City budget manager: Federal funding threats ‘a grave concern’

By Bob Seidenberg

Evanston has not experienced the same shock of an impending loss of federal funds as Northwestern University, but city officials are keeping a watchful eye on their own situation as the next budget season grows closer.

At the April 8 Finance and Budget Committee meeting, as members talked about new tools to tame a longstanding structural budget deficit — including a zero-based budgeting pilot in one department, where every new budget is made from scratch rather than simply adjusting from a previous budget — a city official warned about larger forces in the air.

Looking at the current budget cycle, Budget Manager Clayton Black said, “there are a lot of really high level challenges that we are looking at, not the least of which is the expanding and evolving threats to our federal funding — that is a grave concern for us as this budget cycle approaches, if not the greatest concern.”

Black told committee members that officials learn ‘’almost on a daily basis of changes, of potential freezes in funding, of lawsuits tied to that funding,” he said.

In addition, with the recent fluctuations in the stock market, there’s also a concern about the possibility of a recession, he added.

Already, members of the committee are going to have to figure out how to fill a $2.5 million hole in grocery store revenue when the state grocery tax is repealed in 2026, he said.

“So those are the big levels, the big challenges that we’re looking at as we move into next year’s budget,” he told committee members.

At a January meeting, Shari Reiches, the committee’s current chair, requested information about the revenue streams that could be at risk, given the change in federal administration.