Council Chamber: Good afternoon. The Committee on Budget and Government Operations will come to order. We'll begin with a roll call vote. I mean, roll call to establish a quorum.
Council Chamber: Vice Chair Lee, Autumn of Sparta.
Council Chamber: Alderman Dow.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson. Alderman Yancey. Alderman Mitchell?
Council Chamber: On my Harris? On my bill.
Council Chamber: Alderman Ramirez?
Council Chamber: on the Quinn.
Council Chamber: Armor Lopez.
Council Chamber: or even more.
Council Chamber: Oh, no, no shade.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mosley.
Council Chamber: Online Rodriguez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Scott, on Micinto Lopez, Honourable Member Burnett?
Council Chamber: on Vitalia Farrell?
Council Chamber: Alderman Cardona, Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez?
Council Chamber: Olderman Conway. Older Quesada?
Council Chamber: Horme Villegis.
Council Chamber: Ottawa mitts?
Council Chamber: On Ms. Bozzotto, on the Nugent Alderman Vasquez?
Council Chamber: Alderman Napolitano, Alderman Riley?
Council Chamber: on Rick Knudson, Alderman Martin?
Council Chamber: Alderman Haddon?
Council Chamber: On the silver sneak.
Council Chamber: And Chair Urban is present, we have… Alder Mitchell is present.
Council Chamber: Any others?
Council Chamber: Alright, with that, we have a quorum. We have…
Council Chamber: Four members who've requested to participate under the provisions of Rule 59 are Alderman Yancey, Alderman Harris, Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez, and Alderman Hatton. Is there a motion to allow for the four to come in? So moved. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Any opinion chairs? The ayes have it. And Alders, Yancey, Harris, Rodriguez-Sanchez, and Haddon will be permitted. Alderman Yancey?
Council Chamber: Lisson? Yeah.
Council Chamber: Obminese?
Council Chamber: Alderman Harris.
Desmon Yancy: Alderman Yancey here, present.
Council Chamber: Alderman Harris?
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez?
Ald. Rossana Rodríguez: Present.
Julia Ramirez: Ramirez is present, Chair.
Julia Ramirez: I sent in my Rule 59.
Council Chamber: Okay, let me… give me one second, Alderman Hatton.
Maria Hadden: present…
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: With a motion to add Alderman Ramirez.
Council Chamber: So moved, by Vice Chair Lee. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Depending the chair's ayes have it, and Alderman Ramirez will be added to the… Roll call as well.
Council Chamber: All right, we missed anybody?
Council Chamber: So, for all…
Michelle Harris: Would you please add Alderman Harris? I'm so sorry.
Council Chamber: Oh, no, no worries. Alderman Harris, you are added, and also, our condolences, to you on the passing of your, of your father.
Michelle Harris: Thank you.
Council Chamber: All right, the time is now for, public comment. It's my understanding that we have 28 people who signed up for public comment, of which we will have 15 speakers at 2 minutes, per, person.
Council Chamber: the,
Council Chamber: Sergeant in arms will give us, 15 names that we will, take, take an order. We also add Alderman Lespada, to the, quorum call as well.
Council Chamber: The first person for public comment would be Rocio Garcia.
Council Chamber: Followed by… Jada Potter.
Council Chamber: Go ahead.
Council Chamber: Hello, members of City Council. Hello, Alderwoman Lee.
Council Chamber: My name is Rocio Garcia, I am with the People's Unity Platform and the Grassroots Collaborative. I've also lived in Chicago all my life and have seen my parents struggle financially, through the result of having a lot of debt collectors come after us. And I also know that, it takes a big mental health care… a big mental, a load, or a toll, on people's mental health.
Council Chamber: whenever they're being harassed by debt collectors knocking at their doors, calling their phones multiple times a day, it results in people really struggling with their mental health. It results
Council Chamber: In people having to, feel… it takes an emotional toll on them that leads to, greater financial strife.
Council Chamber: which sets people up to potentially lose their homes, to potentially not be able to put their children through school and get them to school on time every single day. So, having debt collectors behind you as a harasser, really impacts every aspect of a person's life.
Council Chamber: That's why today, here, I'm speaking against, the alternate budget that is proposing selling of the debt collection to agencies that will come and harass
Council Chamber: People and small businesses who are behind on their bills as a result of billionaires having taken over this country and attacking small businesses and attacking families who are, at the bottom of the totem pole, who get left behind every single time as a result of other folks getting richer every single day.
Council Chamber: So, I urge you, city council members, to think about all of the constituents in your ward, to think about the voters, to think about the people who do not have homes, who are struggling every single day, who are out in the cold.
Council Chamber: who are still getting harassed by duck collectors. That is not right, and I hope that you use your conscience to make a choice
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Next we have Jada Potter, followed by Casey Sweeney.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, City Council, and to my Alderman Desmond Yancey. My name is Jada, and I'm a resident of the 5th Ward.
Council Chamber: Right now, there are almost $100 billion from the corporate head tax that the most recent budget proposal simply leaves on the table.
Council Chamber: We have two options if we want to fund critical city services, like youth jobs, violence intervention, mental health care, and gender-based violence support.
Council Chamber: We can either increase taxes and tighten enforcement mechanisms on traffic tickets and debt collection on working-class Chicagoans, or we can tax megacorporations like JP Morgan, who can pay their fair share.
Council Chamber: I like to see a show of hands from you all. Who would like to see this money come from ordinary Chicagoans struggling to pay their bills?
Council Chamber: And who would like to see it come from JP Morgan and other corporations?
Council Chamber: That's right.
Council Chamber: Let me remind you that these corporations just got billions of dollars in tax breaks from their sugar daddy, Trump.
Council Chamber: With a head tax, based on a $33 per month tax per employee, JPMorgan Chase would pay an extra $2.8 million in taxes. Want to guess how much it made per year just from Trump's tax breaks? $11 billion!
Council Chamber: $2.8 million is 0.025% of these tax breaks. They don't care about that much money.
Council Chamber: Now, I've heard the argument that there's no enforcement mechanism for this corporate head tax, yet you seem perfectly fine with finding ways to squeeze money out of people struggling to pay unpaid traffic tickets.
Council Chamber: Clearly, enforcement mechanisms are perfectly doable as long as they're against ordinary people and not huge corporations. Our demand is simple.
Council Chamber: Keep the corporate head tax in the 2026 budget.
Council Chamber: So, City Council, and especially to my Alderman, Desmond Yancey, who are you going to tax? People who can't afford to pay traffic tickets, or mega corporations? I urge you to choose wisely. Thank you.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Our next speaker is Casey Sweeney, followed by Jasmine Smith.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, members of Council. My name is Casey Sweeney, I'm a resident of the 27th Ward.
Council Chamber: So, I've been out knocking on doors, doing phone banking, talking to residents across the city.
Council Chamber: It's been really encouraging to me to talk to many of your constituents who think it's obvious that corporations can be part of that shared sacrifice so many of you are speaking of. They can afford to chip in, more, I think, than the people you're trying to tax in this latest package, seeking debt collectors on poor and working-class Chicagoans to balance a budget for the same amount
Council Chamber: The amount of money that you could be generating from the city's largest corporations is incredibly disappointing.
Council Chamber: But, I see that you all are continuing to make changes. I think you're hearing us, and you're hearing your constituencies. You've conceded on the garbage tax. You've conceded on a property tax. You've conceded on, youth jobs and youth employment, and I think it's because you're hearing us, and you're hearing your constituents. So, many of us are here today. You've made these reversals.
Council Chamber: I want you to hear us loud and clear. We don't want you to cut city services. We don't want you to chase our neighbors with bill collectors. We don't want you to raise our fees and fines. We want you to ask corporations to do the bare minimum here and chip in so that,
Council Chamber: our neighbors aren't under further attack. You heard from this other speaker, Trump is really hurting our families. Healthcare costs going up, food assistance under threat, literally abducting our neighbors back here again yesterday. You have choices to make.
Council Chamber: Please, keep moving. I see a compromise in sight, but corporations can absolutely afford to chip in a little bit to end the chaos here in Council. Thank you.
Council Chamber: Next is, Jasmine Smith, followed by Kelsey Caron. Also, we want to recognize, Alderman Talia Farrell for, Quorum.
Council Chamber: Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I want to say, first, it's a no-brainer of what you all should be making a decision on, which is taxing the ultra-rich corporations and not working-class people more.
Council Chamber: A lot of people don't know the history. Working-class people have been getting taxed more than rich corporations for a lot of years, and it's time for them to pay their fair share.
Council Chamber: A lot of people don't know the true history as well. It's not just all on Brandis Johnson that we are in this deficit. Like, this deficit has been there way before he came alone.
Council Chamber: Then, it's a lot of people that's just not educated when it comes to
Council Chamber: These alders. And you all are not educated as well either, because our communities are suffering and suffering because a lot of you guys have sold us out to side with the rich corporations and the billionaires. This debt has came long before when whatever alderman's… I can't think of y'all name right now, but when y'all signed that contract for them parking meters, that was a horrible deal.
Council Chamber: And now we hear again.
Council Chamber: Talking about what we gonna squeeze from working class people, and then arguing about if we should tax the rich. And then there's lies being out there that the rich corporations are going to leave from being taxed. We were just years ago having a head tax, and it was more people working jobs than they are now. Let's talk about facts. These rich corporations are not gonna leave the city of Chicago. The city of Chicago is what we are, the best city in the freaking world.
Council Chamber: And they're gonna stay here because this is where they make the most money at.
Council Chamber: Trump just gave them a tax break. There's no reason why you guys should be feeling bad for taxing them their proper share. They have been taking tax breaks long before Trump gave them a tax break. And then let's not…
Council Chamber: Forget the fact that the city, you all, are fighting cases that got us a billion dollars in for wrongful convictions, settlements, y'all paying them thousands of dollars when they should be settling on these frivolous cases of people that's been wrong by…
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Next we have, Kelsey Caron, followed by George Blakemore.
Council Chamber: Hello, good afternoon, good afternoon. I see a lot of side conversations when there are people that are your residents who want to talk to you. Thank you very much for your attention.
Council Chamber: I just want to say that it is unbelievably shameful that we have a billionaire-backed budget on the table today. Yes, we got you to reverse course on youth jobs. Thank you for listening to the young people who had to come here after school to get you to do that.
Council Chamber: And we're telling you, keep listening to your constituents. I know that I have talked with so many people in this room who have been trying to reach you for months, trying to reach you since May to pass a budget that doesn't put more burden on working people.
Council Chamber: I'm speaking here today not just as a constituent, I'm a constituent of the 47th Ward, but also as a person who has debt, also as a person who has only, in 3 years of my adult life, made over the federal poverty level. Do you know what that's like?
Council Chamber: You don't know what that's like. You're sitting here with your comfortable jobs, and you're not even listening to people who have been flooding your phone lines, your email inboxes.
Council Chamber: Rich corporations can afford to pay. We cannot afford to pay more. And the fact that you want to go after vulnerable residents and just give out contracts to private debt collectors to hound people who can't afford ambulances?
Council Chamber: And people who can't afford their unpaid parking tickets, and people who can't afford their utility bills.
Council Chamber: They can't pay that money. You cannot build a budget that is built around money from people who cannot pay.
Council Chamber: But you know who can pay? The billionaires? You know who can pay? Google opening a huge-ass headquarters across the street. It is shameful that we have to come out here every single day, and that you are taking our holidays from us, and time with our family, and people are taking time off of work to come and talk to you. And we're even having a conversation about a budget that was written by corporate lobbyists!
Council Chamber: Whose side are you on? I'm asking you who you work for! You work for us! You need to be listening to us!
Council Chamber: Public health is public safety. We've been saying that since April. We've been saying that last year.
Council Chamber: Turning our neighborhoods into tiny little miniature casi… Thank you for your comments.
Council Chamber: Next, we'll have, George Blakemore, followed by Amy Masters.
Council Chamber: Also, I want to recognize Alderman Riley for the purposes of quorum, Alderman Cosada for the purposes of quorum, and non-members Fuentes and Walkerspecht.
Council Chamber: This is sinful.
Council Chamber: Taxation without representation.
Council Chamber: The rich get rich at the expense of the poor.
Council Chamber: And…
Council Chamber: Your ultimate. Your ultimate, what are you talking about, Mr. Blame Mo? Be a little more articulate. Jason, urban.
Council Chamber: Ward is one of, I don't feel… one of the worst wards in the city of Chicago.
Council Chamber: That man right there, and his wife, Melissa.
Council Chamber: got the worst ward, but look at his seat. He's the head of budget here.
Council Chamber: Aren't you ashamed when you go to Madison and Pulaski, see all these Arabs and Koreans and Vietnamese working, just spending money, spending money? Why can't your constituent do that?
Council Chamber: Why can't your constituents do that?
Council Chamber: You're a black man.
Council Chamber: Go… go to the ghetto!
Council Chamber: And they have… now they're taxing your wife.
Council Chamber: And, and, and, and, Miss Scott's ward.
Council Chamber: All these vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Don't you black people have some shame?
Council Chamber: Don't you have some shame that these Mexicans help each other? That taxation in these Mexican wars are not in these white wars, but it's not in tax…
Council Chamber: Where is it? It's in the Black Ghetto! That is true! Don't even want to go to the Black Ghetto!
Council Chamber: Stop!
Council Chamber: If you so smart, you so articulate, why do you have the worst war in the city? The vacant lots. What's wrong with you, and what's wrong with your wife, and what's wrong with your constituents? We're not gonna lay that on you alone! We're not gonna lay that on you alone!
Council Chamber: All of you.
Council Chamber: All you Black ones, you're disgraceful. The answer…
Council Chamber: Thank you, thank you for your comments. Next we have Amy Masters, followed by Vicki,
Council Chamber: Curse a dog.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, Chairman Irvin and members of the Budget 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, where 18,000 businesses make their home.
Council Chamber: And more than half a million people go to work each day. Together, Chicago's office sector supports 64,000 jobs, the vast majority of them are union. I'm here today to ask you to support the alternative budget put forward by members of the City Council.
Council Chamber: We are grateful for the hundreds of hours that this group has committed, without the support of budget staff to craft a responsible package that avoids both a head tax and a dramatic property tax increase. This revenue package supports a full, advanced pension payment that will protect the city's credit rating and the retirement security of its workers.
Council Chamber: This budget proposal also removes the garbage fee increase, eliminates Chicago public library cuts, and increases funding for domestic violence services, all meaningful improvements. I want to address a repeated claim that businesses aren't paying their fair share.
Council Chamber: More than 80%…
Council Chamber: More than 80% of the fees and taxes in this alternative budget fall on businesses. More than 80%.
Council Chamber: Some of this burden on businesses includes a 15% personal property lease tax. This tax is already the highest in the nation. A new social media tax, and increased business fees. This is on top of Chicago having the highest commercial property taxes in the nation.
Council Chamber: To be clear, this budget isn't ideal, but we urge all stakeholders to work together to approve the alternative budget that limits additional burdens on residents while still supporting economic growth that is so critical.
Council Chamber: This country is watching this process play out and taking notes, so the sooner you can approve a balanced budget, the better. Chicago businesses are already under strain. We urge you to support this balanced, responsible, alternative budget.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments.
Council Chamber: Next, we'll have, vicki,
Council Chamber: Kurzedahl, followed by Nasser Ben Softman.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, members of the City Council.
Council Chamber: I'm speaking today as the recording secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Council Chamber: And someone who works with Chicago families who don't have lobbyists, corporate lawyers, or campaign contributions backing them up.
Council Chamber: Right now, a group of alders in this chamber would rather dig in their heels and push us into overtime and toward a government shutdown
Council Chamber: Thank you for listening, those of you that are.
Council Chamber: To put forward a budget that goes after working families and is based on math that doesn't add up.
Council Chamber: All to avoid asking wealthy corporations to pay a little more.
Council Chamber: They want to call that balance.
Council Chamber: Balanced about protecting billionaire profits while shifting the cost of government onto working people.
Council Chamber: We saw their priorities clearly last week. When cuts were on the table.
Council Chamber: They went straight for youth jobs and higher garbage fees.
Council Chamber: They only backed off because people organized and forced them to.
Council Chamber: That didn't happen by accident, and it shouldn't be forgotten.
Council Chamber: Those same alders are still pushing to eliminate taxes on rich corporations.
Council Chamber: If they succeed, the consequences are immediate and severe.
Council Chamber: Debt collectors chasing people who are already struggling.
Council Chamber: And made your cuts to essential city services.
Council Chamber: That they won't specify.
Council Chamber: Let's be honest about who pays first.
Council Chamber: Working-class families disproportionately black and brown families.
Council Chamber: For decades with the consequences of chronic underfunding and disinvestment.
Council Chamber: Instead of asking the ultra-wealthy to step up, working families are being asked to pay more.
Council Chamber: Bad taxes go up. Garbage…
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Next, we have Nasa Ben Softman, followed by Jasmine Smith.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Okay, oh, alright, then we… I'm sorry, followed by Alex Goldenberg.
Council Chamber: Hey.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, for being here. It's… it's very important that we as, you know, citizens of the city of Chicago are here to express our opinions and our voices. Chicago is a city that captured my heart with its vibrant culture and diverse people. People that you were chosen to represent.
Council Chamber: Something that should be considered a very high honor, but what does it say when our leaders want to defund education, transit, health, and shelter? Can you really wake up in the morning and say that you want uneducated people out on the… and have people out on the streets?
Council Chamber: Coming here, I passed several homeless people And barely blankets.
Council Chamber: That's far too many, that's one too many.
Council Chamber: I'm urging you, I'm here with my city and my people, urging you to reconsider what you're doing, because if you consider… if you continue to defund libraries, transit, health centers.
Council Chamber: You will definitively ruin more lives than you will help. If you want Chicago to be a safe city, it needs to be one where leaders are comfortable opening their hearts and minds. It is your job to represent the kind people in this city, and to protect the workers.
Council Chamber: And that's all I have to say, thank you.
Council Chamber: We are good team.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comment. Sergeant Arm, we were, we had a duplicate in the,
Council Chamber: in the, in the box, so if you can pull one more, one more out. Next we have, Alex Goldenberg, followed by Gabriel Reyes.
Council Chamber: Hello again, members of City Council. My name is Alex Goldenberg, I'm a resident of the 22nd Ward, part of United Working Families. As we dug deeper into this proposal yesterday and saw the plan to sell debt
Council Chamber: We can't be any more disappointed.
Council Chamber: To think that you would rather go after people who are… low-income, Struggling to pay bills.
Council Chamber: dealing with debt collectors calling them. You would rather ask…
Council Chamber: Them to suffer more than to ask the rich corporations to pay just a little bit
Council Chamber: There can't be a greater contrast, there can't be a greater contradiction, and there can't be a greater…
Council Chamber: Display of which side you're really on.
Council Chamber: We're really asking you to make a simple choice, which is to side with 70% of the residents of your ward.
Council Chamber: This will help you get re-elected, much more so than the money of… these…
Council Chamber: Business, corporate, neoliberal, people who are leading us in the wrong direction.
Council Chamber: Like, we really have… An opportunity to do right by our city. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Council Chamber: Ma'am, both of you.
Council Chamber: both askewed.
Council Chamber: Sarge, Sarge, could you remove both of them out?
Council Chamber: Committee will stand at ease.
Council Chamber: Alright, we'll all come back to order.
Council Chamber: Any, any, any additional outbursts, will cause the Sergeant in ours to remove
Council Chamber: Move you from the chamber.
Council Chamber: There'll be no more warnings.
Council Chamber: Just removals.
Council Chamber: Mr. Goldenberg?
Council Chamber: Okay, you may continue.
Council Chamber: Thank you.
Council Chamber: I think where we left off, I was making the point that
Council Chamber: Selling debt of low-income and working people to pay for a budget instead of taxing rich corporations is wrong.
Council Chamber: I think you know it's wrong.
Council Chamber: As more of your constituents find out about this plan, they will also know it's wrong, they will remind you that it's wrong, and they won't forget that it's wrong. Several people have alluded today to the sale of the parking meters.
Council Chamber: The citizens of Chicago have never forgotten that. They will not forget, when their phones are ringing off the hook by bill collectors, that it's because you sold their debt to third parties and have had crushing impacts on their family's livelihood and mental health.
Council Chamber: So we are urging you to stop this plan of selling debt, stop this plan of $42 million and cut.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments.
Council Chamber: Looks like, Mr. Reyes was removed, so I'm gonna pass him up, and you gonna give me one more?
Council Chamber: Alright, last one. Next, we'll have, Lynetta Thomas.
Council Chamber: Followed by Julie Dworkin.
Council Chamber: You may proceed. I'm waiting for the, council members to sit down.
Council Chamber: Ma'am, you may, you may proceed. Jessica.
Council Chamber: Over there on land.
Council Chamber: I know y'all didn't take notes yesterday, so here are the resolutions to this deficit again. Let's start with the math. Chicago faces a $1.15 billion corporate fund deficit. The proposed $33 head tax raises about $80 million, less than 7% of the gap. It discourages hiring and does not solve the problem.
Council Chamber: Control over time immediately. CPD budgets about $100 million and spends close to $190 million. The fiscal year 26 proposal normalizes this by budgeting $200 million.
Council Chamber: Require action. Enforce caps, pre-approval, event cost recovery, and civilian scheduling. Finance must model 10%, 15%, and 25% overtime reductions.
Council Chamber: Pause wage growth for one year, including aldermen. No layoffs, protect frontline workers and step increases. Pause across the board raises for non-critical positions. Aldermanic COLAs alone cost over $350,000 annually. Required action frees all COLAs for fiscal year 26.
Council Chamber: Audit and re-bid major contracts. Chicago spends billions annually on vendors focused on IT, security, fleet facilities, and temp staffing.
Council Chamber: Re-bid or consolidate top contracts.
Council Chamber: Sunset pandemic-era programs. Federal relief is gone, but costs remain.
Council Chamber: Do a 90-day outcomes audit with Sunset Authority. Fixed CPS transfers. CPS plan for $379 million in TIF support. The current proposal from the City Council exceeds that without conditions.
Council Chamber: CAP CPS at stated need and require reciprocal payment.
Council Chamber: Final directive to this Finance Committee, enter these items as working budget notes, publish the fiscal assumptions, do not move this budget forward until the math is shown. Bottom line, the deficit can be closed without a
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Next we'll have, Julie Dworkin.
Council Chamber: Ma'am?
Council Chamber: Sarge, could you remove it, please? Thank you.
Lamont Robinson: And…
Council Chamber: Commuter stand at ease.
Lamont Robinson: Can't do this with each other.
Council Chamber: Bye.
Council Chamber: Okay, we'll come back to order.
Council Chamber: Oh.
Council Chamber: Next, we'll have, Julie Dworkin, Followed by Ishan Daya.
Council Chamber: City Council members.
Council Chamber: Right now, you have a very clear choice in front of you. A budget that balances out as is legally required for the City of Chicago, and one that simply does not add up.
Council Chamber: The alternative budget proposal relies on $46.6 million in efficiencies that cannot be realized next year. It rests on ideas for government streamlining that are already included in the budget or in the works, and insists that they can be done faster without any data to back this up.
Council Chamber: The savings will not be realized. It counts on $90 million for a debt-selling scheme that has not been proven to be legally viable or feasible for buyers. Not to mention that it goes after those who have the least to balance the budget.
Council Chamber: Other revenues come from unsubstantiated projections for revenue from untested schemes.
Council Chamber: In addition, the new revenues in the alternate proposal overwhelmingly shift the burden to residents and city workers versus corporations.
Council Chamber: Last week, the Sun-Times and WBEZ analyzed jobs data in Chicago and spoke to labor and tax experts who all agreed that there's no data that supports that the head tax in Chicago has had any impact on job growth or loss.
Council Chamber: Suburban job growth tracked the city's job growth and decline in the years that the head tax was in place, despite the suburbs having no similar tax.
Council Chamber: Even Joe Ferguson from the Civic Federation admitted that there's no data that shows that the head tax killed jobs.
Council Chamber: This analysis, and the full explanation yesterday of the fiscally unsound budget proposal, has removed all doubt about what is happening here.
Council Chamber: Corporations simply do not want to pay any new tax, despite their ability to absorb the cost after the massive tax increases they have received.
Council Chamber: There are no longer any hidden efficiencies or alternative revenues to hide behind, or narratives about job killing. It is now simply tax corporations or tax us, and the garbage tax just came off the table. So in my mind, there's now only one option. Tax the corporations who've been given a pass for a decade to create stable funding for the services
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments.
Council Chamber: Next, we have Ishan Daya, followed by Dennis White.
Council Chamber: Hey y'all, my name's Ishan Daya, I am the co-director of the Institute for Public Good. I'm here with a plea for fiscal responsibility.
Council Chamber: What was presented yesterday gives me really grave concern when I look through the revenue proposals that you had put forward and that you voted forward.
Council Chamber: The $6 million in the liquor tax will have a lawsuit against it, and we cannot count on that to balance this budget.
Council Chamber: We have $32 million… sorry, we have $92 million in sales of debt, That you all are proposing?
Council Chamber: That will put one thing to be true next year, which is that we will set the record for the number of bankruptcies in this city across the nation.
Council Chamber: Baltimore, Alderman Conway, you were right. Baltimore did sale debt, and what happened was a spike in bankruptcies of their residents and folks leaving that state.
Council Chamber: We are going to see the same thing happen in this city if we continue to sick debt collectors on our own people. We don't even need to worry about businesses leaving, because there will be no workers left to work at those businesses.
Council Chamber: What we need to be talking about is the fact that these debt collections
Council Chamber: Do not happen evenly across the city.
Council Chamber: These debt collections affect most greatly the south and the west sides.
Council Chamber: Ward 16 is the number 1 in water debt collection.
Council Chamber: Ward 21?
Council Chamber: is number 3.
Council Chamber: Word 8?
Council Chamber: Ward 7, Ward 37, Ward 3, and Ward 5?
Council Chamber: All of these are in the top 15 that are disproportionately going to impact your residents than any other residents in the city. These are realities that your constituents are going to face, and I'm asking you, do not bring us into fiscal disaster next year, where we're going to have to come back here in the middle of the year.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Next is Dennis White, followed by our final speaker, Carl Gutierrez.
Council Chamber: It's funny that everybody say, tax the rich.
Council Chamber: And the only ones who say tax-rich are CTU.
Council Chamber: And CTU is so far up into politics right offhand, that…
Council Chamber: the kids are not reading, they're not doing math on none of the bases, because CTU is all up into politics all of a sudden. And then you over… everybody over here talking about tax the rich.
Council Chamber: Big, tall, mild…
Council Chamber: Trump and stuff, but nobody ain't saying nothing about Brandon Johnson put this ridiculous budget plan for fiscal year 26.
