Good morning everyone.
The Committee on Finance is called to Order.
Please take your seats.
Uh, we will now have roll call to establish Quorum.
Vice Chair Conway. Alderman Lata
Alderman Hopkins.
Alderman Hall. Alderman Mitchell.
Alderman Beal. Alderman Lee.
Alderman Quinn. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Moore. Alderman
Curtis Alderman.
Osha Alderman Taylor.
Alderman Scott Alderman. Citro Lopez.
Alderman Burnett. Alderman Irvin. Alderman.
Talia Farrell. Alderman Cardona.
Alderman Wack Alderman. Rodriguez Sanchez.
Alderman Cazada. Alderman Viegas. Alderman.
Mit Alderman Spto. Alderman Vazquez.
Alderman Riley. Alderman Knutson.
Alderman Martin and Alderman Silverstein.
Chair Dowell is here.
And Alderman la spot is here. We have a quorum.
We have, wow. We have more than a quorum. We have 30.
Um, alderman Harris, alderman Ramirez,
alderman Mosley and Alderman Rodriguez requested
to participate, uh, remotely, uh,
according to the provision stated under Rule 59.
Can I have a motion to permit Alderman Harris,
Moseley Rodriguez and Ramirez entrance?
So moved by Alderman Viegas, all those opposed,
all those in favor signify by saying Aye.
Aye. Opposed? And the opinion of the chair, the ayes habit.
And I want to confirm Alderman Harris.
Alderman Harris is here. Alderman Mosley.
Alderman Rodriguez. Alderman Ramirez,
President, Our president joined today's
meeting, alderman Nugent.
Oops. Thank you, Madam President.
Pursuant to my role as President Pro temp under Rule 36,
I intend to participate
and vote on this matter as an EXOFFICIO member. Thank you.
So recognize Alderman Lopez.
We have you counted towards quorum. Thank you.
At this time, we will begin the public comment period.
The public comment period will be limited to 30 minutes out
of respect for everyone's time.
Each speaker today is limited to two minutes
because we've had a number of people sign up.
Um, we will have 15 people that will be able
to speak this morning.
Can also non-member could be recognized.
Yes. Nonmembers. Thank you. Alderman.
Non-members who are here are Alman, Yancy, alderman
Gutierrez, alderman Coleman,
alderman Cruz, alderman
Napolitano, alderman
I said her name. Any, any other non-member here that is not,
has not been recognized.
Okay. The first
speaker is Michael Young Bay, followed by Carl Gutierrez.
Hey, good morning. Good Morning.
Um, I didn't get an agenda,
but I still can talk on the finance
as I was taught when I was young.
It take finance to uplift a nation.
You know, we need finance to continue to move the city.
We need finance for allegedly candidates
that's running for office.
We need finance for the children, for education.
We need finance for different programs, for the uplifting
of people here in the city of Chicago and in the country.
Finance is very important.
You know, we, we going through a budget crisis here,
and, um, pretty much I believe that most of y'all known
that this was gonna be a problem
when we were saying don't give $72 million
for certain migrant issues, taking money from Tiff
and COVID funds, et cetera.
You know, how could you possibly think that you was going
to be balanced out?
Come the end of the year when it's time for a new budget,
that's impossible.
You know, I do know mathematics.
I done got a copy of all three budgets
for the last three years that I've been down here telling
y'all to stop putting money in this.
Stop putting money in that,
but not putting money in the citizens.
You know, now the citizens have a high tax bill,
you know, that's outrageous.
Some people $3,000, you know, extra in taxes,
but it's not no jobs out here.
We give them raises
and finance to certain companies
and raises to certain people in office, you know, and,
but it's no money for the children.
There's no money for the seniors.
There's no money for the homeless.
There's no money for the schools.
There's no money for transportation.
There's no money for everything
but what you want money to be for.
And it's usually, it's hurting the citizens here
in the city of Chicago.
We need finance, you know.
Thank you Mr. Bay.
The next speaker, Carl Gutierrez,
followed by Jackie Sample
Still. Morning.
Good morning.
My name is Carla Gutierrez from the Chicagoland Chamber
of Commerce representing more than 1000 members of all sizes
and sectors across our city.
The 2026 budget has been a hugely difficult process,
putting our city in a place that we've never been.
Make no mistake.
Both budgets are hard on all of Chicago's businesses,
but especially our small and mid-sized companies.
Chicago businesses across the board not only have more skin
in the game, but by a margin of four to one, starting
with the hundreds of millions of dollars in the lease tax,
but continuing with the doubling of cost
of business licenses, along with the myriad
of other new revenues in both budgets.
And that's on top of the new taxes from last year.
I will say it again, both budgets are very difficult.
However, while both are hugely difficult,
the alternative at least doesn't include a tax on jobs,
does more to address the savings
and efficiencies identified by the Earn and Young report,
and makes the full advance payment on our city's pensions,
lowering the threat of a credit downgrade
and helping better protect our city's financial future.
Members of this committee,
you should not have been put in this position,
but you stepped up and in the face of an aggressive
and unwarranted attacks on yourselves
and your character, you proceeded
with the unprecedented tasks
of having to create an alternative.
I will say it for a third time.
Both budgets are hugely difficult for Chicago businesses.
Both budgets have businesses putting more skin in the game
by margin of four to one,
but these budgets rep represent choices while one looks
to the future difficult as it is the other chooses
to build a Taos on sand.
We are a good city, I great city,
and we must choose better than that.
We have a lot more work ahead of us,
but we look, look forward to working with all
of you next year in the years to come
to build on our city's future and adjust in sustainable way.
Thank you.
Uh, thank you Alderman Mosley, uh, wanted
to recognize you.
Make sure you're on remotely. This is, uh, present chair.
Okay, great. Uh, Jackie Sample, followed
by Lynette Tta Thomas.
Hello, my name is Jackie Sample.
I'm here to bring awareness about my divorce case
with four DuPage County judges
who engaged in a coordinated pattern of misconduct.
They knowingly accept a fraudulent financial documents
submitted by my husband, Dr.
Madison sample, while ignoring truthful financial
records submitted by me.
These judges refuse
to enforce their own court orders while assisting my spouse
in stealing millions of dollars
and moving business assets to hide them from me.
This conduct followed a clear pattern
of crooked judges corruption, financial fraud, bribery.
They knowingly assisted my spouse instilling over 5 million
in assets and leaving me penniless.
This misconduct did not stop there.
The actions of these judges reflect a slave owner mentality.
I endured extreme systemic racial discrimination, contempt,
dehumanization, rooted in racism.
My property was taken
and everything I built over the last 25 years was
illegally stripped from me.
I was treated less than human
as a commodity rather than a full person with rights.
In May of 2025,
judge Neil Cerney unlawfully dismissed my divorce case
against my wishes, forcing me to remain legally married
to an abusive spouse
and leaving me financially devastated Judge Neil Cerney.
Kenton Scarton, James Rell
and Susan Alvarado treated me not
as a person, but as property.
Their practice include fear-based control used to dominate
and silence me, so I would not speak out about their
collusion and the theft of my assets
and property stripping me of everything I built
and any legal ability to protect it.
In addition, the judiciary willfully
and knowingly violated my rights under the
Americans With Disability Act.
Reasonable accommodations were obstructed
and my ability to be to fairly
and equally participate in court proceedings were denied.
As a result, I now have multiple foreclosure cases
pending in Cook County.
I have filed a federal complaint against two page county
judges and my spouse, yet my a DA rights, uh,
and due process rights under cholera.
Thank you, Ms. Sample. Uh, the next speaker is TTA Thomas,
followed by, uh, Ray Roundtree.
All right, y'all got one. These sergeant
arms threatening me over here.
I'm just letting you know right now.
Members of the finance committee, I'm asking today
that the following be taken as formal working notes
and that staff be directed to supply, verify
and publish the supporting numbers
before the budget moves any further.
Chicago is facing a 1.515 billion corporate fund shortfall.
If this committee is serious about closing
that gap responsibly, we need
to focus on quanti quantifiable levers,
not symbolic revenue first,
a $33 head tax based on existing estimates,
it raises approximately 8 million
or less than 7%
of the deficit while creating negative hiring incentives.
I'm asking finance staff
to place the official revenue projection economic impact
assumptions and administrative costs into the record
so members can evaluate whether this tool
meaningfully addresses the gap.
Second, overtime spending, particularly at CPD,
recent budget shows CPD overtime budgeted near,
near 100 million,
but spent closer to 190 million
with the fiscal year proposal increasing the line
item 200 million.
I'm requesting the five year overtime trend
by department identification of avoidable overtime drivers
and a fiscal estimate for 10, 15
and 25% through enforceable caps pre-approval
and event cost recovery, peer CDs re routinely realized 100
to 150 million in annual savings through these controls.
Third wages and personal costs.
A one year pause on across the board raises,
ex excluding step increases in critical frontline roles
should be costed out by staff based on comparable cities.
This represents 120 to 180 million in avoided cost growth.
This pause should explicitly include elected officials whose
salaries average 142,000
with COLA tolling over 350,000 annually across the council.
Fourth contracts in procurement Chicago spends billions
annually out on outside Venice.
I'm requesting a fiscal note estimating savings
for rebidding and consolidating the top contract categories
using conservative benchmarks to, uh,
Thank you Ms. Thomas.
Our next speaker is Ray Roundtree, followed
by Alex Goldenberg.
Yeah, it just bring awareness.
Uh, bill Conway 34th Ward Alderman.
I'm trying to see why is nothing being done about the
kidnapping of Dylan.
Jay Roundtree, my son. It happened in your ward.
What's, what's the problem? Can't get no help.
I've been here for years in your ward. It is.
Nothing's being done. That's it, that's all.
Excuse me, Mr. Roundtree. Thank you very much.
The next speaker is Alex Goldenberg, followed
by Reverend Dr. Wallace Gator.
Bat Bradley.
Good afternoon again.
Um, earlier I made the point that there is no evidence
that the corporate head tax is a job killer.
And I really think it's important for the members
of this committee to acknowledge that, to internalize that
there is analysis by economics
and labor experts that have concluded that
centrist Joe Ferguson has concluded that.
And it's really hard for us
to understand why you're still making that a talking point
and hinging your argument for your proposal on the fact
that is blatantly false.
The other point that I think it's really important to make
is that this search for revenue from
fines, from selling debt of low income
and suffering people, people are getting into the situation
of debt because they have no means to pay it.
These are people who are getting tickets booted,
accumulating different debt to the city,
and your plan is to actually make life harder for them
instead of to ask the ultra wealthy that have it so good
to just pay a little bit more.
I can't think of a starker contrast than people who have
to learn all the different places that the,
all the different pounds of the city.
They know all the mazes, they, they have been
to those trailers, they have been
to under wacker those dark places.
They have had to decide whether they were gonna be able
to put food on the table
or get their car to then go to work.
And those are the people who are looking
to make more sacrifice instead of the ultra rich
who have never had it better.
So I really think that putting forward an unbalanced budget
that is so regressive is wrong,
and we strongly encourage you to take the right decision
tax, the rich corporations who have it
and support the protection.
Uh, thank you Mr. Goldenberg.
Reverend Dr. Wallace Gator Bradley, followed
by Apostle Sandy.
A Norman.
Yes. Good morning chairman. Good morning.
First off
again.
Good morning, chairman. I love you more.
I say in that one, I wanna say, uh, Madam Chairman,
is it possible that I can get a copy of the, uh, revenue
ordinance alternative?
Yeah, we have. You can check that on.
It's on the Clerk's website. It's online.
Okay. Thank you. I'm in full support
of the Protecting Chicago budget
with the alderman, be it pro
or con, can come together
and help make it a righteous budget
for everybody in Chicago.
If you see something that's wrong
and you can make it better, I believe everybody need
to understand to make it better.
The reason that I asked for a copy of the alternative
is because I haven't seen where
new revenue was going to be generated.
When I see new revenue being generated
from the Protecting Chicago budget,
the people in the community can't judge what they can't see.
And that's what they trying to see.
So they can say, Hey, well that makes sense.
Case in point, the people realize
the importance of the garbage tax
because it was shown $9
or $15.
Thank you Reverend. Dr. Wallace. Skater Bradley,
that's a good one.
Um, apostle Sandy, Norman.
Blessings, Everyone by James McCoy.
Blessings, everyone. My name is Apostle Sandy, a Norman.
I wanna say honor to everyone that is here.
I did come to the meeting
and I will be at all the council meetings moving forward.
I wanna say that I'm a product of, uh,
the West side Lawndale community, Ida B.
Wells, uh, housing projects.
And as a a pastor, I have one
of the best violence intervention ministries
and outreach teams in the city of Chicago.
And so I wanna just say to the city of Chicago, when,
when they, the flip red, when they're talking about, um,
audits, I'm in the streets.
I'm active, I work with the police department,
turning in weapons.
I'm in a lot of the automatic wards
that are here doing the work.
And so people like myself, I just wanna say to the city
of Chicago that what I've been experiencing from the city is
that the funding is not going to the people
that are actually doing the work,
but the funding is, is going to a lot of these organizations
that are not on the street, they're not preventing crime,
but they have political ties and political connections,
and that is wrong.
And it is not of God.
And so I'm here again
because chain breakers, VIP, uh, ministries, we,
we know the detail that the mayor takes.
We are in all of our communities from Lawndale.
We are in East Garfield, we are in, uh, Michelle Harris's,
uh, automatic wards.
And again, the funding, the, the corruption, it's terrible.
And you have, I can't even count on my hand, 10 pastors
that are in the city of Chicago
that are actively on the street doing anything in our
communities, but yet they continue.
I see the funding that is being distributed.
I have been disrespected.
I'm one of the most honorable women
of God in the city of Chicago.
And I can back up what I do. I have over 20,000.
We are just camping out on the streets, 24 hours
doing the real work.
But we
Thank, thank you
Apostle Norman.
The next speaker is James McCoy fo followed
by Amy Masters.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon.
Okay. The days that people don't pay attention
to politics are over with the days
that people don't pay attention to the voting record
of certain people of certain alderman is over with.
Alright? I need everybody to understand
that people's seats are not nearly as solid
and unmovable as the you think they are.
So when we talk about we're coming to get your seats,
when you talk, when we talk about you might get replaced,
that's a very real possibility.
We can look at some of your records.
Y'all did not win your elections by that much.
We don't need that much.
If you think that your budget will be able
to beat our influence, it won't.
Okay? Even your your fake
and stage interviews, it didn't get.
Kamala Harrison office is not gonna keep
Brandon Johnson his money.
Okay? This stuff is not gonna work.
And what we're telling you now is
that Brandon Johnson has proven he's not a man of his word.
He swore up and down he wasn't gonna increase,
uh, housing taxes.
And then the next year he decided to do that.
Now he's acting as if he completely
didn't do that whatsoever.
You know, for a fact that he cannot balance a budget.
Alright? And you all agreed with it.
Most of you all were completely complicit.
Most of you all were.
And we know who was and we know who weren't. Alright?
Now you have the opportunity to not
to save yourselves a little bit, to be very honest with you
because your voting record is, is kind
of set in stone right now.
Alright? We know for a fact that there are
so many things that can be cut.
If you want to save the budget, if you want
to balance the budget somewhat,
you would cut what needs to be cut.
Alright. Brandon Johnson's talking about taxing the ultra
rich, which is his big thing
because he understands that people don't like, you know,
super big, rich people, or,
but he doesn't talk about the fact
that he's giving a lot of you all raises.
He doesn't talk about the fact
that he's giving himself a huge $5 million pension.
He's the rich. And we are keeping track
of all of this. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McCoy.
The next speaker is Amy Masters, followed by Adrian Seti.
Good afternoon, chair Chairwoman Dowell
and members of the Finance Committee.
My name is Amy Masters
and I'm here today on behalf of the Building Owners
and Managers Association of Chicago or BOMA Chicago.
We represent about 240 large office buildings in the city,
and our buildings house about 18,000 tenants
and over 500,000 office workers.
Chicago's office industry supports about 64,000 jobs, many
of most of which are union.
I'm here today to ask you
to support the alternative budget put forward by members
of the city council.
We are grateful for the many,
many hours this group has committed without the benefit
of a budget staff to craft a reasonable, balanced package
that avoids a head tax.
And the mayor's dramatic property tax increase
of $300 million proposed last year.
This revenue package supports a
full advanced pension payment.
Paying the full amount will prevent the city
from falling further behind.
Protects our credit rating
and avoids the higher costs that come
with borrower borrowing or shorting the system.
This updated budget proposal also removes
the garbage fee increase.
It eliminates cuts to the Chicago public Library system
and increases funding for domestic violence services.
These are meaningful improvements
that protect residents while strengthening the city's
longstanding financial position.
There's been a repeated claim
that businesses aren't paying their fair share,
but in this package, more than 80% of the fee
and tax increases fall on businesses, not residents.
Some of these include a 15% pro personal property lease tax,
a new social media tax, and increased business fees.
This on top of commercial property taxes that this on top
of commercial property already paying the highest
property taxes in the country.
No one likes tax and fee increases,
but we need a balance that limits additional burdens on
residents while supporting economic growth.
The city can't risk a government shutdown
that would harm residents.
And bus.
Thank you Ms. Masters.
Uh, the next speaker is an Andrea, an Adrian Seti, followed
by George Blakemore.
Good morning. My name's Adrian.
I'm a library worker at Chicago Public Library at the
Harold Washington Library downtown.
I'm here to tell you that contrary to our last speaker,
restoring our collections budget, it's is not sufficient
to do justice to our libraries.
I'm represented by ASK sme,
but I'm here to talk about the cutting of 200
of our SEIU library security guards
as proposed in the merit budget.
We've been hearing that this budget has no library layoffs,
and I am grateful
that my job is not on the chopping block this year.
But the reduction of funds for library security staffing
by 44% is not just a number.
It's the guards we rely on every day
to create peaceful spaces for our patrons.
Library staff meet people with a huge range of needs,
and sometimes we encounter those who are struggling so much
that they may hurt themselves or others.
At Harold Washington Library where I work in the last year,
we've experienced a, a group knife fight sexual assault
of a minor battery of staff,
a patron stalking library pages and more.
Our guards make a difference.
Security guards in our libraries help us deescalate
dangerous situations, keep libraries safe
for vulnerable patrons,
and ensure that everyone can enjoy public services in peace.
We rely on guards who are trained in conflict prevention
and management to help us help all
of our patrons without involving the police.
The police district my library is in
doesn't have a CARES team.
So when we call for outside assistance, the responders
who arrive are not mental, not clinicians trained
to handle mental health crises.
It's cops ready to make arrests.
Having guards present means that much more
of the time we can avoid calling the police
and subjecting people to being cycled
through the criminal justice system.
The reduction in force of 200 library security workers
for 2026 would be a serious blow to library services.
I have trouble understanding how the termination
of these workers has garnered so little attention.
Maybe if we don't consider contract labor real work,
then we can say there are no layoffs.
I don't think it'll be much constellation to our guards
to know that they weren't laid off.
Raising the library levy would mean the owners
of the most expensive properties in our city would pay their
fair share so that we don't see job losses and vac.
Thank you Ms. Seti.
Uh, the next speaker is George Blakemore, followed
by Jessica Jackson.
Taxation without representation, voodoo economics.
This, uh, this look a year.
Uh, this is pat do over finance
a culture of corruption.
Burke Altman Burke was indicted.
Altman Burke was indicted and they're still stealing.
It's just a culture of corruption here.
Voodoo economics here. She, it's terrible.
It's terrible. Just one corrupt person being
indicted and another corrupt one comes in,
nothing changes.
It all remains the change
because the people allow this to happen.
Walter Burnett is gone
and he is not corruption for abuse.
Just musical chair. They go from one hog pen to the other.
Where's the other hog pen over here? Cook County.
That's where, where did Tony pre when cocaine,
what hog pens did she come from?
This one, they just transfer the pigs from one
hog pen to the other one.
Some of 'em are e even big, in fact,
like pig Lauder.
Now look at here. Now the most of budget, they say one
of the, the worst of all the wards.
This is this man's ward.
They and his war and a black ward.
But you go to Madison Vete, who do you see out there?
Koreans and, and European and Asian.
What are the blacks doing? Buying. They not selling nothing.
Uh,
Thank you Mr. Blake Moore.
Uh, next speaker is Jessica Jackson, followed
by Dennis White.
And our last speaker is Danielle Carter.
Before I say what I need to say, I want to thank
Alderman Tyler Farro for helping me with my case.
He did in fact fact come through and help me,
and I wanna acknowledge that.
Thank you very much.
Now with that being said, that John Hendricks was here.
Now he ran in the back
because he didn't want to hear this conversation.
Now you got your finance people over there.
That's with him from the city. You got that, uh, what is it?
Annette Gosman who is in here instead of him.
And you got the lady with the black jacket on
with the glasses, who I really thought was AI up
until right now, because she just had this stick stoic
position on tv.
She doesn't even move, you know? So I thought she was ai.
So seeing that how she's real, maybe you can go back there
and tell John Hendricks that Jessica Jackson said
that meeting that he had
with Senator Terry Bryant from Springfield
in March, 2025, when him
and Mary Richardson, Lori lied
and told Senator Terry Bryant that the reason why
my case had not been settled was
because my mother did not have a will.
It's the same lie
that Cook Cook County public administrators told.
So do not sit here and make like the city and the county
and the county and the city are not connected
because they're very connected.
So the fact that you all will sit here
and look at some false rigged up numbers
that you can't even fix is a disgrace.
You all are a disgrace because you are lying nonstop lying.
You won't say nothing about the money
that was spent on illegal immigrants.
'cause you know, that's what's got this budget messed up.
It has nothing to do with no ultra rich or nothing else.
It's got to do with the incompetence of you
and that Goodman that sit there
and let Brandon Johnson do this garbage.
You and that AI robot ne
Thank you Ms. Jackson.
Uh, our next speaker is Dennis White.
And our last speaker is Danielle Carter.
He didn't know.
It's amazing that people over here saying
tax the rich and it's e more easier,
what liberals say, tax the rich, but they don't have jobs.
It's easy for a incompetent, make believe
American black mayor,
which he might be an undercover Haitian to say we need
to tax the rich, but all at the same time, he liked
to raise property taxes
and stuff to say, well, we need
to put our skin in this game.
And then he's saying, he crying with the dry tears,
talking about my family didn't have no
food in the refrigerator.
Maybe they didn't have a job. I don't know.
But nevertheless, Brandon Johnson either need
to be voted out, impeached, indicted, convicted
jail for the rest of his life.
That's what Brandon Johnson need to be.
And I'm telling you now, if you vote 25 to 10 to say no
to Brandon Johnson, make it 26 to make it 26 to nine
to say vote no to Brandon Johnson
because this budget do not need to be passed.
And then all these liberals over here are talking about we
need to, uh, tax the rich and stuff.
Get a job, man. That's all you need to do.
Now, here's the thing.
The, the, the south, the blacks from the south side
and the west side are getting tired
of all these unnecessary taxes from the democratic
politicians right here.
And then they, here's the lesson, the, the, uh,
Democrat symbol is of a j*****s.
But look how many dumb asses
that's under the jackasses and stuff.
So I'm saying to this, the election season is coming.
Them seats aren't going to get high.
It's going to be in danger, and you going to get voted out.
And Brandon Johnson, you going to prison?
Thank you, Mr. White, Danielle Carter.
Sir, I'm not gonna raise property taxes.
That's, that's been the lazy form of governance
for a very long time in the city of Chicago.
And quite frankly, around the country,
communities have been hit hard, um,
because the property taxes continue to go up.
And that's why I'm committed to making sure
that we're not raising property taxes
to keep families in the city of Chicago.
So make sure that we're keeping everybody here.
The greatest population loss right now, the city
of Chicago, our black people.
Why? Because we have not addressed public
safety and property taxes. We just saw you
Live in the city of Chicago. Mayor
Brandon Johnson wants to increase your property taxes.
Mayor's $300 million property tax
Proposal for Chicago property owners.
A double dose of pain first came reassessments.
Now a possible property tax hike rather than proposed
layoffs or furloughs.
Today, mayor Brandon Johnson sent City Council a budget
calling for a $300 million property tax increase the
largest in nine years.
According to the administration,
the average homeowner would pay 4% more
by tapping into the property tax.
Well, the mayor is breaking a campaign promise.
I feel that you are taxing them into financial slavery, uh,
to pay for migrants.
Um, the exact, uh, amount of the this tax increase
that you're proposing is, I think to the penny,
what you've already given to one of the migrant vendors.
Uh, yeah, the, the, the migrant vendor named, uh, uh, uh,
favorite healthcare staffing.
Not to mention all the other migrant vendors.
Uh, wouldn't it make more sense for your tax increase
to simply be called a migrant tax on Chicagoans?
Make no mistake about it. We warn you all.
They're, they're trying to divert
the reason why your property taxes went up because we pay.
Thank you Ms. Carter. This concludes the public comment.
I want to acknowledge
that the Committee on Finance has received, excuse me,
the Committee on Finance has received 18 public comments
pertaining to the matters before us today,
and they will all extend to you electronically.
We have a total
of five items on this agenda this morning or this afternoon.
Now, um, item number one,
excuse me,
I'm asking the gallery
to please be silent for this meeting.
Thank you.
The committee has been informed on item number one.
The committee has been informed by the mayor's office
that item number one will not be discussed
during today's committee meeting.
Um, so we will go out of the regular order of the agenda
and hear item number five.
