Naperville Slices 2020 Budget By Nearly $25M Amid Coronavirus

NAPERVILLE, IL — At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, Naperville unanimously approved a $24.9 million budget cut that comes with putting several capital projects on hold. The shift comes as the ongoing new coronavirus crisis has left a financial impact on the city, especially when it comes to sales tax revenue, City Manager Doug Krieger said at the meeting.

Among the deferred projects, which Krieger said were tabled for a number of reasons, is the city's downtown streetscape improvement plan. "There is not a single reason for all of these defferals, but a number of different reasons," Krieger said at the city council meeting.

"This year's capital plan is running about $20 million higher than our typical capital plan would and staff is comfortable with all of these recommendations for this budget amendment,"Krieger remarked.

"We've had kind of a unique year," Krieger said, "Through the month of February, we were off to a great start this year. March came and obviously some very significant changes were made, specifically to our sales tax, so we expect the next several months to be very difficult."

He said the city council will have a financial check-in during the second meeting of each month.

Mayor Steve Chirico urged Krieger to look into getting funding from DuPage and Will Counties.

Though no financial assistance from the counties is set in stone, Chirico said, "So, despite the fact that we have a pretty substantial and sort of scary hole in our budget going forward here, we do have some financial assistance that's coming our way, as well as all the other municipalities, as well as all the other levers that we sort of have to pull, our reserves and our debt rating and our deferment of capital and things like that."

One of the biggest projects deferred is the city's $2.6 million downtown streetscape plan, as merchants preferred it to be postponed in the wake of the coronavirus.

"Given our existing timelines, [2022 or 2023] appears to be the most [likely] timeline for it," Krieger said.