Evanston City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz is scheduled to release his proposed budget for 2015 tomorrow — a budget he has said may call for as much as a three percent cut in non-public safety general fund spending.
At a citizens budget input session last month, city finance officials said they anticipate that general fund revenue sources will increase at a rate greater than the rate of inflation because of expected increases in income, sales tax and building permit revenue next year.
Because of existing contract agreements with employee unions, the city expects to see wage costs increase by about 2.5 percent next year.
The consumer price index, the most widely followed measurement of inflation, has been running at an annual rate of between 1.7 and 2 percent in recent months.
Bobkiewicz told aldemen in August that he wanted the 3 percent cut in current departmental spending to be able to allocate the resulting savings to meet City Council priority goals.
Those goals include more work to repave city streets, better maintainance of city facilities, increasing economic development efforts and reducing the city’s long-term debt.