Item number five is an ordinance introduced
by Alderman Matthew, osha,
and others amending titles
1 3 4 7 8 9 10 11 14
a, 14 B, 14 x,
and 15 of the municipal Code
2026 Municipal Code Revenue Ordinance alternative.
There is a substitute ordinance, which has been prepared
and sent out electronically to everyone
and distri distributed to everyone in this room today.
Pages three and four have been revised
and will be explained by Alderman Nugent.
Is there a motion to accept the substitute ordinance?
I moved. So moved by Alderman Beal.
Alderman Nugent, would you please explain
pages three and four?
Uh, Madam Chair, I was just moving
to accept the substitute ordinance that was circulated
and in, and, uh, have received the updated pages three
and four to reflect the changes.
I was just simply stating that for you. Thank you.
Thank you. Alderman Lee
and Alderman Wapac are here to explain
the ordinance that you have
before you today substitute ordinance point of all order.
Alderman Lopez.
Thank you Madam Chairman. Do we need to vote
to accept the substitute?
You are correct. Hold on one second.
All those in favor of, of, uh, sub
of accepting the substitute, please signify by saying Aye.
Opposed in the opinion of the chair. The ayes have it.
And the substitute ordinance is now before the committee
and will be explained by my colleagues Alderman Lee
and Alderman Waba.
But before you start Alderman Moore,
you had a point of information.
It's tripping, but I just wanted to be clear, chairman,
which the one that says substitute page one
through 81 is the one we are talking about,
or is it the other one that says ordinance pages?
Ooh, it should have substitute ordinance at the top.
Okay. Not the one that ends with Exhibit A.
Okay.
Substitute revenue ordinance.
Okay. Thank you. Chairman Alderman Lee
and Alderman Wapac, please proceed.
Thank you. Chairwoman.
Uh, colleagues, thank you for being here today.
As a lot of you know, our Aldermanic coalition worked
throughout the weekend to fine tune revenue
and spending options and consultation with budget
and finance advisors not-for-profits, uh, many other, um,
entities throughout the city as well as industries, uh,
including manufacturing, liquor, and the business community.
Um, as part of this collaborative process among many alders,
we've come to an agreement to remove the garbage tax
as part of our proposal.
We have no grocery tax, we have no property tax,
and we have no head tax.
We have work to, uh,
also include the mayor's record setting TIF surplus,
despite the distort distorted rhetoric
that has been spreading around the city.
We have also figured out how
to balance this proposal while fully funding collections in
the Chicago Public Library
and provide additional funding for gender-based violence.
We believe that this final proposal represents the position
of an even broader number
of alders than just a few days ago,
and are excited to move forward in this process
to avoid a possible shutdown
and give the residents working families
and businesses the peace of mind they deserve.
As we close out 2025, we also wanna share
for the record the confidence we have in our record
revenue projections.
Our advisors are amongst some of the city's best budget
and finance experts who dug deep into the numbers with those
of us who do this work, work every day.
As we all know, every spending
and revenue number in a budget is an estimate,
and that applies to our numbers as it does
with those assumed in the mayor's proposal.
Our budget is balanced.
The one that we provide to today is balanced
and we are ready to move forward with our spending
and revenue projections.
We look forward to passing this out today
and avoiding the shutdown
that I think many in this city fear
and this proposal today will help us get through this time
of crisis and a time of need.
Thank you, chairwoman.
Thank you. Uh,
before we go, I would like
to acknowledge Alderman Rodriguez, who has joined us for
Quorum and Alderman Lawson
and Alderman Manna Howorth,
who are non-members who've joined us today. Alderman Lee.
Thank you. Thank you Chairwoman.
Uh, and thank you to my colleague, alderman Waba.
Um, I'd like to just add to the remarks. Budgets are hard.
We all know that. Uh, I've only voted on a few of them.
Many of you here have voted on more.
Uh, and, and with anything we have for hundreds
of hours at this point, engaged the majority of city
of Council in conversations, um, having debates about
what goes in the budget, um, agreeing, disagreeing, agreeing
to disagree, because make no mistake, there's not a budget
that's on the table right now
that everybody likes every aspect of,
but our job is to make sure
that the city government continues to run
and we do this in a responsible way,
and we believe that we have that,
that we're meeting our obligations
and that we're leaving Chicago stronger for it.
So with that, we'll get started with the presentation.
All of the elders should have hard
copies of this in front of you.
Um, and we've got this projecting on,
uh, on the screen here.
Did we hand up? Okay.
We use the Mayor's original proposal as a base budget.
We're really only talking about 258 million, $400,000
of a $16.6 billion budget.
On the expenditure side,
we're increasing on the corporate fund, the removal
of the head tax at a hundred million, ensuring
that we make the full advance pension payment at
139,900,000, increasing funding
for gender-based violence programs above the 2025 levels.
Restoring funding for the library books, uh,
library collections at 5 million
and restoring funding for youth mentoring
that we know is very effective.
Again, this represents a very small portion of the budget.
1.6% of a $16.6 billion budget.
So how do we get there?
We're gonna walk through this summary very quickly
and then we're gonna go through individually.
So, uh, you'll get more descriptive, uh,
details about each one of these
as we go along on the expenditure.
Decrease side of the, uh, house.
We're looking at the UI efficiencies, uh, report
that was done by Ernst Young.
Uh, we're anticipating
that there will be $46.6 million in savings
and efficiencies on revenue adjustments
for the ground transportation tax.
This has to do with Uber and Lyft, uh,
and the congestion fee zones.
We're looking, this adjustment is based on, uh,
an adjustment from the prior version.
The original version of the, uh,
revenue ordinance had a fee increase,
so we worked backwards from there
and we're, this looks weird
because it says minus 39 million.
We're gonna go through that in detail.
Uh, we're also adding on here business tax
for video gaming at $6.8 million.
Personal property lease tax, uh, at an increase to 15%,
which is capped through the end of 2027.
Increasing the shopping bag tax from 10 cents
to 15 cents while maintaining the 1 cent, um, rebate
to retailers for reimbursement.
That's $8.7 million on the liquor tax.
We would replace the existing unit based tax
with a percentage based tax for off-premise liquor sales
that we believe can conservatively generate $6 million in
the next fiscal year.
Nonprofit vote Mooring exemption.
Uh, there is a yacht tax that was proposed.
We propose exempting nonprofits to, uh, the tune
of $200,000 to this budget.
Fines, fees, forfeitures and penalties.
Uh, we're projecting a $92.6 million, um,
revenue from that resource,
and we'll get into details of that in a little bit.
Um, rentals and leases.
Uh, looking at augmented reality
advertising, I know this is new.
We're gonna tell you all about it when we get into it.
Uh, that's $6 million advertising revenue
and getting creative with our advertising revenue.
Um, for Bridge Houses as a pilot, light poles as a pilot.
And then city vehicles,
we anticipate $29.3 million in additional revenue for that.
Um, and finally, uh, taking prior year assign
and unassigned available resources, uh, at $20 million
for a total of 258,400,000.
Alderman Beck will get into the corporate savings.
Okay. In the corporate fund savings, we set a target
for expense reductions in the corporate fund,
but provide flexibility on how we get there.
And this target is based on efficiencies
that we identified in the Ernst
and Young report, including closing,
select vacant positions, improving fleet disposition,
life modeling or lifecycle modeling
and warranty recovery, um, service optimization
through implementing cost recovery fees like
false burglar alarm fees.
And the target there was $46 million.
Um, under one second there.
Under this, uh, for instance,
the vacant positions in the EY short-term estimate, they
provided a range of 2 million to $10 million.
We used the low estimate of $2 million in terms
of optimizing managerial spans of control.
The EY midterm
or one to three year report estimated
that $37 million could be assumed.
We assumed only 20% of that through FY 26
or 7.4 million.
We reduced legal spending.
EY midterm estimate was five to $11 million.
We assumed 50% implementation for FY 26 or 2.5 million.
And the reason I will state is that, um, we tried
to make our numbers conservative so
that people did not think we were overblowing what ey,
what the ROY report recommended
and what the administration thought they could get to
in fleet services on the work stream.
Uh, in the EY report, this is page 15.
Um, the other point I would make out on some of these is
that this is very prescriptive.
So the administration, if they want
to put more effort into it,
could actually find more savings in the EY report.
And that was made very clear
after several weeks of waiting
for the EY report to come out.
When EY came before us,
and there was testimony in this council chambers
and the fleet services work stream accelerated disposition
ey, short-term estimate was 4.4 to 6.4.
We used the, uh, lowest estimate minus
what is already included,
or $1.4 million improved lifecycle modeling.
The estimate was 2.2 to 4.4.
We used 2.2, expand the warranty recovery.
The EY short-term estimate was 1.7 to 3.7 million,
and we used the low estimate again of 1.7 million.
Now moving on to service optimization.
The recommended items from EY except disbanding,
the CPD mounted unit,
was adjusting fire alarm inspection fees,
false alarm burglar fees, adding a false fire alarm fee,
increasing film production, squad car fees,
increasing pyrotechnics and sprinkler fees,
and implementing a treat, no transport fee.
Adding a non-emergent lift assist fee
reducing 3 1 1 hours from 24 7 by leveraging chatbots
and additional items.
Ey short-term estimate for all
of these options was $18 million.
We only assumed 50% of that implementation
or $9 million on the next one.
Now moving on to the next page
for ground transportation congestion fee.
Essentially what we did here was restore the original
proposed congestion zone, but remove the rate changes.
The administration said 17 million for the new proposal.
We were told by industry officials it was 26 million based
on their more sophisticated forecasting.
We're not doing 10.25%, were just changing the geography.
Um, and I believe the mayor's office has since indicated
that they agree with the industry's more
sophisticated modeling.
So again, we have only adjusted boundaries, um,
and not the rate and the boundaries
as the administration had done.
Alright, next one there. Tax video.
All right, alderman, do you wanna jump in on this one? Um,
We got chairwoman chair.
Is it? Okay? Um, okay, we've got, uh, business,
business tax on video gaming.
Uh, this is a, a new item that we've got here
and, uh, I will defer to, I will defer to Alderman Beal,
um, to, to speak on this one. Alderman Beal,
Thank you Madam Chairman.
And I wanna thank my colleagues for, uh,
a great presentation, uh, as we go
through this alternate budget, which I think is phenomenal.
And I want to encourage everyone to really take in
what we're doing and understand
that we are doing the right thing
by the people of the city of Chicago.
But talking about video gaming,
we've talked about this for a while.
Right now we have over 3000 illegal sweepstakes machines
here in the city of Chicago that we're not getting a penny
off of, not one dime.
And let me again say illegal sweepstakes machines.
So right now we have over 3,300 liquor licenses
here in the city of Chicago.
Of that, we took the number of 80% we, we anticipate
applying for, uh, VGT licenses,
which is about 2,640, uh, VGT locations.
If each one of those locations opted in between four
and six machines,
we we're looking at roughly 11,880 machines here in the city
of Chicago, which will net us initially
$10,800,000.
And with that, if you look at the 10,000,800 minus the
4 million penalty that we have baked in for the valleys, uh,
contract, we potentially will have
to pay $4 million for opting in.
That nets us 6.8 million in revenue,
$6.8 million in revenue initially.
And this is a very conservative number when you look at the
fact that this is, uh,
each license will contribute about a
thousand dollars per year.
And that is before any revenue is generated.
Not one pool on these VGT machines,
we're gonna be netting almost $11 million.
And so once we get up and going,
and these are numbers are coming straight from the video
from the, um, um, um,
licensing in Springfield, the gaming board.
The gaming board is anticipating
that Chicago wants fully up and operational.
We will bring in between 65
and a hundred million dollars based on the 5%
of the current contract that we're in right now
with the state of Illinois 5%.
And so when you look at between 65
and a hundred million with just 5%,
that's not including the money that we could potentially get
for capital improvement.
The state's portion is almost $900 million of that.
Chicago is not getting a dime for capital improvement.
So if we would look to work with the state
to maybe change the formula
or get a line share of the capital improvement funds
that this, uh, money will create from BGTs,
we could po possibly be, be netting between three four,
possibly $500 million.
But we're being conservative today to get going.
Coming outta the gate, we're looking at $6.8 million.
Thank you Alderman Mobile.
Moving on to the lease of personal property
or the PPLT, uh, we're increasing the rate to 15% capped
through fiscal year 2027.
That would mean that we would keep the rate at 15, um,
through December 31st, uh, 2027
with the revenue impact from the original version
of the revenue ordinance, uh, of an additional $82 million.
Next, we have the plastic bag tax. The shopping bag tax.
This is an increase in the shopping bag tax from 10 cents
to 15 cents.
And this proposal maintains the 1 cent retailer share.
Unlike the mayor's proposal we have, uh,
this information was, uh, was gleaned from information
that we received from the administration
as a council back in July.
Uh, these numbers are pulled directly from there.
The incremental revenue estimate here is $8.7 million.
Next is a liquor tax.
This replaces the existing unit based tax
with a percentage based tax on
off-premise liquor sales only.
So this would not affect restaurants.
Um, the revenue impact is $6 million.
Now, we assume, uh, 80%
of the sales are off-premise in the city of Chicago,
and assuming 2 billion in total liquor sales for the year
and one quarter of implementation.
We have been very conservative with our estimates here.
Uh, taxable off-premise sales would be $800 million.
This was also something that was taken up, uh,
by the Chicago Financial Futures Task Force, uh,
which was an independent group of 24 civic leaders charged
with, uh, charging practical
and forward-looking options
for the city's long-term financial health.
Uh, this is something that we believe, uh, has a strong, uh,
opportunity to create even more revenue down the road.
This would be at a rate of 1.5% of 400 million, uh,
which is $6 million that we're assuming of revenue
for the fiscal year.
2026. That's you.
All right. And, uh, that's me.
You're doing the fines fees.
Actually, can you skip here first?
You want me to take that? Yeah, will you first. All right.
Skipping over to fines fee for forfeitures
and penalties, uh,
we include 89.6 million in increased debt collection.
Currently, 1 billion is currently saleable,
and this assumes that the city can recoup nearly 9%.
Uh, we believe the impact would be about 92.6 million.
Now, there's a lot of issues with debt collection.
Um, city's total uncollected debt tallies as high
as nearly $7 billion going back over 25 years.
Uncollected debt is reported
that have gone up 1 billion over this la over this term,
but that is probably due to, uh, deficient practices
and that the administration inherited
and, uh, accretion of new and expanded taxes, fines,
and fees of various sorts.
Um, we had robust conversation on this
with high level expert assisted independent assessments,
as well as people in the administration suggesting
that potentially, um, a billion of this, as I mentioned,
is realistically recoverable through a combination
of modernized internal collection efforts.
I would also point out that, uh, some of the other issues
with this include making sure that employees of our s sister
agencies not limited to CPS,
but as well as Cook County, um,
have mandatory debt compliance to make sure
that they are paying their bills when they're employees
of the city of Chicago, of a sister agency
or of another jurisdiction.
Um, using data in our possession, we can immediately access,
um, some of the other information.
And we believe, again, that we could get close
to 92.6 million, uh, total impact in this,
um, upcoming year.
Yes. Um, we're including enforcement
of the environmental benchmark ordinance, uh,
at a re at a revenue impact for half of a year at 3 million.
Uh, if you're not familiar, the city passed an ordinance
back in 2017, uh, requiring, uh, requiring commercial,
municipal and residential buildings over 50,000 square feet
to track and report their annual energy use.
Uh, we understand based on reports
that there hasn't been great enforcement of this, um,
by a report based, excuse me, a report by Electrify Chicago,
uh, looked at non-reporting on the ordinance between 2018
and 2022
and found that 33, excuse me, 3,325 instances
of building owners not submitting their data over
that period, their analysis further reports
that the city could have generated up
to $30 million in fines.
Now we know that's a high end estimate.
Um, extrapolating from these calculations, uh,
we feel like this would be, uh, an upper limit
of $6.1 million per year.
Once we're enforcing this,
and with the new positions that are scheduled
for the Department of Environment, we know
that there will be more opportunities for enforcement.
We went with a 50%, um, assumption on that upper limit
of 6 million at, uh, revenue
contribution here of $3 million.
Augmented reality. Who has kids that play Pokemon Go?
Anybody? I do. Okay. Pokemon Go.
Um, this is a, this is a, a, a really, um,
a really cool new, uh, revenue opportunity
that could generate revenue
by allowing augmented reality content on city property.
So if you've ever played Pokemon Go,
or if you use augmented reality at all,
it's when you hold your camera up, um,
and you're, uh, looking at the real world,
but other things sort of pop up in its place.
Um, the city would work with a broker for augmented reality,
uh, sorry, augmented reality opportunities for the city
where the broker and the platform own,
uh, earns a commission.
And there are no upfront costs.
We're assuming the low estimate from the numbers
provided by the AR company, um,
leading in this space at $6 million.
Now, we are grateful to BOMA Chicago
for sharing this information as they presented on this idea.
In fact, you can go to their website
and see how they are, uh, sharing this with their members.
The idea was also presented
to the Financial Futures Task force
and was something that World Business Chicago was also very
interested in their revenue estimates.
Uh, the broker's revenue estimates go from 6 million
to $30 million potentially, um, in, in a year.
And we went with the low end estimate
of 6 million advertising.
Alright, moving on to advertising revenue.
Uh, this includes the following options.
Bridge house naming rights, light pole advertising pilot
and advertising on fleet vehicles.
Um, again, some
of this came from the Chicago Financial Futures task force,
which was convened by the mayor.
Um, for instance, uh, in
that report they say consider advertising on light poles,
$4.3 million at the low end, or up to the high end as well.
Um, we have also had, as far back as 2012,
a municipal marketing plan that included advertising,
if you recall, on divvy bikes.
And unfortunately, some of the, the large, um, the highway,
uh, advertising.
However, um, the, the projected amount
that could be here for a similar program looking at several
other cities and the different types of things
that they do is $29.3 million.
And we've had some of this
that came from the C-F-F-T-F report, as well
as from several aldermen looking at things like, uh,
city vehicles that are available
for advertising on some other cities do, um, again,
the light poles
and potentially other aspects of city assets that could, uh,
bring in additional revenue.
The last item here is using prior year assigned
and unassigned resources.
We know that the City of Chicago is forecasting a deficit
for 2025 of $146 million.
The city will receive 173 million back from CPS as a result
of the record breaking TIF surplus with the IGA agreement
that the city of Chicago has with CPS any amount over 379,
but less than 175 in surplus would be returned back
to the city to cover the MABF payment
at $173 million coming back in less the deficit
that would remain a delta of $27 million.
Our proposal carries forward 20 million of that
to pay towards the advanced pension payment.
And finally, there's been a lot of talk of how
the budget is impacting individuals and businesses.
Our proposal in terms of new revenues impacts
businesses at 84% and individuals at 16%.
I want everybody to take a look at this for a minute.
Don't just glance at it.
84% to 16%.
Um, the PPLT is the largest share of the business expense,
and that has gone from zero
to a billion dollars in the course of one year
businesses paying the overwhelming majority, uh, of
what is in this new revenue package.
And as I said earlier, no budget is perfect.
We feel that this is a responsible, conservative, uh, budget
that ensures that we are meeting our obligations
with the pension payment and ensuring that Chicago continues
to grow and does not put up roadblocks
to growing this economy.
We're here for working families.
We want people to be working and corporations employ people.
We need jobs. So we cannot continue, uh, to put onto
businesses more roadblocks.
We know we recognize that we have many other things
that get in the way, and we're only, again,
touching 1.6% of this budget.
No budget's. Perfect. And here we are.
We're presenting this and we hope
that you come with us on this budget.
Thank you,
Chairman.
Thank you. Excuse me. Ms. Jackson.
Ms. Jackson, please.
Um, we'll, we'll start, uh, Ms. Jackson,
I am respectfully asking you
to please calm down.
Thank you. All right.
Um, we'll start with questions from, uh, the committee.
First up is, uh, vice Chair Conway. You have,
Well, I, I, I, uh,
I'll wait till the conversation
germinates a little bit before I ask.
Right. Any questions? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Uh, then we'll go to Alderman Cazada. Thank
You, Madam Chair. Um,
members of the committee as reported by WTTW, members
of this committee, said that they, they, they did not want
to spend 12 to 16 hours having, uh, their numbers dismissed.
But if the numbers are sound, they should withstand 12
to 16 hours of scrutiny.
'cause scrutiny is, is not disrespect.
It is the heart of good governance.
I'm concerned that we are being asked
to vote today on numbers that were not released yesterday,
precisely because they could not withstand even a half day
of scrutiny if they cannot withstand
12 to six hours of scrutiny.
They do not belong in our budget today. Financial members.
Did you, could you get to your question? We get into that.
Thank you. Finance committee members are being shown
supporting materials for the first time
and are being asked to evaluate
and vote in the same meeting.
Finance committee members are fiduciaries,
not an audience reviewing major revenue. What
Is your question, Mr.
Casada? Alderman Kaza
Requires understanding the methodology.
I'm, I'm putting into context so
that I can ask clear questions.
Making major revenue assumptions requires time
to understand the methodology, assess legal
and procurement feasibility, consult staff, consult
or constituencies, and ask follow-up
questions after reflection.
So I'll move into my first, uh, line of questions.
Thank you. I believe it is great
that we remove the garbage fee increase
and we restore funding for approximately 5,000 youth jobs.
Thank you for listening to our residents
and our young people because that matters.
Or youth jobs funding.
If assumed revenues fall short, what
safeguards ensure youth jobs are not cut midyear
well, um, I think what we're looking at right now is
that the revenue estimates are probably not going
to fall short based on the monthly analysis
that actually comes from OBM.
So in our, uh, estimation here,
we're not worried about those revenue items falling short.
I would like the budget director not
Guzman to answer that question.
Uh, excuse me. Uh, I got this meeting. Okay.
Alderman Quinn, you had a point of information? No. Okay.
Uh, director Guzman,
I'm sorry. Is the question,
will the revenues fall short?
I think that's the first part.
And then two, if revenues do fall short,
how do we ensure youth jobs are not cut,
are not cut mid-year?
Um, so this is our first time reviewing
this, uh, proposal.
We also don't have any of the background methodology
that was used to evaluate and come up with the forecast.
So I can't speak to whether
or not the revenues will fall short.
I would, um, uh, we ask for that
and I would ask for it again, so
that we can do that analysis.
If the revenues, um, do fall short
or don't come in, based on the projections
that are put forth today, we will be back here, um,
presenting, uh, possible solutions
to cut expenditures next year.
Thank you. Um,
why were the assumptions made in this budget not shared
publicly when reporters requested them
Point of information? Alderman Lopez,
Thank you Chairman. And
forgive, forgive me, colleague,
but if I may ask, isn't that true of any budget
where revenues may fall short, that we have
to make adjustments midyear, regardless if it's this one
or the one that the mayor proposes?
Uh, that's, that's true. Um, thank
You. Thank you Chairman.
Uh,
Wanna answer that question?
I'm sorry. Can you re can you repeat your
question, alderman?
Yes. So, or the, the, the previous one
or the, the most recent one is my most recent one.
The one that you just Ask. Yes.
I was asking why was this budget not shared publicly
to members of this committee
and also reporters yesterday when, when requested,
this is our first time reviewing this.
This is incredibly disrespectful
Point of clarification. Alderman Beal.
Well, uh, Madam Chairman, we don't work for reporters.
And just because reporters ask us questions don't mean we're
obligated to give them information.
We're not negotiating this in the press.
And so when we look at this information,
we asked the administration to provide their information
to us as well yesterday.
And they presented nothing.
They were on the agenda to submit their information today,
and they submitted nothing.
So at least we are presenting
something that you can evaluate. I
Will say also that we, in our coalition, uh,
this was presented to, I wanna say 30 members of council.
This is not the first time that everybody is seeing this.
I appreciate that some
of you are seeing this for the first time.
Duly noted. It is not any different than when the
administration does a direct introduction
and we have no notice of it.
And we are often asked to vote on those days.
So I, it's a fair question.
Um, back to some, some of the nitty gritty here
for the advertisements on public spaces.
Um, what is your plan for an RFP process?
Because from my, uh, uh, reference, um, seems like the city,
when they did the digital billboard, uh, vote, uh,
they passed an RFP proposal in 2011.
The plan wasn't actually approved by a, an actual vendor in,
well, that was passed in November of 2011.
The vendor wasn't approved until December of 2012.
And then the cities didn't start collecting revenue
until 2014.
So how are you going to collect $30 million in one year
without an RFP process? I'll answer that.
Uh, alderman WA is back.
Thank you, chairwoman.
Actually, an RFP process would be proposed here.
Procurement has the expertise to do that.
They've done hundreds, if not thousands of them,
and they have the blueprint, uh,
and again, the expertise to do that.
So if we do not collect your $30 million,
what is your, your plan?
Um, okay, so
Point of information. Alderman Nugent.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I believe that in the presentation that, uh, alderman, WAPAC
and Lee gave, uh, all of the estimates were conservative
and we used the lowest estimate for everything proposed.
Therefore, there is a chance, should the augmented reality
not fulfill the 30 million as anticipated that we would find
that revenue through other sources.
Thank you. Madam Chair
Al Vasquez.
Yes. I apologize for the point
of information to the point of information.
Um, we're being told that these are conservative estimates.
We would like the data to show that
and to the, we need clarity there.
I guess it would count it through the chair.
So I apologize if I'm overextending.
I can answer that. Chairwoman.
Um, many of the estimates that we've
provided here, for instance, uh,
through the Chicago Financial Futures interim report
that was released in August of 2025,
every alderman had ample opportunity to look at that.
