Oswego Village Board Passes Budget For Fiscal Year 2019-2020

OSWEGO, IL—The Oswego Village Board passed its fiscal year 2019-2020 budget at an April 22 special meeting. Village revenues and expenditures amount to $46 million and $50 million, respectively.

“The $4 million difference is due to $1.7 million of expenditures exceeding revenues in the capital improvement and $2.4 million of expenditures exceeding revenues in the water capital fund,” said Mark Horton, finance director for the village. “There’s $4.1 million, right there, in the two capital funds. As you know, prior year savings in reserves in those two funds support those expenditures.”

Horton said department heads are good about controlling expenditures to help the village generate reserve surplus funds.

Some adjustments were made to the draft budget since it was originally presented. Those include personnel costs and minor expenditures in the general/operating and water and sewer capital funds.

The budget shows the village is accounting for two new positions, one for a civil engineer, one for an administrative assistant.

Trustee Luis Perez wanted to know if staff could provide insight on any trends noted in expenditures, especially considering the village continues to grow.

The village tends to generate increases in expenditures each year.

“My experience, here, in the village has been that most of the expenditure growth is just in the personnel service costs, which are the salaries, wages and employee benefits,” Horton said.

The village budgets for personnel service costs at 4 percent each year.

Horton said the operating costs tend to be kept low from one year to the next.

“This is probably the first year that we’ve had 2 or 3 percent growth in some of the operating expenditures, but we’ve got the revenues coming in to support them,” Horton said.

In a 6-0 decision, the village board voted to adopt its fiscal year 2019-20 budget. The second read was also waived.