Spending Cuts Reduce Skokie's Deficit By Nearly $5 Million

SKOKIE, IL — The coronavirus pandemic has forced local governments to confront ominous budget forecasts for the coming year, with its high reliance on sales taxes and fees, and the village of Skokie is no different.

At Monday's village board meeting, Village Manager John Lockerby told trustees about half of the village's revenue is tied to the economy, and half the village's $120 million annual budget goes towards operations.

"We anticipate there will be a deficit budget this year, but we're working aggressively to reduce the size of that deficit," Lockerby said. "It could be as high as $10 million, but we are projecting we can get it down to about half of that."

Village staff implemented a series of cost-cutting measures over the past two months in response to the economic impact of the pandemic, according to Assistant Village Manager Nick Wyatt.

All departments at Village Hall had to cut their non-personnel budgets by 5 percent. And an informal hiring freeze that kept 14 budgeted jobs vacant heading into the pandemic was made official in March, he said.

A pair of positions have opened up since then and remained unfilled — a $54,000-a-year finance clerk and a $95,000-a-year fire administrative project coordinator, not counting benefits.

"A large percentage of our operating budget is related to personnel," Lockerby told trustees. "So as we have had attrition, we are not filling those positions, doing an analysis with each position to see if we can maintain services and keep those positions vacant, and so the hiring freeze has been very important to us."

Village departments deferred some capital spending, reduced its village's contribution to employee health insurance, eliminated most seasonal summer employees and all non-essential travel or training.

Across the board, the departments' spending cuts saved the village $2.3 million, Wyatt told Patch.

The other $2.4 million in savings came thanks to larger than anticipated revenue from the motor fuel tax last year. That money will go to cover the cost of street resurfacing that would have otherwise come from the general fund, he explained.

Wyatt said the remaining $5.5 million deficit projection does not include reimbursements for costs associated from the pandemic, future savings from the hiring freeze, grants or other forecasted reductions that have yet to be realized.

Lockerby also said the village also has just over $15 million in its reserve fund.

"So as we are embarking on these very difficult economic times," he said, "the reserve fund is at the level that our village policy established it for."