Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. says the city has received some good news about how it ended the last fiscal year on April 30th….
{‘’I’m proud to report with thanks to the good stewardship of our leadership team and all of our city employees in partnership with the City Council, we actually spent $2-million dollars less than we projected spending this past year. And we brought in a million dollars more,’’ said Mayor Williams during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News. ‘’What that means is that we will end the year with $4.7 million dollars in our reserves. That’s up from $300-thousand dollars when I took over in November,’’ said Williams.
The Mayor credits the Danville City Council and city administrators with doing a good job looking out for taxpayers…
{‘’When servants have the best interest of the people at heart, and they make sure that we remember that we’re spending the taxpayers’ money – not ours – it didn’t just magically come out of the air – it helps us to be mindful that we’re doing things that are important to people and businesses in this community – and that we’re not spending their money unnecessarily,’’ added the Mayor.
City leaders had planned on seeing some revenues from the new Danville casino by the last half of the 2020-2021 fiscal year – but that will not happen because the Illinois Gaming Board has not yet approved a license for it. City leaders had planned to pay down some debt and pay more into some pension funds, according to Mayor Williams….
{‘’So the good news is it shouldn’t affect us in an adverse way. We should be on top of things. The other good news that I just received yesterday is that the legislature voted to return the 5-percent reduction that they had previously taken out of our LGDF – the Local Government Distributive Fund. So that will help us a good bit too, having that extra 5-percent because we expect revenues to be down a little bit.
So, my hope is that with that extra 5-percent, maybe things will even-out,’’ added the Mayor.}
Mayor Williams remains optimistic about the city’s new fiscal year despite the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
