Feckless State Government Causes More Ills in Highland Park

In a good news, bad news scenario, we learned that the City of Highland Park ended the 2010 fiscal year. This extra money went into the city’s general fund balance, commonly known as the reserves. 

The bad news was that according to our auditor the above city policy 45 percent of annual budget currently in reserves might not be enough. Due to the State of Illinois being chronically late with payments, even those like sales tax for which it is merely the collector not the assessor, our auditor now recommends having more than 50 percent of the annual budget kept in reserves.

In other words, enough money to make sure that the city could operate for six months without any payments from the state.

Preserving our city’s AAA rating is incredibly important, especially as we face some large infrastructure needs in the near term, such as a and changes to the library. If we need to raise our reserves to keep that AAA status, that’s what we’ll have to do.

There’s just no reason we should have to do this. We shouldn’t be in a position to have to worry about funding from the state. There’s no reason that in the middle of the Great Recession, our fiscally responsible local government is going to need to increase its savings rather than prudently utilize them. The State of Illinois is entering a scary spiral of defecit and it seems we lack the leadership in Springfield to get us out of the nosedive. 

While I'm happy that our local government remains prudent, I am furious that residents of Highland Park are going to suffer not only at the state level due to these follies, but also locally as we face the specter of higher taxes, fewer services, or both.