How Health Insurance and Computerized Maps Could Drive Up Tinley's 2012 Costs

Thursday was Tinley Park’s all-day budget meeting, where the village board reviews all the requests for the FY2012 budget.

Overall, the village is doing well – there’s about $1 million more coming into the general fund than going out. That gap has been decreasing every year since the economy collapsed.

We’ll be posting articles looking at the four major aspects of every budget:

• Where are Expenses Up?

This article is about where expenses are up.

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Some expenses are up, some are down but it evened out that FY2012 will be more expensive than this year, but there will be more money to pay for it.

Here are a few of the more notable cost increases:

Personnel

The salaries and benefits paid out of the general fund went up by $377,095.

Why?

People are expensive.

You have to pay their salaries, pay for their health insurance, pay into their retirement accounts and pay other charges that add up. A lot of these are beyond the village's control. Union-mandated raises have to be given. Health insurance premium rises have to be paid. FICA, IMRF, etc.

The village to combat personnel costs.

As a weird little side note, the money spent on salaries alone will go down a bit. Tinley Park pays its employees every two weeks. Most years this means 26 pay periods, but in the current fiscal year, there were 27. The village took money out of the salary reserves to cover the 27th payday.

So technically, the village will pay everyone one less time next year than this, but it's not a real savings, just a weird fluke of the calendar.

Gasoline

Gas and diesel costs went up $227,307.

Why?

Even governments are getting hit by rising gas prices.

Business Incentives

The proposed FY2012 budget lays out a $336,351 increase for economic incentives, including $118,000 to Brookside Marketplace to lure HomeGoods and Old Navy to town.

Why?

To up revenues.

While Tinley uses incentives to lure businesses , the whole idea is spending money to make money. Several of these deals are still in the "spending money" part of things.

In the case of Old Navy and HomeGoods, .

(Clarification: The full incentive package for HomeGoods and Old Navy is $1.25 million over 10 years, whichever is hit first. The $118,000 is the portion of the overall increase directly attributable to HomeGoods and Old Navy in 2012.)

GIS (Computerized Mapping)

This one is more of a "could" than a "will" in terms of raising costs, but it's likely a "won't."

After some discussion, the board put a $300,000-a-year plan to enter a Geographic Information System consortium with Skokie, Elk Grove Village and 15 other communities on the priority list. That means it won't be put in the budget, but if there's extra money, they'll consider it.

Why?

A better question is "What's GIS?"

It's more than a computerized map. GIS captures, stores, analyzes, presents and links all levels of data to street locations. With a click, police can see high-crime areas and send more cops there. Health officials can pinpoint the source of outbreaks. Rescue workers can calculate emergency response times. Officials can see where water bills are higher or sales taxes lower.

The village has eyed GIS for years but kept putting it off due to the cost. That happened again this year, with the $300,000 a year budgeted out over five years deemed too high in the current economy.

“I’m a big proponent of GIS. It’s a phenomenal system that, if done properly can make huge cost savings in the long run. I’m just not so sure I’m ready to jump in with $1.5 million,” Trustee Greg Hannon said.