Riverside will eliminate its recreation department, reduce daytime staffing at its north fire station and eliminate funding for the historical museum if voters fail to approve a property tax hike on Nov. 4.

Those are just three budget items facing the ax. At a meeting Sept. 9, village trustees agreed to cut $400,000 from the village budget if a bid to raise property taxes falls short.

"Everyone says don't touch my pie, but no one in the village wants to pay for the piece of pie," said Trustee John Scully. "As far as I'm concerned, we should not be in this position. If residents want quality, they need to support the village."

On Nov. 4, voters will be faced with the prospect of approving a referendum question that would phase in over $4 million in additional revenue through 2012. The owner of a home worth $450,000 can expect to pay an additional $210, $331, $467 and $620 annually during those four years, according to information provided by the village.

That amount would allow the village to not only keep services at the same level, but add new services for which there is no funding, including the addition of a police officer, maintenance for wilderness areas and parks, code enforcement, downtown landscape maintenance and additional computer system maintenance.

Trustees previously said that the new revenue would also allow the village to roll back an increase in vehicle sticker fees and a restaurant tax. At the meeting last week, Trustee Thomas Shields indicated that the village was backing away from that plan.

No village department was spared in the cost-cutting. If the referendum fails, trustees will eliminate the police department's community service officer, the assistant to the director of public works, and interns in the village manager's and finance offices.

A part-time building inspector position that's currently vacant would remain unfilled. Trustees also would eliminate the services of Camiros, a firm serving as a consultant to the Plan Commission, and would slash money for activities related to the Economic Development Commission.

Cutting the police department's community service officer would save the village $30,000, but would also have a related impact on costs and revenues. Since the CSO attends bond hearings, that duty would have to be done by sworn officers in the future, likely resulting in overtime expenses. In addition, the CSO is the village's parking enforcement officer and is often assigned to schools in the morning and afternoon.

Those duties would shift to police officers, who could be called away at any time to respond to other calls.

For the past 11 years, Riverside has staffed its north fire station with two firefighters during weekday, daytime hours. Together with the two paramedic/firefighters at the south station, the village has enough officers to immediately respond to a fire.

Trustees agreed that in order to save $40,000 if the referendum fails, the village will reduce daytime staffing at the north fire station to three weekdays. If there is a fire call on those days, the chief will put out a general call to the department's firefighters, all of whom work on a paid-on-call basis. Riverside does have mutual aid agreements with neighboring villages, who are also contacted when there is a fire call in the village.

"If [a fire] takes place on those one or two days, there would be nobody there to make the initial response," said Fire Chief Kevin Mulligan. "The day you're having the worst day of your life, there won't be somebody there for 10 minutes."

The single biggest line item cut, however, is the $214,000 tax levy for the recreation department. Eliminating the levy will effectively kill the department, said Laure Kosey, the director of parks and recreation.

"It's a downward spiral," she said. "If we cut personnel down to 1.5 employees ... we can't run the programs."

Trustees rejected a couple of alternate cost-cutting measures, including freezing wages for village employees. According to information provided by the village, a one-year wage freeze of all village employees would save $173,000 in 2009.

However, a majority felt such an across-the-board freeze would be impossible given the fact that the majority of village employees are represented by unions with contracts in place. Reopening union negotiations would be not only lengthy, they said, but possibly expensive.

Trustees also rejected freezing the wages of non-union employees only, saying it wasn't fair to target them simply because they didn't belong to a union.

"I'm not in favor of taking salary away from non-union employees unless we think about unions," said Trustee Jean Sussman.

For the same reason, trustees rejected ordering non-union employees to take unpaid furlough days or reduce their work week to four days. If all non-union employees worked a four-day week in 2009, the village would see a $356,000 savings.

Trustee Kevin Smith suggested that while the proposed cuts addressed the fact the expenditures are expected to increasingly outpace revenues in coming years, the village did not need to eliminate a full $400,000 from next year's budget in order to make it balanced.

Finance Director Kevin Wachtel confirmed that he is projecting a $280,000 deficit in the village's general operating fund in 2009. The $400,000 figure for the cuts was chosen in response to a Sept. 5 memo from Village Manager Kathleen Rush to the board that outlines the village's five-year financial projection. If no changes to the budget were made, according to Rush, the village fund balance would be depleted "by an average of $393,000 every year through 2012."

Wachtel has projected that the village would use up its undesignated cash reserves by 2011 if no changes are made to the budget.

"We can't just keep kicking this can down the road," said Trustee Ben Sells. "We need to give people a clear choice on Nov. 4."