When the Paramount Theatre learned a few months ago that the city of Aurora was planning to give the organization less funding than expected next year because of a projected budget deficit, theater officials announced they were cutting the BOLD Series of shows at the Copley Theatre.
At the time, those officials said that the city’s previously-communicated financial support of $7 million could be reduced by up to 65%. They warned that, if city funding for the organization did come in far under the $7 million mark, it would mean additional cuts.
But Aurora’s recently-proposed 2026 budget, which includes significant funding and staffing cuts for city departments, doesn’t just have a reduction in that previously-discussed funding for the Paramount. City and theater officials say it includes none of those funds at all.
“I was surprised,” Aurora Civic Center Authority President and CEO Tim Rater said. “I’m still hopeful that they’re going to find the funds as they continue. I’ve been told this is not a final draft. But it’s concerning.”
The Aurora Civic Center Authority — which owns the Paramount Theatre, the Copley Theatre, Paramount School of the Arts and North Island Center plus manages the city-owned RiverEdge Park and Stolp Island Theatre — regularly receives money from the city both though its contract to run RiverEdge Park and through a head tax paid by the Hollywood Casino in Aurora. Those payments are included in the city’s proposed 2026 budget.
Under former Mayor Richard Irvin, Aurora told the Civic Center Authority it would be receiving an additional $7 million next year to help close a gap the organization had in its budget, Rater previously said. Previous reporting shows that money was to be part of a three-part plan to make the Aurora Civic Center Authority financial sustainable.
But current Mayor John Laesch hit the brakes on another piece of that plan, a proposed 4,000-seat theater and event space called the City of Lights Center that he’d been critical of, almost immediately after being elected in April. He later said at a community meeting that, while the Paramount is vital to downtown, the city had been giving the Aurora Civic Center Authority “way too much.”
Laesch has long spoken about the Aurora Civic Center Authority needing to find a way to become financially stable, including during his time as an alderman at-large on the Aurora City Council. As mayor, he’s also made suggestions about ways he thinks that could happen, and he recently said it doesn’t appear that steps are being taken to right the ship.
He also previously told The Beacon-News that he didn’t want a steep decline in funding for the Civic Center Authority, but that the math was going to drive what they ended up getting.
Aurora officials have been saying for months that the city’s 2026 budget is facing a significant deficit. The projected difference between revenue and expenses was said to be roughly $30 million earlier in the budget process, and the proposed budget released in October shows a $2.5 million deficit alongside millions of dollars in funding cuts and nearly 140 less positions.
Laesch told reporters at a meeting in mid-October about the proposed 2026 budget that his administration had not budgeted any “lump sum payments” to the Aurora Civic Center Authority, and neither had the previous administration. Under Irvin, the city did give the Civic Center Authority some of its federal pandemic-era relief funds and also bought a downtown parking garage from the organization for $10 million, a sale which Laesch said at the October meeting was “creative maneuvering.”
Earlier in the same week that Aurora released its proposed 2026 budget, two actors from the Paramount Theatre spoke at a City Council meeting urging the city to financially invest in the Aurora Civic Center Authority. Both stressed the economic impact of the arts and the way the downtown has improved over the years since the Paramount has been in operation.
“There is a direct parallel between the ascendancy of the Paramount, in my opinion, and the ascendancy of the downtown district,” Andrea Prestinario, who has been involved with the theater since the start of the Broadway Series and recently starred in the theater’s production of “Come From Away,” said at the City Council meeting on Oct. 14.
When later asked about the city’s decision to not budget any of the previously-discussed amount for the Civic Center Authority, Laesch told The Beacon-News that “we all want to make sure that the Paramount stays open,” but there’s going to be “a lot of pain felt around the city and around the downtown.”
“It’s not great, and there’s just no money,” he said. “Without a massive tax increase, there’s no way to address this.”
The city made cuts in its own budget but had to stop cutting to not make it more difficult for public safety and other staff to do their jobs, Laesch said.
The city is having ongoing negotiations with the Aurora Civic Center Authority, according to Laesch. He said the city asked the Civic Center Authority to break out its financials to see where it needs help, but “they haven’t got back to us.”
