The problem with government upper echelon entities, they forget that by cutting the low wage earners; they increase the requirement for higher taxes for themselves and those that are still working.

The higher paid government entities would rather slit their own throat then admit that a lot will be lost when low wage earners are terminated from the work force. Low wage earners do not earn enough to write off anything from their taxes and that is why taxes have to be raised for the loss of the taxes; which, the low and middle class workers that were paying into the funding of government, no longer pay into it.

If those in the decision process and are in the upper pay scales of government; would stop and due heavy thinking about what they currently get and what would they do if that would end; due to the lack of sufficient taxes to pay their wages, life insurance, retirement fund and of course medical insurance; they would be extremely intelligent to take a cut in their pay and have more low and mid range wage earners hired to help feed the taxes trough, for the continuence of what they are currently receiving or hope to receive when they retire or when they are unable to work anymore.

Look at the History of the world; major civilizations crumbled when the weathy became greedy, tried to hide their wealth, or moved it away from the civilization they lived. They even thought that they could buy their way to happiness and continue retaining the power they thought they had; only to be pulled down by their lack of knowledge of what made it possible for them to obtain and retain what they had; which, were the middle class and sometimes the poor.

Look to the top to make cuts, hire more people in the lower and mid brackets of the pay scales and your tax base will increase. Remember, the poor and middle class, really do not have much to write off on their taxes; unless they have a large family and even then; once the kids grow and go to work; money continues to flow into the coffers of the government tax pool.

Enough food for thought; continue your quest for learning and remember to teach what you learn; if the process is right and correct; all will prosper and society will continue to thrive.

Although I am not in your ward, I am responding because I received this email. My vote is cut 2 more employees (or 1 big one, an expensive dept. head from MN).
My 7th ward Alderman had a meeting last night. He didn't give us this option. Before reading the Daily Hearld today I didn't realize the 30 ee's was only 10%. (Most residents, although a poor turnout, agreed to raise the property taxes more and not raise the gas heating tax.)
I agree the Historical Museum is valuable and should be subsidized, to some extent, by the city. However, they need to make cuts also - I don't know who their newest FT staffer is (Aug'09 I heard), but maybe that person should go for example - LIFO. John Burke seems like one of the nicest men in the world, but I think he may need the nudge from the council to make these difficult cuts.
Thanks for reading & potentially taking these ramblings into consideration.

I am a resident of the 3rd Ward.

While it is appropriate for an alderman to comment on the amount of funding due to the Historical Society, it is not appropriate for an alderman to push the Historical Society into a forced layoff. Staffing concerns will be handled by the Board of the Historical Society. The full time staff member mentioned above filled in a vacancy, it was not a new full time staff position created this year. Unlike the City, where even the Police Chief claimed that there will be no reduction in service levels despite the reduction of staff, the Historical Society is and has been operating at minimum staffing levels for the services provided. It does not have "extra" staff around milking a pay check, ready to be laid off at the first sign of decreased City revenue. The recent voting by the City Council for a decrease in city staff is also being painted as a reason why the Historical Society should lay off staff to do "our" part to share in these difficult economic times. Yet, while the City claimed at last Thursday's meeting that service levels will not be affected, a decrease in staff at the Historical Society will certainly involve a reduction in services.

However, this is not to say that the Historical Society isn't ready to share the burden. When asked to submit a budget, the Historical Society offered to take a 25% reduction in it's stipend this year, to help ease the burden on the City. 25%! The rest of the City budget is down approxiametely 20% from the previous year, according to numbers that have come forth in the budget hearings, and the Historical Society is willing to take a larger hit than the 20% affecting the rest of the City! What isn't coming forward is that the City is trying to balance their budget on the backs of the Historical Society. If the Historical Society received an equal decrease to every other department or line item in the City's budget (~20% reduction) then this wouldn't even be an issue. Yet, the proposed City budget dropped the Historical Society's funding by 100%! And the arguement now is that ~1% new tax hike would be necessary to fund the Historical Society this year.

Matt points out that Historical Society funding through the City has increased 200% from 1994? Why is he telling half truths? How much has the City budget increased in that same time?