Council Chamber: Now, nobody did not learn a lesson from fiscal… from this year when he put a $300 million tax in proposal, and the city council shot it down. So, you all need to be very, very careful about who need to be taxed, because I know some don't have jobs.
Council Chamber: And then you all over here complaining, bitching, moaning, and stuff?
Council Chamber: And…
Council Chamber: I don't see nobody else doing nothing. The city is in crisis, not only in financial crisis, but we gotta deal with the crime. If you want the budget to be saved, or money and stuff, focus on get these illegals out of this city.
Council Chamber: You boo all you want to. Boo all you want to, that's okay. Brown folks still talking.
Council Chamber: then do a financial audit and stuff. And then, if you want to really do something.
Council Chamber: Vote Brandon Johnson out. Vote some adults in here to do the budget much better. But you all over here, you liberals over here ain't doing nothing but talking. That's all you know how to do.
Council Chamber: But, if anything else, That's how you guys get this budget right.
Council Chamber: Brandon Johnson ain't gonna do it.
Council Chamber: He ain't gonna… he don't know how.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. Our final speaker is Carl Gutierrez.
Council Chamber: Good morning, Chair Urban and members of the committee. My name is Carly Gutierrez from the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, representing more than 1,000 members of all sizes and sectors across our city. As I said yesterday, the 2026 budget has been a hugely difficult process, putting our city in a place we've never been.
Council Chamber: Both budgets are hard on all of Chicago's businesses, but especially our small and mid-sized companies.
Council Chamber: With businesses, across the board not only having more skin in the game, but by a margin of 4 to 1, and yet…
Council Chamber: While both budgets are hugely difficult, one at least does not include a tax on jobs, makes a sincere effort to address the savings and efficiencies identified in the Ernst Young report.
Council Chamber: And makes the full advance payment to our city's pensions, lowering the threat of a credit downgrade, and helping better protect our city's financial future and ability to invest in ourselves.
Council Chamber: As I said yesterday, members of the City Council, you should not have ever been put in this kind of position, but you stepped up, and I will say it again, both budgets are hugely difficult for Chicago businesses. Our ask now, as we move forward and close this process.
Council Chamber: that it proceeds as efficiently, responsibly, and respectfully as possible. That includes giving the members of the City Council the respect they deserve as co-equal branch of government.
Council Chamber: We cannot afford the uncertainty that comes from recklessly and needlessly protracting this process, and I will close by saying, as I did yesterday, we are a good city and a great city, and we all look forward to working with you next year to build a city future that is in a just and sustainable way. Thank you.
Council Chamber: Thank you for your comments. We want to recognize Alderman Vasquez for the purposes of quorum.
Council Chamber: Also, entertain a motion to allow for remote participation for Alders Mosley and Robinson. Is there a motion?
Council Chamber: So, moved by… Who's it, Alderman Dow, all in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Any opinion of the chairs? Ayes have it, and Alders Mosley and Robinson, will be able to join virtually. Alderman Mosley, are you there?
Ronnie Mosley: Present.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson?
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson.
Council Chamber: I also recognize, non-member Lawson.
Council Chamber: Joined us as well, as well as, non-member Manna Hoppenworth.
Council Chamber: Also, non-member Coleman.
Council Chamber: Any others? We miss anybody?
Council Chamber: Okay,
Council Chamber: We'll proceed, like to, go out of order and do all of the transfers first, to get those out of the way.
Council Chamber: Actually, let me do the Rule 45 report, which was submitted to everyone electronically.
Council Chamber: Is there a motion to accept the Rule 49… Rule 45 report? So moved. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Independent chairs, ayes have it. All right, today we've got 26 items before us. Would like to, clear out, our,
Council Chamber: transfers, Which are items… 8 through 26.
Council Chamber: Which all transfer of fund ordinances.
Council Chamber: So we have 19 proposed ordinances for Wards 1, 14, 21, 22, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, and 46, 2 for the Committee on Committees and Rules, 2 for the Committee on Education.
Council Chamber: the Committee on Housing and Real Estate, the Legislative Reference Bureau, and two for the Committee on License and Consumer Protection, which have all been distributed to committee members.
Council Chamber: We also have 4 substitutes for… of transfers for the Committee on Committees and Rules, and Wars 22, 39, and 41. Can I get a motion to accept the substitutes?
Council Chamber: So moved by Alderman Telly-Farrell. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Independent chairs, ayes have it, and the substitutes are, before us. We get a motion to approve, items 8 through 26 on our agenda?
Council Chamber: So moved by Alderman Telly-Farrell. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Any appearing that chairs? Ayes have it, and these items will be reported out at the next available meeting. All right, going back to item number one, item number one…
Council Chamber: Tuddha.
Council Chamber: Not without seeing it. I can't see what's on there.
Council Chamber: Alright, now before us is the… Budget Director.
Council Chamber: Annette Guzman, as we now have… A series of items,
Council Chamber: Items, 1 through 7, which are,
Council Chamber: items, in relation to the 2026 appropriation and budget, items, so…
Council Chamber: Now we'll consider item number one, director Guzman.
Council Chamber: Oh.
Council Chamber: Code Corrections. Code Corrections, yeah, I'm sorry.
Council Chamber: Item number one in front of you is the code corrections. I will defer to, Ray in the box from the Department of Law to walk the City Council through, those items.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon, Ray Phillips-Santos on behalf of the City of Chicago's Department of Law. The Substitute Code Correction Ordinance
Council Chamber: Consists of… 11 substantive sections.
Council Chamber: It is recommended that we adopt substitute.
Council Chamber: But otherwise, in its original form and in its substitute form, it is
Council Chamber: a collection of, oh, I'm sorry, you were,
Council Chamber: You're asking for a motion to accept a substitute, I'm assuming? Thank you. Alderman Lopez, on the motion to accept and substitute?
Council Chamber: All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Any opinion that says ayes having to substitute is now before us, you may continue,
Council Chamber: Quote, Council. Thank you.
Council Chamber: These are corrections as small as removing a…
Council Chamber: Comma in Section 3 from excessive… between the words excessive force.
Council Chamber: to, putting in a correct subsection, as you see in Section 5, adding a subsection A in between 251050A42.
Council Chamber: If you have any questions, I'm happy to take them.
Council Chamber: Any questions?
Council Chamber: Is there a motion?
Council Chamber: Move to pass by Alderman Lespada. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Independent Chair's ayes having this matter will be reported out at our next City Council meeting. Item number 2 and 3 are…
Council Chamber: taken together, and we'll have a presentation by, Budget Director.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: get some assistance with getting this up on the screen. Emily?
Council Chamber: I can get some assistance.
Council Chamber: So thank you for, thank you for,
Council Chamber: each of the members of City Council for your time.
Council Chamber: the effort… And work that's gone into the budget, that was, presented yesterday.
Council Chamber: Come before you today, myself, Jill Jaworski, and Mike Belsky, to provide information regarding the…
Council Chamber: budget.
Council Chamber: Alderman Vegas? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Is the Budget Director going to give a presentation on the budget that the administration's proposing?
Council Chamber: I believe that she's given a presentation on what came from revenue, from the revenue ordinance, from yesterday, coupled with,
Council Chamber: Essentially, that's it with the technical amendments. So, so then, are we… she's presenting the budget… she's analyzing the budget from revenue from yesterday with the hopes of that budget passing today? Is that what we're doing?
Council Chamber: again, the revenue, based on what was submitted yesterday, to my understanding, that is the component of the amendment that is… that will be before us. I know they're still running it off today, but she was doing a presentation to that effect.
Council Chamber: Does that clarify?
Council Chamber: Alright, well, I'll let her proceed, but okay. Okay, all right, very well.
Council Chamber: Yes.
Council Chamber: Alderman, bill.
Council Chamber: Just a quick question. What was presented yesterday was in finance.
Council Chamber: And those are financial matters that are… should be in the Finance Committee, and not the Budget Committee. That was passed yesterday and approved, in that committee, and I think using, a maneuver to have this presented in budget is totally out of order, because we're talking about items that should be in finance.
Council Chamber: The actual amendment of the…
Council Chamber: of the appropriation ordinance is a matter for the jurisdiction of the committee, and pieces of the ordinance that was passed by the Finance Committee are incorporated into the appropriation ordinance because the revenues and other things have changed based on what passed on yesterday.
Council Chamber: Is that… Well, I totally understand, but where is… where's the mayor's proposal?
Council Chamber: there… the budget at this point in time has been, theoretically, while the revenue ordinance changing, theoretically been amended, and those changes were incorporated into the amendment, package that will be before us. No, that didn't… I asked where was the mayor's proposal?
Council Chamber: The mayor's proposal, the original proposal that has been submitted to us back in October is theoretically before us. However, the revenue component of the proposal has changed, which is going to cause a change in the overall appropriation ordinance, which is what
Council Chamber: She's essentially going to discuss.
Council Chamber: Any other questions, folks? She proceeds.
Council Chamber: May proceed.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman and members of City Council. Thank you for, my name is Annette Guzman, Budget Director, and I come before you to provide an update on the appropriation ordinance
Council Chamber: That, was presented in October and has thus been, updated through the passage, out of committee yesterday of the revenue
Council Chamber: updated revenue ordinance. So I'm joined today by my colleagues Jill Jaworski, CFO for the City, and Michael Belsky, comptroller for the City, to provide that analysis.
Council Chamber: So, as we work through both the revenue and expenditure side of the ledger, our utmost, responsibility as a city is to ensure
Council Chamber: that…
Council Chamber: what we pass out of this committee, and also what comes before City Council is a balanced budget. And I take that particularly seriously, because at the end of the day, my office and I, as the budget director, will not only have to manage
Council Chamber: The budget next year, ensuring that every aspect of the budget is, monitored, but also identifying solutions, to the extent that as the year goes along.
Council Chamber: We have performance on both the revenue and or expenditure side that will, implicate the end-of-year
Council Chamber: results.
Council Chamber: As we provide both revenue updates to City Council on a monthly, basis, as well as quarterly budget reports, which provide overall, updates to both the expenditure and revenue side.
Council Chamber: And so we offer this, information as this committee, and ultimately City Council takes up the final passage of the budget, providing both our elected leaders as well as, members of the public information around the budget.
Council Chamber: So, looking at what was presented yesterday, projected, additional new revenues and expenditure savings.
Council Chamber: of $176 million of new items presented by City Council, not including the ones that were provided in the Mayor's budget.
Council Chamber: But $176.6 million of additional revenue. My office, along with the rest of the finance team, reviewed, those, projections…
Council Chamber: Copy of this deck.
Council Chamber: That can be handed out to the…
Council Chamber: Committee. They are… they are running those off right now.
Council Chamber: So, taking the information that we were provided in both the revenue ordinance as well as the deck that was presented yesterday, our team worked,
Council Chamber: Around the clock to provide, our analysis,
Council Chamber: Of those revenues and expenditure savings, to put into the technical amendment that'll come before you today to ensure that,
Council Chamber: we applied operational impacts to those as well. And so, when we did our analysis of the new items that were included in the proposal yesterday, the OVM projection amount, which is based on the budget impact numbers.
Council Chamber: reflected in the City Council alternative budget presentation, as that is the only information that we were provided.
Council Chamber: the number that we came up with on both the revenue and expenditure saving side is a negative $8.3 million.
Council Chamber: When we look at the, items that the, proposal was looking to solve, both on the expenditure side, additional expenditures added to the corporate fund.
Council Chamber: As well as the revenue projections provided in the
Council Chamber: presentation, on the presentation, it balances out at $258. When we ran our projections, the expenditure increase was $236 million, which we'll go over in a second.
Council Chamber: When we add the, negative $8 million to the $81.8 that was already included from the mayor's proposal.
Council Chamber: That, left a, anticipated deficit next year of $163 million. A couple of notes, the additional pension advance.
Council Chamber: In the proposal, it was noted as $139.9 million from the, amount that was reflected in the mayor's original, budget proposal. When we, reflect that against
Council Chamber: The amount actually needed from the corporate fund, because the pension advance
Council Chamber: is paid by not only the corporate fund, but water and sewer and aviation funds. It's actually only another $117.8 million was needed
Council Chamber: One additional note on the library books, that we'll need to, discuss and make sure that…
Council Chamber: the property tax ordinance is, accurately reflected. When we look at what was passed yesterday. It appears to…
Council Chamber: increase the levy by $13 million, while only $9 million of expenditures are offsetting it. I think that's a typographical error, but we'll need to make sure that that is
Council Chamber: Updated accurately.
Council Chamber: When we think about,
Council Chamber: How we will, bring this budget into next year, thinking about structural solutions versus one-time solutions as we are working our way towards structural balance, not only, in next year's budget, but future year budgets.
Council Chamber: What we see from what was presented yesterday are, some structural, revenue sources, or sustainable revenue sources, which will continue year over year, inclusive of the shopping bag tax, the liquor tax.
Council Chamber: The Environmental Benchmark Ordinance and the advertising on light poles.
Council Chamber: But a number of speculative revenue and expenditure savings, as well as one-time revenue sources. And when we look at that, what the proposal, proposes to do is add just over a hundred and,
Council Chamber: $80 million of proposed non-structural solutions to the FY26 budget.
Council Chamber: Of the $216 million of newly proposed revenue and expenditure savings in the alternative budget proposal.
Council Chamber: the revisions overwhelmingly shift, the burden onto residents and our labor force, and that's, based on the,
Council Chamber: Inclusion of the, sale of debt.
Council Chamber: The liquor tax, the shopping bag tax.
Council Chamber: And, cuts or efficiencies within the budget.
Council Chamber: 21% on businesses, which is the augmented reality revenue, the advertising revenue, the benchmark ordinance, and the VGT license.
Council Chamber: So, going, specifically into our projections of each of the revenue proposals, the corporate fund efficiencies and revenue, that was passed.
Council Chamber: At $46.6 million, left a flexibility on how to get there, but gave a couple of options, including additional vacancy cuts, fleet modernization, service optimization, including false alarm fees and fines.
Council Chamber: For the additional vacancy cuts, the budget already includes $9 million of vacancy cuts on the corporate fund. There is a reference to the report that we developed with EY, which…
Council Chamber: reflected a range between $2 to $10 million of vacancy cuts. And so, from our perspective, we had already incorporated that
Council Chamber: option into the report, and any additional, so the $2 million that was proposed yesterday would be in addition to the $9 million. We will get to a slide in a second around where we think additional vacancy cuts can be made by this,
Council Chamber: this city council, but again, from our perspective, we've done the, the option, and we actually outpaced the option that was in the report.
Council Chamber: Our projection for, out of the $46.6 million, what we believe, additionally can be done are additional vacant land sales. We heard back from, the Department of Planning and Development.
Council Chamber: around the vacancy, the vacant land, that is already available.
Council Chamber: based on the sale through the Scheibach Builder site, in October, the sales were recently finalized, an additional $6 million, and there's an appendix to this slide deck, which provides the,
Council Chamber: locations of those, vacant land sales, which have been, discussed, and, with members of City Council.
Council Chamber: The false alarm fees and fines, as we had discussed in our letter back to city council members, these largely exist in our ordinance today. We have, the ability to, enforce fines and fees for false alarms.
Council Chamber: As we had discussed in our report with, EY, the resources do not exist today. We don't track false alarms, nor do we,
Council Chamber: Currently have the resources to initiate, tickets on those who,
Council Chamber: violate this. And so, when we think about the ability to,
Council Chamber: enact, say, revenue in this budget. The likelihood is very speculative.
Council Chamber: Additional fleet modernization through extensive discussions with our Department of Fleet and Facility Management.
Council Chamber: We had already included $3.3 million of revenue in our budget. That is the achievable amount that they have, reflected to us they'll be able to do.
Council Chamber: We've also noted several times that each of the options in the EY report are options that are baked into this budget to begin implementing
Council Chamber: However, achieving all of that in one… in year… in 2026, is not likely.
Council Chamber: Autumn Rider?
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. As we're going through this dog and pony show, I think it begs a question. One, why is the PPLT not being featured here today? But I think more importantly, the baseline question is.
Council Chamber: Who's checking the administration's math?
Council Chamber: And I would expect all the work product that went into these slides here, these very vague slides, all that work that backs this up will be turned over, to the budgeteers and the City Council to share with our experts to make sure this math actually does add up.
Council Chamber: Because I would… I would argue that this budget team's credibility's fallen off a cliff in the last week, and so we want to make sure that responsible, financial experts get a chance to check their math, because the data has been hidden from this council as long as it has.
Council Chamber: It really doesn't… it doesn't show,
Council Chamber: any good faith here. So, we will, once… once they have, completed, everybody will have… they're still running off this stuff. Again, this was just a fairly quick turnaround.
Council Chamber: Once all of that is done, people can ask, whatever questions that they wish to ask to the team and members.
Council Chamber: Here, but let's allow them to get through the presentation, and then we'll have time for Q&A to your heart's content. Chairman, that's fine, but I guess the request is that we would like to see the homework they've done to come up with these numbers and projections today.
Council Chamber: Given that we have a ticking clock and a deadline to meet, we'd like to check their math back of envelope with financial experts that are advising the City Council. Your request is noted.
Council Chamber: Okay. All right. Noted, okay.
Council Chamber: Oh, I'm right.
Council Chamber: Can you continue.
Council Chamber: I'll turn it over to CFO Jill Taworski to talk through the, projection on the VGT.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Jill Jaworski, CFO. Regarding the video gaming tax, the, proposal that was, presented assumed
Council Chamber: that, 80% of the potential establishments in Chicago would obtain a license for VGTs at $1,000 per terminal, for $6.8 million in revenue.
Council Chamber: Our analysis shows we'd have, if we authorized, video gaming terminals, we'd have a $3 million decline in revenue in 20… fiscal year 2026.
Council Chamber: There's a few items of note. One is that the timeframe to, get a license is currently 6 to 12 months. That doesn't include the impact of increased applications, from, a number of, applicants from Chicago. That's just, the steady rate, given the level of,
Council Chamber: communities around the state that already have VGTs, Chicago obviously out…
Council Chamber: being much larger than any of those communities would likely have an impact on that. Our projections assume that 6% of potential establishments would get approved in year one. This was based on the Christensen Capital, report that was, provided earlier, and they based that assumption on
Council Chamber: Historical precedent, looking at other communities and the ramp-up time that it took them to build up, which is approximately 10 years to sort of get to full
Council Chamber: you know, full licensing potential. And a lot of that is occurring, in the first, you know, 3, 4, 5 years. But there is a…
Council Chamber: Significant lag in the beginning.
Council Chamber: We would immediately lose the $4 million in community benefit payment that we get from Bally's, that would, negatively impact the revenues, offset the revenues that we would be getting.
Council Chamber: We also need to do some further research on the fee itself.
Council Chamber: It's, it's not a tax, because the, the State Video Gaming Act, preempts Home Rule municipalities from imposing taxes on video gaming terminals, so it has to be a fee, and fees have to have some nexus to the, costs incurred.
Council Chamber: If we flip to the next page, we have a lot of detail on how we got to, our calculations. The top half of this is essentially the material that was in the CCA
Council Chamber: report. So the top part under the blue, it contains the total city revenues that were estimated
Council Chamber: To be,
Council Chamber: total city tax revenues from Bally's, and then the impact of those tax revenues with VGT, so we see a drop, of about $5 million,
Council Chamber: based on the impact of VGTs, drawing people away from, the slots at the casino. And again, those get taxed at 20%, whereas we get 5.15% on the VGTs.
Council Chamber: And so it can have a significant impact, and as many of you have stated in your day, we do expect a lot of people would use the VGTs.
Council Chamber: The VGT establishments, the number of them is 160, that's assumed in that first year, that 6% number. Total tax revenues collected.
Council Chamber: In the aggregate would be $5.7 million, but most of that would go to the state of Illinois. The city would get, $840,000 of that.
Council Chamber: The state gets about 30% of NTI, we get 5.15%. So we looked at what it would cost if we did add licensing fees, which were not included in those, the CCA report.
Council Chamber: So we added a $500 licensing fee per establishment and a $1,000 licensing fee per VGT, which we believe reflects the proposal.
Council Chamber: Though I'm not sure you included an establishment one, but the $1,000, we believe, reflects the proposal. That would bring us, based on the number of, establishments and terminals, an additional amount of $960,000.
Council Chamber: So when we take the offset of the loss in the city revenue, ultimately that ends up being, $3.04 million negative when we take the,
Council Chamber: the… the revenues we'd receive from the VGTs, but the larger losses that we would receive
Council Chamber: larger losses we would experience, from the loss of the Bally's payment and Bally's, revenues.
Council Chamber: In addition, estimates were made that this would lead to a loss of 398 jobs.
Council Chamber: At the Ballys.
Council Chamber: With that, I'll turn it back over to Annette.
Council Chamber: In the, proposal that was passed out of committee yesterday, the proposal had a $6 million, sorry, a
Council Chamber: $12.2 million shopping bag tax. The impact of that against the budget would be 8… against the mayor's original proposal, would be $8.7 million by increasing the shopping bag tax from 10 cents to 15 cents, allowing a retailer commission of 1 cent, so what would come back to the city is 14 cents per bag.
Council Chamber: When we look at that, based on the projections of our revenue that we're currently experiencing this year, our projection is actually $8.7 million of additional revenue, with an impact against the mayor's budget of $5.2 million.
Council Chamber: What we're seeing in the, bag tax this year is reflected in not only our monthly, budget, revenue reports, but also in the financial update briefings that we've done this year with City Council, is about an 11% loss of taxable activity when we increase the fee this year from 7 cents to.
Council Chamber: 10 cents with, one…
Council Chamber: Going back to the retailer, so shifting it to 15 cents.
Council Chamber: again, with 1 cent remaining with the retailer, we'll have, significant impact on consumer behavior. And so, again, we built that into our projection to reflect that an even higher increase will probably shift consumer behavior even more than what we're seeing this year.
Council Chamber: As it relates to the liquor tax.
Council Chamber: The proposal yesterday was $6 million in liquor tax, by replacing the existing unit-based tax.
Council Chamber: With percentage-based tax for off-premise liquor sales during the committee, that was amended from 3% to 1.5%.
Council Chamber: I'm gonna start this and then turn it over to Brian Carlson, from the Department of Finance Revenue Collection Division. But what we currently see is that 85% of our top, sorry, our top 6 distributors remit about 85% of all liquor tax collected and administered by the city.
Council Chamber: As you know, based on your proposal, we currently have a unit-based
Council Chamber: tax on the volume of the liquor. When you convert that to a percentage basis, what our current unit basis, would be, would be an effective blended rate of 2.38%.
Council Chamber: Meaning that by imposing a rate of 1.50 on off-premise liquor, we will actually see a revenue loss, because that's less than what our effective tax rate is today.
Council Chamber: As well as the fact that off-prim actually makes up the bulk of purchases, for our, revenue.
Council Chamber: When you think about our other taxes, soda is taxed at 3%, which would be higher than what this proposed rate is on alcohol.
Council Chamber: And, one thing that we'll note is, implementation of this for off-premise retailers at the store level, beginning January 1st will be almost impossible. This is currently remitted to us.
Council Chamber: At the wholesaler level, retail stores don't collect this tax currently, and so implementing this within their systems will take time, as we've done for all of our new taxes, or,
Council Chamber: changes to our tax rates. We generally have a timeframe to allow retailers to shift to the new reality of having to collect a tax.
Council Chamber: Otherwise, if… without that level of time, it both, imposes undue burdens on the retailer, but also on the enforcement and revenue collection team within the Department of Finance.
Council Chamber: With that, I'll turn it over to Brian Carlson, who's in the box, to talk through the math on the four-point.
Council Chamber: $2 million.
Council Chamber: Hi everyone, Brian Carlson, Deputy Director of Tax Administration and Enforcement.
Council Chamber: So, here you see a breakdown of the, current tax that we receive by, category for the four categories of liquor tax that we have, which are beer and alcohol by volume of less than 14, 14 to 20%, and above 20%.
Council Chamber: So… To compute this loss, we looked at the percentage of
Council Chamber: tax that's received in each category based on the volume of, gallons that are reported on tax returns using the most recent tax return data available, which is for fiscal year July of 24 through June of 2025.
Council Chamber: And…
Council Chamber: Computed what the effective tax rate is for each of the four categories based on an average cost per gallon that was computed, using an average
Council Chamber: cost per 6-pack of beer, and per 750 milliliter bottle of wine or spirits. Computing an effective tax rate for each category, you can see…
Council Chamber: For beer, that's 1.81%.
Council Chamber: For the different categories of wine, it's .71%, 1.77% currently, and 3.32% for, alcohol by volume.
Council Chamber: greater than 20%. These rates have been diminishing over time since the per gallon rates have not been adjusted or increased since the end of 2007.
Council Chamber: So we're currently at, the effective tax rates that we are.
Council Chamber: Using a blended rate approach based on the volume in each category was how we got to an effective, tax rate across the board of 2.38%.
Council Chamber: which is quite a bit higher than the proposed 1.5%, and would result in a $4.2 million loss, in the first year of 2026 with a January 1
Council Chamber: effective date. And this is all based on 75% of liquor sales being, off-premises or packaged liquor.
Council Chamber: Thank you.
Council Chamber: Turning to fines, forfeitures, and penalties, the proposal had two items, including a $3 million projected amount for environmental benchmark ordinance, and $89.6 million from increased debt collection.
Council Chamber: Turning first to the Environmental Benchmark Ordinance, what we included in a response earlier back to City Council, is that our projection is actually $165,000 in 2026. The proposal that was, presented yesterday assumes 365 days of noncompliance.
Council Chamber: Yielding fines of $9,200 per building.
Council Chamber: However, in reality, the reporting deadline for companies is actually June 1st, making full-year 2026 non-compliance
Council Chamber: not possible within the, proposal. Realistically, the maximum fine is about, $4,662 per building.
Council Chamber: The proposal also assumes that developers would repeatedly, pay fines instead of coming into compliance with the city's ordinances.
Council Chamber: In practice, what we see with violations, across the board is that compliance is more cost-effective than incurring ongoing penalties.
Council Chamber: And so, working with, the Department of Environment, the projection of this benchmark ordinance is actually $165,000 prorating from the beginning of 2026.
Council Chamber: Turning to the sale of debt, just a note, and I think that we talked about this yesterday in, the mayor's proposed budget, we actually did increase, year over year the debt collection amount in the budget by $113 million, based on
Council Chamber: stepped up and ramped up enforcement by the Department of Finance and the Department of Law, and we provided additional resources within the Department of Law to do that.
Council Chamber: But also through, certain policy changes that would, make it, a little bit more difficult to, continually come in and off of our,
Council Chamber: Our, debt relief plans.
Council Chamber: I'll turn it over to Jill to talk a little bit more about the difficulty in selling the types of debts, the type of debt that the City of Chicago has, including our parking tickets, speed camera, and so forth.