Um, and the conservative
or the high end estimates are in each one of those,
but we also have it in the EY report,
which I know the administration held back
for several months on that, not providing it.
Once we got it, we went through,
I think you were at the EY meeting.
That's where we're really making sure
that our projections are conservatively based.
We're not trying to overstate them.
We're giving the administration every opportunity,
ample opportunity to go out there and say, we can do an RFP.
Um, I think you've been talking about advertising
for six years.
You know, sometimes it doesn't go through.
Sometimes it does, but the opportunity is there
and it's been available for several months.
Sure.
All, um, we'll come back to you for round two.
You've been going like five minutes. All right.
One last question. Go ahead.
Um, so in terms of the advertisements,
do you have a design layout for how some
of these advertisements would look on our bridge towers
and our light poles on our No,
That is the, that would be the
responsibility of the administration.
Well, I, I think In the rf in the RFP
Process. Thank you. I think,
I think it's a horrible use
of privatization and commodification of public space.
Thank you. And I think it's a continuation
of failed neoliberal policies
that brought us into this fiscal
mismanagement. Thank you. Thank
You, alderman. Um,
and I'm sure I can, would like for you want
to respond to that Alderman Waga bank?
No. No. Right.
Um, uh, alderman Nugent, would you want
to explain the PPLT?
Yeah. I, if you Thank you Madam Chair.
I did just wanna, uh, mention one thing.
There was a Al Alderman Lee with, with all respect,
we were just slightly off on the explanation
of PPLT under the newest version.
It doesn't automatically revert to 11% for the next year.
Instead, it cannot be increased before January 1st, 2028.
I just, just wanna make sure we're very clear
on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Um, alderman, osha.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Uh, I just wanna make a point here.
On October the 16th, the budget proposal was put before us.
We've seen several iterations of this.
One's been voted down.
The group that's worked on this has spent hundreds of hours
bringing in the majority of the city
council to talk about this.
We relied on the advice and council of budgetary experts.
We put this together.
Many people adding contributions. We brought it forth.
Today. We're getting questions
and accusations from people.
Where's the other side's proposal?
The other side's proposal that's been in,
in the works for a year.
This is our proposal.
There is no other proposal,
Alman, which would be the most alderman.
Osha do you have a question? Just a comment.
Thank you so much for your presentation.
Alderman Waba Alderman Lee,
and thank you for your leadership.
Alderman Moore.
Thank you. Um, chairman, first of all, um,
I wanna commend my colleagues for all
of their hard work on this.
For, you know, bringing different people together.
Um, thank you all for definitely.
Um, removing, um, the
garbage fee.
Um, and
although I still don't agree with the bag tax,
like I said, nothing is perfect.
Um, but yes, a lot of people are talking.
Um, but it's different when you have the whole packet
and you can start looking and you can ask questions.
You could talk also respectfully, um, to the administration.
That's what I prefer to do in terms of, um, crossing,
dotting i's, and crossing t's.
Um, not to say somebody wouldn't support this,
but if the administration,
which they've done in the past brought something, um,
and said, vote on it, I ne I never did.
If I, if I wasn't comfortable with it.
And, and until I do my due diligence,
that's where I'm at now.
I, I, I'm good. I'm grateful for this presentation,
but it's nothing that I can vote on today
because, um, I have to do my due diligence.
And that's all. It could be perfect.
It could be something I could support,
but I have to do my due diligence.
And with that, let me start by asking these questions,
because I did have some conversations, um, with, um, summer,
um, quote unquote, um, the millionaires and people that,
and they talked about increasing, um, um, the PPL um, tax.
So what's the difference?
Um, 'cause I'm missing something in terms of, um,
what the projections were for what the mayor
and them did on this from, I guess I'm confused
on the 11% to 15%.
So the 15% is still the same.
And then, um, the incremental estimate was 416 million
versus, uh, I think it was a smaller amount.
What was that dollar mean?
It's the difference between what was originally introduced
in the mayor's original revenue ordinance, which was 14%,
was a lower number, and then it was raised
to 15 subsequently.
But it was never reintroduced as a substitute.
The mayor's office, uh, went to 15%
and we're agreeing with them on the 15%.
That, that's just the delta for raising it from, uh,
from 14 to 15.
I don't have that number right in front of me. So,
So I'm not so the mayor,
and I'm saying they're bringing in 416 million.
And you're saying that what you're saying wouldn't,
I'm, I was just confused.
I I forgot what page I'm on, um, in terms of that.
But, you know, get to that. What page is that again?
'cause I done lost it because it was a smaller amount.
So are we bringing in 416 million?
It will, because both of 'em are 15%.
Let's be clear about that. Both are 15%. Both
Them are the same.
The, what we did in our, the version
that we introduced was building off
of the mayor's original revenue ordinance as a base.
So we, we added you
Go to that page. So I, 'cause I'm
Sorry. Yes.
Hold on one second.
Alderman will flip the details.
Wifi is not working there.
So for me, it's not a trick question.
I'm just saying if both are 15%,
They 15%, Why is the mayor saying the, that
and I could be reading something wrong?
So that's what I'm saying. I need to know
that we are getting in 416 million
and we, here we're saying we're doing
82 million. So I'm lost.
It's an, it's the 82 million is the difference
between 14 and 15%.
The incremental difference of the 1% going from 14 to 15.
The original proposal, and again, we're building off of what
the original, uh, plan was.
The mayor's original plan. Okay. We, we didn't touch this.
There's the short end of the long story.
We still bringing in 416 million.
That is correct. An additional 416 million. Okay.
All right. And The point of clarification, alderman
Mitchell, thank you. Thank you,
chairman. Um, I had the same, uh,
I needed the same con calculation to be stated for me.
So I'm gonna want you guys
to verify this fiscal year 2025 budget at 11% projected
revenue at 818,125,000 point
7,487.
The fiscal year, 2026 proposed as of 10 16 at 14%
with revenue projection was 1.1 billion.
1.1 5 2 1 3 9 3 8 0.
And that would've been a difference
of 300, 330 4 million
0 1 3 8 9 3.
Am I going too fast? 'cause David, I had the same
and I needed to have this laid out too,
as a former alder uh, auditor.
So for fiscal year 2026, as of 1117
at 15%,
the projection was
1,234,435,000 0 5 0,
which that change would've been from projections in 2025
of
416,309,563.
I'm gonna, I'm trying to put my hands on a document
where I can go back and just find all this out.
That 82 million is the difference between, I know is the 1%,
Which is 334,000 0 1 3 8 9 3 minus
4 1 6 3 9 5 6 3.
Yes. Yes. The reverse.
That's what the 82 million is coming from.
Thank you. Alderman Mitchell. Did did you get that,
David? No. I'll get with,
I'll, I,
I I don't have to discuss it here.
I get with Alderman Mitchell afterwards.
Uh, and, and, and so the other part is that be PPLT.
'cause I was out there advocating for it.
Then I heard somebody say else say, well,
the reason why they're, they're,
and I hadn't verified this, so I wanna bring it up.
They said, the reason why your businesses
or your millionaires are telling you to increase PPLT
because they can pass that down to the consumer.
Can that be done? And if so, what projected portion,
if any, can be passed down to the consumer?
Or are the businesses absorbing this whole thing?
So I want the story to be real.
If it is, if they're picking up the 84%
because of PP lt, fine.
But can any of that be passed down to the consumers?
And what's the projected that's gonna be passed down to the,
uh, I'm gonna consumers, if we've talked about
An answer here and, uh, alderman Waba can chime in, um,
alderman Moore, I, I think at any point, uh,
a business can make a decision
to pass along any additional costs onto customers.
At the end of the day, I don't think that we,
we project it out how much we think, uh,
will be passed along to customers.
But the reality is that this is a tax that hits a lot of,
uh, different organizations, companies and individuals.
If you are a consultant and you work by yourself at home
and you've got a subscription
to a customer relationship management service like
Salesforce, and you're paying a monthly subscription fee
for yourself and another, uh,
another partner employee you're seeing over the course
of two years, and it will be,
and we've got this in our proposal at 15%,
that's a 67% increase over two years.
I get it. Yeah. But I just want to be clear.
So when I'm talking to my constituents,
when we talking about individuals only doing 16%,
that could actually go up Correct.
Based on the past. That down Correct.
It, it is capped at 15% through the end of 2027.
I get that part. I'm just saying when we,
when we presenting something
like this is, it's not a debate.
It's not a got you thing. It's,
it's, I just want to be clear.
'cause this, this may be something I can get behind,
but I gotta be able to talk.
So when we saying business is covering 84%,
that actually could, could be lower.
They're being, they're the ones
that are getting hit with the charge upfront.
We're, we are not going down.
They could pass it, but they could pass it down. Okay.
I just wanna, I just wanna clear
On as is all, as every tax can be.
Yep. Um, I'm going
to do a five minute timer on.
Okay. The first round of questions.
I think Alderman Moore, would you like round two? Yeah,
I will. And I'll get my
stuff more in order. Thank you. Thank
You.
Alderman Scott,
Chair, uh, wack Lee,
I just wanna say thank you for your hard work on this,
but I have a, I want a question answered for me.
I just wanna make sure that this alternative budget that we
just presented today does not include any property taxes.
No. I think, as I mentioned at the beginning,
no property tax hike at all.
Uh, from this alternative, uh, budget
that we've presented today, no garbage, no grocery,
no property tax hike.
And again, we're essentially working with less than 2%
of the entire $16 billion budget.
Thank you. In part, because that's
what we could get our hands on. Thank
You.
Thank you. Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez.
Thank you, chair. Um, I want to start, um,
asking about efficiencies.
Um, can somebody answer, uh,
where are these cuts are going to be made?
The question, what, what are, what are we cutting?
What are the services? And have you have any of you talked
to any heads of, of departments to see how this is going
to impact our services?
Um, you're referring to the EY efficiencies?
Yes. Yes. Those, Well, um, we had a pretty lengthy
hearing here in the city council on that.
Um, I think a lot of questions were asked about what
of efficiencies could be put into place, um,
in the short term, midterm
and long term, the administration, uh,
took a small percentage of those.
And in reality, what it depends on is how much effort
each department would put into crafting, uh, a plan
to get those
efficiencies. And I think what we've heard, heard,
I'm sorry. You're you're saying that
this is
incumbent upon the departments to make an effort?
Is is that what you said?
That the departments need to make an effort.
Departments that are down
to the bone need to make an effort.
Departments that have underfunded programs, things that,
that are life or death in
EY department doesn't touch any of those. Uh, chairman,
I, I, I just need to understand, like,
how can we tell the departments that are already down
to the bone that they need to put more effort?
How, how does that work? I'm really confused.
Well, because these ey efficiencies, um,
they do talk about efficiencies in terms of
how they manage staff,
but it also talks about, uh, things
that they could implement to actually provide more revenue
to the budget.
And that's a, it's a mixture of those things.
Samples of those, what is it that we're doing?
Because I, I am not familiar with any,
any ideas of how do we call it services?
And we create revenue in these departments that are down
to the bone that I am struggling so much to get
a lot of these, um, programs to make sure
that they are taking care of people.
One second. Yeah. Like, I, I don't understand how,
where are those efficiencies and what are we
Alderman? I can answer that. Chairman,
I don't think did I Can answer
that too, but go ahead, alderman. I
Don't, I don't think the question was answered.
So the EY report was actually created
by the administration, just like the c the, uh,
Chicago Financial Futures Task Force.
We hired EY
and paid them over $3 million to come up
with this report. Mm-hmm.
And there were recommendations.
So report actually out is outlined by the departments
who participated in the actual report.
So 22 departments
and offices within the executive side, uh,
participated in it.
And that's where we gleaned this from.
So this wasn't something that we made up.
This came directly from the EY report that we all heard
Those recommendations, correct.
Yeah. They're all the recommendations. Recommendations.
But we know, like any
of us in this council that have issues in our ward with
social services, with city service delivery,
we know that we are down to the bone because,
because it is really hard for us to get services.
So I, I am asking again, what is it
that we are putting on the chopping block for efficiencies?
Or are we saying that the administration's gonna
have to figure out what to cut?
Is that what we're saying?
Point of information Alderman Bill,
Uh, Madam Chairman, um, let me just, um, you know,
help my colleague out a little bit.
Um, what we do in this body is we vote on a budget
and that budget goes to those departments.
And those departments have to figure out how to best,
best make that department.
I'm talking, I didn't interrupt you, alderman.
I didn't interrupt you.
Thank you. Alderman.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez. We got you.
Can you, are you through with that?
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm not. Um,
and I just wanna state that, you know,
just like when the administration, uh, goes, excuse
Me. Can
you didn't have a point
Of clarification. This point.
This is a point of clarification, is that
when we pass a budget, if a,
if the administration tells their department heads to go
and cut their budgets by 3%, that is not for us to dictate.
Thank you. How they cut the 3%.
Thank you, alderman. Bill, alderman Sanchez, go ahead
with your other questions, please.
Well, I, I, I haven't gotten an answer to this question,
but I'm gonna move on 'cause I have other questions.
Um, was there any studies, any research, anything,
uh, that was, any evidence that was gathered in order
to understand the impact of
advertising everywhere in the city?
Because I have done some research
and advertisement in public spaces has started
to be banned in many cities
because of the consequences that it has for public health
and for environmental health.
So I, I feel like here in City council,
we govern on vibes a lot.
A lot of people just bring policies
that they have in research,
and they don't, they can't talk about the
impacts that it has.
And we have had several examples of that recently.
So I wanna know when y'all thought about
29 million in advertisement,
that it's gonna be everywhere that it, I just find,
No, it's not gonna be everywhere.
Alderman Sanchez, we looked at
Information about what are the impacts.
We looked at, um, what other cities have done.
We've looked at advertising across cities
in the United States.
We looked at, uh, doing it as a pilot
because we knew that we could not roll out a blanket, uh,
policy for the entire city of Chicago.
That's why it's load, it's, it's identified
as two pilot projects.
Chairman, respectfully, that's not
my question. My question is,
No, you asked about the, you asked about the impact,
The impact in public health and environmental health.
That is my question. Was there any, any thought put into
what are the consequences
of having advertisement in all of these places?
Yes. And, and understanding the
healthy inequalities that come with it. Answer
Is yes. The
answer is yes. Can you talk
About it, please?
Yes. Uh, uh, chairman in, in brief, um,
looking at those other cities, they have, uh,
in place aesthetic, uh, types of plans.
And I, I would go back to a couple questions
that have already been, uh, asked similarly to this.
When we look at the River Walk,
the Riverwalk has different aspects of, uh,
RFP work that's been done.
And everything has to be aesthetically
pleasing on the Riverwalk.
And so that same type of effort that's been put in
by this administration and prior administrations would go
into any advertising plan
Talking about aesthetics, I'm talking about
public health and environmental health.
That's what I'm thinking about. I mean, to be the rfp,
there's so many studies that talk about how harmful
this is for public health.
So I would love it if you all could do some research
and do some evidence-based policy
because we are not used to that here. I,
I would, um, the only other, uh, place that I would, um,
reference is the, uh, research that was done by this budget.
Our, our budget committee here
for the subcommittee on city revenues.
Um, I can't recall the exact date that was,
but July, several months ago, July, July, um,
it was discussed in that.
Thank you. Alderman Sanchez, alderman Hopkins point
of information, or am I adding you to the list?
Uh, comment. Thank you. Uh, Madam Chair.
Um, it is, uh, an opinion that
services have been cut to the bone.
Uh, I don't dispute anyone's right to have that opinion,
but I wanna state two facts
that I think disprove that opinion.
Uh, the first is that payroll spending
is up $1 billion
with a b since the last budget prior to the pandemic 2019,
$1 billion more than the last pre pandemic budget.
Uh, and operational costs are up 40% during
that same period of time.
We are spending 40% more last year in 2025 than we did
in the last budget before the pandemic.
Those two facts, I believe, uh, suggest that the opinion
that we've cut to the bone, uh, is not valid.
And we can do more.
We must do more in terms of cuts inefficiencies. Thank you,
Madam. Thank you. Alderman Hopkins.
Alderman Rodriguez.
Yes. And, um,
thank you Alderman Hopkins for that.
Forgive me for, for pointing you out. My apologies.
Um, and our head count's down several thousand during
that same period of time.
Um, so I wanted to start with that,
but I, I, I actually wanna, uh, commend you Alderwoman Lee
and Alder Wack.
I see you two and Alderman Dow
and the group here as thought leaders here.
And I appreciate, um, the efforts you've made,
uh, an alternative budget.
Um, however, I do have some questions that, that,
that I think deserve answers.
Right? And I, and I, and I think that's fair.
Um, I do think the, the, the, the common earlier from the,
from the budget director
around revenue assumptions being shared, I,
I've heard from you both that there was a spectrum
of revenue assumptions that you made that,
and forgive me, that you had in front of you
and you chose the most conservative estimates.
Can you share those assumptions?
Sure. Um, let me look at a couple
of 'em there that you did.
So, Uh, again, looking at the EY efficiency report,
that's primarily where I got everything
and, uh, ran
that back against the Chicago Financial Futures Task Force.
So we paid for both of those,
or we, we organized both of those reports.
Um, and therefore we all have to assume
that those are legitimate reports that not only our report
or our, uh, alternate budget works off of,
but the administration does as well.
So the ones that I mentioned, um, at the beginning, um,
you know, going through the organizational
analysis work stream, um, looking at the EY report,
there are essentially outlines throughout this report,
and that I think there's hundreds of them
that we essentially took, not all of them,
but the ones that we outlined here
and took the most conservative numbers so
that we weren't over-inflating
or trying to inflate that number to say, Hey,
our numbers look better than they actually are.
You don't necessarily maybe have a, a database with the,
the most conservative estimates
with other estimates on each of these line items. Here.
It's in the EY report. So it's, and the CF
Ft it builts in the EY
report, what you're saying? Yeah, we,
We use both the EY report
and the c the task force report
as reference material, if you will.
Um, and we can go
Back. Can you need five minutes, Madam Chair?
Okay. I'm do my best here. To
Which one do you wanna, it's okay.
Well, two two lines. We'll, we'll follow up. Okay.
So two, two other lines on the business
text and video gaming.
I think Alderman beo was the one that presented on that.
My understanding is you're proposing,
or you're saying there's gonna be $10 million
of revenues plus,
but 4 million of that is going to a fine,
the Ballys, is that right?
That is correct. Do you wanna
Ultimate, so here's, here's the questions.
How certain are we that we have to pay that $4 million fine.
And how certain are we about the revenues that come, uh,
on top on, on, on top of that
Alderman Bill? Thank
you, uh, Madam Chairman, uh,
and to my colleague, uh, first of all,
the projections are extremely conservative.
Um, after talking with the industry, they're, can I finish?
Let me, let me, let me answer your question.
Let me answer your question. The industry
in the first year are saying that we could potentially make
between 20 and 30 million the first year alone.
And so we took the conservative approach
to just put in this budget the price of licensing,
the machines not revenue.
So there's no revenue in the 6.8 projection.
And so we are confident that once these machines come online
on top of the licensing,
once people start using the machine, that's going
to be revenue that is not even being
accounted for in this budget.
And so we will have added to that at the end
of the day. Thank you.
Not certain. I hear you.
Uh, and then on the fines, forfeitures
and penalties, well, you said confident.
I don't know. I'm just going with that.
Um, so on the fine, I'm really worried about these.
We have a very high number here on the fines, forfeitures,
I hear you saying there's about a billion dollars out there.
So you're taking about 10% in revenues.
I'm really, so of, of those revenues, are there guardrails
on, uh, forgive me, is that an internal effort
or is that gonna be an external RFP effort?
That would be an internal effort.
And go ahead with your second part of that.
No, no. So, so this is an internal effort for it.
It's an official, how do we get to that 98 million?
I'm just, that doesn't make sense to me. So
Yeah, you, we could contract that out
to make collections as we already do.
Yes. I don't know if a lot of aldermen know,
but we have at least seven firms that do debt collection
that has to be modernized.
It has to be adjusted. And I think, uh, one of the things
that we've also considered here is how, is how we approach
that, um, in terms of equity. Um, so
I don't have much time. Thank
you. Yep, go ahead. You, you understand that, right?
Yeah, yeah. Um, I'd like to ask comp, uh, our, uh,
comptroller, uh, beski to, to, to opine on that matter.
Sure. Thank you, alderman.
Um, you know, the, the mayor's budget, as you know,
we put forward several proposals to, um,
improve collections, period, just on any, any sort of,
uh, ticketing.
Um, but the, the sale of debt's been talked about for years.
We've had newspaper articles.
There's a recent article about 150, uh,
selling 150 million.
We have, you know, multiple billions outstanding since 2001.
Um, the sale of these sorts
of assets has never been done, and it's for a good reason.
And that is one, you know, if you kind of take a scale
of investment, if someone buys a bond to the city
of Chicago, they have a lean, they have a,
there's a property tax unlimited as to rater amount
that goes to the property, and it's collected.
When you buy a revenue bond, there's a rate covenant
that says you have to generate enough revenue from the water
system, uh, to be able to pay that debt.
Okay? So what people look for when they buy assets,
um, is security.
And there's something called a perfected lien.
I'm not a lawyer, but you know, you need to be able
to attach something that you can go
after, uh, traffic tickets, um,
you know, red lights, speed, administrative hearing.
Um, these, these are all the, the, the levers
that are there to collect that.
Many of 'em have gone away.
The state took away the loss of driving privileges.
Um, the, we, we don't shut water off.
Um, and, you know, these are for, we, we, the,
these have happened over the years
because there's an understanding of, of the social impact
that can have on people.
So we've put into place a lot of relief programs.
Um, an investor's not gonna, uh,
just buy assets based on the hope
that this history of billions of dollars
of uncollected debt, uh, all
of a sudden becomes collectible.
And I just, just for the, I I think we got the answer. Go
Ahead. And one of the other thing
I would say is that I would not,
I would not rely on $89 million in this budget.
Um, this has never been done by any city.
Uh, we are, we are definitely doing a more data-driven
approach to collections by, uh, you know,
zip code, ability to pay.
It's never been done. Um, and,
and I would say that, um, you know, even if we could do it,
if what you're doing is relying on a one shot,
that's exactly what the rating agencies are criticizing.
And, and I'd say to the, to just the organizers that I,
I have concern about this period of impact on this effort
and, uh, and the, and the communities to be paying on this
and the harassment than it happens on this.
I think this needs a lot more conversation,
in my humble opinion, this
particular thing's really interesting to me.
I'm happy to talk to you guys
about it, if you invite me to the table. I
Thank you. I appreciate the
question. If I may, chairman, yes.
Um, we share the same concerns.
We don't want people being harassed on the phone, right?
So I, I think that, not for today's conversation,
but around the management ordinances, the opportunities
to create the guardrails around this, we're,
we're putting in a placeholder, uh,
which represents basically 9 cents on the dollar.
Um, uh, alderman Rodriguez, I wanted to have, uh,
Mary Wagner, who's from the Chicago Financial Futures Task
Force weigh in on your question regarding,
uh, ey efficiencies.
Okay. Uh, Mary,
Can you hear me?
Yes. Wonderful. Um, hello, my name's Mary Wagoner.
Um, I am the Senior Director of State
and Local Finance, um, at the Civic Committee.
Um, I've been assisting, uh, this group of alderman
with some analytical support on their efforts.
Um, just to kind of reiterate what Alderman Wapac was, um,
talking about earlier with respect to the EY efficiencies.
Um, so these come directly from their report
that was released, um, mid-October.
And in terms of using the most conservative estimates,
they often provide a range of estimates.
Um, so for example, on vacant positions,
they estimate a short term, um, revenue impact
of two to 10 million.
So this plan uses $2 million instead of the 10.
Um, so another example is, um,
accelerated disposition.
When it comes to fleet management,
their short term estimate is 4.4 million, um,
to 6.4 million.
However, the budget, um,
that the mayor proposed already includes $3 million of that.
So we take the low estimate, 4.4 minus the 3 million,
that's already included.
So an incremental 1.4.
Um, so that's kind of just a very high level,
um, explanation.
But, um, wherever EY
provided a range of numbers, we chose the low one.
And, and, uh, my question was, do you have a database on
that in each of these and all different swag specs
that it's baked into ey.
So we'll just have to sift through all that,
essentially, is what you're saying.
Yes. I was just curious if you guys had a database you're
working off of, because I assume
that given you were saying you were looking at
a conservative estimate and,
and other estimates that you have, you know,
a clear database that you could share with all of us on,
on, we
Do not have, have a database.
We have what is in the public report? Yes. Okay.
It's just directly from the reports. Yeah.
Both reports and other information from both the
subcommittee and other, just a compilation of all that data.
I mean, I've looked at that report. I,
I, that's gonna be tough.
Okay. I'll, I'll just that, just read the report.
Yeah, I, I read the report. Okay.
Uh, and I think my issue is this,
this, this dynamic between, you're saying
you guys analyzed the various, um, I'll just leave it there.
I think we understand our difference here.
I'll leave it there. And the, just the last thing,
Madame Chair, maybe it's a rough for around two, is just,
I just wanted to hear what we're assuming the budget
for enhanced that debt collection for the mayor's budget.
I just wanna know what the difference was.
It's not at the top of my, it's not the top
of my tongue now.
Or two minutes.
I have you Alderman Vasquez. Do you know the,
Was that a question to me?
Uh, the question is how much have we already
assumed in the budget?
