Springfield, IL – The Springfield City Council approved its fiscal year 2025 budget on Tuesday, but some say the budget information provided to the public is not clear. Cassandra Clark is the president of Sustainable Springfield, and she took to the microphone at the council meeting to say the city needs to do more to make the information easier to understand. She is advocating for items including a table of contents to navigate the 400-page document, explanatory sentences for line items and a budget summary from the mayor that talks about priorities and differences between the proposed budget and the previous year’s budget.

Ward 8 Alderwoman Erin Conley says the budget information was available for review for a longer period of time this year, but hopes it will be available for an even greater amount of time for next year’s budget.  Conley says she received calls from her constituents with questions, and she agrees that it takes a lot of time to review all of the information and a table of contents would be helpful.

One item in the FY25 proposed budget was a 32% water rate hike for CWLP.  Clark pointed out during her public comment, that the CWLP segment was omitted from the summary budget, and “the council bears a fiduciary duty to ensure informed oversight of CWLP necessitating the inclusion of cost allocations for energy resource planning”.  Clark says the CWLP portion was located inconspicuously on slide 298 of the 400-page budget.