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As Ward 10 Ald. Tim Griffin headed to City Council
Tuesday night, he was still receiving phone calls from residents worried
about a property-tax increase. His constituents’ concerns, coupled with his
and six other aldermen’s unfamiliarity with the city’s budget
process, Griffin said, convinced him that raising property taxes next year
was not in Springfield’s best interests. “I’m not willing to change what
we’re doing at this point, not on this short notice,” Griffin
said. “In order to talk about raising taxes, I have to be able to
look somebody in the face and say, ‘I’ve went through every
other option, and this is the only option left.’
“I haven’t gotten myself to that
point.”
Griffin and the other aldermen voted unanimously
Tuesday to keep the city’s property-tax rate at $0.9385 per $100
assessed valuation, as it has been since 2006, despite Mayor Tim
Davlin’s warnings that unfunded state fire and police pensions would
continue to grow and eat away at the city’s budget. Davlin said thanks to the Legislature, the city
currently owes about $65 million and $50 million in unfunded fire and
police pensions, respectively — a figure that will increase by $8
million in the next fiscal year. Because the property-tax rate was left the
same, Davlin told aldermen, next year’s budget is basically written
— with close to $6 million coming out of the corporate budget to fund
public-library and Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund requirements that
have been pushed aside by state police- and fire-pension obligations. However, even though Davlin reiterated that the
city’s property-tax rate would need to be increased eventually, he
again would not openly advocate for an increase. “If the state passes it, it’s our job to
pay the bill,” Davlin said, “or it’s our job to pass this
on to the next City Council, that will then have a $30 million or $40
million dollar problem in another six, seven, eight years.”
Although Griffin says that this City Council needs to
address the problem head-on and ease the burden on the next council, he
agrees with other aldermen that they need to take the next year to consider
other options and allow the public to weigh in on the pension and
property-tax issues.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2007.