So we have assumed in the budget, uh, for DOF already, um,
above what's in the 2025 budget for enhanced debt collection
and enforcement just in DOF about $118 million over 2025.
So this would be an additional a hundred,
around $90 million to that
Alderman Vasquez point of information.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, one,
because I appreciate my colleague, uh, alderman Rodriguez.
Question about the assumptions and data
and how it came to numbers and what conservative
or not just for clarity, independent
of whatever you presented
or whatever the administration presented,
they never gave us the data.
So the ENY information,
which we were asking even when the original proposal was
presented, we never got, so we haven't gotten the data from
one or the other to Ms.
Alderman Waga back's point.
It's being based off a document the administration had done
and created, and they never gave us the data
to begin with. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Uh, alderman Viegas.
Alderman Viegas, keep going. Alderman Hall.
Alderman Lata.
Thank you, chair. Um, first I, I really wanna extend
just I back on spot.
Okay. Um, I really wanna extend my gratitude to
Al Woman Lee Altman Wags back
and others for their leadership on this,
because we, I, I feel like it's been collaborative
and iterative and the things that we're supposed
to be doing as a body.
Uh, so I want to take a moment to appreciate that.
I want to ask about a couple items in here.
I wanna go back to the, the piece around debt,
because that is a substantial percentage
of what's being proposed.
And my understanding is the, the concept behind this is
that we would sell existing outstanding debt
to collection agencies.
And we, we had talked about this in terms
of potentially commercial and industrial debt.
What I wanted to understand,
'cause I was a bit confused
by Comptroller Bell's remarks, is it
that this city cannot do this,
or the city hasn't done this in the past?
And what would be the, uh, the pathway
for doing what's proposed?
Besky? Yeah, I, so my point is that
it's never been done by a city before.
And I think the major reason is that, um,
it's not a reliable security source if
someone's gonna buy it.
Um, we, we already know that we have billions
of dollars in uncollected debt,
and, you know, you have a, a bunch of issues around it.
One is if someone buys it,
are they gonna be responsible for the collection?
And then you might have an issue where you have residents
being, you know, called up by these firms
that own these assets, and they could be heavy handed
and it'll come back to the city
because it is the city's debt.
Um, so that, that's an additional problem.
But, um, again, to, to rely on this
as a revenue source for a budget as a one-time thing,
and then maybe even expecting
that it's gonna be a continuing source, uh, for me,
you know, if you're asking me to implement this,
I have problem with that,
because, again, I can't assure you that
that sort of money would come in.
And, you know, what, if it, if it could,
if we could do this, I certainly wouldn't sell it
for 9 cents on the dollar.
Um, you know, the, if there's a billion dollars in debt
outstanding and it was possible to securitize,
which you're suggesting, I, I certainly wouldn't sell it for
9 cents on the dollar,
but I, this is not the type of thing, you know,
when I was in a rating agency, again, this is a one shot
and this is a speculative one shot.
Um, so again, I I, I would encourage you to look
for alternatives.
As I said, we have, we have put together a pretty robust
plan that brings in $118 million with adding PS
and expanding smart streets.
Um, if I could just through our own efforts
increase collections by, uh,
92 million, that would be great.
But we're, we are putting in an effort
and we've estimated 118 million.
If it comes in 90 million over that, great.
But I wouldn't budget on that.
Thank you. Uh, alderman, wait, what? Oh, I'm sorry.
Point of information Alderman Conway by
I Thank you. You know,
one thing I, I would say is I have,
I have great respect for, for Comptroller Belsky,
but I would say we were, we would be far from the first
municipality to sell our, to sell our accounts receivable.
I mean, earlier this year, New York City did it
for water charges and sewer charges and,
and property related charges.
Uh, Baltimore I think does it, like every year,
Philadelphia has sold off its accounts receivable first.
So this is this,
we would hardly be the first municipality to do something.
Okay. Such as, well, I, I mean, my response to that be is
that, that there is, um, those are perfected liens.
Those are, you know, those sorts of debts are where you go
after you're able to leann the property.
So you have a security there behind the investment
tax liens, property tax liens are sold
by cities all the time.
Um, what we're talking about are our traffic tickets.
Um, we don't take away driving privileges.
We can't cease vehicles. Thank you. So
Ky, you had said that previously, so didn't want
to repeat that.
Alderman Las spotter, here's
Why I'm going. Like,
can someone who was a part
of the team putting this together, it does not have to be
right now, provide examples of other municipalities
that have done what is being proposed in this budget,
namely the selling of debt as an asset.
Um, that, that's what I was trying to get at and understand.
Um, so my second question was going to the back to the EY
component of this.
Can we go back to that slide? Got
It.
So there's a part, part of this is related to closing
select vacant positions.
And I know that these are examples.
We talked about this yesterday.
Would this require going back to
the appropriations ordinance to
identify additional vacancies to cut,
Uh, alderman Lata?
We're gonna have Mary Wagner answer that question for you.
Mary, could you repeat the question?
Did you hear the question? No, no, no.
Actually, can you repeat the question
Strictly? So,
so when we're looking at the target is based on,
the target is based on keep going efficiencies identified in
the EY report, including, uh, closing,
select vacant positions.
My question is, does this, imagine going back to the budget,
does, does this, imagine going back to the appropriations
or ordinance to identify potential additional vacancies
to be cut heading into 2026?
Maybe? I heard Mary. Okay.
Um, alderman, I think, um, this came out of the,
I believe I what you're referring to is out
of the analysis work stream
or the organizational, um, what we were looking at was a,
there was a span of two to $10 million for vacant positions
that would not affect the day-to-day operations.
And that's why to be safe there.
We also used the lower end estimate
of $2 million out of the tab.
Okay. I appreciate chair. Could I make one more comment?
Yes. And then go ahead, resolve it.
So I, I, I, once, I appreciate the effort
and I know that the clock is running down
and we have votes that need to be taken in short order.
And I, I respect if the preference of colleagues is
to vote today, I would ask for consideration if, when we've,
not to cut the meeting short prematurely,
but when we've completed our other items,
if it is at all possible to recess to either Wednesday
or Thursday so they could,
people could review these matters, I'd appreciate that
because it, it was called out by my colleagues
that we don't, we don't ever like it when we're asked
to vote on a substitute
that's been put directly in front of us.
I agree with that, whether it's coming from colleagues
or from the administration.
If there's any way for us to vote on these even tomorrow so
that we can fully digest this, I, I put that forward.
Thank you, alderman. Take that under advisement.
Um, alderman Hall.
Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Chair. You don't gimme that look like,
don't skip me. No, no, no, no.
Well, um, first thing, thank you so much
for the work that you all put in.
Seriously. It shows the passion, uh,
commitment that you all have for the city.
Um, my first question is going back to VGT, which again,
I support a piece of ordinance
to remove those illegal machines.
My question is, um, everything has
to start down in the gaming board
as it pertains to the applicants.
And there's a six to 12 month backlog for those
who are applying for outside of Chicago
for these VGT licenses.
So is there an arrangement that we've made to expedite those
who are going to apply in Chicago with this ordinance?
Because if it's going according to what they have sent
to us in the memo when looking into this, then
how will we be able to get all of these licenses,
potential licenses online if there, is there a pathway
for applicants to be expedited?
Alderman Bill, Uh, Madam Chairman, uh, first of all,
there's not a six to eight month backlog right now.
It's a six to eight month, um,
period in which licenses come online and get approved.
So that's not the backlog.
Uh, and so right now the state is approving between three
and 400 licenses per month,
and all of that was taken into this equation.
And while we came up with a conservative number
of 6.8 million
Alvin Hall, by the way, I I wanted to ask you
to take down off of your Facebook page that the, the, uh,
proposal you got 15 minutes ago raises property taxes.
That's not true. Well,
I appreciate your opinion.
Um, so the second question that I have is the
EY approach to the, uh, efficiencies,
which is very laid out.
How much in the efficiency recommendations include jobs
to be either closed or cut, or are there any I don't know.
Well, I think you would have to read the whole report.
Um, some of those are, uh, looking at instead
of police doing jobs that that would transfer over
to traffic management authority, um,
filling different types of vacancies.
But, uh, overall, I think in the report there are, um,
non, they refer to non-critical vacancies.
Um, you know, like, um, anything that doesn't pose a direct,
uh, risk to immediate business operations in the city.
I mean, that's all kind of laid out in the EY report,
but, um, we don't have anything here that would, uh,
affect any critical operations at all in, um,
in our alternate budget for the city.
Okay. And, um, in addition to, I think it's right
behind you, you said the 16% for the new revenue, uh,
would be specifically consumer, 84% majority.
Have we did any math to show what that 16% looks like
as it pertains to the,
the day-to-day costs added to the residents?
Uh, and the reason why I mentioned the property tax increase
earlier as it's written on my pages,
because we are paying for the libraries
through property taxes, uh,
being added onto the property tax bill.
So that's the reason why I mentioned
That hasn't come before. It's not,
I, I don't, I don't need
to talk about what's going on in here to put on my page.
So at the end of the day, if I want to talk about something
that happened at 10 about property taxes
increase, then that's my right.
So the point I wanna make is, back to this question.
Is the 14% that is going to be added to
the, uh, day-to-day residents
and things of that nature, has that been quantified
as it pertains to an amount per resident?
For example, with the, uh,
property tax bill having the libraries, it equates to $4
or some change in pending on what have you.
So does this equate to per type of, uh,
To be clear, yeah, nothing in the revenue ordinance
that is on the table right now
and being discussed currently in this conversation includes
any sort of property tax?
No, I, i clear wrong.
I wanna make it perfectly clear
because you keep bringing it up.
Now, what we have here in this breakdown is for every dollar
of new revenue, 84 per 84 cents of that is being born
by business and 16% by individuals.
We did not do a calculation
that includes what you're asking for.
Gotcha. Oh, okay. That's,
that's all I wanted to reference.
And again, thank you all so much for the work
and, uh, again, appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome.
Chris, um, were you, I don't know if you were referring
to the, we did put money back in for library collections
that was originally cut out of the mayor's budget, so Yes,
that is, but that's not a levy.
That is money for the collection. Oh,
Yeah, I was talking about something completely different.
Okay. Everybody just thought I was talking about here,
but that was completely
Thank you. Alderman Hall.
Alderman Viegas.
Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair.
Uh, and thank you Alderman Wapac and Alderman Lee.
I just, uh, had a couple of questions.
So with the budget that was introduced by the mayor,
uh, in October, how much, what percentage of this
are we changing or,
or discussing in during this meeting right now?
1.6%.
So we're, we're, we're, we're, we're talking about
amending a $16.6 billion budget, which accounts
for 1.6% of the total overall proposal.
And let me mention that again.
Proposal, the administration puts forward a proposal.
The city council in turn takes a look at it, can either go
with it or put forward amendments is which is what this,
which, which this body has, uh,
what this finance committee has chosen to do.
I have a question around,
and this is not so much for my colleagues, uh, Lee
and wa back from more for the administration.
I know that in the budget there is a mention of a smart tax
social media tax, which is one of, its first
of its kind in the city, I think mirrored
around what's occurring in Maryland.
And I wanted to know if the budget includes two things,
do they include the outside counsel that we have to pay
to defend the lawsuit that's coming from the internet?
The internet companies also, all three things, I'm sorry.
So outside counsel that we have to pay
to defend the lawsuit, the, the, uh,
settlement once we lose the lawsuit,
and then also the, the attorney costs
that are gonna be associated with every internet company
that's, that, that, uh,
is successful in winning this lawsuit.
Which, which I would mind you, I would, I would, I would say
that it's projected that outside counsel would cost us two
to 3 million on our side.
And so if you did some easy math
and took a look at all the other tech companies, Instagram,
TikTok, Facebook Meta, um, Google
that potentially that would be anywhere between one
to 3 million in outside legal fees
as well, plus the settlement.
So has that been baked into this budget since we're talking
about the uncertain,
especially when IT administration has said,
we know we're gonna be sued, but that's okay.
Question. Um, director Guzman,
Uh, thank you. Thank
you for the question. Um, so we have baked
that into the budget, um, as we've noted, uh, one,
the department of law, um, has increased their staff.
So in this budget, there's 12 additional attorneys within
the Department of law, which actually does allow us
to decrease the, uh, outside counsel spend
that is in their budget as well.
Um, as you know,
'cause you've been in these meetings with me, um,
and the department of law, they're very conservative in
their approach to tax policy
because the fact that the city gets sued,
even if we have a great case, we'll get sued anyway.
Even if we, um, know that we're gonna win, we'll get sued.
And so what we have done is we have not, um,
put any expenditures against this revenue source
in the course of 2026 when we know
that the litigation will play out.
That is a very conservative approach, uh,
which is different than what's been done in the past
where the city has implemented tax, uh, policy
and, um, that, that was controversial
and also at the same time put expenditures against it.
We didn't do that this time.
The tax is not the same as the one
that you mentioned in Maryland.
It's different. And based on how it is structured,
we believe, again, from a very conservative department
of law that we have a very winnable and defendable case.
So the question is, we haven't budgeted any money
for any type of outside counsel.
You set? No. Strike that. Strike that.
Any type of settlement
or any type of legal fees that potentially we would have
to pay once we lose this lawsuit?
I, I, I did, I did answer your question.
One, I mentioned that the Department
of Laws increased their staff by 12 attorneys. Um,
Not all 12 are focused on this issue. So that's
The part of those are in the litigation, um,
uh, division. Yes. And
Then some of them are also gonna be used
for collections. Am I correct? That's
A different division. My point
is that we have, but
That's part of the 12 attorneys though.
My point is we have accounted for what you are naming
by increasing the staff within the department of law.
We have also not, uh,
put any expenditures against this revenue, um, in the event
that it, uh, would have to be returned, um,
which is a different practice than
the city has done in the past.
And we have taken a very conservative look
and approach to the, uh, tax policy
and the tax that we're implementing, um,
based on our authority
and the authority under both state law,
city law, and the federal law.
We believe that this is a winnable case.
We believe that the Department of Law has everything
that they need in order to support the city's defense.
Well, I would say that anytime someone brings a lawsuit,
they assume that they're gonna win.
So again, that's just an assumption that'll be
for the courts to determine whether
or not we're successful given the track record,
what's occurring in Maryland around the digital ads
and also Washington DC taking a look at putting some
regulations around social media, I would caution
that the city would take this effort to try
to create revenue on an industry
that is protected under the, under the First Amendment
around freedom of speech
and put us in a position to ultimately l have to pay out
with settlements as well as pay out for potential, um,
legal fees to these corpora,
to these billion dollar corporation.
That's always stated, uh, in this, in this, uh,
council men to, I lack round two. Uh,
Thank you. Alderman
Viegas and I, alderman Che Lopez,
Madam Chair.
Um, I think a lot, a lot of the, a lot of the conversation
of the information has come from the EY report.
So when I first got clear the date
that the report was published,
'cause we, I think it's important that
we, that we start with that.
Can you, can, can I get a res response on when this EY
report was published for the record?
Uh, October 16th.
October 15th. 16th. Okay. October 16th.
So I, I just wanna make sure that,
that we are looking at the facts
because if we cannot get dates right, I will certainly think
that these projections should be subject to scrutiny.
My question around these efficiencies go around what you
proposing to cut.
Have you had any conversations, had these been, had these,
um, proposed cuts have been reported out
to the budget office
or anybody that can look into this, yes or no?
Is that a question for me? Uh, first for the panelist,
and then you can corroborate.
Did we communicate with, on the Ernst
and Young report with the administration? No.
Do you, your $46.6 million cut,
had those cuts been transferred, had that information,
or what do you pretend to cut being transferred
to the budget office?
Well, they're not, first of all, they're not cuts.
But yes, we've had conversations with the administration,
The conversations, or have you transmitted
The detail? We sent the,
we actually have sent a letter
to the administration detailing a lot of what we wanted
to see in the UI report.
Wait, wait a second. We're talking about not a letter.
I'm talking about. Have you, have you communicated
what those efficiencies in this proposal look
like to the budget office?
Yeah. So, yes.
Yes. Efficiencies. Okay. Yes.
They're not cuts alderman, they're efficiencies. Well,
The, I'm, I'm, lemme point out,
are you saying here in the alternative, well,
Let me point out one other thing.
Even though they just said it was October, we asked for
that report back in June on June 3rd
with many Alderman signing onto the letter asking for
that report to be made public.
But I'm not. I'm, it wasn't. I was,
and we had to wait till October. Look,
There's only one date when they were made public.
There's not two dates. There's one.
And that one, and that I think we can verify. No,
There's, And now
What we have access to and what we don't,
Uh, lemme go back to, lemme go back
to my line of questioning.
So when, when we are looking at what you're proposing here,
um, you, you mentioned a number of budgetary experts, some
of the members of city council.
Can you give me, what are those experts?
Who are the, have you been consulting?
I just don't see a single source in your presentation.
There's not a single actual source in
that presentation. Can you give that,
Um, Ernst and Young?
Okay. Sir,
there's a $3 million report that's commissioned by the city.
I, I appreciate the humor, but the
City's own report, I, I
appreciate, I believe not refer to that.
It's very different to the EY report. Right.
You have, we have a,
you have a proposal on the table we're looking at.
I appreciate the humor, but I do think it's important
that we, we go through the details.
'cause one of the things that I'm concerned about, I think
that the proposal includes,
and that's some members of the progressive caucus.
I said cutting, uh, 3 1 1 service hours
and replacing them from the 24 7 to using chatbots.
Is that correct? Are using, are you, is part
of your proposal reducing 3 1 1 service hours?
Okay. I I'm looking into your, your, what you
Proposed. It was in the, it was
in the EY report.
It's been, it was considered. It
Was considered. But is in
yours or not? We are,
We have not made recommendations.
We're not being prescriptive about this.
What you see, we gave
The administration a menu of things that they could No,
I'm, no, I'm gonna answer your question.
You, I'm gonna answer your question.
We gave the administration a menu of things
that they can work on, that they can choose from.
That's one element.
Okay. So I, I, I, I see that,
you know, we don't have a lot of details.
That's a concern to me.
What are the projections, right, in terms of the projections
that you have in your own budget, right?
In your own proposal. Some of those projections
to me are super inflated in terms of,
and I'm gonna focus on the fines and fees.
'cause I think this is, I don't have a lot of time.
I wanna have round two. But you're proposing
to balance the budget, right?
You, I want this rationale.
You're proposing to get off the corporate head tax.
And I wanna hear what is your evidence of why
that should be removed from your alternative?
And you are really balancing on fines and fees.
More of those have come from today.
And I hope that even the people here in the room,
you're talking about automobile fees, you're talking about
the city clear, including more fines
and fees for vehicles pounding and all that.
So you were talking about the EY report.
By the way, consider cuts or in your efficiencies for fine
and fees, no more than $74 million, 20
to $74 million if you, if you read the report.
What you have here is balancing the budget with fines
and fees and taking the corporate head tax.
I wanna hear your rationale to do that.
Uh, and also if you, if you report includes projections,
because every report has to include inflation, recession
and other, and other factors in the
economy when you produce that.
So you are proposing $92 million way beyond
what EY report even considered.
So, wanna hear, what is your rationale
to move the corporate head tax and impose more fines
and fees on Chicagoans?
I wanna hear your rationale.
Well, first of all, going back to this, again, we paid
for the EY report.
We also had the Chicago Financial Futures Task Force.
That was Jim Reynolds.
So that's where we're getting a lot
of that information from.
That is something that the administration,
this administration convened
to go find these types of revenues.
So it's not just coming from us.
The origin is from the administration.
Now, if you want to talk about what is balanced
or what is not, we could go into that.
Every budget has projections, just like this budget
that the mayor proposed that was voted down.
Every, every budget is a set of assumptions.
And in part, what we are doing is trying to narrow it down
as best we can, using conservative numbers that came from
the departments in the offices in this city,
who participated directly with EY in, uh,
producing this report. Point of
Information. Uh, Madam
Chair, I think the set of assumptions
that we have are very different.
And I think that city council membership,
They're very different. Yes, they're
Very different. Both assumptions do
matter.
So I just wanna correct for the record,
your assumptions are very different.
And I'm concerned about, you still have not given me one
single source, one single
budgetary expert that work on this. Not one single one.
Well, we just, we just had one
of them speak from the Chicago Financial Futures Task Force.
What are the source of their data?
I heard also a lot of concerns
About that Chicago Financial Futures task force,
the EY report assumptions
and data from this administration that where they went
to the actual departments in the offices
to get that information. But again, the
Point Of information, all Vasquez,
Thank you. Uh, at
the point of reiterating myself, we have been asking
for the data from the administration since the beginning
for the ENY report.
We never received it.
So to then ask these folks who are going off
of the same document that also never received it,
to provide the data that we never received when we asked
for multiple times is a joke.
We asked for it from the beginning.
We actually had to force a hearing
to get data and information.
We did not get it from the administration.
Those are the budgetary experts that we're asking about.
Thank you.
Uh, alderman, you, you want a round two?
Alderman Burnett,
Thank you Chairman Alderman wa spec.
Ultimately, seriously, I do appreciate you all going
through the effort as well as the other 28 colleagues
who have been trying to figure out creative ways
to get this budget passed.
There's some things on here that I'm really excited about.
I, I didn't know if I was just new
or if it, these ideas were ready quite yet.
So I just wanna get a little bit more clarity on
how these structurally work, particularly
with the advertising fees.
Um, we talk about the light pole ads as one
of the possibilities in the assumptions
that you have presented.
Is this a full adoption? Can you talk through the mechanics?
Is this projected to be citywide?
And how quickly is the ramp up process here?
Yeah, Give us one second.
Shuffling papers around. Thank you. Hmm.
On the light pole advertising, um, this is,
this comes directly from the Chicago, uh,
financial Futures Task force report.
It assumes 1% of all light poles with two manners each.
And this also further comes from, uh, the report
that was shared with City Council back in July.
I'll be happy to share that with you as well.
Red, um, where the, uh, the city also estimated, uh,
projected revenues on that as well.
Okay. Uh, yeah. I wasn't here,
so it would be great to get those documents. Um,
Yeah. And I, I would
just point out too that again,
in 2012, um, this was done.
There was a task force that was,
or a committee that was put together similar to
what we have with the Riverwalk.
They look at the aesthetics,
they look at the different aspects of
how it would affect both the, the visuals of Chicago,
but what those PO possible revenues could be.
Um, and I'm not saying that we used the 2012 numbers,
but they were, um, actually close to what this is.
And that was, you know, obviously several years ago.
Um, but again, we took the subcommittee on finance.
We took the EY or the CCFT report
and, um, tried to build that in here, assuming that, um,
we're only talking about 1% of all light poles in the city,
just on the light pole aspect.
And
Is there, when you say 1%, do we know
how many light poles that is?
Um, I think
Light pole, 1% citywide.
Um, not exactly sure. Gil, you, I don't know if chairman
Don't have that.
Keep, I wanna utilize my time.
We can get back to that answer. Yeah. Um,
We'll get that information to you.
So, 250,000 polls. So
It's 300,000 polls, 3000 poles.
So we assume 3000.
So 3000. Um, okay.
So again, I'm just curious about the implementation, um,
and the number that they projected.
Again, I haven't seen the report. I don't know if
that's the stabilized number, when it's at full effect.
Have we projected some type of ramp up time in order
to get the advertising revenues,
uh, we need for that project? Like,
Yeah.
Well, when you talk to Chambers of Commerce,
they also do RFPs.
Ssas do RFPs.
They get that stuff out within months, if not a year. But
There's a information there.
I just shared it with you, alderman.
So, uh, there's more detailed information directly from the
city on advertising on Lake Poles. Point
Of information. Alderman Viegas.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I, I think, I think the, the,
the authors of this portion were very smart
to include a pilot program, which allows the office
of procurement, department
of procurement services to act quicker.
'cause it's the pilot program, which in turn allows the city
to find out what types of technologies are out there
to fulfill this a advertising goals.
Understood. Uh,
there's still a ramp up period of time, point
Of information. Alman
Irvin, oh, you're next. Anyway,
Uh, thank you.
I know I have a limited amount of time,
so I would please continue, like to ask questions.
Um, I've done some of this work, been looking at that
with some other colleagues for my ward in a pilot program.
We see it 35% adoption rate in year one of
what the maximum number could be.
So I just wanna put that into consideration when we talk
about, um, how much revenue we're able to generate.
Because even with the install time, the first year,
it's gonna take some time in order for the advertisers
to collect the dollars that we're looking for.
Um, even if it's a flat rate fee
or part of the percentage of revenue. What was the
Percentage that you said? I'm
Sorry, 35%, 35% of the stabilized amount.
Um, so please take that into consideration.
Uh, my next line of questioning is around BGTs,
but I think the author is not in the room.
So I, I guess I'll come back for, uh,
second line of questioning.
Uh, in, in terms of the debt collection.
In my former life, I was a, a debt structured broker.
So this is exciting topic for me.
Uh, particularly with like the, how debt is structured.
You know, we have first lien, second lien secured loans.
And so I'm curious to the finance team,
when we're talking about this revenue package
that they're presenting, how much
of this revenue is leaned out to other debt products?
Uh, if any at all? Can we just say yes or no?
If we have this revenue stream, um, tied
to securitized products for our current,
um, debt outstanding,
Um, the, uh, the revenues that the city should you
Identify yourself? Ms. Jaworski
is a
Yes, George War, uh, chief Financial Officer.
The revenues that the city, um, uh, has pledged to, uh,
various debt instruments include our, uh, property tax,
which is part of our general obligation pledge.
