'Lean' Clarendon Hills Budget Approved

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The Village Board gave its unanimous approval Monday night to a 2012-13 budget that reduces General Fund departmental expenditures by 2.3 percent compared to the current fiscal year’s budget, but spends 2.2 percent more than the current year when the fund's transfers and rebates, like the sales-tax rebate to , are included.

Thanks in part to the leftover revenue from the new dealership after the rebate, village staff expects to have an excess fund balance of $362,330 at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year.

Village finance director Peg Hartnett said leaving several personnel vacancies unfilled played a part in the departmental reductions. Also, the village board approved Monday that aim to keep salaries market-based and offer merit bonuses only to those employees who have not reached their maximum wage.

Apart from those factors, Hartnett gave credit to village staff for finding cuts.

“The department heads did a very good job of trimming back their expenditures,” she said.

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The Public Works Department’s expenditures were cut by $101,000 (11.2 percent). Much of that decrease is due to the upcoming retirement of the department’s longtime director, John Hayes. Community Development expenditures were cut by five percent, while the trimmed 4.6 percent off its budget.

The President/Board/Committees Department, Administration/Finance Department and Clarendon Hills Fire Department all saw expenditure increases, though the largest increase came in miscellaneous costs and transfers, which will rise 65.6 percent.

Those expenditures will rise more than $262,000, from $400,150 in 2011-12 to $662,600 in 2012-13. Most of that increase, an estimated $212,500, is the result of a sales tax rebate that will be given Infiniti of Clarendon Hills, a part of the new dealership’s agreement to locate in the village. The village is also transferring $250,000 from the General Fund to the Capital Projects Fund.

Trustee Paul Pedersen, the Village Board’s finance chairman, said he appreciated village staff coming up with as “lean” a budget as it did.

“The bottom line from my perspective is we’ve done a good job of controlling costs historically and we’ve tried harder given the economic circumstances we’re working under,” Pedersen said.

While the village’s overall expenditures are budgeted to increase during the upcoming fiscal year, the village’s revenue is expected to increase at a higher rate.

Clarendon Hills expects to have $6,577,290 available in 2012-13, a seven-percent increase over 2011-12’s $6,146,965 revenue intake. Much of that increase is due to a 29.5 percent rise in state-shared revenue (from $1,291,250 to $1,672,000) that is partly due to a population increase noted in the 2010 Census, Hartnett said, and a 2.6 percent increase in property-tax revenue (from $3,284,445 to $3,371,010).

And despite the aforementioned rebate, the village still expects to get $186,500 in sales-tax revenue from the Infiniti dealership.

Village staff does not expect surplus budgets in future years and included in the budget a few words of warning. 

"The likelihood of future expenditure increases, the instability of the State of Illinois' financial situation, and the general lack of economic activity all mean that the years ahead will continue to be difficult for the General Fund," the budget's intro reads. "The Village Board and Staff will have to be both creative and flexible going forward to see that the Village's responsibilities are met."

Hartnett noted that Water Fund expenditures will increase due to rising rates from the DuPage Water Commission and the need to replace a significant portion of the village’s 29 miles of water-main pipe. The finance director said 16 miles of that pipe is due for replacement.

Additional revenue to offset those new expenditures will comes from increased resident water rates over the next five years.