Emphasizing that they can maintain or enhance services without resorting to a tax increase, candidates for president and trustee on the Riverside Community Alliance slate vowed Sunday to "tear apart" Riverside's budget and work to attract new businesses downtown.
The candidates made their pitch at Riverside Township Hall to a standing-room only crowd of 60 to 70 people that included residents and local officials, including opposing candidates and the sitting village president.
"Everything is on the table," said Michael Gorman, who is the Riverside Community Alliance's candidate for village president. Also speaking at the two-hour town hall meeting were RCA trustee candidates Mark Shevitz, Lonnie Sacchi and James Reynolds.
While the candidates didn't break much new ground during the meeting, which included a short presentation by the candidates and then a question-and-answer session with audience members, they did provide a few specifics regarding their plan to reduce spending without raising additional revenue.
But they fell short of specifying programs or people they might cut to balance an operating budget that projects deficits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in coming years.
"We're just going to tear it apart and start over," Gorman said of the village's budget.
The party's platform seeks to match village services with the amount of money available to it.
"We're going to figure out what are the services we want and then we're going to look at the money we have," Gorman said. "We're not going to worry about who's in what department. We're going to find efficiencies. It's all about matching services to the money you have."
Two areas that the candidates vowed to continue funding were the recreation department and historical museum, both of which had their funding cut in half by the village board in 2009.
The party's vision for the recreation department, however, appears to be one focused on programming alone and not on sponsoring costly special events or spending its money maintaining park lands.
"I'd like to think we could find $100,000 in the budget," Shevitz said. "We shouldn't be punishing the rec department for running efficiently."
Sacchi said that park maintenance should be funded through the public works department and that if the goal was to have the recreation department become a self-sustaining entity "then it's incumbent on us to provide the assistance while that's happening."
Gorman repeated the party's platform of making sure the village had the right staff in place for the job, but fell short of giving insight into which village staffers might be looked at in an effort to economize.
"Are we going to lower salaries? I don't know, but we're going to look at it," Gorman said. "It's a question of whether you have the correct people in the correct job."
Pushed to show how the party could reconcile their promises with the village's financial projections, the candidates did offer some insight into bridging the financial gap.
Sacchi said that if the RCA gains a majority on the board and finds through its line-by-line audit that the numbers still don't work, they would advocate using cash reserves. Citing the $1 million the village board in 2007 moved from the general fund to the capital projects fund, Sacchi said, "We have that if the process falls short of what we intend to do."
Reynolds added that reducing village staff hours could also result in a savings to taxpayers and avoid layoffs.
"I don't think we're trying to evade this question," Reynolds said. "It's going to take a lot of work."
With respect to attracting businesses to Riverside, the candidates reiterated their pledge to hire a consultant to recruit businesses to the village, if the budget allows such an expense.
Reynolds said that Riverside needed to trade on its uniqueness as a historic community, which, he said, could offset the size of the village. Businesses "will come if we showcase our village as something unique," Reynolds said. "We have to be welcoming. We have to encourage each little merchant we get."
Asked how the village might be able to use its influence to spur the reclamation of the Arcade Building, RCA candidates stated that although the building was in private hands RCA would push to put together a group of residents who might understand how best to approach the problem.
"It's the heart of our village," Reynolds said. "If we don't care about that, we don't care about anything in this town. We have to get together a consortium of residents with expertise and money. It's something we have to advocate for."