Council Chamber: So, when we, we were listening to the presentation yesterday, I think there was a couple items that were going on here. There was one discussion of increased enforcement, and there was secondarily a discussion of the sale of debt. Annette has addressed the fact that we have already included increased enforcement in the Mayor's, proposed budget.
Council Chamber: So if we, turn towards the sale of debt, we emphatically believe, in my office in particular, which is responsible for all of the
Council Chamber: Types of major transactions that we do, whether it's sale of our bonds, asset sales, any of those type of large transactions, that we would not be able to sell this debt and generate proceeds in this manner.
Council Chamber: The types of…
Council Chamber: Sales of receivables that are done by governments are almost all sales of property tax, property tax.
Council Chamber: debts, and property tax debts are the most enforceable kind of debt because there is a lien on the property. We do see other municipalities engage in those type of sales, but this is really getting to the type of other, debts and tickets that are owed to the city, which do not have an enforcement mechanism. As the Comptroller discussed yesterday, we ourselves don't have the mechanisms to do this. We cannot take away licenses.
Council Chamber: We, cannot place liens on these properties, so there's no, enforcement beyond the normal types of collection procedures that, are engaged in by the outside collection agencies that the city
Council Chamber: city uses for these type of debts, or the individual litigation that, DOL
Council Chamber: does for the larger debts and more egregious violations, that we see. So, we do not have a way to package this and find investors that would be willing to buy these types of debt.
Council Chamber: Quickly, just turning to the last few items, the advertising, augmented reality advertising, doing things like,
Council Chamber: content on city property, such as Pokemon Go and other types of, events, forecasted at $6 million. Our projection is $0. There aren't any U.S. or international municipalities who've successfully implemented the licensing framework for this.
Council Chamber: And establishing this within the City of Chicago would require lengthy policy, legal, and procurement deliberation across several departments, including BACP, DOH, DOL, DCASE, 2FM, and DTI.
Council Chamber: And without precedent for how this would be accomplished, or decisions on the policy, the final policies and implications, within the city's framework, we cannot responsibly rely on the figures, that were projected yesterday, so currently our projection is $0.
Council Chamber: Can I add on that point, though, too, that locally, Milwaukee did attempt to do this, and they passed an ordinance, that would regulate and charge for this type of activity, and it was thrown out by the courts.
Council Chamber: due to, free speech issues. So, this has been, tried in other, jurisdictions and has not been held up so far.
Council Chamber: Turning really quickly to advertising revenue, three, items were presented yesterday. The Bridged House Pilot Program, the Light Pole Advertising Pilot Program, and advertising on City Fleet Vehicles at $29.3 million as a first-year projection.
Council Chamber: we weren't able to align, with likely revenue outcomes based on our current ad revenue streams. The city has a number of those, and Jill will talk about that in a second. But as you can see here, the city did establish a program similar to the one of the Bridge House program in 2011.
Council Chamber: Where ads were sold to place on our bridges. I think it was Bank of America who did it.
Council Chamber: And as reported, it didn't generate, any revenue. Currently, we have ad, programs for street furniture, digital billboards, as well as other items, and, through that, we currently raise about $23 million.
Council Chamber: Yeah, I think, many of you are familiar with the, advertising programs that we do have. We use JC2Co for our, primarily for, our municipal marketing initiatives. They run the street furniture program, which includes the, the ads that you see placed, around the city, particularly in the downtown area, as well as the, bus shelters and, some other types of
Council Chamber: advertisements.
Council Chamber: That program brings in $13 million annually. It's a large and well-established program. Our digital billboards, of which there are more than 50, bring in, $10 million. We are at max capacity under our contract for that, and under available, city locations for that program.
Council Chamber: And in addition, I think there was a mention of, advertising potentially on garbage cans. The city did try a program like that through Big Belly, and Vector Media, and that only generated $2 million.
Council Chamber: Over a 10-year period, and ultimately they moved away from offering, that program, because it wasn't, a good investment on the…
Council Chamber: Private company's part.
Council Chamber: Just taking each of them in turn, the Bridge House pilot program, both Mayor Daley and Mayor Rahm Emanuel experienced challenges finding companies interested in advertising on bridges, sorry, bridge houses. As I mentioned earlier, in 2011, this was done.
Council Chamber: And Bank of America placed ads on the Wabash Avenue Bridge house, and it drew immediate backlash from the community. It was taken down within two weeks of being placed up, and the lease was only worth $4,500. And so while,
Council Chamber: We don't think that there's any legal challenges. We think that it will be difficult to raise the level of revenue that was presented in the proposal yesterday.
Council Chamber: the light pole advertising program, this one was based on, you know, research that we provided to City Council at a projection of $4.6 million. We do know that in order for, and this was baked into the projections that we gave City Council earlier this summer, that CDOT would need additional positions.
Council Chamber: and resources in order to administer this program. And so the, hiring of additional personnel and, implementation of.
Council Chamber: A tech upgrade to their system to track, this work, could, impact the revenue projections, but we do, believe that this could bring in, additional revenue to the city.
Council Chamber: And then finally, advertising on city vehicles. I'll turn that over to Jill.
Council Chamber: Sure. So, advertising on city vehicles, is a complex issue. The city tried this, with the, garbage trucks, in 2014. The garbage trucks and our fleet vehicles are generally, purchased.
Council Chamber: Through our tax-exempt bonds, which include, IRS, code limitations on any type of what is called private activity, which would mean, generating, use of it, use of those tax-exempt, financed.
Council Chamber: Assets by a private entity, or us generating revenue from a prior private
Council Chamber: entity, through a tax-exempt finance asset. Some of the limitations are that 2.5% of the asset can be used for private, use, including advertising. That is a physical,
Council Chamber: limit, meaning that, for instance, if you had a building, a 2.5% of the square footage could be used
Council Chamber: for private use. An example of that that you may be familiar with is Chicago Transit Authority, and their headquarters building has, a small, I think, sundry shop and maybe a restaurant in their multi-story building that is under that.
Council Chamber: limitation. The other is that, for revenues, if it's an… if it's an item that has an operating cost, the revenues cannot exceed
Council Chamber: The operating cost, this relates back to the garbage trucks. When that was tried, the analysis by CDOT was that it costs $160,000 a year to operate a garbage truck. At that time, the revenue was $100,000 per vehicle, so that was under the operating cost.
Council Chamber: So that, that was allowable. There's certain other provisions, for instance, if the private use is less than 100 days, that can be allowable, but if we're talking about a large-scale advertising program, limiting it to such a short
Council Chamber: period of time per asset is likely going to make it highly disruptive and difficult to, implement. And so, you know, at this point, we put, zero dollars. There may be some possibility to do a modest amount of this, but we are not able to assess that at this time because of these limitations.
Council Chamber: And so, when we look at the anticipated, budget deficit,
Council Chamber: That we would believe that we would face immediately, in January. You know, the city has limited options.
Council Chamber: an opportunity to resolve a deficit, and one of the ways that we do that primarily is through hiring freezes, salvage through, vacant positions, and so forth. And so, as you can see here,
Council Chamber: In the proposed budget, that the mayor put forth, and that, on the expenditure side, still,
Council Chamber: looks unchanged when it relates to positions. Across the corporate fund, there's available vacancy budget of $99.6 million. That's after taking into account the adjustments that are baked into that budget already for turnover and the hiring freeze that was included in the mayor's proposed budget.
Council Chamber: So, when you break that down, of that $99 million, $52 million of that is just CPD, positions. Another $14 million is CFD, and as we know, it's difficult to.
Council Chamber: freeze CFD positions, or remove CFD positions because of the minimal manning requirements in the, union contracts. And another $279 million… $279,000 is OEMC.
Council Chamber: All other departments in the corporate fund make up just $33 million in available vacancy budget.
Council Chamber: And as we think about, when we would need to potentially address any, issues with the budget, if it's trying to be resolved through positions.
Council Chamber: The longer you wait, the less savings you're able to, recoup by not hiring into positions, and so taking, the amount across each of those,
Council Chamber: Buckets, you can see…
Council Chamber: for each month of the year, what our anticipated savings would be if we were to enact an additional hiring freeze or reduce the number of vacancy… vacant positions available. And so, looking at this.
Council Chamber: even with the 90… if we were to completely not allow any hiring, next year, it still wouldn't, resolve what we believe is the budget deficit. And so we would start having to look at other options to address the deficit that we currently see within the revenue side of the ledger.
Council Chamber: And with that, I'll turn it back to… Chairman.
Council Chamber: Thank you, thank you for the presentation. Any, questions.
Council Chamber: Questions? We're gonna pretty much, just go down the, list in, seniority order, to make it simple. And, yesterday, I think we… how many minutes can… can you do 7 minutes or so? 5 or 10?
Council Chamber: Hold on. Alright, we'll start with 5 and go from there. Point of information on the spotter?
Council Chamber: Sorry, Chair, just so we can ask the most…
Council Chamber: informed questions. Do we know if printed copies of the presentation are on the way?
Council Chamber: They're just handing them out. Oh, wait. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Happened on the desk while I was talking. Thank you. I think she may have been getting…
Council Chamber: Could you make sure the balance of members that did not get the presentation have them?
Council Chamber: Automobile?
Council Chamber: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon.
Council Chamber: Appreciate you all taking the time to, you know, crunch those numbers. You know.
Council Chamber: We, you know, we disagree with 99.9% of your assessment, because it looks like, based on your proposal, the only numbers that you agree with are the mayor's numbers.
Council Chamber: And everything that we submitted basically had a red line next to it.
Council Chamber: So, going back to Alderman Riley's question, would you be willing to sit down in an open and transparent way with our financial team and crunch numbers? Absolutely.
Council Chamber: Okay?
Council Chamber: Let's get back to VGTs.
Council Chamber: Basically, you have a broad range. You know, your numbers are saying 6 to 12 months. You know, the information, basically, I got from
Council Chamber: The gaming board was 6 to 8 months.
Council Chamber: However, have you ever thought about asking the governor to allocate more resources
Council Chamber: To get these licenses out the door?
Council Chamber: To get the revenue out faster.
Council Chamber: Have we personally asked the governor's office? I have not asked the governor. Do you think that would be a good idea, knowing that we're leaving a bunch of money on the table?
Council Chamber: I think that, we can definitely… if the… if the City Council, wants to move forward with this, I think it would be, incumbent upon us to have that conversation with the Governor's office, to see if we can reach the… and achieve the numbers that
Council Chamber: are, represented here in that proposal. Obviously, the Springfield and the governor's office, you know, have a lot of people that are, asking them for things, so, we cannot guarantee that, and so if it doesn't happen that it happens faster, then
Council Chamber: that also just impacts the amount of revenue that would be able to make. No, I agree that there's no guarantee, but I think instead of just saying, you know, 6 to 8 months, we can't do this, the numbers are bad, you know, I think we should, you know.
Council Chamber: Extend an olive branch to the governor, because they are… they're…
Council Chamber: able to make a lot more money on VGTs than us, so it… and they have budget problems as well, so I really… it makes sense for us to say, hey, Governor, work with us, put some more resources, and get these applications out the door, knowing that you're gonna have 2,640 applications coming your way.
Council Chamber: I… I think that anything that we can do to get things out of Springfield, we should do, and I just want to be clear, I don't think that we said that we can't do this. I think that I said that this is based on the history of what we see in other municipalities.
Council Chamber: that have, approved VGTs. Okay. Let's, let's talk about the advertisement on your proposal. Let me ask you, how much was the advertisement that the mayor spent on putting his name on every city vehicle in the city of Chicago? How much was that?
Council Chamber: I don't think anybody up here has that number, but it's probably the same amount as every other mayor that does that.
Council Chamber: None.
Council Chamber: So, knowing that we have a budget deficit of $1.3, $1.5 billion.
Council Chamber: it's okay that we just do whatever mayor does to try to advertise, to, you know.
Council Chamber: change our popularity numbers, or to make people feel that we're doing some things that we're not? So, what I would say is that, the… every year, we appropriate a budget for every department. Some of that includes things like printing and advertisement.
Council Chamber: So that was included in the budgets of the departments who did that. So, we did not come back to City Council for any additional dollars. It was in the appropriate budget. No, I get that, but what I'm saying is, knowing that we have a budget problem.
Council Chamber: You don't think those dollars would be better spent to say, wait a minute.
Council Chamber: Let's not advertise to promote ourselves. Everybody knows who the mayor is.
Council Chamber: We don't have to put a sign up on every, you know, corner on every block in the city, that the aldermen are doing, you know, capital improvements, streets, sidewalks, curbs, and gutter that comes out of our menu, but, you know, we look up and there's a big sign saying, hey, Mayor Brandon Johnson, build back better.
Council Chamber: I think that if, we want to have a conversation about
Council Chamber: usage of tax dollars on, including any elected official's name on projects that are done in the city of Chicago, that's a worthwhile conversation. I think that is different than the
Council Chamber: projected analysis that we've done on the proposal that was passed yesterday. I guess what I'm looking at is wasteful spending. That's what I'm looking at. That's all. Okay, let's get to the CPD numbers.
Council Chamber: What do you all do when CPD blows over their overtime? And then, how much overtime are they allotted this year?
Council Chamber: In, are we talking 25 or 26? We're talking about 26. 26. Okay, so, I think that we have… I think this is a great conversation, for one, so thank you for that question. Absolutely. I think that,
Council Chamber: you know, you… the City Council has brought to my office, as well as the finance team, for the last several years.
Council Chamber: the observation around, CPD's overtime budget. I'm looking for… I know, I'm trying to answer your question. Okay. And what we have done in the 26 budget is right-size their, overtime.
Council Chamber: To what we have observed over the last several years, based on the fact that we also introduced and passed and ratified new contracts, which means their overtime is more expensive now.
Council Chamber: So the 2026 budget has, increased to $200 million in their budget, and we have also included a management ordinance which requires them to come back to City Council if they need to go over that amount. Okay, so…
Council Chamber: What did you budget this year, and how much did they go over?
Council Chamber: So, over the last several years, I'm just talking about 2025 right now. How much did you budget, and how much have they gone over? So, over the last several years, CPD has been budgeted at $100 million.
Council Chamber: I don't have the number that they're at right now. We do know that they are over. However, as I've… we've had several conversations within this, council.
Council Chamber: salaries and wages and overtime are within the same account, and so any overage that they are in their overtime budget comes from their salary account, and, I can get you the number of where they're at right now. Okay, so when they…
Council Chamber: But when they go over, their allotment.
Council Chamber: That money comes from where? The salary and wage account. Their salary and wage account. Okay.
Council Chamber: And do you come back to this body for that, or you just do it? No, it's… it's… it's… they're within the same parent… Same bucket. Yes, you're within the same… So you just… you just make it happen. No, it's…
Council Chamber: They are within the same account, so they're inversely related, they're the same parent account, so it's not… together, they're within their budget. Okay, so why is it that this year, you want to come back, or next year, and ask for City Council approval if it's all part of the same bucket and same process? So…
Council Chamber: as mentioned before, there are a number of things happening in CPD's budget. We have reduced their, positions by freezing a number of those positions.
Council Chamber: We have increased their overtime to be more transparent and keep them accountable for the amount of overtime that they have. And as we have noted, from a transparency perspective, this is a group project.
Council Chamber: We want to ensure accountable government, and you, this body, is responsible for appropriations, and we want to make sure that if they go over, or if they need additional dollars in that account, that they're coming back before this council to request it. Okay. Did you come back to this council before? You all spent $50 million.
Council Chamber: For the migrants before you came?
Council Chamber: Or did you just spend it?
Council Chamber: I'm not sure if that is a month. 2023.
Council Chamber: We briefed this council on where those dollars were coming from. You briefed us after it was spent?
Council Chamber: the… the dollars that were used for that funding were ARPA dollars, and this council gave my office the flexibility and ability to use those dollars. Okay, so the answer is no. Okay.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mitch, do you have any questions?
Council Chamber: Good evening.
Council Chamber: Director Guzman.
Council Chamber: What was the, if I'm not… Correct me if I'm wrong.
Council Chamber: You funding… The jobs that was allocated last year For youth.
Council Chamber: Was that money out of the… Upper money.
Council Chamber: It was both. So, the, what were you… explain what were we using? And if that money ran out.
Council Chamber: And when did it run out? So break that down for me, so we'll know. Yeah, sure, thank you for the question. So, if we're just talking about youth employment, the One Summer Chicago, which is the main program, that is administered by the City of Chicago.
Council Chamber: Pre-COVID, the city funded that within the corporate fund at around $21 million, and, I don't have the specific amount of jobs that that funded, but it was much lower than where we are. Can we get it through the chair?
Council Chamber: We can definitely get that for you. Okay. Since then, with the addition of the ARPA dollars that we received in 2022, the city allocated $66 million in ARPA funding to support the One Summer Chicago
Council Chamber: program, which allowed it to dramatically increase the number of slots available to youth to where we are today. So this year will be the last year in which ARPA dollars are…
Council Chamber: allocated to support youth jobs, and… This year, this year is almost over, so at the end of this year… Yes. …the Harper dollars go away. For, the portion that was remaining to support youth jobs.
Council Chamber: And so in order to ensure the number of slots don't go down, and to also… But how many slots was it? So, this year, they were able to, fill over 31,000, slots for youth and… youth employment.
Council Chamber: So to ensure that we maintain that level, but to also ensure that we can increase the compensation for those youth by… to the rate of minimum wage, we want to keep up with minimum wage.
Council Chamber: The funding for that, which in the mayor's proposal was in the community safety surcharge, but in the package that was presented yesterday, shifted those costs back to the corporate fund. The total amount is $49 million to keep the slots level, while also
Council Chamber: Up, increasing the, compensation rate to minimum wage, because it goes up every year.
Council Chamber: Do you have, a list of organizations?
Council Chamber: That the city utilized.
Council Chamber: Or, summer jobs, Do the program.
Council Chamber: We can get that for you. I believe DFSS has it. I don't know if they did it through the chair already, but if they didn't, we can get that information for you. You're saying DFSS, is that the only one, or who is the main source? Because, if I'm correct, there were other agencies that received…
Council Chamber: jobs as well, so can I get the whole entire list?
Council Chamber: Right, so One Summer Chicago is administered through the Department of Family and Support Services. Okay, okay. So they're the ones who would give out the grants to the organization. Okay. I would like to have that list, if it's okay with you.
Council Chamber: All right, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Mitz.
Council Chamber: Alderman Harris?
Michelle Harris: I have no questions.
Council Chamber: Thank you.
Council Chamber: Oh, Nadal, you have any questions?
Council Chamber: Go ahead, Alderman Doll. Thank you.
Council Chamber: I have to say, I just think that this is, just a extra critical analysis of the alternative, aldermanic Budget Director… Budget Director Guzman.
Council Chamber: I sort of feel like you are hitting the budget over the head with a hammer when you could do
Council Chamber: When it doesn't require that.
Council Chamber: And so,
Council Chamber: I want to also underscore the question that I think, Alderman Beal asked about the ability to get the underlying data.
Council Chamber: Which was asked of us yesterday.
Council Chamber: To, look at the assumptions that you're making here. I mean, for example, I think
Council Chamber: To say that the advertising projection is zero, That…
Council Chamber: is… seems very far-fetched. Even if you did just a hundred of the vehicles.
Council Chamber: I'm sure that number would be something. So to say zero, I just don't get that.
Council Chamber: The augmented reality…
Council Chamber: Can you, Jill, could you say, CFO Jaworski, could you say what the,
Council Chamber: Legal issue was there, again?
Council Chamber: Yeah, it was a freedom of speech issue, so the… you know, they, the city of Milwaukee,
Council Chamber: Imposed, you know, regulations and, and fees related to this type of thing, because they were experiencing
Council Chamber: like, huge numbers of people coming to public locations for, you know, Pokemon Go events, and it was costing them in dealing with the crowd, so that was their impetus for
Council Chamber: For, starting this kind of program, but it was thrown out, on free speech issues.
Council Chamber: Right, I thought it wasn't about free speech, I thought it was about not being able to get permits.
Council Chamber: For the parks, because people were trashing the parks and leaving a lot of garbage. I didn't think it was a free speech issue. I will double check, but my understanding is that's why the courts re… threw it out.
Council Chamber: So that should not be an issue here.
Council Chamber: I, I think the, the, legally. I, I think the, the point that I think we're trying to highlight is
Council Chamber: To ensure that we're setting up the… Correct, type of… Program that is both revenue-generating
Council Chamber: Goes through all the legal channels to make sure it's legally defensible and that we aren't impacting any legal issues that would bring litigation to the city.
Council Chamber: there's a lot that we would need to work through, because this has not been done in this city. We'd also need to figure out where we would allow it to happen within our public space, and so forth. I guess my issue is that to say zero, you know, zero is like nothing.
Council Chamber: To me seems,
Council Chamber: like, you're not even trying, right? I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that, Chairwoman. I would say that there's not enough information in which to base
Council Chamber: a…
Council Chamber: reliable number for a budget, which, you know, at the end of the day, we're responsible for making sure balances, and I base that on information known at the time.
Council Chamber: in order to make a credible assumption around what we can achieve within a year. And I think that our experts have shown us that it is possible to… and we were very conservative in the number that we raised, and so I stick to the number that we put on the table.
Council Chamber: All right. I think in… I just want to say, I think in that regard, I mean, we'd be more than happy to see the information, you know, from the outside experts, to see the proposals that were…
Council Chamber: provided and that were vetted, you know, we haven't seen that either, and so, you know, nobody has… you know, for instance, we handle municipal marketing out of my office, and so typically those kind of proposals would come to the CFO team.
Council Chamber: And we have not seen those proposals brought to us, so we just don't have the level of detail that,
Council Chamber: That you might have.
Council Chamber: The bag tax, in 2024, you had a revenue estimate of $22 million.
Council Chamber: In the mayor's budget, it is $30 million, but you talked about changes in consumer behavior.
Council Chamber: Why would the numbers go up and not down in this num… in this… And your projections for 2026.
Council Chamber: I… I'm gonna start off, and then I'm gonna hand it over to Brian Carlson to talk a little bit more about what we're seeing in the bag tax. So, we did see a decline based on,
Council Chamber: Consumer behavior, so while the…
Council Chamber: rate increase, meaning that we would see more revenue. If it is… if it had stayed at the same amount, and we got all of it, all of the revenue, and took the retailer commission away, we would… that would be…
Council Chamber: only additional revenue. However, when we raised it, some people changed their consumer behavior, which means that you wouldn't see the amount that you would normally see if everyone who was engaged in that activity before just continued doing that activity.
Council Chamber: Because the rate change shifted some people from using bag tax… from using bags, it…
Council Chamber: Sort of mitigated against what you would typically believe to be the maximum amount raised from just a rate change.
Council Chamber: And so, we took that shift of about 11% decline in consumer activity, built off of that, because this would be an even larger rate increase than what we did in the 25 budget, and built that assumption into what we think that would do to the activity. And with that, I'll turn it over to Brian to talk a little bit more about.
Council Chamber: Thanks, Brian Carlson, Deputy Director of Tax Administration and Enforcement. So…
Council Chamber: To Annette's point, looking at the,
Council Chamber: Tax return data for the first half of 2025 compared to the second half of 2024.
Council Chamber: When we had a 3 cent increase in what the consumer had to pay for shopping bags at checkout, which is basically a 43% increase in what the consumer pays, we did see about an 11% decline in consumer demand, and taxable bag activity.
Council Chamber: So that erodes the, the taxable base a bit there. Now, expecting a similar increase going from 10 cents to 15 cents in 2026, which is another 5 cent increase, or a 50%.
Council Chamber: rate, I think it's more than reasonable to assume you're going to see at least another 11% drop in taxable activity, so that's been factored in to a further erosion of what the base from 2024 was to get to the taxable bag activity that we would expect to see in 2026 as a result of
Council Chamber: such a large, increase. You've effectively more than doubled the tax that the consumer's paying in, a span of 2 years, so it's…
Council Chamber: Important to factor in expected change in consumer behavior as a result of that.
Council Chamber: very, okay, thank you. You want round two? I want a round 2, yes.
Council Chamber: You ready?
Council Chamber: On O'Reilly, followed by Vice Chair Lee.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. I wanted to talk, if we could pull up this slide related to debt collection, that'd be helpful.
Council Chamber: So, we have a projection of zero from OBM, and I think a few things are being conflated here.
Council Chamber: There's been talk about the sale of debt.
Council Chamber: But there's also been discussion about,
Council Chamber: The city's current policy related to collecting debt
Council Chamber: From city employees and employees of sister agencies.
Council Chamber: today, how many city employees and sister agency employees are currently seeing their checks garnished?
Council Chamber: For debts owed to the city?
Council Chamber: Total number.
Council Chamber: I don't, thank you, Alderman. I don't think we have an exact number, but… We are…
Council Chamber: changing our technology this coming year on the debt check portal, and that enables us not only to look at our city employees, but also people doing business with the city. We had to access 7 sources in order to,
Council Chamber: In order to do debt checks. Now it's going to be done through one portal. One of the issues, though, is with the sister agencies, I think the Park District cooperates with us.
Council Chamber: When I came here, I was wondering why the other sister agencies didn't cooperate with debt checks with their employees. And my understanding is we'd have to enter into intergovernmental agreements with them, and it's something I certainly want to explore.
Council Chamber: when I did, take a look at it, it was somewhere around $5 million, so it's not a substantial amount in terms of, you know, the… relative to the size of the budget, but, you know, definitely…
Council Chamber: We're gonna pursue that. You're saying the total amount of uncollected debt from employees to the city and sister agencies is only $5 million? No, it's just the sister agencies that we're not cooperating. That are not cooperating? Yeah, I can, I mean, we can, through the chair, get you the number of…
Council Chamber: how much debt we collect, through our debt check, just for employees. Thank you, Comptroller. And just so we're all clear here.
Council Chamber: Which of… which are… what are the sister agencies that are not cooperating currently? If you could just name those for us, that'd be helpful.
Council Chamber: I mean, really, other than the Park District, it's all the other governments… For the Chicago Public School? They're not cooperating, I would just say we have to… we would have to enter into a formal agreement with them in order to be able to, have them…
Council Chamber: turnover, and we do… we do send information over on employees, on outstanding debt, but they're not… there's no way to compel them to do that. They're independent governments, independent jurisdictions. Sure. So, many of them receive monies from this body annually.
Council Chamber: And so, when we're talking about sister agencies excluding the Park District, we're talking about Chicago Public Schools.
Council Chamber: CTA.
Council Chamber: CHA? Are those… is that accurate?
Council Chamber: And sister, and, and community, city colleges. Yeah, city colleges, you know, we… I mean, we, we should be as expansive as possible, and… and cooperate with, you know, try to cooperate with all the, all the governments. It's… it is…
Council Chamber: you know, as a condition of employment here, you have to eradicate your debt or go on a payment plan, and I feel like that should stand, too, with any other government that we… I feel that way, too, Comptroller, and that's why it's frustrating to see a projection of zero
Council Chamber: Up on your slide there.