Why did Matt let Jason Bajor feed him incorrect information prior to last Thursday's budget hearing, where Matt was "FLOORED" that the Historical Society had the gall to ask for a 10% increase in its stipend. Well, I'm floored that he continued this line of questioning after John Burke proved that Jason was lying when Jason said that he had an "email right here showing 10%" when John Burke proved that the Historical Society received NO increase last year, and simply asked for a 5% increase this year when no direction was given ahead of time that the City was looking for a reduction or a complete cut. The proposed 100% funding cut was sprung on the Historical Society at the last minute, but even so, when asked to reduce its request for funding, the Historical Society voluntered to take an even larger cut (25%) than the rest of the City (~20%).

It is unfortunant that Matt Bogusz could be so easily swayed by absolutely incorrect information being presented to him, and even more unfortunant that he is trying to play this off as a Historical Society problem when the City put itself in this position through no fault of the Historical Society.

It is also incorrect to point out that a 1% tax hike would be necessary to fund the Historical Society this year. By other calculations it would be ~0.5% raise, or $3.47 per household. That's less than a penny a day per household.

Maybe a few more options should be added to the list, I'll start:
4) Would you rather support the Historical Society, or pay for the City Manager's monthly automobile stipend?

After all, if everyone needs to share in this economic downturn, maybe the City Manager needs to do more than "not accept a raise" and actually make a sacrifice. But no, the City Manager is doing his best to cut out departments that he doesn't have control over, with the Historical Society being this year's target.

Mike has some very valid points and also seems to be pointing out a reoccurring theme with the City manager. Some people are slower than others and I can only hope my Alderman, Matt, is a fast learner and can see the forest for the trees. What is very disturbing is that the City council seems to find it easy to cut services and think that there won’t be ramifications.
We ask all the Alderman to use “Their” brains and not just the word of a select few people, to question and then question again. When one and one don’t make three it should be a clue.

Matt: Thank you for your interesting and informative e mail. You have raised issues many of us are not aware of - although I have read many articles in the papers and there is a lot of coverage. I agree with what you are saying and, again, commend you. I attended the Friends of the Library meeting last night and was very pleased with the thinking of the Library people in this similiar situation.

Jason Bajor's recommendation for cutting was based on surveying 16 neighboring municipalities, 12 of which did not fund their historical societies. Those who didn't were Antioch, Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Carpentersville, Cary, Grayslake, Lake Barrington, Lake Zurich, Palatine, Prospect Heights, Schaumburg, and Wheeling; those that did were Arlington Heights, Rolling Meadows, Roselle, and Mount Prospect.

However, a little thought shows how fundamentally flawed this analysis is. These municipalities are of varying sizes, and their historical societies are similarly varied in scope. More to the point, few of these occupy a similar historical position to Des Plaines. To make a decent comparison, you need to look at historical societies in communities of similar age to Des Plaines with similar size historical societies. We're an inner ring suburb, so where is Niles? Glenview? Oak Park? Hinsdale? Morton Grove? Evanston? Skokie? Park Ridge? It's cherry-picked. Antioch is in no way comparable to Des Plaines.

It's clear that if funding is totally eliminated, the historical society will, if not necessarily closing its doors, be unable to function next year and for years to come. I think a more appropriate course of action would be for the city & Park District to offer a 1:1 funding match for the historical society. This would incentivize them to step up their own fundraising efforts, and perhaps over time the ratio could shift so that more of the burden was on the historical society. We're privileged to have such a good steward of our historical data, and cannot allow this to fail.

May I add that 2010 is Des Plaines' 175th anniversary, and it would be an embarrassment if we didn't somehow celebrate that. We did it in 1935, 1960, and 1985, and we shouldn't drop the ball now.

First off Bajor doesn't run the city, the Council does and Bajor executes their policy. Bajor is not the "bad guy" and neither are the current Aldermen and Mayor. The past Council and Mayor's of the last 10 years are. They got us into very expensive real estate projects and they didn't know what they were doing and wouldn't listen to anyone who disagreed; in fact they were arrogantly dismissive of the "opposition". We have lost $10 million to date folks in TIF's 3 and 6. And TIF 4 is waiting there to lose more millions! This is insane!

Everybody now has to make sacrifices because of their mismanagement; the Historical Society is no exception. Burke is a nice man to be sure but his Society has lived off the largess of the citizens for too long. He was asked to bring a business plan to the Council and we have yet to see it.

We give back $400,000 a year in sales tax rebates to Sam's Club and two auto dealers. I suggested we approach them for a "give back" to fund the Historical Society for 2010 and give Burke time to wean the Society off the public dole. I offered to go with the Mayor to talk to these businesses. Any feed back Matt?

