Board of Aldermen — 6/13/17 Page 3
Yea: Alderman Wilshire, Alderman Clemons, Alderman Deane
Alderman Cookson, Alderman Dowd, Alderman Caron
Alderman Siegel, Alderman Schoneman, Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
Alderman McGuinness, Alderman LeBrun, Alderman Moriarty,
Alderman O’Brien, Alderman Lopez, Alderman McCarthy 15
Nay: 0
MOTION CARRIED
RECOGNITION PERIOD - None
READING MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARINGS
There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the minutes of the Board of Aldermen
meeting of May 23, 2017, and the public hearings conducted by the Board of Aldermen on June 6,
2017, and the Planning & Economic Development Committee on May 16, 2017, accepted, placed on
file and the readings suspended.
COMMUNICATIONS — None
PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS EVENING
Dick lannacone, 35 Swart Terrace
I’d like to second the comments from the Mayor first and thank everyone. It’s been a hard job. The budget job is
one of the toughest jobs that any community can have across this entire country. Not only the entire country but
look at what’s happening overseas. We need to pay attention. This is a very important vote tonight. This is a
major, major, major move going forward. You know there are a lot of people in Illinois that wish they had the
opportunity to change what they voted on and thought about 20 years or so ago. Many people on Puerto Rico,
many people in Greece. The budget is important. Two things tonight.
First people would love to be able to have a budget without the numbers. | hate to call it “gains” but that’s what
people around town are talking about. Wouldn’t it be nice if we’d have a budget which 3 and 2 does not equal 4?
3 and 2 does equal 5 no matter how you slice it. Or maybe 2 and 3. So that’s the first issue that we really should
be looking at this budget. If people wanted a cap, there should be a cap. No matter what you call it, we don’t have
that.
The other issue was not mentioned as one of the major items but maybe I’m wrong here. | thought one of the
major expenses was putting the money into the pension account. That’s one of our larges expenditures. You
know what fascinates me is that this is not a new problem. This has been going on for years, right? It’s kind of like
this is one of the major reasons again why across this country most of the major problems are being caused from
pensions. Now the State started to recognize this around 2009 and 2011 and did some good work. They made
some changes. A bunch of us were called regularly and asked for changes. We had a system which paid for the
highest three years and they included salaries plus overtime. It finally changed and went to five years. Well that
was a help in the system. They also said okay we want it come fully funded. What’s fascinating to me is that New
Hampshire has this great rate yet one of the things we’re trying to do here is that all the current people now in the
community pick up the tab for things that should have been done a long time ago. All I’m suggesting is that we
probably should look at the alternatives which may come up this year do not lock ourselves in to commitments
which are going to raise was it 3.8 percent.
| think it’s interesting the last 8 years — it might have been 3 years in the history of the social security we had
zero increases. All 3 of them in the last 8 years. No one has had a raise of 3.8 percent at all. It’s typically. |
understand that but we need to look at these items. For example, there’s a possibility now what they did was
they said okay back in 2009 we’re going to get us up to 100 percent funded in 30 years. We're now 8 years