Council Chamber: And… As far as… we were talking about uncollected debt, and it's being, suggested that
Council Chamber: All of… 100% of our uncollected debt, which is in the billions.
Council Chamber: Is, is due to the fact that,
Council Chamber: the indigent and the poor, aren't paying their debts and obligations, but in fact, we know, and I know you know, Comptroller, there are companies that owe us lots of money.
Council Chamber: There are fleets of vehicles that owe us lots of money. There are delivery services that owe us lots of money. These are corporations.
Council Chamber: That owe us money.
Council Chamber: So we're not talking about going after just the people of Chicago here. Right. We're talking about people that regularly permits and receive approvals from the city and from this body.
Council Chamber: who owe us lots and lots of money. Right. So, if you recall, through my confirmation, and then, our mid-year hearing, we talked about adding resources. So, we're… we're in the process of, Brian Carlson, who was…
Council Chamber: speaking previously, runs the Tax Audit Division. We have budgeted
Council Chamber: $33 million, conservatively. We're hoping that we can do better than that, just for these sorts of collections from businesses on taxes. And we are short-handed there, so we are,
Council Chamber: reconfiguring position titles in order to fill, I think, I believe, 10 positions that will result in what we've budgeted for, which is $30 million. We're hoping that, you know, it could be higher, depending on how effective
Council Chamber: people are, but we've had those positions vacant for quite some time. Well, that's… and that's… that's part of the story, right?
Council Chamber: I mean, a big problem we have here is the city does not invest in revenue-producing positions the way it should, just like it doesn't invest in regulatory and enforcement.
Council Chamber: And so, the fact that we've got some of the folks in the crowd here might like hearing this, multinational, multi-billion dollar companies who are scofflaws to the city of Chicago continuing to operate here every day, while there are hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected debt, that's very frustrating for us to hear.
Council Chamber: But I'm gonna shift, because I don't have a lot of time here.
Council Chamber: Speaking of fleets.
Council Chamber: Who willfully break the law here every day. We do have our pilot program, our Smart Streets program, that myself and my colleagues put in place to end the practice of loading in bike lanes.
Council Chamber: And using parking spaces for loading purposes. One of the aims of the pilot was to end the practice of loading goods, and unloading goods, in a traffic lane.
Council Chamber: And for whatever reason, this administration has chosen to exempt that, when in fact, that is the worst abuse we see on the right-of-way day in and day out.
Council Chamber: Especially when you're seeing an 18-wheeler parked in a lane of traffic next to a wide-open curb lane.
Council Chamber: And that is money on the barrel.
Council Chamber: Yet, we're not collecting that, even in our limited pilot. And we've seen the number of citations that have been generated, and warnings that have been generated through this pilot, are in the tens of thousands.
Council Chamber: And that is in a very limited pilot area, a very small geography. Right. And were this to be applied citywide.
Council Chamber: That would be an incredible windfall to the city of Chicago, or perhaps all these companies that have been telling the city to screw off for years and years and years might comply with our local laws.
Council Chamber: But the fact we've made little to no progress there, despite this Council having the forethought to put this program in place.
Council Chamber: Is incredibly frustrating. I know that you're relatively new here, Comptroller, and so I'm not blaming you for this. Well, I'm just saying that with your predecessor, who did not implement this in a timely fashion. And when we're in a budget crisis, $1.2 billion.
Council Chamber: You know, it is frustrating for us to be talking about, well, it sure would be nice, and we'd really like to,
Council Chamber: This stuff's mission critical.
Council Chamber: And… and so I would like this administration to…
Council Chamber: Closely reexamine, the scope of the pilot.
Council Chamber: and have this apply to loading in a lane of traffic, which creates all sorts of public safety risks as cars are weaving in and out of traffic lanes to avoid these trucks, never mind the lives put at risk among our bicycle community. That is the chief offense that we really wanted to get after.
Council Chamber: and has been left on the table. And so, Comptroller, I'm a big fan of the work you do, and I'm really glad that you're here. I think the city's better for it. And I'm not blaming you for the current situation, but now that you are here, I'm flagging that for you.
Council Chamber: And begging you to prioritize this, because this is real money. We're talking about millions and millions of dollars. And all of us know, anecdotally.
Council Chamber: no matter what ward we represent, this kind of illegal activity is happening every single day, multiple times a day, in all 50 wards. Okay. I… so I duly noted, we… as you know, in this budget, we have expanded the pilot
Council Chamber: 93%, so we've… Thank you. Smart Street's been expanded, and we've also expanded the sorts of violations, but what you're mentioning to me, I will certainly look into and see if we can expand that
Council Chamber: in the program as well, and just do better enforcement there as well. So, thank you, Comptroller. Thank you, Chairman. Alderman Riley, I just wanted to just, agree with you. I do agree that we should
Council Chamber: have more revenue-generating positions in the City of Chicago. As you probably remember and we've talked about, we did include additional positions within, the Comptroller's, office in this budget, as well as in the Department of Law, specifically around debt collection, and I think that that's a sh…
Council Chamber: showing and being in alignment with many members of City Council who've highlighted that for quite some time.
Council Chamber: Thank you. You want to round two?
Council Chamber: Very well. Vice Chair Lee, followed by Alderman O'Shea.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. I'm just gonna echo some of the sentiments of my colleagues, like Chair Dahl.
Council Chamber: It's pretty disappointing to see, like, $0 on any of these,
Council Chamber: where we have disagreement or not, I… some of this just doesn't make sense to me that we would go with the zero. Can you talk about what we're projecting we're ending the year with in 2025? I… we didn't have the decks in front of us earlier, and I think that it was mentioned what we're gonna end the year with.
Council Chamber: Prior to the MABF payment. Can you give me that figure? Prior to the MABF? So, your deck was correct yesterday, in, you know, when we did the forecast, we, projected a $146 million deficit, for 2025 prior to,
Council Chamber: getting into agreement with CPS on the reimbursement of the MEABF.
Council Chamber: Okay, so it's 146, not 163?
Council Chamber: 146. 146, okay. I think that's what your deck said yesterday. Yeah, it's… I just wanted to make sure I didn't hear something wrong earlier. And how would we have filled that hole if we couldn't get a billion-dollar TIF surplus?
Council Chamber: So, there are a couple of things that we did, this year, which is, as you know, we're still in a hiring freeze through the end of this year, which, I don't have the exact number. It was in… it was asked in a… through the chair that we did provide, so I can re-up that for you as to where we…
Council Chamber: what we have been able to achieve in that hiring freeze, since it was implemented back in, I believe, August 1st. So that was one way that we were going to, be able to mitigate against that, projected deficit. And that's
Council Chamber: one of the reasons why I wanted to show, in this presentation, if we do have a deficit for next year, one of the ways we would do that is through
Council Chamber: again, hiring… Fake, hiring freezes, and there just isn't as much,
Council Chamber: Vacant positions in the city going into next year.
Council Chamber: Can you talk a little bit about,
Council Chamber: How, projected revenues for 2020
Council Chamber: 5 are performing better than you guys had originally forecasted. I know there's a lot of stuff, like, we're forecasting that deficit mainly because of the absence of the pension payment.
Council Chamber: But as I understand it, our revenues are actually doing better this year than originally forecasted. Some of our revenues are. There are some that are lagging, and as I mentioned during
Council Chamber: A meeting that we recently had, our state revenues are lagging.
Council Chamber: Our sales tax, revenue is lagging, for this year, after taking into account that most of our sales tax goes to our STSC debt. Our GEMT revenue is lagging, which it also comes to us through the state. Gemt is our emergency medical transport. So,
Council Chamber: overall, through November of this year, we are seeing,
Council Chamber: positive performance in the revenues that we control, but there are a lot of lagging indicators, and we still have both December, and a lot of our revenues come in through our adjustment period, and so we are, anticipating that, we'll see a narrowing of that, revenue performance by, especially when we finalize the audit.
Council Chamber: But net-net, if we are projecting 146 as the deficit before we get the 175, that means we…
Council Chamber: We're doing better. The revenues that we do have control over have done better than the losses that we've experienced from things that we don't.
Council Chamber: Right? That's correct. Okay.
Council Chamber: Got it. I'm gonna move to liquor. Who's got liquor over here?
Council Chamber: We can go to that slide, about liquor. Can you tell me, so the, the proposal that we've put forward is, would be a tax specifically on, off-premise consumption. That would mean, like, you know, a 6-pack of Natty Light.
Council Chamber: much less expensive than, let's say, a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Council Chamber: Even though…
Council Chamber: by volume, it might be more. This would be a tax that would be applied at the point of sale, and I know you used aggregated numbers. Do you have data specifically on the breakdown of the types of liquor? I know you've got spirits, or you've got wine versus
Council Chamber: Versus beer, in your example, you know, a good bottle of scotch is gonna cost you a lot more, we're gonna make a lot more tax money off of that.
Council Chamber: Then, in my example, you know, six-pack and added light.
Council Chamber: So, can you… can you explain why you went with the aggregate, or do you have access to that information? It just… this also seems like a,
Council Chamber: I get the exercise here, right? Your job was to tear our numbers apart. This makes it very much look like that. So, can you talk about how… what access… what sort of access you have to information about the specific types, and breakdowns?
Council Chamber: beer, wine, spirits? Sure. Thank you for the question. To your point, it's…
Council Chamber: Difficult to break it down in terms of…
Council Chamber: using your example, the difference between a good bottle of scotch and a 6-pack of Natty Light.
Council Chamber: So, trying to use a general average between
Council Chamber: You know, there's a lot more… sales of, I think, lower-priced
Council Chamber: products than there are of ultra-premium, and find an average that's reasonable and…
Council Chamber: within a… within an acceptable range is the way that I approach the exercise, and not
Council Chamber: Specifically trying to tear anybody's numbers apart.
Council Chamber: And I do think if you look at the cost expected, per category, that those are…
Council Chamber: that those are reasonable, based on research that I have been able to do, and again, specific data by product, price, and category is difficult to come by.
Council Chamber: And if you were to,
Council Chamber: Use higher numbers in terms of what, the cost per gallon…
Council Chamber: Was going to be. You would, you would get… A lower rate of tax.
Council Chamber: That's effectively being charged per reach.
Council Chamber: And I do think that the percentage approach does,
Council Chamber: Get you higher level of tax on a bottle of premium spirits, than it does on a lower-priced 6-pack.
Council Chamber: But just at the percentage that was introduced.
Council Chamber: in… and amended in committee yesterday, it's just too low, and it's gonna… it's gonna lose us money, based on my analysis. I'm gonna… Chairman, I've got a follow-up question to this line, and then I'll need around 2, 3, maybe 4.
Council Chamber: Can you tell me if your numbers are based on wholesale cost or retail? There's also a big difference in that pricing as well. They're based on an average retail cost.
Council Chamber: Because, as I understand it, the tax proposed is going to be collected at the retail. That's right, it would be collected at the point of sale. Okay, thank you. Chairman, I'd like a round two.
Council Chamber: Got it,
Council Chamber: All the services ain' left, army Lopez, you ready?
Council Chamber: Droit.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman, and good… Good afternoon, members of the committee.
Council Chamber: Wanted to touch on a couple things, if we may.
Council Chamber: Since I know this is both a review of yesterday's impact on the appropriations, as well as
Council Chamber: a bit of a discussion on the actual appropriations ordinance on page… 5.
Council Chamber: Of your slide deck, if we can.
Council Chamber: The anticipated surplus slash deficit.
Council Chamber: Where it says OBM projection amount. That is the projected deficit of the revenue ordinance Versus the appropriations…
Council Chamber: Ordinance that's in front of us today.
Council Chamber: So the technical amendment that the, body will be voting on today is, is what the OBM projection is, yes. So when we… So, yes?
Council Chamber: I'm trying… I'm just trying to answer… I just want to make sure I'm being clear, because you'll… you're going to have the… the document in front of you. So when we took what we got, which was just a PowerPoint, and the revenue ordinance.
Council Chamber: And, ran that through our methodology. These are the numbers that we came up with.
Council Chamber: And so the, the deficit is what we would anticipate happening next year.
Council Chamber: So you're anticipating, based on our… so to be clear, you're anticipating, based on the revenue ordinance that Finance passed yesterday.
Council Chamber: To be $162 million short.
Council Chamber: To be, yes, to be short enough revenue to support the, expenditures.
Council Chamber: So, the appropriations ordinance as it currently stands, and to be clear, we haven't… we don't have the technical amendments in front of us, correct? We just got your… No, no, no, I just want to make sure I'm not… It just got approved yesterday. It's not a slight, I'm just saying we don't have it, so…
Council Chamber: The technical amendments to address that $162 million perceived shortfall. What will that include?
Council Chamber: I'm… I'm not sure I understand the… How are you…
Council Chamber: There will be changes to the appropriations Ordinance Bill to address
Council Chamber: that $162 million shortfall, correct? No, we're… we… we input the information that,
Council Chamber: that was provided. We're just saying that as we evaluate what you've put before us, we believe that will be $162 million.
Council Chamber: Not balanced, or out of balance, because we… we have evaluated the revenues, and we aren't…
Council Chamber: confident that we'll be able to achieve the projections that City Council put forth yesterday.
Council Chamber: Now, will that impact, then, the appropriate… I guess the question that I'm asking is, will that impact the appropriations ordinance
Council Chamber: Or are we able to move forward with what has been presented, considering that we believe that our…
Council Chamber: Revenues are going to be at a different… hitting a different mark compared to what your analysis projected?
Council Chamber: I think you're asking a legal… I don't… I'm not sure I understand your question, so I don't know if it's a legal question, or if it's… are you lacking… Well, I guess it's just a matter of…
Council Chamber: You're saying we're $162 million short in our revenue.
Council Chamber: Which means we are over our expenditures by $162 million.
Council Chamber: Is the technical ordinance that we're going to see at some point
Council Chamber: going to have cuts and revisions to the appropriation ordinance equal to $162 million? I think that if the City Council wanted to,
Council Chamber: propose, Cuts or amendments to mitigate against what our proposal, or what our evaluation is
Council Chamber: presenting, that is well within this body's right to do. I think that that's probably a question more so for the chairman than me. Okay, so now that we're all on… so now that we're understanding the question.
Council Chamber: Is the administration… so you're leaving… addressing that to the committee… the budget committee?
Council Chamber: The administration does not have any proposed amendments for that?
Council Chamber: No. No? Okay. That's all I wanted. That was the crux of my question.
Council Chamber: There are a couple other things, Chairman, that I want to get to on page… 8.
Council Chamber: Of the slide deck.
Council Chamber: OBM's projection of $6 million for additional vacant land sales, that was what was originally proposed by the administration, correct? No, this is a, so, based on the, presentation yesterday.
Council Chamber: There were, there was a target set, and a bunch of…
Council Chamber: if, you know, I think it was presented as, you have flexibility to do what you want from the report,
Council Chamber: With just these three line items, within the presentation, as well as the false alarm fees within the revenue ordinance that was passed.
Council Chamber: what we did is we went and went back, and, in our discussions, because we have $10 million in the proposed budget already for vacant land sales, in discussions, yesterday, with DPD, their October shy block builder sales, which happened,
Council Chamber: After we presented the, the budget.
Council Chamber: Those sales, are recently finalized and approved, and so from that.
Council Chamber: And it's an appendix to this deck that you now have.
Council Chamber: those additional sales can be realized in 20… we believe and know that those sales can be realized in 2026. So, of the ones that we've said, you know, here are a bunch of options, which ones… you have your flexibility to do it.
Council Chamber: Those are the ones that we believe that we can achieve, in addition to what we've already included in the mayor's proposed budget.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Now, the vac… so I want to just touch on the vacancy cuts. When you referenced the 9 million, you're referring to what you gave us, which was the 131 positions that were cut previously through the chair? That's correct. And that's all the vacancy cuts that you were able to identify?
Council Chamber: Based on our, work with our departments.
Council Chamber: In, during our development of the budget. Those were the cuts that, we were very… we were comfortable eliminating that would not lead to service.
Council Chamber: Provision, or service, provision reductions. So that's… that's what was eliminated out of the budget.
Council Chamber: So I just want to point out something, and Chairman, I will be wandering around, too, as well, in that one of your…
Council Chamber: Through the chairs, which was date… which was…
Council Chamber: ID number 5-20 to Alderman Martin with regards to 2026 vacancies. It was… it was a question of what is carried over from one year to the next, but you were able to respond that
Council Chamber: There were 2,192 vacancies that are going to exist from 2025 into 2026.
Council Chamber: Last year's vacancies, that was roughly $290 million in savings from those vacancies.
Council Chamber: For the same number of positions, that we're ending the year with.
Council Chamber: How is it that none of those were considered Able to be cut.
Council Chamber: You've identified 131 full-time positions, but yet across 34,000 employee positions, 2,100 are going to remain vacant through much of the first half of next year, and none of them were able to be cut to save money. When you say for much of
Council Chamber: Of next year, what do you mean?
Council Chamber: In your memo…
Council Chamber: there were… All of these.
Council Chamber: And it says that they will be vacant for 6 months or more in 2026.
Council Chamber: That is from your… Memo.
Council Chamber: No, I think what that memo says, and I don't have it in front of me, there's been a consistent request from City Council for us to reflect
Council Chamber: which positions, year over year, have sat vacant more than a year. As I've mentioned on several occasions, because of the limitations of our system, I can't tell you
Council Chamber: which ones have been vacant for more than a year, because our system re-ups those positions every single year. We don't have position IDs.
Council Chamber: And so, of the ones that are moving over year over year into 2026, in this year, those positions have sat vacant this year for more than 6 months. And part of that is because we put a hiring freeze in place.
Council Chamber: Which… Means that they'll sit vacant.
Council Chamber: I understand that, but they're also going into 2026 as a vacant… as a vacant position as… But that doesn't mean that they'll sit vacant for 6 months. It means that in this year, those positions that are crossing over year to year.
Council Chamber: Of those that are crossing over to year-to-year, these are the ones that sat vacant this year for 6 months or more. So, 2,000 from last year.
Council Chamber: From this year. This year, excuse me, from last year's… this current year's budget, going into next year's budget, of which we fully funded their salaries at the start of last year… the start of the budget from this year, doing the same for next year.
Council Chamber: It just seems very questionable to me to keep asking taxpayers to pay for positions that we are not filling.
Council Chamber: Thank you. And I would just say that of the 2,000 positions that you mentioned, or 2,100 positions that you mentioned, the vast majority of those, I believe 1,300, are
Council Chamber: police positions, or CFD positions… CPD positions. By the way, thank you. Thank you. You won a round two, right? Yes. Okay, Alderman Silverstone, you ready?
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, before, do that… You can skip me, Chairman, it's fine.
Council Chamber: Well, I'll let everyone else ask their questions, it's,
Council Chamber: just a little frustrating that here we are, still talking about a revenue package that was passed yesterday, and we're still here asking questions when we know we're both not in agreement, but it did pass yesterday, and we should move along with the budget portion. I will yield my questions.
Council Chamber: You can do them now if you like.
Council Chamber: Okay,
Council Chamber: We want to recognize Alderman Martin for the purposes of quorum. Also, Alderman Rodriguez, has requested to join via Rule 59. Is there a motion or allow for such?
Council Chamber: So moved by all the minutes. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Paying the chair's eyes, having Alderman Rodriguez will be participating, remotely.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez, are you there?
Michael D. Rodriguez: Absolutely. Thank you.
Council Chamber: Okay, very well. Next up will be… Alderman… Viega, get you ready?
Council Chamber: Sure. All right. Followed by Alderman Napolisano.
Council Chamber: Thank, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Council Chamber: I had brought up yesterday during the revenue package,
Council Chamber: a question around… based on the budget that the mayor proposed around the smart tax.
Council Chamber: I know that you guys budgeted zero for the actual revenue.
Council Chamber: Because you're pending some type of litigation, correct? We budgeted $31 million for revenue.
Council Chamber: But you have zero allocated, correct? We don't have any expenditures allocated against that. So you've line item as $31 million, but you're pending, you're waiting to get sued by the industry.
Council Chamber: I don't think that we're waiting to be sued by a… But if you're not waiting to get sued, you would have actually put a number where the expenditure's at.
Council Chamber: So you are prepared… you're being very conservative because you're anticipating a lawsuit based on the current lawsuit that's occurring in Maryland. I think that's an accurate way of saying it. I don't think we're waiting to be sued, but… Yep. All right. Have we also budgeted for the legal costs associated with this? I asked this yesterday, and I didn't get an answer.
Council Chamber: The outside counsel, we spent $1.5 for the opioid.
Council Chamber: We've spent millions of dollars, $42.5 million in outside counsel. I'm curious as to what the amount in the proposed mayor's budget accounts for outside counsel, plus the settlement, plus the cost of outside counsel for all the tech firms that would be part of the lawsuit.
Council Chamber: There is, a budgeted amount in the budget for external legal counsel that the law… the legal department uses for all of our litigation, where they use external legal counsel, so that is in the budget, sir.
Council Chamber: So then the… are you telling me that the Department of Law gave you already a figure as to what the potential settlement or the potential legal costs will be?
Council Chamber: As it relates to a specific case, no, they gave us a number for their legal counsel that they will need to support
Council Chamber: All of the cases that they have on their… their…
Council Chamber: docket for next year, but they don't give me a number based on a specific… So then, based on that answer, so then you should have a number from the 24 budget… I'm sorry, the 25 budget and then the 26 budget, and that would be the number that shows what the potential legal cost is. Is that accurate?
Council Chamber: For this specific case.
Council Chamber: Well, I mean, you had a number from the previous year based… I'm trying to understand your question so I can appropriately answer it. Are you asking, do we have a number in the 25 budget for external legal counsel? And in the 26 budget for external legal counsel, yes, that does exist. If you're asking me if we have a number specific to this case.
Council Chamber: for external legal counsel. Well, I think it's important to have that, because, I mean, you got 30… you've got 20…
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, you've got $30 million attached to that, so I would assume that this is… that's a number that we're counting on revenue at some point. So I think… I'd like to know what that number is, if you can get it.
Council Chamber: the Department of Law, budgets for their needs across all of their cases in external legal counsel. Alright, so there's… are we… based on… have you also budgeted for any type of settlement, potentially? Or is that going to be used based off the borrowing to pay for any type of settlement?
Council Chamber: I, again, we believe in the case that is before us.
Council Chamber: There is funding in the budget generally for settlements.
Council Chamber: So, I… well, I… I hope… I hope you're right, because I'd hate to give the multi-billion dollar tech companies money from…
Council Chamber: from a bond that we're putting forward. Are you aware of, also part of the mayor's budget is online sports betting.
Council Chamber: 26.2 million.
Council Chamber: It's a part of, both… it's part of the revenue package that also, was passed by City Council yesterday. Right. So, have you…
Council Chamber: Prior to the, have you budgeted also, or have you thought about Senate Bill 2760 that was filed?
Council Chamber: on Springfield that would, in essence, amend the State Revenue Sharing Act
Council Chamber: That would take dollar for dollar of the local government distributive fund for every dollar that the city taxes. Have you heard about that, Bill?
Council Chamber: I don't, but again, this is in the revenue package that was passed by the Committee of Finance yesterday. Right, and so we're… oh, so we're gonna go there. So, 1.6% of the total budget that
Council Chamber: the mayor proposed… I'm sorry, 98.4% of what the mayor proposed is what we supported. We're talking about 1.6%. The $160 million that you're talking about now equates to 1%. So here we are spending all this time, spending hours of time when we… a revenue package has passed.
Council Chamber: And we feel confident that there… that it will balance out.
Council Chamber: So… The online sports betting.
Council Chamber: But there's a potential based off the Senate Bill 2760 that would allow for a gap to be there.
Council Chamber: So when we're talking about budgets, I mean, budgets are just estimates, trends, data, and there are line items that come in over and under, so through the chair, if you wouldn't mind producing,
Council Chamber: Every line item that you've budgeted for in the past, last year's budget, and where it came in at.
Council Chamber: According to the budget, whether up or down.
Council Chamber: Because, just because we budget a line item doesn't mean that it's gonna come in at that amount. Is that an accurate statement?
Council Chamber: That's definitely an accurate statement. That's why we produce a monthly revenue report, that's on my website and also available to City… that we send to City Council every month. Well, could you send it through the chair? I'd be interested in seeing it. Or point me to… point me to the… and I'll be more than happy to look at it. But there… but you… you do… you do…
Council Chamber: Admit that the line… the proposals that you put forward in line items, some are over and some are under, correct?
Council Chamber: Absolutely. Okay, yeah. Well, so then that's what we… we have a revenue package that we put forward based on data, and we're gonna hope, just like the other 98.
Council Chamber: 98.4% of the budget that those line items come through. Some do better, some do worse. I mean, that's what we're… that's what a budget is. It's a guesstimate, an educated guess, with data and trends, and so…
Council Chamber: that's what… that's what we're doing here. Yeah, and we provide our methodology around our revenues, it's included in our forecasts. Outside of the reference to the EY efficiencies, we didn't receive
Council Chamber: the assumptions that were the basis of the revenue put forth yesterday by City Council. Okay.
Council Chamber: Alright, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Villegas. Alderman Moore, you ready?
Council Chamber: All right, Alderman Moore, followed by Alderman Napolitano.
Council Chamber: Okay, thank you, chairman,
Council Chamber: I'd like to go just on record, you know, again, appreciating all the things that my colleagues have done, and…
Council Chamber: just me. I'm trying not, as much as possible, not hit the, residents with anything, and so I'm asking
Council Chamber: you ought to look at that increase, even in 5 cents of that, bag tax. And so, for me.
Council Chamber: again, I will always go back, and I know this may sound a little contradictory, but again, for me, just for the record, the, grocery tax,
Council Chamber: was something that I think would probably piss everybody off in this council, in a way, but it was something the residents were paying, and I think it'd be, you know, if we can go somehow go back to that at some point and see what
Council Chamber: revenues we generate right out of that, but that may not happen, but I just want to say that for the record, because it was already there.
Council Chamber: Now, getting into this.
Council Chamber: this sweepstakes part is what I'm having, besides the bag taxes, what I'm having some trouble with, and it's only because I'm talking to people, in that industry, because one of my questions yesterday was, do we have to rely on anything from
Council Chamber: the state of Illinois. And,
Council Chamber: what I'm hearing, is that there are some things that the governor may have to do, to make this
Council Chamber: I don't want… for lack of a better word.
Council Chamber: palatable, or to get us to some of the numbers that we want to get. Can anybody speak on that? Because I just… I'm hearing that from, you know, someone in the industry that it impacts, and I just want to, just… if anybody can chime in on that more.