Rater, however, said he feels that the organization he leads has been doing all it can. The Civic Center Authority was working to reduce the deficit in its 2026 budget down from the roughly $7 million it was at previously to match what Laesch’s administration had been telling him would be in the city’s budget, he said.
The Aurora Civic Center Authority has already cut over 20% of its full-time staff as well as some part-time staff, has not been filling open positions and, as previously announced, eliminated the BOLD Series, according to Rater.
When asked what further cuts would be needed if the Aurora City Council approves the currently-proposed 2026 city budget, he said that was being looked into. It would likely mean that the Civic Center Authority would need to “take a good look at our school” and would be unable to operate RiverEdge Park, he said.
Although the Civic Center Authority has a contract with the city to run the park, Rater said that contract doesn’t cover the cost of staff’s time spent working on it. Staff spends a “tremendous” amount of time on RiverEdge, he said, and that would need to be refocused as the organization would need to make further staffing cuts.
“We’d just have to shrink everything down,” Rater said. “We wouldn’t have the manpower to do it.”
In a letter to the city of Aurora dated Sept. 2, the Civic Center Authority said it had originally developed its 2026 budget at the direction of the previous administration with a goal of providing over 1,000 performances each year. That draft budget had a deficit of $7.7 million, according to the letter.
At the time, the Authority had reduced that deficit down to $5.6 million by cutting the BOLD Series and reducing staffing by around 20%, according to the letter. So, it asked for the city to cover that amount to “make necessary adjustments without further dramatic changes to our programming, preserving the community’s access to the quality and variety of performances and events that Aurora has come to expect.”
The letter also highlighted efforts by the Aurora Civic Center Authority to boost revenue, including by increasing ticket prices, putting in place dynamic pricing and working to increase contributions. A recent study showed that the organization has the ability to raise $25 million over the next five years, the letter said, but that “reliable city support will be essential to creating the confidence and conditions needed for a successful campaign and to ensure that these ambitious goals can be realized.”
The Authority understands the city is “facing broad financial constraints in 2026,” which is why it worked to reduce its deficit, Chairman of the Board Jonathan Hylton wrote in the letter. The organization also recognizes the city’s “need to manage its resources responsibility over the long term,” so it suggested the city could reduce its support by 10% in each of the following three years.
Through monthly meetings with Aurora officials, Rater said, he came to understand that the city’s 2026 budget would include $2.5 million in support of the Civic Center Authority. He called that number a “worst case scenario,” but he said the Authority has been making further cuts to meet the city there.
The $2.5 million in funding is also what Laesch previously told The Beacon-News could be in the 2026 city budget for the Civic Center Authority, although he said it could be lower further along in the budgeting process.
After recent work, the Authority now has a $3.3 million deficit in its 2026 budget, Rater said. As the organization looks to the future, he said, it is also reevaluating the prices of “everything” — tickets, concessions, merchandise, classes, weddings and venues — with some of those changes having already gone into effect.
Despite the city’s proposed 2026 budget not including any funding to cover the Civic Center Authority’s deficit, Rater said he’s hopeful that Aurora aldermen and the mayor’s office will find a way to prioritize funding for the Authority.
“We worked really hard to meet them there. I understand it’s a tremendous amount of money,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s going to come down to prioritizing funds, and what is most important, and the value they place on what we are currently doing.”
Aurora’s proposed 2026 budget is now being discussed at a series of meetings by the City Council’s Finance Committee. After those meetings, which will continue through November, the 2026 budget will go before the City Council for final approval in early December.
Like Rater, actor Prestinario is remaining hopeful that the city will “do the right thing” since the budget isn’t yet a done deal, she told The Beacon-News on Thursday. But, it is “astounding” to her that the city’s gone in “the opposite direction,” she said.
Prestinario understands where the money is coming from and that it would be different from what’s been done in previous years, but she said it was a “direct investment” when putting money into something like the Aurora Civic Center Authority.
“I don’t know why they think that cutting out support for the one thing that has transformed the downtown district is the way to go,” she said. “That’s really just profoundly disappointing.”
rsmith@chicagotribune.com