Um, our sales tax,
which is secures our sales tax securitization corporation,
uh, bonds, uh, the, uh,
water revenues generated from our water system,
sewer revenues generated from the sewer system,
and the revenues generated by, uh, the operations of Midway
and O'Hare, which support, uh, bonds issued by, uh,
for Midway and for separately for O'Hare.
Um, we do not, um, have other individual, uh,
revenues pledged to debt.
So the general obligation does contain also
what we call full faith and credit, which means
that we will use any resource available to pay those bonds,
but we don't have other individually, um,
securitized revenue streams in that manner.
Understood. And so my question is more so about
what was held offered in this package, um,
what they're proposing that we sell off.
Are any of those revenue streams
committed to debt currently?
No. The package, uh, as
we've been brief briefed on it here today,
does not include, uh, any of those items. Okay.
So some of my concern
or risk with that department is when you do sell off certain
debt item or certain items
or revenue streams, reliable to the possibility
of paying back certain debts earlier than we expected.
So I know we're not committing any
of the revenue sets in this package, which is good,
but I know the team would have to then still consider
what does this type of securize product mean
for our overall debt structure
and possibly risk credit downgrades for other debt.
That's outstanding. So that's something to consider.
I'll wait until alderman Bill is back to answer
to ask my VTT questions. Thank
You. Alderman Burnett.
Alderman Irvin, followed by Alderman.
Mark.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Uh, couple of questions around, uh, vacancies.
And this is to the budget director.
What is the current count, the corporate fund that, uh,
for vacancies?
How much is actually, I'll call it unencumbered
related to vacancies?
Um, when you, uh, account for the hiring freeze
that we have already in the budget as well as turnover, um,
uh, there's about $99 million
of vacancies in the corporate fund.
Um, how much, uh, how much, in your opinion, is
left potentially in vacancies,
Um, after you count for CPD?
Um, there's not very many.
I can get you that specific number if, um,
before the meeting is over.
Uh, but I do wanna just note that, um, in this budget
proposal, we already have, excuse me,
Budget Director, million dollars in
vacancy reductions, um,
Excuse me, budget director.
Do you have like a, um, estimation
to the alderman's question?
Do I have an estimation
To the alderman's question regarding vacancies left
and the value of them?
The, I I mentioned
after taking into account the hiring freeze
and turnover that's already in the budget.
It's about $99 million of, of corporate funded
Vac. He asked what
was left, uh, taking away
consideration for CPD.
And you said you didn't have that,
But I, I said I would get that to him
before the end of the, the meeting.
Yes, my team can, my team is gonna pull it up right now.
Thank you. The, the reason I asked that question,
I'm just trying to understand, uh, related
to the vacancy projections that, um, were talked about,
is there actual room for the, uh, vacancies
that are being projected?
And, uh, correct me if I'm wrong,
that number is two to 10 million.
Is that what the number is? Um, Scott and, uh, Nicole,
Can you repeat that? I'm sorry,
Chairman, I was saying the number
and the vacancies that you're
projecting, what is that number?
You said it's between two and 10 million?
Is that, is that the number? 2 million? It's 2 million.
Okay. Um, alright, that, that, I'm just trying to understand
how much, how much room is available in that, uh, in that,
in that conversation.
Uh, we also talked about the, the debt
and the, the delta is an additional, uh,
92 million on top of 118 million.
It is.
That's what the comptroller said earlier, yes.
Okay. Um, the, the, um,
the next question I is around, um, the, you know,
the advertising and,
and it kind of piggybacks off of what the Alderman Burnett,
uh, talked about in ramping up the, uh,
the amounts here, uh, at $29 million.
Um, that, that seems to be, uh,
a lot based on, you know, a year one, a type of,
uh, projection.
Um, how, how do you, how do you land there?
Um, so just going back
through it in a little bit more detail, uh,
the Bridge House naming rights, not bridges,
but Bridge House would be $10 million.
Um, when I look back at,
and this comes from, uh, you know, not only the reports,
but I think from subcommittee, looking at, uh,
back in 2012,
I think it was 25 million for a similar program.
So we're not going near that number.
Light pole advertising pilot was, again,
the 1% at a little over 4 million.
And then the advertising on fleet vehicles, uh,
15 million, I think we have 635 types of vehicle
or vehicles that could be utilized maybe more.
But we went with the lower end there, um,
and used a, um, an example in Ohio for
22 trucks that they had $8 million over 10 years.
We also have the opportunity with, uh,
the parking meter contract
to advertise on parking boxes as well.
We did not include that, that just, there were other ideas.
We, we talked about a lot of different things.
This is what these three things were.
The, what we built that 29.3 on.
Oh, now speaking of, uh, parking meters, um,
the sale of, of debt
and the sale of this, this asset, uh, does, uh,
bring some concern, uh, around the practices, um,
of collection and what impact that it may have on, uh,
on certain communities of our, of our city.
Um, I know we talk about, in the very grand sense,
the amount of money that is, uh,
owed to the city of Chicago.
And, and I'm, whoever can answer this, uh, if we had
to categorize our debt between, uh, water
or revenue related debt, um, fine and fee related debt
or what I'll call corporate debt, how does that break out?
So at this, at this point, uh, alderman parking debt,
1.6 billion, uh, red light 440, this is going back
to 2001, 440 million.
We have speed cameras, 275,
water 7 9 9.
And that's relates to the enterprise phone administrative
hearings, which are all sorts of violations.
Three, 3 billion, 21 million for buildings cost recovery.
That would be someone damaging city property
and trying to recover the cost of that 61 million.
And then EMS is 1 billion.
Um, so that, that's the, uh, those are the major, uh,
categories, outstanding debt.
Okay. Uh, uh, oh, let me, I'll, I'll do round two.
You have more than one question.
Yes. Round two Alderman Martin,
Thank you Chair, and good afternoon.
Um, I just wanted to first thank you
for your work specifically
around making the full advanced pension payment.
I think that that's been communicated
for years from rating agencies
as being particularly critical.
Um, and while it's, uh, hard
to not see a reduction in debt despite efforts, uh,
around firefighter back pay
and police misconduct lawsuits, I, I do wanna uplift my,
my thanks for focusing on
that full advanced pension payment.
Um, with regard to the, uh,
corporate fund savings related to ENY efficiencies,
do you think it's possible for a management ordinance to,
uh, include some degree of regular reporting,
whether it could be monthly
or quarterly to track what's happening so that, um,
if maybe we're not keeping pace with what is going on here,
we don't wait until the fall
to figure out how to fill that hole? Yeah.
Thanks for the question. Uh, alderman Martin,
I completely agree with you, uh,
on the management ordinances,
exactly where we would put that.
And our expectation would be
that we build the guardrails in place.
We can't suggest these, uh, efficiencies
and not have a way to track
and make sure that we are staying on top of, um, ensuring
that we're, we're doing everything that we can, uh,
to realize the savings that EY has put forward, uh,
that we know over time can produce a lot more.
But if we don't do the work, uh, upfront
and we don't, uh, we have to continue to stay at it.
And reporting back to city council is absolutely something
we plan to build into the management ordinance. Okay.
With the ground transportation tax, understanding that
relative to the mayor's initial budget proposal,
it would go down by approximately $39 million.
Do you know where that would leave us in terms
of additional revenue relative to 2025
On one second?
Uh, I think it was. Yeah.
Um, so, uh, again, just on that point, the, um,
what we have in ours, there's restoration,
the original proposed congestion zone,
but, um, we essentially,
I believe looked at 39 million.
Yes. Yep. 39 million.
So that would a year over year increase in
39 million? Yes.
Uh, no. Just for the first,
um, have that document. Yeah. Hold on a sec.
So, sure. Um, our proposal, uh, restores the original, uh,
proposed, uh, congestion zone,
but removes the rate changes that the,
the minus 39.4 reflects taking out out the,
the rate increase from the original proposal.
Understood. Um, with regard to fines, fees,
forfeitures, and penalties.
So I know the overall number, 92.63 million is associated
with the environmental benchmark ordinance.
Um, I have a question about the second bullet debt
collection, but with regard to the shared housing fee
and license increase, approximately how much does
that comprise?
So, and I thank you for that,
and I, I apologize that we, we missed that here.
It's a, it's a little less than a million dollars.
Uh, there's no increase to the rate.
Uh, the increases that we've made are to the, uh, the, uh,
two year, uh, license and then the annual registration.
So those fees are doubled.
Um, it's just under a million dollars in terms
of the impact to this budget.
So that's, uh, additional revenue.
Okay. Um, with regard
to debt collection, kind of similar to the piece
around ENY efficiencies, what do you think could be done
by way of a management ordinance to, um,
keep collections away from, um, poor
and working class individuals and
or, you know, corporate entities
that have essentially no revenue?
So, I, I'll take a shot at this Alderman wack.
Um, I think the management
ordinance is exactly where this happens.
Look, if we're selling the debt,
I believe we get to set the terms of that.
So the idea would be to identify that debt, uh, that goes
after the people that can most pay for it.
Uh, and leaving out of that, um, the, the folks
that we don't anticipate can pay for,
we have amnesty periods for a reason, right?
And we, the amnesty periods
that the clerk's office has done, um,
have been very successful.
And I think we've already accounted
for additional months of that.
Um, so the management ordinance, I believe is
where we would, uh, include, are building in the,
the guardrails to ensure that we're not going
after, uh, the, the people who can least afford it, uh,
working class people in the city of Chicago.
Okay. My last question, uh, through the chair request,
I'm sure that there were some revenue options
that you looked at that maybe seemed interesting,
but you determined
that we lacked home rule authority specifically
that the state could grant.
And so I'm hoping you can put together that list
and share it with us,
because if there's a possibility of some portion of us going
to Springfield to advocate, uh, for home rule authority
to do things that potentially a majority
of city council members would support, I I think
that's something we should do in Q1 next year. Yeah, I,
I, we'd be happy to provide that through the chair.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Alderman Martin, alderman
Vasquez,
alderman Hopkins.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Um,
Just to continue the, uh, the point of debt collection,
we currently have, uh, at least two contracts
with professional debt
collection agencies that I'm aware of.
And, uh, they point out to me that there's a variety of ways
that they can approach their job.
We, as the client, uh, direct them, uh,
whether it's in a management ordinance or a contract,
or, you know, even informal guidance.
Um, and they have assured me that there's a number of things
that they could be doing that they are not doing right now
because they're not directed to do so.
Uh, things like the Amnesty program that, uh,
recently expired, uh,
another amnesty program can be renewed.
It can be promoted.
The debt collectors can be trained on how to use that, uh,
as leverage to convince people
that they should pay some or all of their debt.
Um, there's the possibility of civil action, uh,
that can be taken and, uh, targets for
that action can be identified.
So we're only going after people
that have the means to pay the debt.
We're not going after, uh, the poor
and the indigent, um, to really increase the likelihood
that we can collect debt owed to us without having
to sell it, which remains an option for some of it.
Um, but there's a science involved in determining
where the more readily collectible debt is
and where the hardcore debt is,
that is unlikely to be collected.
And that's what you package and sell,
because a penny on the dollar is better than
zero on the dollar.
Um, but these are all decisions that the professionals
can and will make.
That's what we pay them to do.
No one here in this room is an expert,
I don't think, on debt collection.
Um, but the contracts that we've had
with several highly reputable firms, uh,
we can see the difference when we partner with those firms.
And when we ask them to step up their efforts, it pays off.
And when we back off
and stop doing that, collection rates plummet.
So some of this is within our control,
and it's clear that there's more
that we could be doing right now at a time when the city
desperately needs it.
We should be doing it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Alderman Vasquez, you walk back in
At the buzzer. Thank you, Madam
Chair. Um, I appreciate the work.
Uh, I think some of the stuff
that we had been thinking about when we made a management
ordinance changes were to create the environment
where the council is actually creating
and coming up with solutions.
And I think watching what you all have done is commendable.
That being said, we've got
certain things I have concerns about.
I wanna ask away. Um, a lot
of it is related to the debt collection.
I think our colleagues have already voiced some concern.
I'm trying to figure out how we make sure that people
who are already hurting, that have challenges paying their
bills aren't put further into debt.
And then bankruptcy. And I say this to someone who,
when I was not the smartest, took out a credit card,
maxed it out, had to go all the way
to collections and all the above.
When the city is doing that and,
and it's people who are actively hurting,
do you all have ideas or proposals
that would be those guardrails?
Like has that been in, what,
what have y'all discussed as far as that?
Oh, you just missed it for your rc uh, chair.
Martin just asked that exact question and we're love it.
We're very, very, uh, we are keen to work on, uh, additions
to the management ordinance
that would create those guardrails.
We have no desire, uh, to, to impact those individuals.
The, the idea behind this is that we would target those
that can afford it, um,
and look to amnesty periods, uh, in the hopes
of collecting the additional debt from people.
So that's not, I appreciate that.
To not belabor that point. To follow up.
If you are selling debt to someone,
how do you control what they do?
If they've decided they've already locked a deal,
they're gonna do whatever they need to?
Is there legally controls you could put in place,
which a management ordinance wouldn't address?
It would give you reporting legally.
Would you be able to say, here, here, here's
what you cannot do if you bought this debt?
Yeah. I think, uh, you would put it, uh,
through request for proposals.
Um, you could, we do this all the time.
We put guardrails in.
You do it in the contract,
the law department would look at it
and say, here's all the things that, uh, for instance,
the comptroller and the city council want
as guardrails in this ordinance.
Okay. Um, and, uh,
and your management coupled with the management. So
Ambulance bills are the third
largest category of unpaid debt.
How would you ensure that we're not contributing
to the burden of medical debt?
How would we ensure what
That, like if it, if the ambulance debt is
what we're talking about, somebody already has medical debt,
how are we not making it worse if we're then also trying
to follow up on ambulance debt,
which is the third largest category?
I, I think in the same sense, working
through the management ordinance, looking at, um, the people
that are using it, um, what their, uh, healthcare,
um, system is that they need to use
and what the majority of that is.
Um, I think that can be done again, through whatever request
that's put out there along with the contract.
Okay. We do it all the time in every type
of contracting that we do.
Yeah. And, and I'll say this, like in fairness to you all,
and as far as the administration,
you all have had less time to talk to us about it.
The administration had months
and there has not been very good negotiation listening
to anything, bringing data, providing any level of solution.
So I think similarly, we have those questions of you all,
but there's such a much smaller time to kind of identify
what that looks like, that I would propose
that there are members of this council
who have an interest in having those conversations
to figure out what we could all support as a council.
And again, I say that in good faith. Um,
Point of information, alderman, CCHO Lopez Sure.
Mentioned, I think the alderman has mentioned a few,
um, a few important points.
What are the departments like the law department?
I appreciate the, the, obviously the alderman, um,
perspective on this, but it's the law department
and other departments able to pitch in, especially,
you know, so I wanna know whether the other departments
to explain this in more detail. Are they,
What's Your, like the legal,
I thought there was the law department.
There's other departments that are,
that I think could respond to some
of the implementation around that.
And others, are there anybody from the law department
and any other departments that could,
That's not germane to the budget question, but, um, sure.
I mean, the law department can opine on the question
that the alderman is asking regarding guardrails,
but I don't think that that's a component of
what we're discussing today.
Thank you. Much appreciated.
Also, in line with my colleague
who is very helpful asking about the data and information
and underlying assumptions.
This question is not for y'all, it's for the administration.
Are you guys willing to provide the data
and the underlying assumptions that led to the ey?
Or can you guys actually do the chair provide the actual
data since we've never received it?
Got it. Uh, next, so as it pertains to
the Smart Streets pilot expansion, um,
why does the proposal not include just
automatically going citywide?
We had a pilot for this that, I mean, my colleague,
alderman Riley knows we had a pilot for supposedly a year.
It's been two years plus now we've not expanded it.
And that is a revenue driver.
'cause the amount of people who are blocking bike lanes
and buses would actively be paying for it.
It's not a tax 'cause people are violating the law.
So why don't we just go automatically
and have the whole city do this?
Why are we not just implementing that
as a revenue generator? I
Appreciate the question.
I we didn't touch it. We left it alone.
That was not, uh, an area that we, uh,
we impacted on. Here's what, that's
It. Sorry. So let me, let
me, let me, let me fix that question.
Okay. 'cause I, we did have this in a hearing
and the comptroller definitely answered the question.
My question is different. They articulated why there might
be challenges in getting to that place.
My question is, our proposal would be to force that
to happen from the council side to say, we have
to get this done and go citywide and,
and do it, as opposed to waiting for it not to get there.
I would say the same thing for the 25, um, department
of Finance workers that would do parking, uh, regulations,
double that to 50.
We should force those things. Sorry, that's all I got.
No, no, no. Um, alderman VAs has good points.
I if you recall last year,
we had some concerns about OPSA and about Yeah.
The, the medical unit. Right.
We put that into the management ordinance,
which forced the conversation
and the audit, which happened this year.
Yes. So, um, I think that there are opportunities to do
what you're suggesting. Yeah.
And, and I appreciate, again,
I think the proposal put forth by the mayor focused so much
on $83 million of a $6 billion corporate fund,
of a $16 billion budget
that we did not have fullsome conversations about everything
else involved in this budget.
So I do appreciate that you all are looking at in different
directions, and it is my hope,
and I think the hope of every Chicagoan in the city,
that we figure out what a budget is gonna look like,
that averts a government shutdown.
And in that interest, I'm always open in good faith
to have conversations and do
appreciate the work. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, alderman Vazquez.
Um, can I get a motion to allow Alderman Taylor
and Alderman Talia Farrow to move for Rule 59?
So moved by Alderman Cazada.
Um, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed?
And the opinion of the chair. The ayes have it.
Um, before we move to the second round, um,
our co court report, oh, alderman mitts.
Did you have a question? Okay.
Um, thank you. Alderman Taylor here.
Madam Chair. Okay. And, uh, alderman.
Talia Farrell, he has not jumped on yet.
Um, we're gonna take a
five minute break, um,
and we'll come back and start round two.
Uh, excuse me.
Um, the finance committee is
reconvened from recess.
Uh, Ms. Jackson, I'm telling you one more time,
and I'm gonna have to have you removed.
All right? Yes, I will.
Um, officer, can we please have her removed?
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ms. Jackson
Alderman.
Jessica Fuentes. Moving on.
Alderman Manah. Howorth.
Thank you, chair. I just wanna clarify that this proposal
is building off of the original, um, budget
that was proposed by the mayor's office, right?
Like other things in there,
like the Chicago
Not
Okay. Uh, Alder
Women. Minna, Howorth.
Your question was, uh, Chicago,
For instance, the Chicago Legal Defense Fund.
The, the, those funds are still in the budget.
So your first question was, is this the same?
Did we build our budget off
of the original revenue ordinance?
The answer to that question is yes, as a base.
Um, and we did not touch that.
Uh, we did not make any amendments to
that particular line that you're asking about.
So the assumption would be that it's still there. Okay.
Got it. Um,
can you speak more about the proposal
about the 3 1 1 changes it the hours?
Is that right? And it would be replaced
by a chat bot?
So you're, go ahead. You got the question. Go ahead.
Yeah, that is one option, uh, that was referred
to in the EY report.
Um, basically looking at the hours of 3 1 1
in our budget proposal, the alternate, we do not say
that it is required or mandatory to do that.
Um, it is basically an option that the city could look at
to, um, reduce the hours overnight,
I believe in the EY report as they referenced it,
and, um, have a savings there.
And other cities, I believe do the similar thing.
Would that, would that result in the loss of, of jobs?
Pardon? Would that result in a loss of jobs?
Um, I think they would have to look at, um,
making sure that any jobs that were not in those hours,
if they moved ahead with that, would have
to be put into other positions.
But I think if you look at the OEMC center,
and a lot of us talk about that, uh, quite often
there are spaces where people could go into,
but that is not something
that we are talking about in our budget.
That would have, again, have to be through a process with,
uh, labor and with the administration.
So in building this budget, you did speak to Labor
and OEMC
On that particular item?
Um, I think this, uh, basically comes directly out
of the EY report,
and that's where we base, um, all
of our conversation around that.
And then about the, the, the collection of the debt.
I, can you speak more on whether
or not the departments that need to be involved with
that new program, if we have enough people to do those jobs,
and which departments would need to be involved with that?
If it's an internal, not you said that it could be internal
In any RFQ or FP or anything that's put out for a contract
and any contract in the city.
Um, there are guidelines
and guardrails put in place by the department
that's doing the work.
Um, and you know,
we have collection agencies out there right now.
They all have to sign a contract.
They have to look at all different aspects of the contract.
And, um, it would be pretty simple for the Department of law
to be, um, reviewing that contract for procurement
to review it for OBM
or any department, um,
that would be involved in debt collection to be part of
that conversation and put the guardrails in place. So
To be clear, you, are we saying
that we already have the people to do the jobs?
We need to just look at how it's being done
To, we have people within the, the administration?
Yeah. Um, I'm trying,
I understand if we need to, if it's gonna be
internal and not sold off.
Right? Because you said that it could be internal if
It, anything that happens in terms
of a new contract has people that would review it.
And that wouldn't change here at all.
It wouldn't mean that we'd have to go out
and hire an outside law firm to do it, um,
to create a contract or the, uh, request.
We would just simply have the departments involved,
like any other one to go over that
and make sure that it's, um, protecting the city interest,
but also doing what is necessary to follow
through on the debt collection.
Yeah. I guess my,
my interest is in,
in passing this budget by the end of the year.
And I know that this process started late.
And also what I've been hearing,
because I've, I've tried to come to all of these meetings,
is that, is that being able to implement some
of those co those recommendations from the EY
report is gonna take time.
It's gonna take resources and it's gonna take jobs.
And so I, if we did pass this budget, do we have the people,
the resources and,
and the jobs in place to do those things beyond
what was already recommended?
Well, it's just my opinion,
but EY again, met with 22 departments,
city offices voluntarily and sat down
and went through all of these different analyses,
both on the data, on organizational effort, everything.
Um, and these aren't, this isn't some new thing either
that just kind of came up out of the blue just for Chicago.
There's several other cities that have done a similar report
and implemented many
of the EY recommendations that were put out there.
So if you look in Milwaukee, if you look at Houston,
they have, um, very similar reports to ours,
and they each took a certain percentage of those, uh,
recommendations and moved them forward.
So when you look at the matrix that's in the EY report, um,
there are some that receive a lower value, higher value,
but also a higher priority, uh, initial lower priority.
And what we're saying on some of these is that we have
to make them a high priority.
And it's incumbent upon the administration
to look at each one of those
and decide what they're going to do.
But I think it's, um, imperative if we pay for a, a
EY report like this,
and we did a similar Chicago task force earlier,
that we take those recommendations seriously
and move forward as quickly as we can.
May I ask another question? Sure. Or, okay.
I, I appreciate that answer.
And also I feel a disconnect with the information
that's coming from the administration
and, and what you're presenting.
So there's that. But,
and also, uh, I feel like there has
been a lack of time to digest
this, this proposal.
And I, I would've liked
to have more conversation about this.
I'm not on this committee, but also it's important
because I need to explain to my people
what we're doing here in these chambers.
Um, the other thing that I, I don't quite understand
is we're, we're increasing the, um, PP lt.
And what I have been told is that as we increase it, it will
affect consumer behavior.
And is what is what, what is it that you are using?
What data are you using to, um, make the decision
that increasing it by 1%, which would increase our budget
by like a hundred million dollars,
that it will not affect consumer behavior
General, Possibly.
Um, okay. So I just wanna understand your question.
You, you're asking, um, what assumptions we made about,
um, how the increase, the 1% increase over
what was originally proposed 14 to 15, uh,
would impact on consumers, consumer
Consumers. Yeah. Um,
look, we, this was something that was proposed
by the administration and we just matched it.
That's all we did. Um,
and if that's a question that you have
for the administration, we can ask them.
We just matched it. Yeah. Thank you.
Alderman Pop. Thank you.
Is there a response from them
Or no?
Um, does the admin, um, just a,
just a second, uh, director Guzman,
do you, can you answer Alderman, Minna,
hop and warts question?
Yes. So, um, based on our analysis, um, our,
the budget that we proposed increases the rate from 11%
to 15%.
And looking at the increase that happened in the 2025 budget
where we went from 9% to 11%, we extrapolated out what, uh,
um, impacts we saw on, uh, the activity.
Um, that is the basis of the revenue.
And, um, we saw slight, uh, consumer behavior changes
in the PPLT.
Um, and so we felt comfortable that going up to 15%, um,
we might see some drop off.
And we built that into our revenue, uh, forecast, uh,
which is the, um, overall, uh,
increase from FY 25 to 2026 in the budget.
We think that potentially going above that,
you're gonna start to see some significant drop off,
just given that the tax itself includes not only cloud
computing, um, software,
but it also includes, uh, lease of equipment,
such as mm-hmm.
Um, things like at Home Depot or cars or things like that.
So
Ready up, alderman, Vanna Hop, Penworth.
Thank you Chair. I just wanna comment, um, for all
of us here as we're, we want Chicago to be a destination
for business, especially for small business,
if we can please consider what we're proposing, which is
to increase fines and fees on small businesses.
Right now, what is in there is that we wanna double
or triple some of those fines and fees.
And, uh, my ward has some of the most, um,
diversity in terms of our small businesses,
including in uptown.
So if maybe 40% of them are owned
by a small minority businesses.
And if you do increase these fines
and fees, some of these businesses have multiple,
um, uh, licenses.
