We can’t believe we’re saying this, but here goes: We agree with Ald. Don Bach (3rd Ward) that City Mgr. Jim Hock has not done enough to cut City expenses. 

There…we did it.  Whew! 

We suspect that Bach, like the proverbial stopped clock, is right on something no more than twice a day.  But this just happens to be one of those instances, because it is simply unacceptable for the City Mgr. to propose a budget with a $1.8 million deficit [pdf] of expenses over revenues, especially on the heels of several additional years of budget deficits that have shrunk the City’s reserves to an uncomfortably low level.

That’s where our agreement with Bach stops, however.  Because not only did he and his City Council allies adopt Hock’s deficit budget, but they have irresponsibly added to that deficit by approving increased spending since that budget’s adoption.  And now Bach and his spendthrift wing-man, Ald. Frank “The Politician” Wsol (7th Ward), want to add another $400,000+ in spending on their totally wrongheaded flood control rebate program.

So when Bach proclaims – as he did at Monday night’s City Council meeting – that “I would like to see us with no red ink on the books in two years, and I think that’s possible, but only with quick, decisive action regarding staffing levels,” we have to wonder what he’s smoking…and whether the FDA has approved it for over-the-counter sale without a prescription. 

Despite his big, blustery talk about staffing cuts, Bach doesn’t appear even to have attempted any of the heavy lifting that goes into figuring out exactly who should be cut to reduce the size of the current budget hole City government has dug for us.  Nor have we heard him publicly endorse the first cuts that have been made to City staff: the recent termination of four employees of the Public Works Department.  

Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim is reporting that those cuts will result in the elimination of the City’s curbside brush pick-up.  It will also eliminate one of the city’s two street sweepers, thereby cutting in half the number of rounds the sweeper makes across the city each year.  And Zingsheim warns that these cuts also will adversely affect snow removal this winter. 

Hey, Ald. Bach…are you happy with those cuts, both in staff and in services?  And can you tell us what the next staffing cuts should be? 

Not surprisingly, Frankie the Politician also threw his two faces…um, we mean, his two cents… into this debate, claiming that while he doesn’t “like the idea of adopting” these cuts, he does “like the idea of us pushing staff and the city manager to justify every full-time employee we have or present us with real reductions that make sense.”   

That’s a real hoot, coming from a guy that wants to blow $400,000+ on flood control rebates, led the vote against passing through to water users the $400,000+ in water rate increases from the City of Chicago, and would have saddled us with the debt service on $16,000,000+ of bonds for a new cop shop if he could have had his way.  But what else can we realistically expect from a “politician” like Frankie? 

Bach (and Wsol) can talk the budget-cut talk, but so far they haven’t measured up when it comes to walking the budget-cut walk.  And neither has the rest of the City Council.