North Cook News

At the public input portion of the Nov. 28 meeting of the Evanston City Council, residents asked council to commit to fully funding the police and pension funds in the 2023 budget using surplus funds rather than raising the tax levy or adding a new tax rate.

Councilmember Clare Kelly made an amendment to the 2023 Budget Ordinance that stated that the city would use roughly $4.494 million from the city’s surplus to fully fund the pensions. The board members agreed, with some reminding the community that fully funding it this year does not mean the city is completely caught up, but rather they are starting to close the gap and will have to continue to work on the issue.

“I just wanted to point out again that this has been escalating, so we’re now paying - our resident taxpayers are paying probably $14 million rather than 7 had this been fully funded,” Kelly said at the meeting. “So should we choose not to fully fund it, it will just continue to increase what gets levied against our residents in interest and fees. This is money in the bank for our taxpayers, it’s also how we prioritize our spending next year. So I think it’s hard to say how much will we raise taxes, if it’s 4.5. Over time this is obviously going to decrease, but I think we can’t really say at this point how much this will necessarily increase taxes. I think it’s a discussion of our priorities and I think this is a very obvious priority that we need to fund at this point and it might take priority over other spending.”

With an 8-1 vote in favor, the city council accepted the amendment for the budget ordinance and put it on the agenda for the Dec. 12 meeting to be voted on and finalized.

Council also voted to accept all its tax levies for 2022, which included multiple special areas. The overall levy will total $34,525,671 which is a 0.8% increase from the 2021 levy amount.