Um, so please consider that as you're, um,
thinking about moving forward with this budget. Thank you.
I I just wanna respond
and I, I appreciate you raising, raising that up, especially
'cause you yourself are a small business owner.
We have lots of them in the 11th ward.
Uh, as we said, we, we didn't touch the,
the administration's proposal to raise us the 15%.
We, we fully recognize that it's a huge burden on,
on all businesses of, of all sizes.
You, you see in, you see on our chart, 84%,
um, on businesses.
And the largest part of that is the PPLT.
But thank you for the, for the comment and the question.
Alderman, uh, Viegas
Point of information information, the numbers
for the fines and fees, are those numbers
that the responsible alternative budget put forward,
or are those ones that the administration put forward?
It may be, perhaps the administration can talk about the
impact of these fines and fees.
Thank you.
I I think the Alderman Lee made the point that, um,
our budget is
98% similar
to the mayor's proposed budget.
And I think that point's been made.
Um, alderman Nugent,
Thank, thank you Chair, Madam Chair.
It has been brought to our attention
that a very discreet update on page 34 was not made in the
substitute offered earlier in this meeting.
The change is a reduction,
a reduction in the new tax on off-premise liquor sales.
The change is simply reducing the rate
of taxation from 3% in the original version
to the corrected rate of 1.5% of the purchase price.
I'm gonna circulate swap pages right now.
As such, I move to accept this updated substitute.
So moved by Alderman Beal.
All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed?
In the opinion, the of the chair, the ayes have it
and the substitute, um, will be included.
Alderman Fuentes,
Thank you chairwoman for the
facilitation of this conversation.
Um, I have a couple questions as it relates to, uh,
the debt, um, fines, fees,
and forfeitures that you have outlined in
this revenue package.
And I know you've already
received a great deal of questions.
Do we know the percentage
of the $1 billion debt in terms of what it is?
Um, is it,
what percentage is traffic violations versus
water debt, et cetera?
Do we have that breakdown?
Uh, The comptroller had answered
that a little bit earlier, but maybe
he could repeat 'em for you.
Comptroller, could we review, um, where a majority
of the debt that's explained in this
revenue package where it lies?
Um, well, the, I can provide that through the chair.
Um, but I can tell you the, the largest is parking, debt
and administrative hearing, which is a whole host of, um,
violations, building code violations, things of that nature.
But I can get it broken down on a percentage basis for you.
Uh, comptroller, while you're responding to, uh,
who makes up the debt geographically across the city,
do we know where a majority of this debt lies? Yeah,
We, we, we can also provide it by zip code if you'd like.
Bill, My concern is that if we sell this debt,
what parts of the city
and who will be impacted by companies
who will work extremely hard to either
impact people's credits, put them into bankruptcy
in collecting this debt with the overwhelming majority
of this revenue package, uh,
depending on this particular line item.
Uh, and two things I'm concerned about, the sort of
predatory practices that private
companies will have in collecting this debt,
particularly working families who maybe, uh, have to, uh,
you know, make difficult decisions
and don't pay parking tickets
or maybe are late on their water bill
and haven't paid it for a while.
Uh, what sort of practices will happen in terms
of collecting that debt
and how that would impact them and their families?
More importantly, the communities in which we see a lot
of this debt in.
And then if we do not collect at the rate in which we have
articulated in this revenue as one of the largest
line items, what do we anticipate will be the process
to have to come back to make up what we do not
what we possibly will not see in the revenue?
Sure. So the first part of that, um,
as we were speaking earlier, we talked about,
and I think the comptroller mentioned it, um, we did away
with things like shutting off water in the last term we did
away with, um,
taking assets from people like their driver's license.
And so I think that same value would be the same approach
that would have to be taken in any kind of debt collection.
And I think every alderman here has talked about that,
that you would not, uh, sit there
and prioritize, um, communities that are, uh,
potentially suffering through economic, um, uh, issues
that would further exacerbate this problem.
And that has been made very clear, I think for the last two
or three administrations
that the way you go about debt collection has
to be equitable.
Equitable. It has to be fair.
And I think that same message has come across
to the administration here,
and I think they believe in that.
So I think any approach that we take, any contract
that is created or drafted by law department by OBM,
um, all the departments involved would have
to address those issues.
And that has been done in a lot
of other contracts that we have.
So I don't think it would be a, a concern here to make sure
that we put those guardrails in place.
I I can understand your confidence in having guardrails.
I would be skeptical that we would sell off debts
for a private company and that they won't have
predatory practices and trying to assure
that they collect on a debt that they have just bought.
Well, just the answer to that.
Um, we have seven companies already
that are doing it, seven law firms.
And I would assume
that if they were doing predatory practices, they would be,
um, removed from being allowed to do that collection.
There is a $20 million reimbursement on the TIF surplus
that's articulated, uh, in this revenue package.
How do you arrive at an additional 20 million
in the reimbursement?
And I'm assuming that that is from CPS? Yes.
So, uh, I'm going back to the slide.
So up on the screen here, uh, we understand
that the city currently is forecasting $146 million deficit
to finish out this year prior to receiving the TIF surplus,
uh, from CPS.
That would cover, cover the M-A-B-E-F payment
based on the TIF surplus that is,
uh, proposed in the budget.
We would receive $173 million back from CPS.
That amount is the 552
or 53 million total that would go to CPS,
less than 379 million that they asked
for, um, in their budget.
That's what's approved in the CPS budget.
The IGA agreement between CPS
and the city of Chicago is that any amount
that was is received from the tip surplus
that is more than $379 million,
but less than a total
of 175 would be reverted back to the city.
So knowing that we're getting 173 back and we're scheduling
or we are forecasting $146 million in a deficit,
the difference between that is a $27 million.
Good guy. So we'll have $27 million left.
Um, once we get that money in.
'cause remember, we're paying in arrears,
this is about the 2025 deficit for the 2025 payment.
We're proposing to carry forward not the full amount,
but $20 million of that
to contribute towards the advanced pension payment,
leaving $7 million for the city to do things like add
to the fund balance, which we know needs to be done.
And have we heard from CPS
or the board that they're okay with these projections
that you're making or have some, some
Agreement? It's not a projection
that we're making. It's
the agreement that they've signed.
They have made commitments to this body
before and have not paid. I,
So I I I, I could ask IGA to provide the,
the signed uh, agreement if someone could provide that.
I, I don't think that that is in question,
but if someone from IGA could produce the, the agreement
that was approved by the board,
we'd love to be able to see that
That was one of the, um, It was a condition
Condition that, uh, chairman Irvin said that he needed
to have through his budget committee in order
to move forward with his committee work.
And I believe that they followed through with that.
All right. The, could I ask one more question?
Uh, chairwoman, I know my time here has run out.
No, go ahead. Answer. Thank you.
The congestion fee, the, the projections that you all make,
you say you don't adjust the rate,
but you adjust the boundaries.
Can you all provide a map?
It was the, uh, original proposed boundaries
by the administration that were then
shrunk when then we took,
when they took away the rate increase, we just went back
to the originally proposed boundaries.
So, and we'll provide it. I'll we'll send it to you.
That's not a secret. We'll send it to you.
But I just wanted to explain that we didn't actually
add new boundaries.
We just went back to what was originally proposed
At the same rate in which we
currently have the congestion fee. Yeah.
So not an increase in the rate.
It is just an expansion of the zone.
Okay. I would like to back to see the, yeah, the map.
We'll get that to you. Thank you.
The map also, uh,
alderman would be included in the original budget
information that we all received when the mayor made his,
uh, proposal to
us. Alderman Spaza.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted a point
of clarification maybe from the comptroller.
I know everybody wants to know where this debt's at.
I'm just guessing, uh, comptroller, Beski
that if this stuff is 10 or 20 years old, that's correct.
The far, far majority
of these people don't live there anymore.
So, and through the chair, it's not that urgent
or anything to know, but I'm guessing like, once again,
if the debt's 10 or 20 years old, these people don't live
where they lived when they occurred this debt.
So, but through the chair is fine.
Well, that No, that's correct.
I mean, difficulty of having that going back far, far, um,
yeah, you have, you, I mean,
you don't know if people are still living
or residing in the state, et cetera, so it's difficult.
Okay. All right. Well, I'd say you answered my question,
so no, no need to get it to the chair.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it.
Thank you. You, you, have you completed your questions?
Alderman Fuentes. Thank you.
Um, alderman Moore, round two, three minutes.
Thank you, chairman. Uh, Real quick
Is, oh, before we go to round two, just to,
is clean up round one,
alderman Burnett, you're back in the room.
You had a question regarding VGT for Alderman Beal.
He's back in the room, so have at it.
Thank you. So in regards to this Vgt, we say
that this is conservative.
Can you talk about the 80% adoption rate
that we're assuming year?
Can we talk 80% is doesn't feel that conservative,
that's majority of businesses in the city.
Well, um, knowing that the revenue
that's gonna be coming in from BGTs,
I think 80% is a very conservative number by people
who are going to try to make more money
in their establishments.
Um, so I'm, I'm sorry, I'm just a a bit confused on this.
You're saying that 80% of businesses
that have a liquor license are going to adopt BGTs.
We believe that over 80% of the people
that have liquor licenses will apply for BGTs, correct?
I and I, and I believe right now,
I believe the 27th Ward is number one in the city
for illegal sweepstakes machines
that are not being regulated.
So now we're gonna legalize gambling machines on
every corner of every block.
Only people that have liquor licenses.
Look, this just feels very responsible
to legalize gambling casino machines on every block
after our constituents fought
so hard not to have our casino.
And so now you're trying to implement everyone in my ward
to make sure that they have the
ability for people to gamble.
No. You're saying 80% of the adoption,
and you're saying majority are in my ward.
And so you're saying that you want people
to be taxed on this gambling revenue in my community,
and my community is already stated
that they don't want anymore.
So now we'll be talking about instituting this VGT tax.
Are we saying that we're adopting this across the city?
Okay. There are currently 3,300
liquor licenses that will be eligible for BGTs.
We believe 80% of the 3,300, which is roughly
2,640 machines, well,
locations will apply for machines.
I didn't say that. Your war will be oversaturated. Great.
Is there any part of this ordinance that allows us
to restrict where VG T's are located?
Um, if a person has a liquor license,
I think they will have the legal right to apply for BGTs.
So we have to opt into additional housing,
but we have to allow every business
to have gambling machines in their establishment.
I, I, on my time call record.
Uh, thank you. Going on to round two Alderman Moore,
Uh, and just You have three
Minutes. Thank you. Quickly
on that line of questioning, um, have we
accounted for equity around this VGT?
Uh, what are we looking at?
Have we talked to, um, any minorities that's in this, um,
space and how would it impact them?
Alderman, bill, Uh, currently, I, I don't believe
that there are any minority vendors
that make these actual machines.
Uh, so right now there's just nobody in the market.
And so the only people that are in the market, again,
are people who are operating illegal machines
where we're not getting any revenue from whatsoever.
Okay. And in this budget, is there anything that,
in this package, is there anything that the state has to,
um, chime in on, um, in this budget
that we expect the, um, state to chime in on?
Or is it clear all this is city controlled?
Any of this information in here?
Anything state that relies on the state, um, approval?
The, the gaming board would have
to approve anybody applying.
The, the actual license goes to the state
and the State's gaming board,
which has a very thorough vetting process about, uh,
making sure that there's, um, nobody trying
to obtain licenses that are mob tied
or, um, you know,
have illegal backgrounds and things of that nature.
So they have a very robust, robust process
before approving BGTs or liquor, I mean, licenses for vts.
Thank you all. And it just wasn't directed to the game.
It was to the whole package, but thank you. Yeah,
It's just the license. It's
not the revenue from derived from those,
Right. And, and that's
the only thing.
Ga from a gaming standpoint,
nothing else within this budget needs state approval?
No. All of our revenues are locally generated.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, chairman. Correct.
You're welcome. I think that's all that, let me,
let me check before my three minutes up,
because I did have this in order.
Uh, we talked about the Bridge Pilot program,
which I've been talking about for years,
and that's it.
Thank you, chairman. Thank you.
Alderman Moore. Alderman Ada.
Thank you, Madam Chairman. Um, so, um, in regard
to the advertisements, again, so to clarify, uh, in regard
to advertisements on Bridge Houses, will that just be
for naming rights, or will it be
for advertisements along the sides of the bridge houses?
Uh, different cities do different things,
but that would be, um, something
that the administration could look at as they prepare an RFP
for similar, uh, types of advertising.
I understand, but it's your proposal.
So I, I would like to know if, um, any
of those advertisements would be in compliance
with the programmatic agreement
among the Federal Highway Administration,
the Illinois Department of Transportation,
and the Chicago Department of Transportation, um, in regard
to the preservation of the movable bridges
and the, uh, bridge houses.
Anything that the city does has to be in compliance
with state and federal law.
But have you checked whether
or not advertisements on the Bridge Houses is in compliance
with that preservation agreement?
Yes, it is. It is in compliance. It is. Okay, great.
If you're talking about Bridges, it would not be,
if you're talking about Bridge Houses, it would be
okay, just to clarify.
And so what you're saying has nothing to do
with the naming the, not with the naming of the Bridges,
but with the Bridge Houses solely.
Um, my understanding is the Bridge Houses. Yes. Got it.
Got it. Okay. In relation to the augmented reality, um,
I heard the example of Pokemon Go.
Um, you know, actually that kind
of concerned me a little bit
because there's all sorts of different types
of advertisements that are targeted to young people.
Um, and a lot of times young people have their applications
connected to their parents, uh, you know, debit cards,
credit cards, et cetera.
So how will these advertisements, uh, be targeted
and protect, um,
are young people from buying things that they shouldn't be buying?
And what kind of advertisements are we talking
about additionally?
And what kind of public spaces are we talking about having
these augmented realities?
Will it be on school grounds?
Will it be in Park district grounds?
Is there coordination with these other agencies?
This would be for the administration to decide where
we have no contract with anybody.
So I, I can't tell you where exactly these would be.
What we have is the opportunity to explore this
as something, as a revenue
generator for the city of Chicago.
But have you laid out any sort of values
or kind of framework in which you want? No,
That would be up to the administration
and, and procurement.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Alderman. Cazada, alderman Scott,
I have one question.
Um, I don't know, I don't know if some of my, you know,
some, some in, some, some things in the presentation.
I think some of the co our colleagues dunno that a lot
of the information was just pulled from the original budget.
But I want you to speak on,
because a lot of us are getting, um,
they're doing their advertisement on us.
Um, the, the hits saying that we don't care about children.
Can you speak to the fact of what is left in the budget?
Uh, did you touch anything in the budget
as it relates to youth employment?
Uh, we, uh, we kept the, the job levels
that the mayor proposed, um, at the same levels.
I know that there was a version, I dunno, a version
or two ago of our budget that may have showed some cuts.
This is, this is an iterative process.
What is on the table today, uh,
does not cut youth jobs at all.
And what did you add for youth jobs in this budget?
5,200. What?
Yeah, so for instance, um,
and we just touched on it a little bit at the beginning.
Um, first of all, I would say that restoring funding
for the library collections, both in terms of media
and books, that was a huge hit for the library system.
Um, all of our kids used the libraries,
and that's $5 million, making sure
that they can sustain the purchases that they need
and access to media.
Second thing was restoring funding
for the youth mentoring programs.
Bam. And Wow. Um,
and that was three and a half million dollars. Right.
Thank you. That's all I have.
Thank you. Point of information. Alderman Nugent.
Thank, thank you, Madam Chair.
I, I think it's also important to note that we also, uh,
preserved the tip surplus
as was presented in the mayor's original
budget. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I, I'll also add, we put back into the budget,
which had been removed, the youth mentoring mm-hmm.
Uh, for Bam and Wow.
Yep. Uh, that, that was your question.
Alderman Scott. Alderman Rodriguez? Not here.
Alderman Viegas not here.
Oh, no, he's there. Oh,
He's hiding. Noisy
right there. His chair. All right.
Madam Chair. Oh, I was just chilling.
So, Madam Chair Alvie. I'm good. Madam Chair. Thank you.
Okay. Alderman Ccha Lopez.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, just two,
two additional questions around, um, this debt,
this debt collection, I think is, is a concern to me.
The 1 billion that is sellable, uh, seems like
that we can recoup about 10%.
Um, what are the potential impact?
And is this, uh, is this something what we are considering,
uh, income levels?
I'm very concerned about this debt when it comes
to water debt and other debt that becomes,
and these predatory practices that could potentially harm,
um, small homeowners and so forth.
So can you give me a little bit of this, you know,
information about these, um, this proposal
and how, seems like that's largely all the proposals
for finding fees as well.
Then I have a follow up.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Al Alderman, I, I appreciate the, the question.
Um, we'd love to sit down with you
to formulate exactly those rules
for the management ordinance to ensure that we are not going
after the people that could at least afford it.
Yeah. But I, I think that that will impact the revenue,
uh, collection and the impact on residents.
I don't know, maybe comptroller can, if there's any, any,
any things that maybe we can, uh, we can add to that.
I mean, I'm really concerned, I know
that there's been work efforts to make sure
that we help homeowners that are struggling
with water bills, and so that I,
I'm afraid this could potentially be harmful.
So I'm not sure, uh, controller Belsky would add to this.
Well, I, I would separate the question of the sale
of that versus what you're talking about.
Just, just our collections.
So normally in our collections, um,
we, you know, we obviously focus on the ability
to pay, and we can do that.
I mean, on, on enforcement, it has to be equitable.
But I, using data, uh, on collections,
you want to go to where, you know, people will pay.
And then in cases where, uh, people can't afford to pay,
we do have a lot of different relief programs,
as you might be aware, like Clear Path, um, you know,
people can get on payment plans as low as $25 a month, um,
utility billing and relief, et cetera.
So, um, you know, we, we,
we do have those things in place already. Mm-hmm.
Thank good Controller, I'm just concerned.
But definitely look into working
with you, um, on that estimate.
Seems to me inflated.
The other one, um, is the advertising, you know,
I think concerned about the 30,
almost $30 million, uh, projections.
So I wanna know more about
what are the basis of that projection.
Um, also concerns about
what if we don't meet that projection.
There'd been cases like in 2012 in Virginia, when
that was advertised in highways,
the projection never came to anywhere closed.
The LA has also concerns about predatory and harmful content
and what would be the makeup of the city when,
whether advertising on city property.
So what, just the basis of that 30 million.
Yeah, no, thank you for the question.
Al Lopez, I'll, I'll forward you the same report I sent to,
uh, alderman Burnett.
Uh, it was the report that we got from the city,
actually from, uh, from the budget
and, uh, finance folks in back in July
that actually had the light pole
and, um, the light pole advertising
and digital advertising included in there.
So we didn't pull these numbers outta the air.
Yeah, I, I'll forward it to you. That's not a
Problem. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I,
I, I do, look,
there's about $120 million that we talking about.
It will be significant that we actually be accurate.
That would be a big hole in the budget
if those projections are not met. Thank you. Yeah.
Just do you wanna, Yeah, I think, um, we, all
of our estimates, um, again, we're fairly conservative,
so we're not saying that we would go for 50
or 60 million here.
We pegged it at a relatively conservative number so
that we're not over-inflating
or, um, trying to, you know, put us in a position
where we have a budget that's not balanced like we have now.
So that's definitely something that we're trying
very hard to avoid.
And I think we've done that with this alternate budget.
Mm-hmm.
I, I can just like a point of clarification,
because I do think there's a lot of evidence around,
especially the head tax, corporate head tax,
and how, how does that work?
I don't know. There's a lot of data on what we're trying
to do here, especially when it comes about collection
and a time when inflation is super high,
when people are struggling.
So I definitely would like to get a hold of,
of those projections, those assumptions
and how we get to those numbers. Thank you, chairman.
Thank you. Alderman.
Che Lopez, uh, alderman Burnett,
did you have more questions?
Okay. Alderman Irvin,
Thank you. Uh,
actually, uh, this was around the, uh, the BGTs.
And, uh, the one concern that I have in this industry is
that, uh, similar to cannabis, uh, there is zero,
uh, African American participation, uh,
from an ownership perspective in this industry.
And I think that for us to potentially allow for
that level of activity
and, uh, other options and, and our,
and the respective communities, uh, without seeing any level
of participation is a bit concerning.
Uh, with it being such a relatively small amount
that we're looking for, uh, I would hope that we may, uh,
pull back from that particular point, uh, so
that we can see some participation in this
industry specifically.
Uh, 'cause it is something that is going to be, uh,
if it grows at a pace a, a major revenue generator,
and similar to what we saw in cannabis, uh, a lot of members
of our community were left out.
Um, so, um, if there's some, uh, thoughts around that.
Uh, but I think that ought to be a consideration
around economic activity, uh,
primarily in our communities when, um, we don't,
we don't have any, uh, any piece of the pie in that.
And I'll open anybody that wants to speak
to that particular issue.
Alderman Vial, Uh, Madam Chairman,
and I appreciate the question.
Uh, based on the numbers that we're looking at, uh, the,
probably the lion's share of the licenses will go
to people in the south
and west side, uh, to be able
to benefit their small establishments
by bringing in additional income.
And after talking with the industry, it shows that, uh,
they will, uh, hire more people from the community
after they're able to, uh, make additional money
and supplement some of the things that they've been doing.
So this would be a win-win for businesses in our community
that are looking for additional income to be able
to hire more people from the community.
So I think it'll, it'll be a great asset, uh, to people
who have bars, restaurants, uh,
and, you know, things like that in our communities.
No, I, I understand that particular point.
And I, and I also would ask the number
of establishments, uh, that are in, um,
in African American community,
but I'm speaking of the, there's a third,
there are three pieces to this.
There's the state
and the government component that's the third.
But the owners of the machines
and the gaming aspects, that's the third.
And that's the third that I'm speaking of
that does not have any level of ownership, uh, members of,
of our community involved.
Yes. The other third that goes to the actual operator, the,
you know, the, the, the bar
or the establishment, um, that, that exists,
they will get their third.
But I'm speaking of the ownership component of the
companies, uh, that do this type of work.
Um, and, and we would be, uh, in my opinion, missing on a,
a very large opportunity, uh, for businesses
or in, in our, in our community.
And I would also add that the bulk of establishments
that have, um, licenses
or that would be eligible to do this, uh, isn't the,
isn't in, in, in the black community.
So if BACP
or someone else has some information on that,
be glad to take a look at it.
But, um, we don't have the same number of tavers
or entertainment venues as, uh,
our counterparts downtown on the north side
and other places, so,
All right. Thank you.
Uh, thank you Alderman. Alderman Fuentes.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand that there are also,
um, some ideas maybe that you all had around
what the efficiencies that are allocated
around the 46 million could be.
Can you all share what some of those ideas
or recommendations were?
I know that they come out of the EY report, very clear on
that, and I've read the report.
But as you see fit, what are the recommendations
that you all would recommend for the efficiencies
that you all have articulated in this revenue package?
Hold on, Alderon. Thank You.
I fell asleep on the job.
I'm sorry I didn't keep the screen.
While we're getting the screen. Um, while
We're getting this screen unlocked, um,
alderman Rodriguez has asked for, uh,
to be allowed in under Rule 59 and participate remotely.
Uh, can I get a motion to allow him in Alderman Cazada?
All those in favor signify by saying Aye. Aye. Opposed?
In the opinion of the chair. The ayes have it.
And, uh, alderman Rodriguez, are you on?
Okay, Al Alderman
Fz, can you repeat your question? Just,
Yeah, absolutely. Uh,
there's a line item
that articulates additional ey efficiencies.
I'm well aware that you're drawing those
directly from the report, but as you all were meeting
as a coalition, are there recommendations for
where you see those efficiencies being made
Specifically? Um,
as we mentioned earlier, um, a lot of these have to do
with adjusting fire alarm inspection fees.
So we have false alarms that happen all the time, um,
both for burglaries
or, uh, false alarm burglar, false fire alarms.
Uh, we have increase in film production for squad cars, um,
which I think has been low for a while.
And that kind of comes through in part
with the special events recovery, um,
increase in pyrotechnics and sprinkler fees.
Um, I would say, sorry, fleet. Yeah.
Um, there were other fleet options as well.
Um, accelerated disposition of our assets,
lifecycle modeling, warranty recovery.
There's a long list of 'em that we put into our report,
but again, all those were,
we took the low end of each one of those.
Understood. Thank you. Have,
has the coalition had a conversation with commissioners
around their ability
and capacity to be able
to implement those deficiencies over FY 2026?
Well, all those conversations were with the departments
and the offices, so I'm assuming that, um, all
of them are very aware of it.
And then I, we have all spoken, I think, with commissioners,
um, looking for these efficiency efficiencies,
but also with the administration.
And we had a meeting with the administration where, uh,
essentially all the ones that we put forward, they, um,
what's the best way to put it?
Said no. Um, so we have had that conversation,
but we've outlined these
as best we could based on exact data from the EY report.
We just really wanna ensure that knowing that many
of these things will take time, we fully acknowledge
that some of these, you know, longer term, uh, will realize,
uh, and yield greater efficiencies.
But we wanna make sure that everybody,
that we are hitting the ground running
and we're doing everything that we can.
We feel that with the, uh, with the projections
that we've put in here on the revenue that conservatively,
there are, there are opportunities to,
before the end of the year, glean efficiencies
that will be meaningful enough for this budget.
Director. Guzman, can you walk us through what you believe
can be done through FY 26 as it relates
to the additional efficiencies
that we see here in this revenue package,
and if they are in fact achievable through the course
of this next fiscal year?
