Story posted Thursday, June 25, 2009
City Departments Outline Ways To Save
By CRAIG ADAMS Journal & Topics Reporter
Several city departments in Rolling Meadows agreed to take steps to lower budgets for the rest of the year.
The city manager asked each department to submit cuts to reduce spending. The city council saw a presentation of the cuts during a Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday, June 16, and approved a transfer of funds suggested in one of them at its meeting on Tuesday, June 23.
That transfer was a chargeback from the local roads fund of $70,000 to the city's general fund. Finance and public works staffs pointed out they support the local roads fund with activities such as city sticker processing, but do not assess a chargeback fee for that administrative support. The council agreed and approved the chargeback for that support.
The finance department also agreed to not approve any overnight stays for staff seminars and close the service counter an hour early every day to lower payroll. That department also showed a $3,000 savings by switching to a lighter weight paper for the city's newsletter.
All departments will make use of more electronic instead of paper reports and files. City council packets have switched to an email format as well.
The Community Development Dept. also plans to close the service counter an hour early and it will not fill an open part-time clerk position. There are other savings planned by reducing training for the police and fire departments. Fire will also delay the hiring of a firefighter, reassigning the training officer for the time being. The police department will reassign officers to the patrol division to reduce overtime. That department will also delay the purchase of a records management system.
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