‘We just know it’s going to be bad’

When members of the Springfield City Council debated Mayor Jim Langfelder’s $130.1 million fiscal year 2021 budget proposal in February, Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer was sure to remind his colleagues that the city’s healthy fund balance “can go very quick.”Though the city was on relatively stable financial footing, Hanauer had recalled just a few years prior going through the budget line-by-line with Ward 9 Ald. Jim Donelan in an effort to bring it into balance. […]