Council Chamber: Or are we totally free from
Council Chamber: The governor having anything to do with this at all.
Council Chamber: Thank you for the question. As far as the, you know, the biggest…
Council Chamber: area that there would be an intersection of the state would be, on the VGTs.
Council Chamber: Because those require that, that the establishments, get licensed through the Illinois Gaming Board.
Council Chamber: So, you know, the state…
Council Chamber: You know, has already, you know, passed their, budget, through, the end of June.
Council Chamber: And, I can't say, as I think any of us here are experts, about how they do, you know, mid-year personnel or staffing changes, or, you know, bulking up.
Council Chamber: of, Illinois Gaming Board employees in order to
Council Chamber: have more people to address more applicants, but I think that would be the only area that there is an intersection, is that, we do need, the Illinois Gaming Board would be needed to
Council Chamber: provide the licenses for any VGTs. Okay, and then with that said, which is interesting, because the person then told me, and I don't know, because then I got, again, all this stuff I have to verify, said, like, in our communities, the people who have the sweepstakes
Council Chamber: for some reason, because of the Gaming Board, are not approving their VGT license because they had sweepstake license. Does anybody know anything about that statement or comment?
Council Chamber: No, we… I would have to investigate that. I mean, we can certainly look into that.
Council Chamber: I… when you say that, I can understand where potentially that's coming from. It could be an attitude of.
Council Chamber: that the Gaming Board has that… and again, I'm speculating that if you engaged in a legal activity, that we are then not going to give you a license for illegal activity. That's pure speculation, on my part as to why they may do that, but we can look into it further.
Council Chamber: Okay, and then they added That's something about…
Council Chamber: even if they were, these lights can take up to almost 2 years. Is that…
Council Chamber: anything anybody know about. Again, I'm just calling and talking, and I'm writing stuff down, and I'm not taking nobody's word at, you know, as gospel, but trying to get to the truth. Our understanding is that it takes 6 to 12 months
Council Chamber: to get licensed through the Illinois Gaming Board. I don't know if there are outliers that take a longer period of time.
Council Chamber: But the norm that, as we understand, is 6 to 12 months. And so within that 6 to 12 months, then, you're saying this revenue from video gaming wouldn't be realized until 2027?
Council Chamber: Yeah, we're expecting a very minimal amount of revenues that would occur in 2026.
Council Chamber: And, counting the offset of the loss of
Council Chamber: the $4 million from the… from Valley's payment, and
Council Chamber: Potential sort of cannibalization of our,
Council Chamber: gaming tax revenue at the casino, that we would have a loss of around $3 million in the aggregate. Now, while I appreciate this budget hearing, one of the things
Council Chamber: that, you know, I think was… somebody had asked, the budget director with, you get in a room with their people, because I think it's hard for the administration
Council Chamber: whatever you did within a 24-hour period, I think you did your best, and I hope you did, but it's hard, like you said, if you don't have the data, and if we're trying to move either one, and in particular this one, we gotta get those experts in the room, because at the end of the day, yes, we are council members.
Council Chamber: But, the mayor's gonna take the brunt of this budget. Same way I tell people with CPS. I don't care if it's any fully elected school board or what, who's ever mayor, and schools go wrong, gonna get blamed for it. And that's just the way it is, so…
Council Chamber: I respectfully think this, staff has the responsibility, whether they agree with it or not, to sit with the people who,
Council Chamber: came up with the data and the information, so, then we can, you know, talk through that as well. And yeah, that may take through to December 30th, I don't know. But I think that has to happen in order for, us to make a, a better decision, so…
Council Chamber: Those are all the questions I had in regards to this budget, so that gaming piece is still outstanding, for me, because I could… I mean, like I said yesterday, my colleagues put something, I think, great together, but like I do with the mayor's budget, I have to vet it.
Council Chamber: And be comfortable in saying yay or nay, to anything. Well, definitely yes to anything. Thank you so much, Chairman. And Alderman Moore, I will say on behalf of everyone who's sitting up here is that thank you, we appreciate those comments.
Council Chamber: The team was up extremely late last night working, and up extremely early this morning working.
Council Chamber: to pull this together. We would certainly all have liked to have had this presentation in your hands prior to the meeting, but we were working on it, up until and into public comments. We were still working on it. So, we, definitely are dedicating as much time as we can
Council Chamber: physically into this, and, you know, secondarily, I think, appreciate your comments about sharing of information. We very much want to have that dialogue with the experts who, you know, provided information, for the budget, the revenue proposal that was passed yesterday. We would like to.
Council Chamber: to, dialogue and examine, all of that together. And certainly, if there's areas where we are, wrong in our estimates because there's more information that we don't have, we are very welcome to seeing that, understanding that, and, making changes to
Council Chamber: our projections. All right, thank you, thank you so much.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Moore. Alderman Napolitano, followed by Alderman Lespada.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. Can you please go back to slide number 15?
Council Chamber: So, I just kind of want to…
Council Chamber: kind of roll back to what my colleague, Alderman Riley, had brought up, and what's very concerning to me
Council Chamber: Is that we're looking at…
Council Chamber: We're going from $89.6 million down to zero, and my question…
Council Chamber: Which is very confusing to me in… Very disheartening is…
Council Chamber: We're looking at a deficit, or I'm sorry, not a deficit, we're looking at a debt of…
Council Chamber: Correct me if I'm wrong, a billion dollars plus that the city needs to collect? A billion dollars plus? Correct, okay. Not a million, a billion with a B.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: What's concerning to me is… is… is year over year, do you guys do a prediction on…
Council Chamber: What will be collected?
Council Chamber: yearly? And, like, what would that prediction be for 2025? Not 26, like, 25. On, debt collection? Yes. So, I… I…
Council Chamber: all the numbers in my head, I don't have that one. If you give me a few minutes, you can ask additional questions, I can get my team to… to give that number for the 25 budget and where we are. Yes. I…
Council Chamber: sort of anticipating where you're going, we don't disagree that we have a large amount of debt. We don't disagree that we need to
Council Chamber: Collectively find ways to, make, you know, get people to pay their debt.
Council Chamber: The issue that we have right now is, one, the information that we got yesterday, is that $89 million will come from a debt sale, so that's what we analyzed.
Council Chamber: And we talked with our Department of Law, we talked with the people who actually have to do this, CFO who would actually have to sell it in the market, and this is based on that information. We don't disagree fundamentally with what the underlying goal is. Yeah.
Council Chamber: And I agree. I mean, I would assume that it only benefits you for us to be all on the same page in finding a way to collect that debt, but with that prediction of collection, is there a prediction of uncollection, or not collected yearly?
Council Chamber: So, I mean, obviously that depends on the, the tickets, or the different types of penalties that people receive from the city year over year, and we could probably pull that number per type of penalty. What I would say is that,
Council Chamber: ultimately, you know, one, we've enhanced the Department of Finance to go after more debt, we've enhanced the Department of Law to go after more debt. We've also changed the policies to ensure that we can… and technology to go after more debt. I don't… I apologize for the interruption, but just on what you said, on the increase
Council Chamber: The number of positions. Yeah, what was that increase from to what? And I know we've had it in budgets before, but offhand, what is that number? I don't mind, you can ask me any question you want. So within the Department of Finance, the comptroller mentioned before a couple of different things.
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, it's hard for me to see you. A couple of different things. One, they have, been working with the Department of Human Resources
Council Chamber: to modify positions within Brian Carlson's team, the deputy director who collects and enforces revenue for the city, so that they can ensure that we maximize the amount of
Council Chamber: of, collections, and that's not necessarily, collections that's turned into penalties. So people owe us money.
Council Chamber: Hasn't gone to a collection agent, or anything like that. They're just trying to maximize what we can get based on what people owe us.
Council Chamber: In addition to that, we increased the number of positions within, David Holkamp's team within the Department of Law. Do you know those numbers, though? Yeah, so I think we, David, I think it was 4 people? 4 additional attorneys, in his division alone, and I believe either 2 to 4 attorneys within the affirmative litigation,
Council Chamber: team as well. Okay. Now, and so, if you can, I'd like to see what the prediction is, if you can get that for us. I'd like to also see what the prediction that's not going to be collected, and
Council Chamber: we… we stated that we're looking at an increase of 4 positions, and on a billion dollars. What…
Council Chamber: How long did it take us to accumulate a billion dollars?
Council Chamber: how many years would you say that this… if they had to go back, is this, like, a 10-year? Is this a 5-year? Is this…
Council Chamber: Well, we, we, the billion dollar figure.
Council Chamber: Relates to going back the past 7 years.
Council Chamber: And, you know, when you go back 20 years, it's a much larger number. So we… but just to answer your previous question, we do keep a tally of how much we collect each year by buckets of taxes. You know, in 2020, it was 2.8.
Council Chamber: Billion, and in 2024 is 4.07.
Council Chamber: And so we're putting more resources… we… we're putting more resources on, and as we mentioned, parking enforcement aids.
Council Chamber: Expanding Smart Streets.
Council Chamber: Also, adding tax auditors, so our expectation, and this has been budgeted for, that's that $118 million.
Council Chamber: You know, we would expect to see, you know, we know how much each parking enforcement aid generates. Well, let me stop you there, just for time constraints purposes.
Council Chamber: My question is just more leading to, is we make predictions… we have a net amount of a billion dollars. We make predictions on how much we're going to get paid. We make predictions on how much we're not going to get paid. We look at this over a 7-year period of time, and we're at this number right now, but we're just allocating 4 more people to collect what is
Council Chamber: Obviously, an enormous amount of money.
Council Chamber: of who we collect from and who we don't collect from. So, like.
Council Chamber: who's got the ability to call balls and strikes of who we're gonna collect from? Yes. Or, in the same statement, are we putting out debt to people that they owe, hoping that they pay it? If they don't, you have amnesty
Council Chamber: to not pay… like, are we telling people, if you don't pay your bill, oh well, you don't have to pay anymore? Or, at some point over the last 7 years and a billion dollars, are we gonna get to a point where we're gonna say, maybe we need a team of 60 people working on collecting a billion dollars worth of debt to the city, and we can justify
Council Chamber: Who we don't want to go after to hurt.
Council Chamber: to hurt, but who we're going after that, you know, are doing business with the City of Chicago. Our sister agents of the City of Chicago, because, I mean, guys, and like I always tell you, I really think everyone's trying to do their due diligence here.
Council Chamber: But this is a billion dollars. I don't… and again, I want to just come back to, we don't disagree with you. We don't disagree with the goal. I think that your question is a very good one, because it's a great policy discussion about
Council Chamber: what are the limitations that keep us from getting after this debt in the way that other places might be able to do it better? And so it's a very nuanced, and I think it's an important question, so if you just will bear with me for 2 seconds, I'm actually going to pitch it to David Holkamp in our legal department, because he deals with this every single day. David?
Council Chamber: Ultimately… Thank you, Alderman. David Holkamp, Deputy Corporation Counsel for the Law Department. I'm in charge of the,
Council Chamber: Billion dollars in debt collections,
Council Chamber: So I think what we need to remember here is the type of debt that we're actually collecting. So this is not credit card debt or mortgages where we get to pick the debtor, we get to run credit checks, we get to do any of those things. These are involuntary debts.
Council Chamber: And the billion dollars you're talking about isn't just involuntary debt, it's involuntary debt, the fines, fees, all those things.
Council Chamber: that…
Council Chamber: We've already tried to send bills, do a lot of aggressive debt collection against these individuals, and they still
Council Chamber: are not paying the debt. So, what we're kind of left with here is, you know, parking tickets, weeds tickets, those types of tickets against individuals that
Council Chamber: For one reason or another, aren't able to pay the debt.
Council Chamber: We absolutely… Can I stop you right there, though? Sure. Like, technically, everybody can say they absolutely can't pay the debt.
Council Chamber: And that's… that's where we have to…
Council Chamber: as a city called Balls and Strikes ourselves, and if we're not going to do it past a certain point.
Council Chamber: we should willingly be looking at somebody that would do it, or would take on that debt to do it? Sure, and like the budget director said, we're adding 4 people, but we have a whole team of attorneys in 7 outside law firms that collect all this debt all day.
Council Chamber: We can go back and forth a little blue in the face, and like I said, I'm not getting angry at you.
Council Chamber: But it's 7… I mean, it's a billion dollars.
Council Chamber: So, if we were at about $100 million, and I was like, hey guys, we could do better, but we're at a billion and growing.
Council Chamber: So, whatever we've done to this point isn't working. There has to be a reset done. Your department might need 40 more people, and we could base it on collecting that debt to build this department to make sure that we're collecting money, because there's people out there that are paying their debt to the city of Chicago every day, and they're frustrated about it.
Council Chamber: And there's people that aren't, and it's understandable for a lot of people, but there's a lot of people that it isn't understandable for.
Council Chamber: So, to my constituents, I have to say, don't pay your bills anymore, because there's nothing you're going to do about it but send a mean letter.
Council Chamber: So I think that that's exactly the conversation that we need to have, and I think this is what David was trying to convey. I think this is… I think this is an important conversation, Alderman.
Council Chamber: We… the way that we collect our debt, and I don't mean…
Council Chamber: Just because we're choosing to collect it this way, there are limitations on how we collect our debt. We can't, we can't,
Council Chamber: take people's licenses, we can't… there's just certain… the other jurisdictions across the country have that, but the state of Illinois doesn't allow us to do that. We can't take their licenses, we can't take their cars for them, all these things, right? We also have, currently in the city of Chicago, that was implemented under the former administration, a lot of debt relief programs
Council Chamber: that allow people to, essentially do exactly what you just said, right? And there are reasons why those debt programs were put in place, and there are people who really do need those debt programs.
Council Chamber: That… and so I'm not undermining those. I think that's important. What the… the reason why we have in this budget an increased debt collection amount above and beyond what we got in 2025 of $113 million is because we are doing certain things to go after that debt.
Council Chamber: That is not currently being done. There's technology that's being put in place right now that allow us to do enhanced debt collection, so those businesses that owe us money, you can't get your license.
Council Chamber: Until you pay us back. And we're able to do way more of that enhanced, debt check, right? If you,
Council Chamber: have been on our debt, relief programs 10 times, 20 times, just because you keep paying $25, and you get off, and you just get back on, you pay $25. We're not, we're not doing that anymore. So that's why we're saying, within the confines that we have.
Council Chamber: We're doing what we can to go after that debt.
Council Chamber: Within the confines that we have, it makes it really difficult to do debt sales, because, again, if we're having difficulty based on state law and our current policies of collecting our debt, it's gonna become very unattractive for someone to buy that from us in a debt sale.
Council Chamber: And think that they're going to be able to collect. I gotcha. You know, I just… I'd like to… I'll close it there, Chairman. No, go ahead, you finish up. I'd just like to say that, you know,
Council Chamber: I think as a council, that this should be something on… so, we'll finish the budget on the 23rd, and it'll be done.
Council Chamber: Slowly, shortly after that, we all sit down, and it's something we fix as a council immediately, because we're… we're a council of legislators, and, you know.
Council Chamber: this is… this is out of hand, and I don't put the blame on you, or any of you, because it's been here years in the past, but this is something that we can't let go anymore. It changes budgets completely.
Council Chamber: So, thank you, thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chair. All right.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cosada, on the point of information.
Council Chamber: Perhaps the breakdown of the different types of debt, and also, like, a heat map of the different types of debt, and the breakdown across our city.
Council Chamber: Just so that we could have more reference.
Council Chamber: We can definitely… I believe, we've provided some of that information by zip code, and the type of debt in a… in a response back to City Council. We'll make sure you have that. I believe that a heat map was produced. I don't know if it is particularly
Council Chamber: Ready? Oh, it's being printed out. It's being printed out right now for you. Thank you. We can provide you with both.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Okay.
Council Chamber: Hold on, hold on, hold on, Alderman Sposato? Just another point of information, so we only know where this debt is from 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we don't know where it's at now. If you've been chasing somebody for 10 or 20 years, I don't know how many people in this room live in the same place they lived 20 years ago, so we don't know where they are, we can't find or avoid enough, so that's not really gonna tell us much, I don't think so.
Council Chamber: Okay, 3 years, we're looking for? Okay, that's fine.
Council Chamber: S7, 3, 10, 20, whatever, so… Alright, automobile.
Council Chamber: Mr. Chairman, if we can, actually ask about how much debt is not only in the city, but outside the city by zip code.
Council Chamber: Do you have that as well, Mr. Comptroller?
Council Chamber: Did you have a question? No.
Council Chamber: The question that Alderman asked was the amount of debt, not only inside of the city, but outside of the city as well.
Council Chamber: Do you have that by the zip code? That is correct. We can provide that. Okay, very well. All right, any other information points before we go to Alderman Lespada?
Council Chamber: Alright, Alderman Lespada, followed by Alderman Rodriguez.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Terry. I suppose Alderman Las Matter will start with his own point of information, because if you want, actually, every April, we now get a utility debt report related specifically to water debt, which, at the end of last year, cleared $750 million.
Council Chamber: It's interesting for two things to be true at the same time. At once, residential debt
Council Chamber: is… the majority of that is in the poorest zip codes in this city. At the same time, there's about $95 million in water debt that is solely within commercial and industrial properties. So that could be a conversation for the Comptroller, Mr,
Council Chamber: Whole camp, I feel like I'm remembering.
Council Chamber: No, I'm not. He's not. He only got the second half, right? But it's a way to be thinking about it, and I'm glad at least that this budget is opening up that conversation for what responsible debt collection on the part of the Sadiq does and doesn't look like.
Council Chamber: I had a few questions. I'll limit it to 3, because it's… couldn't wait.
Council Chamber: Page 4, Ground Transportation Tax looks like it's listed as negative on both sides, and I don't…
Council Chamber: understand that. Right, so, as you can… you probably… I apologize you got this right before we started, but what we were doing is we took the presentation from yesterday, which goes… which was…
Council Chamber: basing itself off of the mayor's proposed budget, and we took that and then did the differential against that number. So, this proposal
Council Chamber: from the mayor's, introduced budget was $55 million, I think, roughly, for the ground transportation tax. And so, with the proposal that was approved yesterday, that would have lowered the mayor's proposed budget to around, I think, $26 million? Are you referencing congestion pricing when you say that?
Council Chamber: So the mayor's proposed budget that was first introduced was both the maps and the rate change, so that's why it was much higher. And this is because it removes the rate change, is that accurate? Exactly. Okay. My second question is…
Council Chamber: Related to the shopping bag tax. So, on page 4,
Council Chamber: The OBM projected amount is listed as $2.2 million.
Council Chamber: On page 11, it's listed as $5.2 million. Which of those is the right number? I think that's a typo on page 4, it's 5.2. The impact is… I apologize, it's 5.2.
Council Chamber: I understand, but, like, it matters in terms of making sure that the numbers add up. I wanted to ask, then, about the liquor tax
Council Chamber: So what I… Joe, what I feel like I heard from you earlier is that the…
Council Chamber: galleonage fee has not been increased since 2007. Is that accurate?
Council Chamber: Which fee?
Council Chamber: Gallons. Gallonets. Gallonets? That's correct. We have… I think it's… is it 2,000…
Council Chamber: When was the last time, Brian? Yes, the last rate increase went into effect January 1 of 2008, and it was passed in late 2007.
Council Chamber: Okay. This has been 18 years. I know we thought about that last year, but that's something I continue…
Council Chamber: to think about… And… Just for the sake of argument, my last question really is, Where is the appropriation.
Michael D. Rodriguez: mental magnet.
Council Chamber: because we are… we're 3 hours in at this point, and I… I understand the time that it takes
Council Chamber: To print things, or edit things, but we're…
Council Chamber: We're 3 hours in, when is it gonna be on our desks, y'all?
Council Chamber: So it's being printed right now, and I just… I… I appreciate the question. I really want to underscore that
Council Chamber: This is… putting things in the system that were provided yesterday, it's not an instantaneous
Council Chamber: exercise. I understand that at once, and I sincerely do, and I feel like I… Hold on one second. I'm almost done. No, no, no, no, I just want to let you know that we just did get the, get the amendment package, and it has been emailed
Council Chamber: To everyone, if somebody wants a paper copy, again, it's 121 pages.
Council Chamber: So if you could look at it via email to start with while they're printing, it has been made available. Terry just emailed it from the committee to everyone, so just as a FYI. I'm glad that now it has been emailed. Thank you, sir. Thank you. No further questions.
Council Chamber: All right, Alderman Rodriguez, followed by Alderman Cicho Lopez.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me okay?
Council Chamber: Yes, you're good.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Very good. And by the way, is that email in a searchable PDF form, so that we can easily go through it?
Council Chamber: I… I… I don't, I don't know.
Council Chamber: I'll check it out. We'll respond if it's not there. Just two quick thoughts.
Michael D. Rodriguez: One, budget chair, Expected revenue deviation versus…
Michael D. Rodriguez: Well, budgeted revenue, versus, actual revenue.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Is there some sort of acceptable deviation industry standard that's out there?
Council Chamber: So, we base our budget on our base, revenue projections. So, as reflected in our forecast, we reflect a number of different economic, indicators that could happen, as well as
Council Chamber: policy, policy implications. So, our base forecast, is based on there not being a recession, and a couple of other things related to the labor economy and so forth. Our negative,
Council Chamber: forecast is based on their higher incident of recession, and, the, positive forecast is based on a much more positive or rosier economic outlook. I don't have it in front of me, but
Council Chamber: There are, those different, bases are based on a number of months of positive, negative, or base economic conditions.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Okay, I mean, essentially, I'm getting to a point where I think 100% deviation is absolutely unacceptable and irresponsible.
Michael D. Rodriguez: And, look, I… I really do. I've articulated time and again that I do appreciate the efforts of my colleagues for putting this alternative budget together. I know lots of… hundreds of hours of work were put into it. I get that. I want to recognize it. But y'all, we… we can't do this.
Michael D. Rodriguez: that type… of,
Michael D. Rodriguez: drop in such a significant portion of our budget is absolutely unacceptable. And we've got to get back to the table and figure this out, and that's one place where we just cannot implement something
Michael D. Rodriguez: Where one side of the aisle here is saying there is no way we can recover 0% of that, revenue source.
Michael D. Rodriguez: The other piece that I just wanted to ask, we got an email from Karen Kent, Union, Unite Here, Executive Director, President, forgive me.
Michael D. Rodriguez: We got that a couple hours ago, I think, now, at this point, or maybe an hour ago.
Michael D. Rodriguez: She's projecting, VGTs to cost their members 300 jobs.
Michael D. Rodriguez: At Bally's.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Is that something that…
Michael D. Rodriguez: Budget can verify, or given that those aren't necessarily city jobs, you wouldn't be able to, do so, even though this is a significant contractor with, with the city?
Council Chamber: That is an estimate of the jobs that we think would be lost. The amount of, you know, jobs that Bally's will have, in the casino, is… they are amounts that they've estimated. The contract does not…
Council Chamber: require a specific number of employees. And so if they are doing less business, their expectation is that they would have less employees.
Council Chamber: you know, we… We don't disagree with that assumption on their part, and we think that the estimate
Council Chamber: Of jobs is appropriate for the, the loss of revenue, but the actual numbers will…
Council Chamber: You know, can only be determined after the, permit casino is, operational.
Michael D. Rodriguez: Thank you, and I get that, we don't know exactly, but, you know, when I think about my ward and the number of Unite Here members that are in my ward, I may have more Unite Here members than any other union, possibly SEIU might be up there as well.
Michael D. Rodriguez: But I, you know, this is extremely concerning. So, that's all I had, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Rodriguez. Next, we'll have Alderman, Cicho Lopez, followed by Alderman Cardona.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. And I appreciate the presentation so that we can look where the… where the discrepancies are. I certainly appreciate, and I wish we had the opportunity to do so yesterday.
Council Chamber: I echo the sentiment of Alderman Rodriguez, especially around the loss of jobs. I do… I think many of us got the letter for Unite Here,
Council Chamber: It…
Council Chamber: And this potential with this alternative proposal at $6.8 million for these BGTs, what could be the impact on Bally's host community agreement? Do you have that?
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? What could be the impact on Bali's, the casino.
Council Chamber: host community agreement. Is that… is that… We expect that if VGTs are passed, we will lose the $4 million payment that we received from Bally's annually, the community benefits payment.
Council Chamber: Thank you. I'm extremely concerned about that, that we think we're undermining our own efforts in the past.
Council Chamber: I also want to go back a little bit, and I appreciate the heat map, right? It's always good that we know who's crunching the numbers. I'm still waiting to see who are the budget experts that we keep hearing about. I'm still waiting to hear. But around,
Council Chamber: around the OEM…
Council Chamber: How do we… how do we calculate the compliance behavior when it… when we estimate it,
Council Chamber: Especially fine revenue. I think that is important for us to understand, I think that's an important conversation, and I think that is a grossly mischaracterization and a misunderstanding, and I think that has to do a lot of what we are… the discrepancies are.
Council Chamber: Thank you for the question, and if I understand your question correctly, I don't know if this is specific to the environmental benchmark ordinance, but we worked with the Department of Environment, who will be taking that over in 2026.
Council Chamber: As you know, and this Council has rightfully noted, in their comments to us.
Council Chamber: this ordinance exists, and it existed under BACP for quite some time, and it was never enforced. They never fined anyone, and that was largely due to lack of resources. And that's what we typically see a lot of times when we see ordinances that we have the ability to do and fine or
Council Chamber: provide fees, and they're not done, it's because there's a lack of resources to enforce it. So, based on our discussions with the Department of Environment, compliance, or noncompliance, typically, depending upon how much the noncompliance will cost someone.
Council Chamber: that person will typically come into compliance to avoid the fine going forward. And so, based on what we saw in the very limited information that we got from yesterday's proposal, it appeared to assume that developers would repeatedly pay the fine, rather than coming into compliance, which
Council Chamber: Would make the number bigger.
Council Chamber: As well as the fact that it didn't reflect that, when people would have to come into compliance is a specific point in time of the year. So, for the ordinance that they would be, violating.
Council Chamber: the, deadline is the middle of the year. And so, based on what we could see, it seemed like the proposal and the assumption was based on a full year of 12 months in 2026, which wouldn't be how we would actually calculate this.
Council Chamber: Thank you. As someone who's…
Council Chamber: actively requested this kind of enforcement, especially environmental inspections. I think that, as I said yesterday, these numbers are overinflated, and I hope that we can get, at some point, who is crunching those numbers, because it doesn't seem that it comes from someone that understands government. I'm really worried about these projections that are completely off.
Council Chamber: Can you provide the, can you also…
Council Chamber: Let me… what is the evidence that supports the assumption that the city can recover nearly 9% of $1 billion in delinquent debt, given the history of collection performance? And also, I want to…
Council Chamber: also want to recognize the efforts of the controller to worry about especially those vulnerable, small homeowners, especially that have shown in multiple locations that people in debt and water debt, especially in black communities, are 10 times
Council Chamber: burden, 10 times more burden, than in white communities. So this directly affects communities like us. This is about who is going to bury the cost. And my question again is, what is the… what supports that assumption of the 9% and $1 billion?