Um, uh, thank you for the question.
Um, so we have put forth, uh, through the chair about
what we believe is achievable.
And I think it's important, you, you asked the question.
Has, has this, um, uh, been discussed
with any commissioners?
The EY report is options, right?
And we took those options
and we directly talked to our departments about
what they could do and what was achievable.
And that's how we came to the revenue
and expenditure, um, savings that are in the mayor's budget.
Um, it does take commissioners to implement these.
We don't have the technology to do the 3 1 1 in hand
or in place, uh, today.
And we, we also think that
that requires a lot more conversation.
It would require us to, um,
have less people doing 3 1 1 if we were to implement that.
And we think that that's a, a conversation
that is broader than just the administration to have.
So as we, as we have noted, um, on several occasions,
the bulk of what is in the EY report we are implementing,
but to, um, uh,
record a savings in those when a lot of the foundational
contracts, technology, resources,
and so forth are not in place on day one,
or even right now, it's difficult to apply the savings.
And for us, that means that fiscal year one,
as the EY report is laid out, is not FY 26.
Thank you. Thank,
is there a motion to recommend approval of item number five?
Uh, alderman O'Shea?
I know someone's gonna say roll call. Uh, thank you.
Vice Chair Conway. Vice Chair Conway didn't hear you?
Yes. Okay.
Alderman Laa, I can't hear you. He said no.
He said no. Alderman Lata, no. Alderman Hopkins.
Alderman Hall. Alderman Mitchell.
Alderman Harris. I,
alderman Beal Alderman Lee.
Yes. I, I, I'm sorry. Alderman Mitchell said, yes.
Alderman Harris said, yes. Alderman Beal said Yes.
Alderman Lee said, yes. Alderman Ramirez.
No. Alderman Ramirez is a no. Alderman Quinn.
Alderman Quinn is a yes. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez is a yes. Alderman Moore.
Alderman Moore is a no. Alderman Curtis.
Alderman Curtis is a yes. Alderman. OSHA Alderman.
Osha is a yes. Alderman Taylor.
No. Alderman Taylor is a no.
Alderman Moseley, yes.
Alderman Moseley is a yes. Alderman Rodriguez. No.
Alderman Rodriguez is a no. Alderman Scott? Yes.
Alderman Scott is a yes. Alderman Ccho Lopez.
Alderman Ccho Lopez is a no. Alderman Burnett.
Alderman Burnett is a no. Alderman Irvin.
Alderman Irvin is a no. Alderman. Talia Farrell.
Alderman Cardona. Alderman Cardona is a yes.
Alderman Waga back. Yes. Alderman Waga back is a yes.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez is a no, uh,
alderman Rodriguez Sanchez is a no.
Alderman Cazada. Alderman Cazada is a no. Alderman Viegas.
Alderman Viegas is a yes. Alderman mitts.
Alderman MITs is a yes. Alderman Spto.
Alderman Spto is a, uh, yes. Alderman Vasquez.
Alderman Vasquez is a no. Alderman Riley.
Alderman Riley is a yes. Alderman Knutson.
Alderman Knutson is a yes.
Alderman Martin Alderman Martin is a no.
Alderman Silverstein. Alderman Silverstein is a yes.
Exofficio Nugent, all Exofficio Nugent is a yes.
Chair. Dowell is a yes.
The, um, ordinance passes
22 to 13.
Thank you very much. Moving on to item numbers three.
Uh, two, I'm sorry.
Item number two is an ordinance
authorizing the levy of real estate taxes for the city
of Chicago for fiscal year 2026,
the fiscal year 2026 tax levy.
A direct introduction from the Office
of Budget and Management.
The committee has been presented
with the substitute ordinance,
which has been distributed to everyone.
Is there a motion to accept the substitute ordinance?
So moved by Alderman Mitts.
All those in favor signify by saying Aye.
Alderman LaSpada?
Yes. Pardon. Chair. But thank you.
Chairwoman Dowell, members of the committee.
For this item, I had prepared
and distributed a substitute ordinance
that raises the property tax levy in the library fund
by $9.146928 million to maintain
89 frontline apps.
Meet library workers as well as hundreds
of SEIU security officers under the fleet
and facility management security contracting
that was cut in the original 2026 budget.
Recommendations, I would move for the committee
to accept this substitute.
All right. Do we need a roll call for the substitute,
or can we accept the substitute?
And, okay.
Roll call for the substitute vice chair Conway
Alderman La Vice Chair Conway Votes.
Yes. Alderman Lata votes? Yes. Alderman Hopkins Votes? Yes.
Alderman Hall votes? No.
Alderman Mitchell Alderman Harris.
Alderman Beal. Alderman Votes No. Alderman Lee? Yes.
Votes? Yes. Alderman Ramirez.
Yes. Votes? Yes.
Alderman Quinn Votes? Yes.
Alderman Lopez Votes? Yes.
Alderman Moore Votes? No. Alderman Curtis votes?
Yes. Alderman Osha votes? Yes. Alderman Taylor?
Yes. Votes? Yes.
Alderman Mosley. Alderman Rodriguez?
Yes. Alderman Rodriguez?
Yes. Okay. That sounded more like you.
Alderman Scott Votes No.
Alderman Ccho Lopez votes? Yes. Alderman Burnett Votes? Yes.
Alderman Irvin Votes? No. Alderman Talia Farrell.
Alderman Cardona O. Yes. Alderman Waba Votes? Yes.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez. Bo. Yes. Alderman Cazada. Yes.
Bo? Yes. Alderman Viegas Bo? Yes. Alderman mitts.
Bo? Yes. Alderman Sdo Bo? Yes.
Alderman Vasquez. Bo. Yes.
Alderman Riley. Alderman Knutson. Yes. Votes?
Yes. Alderman Martin? Yes. Votes? Yes. Alderman Silverstein.
Ex Officio Nugent Votes? Yes. Chair Dowell Votes? No.
24 to six. The substitute is before us.
Uh, would anyone like to speak
to the substitute Alderman Lopez?
Followed by Alderman Moore, followed by Alderman Vasquez,
followed by Alderman
Hall, alderman Lopez.
Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'll be brief.
I appreciate all the members who signed on
as co-sponsors to this ordinance.
It's a,
We're good.
Alright.
We, I think that chair was rigged for Nicole Lee.
He's okay. His hair is outta place, though.
Alderman Lopez.
I've never seen Constantine's hair move in my, um,
uh, as I was saying, uh, good afternoon, uh, chairman
and members of the committee, um, thank you to all
who signed on as co-sponsors, uh, to this
or, uh, to this ordinance amending the property tax levy.
And I do know, as we had conversations during
budget hearings, uh,
that even this is considered a property tax increase.
Yes, it is. And for most of us, by
and large, going to be an $11 annual increase,
$12 roughly.
So for less than, I feel like one of those commercials
for less than $1 a day.
Less than a price of a cup of coffee.
You too can fully fund libraries in the city of Chicago.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
In the past, historically, we've seen
where cuts have been made,
or where we've used the corporate fund to augment
the expenses of the library system.
This allows us to actually activate a, a revenue stream
specifically for a specific purpose so that we can one,
lessen the burden on the corporate fund
and not have to rely on the whims
of funds being available there,
but also use the levy for what it was meant to be used for,
which is to fully fund our library services.
This should be an easy lift for all of us.
And I say it's a rare occasion
where individuals like my colleague from the first ward,
and I, and even from the 33rd
and 35th wards can agree on something.
But this is one of those things
where it's worth it to stand together.
So I encourage everyone's support of this today and to,
and when it's voted on by full city Council. Thank you.
Thank you. Alderman Lopez. Alderman Moore? Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, chairman.
What, what I appreciate, um, my colleagues,
um, sentiments about this.
And I do also support, um,
our libraries and, um, you know, um,
fully funding them.
Uh, anytime we are doing property tax increases,
especially in an environment like this, it's important
that we educate our, um, constituents on the forefront.
I don't care if it's, um, $11 or $1,100, um, a year.
Um, but they've been hit with,
especially on the south and west side.
Um, just give us pause right now for, um, um,
any property tax, um, increase with,
with them just getting their bills.
And, and until I have those conversations,
I just cannot unilaterally, um, go ahead and,
and support something like this.
As I, I was always a, a fan of, um, CPI
and many were not.
Um, which we, you know,
would've gotten us out of a lot of holes.
And I, and I don't want to cherry pick, um,
how we now raise property taxes without having those
conversations, uh, with our constituents.
So whether it's a dollar
or a thousand dollars, um, I,
I think those conversations have to be had.
And if not, we have to work with our partners in the, um,
um, here, here at the city of Chicago
or our corporate partners, um,
if they have some more funding to put up to help cover
that without us, um, bearing the burden of our constituents
with additional property taxes at this
time. Thank you, chairman.
Thank you. Alderman Moore, alderman Hall.
Uh, thank you so much. Um, Madam Chair again.
Um, I support libraries, support workers,
but I support the residents of the Sixth Ward
who can't afford what we are facing now.
And I believe that we still got time, but
however we can pay for it without
the property taxes going up is where I stand.
And hence the reason why I'm not voting against workers.
I'm voting against making sure that property taxes
don't go up beyond what they expect, uh, to pay for.
So that's my know, and that's my reason, and that's what I
Mentioned at 10 o'clock on my Facebook status.
Glad you clar, glad you clarified that.
You need to put the word library in there. All right.
Alderman, I, I love you too. Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Um, we have a lot of difficult decisions
to make here at the city of Chicago.
This is not one of them.
Um, I think we see this a lot,
but I just want to really say this.
People will say, I support libraries wholeheartedly,
but asterisk, I'll support you and your workers,
but asterisk, if you really support them the way you guys,
the way we all do and say we do when we're talking to them,
when we're in front of union workers, when we are in front
of people understanding that under Trump,
the libraries are actually being attacked,
that we're losing funding everywhere.
The fact that we have workers union, the fact
that we have workers, union workers
that literally protect libraries, security guards
that are AFSCME workers,
and we can't get 12 bucks on a property tax
to pay for libraries.
I just think it's fundamentally,
I, excuse me, alderman.
Sorry. Um, Ms. Lang, please, you know,
Promise.
Thank you.
Like that dancer.
That's, thank you very much.
That's actually not a bad suggestion.
Um, but we thank you very much.
Alden Vasquez. Yeah.
I, I apologize. I, I, I a insult the fearless leader.
So, um, uh, I, I'll say this one cannot say
that they're in support of libraries
and in support of union workers,
and then vote against funding the libraries
and voting against keeping their jobs.
So this is an easy one for us,
and I'm just glad I'm a part
of the right side of history on it.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank
You, alderman La Spotter,
And thank you so much, chair.
My, my colleague Alderman Lopez.
I actually overstated it when he said the cost
of a cup of coffee day.
'cause it's, uh, more like the cup of a cost
of a cup of coffee a month.
Um, but I believe in it,
and I, the reason I was willing to work with my colleagues
and some of our partners on this is
because I think the way we restore trust
with our residents in government is when they know
what their dollar is paying for,
and they value what their dollar is paying for.
And I think you can truly
and definitely say that about our libraries.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt,
that the Westtown Library, the Logan Square Library,
the Wicker Park, Bucktown Library, they change my life.
They change my family's lives,
and they provide safe spaces for learning
and curiosity every single day in our communities.
And to make sure that they continue to be safe
and secure and well-resourced spaces.
I am, I'm willing to put myself on the line for that.
And I'm really glad for
what I've learned about everyone else's commitments
to the Chicago Public
Libraries as well through this process.
So thank you so much for the, the solidarity
and the substitute.
And I, I would when we're done, uh, move to pass. Thank you.
Okay. Move to pass Alderman OSHA followed
by Alderman Spto and then Alderman Irvin.
Thank you, chairman. I think I'd just like
to point out that many children in communities
Represented by many people in this room come
to the libraries in the 19th Ward after school
and on weekends, because it's a safe place to learn.
It's a place that they can do their homework,
where their parents can pick them up.
They don't live in my community,
but they attend school in my community.
Just like the children that walking to school
used to be crossed by crossing guards.
They didn't live in my community.
Decisions were made not to keep our libraries open,
not to fund our libraries.
This is a difficult vote, but it's a needed vote.
I wish that we looked as seriously at protecting libraries
as we do at protecting schools
and protecting kids, walking to school.
I support this.
Thank you. Alderman O'Shay. Alderman Spaza.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Uh, now that I know Donald Trump's a tap in libraries,
I don't know, I'm, I'm really gonna vote for it.
So, um, I never heard that one before,
but thanks, thanks for the update.
Uh, I was, I was with this all along.
I mean, it's a no-brainer.
I, I forever, even when I was running as a candidate,
I always felt schools, parks
and libraries were anchors to communities.
I don't think anybody's going out on a limb to say,
we're gonna raise your taxes 12 bucks a year on a
$400,000 house.
So easy, no brainer.
And you guys all keep talking about,
and Gs talking about union jobs,
let me remind you, yes, they are union jobs.
These are low paid workers also.
These are people making less than 20, $25 an hour.
So, but easy vote for me. I have two library.
I'm fortunately, I have two libraries in my ward.
Many of kids go there. It's a safe place
for 'em, like my colleague said.
So I'll be voting yes on this. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank
You. You Alderman
Irvin.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I, I understand, uh,
where we are with this particular issue,
however, uh, given the dramatic increases
that we've seen in West Garfield Park, north Lawndale
and Parks on the West side, unfortunately,
I cannot support this, uh, at this, at this particular time.
Hopefully this process gives us some better fair
assessments, um, as, uh, individuals in our community
that I've said have, have seen dramatic increases.
So, um, I understand where people are on this issue.
Unfortunately, I can't be with you on
this. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Alderman Irvin. I don't see any other hands up.
And Alderman Ada made a motion Do pass.
Um, before we call the vote, um, director Guzman,
what would be the average impact
of this on a household in Chicago?
On the, the, the revised or the, the original,
The revised.
I just got it this morning, so I, I I don't have that
for you, but we can do that analysis for you.
Alright. Thank you. On the original,
The original didn't have a property tax increase,
so there was not an impact on households. Okay.
Thank you. Um, you renew your motion.
Okay. I'm sure. Roll call
Vice Chair Conway.
Yes. Alderman Lata. Yes. Alderman Hopkins.
Yes. Alderman Hall? No. Alderman Mitchell.
Alderman Harris. Alderman Beal.
Alderman Lee Alderman Ramirez. Yes.
Alderman Quinn. Alderman Lopez. Alderman Moore.
Alderman Curtis Alderman. Osha Alderman Taylor. Yes.
Alderman Mosley. Alderman Rodriguez.
Alderman Scott? No.
Alderman Ccho Lopez. Alderman. Yes. Alderman Burnett.
Yes. Alderman Irvin. Alderman Talia Farrell.
Alderman Cardona. Yes. Alderman Waba.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez. Yes. Alderman Cazada. Yes.
Alderman Viegas. Yes. Alderman Mitt. Yes.
Alderman Spto. And Easy. Yes.
Alderman Vazquez. Yes. Alderman Riley.
Alderman Knutson. Alderman Martin.
Alderman Silverstein. Exofficio Nugent.
Chair Doel is a No.
The vote is 23 to six.
The motion passes 23 to six.
All right. Moving to item number three.
It's from the Department of Finance authorizing the issuance
of City General Obligation Bonds.
A direct introduction.
There is a revised version
of the 20 26, 20 27 General Obligation Bond
ordinance at the request of, uh, CFO, Jill Jaworski,
which has been prepared and sent electronically to everyone.
The version before the committee is the latest version filed
with the city clerk's office yesterday
and distributed to all
CFO Jaworski.
Uh, thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were going
through the presentation today.
Um,
let me pull it up.
This is the same presentation we've gone through before.
Perhaps you want to, uh, if you want, you can summarize
unless there is a request from the body to have her go
through the entire presentation.
Summarize the substitute.
Yeah. So, uh, you know, we, we had two ordinances in front
of, uh, counsel.
One was for, uh, $1.8 billion in new Money authority, um,
which concluded 1.3 billion for, uh,
the CIP projects.
And, uh, the revised ordinance, uh, specifies
precisely the 283.3 million for settlements and judgments
and 166, uh, million for the retro payment.
Um, those were included in the prior ordinance,
but it didn't specify the amount.
So we added those, uh, specific amounts.
Um, the, there is also a, uh, substitute ordinance for the,
um, refunding bonds that, uh, reduces the,
We're not at the refunding bonds,
we're at the general obligation
Bond. That's the page to the
general obligations.
Bonds is just simply specifying the exact amounts
that can be used for the retro
and for the settlements and judgments bonds.
Alderman, Vice-Chair Conway?
Yeah. Uh, you know, I know we spent a lot
of time talking about, uh, less than $300 million in the,
in the, uh, revenue ordinance.
I hope you don't mind if we spent a little time on this
$1.8 billion bond authorization.
Now, colleagues, as, as you'll recall, uh, last month,
the mayor requested the largest
one day debt authorization in the history of city council.
1.8 billion for this item,
and 2 billion for the one that's next on the, uh,
on the agenda, which I'll actually kind
of speak in in four subsequently.
But, uh, as, as I briefed many of you yesterday,
uh, I have drafted a clean
and responsible substitute ordinance
to reduce the total borrowing on this authorization from
1.8 billion to 500 million.
And I was, I was told that the substitute would not be,
would not be heard in committee,
but billions of taxpayer dollars deserve scrutiny.
And we shouldn't be rushing this.
Now, my substitute would've authorized borrowing only
500 million, the 500 million necessary
for firefighter back pay
and lawsuit settlements obligations that we must meet
to balance this budget.
I don't like borrowing
for operating costs any more than you are,
but we have to deal honestly with that reality now.
And then we, we should return in January
for a transparent debate about
how do we finance capital projects.
But what absolutely makes no sense to me, and,
and what I can't support is the additional 1.3 billion.
This ordinance gives Mayor Johnson as a slush fund
to spend on unspecified capital projects.
Not only does that require scrutiny, frankly,
it may not even be necessary.
And, and this part is critical,
and I want to be crystal clear on it.
Right now, the city has more than 2.4 billion
in unused authorized capital funding.
2.4 billion of available dollars that has not been allocated
or spent yet.
Today, we are being asked
to hand the mayor another 1.3 billion with no project list,
no timeline, no accountability,
no debt payment schedule.
Why? What could we be missing
that consumes more than $2 billion
and compels us to borrow more than a billion dollars more?
How could that level of project commitment exist in the city
council and taxpayers not know what it is?
Something frankly doesn't, doesn't add up.
Now, we have been told that this is needed for menu money,
but menu funding has been an authorized use in multiple
recent bond issues.
There's already ample capacity.
We did the $830 million bond
authorization earlier this year.
754 million of that remains unused in the 2022
capital bond total.
1.85 billion, 1.4 billion is still untapped.
The money's already there.
Heck, those two alone would fund menu funding
for the next 20 years.
Now, we've also been told, well, this is routine.
It's always been done this way,
which completely ignores the fact that this is
how we got into this deep hole in the first place.
And you're being asked today to frankly,
just keep on digging and take it on faith.
Now, earlier in my career, I, I handled hundreds
of debt offerings, and frankly,
I've never seen anything like this.
But you don't have to be an investment banker to see
how reckless this is.
Excuse me, vice Chair Conway, do you have a question?
No, I, I, frankly, we,
we spent four hours talking about 250 million of revenue.
This is a $1.8 billion ordinance.
And I don't mind taking my five minutes on on that.
I think you've gone past your five minutes.
I think I've done two and a half at the
Well.
Uh, I have been asking people to make a comment
and then ask a question.
And you seem to be having,
Well, I'm, I'm seeing hypothesis.
I'm sure the CFO will like to,
like to respond. Judge checked.
I I will have her respond, um, to that. Uh, but I believe
May I, okay, I will, I will
abridge the remainder of my comments.
Thank you. Is that okay? Um, what I will say is that, look,
we have spent a lot of time
talking about an $83 million head tax.
And this is something that we're debating quickly
that is 15 times larger than that.
And frankly, the credit, the credit agencies are,
are watching, and I won't belabor this,
but they have warned us that issuing more debt is likely
to downgrade, trigger, uh, to trigger downgrade.
And if that happens, our ability to invest in roads,
transit, public safety will be crowded out in future years.
So I will say this, I have, I
put my substitute in city council this morning.
Uh, it was sent to finance committee.
So what I would ask you to do is vote no on this today,
because we have a choice
to pursue a more fiscally responsible alternative
or simply capitulate to the fifth floor.
So I strongly urge you to vote no on this authorization,
and we can take up a more responsible
alternative that's been introduced.
Thank you. Thank you for your indulgence, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Vice Chair. Um, ultimate Viegas.
And then I will turn it over to,
if there are no other questions, we'll have, uh,
the CFO respond to what she's heard.
Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And, and thank you, uh, vice chair for your comments.
Um, we have, we have, the body has been concerned around
the CIP program for quite some time.
Uh, we have been concerned
because the projects that have been identified,
they've been identified mainly without all dramatic input.
And so in discussing, um, this issue with our colleagues,
uh, we are going to put forward
language within the management bill
that will take a management ordinance, rather,
that will take a look at first a process
that will allow the, the committee that's responsible
for the CIP, uh,
which is the Economic Capital Technology Committee,
to have all the infrastructure agencies
and capital departments
that are requesting funding to come through their first.
And then also having members of the,
of the city council have the ability to put input as to
how the projects that we ultimately have to vote on to fund
will be part of these projects.
So the series of, um, events that will take place is
that the, the, uh, finance, the finance, uh,
director will begin talking about a bond authorization.
It'll come to the Fi, economic Capital Technology Committee
to get input from the departments as well as the council.
And then once it's been approved, then
to finance in order to fund.
I agree with you, we've been, we have been funding projects,
uh, and it's always held over our head
that the menu fund is part of these,
uh, the part of these bonds.
And when you take a look at the total amount
of the menu fund versus the $1.3 billion CIP program,
it's, it's, it's a small percentage.
And so we want to make sure that the body, uh, is, uh,
having more input as it relates to
what infrastructures ultimately could be
completed. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Alderman Viegas. Alderman Beal.
Thank you Madam Chairman.
Uh, I totally agree with both of my colleagues in that, uh,
we do need more oversight on, um, these,
uh, bond issuance.
Uh, but we also need, like Al Alderman just said,
uh, we need oversight.
We, on the CIP,
because I can tell you the last couple of years
I have not had one single, uh, street
that has been done under the, um, was it the, um,
collective Street program.
And I had a boatload of 'em that were targeted to be done,
but they just mysteriously disappeared
and I'm not getting done.
And, uh, we know how that happens.
And, uh, but we need assurances that we cannot play games
with people's resources, the,
and the people's money when it comes down to the needs
of people in our community.
And so, you know, I will vote for this,
but I will agree with Alderman Vega that we need
to make sure that the departments are not continuously
playing games with resources when it comes to our community
because of, we may not agree with the administration
and get penalized for doing such. Thank you.
Thank you Alderman. Bill, alderman Lopez.
Thank you again, chairman, and good afternoon.
Members of the committee. I too agree
with my colleague from the 34th Ward.
I am very concerned
after having sat in both on our CIP hearing, uh, under
Chairman Viegas, where,
but the budget director was joined by members
of Water transportation and two fm.
And literally were told that in,
in some, in previous hearings, that we didn't have
projects lined up.
But then when they all had to appear together, all
of a sudden the bill was completely full.
We should be able to have conversations knowing full well
what exactly we're paying for.
If we look at, for example, the, a form
referenced 2019 obligation bonds
that my colleague, uh, was seeking to remove that amendment,
that reclassification in his amendment.
There were only 12 items, if I'm not mistaken. Mm-hmm.
12 items that we were taking out debt to accomplish.
Projects were specific, projects were delineated,
identified and referenced as ready to go.
That is not the case.
We get generalities now,
and we've been getting generalities,
not just from this administration,
but from the previous one, especially as we have seen
as it relates to capital improvement.
And in particular, our menu, which is
what we are all most concerned about.
We've gone from annual
bond authorization ordinances for menu
to these giant amorphous billion dollar boondoggles
from life foot on, I think the first
one was 1.1 billion.
So the question chairman, I see the look is when are we
as a group gonna start asking questions?
When are we gonna say, enough, I know
that we have things to pay,
and if the budget director
or chief financial officer have a list
that equals the totality
of this obligation, I'd love to hear it.
And I would love for them to give us what it is
that we're doing, um, so
that we can all have a better understanding of,
is this actually something that we're commit, that projects
that are in the pipeline as DPD likes to tell us?
Or is this just advanced planning
to make sure that we have authority?
Because none of us, like seeing, and I,
and I would also, if I may also ask
and then I'll be done, can the finance,
the budget team, the financial team, tell us
how many open-ended lines of credit exist out there?
Because it seems every time we turn around, I mean,
they're scouring 20 years to find
bonding authority authorization.
So how much are related specifically for infrastructure?
Thank you. Thank
You.
Uh, chief Financial Officer Jaworski,
Um, I, I'll answer first and then thank you, Jill.
Director Uzma. Thank you. Um, Madam Chair.
So, um, great question. Thank you for that.
Um, the, uh,
capital improvement plan is a plan.
It's a five year plan. It reflects both projects
that are currently, um, underway, um,
have completed their planning stages
and are in their actual, um, uh, construction
and implementation
or conclusion phases, as well as the projects that are, um,
slated for, um, uh, future, uh,
um, commitments.
