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Public input to be sought in strategic planning process. Community High School District 99 will seek the opinions of community members, parents, business owners, students, teachers and staff as part of its strategic planning process, which will be launched this summer.

At the last June council meeting Mayor Sandack referred to 4-5 resident comments on the village website regarding Long Term Financial Planning that starts on June 29th. The lack of input may be from lack of information. This link will take you direct to a 15 page village summary report on the current financial state, [...]

So far there’s been an ongoing discussion of pensions, which unfortunately only the state can address; we’ve posted on payroll escalations in the upcoming year, cost per resident comparisons, payroll and staff comparisons, expense cuts and potential revenue generators.  Look in “budget” under category in the side bar search and you’ll get a good jumping [...]

“I’m going to be real blunt here: The public involvement with respect to trees is very much appreciated –I hope we get half that involvement when it comes to our budget..We’re talking about difficult, daunting topics like taxes, fees, revenues, the services we provide. And trees, while important, is a budgeted item and while it [...]

Yes, and you better be paying attention, because this one deals mainly with revenue sources needed to make up for existing shortfalls. On Tuesday August 4 village staff laid out the next step in getting workable budgets.  Village Manager Dave Fieldman again led the Long Range Financial Planning meeting, and outlined a multi-year game plan [...]

Last Tuesday was meeting number four for long range budget planning (see reports of meetings one, two, and three here).  Led by Village Manager Dave Fieldman, staff laid out various possible options for revenue enhancement and expense trimming in response to the budget crunch that has already seen layoffs, unpaid furloughs, pay freezes, and cost [...]

Council met tonight for round three of long range budget planning.  Most of the discussion was more of a quiz session of council so staff could try and ascertain what areas they might work on to trim the imbalance, and try and keep things on a steady keel. To kick it off  Village Manager Dave [...]

Champaign’s $96,000 study identifies tax surplus generating development. A buddy downstate emailed me this study, noting one other blogger already has written about it.  His point; there’s a temptation to simply do what generates surplus income for the municipality.

Village staff and commissioners clarified at last night’s council workshop meeting how they’ve used the results of July’s Citizen Summit in the development of the strategic plan Acting village manager Dave Fieldman acknowledged the summit would have been improved by allowing time at the end to share and summarize comments made by participants. Despite that [...]

Had the pleasure of participating in the second annual Citizen Summit last night. The event brings the village council and senior staff together with residents to brainstorm issues for consideration during the strategic planning process. Among this year’s attendees were many of the usual suspects including DGreport regulars Mark Thoman and John Schofield. Under the [...]