Council Chamber: We don't… we don't have that information. It was, you know, you got the same deck that we got yesterday that just had a number beside it, so we don't know, what assumptions went into calculating
Council Chamber: That number, or what portion of our debt would be… Subject to the actual Potential asset sale.
Council Chamber: What… can you also maybe discuss, then, because that is my concern right now, especially with the predatory nature of, debt collectors.
Council Chamber: What will be the process if it goes from, a city process to a private debt collecting process? What will be that effect, and what could be potentially the consequences of that?
Council Chamber: I think there's two parts to that question. You know, one is, you know, we… what happens when the debt, gets in the hands of a private debt collector? And I do want to emphasize that, you know, the city does already use private debt collectors as part of our means to, you know, obtain repayment of these outstanding debts.
Council Chamber: If we were to, try to sell the…
Council Chamber: these assets, I think that, any investor, when they investigate the ability to enforce the debt, and they come to the conclusion that they would have tools that would be no greater than the city has, that they would find it to be an unattractive asset and would not be interested in investing in it.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Yesterday, there was a presentation, where I also showed that some of the new revenue with non-numbers crunch.
Council Chamber: showed that 84% of that will come from businesses, and 16% will come from personal, private, entities. I… I take objection with that, I think those numbers are false, and I would say that on the record. And I will argue that
Council Chamber: Or, or community.
Council Chamber: especially on the business community are concerned, especially this is being sold as a good thing for businesses. I think this is great for big, large businesses, but I'm concerned, some of our businesses have reached out to talk about some of the increases in fees for small businesses. A limited business license that will go for $250 to $500.
Council Chamber: a regulated business that goes from $250, then it will be $1,000, food inspection fees that will double, that will impact small businesses. This will not impact large businesses. Do you have the projections? Did they get any information about that revenue that they're expecting? Do we have that? Because I saw in your…
Council Chamber: data was the reverse. It was mainly affecting personal or private people.
Council Chamber: So, just to be clear, because there is a difference in what we presented in this and what was presented in yesterday's. Yes. We are… this is simply taking the new revenue
Council Chamber: That was presented.
Council Chamber: Not looking at the global budget. Correct. Right? The full $16.6 billion. We did not receive any of the data behind the,
Council Chamber: the pie chart that they showed yesterday to understand what categories they were putting into which… I mean, sorry, which revenue streams they were putting into which category.
Council Chamber: I mean, and let me just end with this, and I will definitely answer around two. I think it's really hard to compare numbers when we don't know who is the other side crunching the numbers. I'm yet to hear that. I think that it's one of the most irresponsible things that I've seen this council do, that will potentially expose layoffs mid-year.
Council Chamber: And I think that this alternative budget should be named as it should. This is the Michael Sachs Alternative Billionaire alternative. That's what it is. And I really think that we should reconsider many things that are here. It's irresponsible. Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Citzer Lopez. What's your point?
Council Chamber: Is it possible… is it possible, Budget Director, to include the PPLT on this graph?
Council Chamber: So, again, this is just the new revenue that was different from the mayor's budget. The PPLT is in the mayor's budget.
Council Chamber: But I think it's important to understand that if you could include a PPLT there, it gives a better picture as to what the actual… Sure, we can add all of the revenue in. I would say that PPLT is,
Council Chamber: not…
Council Chamber: Considered 100% a corporate tax, because there are, small businesses, but also residents that will be impacted by,
Council Chamber: the, PPLT. So, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is…
Council Chamber: it's a hybrid. But would you say the majority of the PPLT relies on corporate? I would say that the majority of the PPLT currently is in non-possessory computer
Council Chamber: Licenses, but again, that could be, also impacting a…
Council Chamber: individual, right? Because individuals also license non-possessory computing. What is, what is English for non-possessory? Things like… like cloud? Cloud computing? Okay, I just… just want to know that.
Council Chamber: I was just using the term from the… No, I, I, I just steal a non-possessory, license. Next we're going to go to…
Council Chamber: Alderman… Alderman Cardona, followed by Alderman Sposado.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: My question is towards liquor tax.
Council Chamber: I see we proposed… 1.5%.
Council Chamber: And,
Council Chamber: When we had… when we were having discussions, we asked… we were asking about the liquor tax. Why wouldn't you…
Council Chamber: tell us the benchmark was 2.338%.
Council Chamber: We did. This is in the research that we provided to City Council over the summer.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Well, I don't know, I didn't see it, but… because it would be very,
Council Chamber: ingenuous for us to go to 1.5 from 2.3, 8 points? If we were to stay with 3%, what would our revenues be going forward?
Council Chamber: Brian, do you want to take that one?
Council Chamber: I… I would have to take a minute to look for that.
Council Chamber: If I could.
Council Chamber: It would be more than 4.2, correct? It would be close to 6? We'll crunch the number for you and get back to you.
Council Chamber: Alright, and then, another thing is.
Council Chamber: It says it gets implemented January 1st of 2026, Cadet… could that date be…
Council Chamber: altered? Could we have a starting… a different starting date, if possible, if… Things do change.
Council Chamber: Typically when we implement new, rates, especially if it requires implementation by an entity, the city has delayed the effective date of that tax.
Council Chamber: To allow for that implementation. We were just reacting to what was presented yesterday, which had a January 1st implementation date. Okay.
Council Chamber: And then I… I… I wasn't here, probably, if this question was asked. Is this tax…
Council Chamber: Implemented on retail or wholesale again?
Council Chamber: This would be, this… this…
Council Chamber: it would fundamentally be on the consumer, right? Because the retail establishment would… it would be at point of sale, so it would be if you went to a package store and you purchased a beer, they would add the 1.5% to your… to the sale of that. Okay.
Council Chamber: Alright, I have no more questions, thank you.
Council Chamber: There you go, Alderman Cardona. Alderman Espos, followed by Alderman Vasquez.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. Just a couple brief statements. Thank you all for coming here, and this is not a question, I'm just throwing something out there. So take a break, have a sip of your pop or water, it's just a statement, okay? I see everybody's all got their underwear in a bunch about collecting debt that people own us. I have a couple suggestions.
Council Chamber: Amnesty program, once again, for probably the 10th time.
Council Chamber: Secondly, a court date. If you could find these people, if they could prove they're indigent.
Council Chamber: Show their tax returns, they're hurting, they're trying to get their life straight, we forgive you, I have no problem with that. But to say somebody shouldn't pay, I don't get it. So, I'm just offering a suggestion with that. Secondly, as far as the VGTs.
Council Chamber: Maybe, maybe not, the casinos would lose some job. I don't know. I'm not a casino guy, maybe somebody here is, they can explain it to me. I don't believe the casino people are the same person that stops in the gas station or the restaurant that throws 20 bucks in there. I know, and I could drag some of my colleagues into this, Napolitano, O'Shea, Quinn, probably.
Council Chamber: Who else? Chico, that… Our businesses are dying, begging me for those games.
Council Chamber: So they could survive, because we're competing with, literally, restaurants or bars from across the street. So, I don't doubt that maybe they'll lose a few jobs there, but I think we will save businesses and create jobs by having VGTs. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman, and that's all I wanted to say. Don't have to answer me, no… you don't have to answer, just… I just want to make a statement. Thank you.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Posado.
Council Chamber: Alderman Vasquez? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions. I know in the interest of time, it's challenging, but I do have something that might be considered through the Chair.
Council Chamber: So, in looking at the discrepancy between the numbers that you all calculated and the numbers that the
Council Chamber: group of orders calculated. You stated that you're looking at it through kind of a set of assumptions, which I assume is, like, your own kind of formula, looking at. Would you be able to provide that to everyone here so we can compare that?
Council Chamber: Absolutely, I think some of it's in the deck itself, right? I think…
Council Chamber: Alderman Beal, I believe it was, asked me earlier if we would sit down and have conversations.
Council Chamber: compare notes, we're happy to do that. The problem that we had was that we didn't… all we had were numbers on a slide, so we based this off of our own data and own analysis. Yeah, I think for me, it's kind of…
Council Chamber: as I'm understanding it, there is… you have certain raw data, you put it through your own assumptions that are based on a multiple, a large number of variables, and so knowing what that formula looks like would…
Council Chamber: I would have imagined, help this group to put it together, come up with numbers that might be more accurate, in your view, that might have been helpful for the competition. Or if they have a different way of doing it, and they have different data, that would be helpful for us to understand. Yeah, so in the interest, I'd ask them the same.
Council Chamber: If everybody put it all on the table, we can hash it all out, so getting your version of it, getting their version of the calculations to kind of see
Council Chamber: what was viewed differently would be helpful in just the math. I think the second thing I'd ask through the chair is.
Council Chamber: from the beginning of this term until now, a comparison of any projections you all made that didn't add up to what actually occurred, to get a sense of where discrepancies were there from your projections to the numbers that actually bore out for the rest of the year. So is this different than the monthly revenue report?
Council Chamber: Yeah, I want the whole thing for the term, like, as one whole… Oh, so put it all in one sheet? Correct. We can do that. Yeah. I think those are the major things, the next questions I have are related to debt collection, because I think I appreciate that…
Council Chamber: This has come up a number of times, and I don't think we've actually acknowledged it as folks who are concerned about the debt collection.
Council Chamber: no one here is inventing debt collection. The city already does it with third parties, and so when we want to, like, put our hands up in awe, there should also be an acknowledgement that we're already doing so. And so I was curious as to…
Council Chamber: the different ways we currently try to target people? Because I know zip codes is what's been discussed, but are there other ways that we could model it that would,
Council Chamber: Protect more vulnerable populations as we're trying to figure out ways to, you know, collect.
Council Chamber: I… Can I answer that?
Council Chamber: So, debt collection's been brought up a lot today, and… Yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean, I… You know what I mean? I just want… I want to assure you that in the mayor's budget,
Council Chamber: you know, I heard… I heard you, and… We,
Council Chamber: We are… we're making investments. We know that we make investments.
Council Chamber: These are revenue-positive investments, right? And…
Council Chamber: We're also making technological improvements so that the debt check process is more effective. So we… we've put into place several things, and I would say that kind of one of the questions that came up is…
Council Chamber: Well…
Council Chamber: why do we keep doing this and we're not being successful? We… we… the amount of debt we collect each year has gone up, and we monitor by these buckets, and with all these reforms we're putting in.
Council Chamber: My plan is to sit down with people on my staff in charge of debt collection, working with David Holtkamp in legal, and sitting down once a month, like a business, and saying, where are we relative to where we expected to be?
Council Chamber: And even use metrics, key performance indicators, like how much revenue per
Council Chamber: parking enforcement aid, or, why aren't we collecting as much from Smart Streets? Maybe, maybe we have to rejigger the technology, whatever it might be. And you use that information to make adjustments.
Council Chamber: So this… the $118 million in additional dollars here is based on that. I would always like to, exceed that goal.
Council Chamber: But certainly we're gonna stay on making sure that goal is met.
Council Chamber: And this budget includes a lot of things that we believe will improve debt collection. The other issue that's out there is the outstanding debt that hasn't been paid, and I think the issue there is that
Council Chamber: The amount of money included in the revenue ordinance, the $80 million,
Council Chamber: you know, again, as I explained yesterday, when you're an investor, you want to know you can attach
Council Chamber: You have a security, right, that you're gonna get repaid.
Council Chamber: So… Property's immobile, so selling, selling tax liens.
Council Chamber: It's a pretty safe bet, right? But… Selling parking tickets?
Council Chamber: Building code violations.
Council Chamber: you know, you have very little recourse there, and I don't… I don't see… it has… the reason it hasn't been done by a city is because
Council Chamber: for the very reason that it's not something that you can rely on the way you can on property or water, things of that nature. Yeah, just to… because I think the question was asking was a little different, so I'll provide context.
Council Chamber: In the world where a budget moves forward that leads to a veto, that then, now, a council has to find 34 votes to find a level of agreement to get a budget passed, rather than to avert a government shutdown. There are those of us who have concerns about the current debt collection model as is. So my question is more related to
Council Chamber: what we do currently to make sure that people who are vulnerable are not the ones we're collecting from, to make sure we can target those who can pay and have means, because I'd want to figure out how to model that similarly.
Council Chamber: for something like this, if we're in the world where we have to figure out a level of agreement. And second, I think having a conversation about collection in-house, as opposed to selling the debt.
Council Chamber: would be another conversation to have, because there are people who owe the city money, and I would rather find a way to do it responsibly, because I, as someone who is
Council Chamber: suffered and been a victim from predatory, aggressive collectors, like so many people in our city have, having concern about this. People doing that and having a city seal in front of it. It is not what we want to send as a message, but there is a fair case about collecting, that if we can do it in-house.
Council Chamber: and we have protections in place, which I would imagine are modeled currently, since we already do collect, getting a better sense of that, to figure out what might be workable here, if we have to fight to avert a shutdown. I would always say that's… that's what we're working with.
Council Chamber: David Holtkamp on, is that we do have an approach where we focus on the ability to pay.
Council Chamber: And where people are vulnerable, we have relief programs. Yeah, if we could, through the chair, kind of, whatever documentation on what that modeling looks like, what tools, because I also don't know what we could do legally.
Council Chamber: to target, right? Does somebody say, oh, it's unfair, we're targeting somebody compared to someone else? I don't know that whole world at all, but I think having a better understanding in a world where I imagine colleagues in the council will be negotiating and try to, again, avert a shutdown, depending on what happens. The more information we have, the better. Thank you for that, and thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: I'm out. Wait, we gotta vote?
Council Chamber: Vasquez?
Council Chamber: I'm sure? I'm like, man, that's…
Council Chamber: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, no, no, we got you, we got, we got you. Alderman Nugent passed, Vasquez…
Council Chamber: Ultimate Skyz, though.
Council Chamber: You, you didn't… oh, you did, I apologize, you did not go.
Council Chamber: Got it.
Council Chamber: Go ahead.
Council Chamber: Quan O'Shea.
Council Chamber: Good afternoon. Good afternoon.
Council Chamber: It's evening now, right? Yeah, evening. I want to talk a little bit about
Council Chamber: The fiscal year 2025 budget.
Council Chamber: Our personal property replacement tax.
Council Chamber: That was down almost $50 million, or 25%.
Council Chamber: our Chicago sales tax.
Council Chamber: Was down significantly, almost 8%.
Council Chamber: our leases… Our rentals, our sales were down.
Council Chamber: Almost 40%.
Council Chamber: Our municipal parking was down almost 5%.
Council Chamber: Those were all from our projections from last year.
Council Chamber: Now, what was up are utility taxes.
Council Chamber: We're $34 million above, or 13%, much higher than we had thought. Our income tax was up
Council Chamber: More than $25 million, or 8% above projections. Our transaction taxes were more than $72 million above what was projected, or 10%.
Council Chamber: I'm pointing this out because, as anybody who owns a business, Or runs a household.
Council Chamber: Knows that a budget is an assumption.
Council Chamber: It's… it's never perfect.
Council Chamber: These were last year's assumptions that we made, and luckily for us, many of these outperformed, for various reasons, most of which, I would guess, were beyond our control.
Council Chamber: The work that has gone in
Council Chamber: these past several weeks to the Alternative Budget Plan, was performed by…
Council Chamber: Some of the brightest people in finance, I've ever known.
Council Chamber: Many of us have worked with some of these folks.
Council Chamber: I and the majority of this council that supported yesterday's package Believe in those numbers.
Council Chamber: And I think it's disingenuous for anybody in this room to challenge the validity or the character of those that worked so hard on putting that together.
Council Chamber: I want to switch gears here.
Council Chamber: Mr. Belsky.
Council Chamber: Last year, I know you're only here part of the year, But… our collections
Council Chamber: Our debt collections significantly outperform what we projected.
Council Chamber: What can you do this year?
Council Chamber: to make those perform even better. And before you answer that, I want to recognize Mr. Holkamp. I had a bad operator in my community.
Council Chamber: That, for years, we were battling.
Council Chamber: And the law department was very helpful in holding their feet to the fire, and we haven't had any more problems there, so…
Council Chamber: Thank you to your team, but what can we do
Council Chamber: And again, I'm not looking to pick on the person that can't afford it. I'm talking about the repeat offender, the egregious offender, the business that doesn't pay its debt, that doesn't handle its…
Council Chamber: what more can we do to hold them accountable? You know, as I just had articulated, we have made significant investments in this budget in personnel and technology to improve
Council Chamber: To improve enforcement, you know, number one is, it's…
Council Chamber: it's… enforcement and ticketing's about safety, right? You don't want people in bus lanes and bike lanes and… but, you know, by adding personnel, you know, we have, 107 people out there now, we're gonna add 25 more.
Council Chamber: And so we'll be able to be…
Council Chamber: Cover more areas, concentrate resources in areas where there are problems.
Council Chamber: As I said, our debt check portal's gonna be streamlined, so looking at businesses that want to do business with the city, where they have outstanding debt.
Council Chamber: Those will be easier to surface.
Council Chamber: And, you know, the, the, each of the, each of the initiatives
Council Chamber: That we have, we're gonna track and monitor and make sure they're happening.
Council Chamber: But, you know, I would say, compare this
Council Chamber: Budget to last year's budget, the investments in enforcement and collections have significantly increased.
Council Chamber: And part of that impetus was from all of you.
Council Chamber: And I think the mayor's office recognizes it's important from a safety standpoint, and we still maintain relief programs for people that can't, you know, afford to pay.
Council Chamber: So it is… it's… it's… I would… I would call it collections with compassion.
Council Chamber: Can I just add one thing? I wanna… I wanna reiterate that this budget includes an increase of $113 million
Council Chamber: In debt collection.
Council Chamber: So, we are implementing all the strategies that…
Council Chamber: Mike has talked about, that David has talked about, and we are budgeting
Council Chamber: That we are going to collect a lot more.
Council Chamber: I feel like there's a, you know, there's a lot of discussion on this point, and Annette has been saying, we agree, we agree, we agree. I think the only thing that we disagree on is the $89 million in a debt sale. That's the problem we have, is we don't believe we can find investors for that. But we do agree on how important this is, that we increase these
Council Chamber: Collections, that we can't have this much bad debt.
Council Chamber: outstanding. And, you know, we are actively employing strategies and hiring people. You know, David can talk more about it if you want to hear more from his perspective. He's… he…
Council Chamber: has explained a lot to me about what they do, but we are banking on success. We've put $113 million more in the budget, assuming that these strategies will be successful.
Council Chamber: And I don't want to belabor the point here, but…
Council Chamber: the DOL, or our department and our division, is not business as usual. Our… as… as Mary said in our, or the Corporation Council said in our,
Council Chamber: budget hearing. Our collections are up 18% so far this year, so, you know, we're, we're…
Council Chamber: Doing a lot better, and that is…
Council Chamber: a large part due to, you know, new initiatives that we've implemented this year. And one of those, Alderman Riley was talking about with employee indebtedness, where we've increased the number of hearings for employee indebtedness.
Council Chamber: Five times. We've increased the collections against… on… on employees by over 300%. We've created the special collections unit that's collecting on all these weeds tickets, all these vacant lots, millions of dollars there. So this is not a business-as-usual division in collections here. We're… we're…
Council Chamber: absolute looking at all the data we have. We're looking at every single way we can to collect more, more money. So, you know, we're happy to hear ideas, but we…
Council Chamber: we have initiatives, and we're doing, I think, a lot better.
Council Chamber: And, just…
Council Chamber: Alderman O'Shea, Chairman O'Shea? I just wanted to respond to something that you said at the very top. I think…
Council Chamber: I don't want your takeaway to be that we don't believe, or we don't think that there was a lot of work that was done in the proposal. We're not negating that at all. I think a couple of things are we didn't get the underlying assumptions.
Council Chamber: But also, what we're responding to, or the things where we have zero beside them.
Council Chamber: The proposal that was put forth didn't come back and say, our revenue numbers for the revenue that we put forth were undercut, or that they were somehow off. You didn't come back with a higher number for, let's say, transaction taxes or something like that.
Council Chamber: What we are responding to, or where we have zeros beside what was in the revenue proposal, is because, for instance, sale of debt, we, you know, based on
Council Chamber: Our research based on her understanding of the market, based on not seeing other cities
Council Chamber: Securitize the type of debt that we're talking about
Council Chamber: today, we can't say that that's achievable. That's… that's all we're saying, right? And that's for each of the areas. So we're… we're not disputing
Council Chamber: a different number for our revenue that you might have, because that wasn't what was presented yesterday. So I just want to be really clear that we're not trying to say that there wasn't a lot of work done.
Council Chamber: We don't know, we don't have the underlying data for your projections, and as we've said, if you have a different one for liquor tax, we didn't put liquor tax in ours, so it's not like you're saying that our liquor tax revenue projection is wrong.
Council Chamber: You presented a new proposal.
Council Chamber: And so if you have the information that can be shared with us, we're more than happy to sit down and have a conversation, talk with your experts. So I don't want your takeaway to be that we don't think a lot of work was done.
Council Chamber: Good? Okay.
Council Chamber: Alderman Martin, followed by Alderman Scott.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, everybody.
Council Chamber: with the Environmental Benchmark Ordinance.
Council Chamber: Could some of this be addressed in terms of the discrepancy in numbers if the City Council just simply changed the reporting deadlines, so that we're talking about some period of time
Council Chamber: Beyond June 1st?
Council Chamber: I… I don't know that that would be… I don't know that we would come into agreement with 3 million, because again, part of the, assumption based on… you know, we just got a number, right? But extrapolating out
Council Chamber: Based on comments that were made at the hearing yesterday about the number of people that some data points said are out of compliance with the city's current ordinance.
Council Chamber: It makes it appear as if the assumption is that those businesses are continually just
Council Chamber: paying a fine, rather than coming into compliance. And our experience of people who violate
Council Chamber: Our ordinances is that, especially our business licenses and ordinances of that nature, is that they come into compliance, not that they'll just continually be out of compliance and pay the fine.
Council Chamber: So our assumption is… our assumption bakes in our experience of people who come into compliance with our ordinances.
Council Chamber: What would happen if we just, like, extended that, reporting, date, so instead of June 1st, it was November 1st, or December 1st? Would that itself
Council Chamber: bring in more revenue, if it could be shown in the 10 months leading up, that there was noncompliance? Because I understand your point about coming into compliance, which, depending on the date, might be something that comes into play
Council Chamber: next year, but for purposes of getting closer to $3 million, if we were to, in a management ordinance, change the compliance date, could that ultimately result in an increase in the amount of money that's brought in?
Council Chamber: I think, it would… it wouldn't necessarily, lead to a massive increase, because again, this is about the fact that, you know, people are fined usually over a 12-month period. Those 12 months straddle 2 years, right? So,
Council Chamber: That would necessarily mean that,
Council Chamber: part of their noncompliance happened in a prior year. So if we shifted it, then their compliance period would be aligned with our calendar year, so we would know that they would only probably be checked once or twice a year to see if they're out of noncompliance. But, so it wouldn't necessarily dramatically increase it.
Council Chamber: But it would be… you would see some increase. We can definitely confirm that with, Department of Environment. But the other thing is, again, that they're out of compliance every single day, that we're finding them every single day, that they wouldn't come into compliance is another reason why the number… we have a different number.
Council Chamber: We believe that people aren't just going to continue to just be fined $4,000, $5,000, For an entire year.
Council Chamber: Okay. I… my last question is around firefighter back pay. My understanding was, in talking with the administration.
Council Chamber: That the money was set aside, and that… Unexpected healthcare cost increases, aiden to that entire amount.
Council Chamber: However, I've spoken with other colleagues who have said something… they've heard something different, which was the money was never set aside, and we were hoping that, revenues were going to come in higher than was actually the case. And so, I've not been privy to that. I did not hear that firsthand, so I just wanted to get some clarity on
Council Chamber: why we did not… why we don't have money set aside to make the full, back pay for firefighters. I don't know who would have said that. I… that… that's never the explanation. So, let me be really clear.
Council Chamber: We budget annually.
Council Chamber: Every year that we did not settle that contract, the amount of the retro goes up.
Council Chamber: So, this year and last year, we set aside a certain amount. We're now in another full year of retro, meaning the compounded amount is higher, which is paid next year. So, we had a certain amount budgeted this year.
Council Chamber: likely would have fallen into our fund balance, because it wasn't paid, but because we're paying it next year, the amount that we owe in retro has now increased even higher, beyond what we budgeted this year, because another year has gone by, and it compounds every single year. So, a couple of things happened. One.
Council Chamber: that amount went, I think it was…
Council Chamber: The full amount, because again, the full amount of the retro is, like.
Council Chamber: over $300 million. Oh, go ahead, Jill can talk.
Council Chamber: I only have the numbers in my head because we worked on a memo for this, which we can share with you. It was through the chair to Alder Cruz. The last year, the amount that was budgeted for retro, or 25, the amount, was $200 million. The actual retro payment after
Council Chamber: All of the different items in the contract, which include not just a retro on regular pay, but various bonuses and other things.
Council Chamber: has gone up to $340 million, so it's a $140 million increase. The amount that we…
Council Chamber: included in the budget for borrowing was $166 million, so it is slightly larger than that year-over-year increase, but the vast majority of it is simply the year-over-year increase. I think, and I'm gonna give this back to Annette, because she can talk about the broader budget. I think it's possible that one of the things that,
Council Chamber: the person who was talking about the healthcare might have been saying is that in this budget, in the $1.2, you know, almost $1.2 billion deficit that we started with, were a number of factors, including a $100 million increase in healthcare costs. And so when we're looking at that $140 million increase over what was previously budgeted and how we manage that, we're also managing that in the context
Council Chamber: Of the budget deficit.
Council Chamber: And how do we manage to meet all the obligations under this budget? And that's where we've gotten to the 166, is that number is… is both the regular retro payment.
Council Chamber: It's mostly encompassed by the $140 million increase, but it's also how we're getting to balance in a budget that started off with a very significant deficit and had some other significant increases in payroll costs overall.
Council Chamber: So I just want to be clear, though, because from what I've heard talking with colleagues, we've heard different things. So, just on the record, we would have made the $166 million back payment without borrowing, except for the fact that healthcare costs went up unexpectedly this year.
Council Chamber: Is that true?
Council Chamber: No, I'm not sure I understand that question, the way you're placing… If we had paid this year. Is that your question? No, and, like, this is something that… yeah…
Council Chamber: $166 million that we're having to bond out. That…
Council Chamber: When I was in a meeting with you all and the mayor, you said that we had set that money aside as a city, and that would have been paid without borrowing, but for the fact that certain healthcare costs increased more than was anticipated. And so, had that not happened, we would not be borrowing $166 million, plus $30 million worth of interest.
