(The Center Square) – Although the Chicago City Council passed a budget for 2025 this week, the city’s financial problems are not going away.
Chicago taxpayers are looking at a billion-dollar deficit after elected officials raised the budget from $16.6 billion this year to $17.1 billion for 2025.
Alderman Gilbert Villegas of the 36th Ward said the agreement contained unrealized savings and said there are ways to get businesses up and running quicker.
“We could have saved $40 million on time and attendance by using a technology that already exists that the county’s using. All we would have had to have done is piggybacked off a contract,” Villegas said.
Villegas also suggested improvements to the council process.
“We need to get a structure, just like L.A., New York, Philly, that have a city charter that designates a speaker, a president of the council in charge of the agenda,” Villegas said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters celebrated the $17.1 billion-dollar spending plan Monday after aldermen rejected two previous proposals which included property-tax hikes. At recent council meetings, however, several residents and aldermen said the mayor’s administration is “kicking the can down the road.”
The budget, which passed by a vote of 27-23, may bring down the city’s credit rating.
Chicago Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski admitted that credit agencies would monitor the city’s supplemental pension payments.
“They also said if this budget was balanced with too much one-time revenues that that would be grounds for a downgrade,” she said.
Alderman Brendan Reilly of the 42nd Ward said Johnson’s blend of gimmicks guarantees the need for a massive property tax hike next year.
“Delaying a $40 million line of credit payment for a year to avoid a property tax isn’t savings. That payment is now going to cost us the same $40 million next year, plus interest penalties,” Reilly said.
Ninth Ward Alderman Anthony Beale rejected the mayor’s claims that his budget proposals invested in people.
“Don’t listen to what a person says, listen to what a person does. You can say one thing, but your actions speak something else,” Beale told The Center Square.
Beale, Reilly and Villegas were among a group of 15 aldermen who had requested $823.7 million in spending reductions. The letter called the budget “a collection of reconfigured savings, recalibrated revenue projections and deferred payments that will ultimately serve as a delayed backdoor property tax increase.”