Of course it's tough to "pull the rug out" from the Historical Society in one year. What about the 30 employees who just had all the rugs pulled out of their homes? Any tears for them?

The city should cut more expenses and not raise any taxes to pay for past mistakes. The citizens can ill afford tax increases at any time but most certainly not in these times.

Brian-

You are absolutely correct. I'll only comment on Buffalo Grove, as I know the situation there, but Buffalo Grove was incorporated in 1958. That's a far cry from Des Plaines which was incorporated in 1869! In another 100 years, I bet Buffalo Grove will have changed its policy as well.

Dion-

That is how it is supposed to work. Jason should answer to the Council. However, do you really get the feeling that this the way things are going? Why did Jason take over the agenda preparation when a new Clerk was elected? That is quite the conflict of interest, and the Clerk and several members of the Council didn't seem to know how wrong that was. And with Jason feeding incorrect information to Matt Bogusz to lead him into a round of questioning based on lies, it's sad to see how easy it is to sway Council members behind the scenes.

It's painful watching some of these meetings, where unexperienced council members (Not just Matt) are frequently asking questions of the Attorney, for simple procedural issues! A Roger's Rules of Order class would greatly benefit this council.

John Burke did present a business plan, showing that the History Center believes it can absorb a 25% reduction in its City funding this year, to share in the belt tightening taking place throughout the City. Is there more information that you are looking for?

Well folks we now know the real reason that the Des Plaines Historical Society was originally completely cut out of the 2010 budget. The City Manager was angry at Joy for writing a letter to him. This is the person managing our city? How childish!

But he is consistent. Did you notice the general theme over the past several weeks. Lots of people stating the City Manager did not communicate with them about cuts. He is a little man.

Matt expressed concern that the city cut 10% of it's workforce, and said that the Historical Society failed to show him that they were willing to make a sacrifice as well.

The City is cutting 10% of its workforce because it knows what budget numbers it is trying to hit for the coming fiscal year. How is the Historical Society supposed to agree to layoffs before it knows what its budget is going to be? Even if the Historical Society agreed to lay off a matching 10% of its staff (10% of 5.5 employees is one part time employee) it would only have reduced the Society's overall budget by a fraction of the cut that the City Council voted on Thursday. And I doubt that bringing a set of layoffs forth would have had any effect on Matt, despite what he pontificated on Thursday.

Again Thursday night I heard comments about how the Historical Society failed to put forth a plan to reduce its dependance on the City. And that the Historical Society was asking for a 5% increase. They did ask for 5% in the first request, which is exactly how every budget process goes that I've been a part of. You ask for the 3-5% raise just to try to cover inflation or cost of living increases, just like the Unions bargain for every year, and received this year. However, when asked for a reduction, the Historical Society proposed a 25% reduction, fully 1/4th! John Burke presented this in a manner that showed the possibility to increase fundraising rather than lay off employees, and Matt decides to rebuke him? Shame on you Matt. It's up to the Historical Society board to decide how to close gaps in its budget. Just because the City can't balance its budget without laying off employees, doesn't mean that every organization, business, or government entity has to do the same.

I'm glad Jason Bajor stepped up on Thursday and set the record straight that he was wrong about the supposed 10% increase requested and clarified that it was indeed only a 5% request. Apparently the damage was done already though. And the Historical Society funding was cut by over 75% from what it was last year.

Yes, over 75% cut. Stunning.

So, there in lies the question. How much did Mr. Bajor really know and just decided to not tell anyone? Diid Mr. Bajor just feel he was just going to be "The Boss" and do what he felt without involving other parties? Guess we'll never know.

I apologize for coming late to this discussion, and for better or for worse the Des Plaines Historical Society has had to accept the City Council's decision. I'm grateful to read all of your comments because it demonstrates that you believe that the Des Plaines Historical Society provides value to our community, whether funded in part by the city or funded privately.

I wanted to respond to Brian Wolf's comment. The Des Plaines Historical Society is indeed putting on a celebration of the 175th anniversary of Des Plaines! The community party is scheduled for Friday, May 21 from 6-11 pm at Lake Park. I encourage you to visit the Historical Society's website at www.desplaineshistory.org for more info. Feel free to send me an e-mail if you have any questions.