Council Chamber: A different set of colleagues said, that is not what we heard when we posed the same question. It was that the money went away because, essentially, projected revenues were lower. It was not about healthcare expenses coming in higher than anticipated. So, I'm wondering which is correct. So, it's all sort of the same thing. So, let me see if I can break this down for you.
Council Chamber: So…
Council Chamber: the entire… because we're paying this next year, the entire cost is now over $300 million. In this year's budget.
Council Chamber: We had $200 million set aside to pay the retro. And I want to be clear, it's in the budget, it's not sitting in a reserve fund somewhere that was never appropriated. It's in the budget for this year.
Council Chamber: when you…
Council Chamber: bring that forward into 2026, it rises over $300 million, because we have another year of the retro. I understand that, but, like, no, because, like, I want to be respectful of time, like.
Council Chamber: at some point this year, you made the determination that, based on CBA negotiations, that the payment was going to be made next year, not this year. So, I understand… The fact that it was ratified in October… The fact that it was ratified in October is why it's being paid next year.
Council Chamber: That's why.
Council Chamber: That is how it happens. We now have… once it was ratified by the City Council in October, we have a certain amount of time to do the calculations that are per individual calculations to actually cut a check
Council Chamber: to every individual that's owed that retro payment. That actually takes time.
Council Chamber: And so, because of the amount of time it takes, the payment happens next year.
Council Chamber: All right, I think we're talking past each other, but we can offline it. Alright, thank you.
Council Chamber: Alright, Alderman Martin, next up, Alderman Scott, followed by… Alderman… Robinson.
Council Chamber: Good evening.
Council Chamber: I hate to continue to beat this dead horse about the fines and the penalties.
Council Chamber: But it just behold me that it wouldn't be a dollar amount right there. Because if, you know, reading the sentence and then getting beat up by public comment, saying that we're just trying to,
Council Chamber: poor people are trying, you know, trying to get the poor people to pay their debt. But in the mayor's budget, it says that it's an increased debt collection already that includes $113 million. So…
Council Chamber: And I've asked him, but I need to hear it. Is this 100… is this…
Council Chamber: The 89 million, did you…
Council Chamber: You included more that was already in the 113, so this was more than what we allocated.
Council Chamber: So, in the mayor's budget, there is an increase year over year in debt collection and debt… So, he collects from… we collect from poor people all the time, right? Not just in this…
Council Chamber: new… So, we collect from people that owe the city money, the strategies that are being employed by… I'm just trying to figure out where did we get that it was for poor people in just black and brown communities. That's… We never said that. Okay, because that's the… that's the sentiment that's going around. So, I just want to make sure that year after year, the mayor collects
Council Chamber: from…
Council Chamber: his constituents $113 million every year. Anyone that owes us debt, so it's not just City of Chicago. I think where you're getting that sentiment is around the sale of debt. So when we sell our debt.
Council Chamber: To the extent that we would be able to sell this type of debt, which was highly unlikely, which is why we put zero next to it, which is what was presented in yesterday's meeting, the sale of debt.
Council Chamber: The reason why you don't see a lot of cities doing it, except for property tax sales and other types of perfected liens, is because of the fact that
Council Chamber: Those companies that have… you've now sold the debt to.
Council Chamber: they employ predatory practices in order to get at that debt, no matter who owes it. So…
Council Chamber: The $113 million debt What are the… again, it's water.
Council Chamber: Not water, because this is just the amount… So what are the… So what are the fees that are collected from the $113 million? Sure. It is, going after revenue related to, our revenue enforcement division.
Council Chamber: It is parking tickets, it's administrative hearings debt, it's automated speed tickets, it's,
Council Chamber: The emergency medical transport or the, ambulatory fees.
Council Chamber: It's, it's, it's a whole host. Belsky, I don't know if you have the full list. So, so, so, and no disrespect to my colleagues, they made comments that we were going after the ambulatory, the parking tickets, so it's more so of the sale of the debt. So.
Council Chamber: The sale of the deck could be changed to…
Council Chamber: the regular fees, the regular collector that we already have. It doesn't have to… it doesn't necessarily… am I correct, Nicole? It doesn't necessarily have to be the sale of the debt. It's just debt that we want to collect the 89.6
Council Chamber: Million.
Council Chamber: Debt recovery.
Council Chamber: Correct. So, if I could, I appreciate that. Again, we're going off of the words on the presentation that was provided to us, as well as what was said in the hearing yesterday, which was the sale of the debt.
Council Chamber: We believe, and we are, you know, working with…
Council Chamber: Comptroller Belsky, a $113 million increase over what we currently do, so what… if this is…
Council Chamber: do more than, you know, using your existing practices. What we're now talking about is $200 more of what is year over year. So, what would be this OBM projection, then? We don't believe that we would be able to achieve $200 million worth of
Council Chamber: debt collection.
Council Chamber: Well, we do have 12 new attorneys, right, for that, correct?
Council Chamber: That have to be hired, yes.
Council Chamber: I think… And how many do we have now?
Council Chamber: Just in your division.
Council Chamber: Just in the new ordinance? No, in your division. In our division, I believe there's… 9…
Council Chamber: Counting me, a chief, supervisor's 9 collection attorneys. Oh, 9 and 12 is a big number.
Council Chamber: Okay, that's all I have.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Scott.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson?
Lamont Robinson: Chairman, thank you very much.
Lamont Robinson: My question this evening would be, if you could please share what would…
Lamont Robinson: what would be passing an unbalanced budget do for the city's credit rating? Again, what would… what would be, if we unfortunately pass an unbalanced budget.
Lamont Robinson: I'm curious to know what it would be… what it would do, excuse me, for our credit writing. Thank you.
Council Chamber: It would definitely put our credit ratings at risk.
Council Chamber: significant,
Council Chamber: that's something that's considered a significant problem, by the rating agencies. It shows a lack of…
Council Chamber: Governance, So, I think our credit ratings would be at risk.
Council Chamber: From all the radio agencies.
Council Chamber: point of information for, Alderman Villegis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's assuming… you're… under your assumption that it's… that it's not balanced. We… we say it's balanced. Also, isn't it…
Council Chamber: strike that. That's not a point of information, but the credit rating agencies gave a negative downgrade
Council Chamber: From S&P to the budget that the mayor proposed. So, what are we talking about here? That's your assumption.
Council Chamber: It is. I mean, I was asked the question, I answered it with the knowledge that I have. As somebody who works in the industry.
Council Chamber: So, that is my answer.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson?
Lamont Robinson: Chairman, thank you. I'm just curious, we got… we got two sides of this. To Jill's point, we have folks
Lamont Robinson: Saying that we have…
Lamont Robinson: sent through a balanced budget, and then there are folks that do not. I just want to make sure that we have a budget team that's in front of us, and I just want to be clear that, again, if we pass.
Lamont Robinson: a budget that's unbalanced, to Jill's answer, it will be devastating to our credit rating. Is that correct, Jill?
Council Chamber: I try to avoid words that are that dramatic.
Council Chamber: But I think it would put all of our ratings at risk.
Lamont Robinson: Chairman, thank you. Jill, thank you for answering the question.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Oh, hold on, hold on. Who's…
Council Chamber: We're gonna go to Alderman Moore, then to Alderman Down.
Council Chamber: Okay, alright, duly noted, on the dial.
Council Chamber: Point of information, just…
Council Chamber: Jill, if the question was asked if we did not make the full pension payment, what would your answer be to that question?
Council Chamber: You know, obviously one of the things that's important in our ratings is our approach to our, you know, pension debts, and the advanced pension payment, the inception of that led to rating upgrades from all of the rating agencies.
Council Chamber: You know, we are, you know, in a, you know, an unusual situation this year where, you know, we don't have the fund balance.
Council Chamber: That we had reserved before to pay for it, nor do we have the, you know, the full casino open and have larger tax revenues for pensions coming in for that either.
Council Chamber: You know, we would certainly, I think…
Council Chamber: I don't think there's disagreement between the council and the administration that we'd like to make the full payment. The issue that we've had is how do we have… produce, you know, a balanced budget that we think addresses the… the needs of the city.
Council Chamber: And, you know, is as fair and equitable as our budget can be. And in doing that, we don't have, you know, the means
Council Chamber: under our proposed budget to make the full payment. Now, we do know that S&P put us on a negative outlook for that, and we have had extensive conversations with them. They have talked a lot about us
Council Chamber: getting back on the path next year to a full payment, and so in the 2027 budget, I strongly believe that if we don't do the full payment in 2027, that we would get downgraded at that point.
Council Chamber: You know, certainly, you know, we can't predict what the rating agencies are gonna do, and we could see, potentially, a downgrade, because of not making the full payment. I think it is more likely that if we don't make it two years in a row, we would get downgraded than if we make the partial payment this year.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: You got round two, so you're good. Alderman Fuentes?
Council Chamber: Followed by Alderman Conway.
Council Chamber: My apologies. Actually, you know, you're last, you just came, you just got here. Alderman Conway, then.
Council Chamber: I had 8 questions, I've answered, answered 6 of them, so I will be… I will be brief.
Council Chamber: Earlier,
Council Chamber: This is for Councilor Belsky. Earlier you said, and I think you may have misspoken, or I may have misheard, that there's been $1 billion of additional debt in the last 7 years, and I know the Sun-Times said $1 billion in this administration, and I thought you had previously said $1.8 billion in the last
Council Chamber: 7 years, so I'm just trying to get that… get those numbers straightened out.
Council Chamber: We, we, we can get you, An exact number, but… Going back to 2001,
Council Chamber: You know, the numbers are… that's where you get the $7 or $8 billion. So, you're not gonna find those people anyway, but… For sure, but we can just focus on the last 7 years, I mean… But, you know, we can… we can get you numbers going back 5 years, 7 years.
Council Chamber: You know, it's obviously gonna be less than the $7 billion, but it's still substantial.
Council Chamber: And again, we… You know, we have…
Council Chamber: All these things at our disposal, and have not been able to collect it.
Council Chamber: I don't see why anyone would want to take on that responsibility, because they won't get paid either.
Council Chamber: Well, we got 7 law firms. I hope they're willing to take on that responsibility, at least if the city certainly isn't.
Council Chamber: One other thing, and I didn't…
Council Chamber: Was it said in this presentation that we have no ability to track false fire alarms? Did somebody say that?
Council Chamber: Can you ask the question again?
Council Chamber: Somebody said we have no ability to track false fire alarms? I said that we don't currently track when police officers or the fire department is called out, and it turns out to be a false alarm. That's actually noted in the report that's been…
Council Chamber: Referenced a number of times by this committee.
Council Chamber: Okay, obviously a series of questions about why don't we? We could put together a form… We don't have the resources to do it. We don't have the resources to put together a form for the fire department to track false fire alarms?
Council Chamber: They do not.
Council Chamber: Yeah, there's a bunch of firefighters here that can refute that, I'm sure.
Council Chamber: Hold on.
Council Chamber: Are you…
Council Chamber: Well, I, I, I'm… Alderman Napolitano… Go ahead, Aldermano. …decorated member of the fire department, would like to speak with that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Council Chamber: For every call that's dispatched, It's… it's closed out with a… with a coating.
Council Chamber: Whether it's false or not false.
Council Chamber: Whether it's by the police or the fire department, so there is a system that is tracking this.
Council Chamber: In order to bill a person.
Council Chamber: a dollar amount for that false alarm? No, I'm just saying as far as tracking for whether an officer or a police or a fireman went out on a false alarm, and translating that into sending out a bill
Council Chamber: To someone to pay is… is different.
Council Chamber: But we do it for false…
Council Chamber: alarms that aren't fire alarms, we have a billing system for someone's alarm system that controls. I'm not saying that we don't have… that we don't currently bill for things, I'm saying that we don't currently bill for false alarms. Okay. My apologies. I thought you said there is no ability to track these numbers.
Council Chamber: Or to know… To track it for purposes of billing. Okay, but we do have the ability to track it.
Council Chamber: And we can attach a purpose.
Council Chamber: For… of billing to that, like we do already.
Council Chamber: I've been told, and I've been in those conversations with both CFD and police department, that we do not currently track for purposes of billing.
Council Chamber: Okay, I mean, I think that that's clear. I would… I would… I would merely say that if we're already
Council Chamber: tracking it as a coding in the fire department, our ability to then send a bill is pretty, seems pretty minimal, and I think it speaks to some of the… some of the information, a lot of the information here I, I greatly appreciate, but I certainly think there's some parts of this where we have conflated
Council Chamber: stuff that…
Council Chamber: we can't do versus things that we are choosing not to do. And I hope as we continue to work together on this, on this budget that,
Council Chamber: we become a little more flexible on the things we are choosing not to do, such as something that would be pretty easy, such as billing false fire alarms. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. What I would say is there's only one thing that I said that we could not do, or very few things that we said that we could not do.
Council Chamber: sell a debt is very difficult to do. What I've said about the false alarms is that we currently have the ability… I mean, we currently have this as an ordinance, both CFD and CPD
Council Chamber: have in their ordinance how much someone would be fined if there is a false alarm. We have zero revenue from that, because we're not currently collecting… they're not currently giving a ticket, they're not currently billing someone for showing up to a false alarm. So when I'm talk… when I say taking
Council Chamber: an operationalizing an ordinance to actually translate that into dollars? Who are the people that are… who are we sending… who's actually sending the bill out? Who's collecting those dollars? That's people. They don't currently exist today, and that wasn't in the proposal that was put before us.
Council Chamber: Okay, I mean, we send out fines for all sorts of things, and sort of adding this one through BACP or whatever it is, seems like it would be pretty easy to do, but…
Council Chamber: Apparently, you disagree that sending a bill to something we already know is difficult, and perhaps that's why we're in the situation we're… we're in here. That's all I got. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All right, thank you.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cosada, followed by Alderman Burnett.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: Shame.
Council Chamber: Sorry.
Council Chamber: Not to be facetious, but truly, for the public record, do we know who the financial experts are who crafted the other budget? We do not. We do not.
Council Chamber: All right. Okay, so I do want to thank my colleagues for all their hard work, and I think that the past two, dialogues have been very productive and have shined a lot of light, and have been very helpful. The three things that I think have been highlighted, I just want to
Council Chamber: put on the public record that I have concerns with are debt and fines.
Council Chamber: The lack of structural revenue sources, and then the unstable revenue projections, from the alternative budget. We talked a lot about debt and fines.
Council Chamber: Talked a little bit about PPLT. I want to talk about the advertisement, proposals.
Council Chamber: I asked this question of, Alderman Wagaspak.
Council Chamber: yesterday, but I was wondering if you all have a legal opinion, or analysis from the Department of Law, or just as a, you know, as OBM, on the advertisement of bridge houses? So, it was…
Council Chamber: brought up yesterday that they would just be naming rights, but it said advertisements. So I'm just trying to figure out, what it is, because there is that programmatic agreement between the Federal Highway Administration and the Chicago Department of Transportation, on the preservation of those, that, those pieces of infrastructure. So I was just wondering if you all have any opinion on that.
Council Chamber: And would advertisements, impact that, programmatic agreement?
Council Chamber: So, based on what was presented.
Council Chamber: on the deck, it just said Bridge House Pilot Program, and a certain dollar figure associated with it. What we do know is that the city has advertised on bridge houses before, and I do not believe that it was,
Council Chamber: legally impermissible. I don't know if laws have changed. The last time they did this was back in 2011, so I don't know if new laws or new regulations or anything like that have come up that would
Council Chamber: Disrupt our ability to do it, but what we will say is that,
Council Chamber: it immediately faced backlash when it did occur, and this was rolled out under the manual administration, and it was taken down almost immediately. I'm sorry, who did it get backlash from?
Council Chamber: The public. Oh.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Go ahead. I know I'm not on the committee, but he did bring up my name. Yes. And I pointed this out yesterday, I just want to say, Chairman, that
Council Chamber: I answered that question.
Council Chamber: It does not affect federal law.
Council Chamber: the way it went about, and we did address it, as well, about how it went about. So…
Council Chamber: it's obvious that you could spend about 5 minutes to figure out that the way we were proposing it is not the way it happened in 2011, 2012. Thank you. Okay. I think I said that we did not see that there were any legal issues, but we also don't have any information about the pilot
Council Chamber: Alderman Riley?
Council Chamber: I want to help with this one, because the bridge houses in question are located in the 42nd ward I was serving at that time.
Council Chamber: And there… it is true, the Bank of America ads were taken down due to backlash, but if you saw what those ads and the material they were printed on looked like.
Council Chamber: They looked like beer specials in front of a dive bar. So, they literally dropped… draped vinyl plastic banners over the bridge house and called that advertising. I mean, it was… it was ugly as all can be.
Council Chamber: And there's a reason why it failed, and I think the aesthetic that Alderman Wagasbach is discussing is a…
Council Chamber: a much higher aesthetic, and a more respectful treatment of the bridge house. I objected to those advertisements back in 2011, along with a lot of people, because literally, it looked like they were selling $2 beers on the side of the bridge house. So, you know, there's a way to do it, and there's a way not to do it.
Council Chamber: And in 2011, I think that administration showed exactly how not to do it. We could certainly learn from that. Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: Monica's auto?
Council Chamber: Thank you. Just, sorry.
Council Chamber: Every time I ask a question, I get so many points of information,
Council Chamber: Is there evidence that, these types of pilots have generated recurring revenue at a scale in peer cities, or in Chicago in previous years? In terms of advertisements, light poles, city vehicles.
Council Chamber: Do we have, information from Pure Cities on that?
Council Chamber: We didn't receive, any information about this, from the deck that we received yesterday. We do look at our own advertising programs and the scale that we currently generate, revenue,
Council Chamber: And…
Council Chamber: based on what was presented, a full $29 million, we currently collect less than that on a pretty, expansive agreement that we have with, JC Deco.
Council Chamber: Okay, and then could you elaborate again? I didn't hear all the information in terms of the augmented reality. What were the reasons why augmented reality would not be able to generate revenue?
Council Chamber: I don't think that we… we believe that it won't ever be able to generate revenue. I think it's an interesting and, novel idea for the city to definitely look into, but if you're asking if I can,
Council Chamber: guarantee revenue in the 2026 budget, when there are going to be a lot of policy
Council Chamber: implementation, procurement, and legal questions that have to be settled as to how we as a city will allow this to occur. That takes time, and there's… you can see the number of departments that would have to weigh in on this.
Council Chamber: that's not a very short process. Right.
Council Chamber: So… and also, is there, like, any legal framework or market data on… on how we would be able to generate revenue from that? I'm just… what I'm confused about is how we are putting out a novel revenue idea, like this, and are expected to generate revenue.
Council Chamber: I… I…
Council Chamber: I'm open, and I would love to have the conversation around the assumptions that went into this. If there's a report that we can look at, that'd be great. We don't currently have the legal framework in place for this, and I guarantee you that we will want to spend the time ensuring that it is
Council Chamber: most beneficial to the city, whatever legal framework that we do put in place, and I just don't think that'll happen overnight. I think that we should be thoughtful about it, so that whatever is put in place is beneficial to the city, and…
Council Chamber: makes the city thrive and things like that. Without additional information about where this does exist and where it has been successful and how much has been generated, it's just difficult for us to put a budget number against it.
Council Chamber: Got it. And then… got one and a half minute left. In terms of the, EY efficiencies, what are the barriers to implementing the ones that they, the additional ones that were listed out?
Council Chamber: Sure. So the additional cuts… so our budget, already included $9 million of vacancy cuts, position cuts, which is higher, or within the range that was in that report. This Council is more than welcome to add an additional $2 million.
Council Chamber: We believe that that will immediately impact service, based on our discussions with our departments. You saw in the very last slide how much we have left in vacancy,
Council Chamber: Budget, that's not a lot, and most of that does reside in CPD. So, to cut additional positions in other departments will definitely be a service… will definitely be a service reduction.
Council Chamber: Fleet modernization, we are implementing every single option within that report. The one that we see as being the immediate
Council Chamber: cost sa… or it's actually a revenue generator, that we believe we can achieve within one year is the asset disposition of.
Council Chamber: outdated equipment and cars. The other ones will take foundational, things to be implemented throughout 2026 in order to guarantee and certify the amount of cost savings within the report that you just mentioned.
Council Chamber: Okay, thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Burnett.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. And to the Budget Director, our CFO, Comptroller, and to the team, thank you for doing the work over the last 24, 48 hours, and for the last 2 months. I know it's been a lot of back and forth, and I appreciate the time to answer these questions. So I'm gonna start at the beginning, or I'll go from
Council Chamber: the beginning of the presentation backwards, and just want to ask a question on
Council Chamber: This deficit, this revenue deficit that we're presenting here.
Council Chamber: Say we go along and we figure out a way to make numbers balance, if…
Council Chamber: In July, we find out that we are short by a significant amount of money. One thing that you've noted is that we can do positional cuts.
Council Chamber: And by that point in time, in July, to the end of the year, I estimated, or from what was on there, it's close to $60 million.
Council Chamber: If we are above that point in terms of revenue deficiency, what are some other ways in which we can fill that gap? How can we do that for the remainder of the year?
Council Chamber: I mean, the options aren't great,
Council Chamber: the easiest and quickest way is layoffs, obviously, because then you save not only the money in this year's budget… next year's budget, but future budgets.
Council Chamber: We can contain overtime, but that's also difficult to do, just given there's… most of the overtime that's currently being done are our infrastructure and our police departments, and they're typically doing them on emergency situations.
Council Chamber: You know, The options aren't great.
Council Chamber: Gotcha, so… Naming other options, but, you know, dip into our asset reserves, not great option. So it'll be incumbent on us to figure out other… could we even figure out other revenue streams at that point in time, or I guess there's implementation
Council Chamber: challenges at mid-year? It depends on what the revenue options are. There might be things that you could implement immediately, but you probably only get
Council Chamber: potentially 6 months of that revenue, if any.
Council Chamber: you'd also probably get a lot of backlash of a mid-year revenue implementation, but you could do it. If it's something like the liquor tax, which we talked about earlier, which,
Council Chamber: is a new fee on a new entity, they probably have to have implementation time to implement it. So it's difficult to implement something mid-year. You could do it, but it, again, not a great option. Gotcha. Pretty, pretty difficult to do mid-year. Okay.
Council Chamber: When we're looking… going… moving on to the video gaming tax, You all estimated 160…
Council Chamber: establishments would utilize the VGT. Can we just talk about that number versus the 3,000 or so businesses that would be able to?
Council Chamber: Yeah, that was a number that, you know, we hired an independent consultant to do a report for us, and, you know, we are not relying on
Council Chamber: information from the VGT industry, or lobbyists representing the industry, you know, we relied on an independent consultant
Council Chamber: For all the assumptions and projections that we have used.
Council Chamber: And that was the number that they projected for the first year. Continues, you know, to ramp up after that.
Council Chamber: Understood. And… One thing that's been mentioned by a few of my colleagues is this idea of removing sweepstakes.
Council Chamber: Do we know if there is any requirement to…
Council Chamber: punish or exclude businesses that currently have sweepstakes, so would they be eligible for these VGT licenses if they wanted to be? That's something that we're gonna look into, that was, also, brought up by Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: I don't… I don't have an answer for that, but we are gonna look into that.
Council Chamber: So there's a possibility where we'll be excluding a significant base if they have to be punished.
Council Chamber: I just… I don't have the answer for that. I'm, you know, I gave a…
Council Chamber: you know, my thoughts on, you know, earlier that, you know, I can speculate that the reason that
Council Chamber: the Illinois Gaming Board might not give a VGT license to someone who operates a sweepstakes machine would be…
Council Chamber: because they engaged in an illegal activity. That's not a right or wrong answer, it's pure speculation, and there's all kinds of problems with that, which we know from
Council Chamber: Prior items that were illegal that have become legal.
Council Chamber: But, we will have to look into what the actual facts of the matter are.
Council Chamber: Understood, thank you. It's out of our hands. In terms of licensing fees versus… what's the difference between a licensing fee and a tax in this situation?
Council Chamber: So, fees are, imposed in exchange for a service provided. So, you think about a lot of the fees that BACP puts in place for issuing licenses and so forth. A tax is a tax on activity, right?
Council Chamber: So that's the difference between the two. One, and for fees, they have to be… they can't be more than the cost of the service provided, right? So we can't…
Council Chamber: We can't make revenue from a fee that's imposed.
Council Chamber: And you note here that it…
Council Chamber: It appears to be a tax.
Council Chamber: But…
Council Chamber: Yes, so, sorry. It appears to be a tax because there doesn't appear to be a service being offset by what's in the ordinance, and we are currently preempted by Home Rule Authority from imposing a tax on gaming terminals.
Council Chamber: So you're saying a potential source of what we're saying in this revenue base for VGTs might not be able to…
Council Chamber: be achieved because of our preemption status from the state? Correct. That's a concern we have. Obviously, we just got the ordinance less than 24 hours ago, so, but in looking at how it's drafted, that would be our primary concern. Okay, understood. There's more to dig in there. Moving on to the advertising.
Council Chamber: portion of… this review.
Council Chamber: You note that we are currently in agreement with JC Deco for street furniture and digital billboards. What is the status of our deal there? Do we know how long there is, and is there exclusivity related to this contract?
Council Chamber: Yes, the contract is an exclusive contract.
Council Chamber: I'll give you the exact, I can follow up on the exact dates of when the, term of the contract ends. It would be very helpful to have the exact term, and then also the exclusivity period. But also, understanding… Exclusive period is through the contract. I mean, they are the entity that we utilize
Council Chamber: for both of those programs. Understood. So does that prohibit us from utilizing other… or having other type of advertising programs? For instance, light poles or buses?
Council Chamber: No, it doesn't prohibit us from having other types of marketing programs. It's just exclusive for the type of
Council Chamber: advertising that they provide to us. Gotcha. So there's other avenues that we can still explore beyond what we currently have. Yes, okay, thank you.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Alderman Sito-Lopez is, asked to participate via Rule 59. Is there a motion?
Council Chamber: So moved by Alderman Cuzada. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Painted chairs, the ayes have it, and Alderman, Cicho Lopez is,
Council Chamber: Are you, on, Alderman Cito Lopez?
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: Yes, Chairman, I can hear you.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Is he in a chamber somewhere? Like an echo chamber or something?
Council Chamber: Alright,
Council Chamber: Alderman Sposato. I just want to give a point of information, and I text the BACP commissioner, and he didn't respond to me, but 8 or 9 or 10 years ago.
