My favorite movie of all time is “Its a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. There’s a line in the movie when George Bailey confronts Uncle Billie about the missing deposit for the savings and loan and says ” Well one of us is going to jail…and its not going to be me!”
We haven’t reached that point yet here in LaSalle but I am getting very nervous about our financial situation…let me explain…
During our last council meeting on April 19th we made some line item adjustments to the appropriation ordinance prior to the end of our fiscal year which ends 4/30. Its a common occurrence to do a bit of financial housekeeping to balance these individual accounts. The problem this year is the LARGE adjustment made regarding Tif 1. We underestimated the payment to a developer which had to be made this year to the tune of over $229,000! We thought it was going to be around $45,000.
I’m not blaming the Mayor , past or present, or the comptroller or the developer, or our TIF attorney Tom Jacobs because frankly I don’t know who missed the boat on this estimate and since the check has been written and paid, that “boat” has sailed!
My point and concern is that we need to find $229,000 that we thought we would have, much like Uncle Billie when he went to make his deposit and accidentally “lost ” it to Mr Potter. The clock is ticking for us because we owe the State of Illinois for our portion of the interchange work being done at Rt 80 and Rt 178. Our bill, I’m told, will be $227,000. It hasn’t been presented yet but its only a matter of time till it is.
We don’t have many options when it does get presented. Either we cut back on current spending and/or borrow more money to pay it. We cannot continue to spend the way we do on unnecessary advertising, public events paid by tax dollars and extending positions that don’t make fiscal sense in these financial times! Let’s not forget we have employee contracts that are getting negotiated and will most certainly bring added expenses to the city as well.
At the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” the locals and friends of George financially bale him out….in our case if it gets bad enough the citizens may be forced to bale us out in the form of higher taxes…and nobody wants that!
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