."

quote:

Originally posted by GEM:
Amazing! I just had my 2008 fire inspection in March of 2009 only to be informed that I will soon be getting my 2009 inspection in a couple of months.

inspection to cover 2009 as it is now 2009?

Somethin' tells me they just want their fees?!

DeKalb did this to me last year. Inspections were in Fall and fee collection was in fall then they bumped it up with fee collection the following June, inspection, fall. Odd.

How is that this town is broke? I look at the help wanted on the Glen Ellyn web site from time to time through out the years at the job postings, hence it has been nearly impossibly for me to get a job with the Village (although I still look and hope), and I've seen nothing in months. The newsletter then touched on that stating they have not filled several vacancies.

You're missing the point Lup!

They (the village) missed the 2008 inspection Totally! (b/c the lady fire inspector quit) so 2008 was never scheduled or performed in 2008, yet the village is requiring a retro-active fee and inspection for 2008 in 2009.

Then the village wants to reinspect again in 2-3 months and require yet another fee when there haven't been (or will be) any significant changes to the property.

i.e. the boiler certificate will still be valid, fire extinguishers still current ect.

quote:

Originally posted by Buggy24:
a red light district could bring in the revenues

Doubt it! I heard that is a cash only operation.

Looking at the budget for GE its 44M which works out to roughly 1500.00 per person . This doesn't include school, parks and we have a volunteer fire department. So where does the village spend all of its money.

Also I agree it would have been good to find out which department were affected . Why is this a secret.