City of Quincy continues to monitor financial situation

QUINCY — At Monday’s Quincy City Council meeting, a woman came up during public comment and asked if the city was in a “financial crisis.”

Carol Mayfield said she had been watching mayoral debates and that former alderman Dan Brink had used that term in describing city finances.

While Quincy Mayor Mike Troup didn’t publicly answer Mayfield’s question from the dais, Alderman Mike Farha (R-4th Ward) gave his response.

“We have a spending problem,” Farha said before repeating the question of “crisis” and calling up City Comptroller Sheri Ray to elaborate.

“We’re operating under a balanced budget,” Ray told the aldermen. “We did a $2 million revenue reduction because we knew last July that the state was not going to advance the PPRT revenues that we had projected a year ago in February, when we passed the budget. So we typically want to keep a balanced budget. So if we were going to eliminate $2.384 million worth of revenues, we subsequently would reduce $2.384 million worth of general fund expenditures. That reduction maintained a balanced budget. It does not mean we are currently in a crisis.”

Ray said further reductions in state funding are expected for the next fiscal year. The Illinois Municipal League predicts the cuts could be another six or seven percent.

“We just passed the tax levy, and I told you that I assumed PPRT would either stay flat, potentially go down … The picture going forward is, obviously, we’re strongly focused on our sales tax and home rule sales tax. We hope to see some growth, two, three percent. it’s kind of been like an average. So the key is, can you contain expenditure growth at that same rate?”

In other action, The City Council:

• Received a report from Human Resources Director Kelly Japcon that said compensation claims were cut nearly in half from more than $465,000 in 2023 to about $244,000 in 2024. she said claims related to garbage pickup were greatly reduced with better training for proper use of equipment. Claims had been as high as $1 million as recently as 2021.
• Voted to spend $1 million from the city’s motor fuel tax to replace the street surface as well as curbs and gutters on South 18th from Ohio to Harrison. The project’s total cost will be $1.8 million, with the Illinois Department of Transportation paying the remainder. Work is expected to begin in April.
• Approved an ordinance allowing Adams County to building a taller fence around the parking lot on the east side of the Adams County Jail. The County wants to raise the fence from four to seven foot because of recent vandalism to vehicles in the lot.