And so when you think about the totality of the plan,
it's not just what we're doing today.
It's what we are planning for in the future.
And the plan itself is reflective
of not just the funding from the bond,
but a multitude of funding sources and,
and primarily from the federal and state governments.
Our geo bonds are a portion about 21% of the entire plan.
Um, and if you look at the back of the, um, budget, uh,
sorry, the Capital Improvement book,
it does reflect specific projects
and the funding sources that are for those projects,
for those that are for future projects, um,
obviously those locations haven't been identified yet
because those are done in collaboration with, um, elders
as well as the community.
And so, as you know,
'cause I know you have meetings every year with cdot, um,
and other departments including water and, um,
and other infrastructure departments, uh, those locations
and the, the places in which those dollars
for future budget, uh, sorry,
for future years will go towards are not in this particular,
have, are not identified here yet
because they haven't been identified.
Those are done within meetings with, um, members
of city council the beginning of the year.
But for those that are identified,
those are existing projects that are receiving, uh,
additional funding from the, uh, bond as well
as other funding sources.
Jill, thank you all.
Director Guzman, uh, chief Financial Officer,
did you have anything to add before I call for a motion?
Um, just on the specific question,
it looks like we have about 325 million
available on our lines of credit.
Sure. I'm sorry. A lot of, got a lot of cords over here.
Let me get this closer. My apologies.
Um, uh, specifically on the lines of credit,
we have about 325 million in our, uh, tax exempt lines
of credit, um, currently available.
Um, and, um, yeah, that's our available capacity.
Our taxables are, uh, fully utilized right now.
Um, we typically use those to, um,
fund capital projects.
I think as we've talked about before, we usually,
first we fund capital projects using cash,
then we reimburse ourselves for cash
with our tax exempt lines.
So we'll probably be doing some significant draws on the
lines this month to pay back cash for our, um, end of year.
Uh, and then we issue bonds to take out,
uh, those lines of credit.
Um, and so that would be part of our bonding
for next year would be, uh, doing a permanent financing
of the projects that are currently on the lines of credit.
Um, addressing just the general question
about, you know, what is it for?
We've put up the slide
that does show the breakdown in categories.
Um, and, um, we have, uh, you know,
can certainly provide you much more, um,
detailed information, um, regarding, um,
the specific projects that are included.
Um, I think a couple other points I wanted to make.
I know that you referenced, um, uh, alderman Lopez,
the 2019 ordinance having specific projects, um,
that was actually an anomaly.
Um, it is not typical
of the bond ordinances have those amounts.
And that is why we, um, added the amendment
because we have, um, let me pull the numbers up.
We have about, um, we have money stranded because of that.
We have about 69.6 million
of unspent proceeds from the 2019 authorization.
Um, that is sort of stranded
because we've already completed most
of the projects that we're identified in there.
And we, and we have excess funding available.
So we would like to be able to reallocate that
and use that for other funds.
We have about 16 million UN isssued authorization from that.
Now, we don't actually intend to issue that,
but we do want to reallocate the, the funds
that have been bonded for, um,
and are sitting in project funds, um, right now.
So going to the broader, um, dis uh, discussion
around the authorization.
Um, all of the, um, all
of the funds from our prior year authorizations, um,
are already, uh, allocated to either projects that are, um,
uh, underway, um, that we have contracts on,
or that we are in the contracting process on.
Um, we have a lot of projects
that are multi-year commitments.
Um, so for example, bridge Projects, we have
to allocate significant amount of money to our bridge, re,
uh, bridge program.
Um, that program was underfunded for years and, um,
and each year we get more
and more bridges added that are in critical, uh, repair
critical state of need for repair.
Um, and so we are continuing to add to that program.
Those take years to, to do those projects
because we do not pay for them just
with our bonding authority.
We're also using a lot of federal grant monies.
And so we have to pull all of the available pieces
of funding together and then do the contracting.
Um, and when you receive federal grant monies, you have
to have your local match in order
to receive the federal grants.
So we need that authorization to be able
to enter into those contracts to get the matching dollars,
to be able to get the federal funds, um, to,
to do those projects.
So this bonding authority is
for the projects in the CIP that, uh,
do not, uh, already have, they're not already in contracting
or already underway.
And so some of the things that we are looking at using this
for, for instance, is, um, we need to replace a lot
of the fire department's fleet.
Um, so we've got, um, 40 ambulances, 30 fire trucks,
and uh, 42 fire engines that are scheduled
to begin procurement, um, this year in 2026.
Um, this is part of a multi-year, um, strategy
for replacing these vehicles.
If we do not have the bonding authority, we will not be able
to begin the procurement, uh, process.
And that's because this authority isn't just
to issue the bonds, it's the authority to, uh, to,
to spend the money to enter into the contracts.
We will not issue the bonds
until we start incurring the expenses, which is why
we always have a situation where we have authorization
that is not fully spent
because that authorization is letting us let contracts do
engineering start everything that we need to do
before we actually spend the money.
Um, some of these, uh,
projects will get start getting spent very quickly.
Um, those fleet ones are, are relatively quick,
but for instance, LED service line, um, that's something
that we are doing go bonds for every year
and we're using that authority relatively quickly.
We are under mandates, um, to replace, uh,
lead service lines, um, for, um, leaks and breaks.
And we cannot use any of our water system revenue bonds
or water system pays.
You go capital dollars for the private side costs.
We can only use them for street side.
And so once we hit the property of the individual, we have
to use another source of funds.
And we have ongoing contracts to do that work.
Of course, we use our own labor as well for that work,
but we need the Go Bond funding for those projects
to keep them moving because we, as I said,
cannot use our water fund, um, revenues for that.
Um, in addition, we have quite a num, large number
of other projects, um, including, um, uh, buildings,
um, some of which are de demolishing buildings
that are no longer, that are not safe.
We have a lot of street scape projects, um, all of which,
uh, would get delayed if the, uh,
capital authorization is not passed.
Uh, we do have a relatively detailed memo prepared
that will also be providing, uh, to everyone.
Um, but there isn't going
to be an immediate impact if we don't pass the CIP
because the projects that are in the, that we want to start,
we will not be able to start them.
Thank you very much. Uh, chief financial officer, point
of information from Alderman Beal, uh, alderman,
ADA Alderman, vice Chair Conway in Viegas.
Okay. I'll just have a quick question
'cause I see that the 1 66, uh, for the fire retro payment
that was in there, that was, we were told that was supposed
to be in the budget, but was spent,
and now we're having to borrow for it.
But could you explain to me
how we arrived at the 216 million
for the automatic menu when the menu is only about 75, 70
7 million a year?
How do we get to two 16?
Um, I apologize.
I don't have the, the presentation, uh,
CIP presentation directly in front of me,
but the, the, it's the same, um, as the amount that's
provided each year, it's
$108 million for the ALDERMANIC menu.
A portion of that is for the additional work,
the supplemental rework that CDOT does.
Um, you choose the items in your menu, um,
there's additional work that they have to do to, for a lot
of the items that are chosen.
So I believe, um, there's about $33 million that, of
that 108 that goes to CDOT
to support the ALDERMANIC venue, uh, projects.
Okay. And that, I'm sorry, that additional funds is,
is not controlled by the alderman,
it's controlled by the commissioner, correct.
They do it with you. So in your briefing that you have
No, that's not true. I'm gonna
disagree with you. They
don't work with me on that one.
Uh, you know, I don't, I they don't work, they work
with me on my allotted 1.5 or one point whatever.
Um, I'm, you know, last couple of years I've never worked
with them on additional funds. Um,
Can I respond to you?
Go ahead. Okay. So, um, the items that are in the menu
for the alters, um, so there's a set price for each
of the projects
and the types of things that can be paid for
through the ALDERMANIC menu.
But to bring that project to bear,
there are additional items that supplement those projects.
So that's what the additional fund,
and it's the same that it's all,
that's the same amount that it's always been.
So when you choose the projects with cdot,
that additional funding, um, in that, uh,
bucket goes to support those.
I, I totally disagree.
Um, even if you, you add the additional 30 something million
that only gets you to a hundred,
that leaves an additional $116 million that we don't know,
uh, what's accounted for.
I think that's absorbent
and I think that needs to be reduced.
Thank you. It's a two year authorization also.
Alderman, ada,
Thank you very much, chair.
I just wanna be clear that it's not the lack
of clarity in this package that disturbs me,
but the clarity itself.
'cause if you look at our CIP plans
for the years beginning 20 22, 20 24,
and 2025, this actually
represents now a dramatic decrease in our capital
spending over those five year rolling periods.
If you look at those, we're looking at not only a decrease
overall, but significant decreases across C DOT's,
own named categories of neighborhood improvements,
sidewalk repairs, residential street resurfacing.
Admittedly, like, as we have learned,
this is teeing up bond issuances for two years from now,
but I do not want to be looking at two years from now
without the resources to maintain this city, let alone
to be able to improve it.
Um, I hope that we find ways to come back
and make up for
what I would say is a CIP
and a bond authorization that a does a disservice
to the city's capital needs.
Thank you Chair.
Madam Chairman. Can I, can I, uh,
just make an additional comment to what, uh, the di
the CFO had said?
Yes. Yeah. So, uh, you know, being new to this, I can,
I can just tell you and assure the council that the idea
of having a a five year capital plan, um,
funded in part through bonds, in part through grants
and other resources is, is very normal.
Um, and as Jill said, you, you authorize,
but you don't issue right away
because you might be looking for a grant.
But the other thing is that during the construction period,
using lines of credit to fund the project, uh,
lowers your cost significantly
because the rates on a line of credit are much lower
than if you just went and issued debt.
And the other thing is, there are,
there are spend down rules that the IRS has
with the proceeds of bonds.
If you're not spending that money, um, at a certain pace,
the bonds can become retroactively taxable,
uh, to the bond holders.
So, um, and,
and the other thing is this, this debt, overall debt plan
is retired pretty rapidly relative to other cities.
So, um, from my view, uh,
this approach is very responsible
and I think it's, it's a mischaracterization to say
that we just put money out there and don't spend.
Um, it, it's a plan and it's a thoughtful
and guided plan, um, that uses, you know, criteria such
as life safety, which are bridges and,
and obtaining grant money.
Thank you. Compt Belski, um, vice Chair Conway.
I wanted just a couple clarifying questions.
Is it, the C FFO seem to seem to suggest that all
of the 2.4 billion of authorization
has already been allocated to projects?
That, is that what you're saying?
Yes. That shock you, Gil.
Okay. Um, and,
and is it also your contention that, um, that if we waited
to do a CIP brief until January, that
that would hold up projects?
You know, last year the bonds were, uh,
February late, so I think it was February.
And, uh, it did impact the delivery of projects.
So CDOT had to, um, make changes to their projects
because of the, the timing delay.
So, you know, of course, one month is gonna have less impact
than two or three, but it has an impact.
I mean, by our own admission,
we're not really gonna even spend this
money for, for two years.
So it seems shocking that that would be the case, which is,
which is why I'm asking, look, let's just pass
what, vote no on this.
We'll pass what we need to pass,
and then we can come to a real thorough CIP
with necessary oversight in January.
Thank you. Al Conway. Thank, thank you. Alderman. Viegas.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, con, I'm sorry, CFO could,
did you provide the 2019 projects that were line itemed
through the chair?
And if you, and if you did, could you resend it?
Um, curious to find, curious to see what those,
those projects are?
Now you said historically that that's been the case where,
um, there's, there there's been appro approval
of the bonds without line items and Yes, and,
and I'm of the opinion we go the other way, so
that way we understand,
and I can talk about, um, when I'm supporting these bonds as
to what it is that, uh, our respective wards, uh,
the investments that we're getting.
So, um, I wanna go back to the practice
of line item line iteming items, so that way we understand
what it is that we're voting on, what it is
that specifically projects are there with the input
of all the, with all the departments as well as from the,
from the, from the legislative branch, which ultimately has
to, has to approve the appropriation.
I mean, we're just giving a blank check to, to the depart,
to the administration, to then hoping that we can get more
above and beyond the 1.5 million
that is allocated in the menu.
So, um, if you could provide that through the chair,
that list of the 2019, what those examples are
of line items, and then I, I'm, I guess I'm, I'm,
I'm gonna be looking at going back to the way that the,
that most legislative branches do it,
whether you're in Springfield
or in Washington DC around line item, line item projects.
So that way we know specifically
where the investments are going. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you Alderman Viegas. Um,
We will provide that, As I indicated to you
maybe a couple of days ago, the, um, language
that you wanna craft around the management ordinance.
You should do that and, uh, work with Chairman Irvin to get
that in place.
Alderman Lopez,
Thank you again, chairman.
Um, I wanna follow up on, if I may,
just briefly something on, on
what Alderman Conway just referenced,
and with regards to holding up of projects,
which I don't think any of us really want to see.
We just wanna make sure
that projects are being done equitably throughout the city
of Chicago, which is
not your wheelhouse, you're just paying for it.
I get it. Um,
but do we know, if you were to look at this diagram,
for example, if, what are, what is the value
of the projects that you need money for immediately?
Because I think that kind of gets to the heart
of both conversations of
what do you need both in the short term to ensure that
for the January February timeframe you're able to continue
with projects versus what is more end of year
or even 2027 that doesn't require
cash on hand authority right now?
Uh, thank you for that question. Yeah.
And, um, I, I don't, we have the memo that's coming to you,
uh, shortly, but there are a host of things that, um,
we would need to have cash or, or the authority to, to do
and enter into contracts pretty immediately.
Um, the, the most pressing of which, as Jill mentioned,
is the lead service line replacements,
because those are tied to the public side work
that DWM is doing,
and they get those done really quickly within each year.
And we are under state and federal mandates on that.
I would also say we have a court order
that requires the signals related to the a DA, uh,
sign, um, street signals, um, our bridges, um,
those are critical, um,
because a lot of a, some
of the money in this bond authority is supporting
existing bridge replacements today, um, inclusive
of the contracts that they need to literally start to let,
um, starting in January.
We also have the equipment for the fire department.
Um, and as we had mentioned during CFDs, uh,
or maybe it was during my hearing, um, we're trying
to do something really innovative with how we purchase, uh,
fire equipment going forward, which is to buy them, um, uh,
in bulk so that we're getting better pricing
rather than these one-offs.
So we, the memo is coming to you,
but there's a host of things
that need immediate authorization, so
Thank you. What
is the value of those that are in immediate,
and I, I appreciate a memo,
but I think for the context of this conversation, I mean,
like, for example, we know that I don't need
to worry about 2027 lead service line replacement.
I need to focus on 2026
and what's available within the first six months
or four months, or whatever it is.
So what is, what does the first quarter needs look like?
We'll make it real simple.
I didn't analyze it from that perspective,
because again,
I'm not sitting in a department while they're waiting to try
to let a contract in line with procurement.
So the idea is we, we have to allow departments to work
as they normally do, right?
They're in discussions,
in procurement discussions right now.
Um, you know, typically we have the Aldermanic package
out to Alderman this month, right?
Where you would begin. And
so you could have those conversations with
CDOT the very beginning of January.
So, um, it's, I, I don't have, it's this done by quarter
by quarter, because that would be a really complex matrix
of looking at every single project in the city
of Chicago by month.
Um, what I'm telling you is that the way
that these departments do
and go about their work, um, this allows them to do that,
um, in the most efficient way possible.
I think Chairman, that must, that might be something
that we need to take a look at moving forward as well
with conversations with, uh, chairman Viegas,
because I think that the,
while it might not be necessarily readily available for OBM,
I'm sure that CDOT has its work broken down quarterly
and knows when their projects start
and when they need to do these things.
It's just a matter of making them do it. Um, yeah.
And I think that that would also be who be more comforting
to us to say, look, if this is what the January go is,
we can pass that immediately while we have these
ongoing conversations on how this bonding authority needs
to evolve moving forward. Thank
You. I appreciate
that. Alderman Lopez, I don't think
that we should be holding up this, uh,
particular, uh, ordinance.
Um, we have some work to do, uh,
before we can even talk about how we're gonna move forward.
Alderman Kada, I'll get to you. Sure. Okay.
Before we move forward, uh,
that we haven't done ourselves, and Alderman Chairman Begus
and I have had some conversations,
but we need to move forward with this
and not hold up anything that might be in the queue.
Um, alderman Cazada,
I wasn't intending to interrupt.
Are there any more questions or can I call the question?
Call the question. Call The question.
Okay. No, we, the question's been called,
um, is this another roll call
by she Conway?
No. Alderman Lata, no.
Okay. Alderman Hopkins. Alderman Hall.
Alderman Mitchell. Alderman Harris.
Alderman Beal. Alderman
Lee, alderman Ramirez.
Alderman Quinn. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Moore. Alderman Curtis.
Alderman O'Shea. Alderman Taylor.
Alderman Moseley. Alderman Rodriguez
Rodriguez is an I
Alderman Scott Alderman Ccho Lopez.
Alderman Burnett. Alderman Irvin. Yes.
Alderman Talia Farrell.
Alderman Cardona Alderman Wack
Chicken from Saturday gone.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez. Mm-hmm.
What did you get that chicken from?
Alderman Cazada. Alderman Viegas.
And they brought four chicken
Alderman Viega, I can't hear you.
I, okay. Alderman Waba. Alderman Mitt
Al Alderman Spaza Alderman
Vazquez Alderman Riley
Al Alderman Harris is a Yes.
Alderman Harris is a yes. Ramirez is a yes.
Alderman Ramirez is a yes.
Alderman Knutson, alderman Martin
Alderman Silverstein, ex officio
Nugent Chair Do vo.
Yes.
Bill. Bill is holding his No. And voting.
Yes, we have 20. Riley is a yes.
The vote is 24 to eight.
The, the, uh, ordinance passes
and will be reported out when we meet.
Excuse me. What was the count you asked
It? It wasn't in
relation to the count,
but I thought the motion was the end debate.
No, the motion was due. Pass call the question.
Okay. All right.
Last item. Uh,
he mo he
do, we're gonna do it over, uh,
pass Alderman Mitchell moves to pass.
Can I use the same roll call from the last one?
All right. The vote is 24 8.
Item number four, from the Department of Finance in order
and ordinance authorizing the issuance of
City General obligation, bonds and
or sales tax securitization corporation sales tax revenue
bonds for refunding outstanding general obligation bonds and
or sales tax revenue bonds.
The committee has been presented with a revised version
of this ordinance, which has been distributed to everyone.
And the matter is before the committee for discussion,
the revised ordinance will be explained
by Vice Chair Bill Conway.
Thank you. Um, I can assure you this substitution is a lot
less controversial than what I, uh, just went through.
In fact, I did this slide.
It may look vaguely familiar as it's, uh,
slightly copied from the CFO slide.
What the, what the amendment does is it keeps everything the
same except it revises the authorization from $2 billion
to $1 billion for savings opportunities.
Um, it is, it is worth noting that,
as you could see on the slide between now
and the end of 2027,
we only have about $665 million worth of bonds
that are callable.
Obviously having a billion dollar authorization should take
care of the US through, uh, one through the end of 2027.
And I will certainly, um, certainly say
that the CFO has done a fantastic job at finding savings
opportunities in the bond market for, for the city.
And I would also say it's important
that we do provide the CFO with some refinancing authority.
I can tell you, as someone who was in banking, the January
is traditionally one of the strongest months
for municipal issuance.
You have a lot of fresh investor demand that comes, uh,
comes out of the holiday season.
You got a lot of reinvestment flows that happen.
Um, so noting, uh, you know, I, I,
I obviously had some desire to restrain the amount,
but I think it is important that we do, um,
past this $1 billion of refunding authority
to give the CFO some opportunity to save the taxpayers,
the city of Chicago some money.
So I ask you to vote Yes. Thank you.
All right. Alderman Moore.
Um, alderman Lopez, did you have
al Vice Chairman Urban?
I, I don't. Hey, he, he'll be all right.
Um, so you want to reduce the authorization from
1 billion to 2 billion.
The question that I have, I'm, I'm sorry,
2 billion to 1 billion.
The question that I have, this is directed to the CFO, uh,
based on the, uh, graph here, um, that, um,
vice chair has presented, uh, what additional authorization,
uh, is necessary or are there other callable, uh, features
or bonds that may exist that would require us
to be over the $1 billion that, that he's asking for?
So the, we originally had, uh, put in a request
for $2 billion that was a two year authorization.
Um, and so, you know, $1 billion, um, is likely
to meet the needs that we would have
and the opportunities in, uh, in 2026.
Um, should there be opportunities beyond that in 2026?
We can certainly bring those, uh, to council
and introduce them at the time.
Uh, the way in which we might issue more would be if we do a
tender offer where we buy bonds
that are callable in future years, um, that is a strategy
that we use opportunistically in the market.
Um, for instance, we did that in the bonds that were sold.
Um, in November.
We sold sales tax securitization, corporation bonds, um,
primarily, um, we were doing a tender,
we did some callable bonds,
but a lot of the bonds were, uh,
bonds we bought out of the market.
We, uh, generated $46 million in savings,
um, distributed between the 25 budget
that we're currently in.
And, uh, the budget that, uh, you are debating
and have debated today.
Um, so, uh, we do have an opportunity, I think as, uh,
alderman Conway was referencing
to be back in the market shortly,
we think we could do about another 400 million or so
and generate about 50 million in savings.
So I think the, uh, the difference between the two
and the 1 billion for us would only be if we had a larger
tender we did later in the year.
Um, and, uh,
we would probably be looking at coming back next year,
budget time to ask for more authority for the next year
To pass.
Um, I, I do have, if there is, if, if we have a policy that
has a minimum of a 3% savings, uh, why,
and there an opportunity may exist for, uh, the CFO
to garner more savings for us, uh, why handcuff for, uh,
with just a billion dollars in authorization if we have a
set policy on how these things are allocated
and the potential to, uh, garner more savings.
And that, that goes to the, uh, to the sponsor
of the, uh, ordinance.
His, his his, go
Ahead. Repeat your question. You
know, I,
I think I got the question, so I'm, yeah, I mean,
a billion dollars compared,
let him repeat his question. Okay. Please.
I said my question essentially is if we have a, a,
a fairly set policy on how we execute these for savings,
I do see your point about the, uh,
numbers of callable bonds.
Uh, but you also talked about the ability
to tender on things possibly in a earlier state.
Why, why handcuff the CFO if we have a policy,
but which we're, we have to achieve a certain level
of savings, it's not as if we're just, uh,
willy-nilly refunding, uh, bonds.
Uh, why, why handcuff her in that respect?
I, I, I hardly think that a billion dollars is
a, is a handcuff.
That's a huge, a huge level of authorization,
but based on the fact there's only 400 million callable this
year, and there might be a tender offer, I dunno how big
that would be, but it's not gonna be 600 million in size.
Um, if, if there is opportunities for, um,
for additional savings, I think beyond giving a billion,
it's not inappropriate to ask the CFO
to come back to do that.
And the savings opportunities are there.
I suspect we'd be amenable to that,
but I don't think we need to have sort of a, a, a lot
of unnecessary authorization out there.
And anything, anything more than a billion would be, uh,
would be unnecessary at this time.
Okay. Uh, alderman Che Lopez.
Thank you, chairwoman. Um, just this question for the,
for anyone in the box,
will this change could create any delays?
I know that this is tied to many money and all that.
Will this create any kind of delays potentially?
Or is this a minor? I don't think the mi
This is, this is strictly for refunding.
The go bond is for menu. Mm-hmm. It's a different bond.
It's a different bond. And then in terms of like delay,
I mean, I, I don't know how we wanna restrict the level
for us to borrow in a time
where we see some old volatility just for some savings.
I, I, I just don't see the, the, the rationale here.
Any other comments?
Anyone moving? Do pass or, oh, I'm sorry.
Alderman Hall, before we take the vote, alderman Hall asked
to be included, um, on remotely due
to Rule 59.
All those in favor? Uh, can I get a motion? So moved.
All those in favor signify by saying Aye. Aye. Opposed?
Alderman Hall? Okay. Yes.
Thank you. Chair. I wanna be clear on
CFO's stance on this proposal.
I, I, I heard everything.
I just wanna know where, where you, where you stand up.
So I would say that generally, um, you know, we would like
to have the authorization that gives us flexibility
to be in the market, um, when opportunities arise
so that we can move quickly.
Um, so the, you know, the larger authorization,
2 billion gives us a greater deal
of flexibility to be in the market.
But, um, you know,
the $1 billion does give us a lot of flexibility.
Like I said, we expect to use 400 million
of that relatively soon.
That leaves 600 million, um, you know, remaining.
And should that be insufficient of the time,
we will come back and ask for more.
Uh, you know, I can say that it's easier
for us if we don't have to come back,
but, uh, we certainly would do that.
And, you know, we would hope that if there was, you know,
a market opportunity where we, uh,
could benefit from more authority, that it would, you know,
be able to, uh, be addressed quickly.
Who made the motion?
Uh, there was no substitute. There was not.
It's a revised version of the ordinance.
Um, all those in favor signify by saying Aye.
Aye. Opposed? Uh, could the Nays identify themselves?
ADA is a nay. Okay. Okay.
This is the refinancing bond, you and I. Okay.
Uh, in the opinion of the chair. The ayes have it.
And, uh, the ordinance will be reported out at our next
city council meeting.
Um, there being no further business before the committee.
Uh, can I get a motion to adjourn?
Moved by Alderman Vasquez to adjourn.
All those in favor signify by saying Aye. Opposed?
The committee is hereby adjourn.
Yes.