Will County Board members are considering a budget plan for fiscal 2018 that is being called a fiscally responsible proposal by at least one board member.
"The fiscal budget for 2018 that the County Board is proposing balances due to board members and county staff holding a line on spending," Gloria Dollinger, elected to the County Board's District 10 seat in 2016, told the Will County Gazette.
The budget proposal is based on the county's spending history upon which future projections have been made, Dollinger said. "We took a look at past actual spending and this year's expected costs to make adjustments which reflect what will be a truer picture of spending for 2018," she said.
Gloria Dollinger, District 10 Will County Board member
"Many line items have been trimmed such as travel, consulting services and supplies in an effort to cut waste," she said.
The latest proposed budget, approved by a Will County Board committee on Nov. 7, is almost $890,000 less than one presented in September and includes across-the-board cuts in travel expenses, the Daily Southtown reported.
Will County Board members this week are expected to consider the plan that would cut about $1 million in salary expenses spend on county staff while setting aside money for overtime paid to sheriff department and health department employees, the Daily Southtown report said. Most of the money for overtime pay would be spent on manning the county jail, though some have called for hiring more officers to reduce the need for so much overtime.
Will County's fiscal year begins Dec. 1, so the plan under consideration comes just a couple of weeks before the beginning of the next fiscal year.
The latest budget proposal also reflects an $830,000 cut for the Sunny Hill Nursing Home, which in the past year switched to private rooms.
The proposed budget also would eliminate a $1 million increase in Consumer Price Index tax revenues and would cut nearly all staff salaries by almost 7 percent, or a little more than $1 million, with each department deciding how to deal with those cuts, the Daily Southtown reported.
Adjustments in the proposed budget are based on real-time expected costs, Dollinger said. "The County Board's adjustments in salaries more accurately reflect real cost, especially in overtime, which is expected in our critical services," she said.
"This isn't a perfect process, the efforts to adjust the executive's proposed budget reflects our commitment to fiscal responsibility in Will County government," Dollinger said.
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