Council Chamber: We had a meeting about sweepstakes machines. They are not illegal. We… they're begging to be licensed, we're not licensing them. These people, we had a meeting with them, they are begging us to license them to pay for a license. They are not illegal, so I don't know where everybody goes up, I don't know how they get around it. I'm not an attorney, but we have done nothing about businesses in our…
Council Chamber: city that have sweepstakes machines, so I don't know why people don't like to play them as much as
Council Chamber: video gaming, but they are not illegal, but they are begging us to license them, so that's it, just a statement. Yeah, and if I can comment, I think that I should have been more careful in my words. We… what we've said in the past is they're in a gray area. They're not… they're not legal.
Council Chamber: they may not be illegal, but they're also not legal, so they do fall into gray area, and you're right, I should be more careful on the words that I try. And he did respond to me, saying, I said, are sweepstakes machines illegal? I said, I say, no, you are correct, so… so they're not. But a gray area, just like the mayor of the pot shop, so…
Council Chamber: Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. All right,
Council Chamber: Alderman Silverstein, we skipped you earlier, you got any questions? You good? Okay. Alderman Fuentes.
Council Chamber: Thank you, my comrade is supposed to be my friend here.
Council Chamber: Cut me earlier.
Council Chamber: Sold me out. Alright.
Council Chamber: Could… I just wanna… I apologize. I apologize. I'm gonna have to hold you… Alderman Yancey was, are you kidding me right now? I'm sorry, I apologize. Alderman Yancey, had his hand up. He's on virtually.
Desmon Yancy: I'll let my colleague, go ahead of me, it's fine.
Council Chamber: Alright, thank you, thank you, sir. Alderman Fuentes.
Council Chamber: Alright.
Council Chamber: I know what committee to get on next time. All right. I just want to touch on VGTs, just a bit. I know that we've talked quite a bit already about debt collection and VGTs, but I do want to talk about the role of the state.
Council Chamber: and the role that the state plays with the licensing from the state gaming board.
Council Chamber: And how long that process takes, and maybe what the backlog there is, and how that component alone will impact our ability to get licenses out in a way that will allow us to get the revenue that we are seeking from this revenue package. Can we talk about how that
Council Chamber: component alone may impact the revenue projections that we see here? Sure, and the… the revenue projections that we have
Council Chamber: That our consultant prepared,
Council Chamber: bake those timelines into the projection. So, 6 to 12 months, is our understanding of how long it takes to get a license. That is the, you know, current, based on the amount of.
Council Chamber: communities that have, authorized VGTs, in the state.
Council Chamber: You know, certainly if, you know, the city authorizes them, there will be a lot more new applicants, so that may impact timelines. I don't know, how much that would have an impact, but, it certainly may have an impact.
Council Chamber: When the consultant put the report together, they looked at the, actual results of other communities and the licenses they got.
Council Chamber: The Illinois Gaming Board, is very open with their data, and so they were able to use that to determine the time it would normally take for a community to ramp up.
Council Chamber: To having… You know, sort of…
Council Chamber: reach their capacity in their, community. I mean, nobody… nobody has 100% of the esta… available establishes get it. I think this came up before, you see restaurants who will choose to give EGTs, and restaurants who will choose not to, you know. But until you get to sort of the typical market saturation,
Council Chamber: It looks like it takes about 10 years, typically, though it ramps up earlier in the first few.
Council Chamber: And for the record, can we issue a license before they get their license from the video game board from the state?
Council Chamber: No, no, you need the license from the Illinois Gaming Board.
Council Chamber: In order to operate.
Council Chamber: I don't know what purpose we would have in giving a license before that. It wouldn't allow anybody to operate. Nor could we collect revenue. Yeah, and we couldn't collect revenue from it.
Council Chamber: And then, just for the record, could we re-articulate the impact that, licensing VGT would… what impact would it have on our contract with Bally's?
Council Chamber: We would lose the $4 million in annual community benefit payments that Bally's makes to the city.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chair.
Council Chamber: The rest of the questions I had were already asked.
Council Chamber: Alright, thank you. Anybody who has not had a first round.
Council Chamber: Okay, we're gonna go to Round 2, and I have…
Council Chamber: Alders Lee, Lopez, Posato, and Dow. Any others?
Council Chamber: Take you off, take you off.
Council Chamber: Alderman Yancey, I'm sorry.
Desmon Yancy: No worries. Thank you all. One of the benefits of being low and seniority is that all your colleagues ask a lot of great questions. I have a question about,
Desmon Yancy: The credit rating with respect to a possible shutdown.
Desmon Yancy: Can someone offer some context about what those consequences look like?
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, can you ask the question again? I apologize.
Desmon Yancy: No, no worries. In the event… I mean, it sounds like there's a bunch of work done, and it sounds like we're only a…
Desmon Yancy: you know, a small percentage of the budget away from landing in a space that we can live with. What happens in the event of us not being able to land on a budget, by December 31st?
Council Chamber: By December 30th is when we're.
Desmon Yancy: 30th, rather. Yeah, credit rating, and etc.
Council Chamber: So, obviously, there are significant implications for not, passing a budget by the deadline of the end of this year, including not having a property tax levy on file with the clerk, which goes to paying our pension obligations.
Council Chamber: And to some extent, our debt.
Council Chamber: We have, you know, essential services, fire, police, and so forth.
Council Chamber: And the question would be with, you know, can we ask them to continue to work without having the appropriation to pay them? So there's a lot of implications, especially, you know, we have vendors that have provided services, to the city.
Council Chamber: That expect payment.
Council Chamber: And have contractual rights. So there's just a whole host of, implications for not having a budget appropriated by the end of the year. I'd also say there are a whole host of implications for beginning a budget year with a known budget deficit.
Desmon Yancy: Okay, alright, thank you for that.
Council Chamber: Your, other question, though, we would get downgraded by the rating agencies.
Desmon Yancy: There's their… Just in your experience, Which is worse?
Council Chamber: Which of what things is worse?
Desmon Yancy: I'm sorry, passing a budget that appears unbalanced, or a government shutdown.
Council Chamber: A government shutdown is worse.
Desmon Yancy: Okay, just making sure. Okay, thanks a bunch. I'm still on.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman Yancey. Alderman Hoppenworth?
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chair.
Council Chamber: I appreciate the work that's been done here, Budget Director and CFO, and many of my questions have been asked and answered.
Council Chamber: I, wanna… Say that it's gonna be really hard for me to To sell a budget, that…
Council Chamber: Relies on debt collection, fines and fees.
Council Chamber: So… I'm not voting today.
Council Chamber: But it's gonna be really hard for me to sell that. I wish to not be here next year. I'm curious…
Council Chamber: How are we working, and what's the plan to work with Springfield so that we can create
Council Chamber: more structural changes so that we are not relying on one-time fixes. Can you speak on that?
Council Chamber: Sure, I'm gonna… if I can… if you give me a little bit of latitude, I wanna speak on a couple of things. One, I think…
Council Chamber: And this council has rightfully stated a number of times, and I think that we have…
Council Chamber: try to show our alignment, that we also have to rely upon ourselves to make sure that we are working to, you know, get into structural balance. And so we do have a lot of work ahead of us, and that we are implementing to lower the cost of government. That's really, really important, because that will help us get into structural balance in future
Council Chamber: years, where we're not dealing with billion dollars, $500, $900 million budget deficit. So that work is critical and crucial, and I commend this body for continually raising that, highlighting that, and challenging us to be accountable to do that work. I think that's critically important, so thank you for that.
Council Chamber: I think, you know, you've heard the mayor say this a number of times, you've probably spoken to IGA about this a number of times. You know, we have a number of priorities in Springfield, and we have been going down there for the last two years, and it does take time. A lot of times you go down there, you're not going to get an answer the first time that you go, or the first session that you go.
Council Chamber: We believe that not only for the City of Chicago, but for the state as a whole.
Council Chamber: the answer is in progressive revenues. This council has brought up, ad nauseum, not just
Council Chamber: under this administration, but several administrations, that we tax and we fine and we fee people
Council Chamber: at the same rate, irrespective of their incomes, right? That is something that we believe is fundamentally unfair. We as a city and as a state need to change that, and so we challenge Springfield, and we want to grab arms with Springfield in
Council Chamber: pushing something that gets to more equitable taxing structure in this state. So that's what we will continue to go down. I'm pretty sure… I don't have the document in front of me that lists out each of the different revenue and priorities that we will be… continue to talk to Springfield about, as well as
Council Chamber: bringing up anew, to Springfield in…
Council Chamber: actually this month and next month, because that session starts now. But I will say that we really do believe that that benefits not just the City of Chicago, but it benefits the state, because they also have financial issues that they're contending with.
Council Chamber: Thank you. That's all I have.
Council Chamber: Together.
Council Chamber: Any other questions?
Council Chamber: All right, I just had one question, and this is related to the advanced pension payment. The change in the advanced pension payment is approximately
Council Chamber: Is it $130 million, or $110 million? What was the difference? So, in the aggregate, it would be $130 million to get to the full advance payment, but that means about $110 million from the corporate fund.
Council Chamber: the balance of that would come from aviation and water. We make our advance, pension payment in the same
Council Chamber: with the same percentages coming from the enterprises and from the corporate fund as we do all of our normal pension payments. And then when is that payment normally made?
Council Chamber: We make the advance pension payment, usually in January.
Council Chamber: And if we make the payment in January, if… like…
Council Chamber: down the road, when we get the tax money, do we make the full pension payment in January, meaning
Council Chamber: No, no, I'm talking about the balance of the statutory payment versus the advance payment. When is the statutory payment made? So we make the payment, in a couple of different ways. We make the, what is called the corporate fund contribution.
Council Chamber: We do make that early in the year, usually, you know, January, February, or so. And then the, majority of the balance of the payment comes from the levy that's dedicated to pensions.
Council Chamber: And so those payments get made as those, property taxes are collected, so that would be in…
Council Chamber: March, and then…
Council Chamber: you know, you'd expect it to be in July or August, but in 3 of the last 4 years, it's been significantly later. And so, for instance, right
Council Chamber: We're collecting those levies currently. Got it, got it. So, if we make the advance payment, and then we say, hey, we want to credit against the statutory component of that, can we take a… then later take a credit against the statutory component of the levy?
Council Chamber: No, we cannot do that.
Council Chamber: So, making the advance payment is, once that money's gone, it's gone? That's correct. Okay.
Council Chamber: So… Oh, no.
Council Chamber: Go ahead, Chairman Dowling, I'll come, Vice Chair Lee.
Council Chamber: Okay, I want to be clear. So, we make the… Pension payment.
Council Chamber: January, you said, and over the course of the year, right?
Council Chamber: If we were to do the advance, the supplemental, the more than what's required, Can we pay that overtime?
Council Chamber: Yes, we could choose to pay it later, or pay it over time. We pay it at the beginning of the year because
Council Chamber: That's when it has the most value to the pension funds, because it then is invested all year.
Council Chamber: So, if we wait till later, it has… it's not invested as long?
Council Chamber: Do we get dinged by the rating agencies if we…
Council Chamber: You know, paid it later in the year.
Council Chamber: I don't… I think that's not,
Council Chamber: I think that's not highly likely,
Council Chamber: it's not something I've really thought about.
Council Chamber: But I don't think it's that likely if we paid it over time.
Council Chamber: That we would.
Council Chamber: I think the more…
Council Chamber: the question the rating agencies have is, are we committed to paying it or not? Fine. Okay, thank you.
Council Chamber: Vice Chair?
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman.
Council Chamber: I have two questions through the chair, you can give… you don't have to give it to me right now, but I can get it from you tonight. It's about liquor. What's the total retail sales in your analysis based on, and what was the source of that? I think you said where you pulled the information from, but if you have that at your fingertips, I can just write it down.
Council Chamber: And then the other question is, what's the total gallonage of taxes collected for the same period?
Council Chamber: You can get that to me, because I want to move things forward, and we've been here a long time. I know we spent a lot of time, sort of dissecting, the work that we did. I have a question about the…
Council Chamber: budget recommend… the amendment to the budget recommendations, because there's some other things in here. Can you tell me if any of the positions eliminated, beyond those that were eliminated in the mayor's original budget were… are in here? Are there any positions eliminated beyond what was originally introduced?
Council Chamber: I'm just trying to sift through… In what was put in the technical amendment? No, it's…
Council Chamber: There are no additional position elimination, so…
Council Chamber: The only technical amendments are things that, you know, people have been hired into a position at a higher, you know, so we put in the rate that their position actually is now. We have a couple of other amendments, such as moving the fire retro.
Council Chamber: payments from Finance General, because when we introduced, it was the same day that you ratified, and we always keep the retro in
Council Chamber: Finance General until it's ratified, so we have now moved that into the fire department's budget, so there's things like that in… Yeah, and there's more… so, and I'm referring to the 121-page document, too, that we got. If someone could please get me a document, that would be really helpful. I don't have it in front of me. What, the amendment?
Council Chamber: Karen's been holding out on you.
Council Chamber: Which page are you on? I'm, oh, what page am I on?
Council Chamber: there were… I'm sorry, I didn't flag it for myself. The overall question is just, because I didn't have time to go through every single one of these pages, because we were talking about other stuff. There's a lot of position strikes and ads, and… Yeah, that's… that happens every single year. It's because we freeze the position
Council Chamber: file in order to present the budget, but transactions, people are being hired every single day. And so, the technical amendments are always updating where activity has now progressed to. So the net effect is that
Council Chamber: There's nothing different in terms of the number of positions… Positions, that's correct. …from the original version. That's correct. That's all I needed to know. Thank you. That's all I've got, Chair.
Council Chamber: Thank you. We're gonna take a short break. The, autumn Lopez has presented,
Council Chamber: some additional items that I wanted to just make sure. The only… one thing I'm very concerned about is the thing being right, and, that it works, so I want the, staff to review that, and then it can be incorporated into the, into whatever
Council Chamber: decision or amendment is, moved forward. So, we'll take a,
Council Chamber: 5-minute recess in order to, confirm that.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Alright, let's, come back to order.
Council Chamber: We have, Alders, Rodriguez and Lespada who, wish to participate via Rule 59. Is there a motion?
Council Chamber: So moved. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Independent chairs, the ayes have it, and Alders Rodriguez and Lespada are added, to, participate, virtually. Okay, all right. So, we will go through…
Council Chamber: Just a couple of…
Council Chamber: I guess, housekeeping items on items, number 2 and 3. We're considering items 2 and 3.
Council Chamber: Which is a direct introduction, and three together. Item 3 is the original budget recommendations, and item 2 is a series of proposed corrections and revisions to those recommendations, together with the text portion. Okay, alright, that is what we have before us, and I have a motion from, Alder Lee.
Council Chamber: to, introduce a substitute annual appropriation? Again.
Council Chamber: I forgot where I was.
Council Chamber: Like, not my first day of class. I mean, feels like it… I don't know, we've never left. You can sit down, we're not going anywhere.
Council Chamber: Chair, I'm so tired, and I know everybody else is, too. Let me try that again. Thank you, Chairman. I would like to introduce a substitute to the annual appropriation ordinance of the City of Chicago for the year 2026. It's being distributed right now. So, hold on. I think what you're introducing is an amendment
Council Chamber: to the amendment, not the substitute, because it's not the full ordinance, this is an amendment to the ordinance that you are… that's currently on the floor, right? It is my first day at amendment school. Okay. Yes. Alright, so this is an… what you're asking for is an amendment
Council Chamber: to the amendment, that has been, brought forth, is that correct? Yes.
Council Chamber: Okay, alright, so there's an amendment to the… Convention.
Maria Hadden: Chair.
Maria Hadden: Who is it? Alder Haddon? Haddon, yeah. Yes, please.
Maria Hadden: Chairman, for both, items that were kind of newly being passed around, can we make sure we get those electronically, so that those of us on virtually have a moment to review them as well, please?
Council Chamber: Okay, we will send, we'll PDF and send that around to all.
Council Chamber: Okay? Alright.
Council Chamber: So we have… An amendment to the…
Council Chamber: amendment. That is your, that is your motion. Yes. Okay, question, Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: Chairman, I just want to be clear, what was just passed out, page 1 through 5,
Council Chamber: that says Substitute Annual Appropriation Ordinance of the City of Chicago for the year 2026 is the amendment to the amendment? Yes, it is. And essentially, what the amendment, if you want to explain fully what the amendment does, to my understanding, the amendment
Council Chamber: Replaces the numbers that, from a revenue perspective, that, the…
Council Chamber: back to the original proposal that came out of finance, coupled with the revenue, options that they put forth. Is that… is that your understanding? That is correct, and I can go through that now, Chairman, if that's okay. Very well. Hold on,
Council Chamber: Oh, no doubt.
Council Chamber: just for clarity, the, I hear you saying that this is an amendment to the amendment.
Council Chamber: But this actually says substitute
Council Chamber: Do we need to do anything with this in order to make sure that there's no issues later? Okay, that's a question for, Radiatu?
Council Chamber: So the question is, the title of this is Substitute Annual Appropriation Ordinance. Is that an issue, as we're titling this an amendment to the amendment?
Council Chamber: They are sick.
Council Chamber: their numbers.
Council Chamber: Yes.
Council Chamber: That… Okay.
Council Chamber: Can you hear me?
Council Chamber: Yeah, Rodeo Casa from the City Slow Department.
Council Chamber: What the body is proposing is clear. It is clearly communicated that it is an amendment to the corrections made to the 2026 budget recommendations. So the intent of the body is clear.
Council Chamber: So I don't think this would pose an issue. What I would recommend is, if there is a…
Council Chamber: A motion to strike that sentence and add it with the correct title, that would be appropriate.
Council Chamber: So, moved? Okay. I, I, I… Hold on.
Council Chamber: Oh, okay.
Council Chamber: Yeah, wh-wh-wh-whatever… whatever he said.
Council Chamber: Whatever he, whatever he said, alright, would you understand that? And that is the motion, as he's stated, and now,
Council Chamber: That's right, yeah. I… I don't know what he's, he's suggesting.
Council Chamber: The team is sold.
Council Chamber: Oh…
Council Chamber: But if we vote on…
Council Chamber: So it is.
Council Chamber: Whoa.
Council Chamber: So…
Council Chamber: Just 12 hours a year.
Council Chamber: This didn't come out of the system.
Council Chamber: As you… this is literally from
Council Chamber: The amendment to the amendment.
Council Chamber: They're, they're, they're sending it now.
Council Chamber: Alderman Dow? Yeah, and will my colleague just, state for the record what you changed the title to, so…
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chair. We're going to be making an amendment to the amendment, which is an amendment to a series of proposed corrections and revisions to the 2026 budget recommendations.
Council Chamber: Now I can get back to my script. The amendment makes adjustments to
Council Chamber: $211 million in spending consistent with the revenue package that was passed yesterday by the Finance Committee. These highlights include all expenditures that were listed in the Community Safety Fund, which are being preserved and moved to the corporate fund in the amounts that the Mayor originally proposed.
Council Chamber: Note that $18 million from the Small Business Fund grants in the last proposal has been eliminated.
Council Chamber: This also increases the amount for the purchase of the Chicago Public Library books and materials by $5 million. It makes the full advance pension payment, and the amendment preserves our ability to expand and grow our community, excuse me, our economy, which will be critically important for our future.
Council Chamber: And that is it. So there's… I don't know if you want me to walk through every single number, but these numbers, essentially match. They're the strike and ads, that match what changes we made.
Council Chamber: That I just outlined. In particular, it's mostly around the community safety, fund that was created, and moving the positions back to where they belong.
Council Chamber: Okay. Does anybody have any questions? Any questions? Please, no.
Council Chamber: All right, with, that being said, there's a, there's a motion, made by Alderman, Nicole Lee for this matter to pass.
Maria Hadden: of order, Chairman.
Council Chamber: Point of order, what's your, point, Alderman, Hatton?
Maria Hadden: Yeah, sorry, I know it's late. Just, just a question. Did we already accept the substitute amendment that was item 2?
Council Chamber: It was, it was sent via direct introduction.
Maria Hadden: Oh, no, no, no, did we already accept it? Like, into…
Council Chamber: That is what we're doing now. The initial motion is to accept the amendment to the amendment. After which we accept the amendment, then we will vote on the amended, amended
Council Chamber: Amendment.
Maria Hadden: And I'm so sorry, I just want to be clear, so… because I know we've got, we've got the.
Council Chamber: I understand.
Maria Hadden: the substitute, and I don't know, like, do we
Maria Hadden: accept a substitute before we accept amendments?
Council Chamber: No, just to be clear, there is no substitute. This is a direct introduction of the, of the text amendment, so there's not a substitute here. We're just amending the amendment, okay?
Maria Hadden: Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.
Council Chamber: Good, we're good. All right, so the vote now is to, accept
Council Chamber: the amendment to the text amendment for the appropriation ordinance, altogether considered with the original recommendations, the First Amendment, and the Second Amendment, this is… we're accepting this amendment. So,
Council Chamber: And that has been moved by, Alderman Lee. I make a motion. You make a… the motion's been made. All in favor? Roll call. Roll call, roll call.
Council Chamber: Vice Chair Lee? Aye.
Council Chamber: Autumn Espada.
Daniel La Spata: Nope.
Council Chamber: Alderman Dow?
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson.
Council Chamber: Alderman Yancey.
Desmon Yancy: Yes.
Council Chamber: On the middle.
Council Chamber: Otterman Harris.
Michelle Harris: Yes.
Council Chamber: Automobile.
Council Chamber: Alderman Ramirez.
Julia Ramirez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Quinn.
Council Chamber: Only Lopez.
Council Chamber: Or memor.
Council Chamber: Armin O'Shea.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mosley.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez.
Ronnie Mosley: Yes.
Michael D. Rodriguez: No.
Council Chamber: Huh?
Michael D. Rodriguez: Rodriguez is a known.
Council Chamber: Exciting.
Council Chamber: Mosley, yes.
Council Chamber: Hold on, Mosley, yes?
Council Chamber: Okay. Alderman Rodriguez.
Michael D. Rodriguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Scott.
Council Chamber: Alderman Sicha Lopez?
Council Chamber: You're still in the tone, though. Alderman, alderman… Alderman Sicha Lopez?
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: Oh, thank you.
Council Chamber: Phone's coming!
Council Chamber: Oh… Could you, I think he's been kidnapped, call the police.
Council Chamber: Old.
Council Chamber: Oh, okay, Alderman, Alderman, Cicho Lopez, we're having trouble hearing you. I'm gonna come back to you.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: Can you hear me now?
Council Chamber: Armo Burnett.
Council Chamber: Alderman Burnett? No? Okay.
Council Chamber: Audelia Farrow, Alderman Cardona.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez.
Ald. Rossana Rodríguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Conway.
Council Chamber: on Mikazada.
Council Chamber: Army Villegas.
Council Chamber: on my mids.
Council Chamber: on Ms. Posado.
Council Chamber: Alderman Nugent.
Council Chamber: Otterman Vasquez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Napolitano.
Council Chamber: on Morriley.
Council Chamber: on McNutsen, Alderman Martin?
Council Chamber: Alder Manhattan.
Maria Hadden: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Silverstein.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson?
Council Chamber: Alderman Sito Lopez.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: I'm a note, Chairman, hope you can hear me now.
Council Chamber: Yes, finally.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: Alright, time I know.
Council Chamber: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Tellia Faro, Chairman Irvin votes, votes, no. One, two…
Council Chamber: 2112.
Council Chamber: Oh… By a vote of 21 to 12, this… the, the amendment is accepted. Is there another motion?
Council Chamber: Alderman Lopez.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just wish to seek if now is the appropriate time to also offer this amendment.
Council Chamber: That's… that's… that was the… that was what I thought he… that's the motion he was gonna make, but he came with something else.
Council Chamber: We accepted the amendment. Okay, what is it that you have? Hold on, what is it? So we're clear right now, so we've got… we've got this before us. Do you have… what do you have?
Council Chamber: Okay, I just… I'm just asking if this is the right time for the library funds amendment. Hold on, I… the ques…
Council Chamber: The one that I shared earlier.
Council Chamber: For the adjustment for the library funds. Well, here's the thing, if he can amend the same document with what he has, because after this passes, that's it.
Council Chamber: Right, we're… there's nothing else for… there's no other vehicle. So, if he has a motion that he wishes to bring something else to add to this, to amend it again, that… that… that's… if that's your pleasure, you can do that, and if that passes, then it'll be incorporated as part of the amended, amended amendment.
Council Chamber: Yes. So you… that is your motion to… amend…
Council Chamber: a second amendment to this amendment. Now that this amendment has passed… No, that amendment is part of the… is incorporated… It's part of the amended amendment. It's incorporated in the amendment, right? Correct. So you want to make another amendment that will be incorporated into the amendment, correct? Yes. Okay, that is your motion. So moved. All right. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Maria Hadden: Aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: The… so… So…
Council Chamber: We're in the middle… we're in the middle of a vote, so we either gotta go up or down at this point, so we are…
Council Chamber: So… It's… Do you withdraw your motion?
Council Chamber: I can… if you want me to Richard… Okay, alright, that's fine, so… Alright, very well.
Council Chamber: So, you… Go ahead.
Council Chamber: Dope.
Council Chamber: I will draw the motion so I can explain so we're all on the same page. This is to amend the budget, amend the amendment to be reflective of the increased levy so that all the expenditures are properly accounted for in the appropriations ordinance. That is it.
Council Chamber: And I make a motion to accept the amendment to the amended amendment.
Council Chamber: Okay, very well. We need… Should all be with everyone. Okay. All right. All inf…
Council Chamber: No, no, no, that's a whole separate issue.
Council Chamber: That's a whole separate issue. So…
Council Chamber: He has his motion, all in favor of Alderman Lopez's motion to have a second amendment to the… to the amendment. Signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Aye. Any opposed?
Council Chamber: Independent chairs, the ayes have it, and this, too, will be incorporated into the amendment. All right. Now, are there any other amendments to…
Council Chamber: What we're about to deal with.
Council Chamber: Okay, is there a motion?
Council Chamber: Automobile.
Council Chamber: I move… do pass, and use the same roll call as the first roll call on the amendment.
Council Chamber: Okay, is there any objection to using the, roll call on the first… on the original, amendment?
Council Chamber: No objection? Okay, then… You object, okay, alright.
Council Chamber: Alright, I guess we gotta take another roll call then.
Council Chamber: on the Casada objective. I want to make sure.
Council Chamber: No.
Council Chamber: All right, Vice Chair… Okay. There's a hand up, I'm sorry, okay.
Council Chamber: He's back in the trunk. Alderman Lespada.
Daniel La Spata: Taking my hand down, it was from earlier, thank you.
Council Chamber: Oh, okay.
Council Chamber: Alright, so we are now voting on the
Council Chamber: twice-amended package that is what will be the now appropriation ordinance. Vice Chair Lee, Alderman Lespada.
Daniel La Spata: No luck.
Council Chamber: Alderman Lespada.
Council Chamber: Alderman Dow.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson.
Lamont Robinson: Robin doesn't know.
Council Chamber: Okay, Alderman Robinson is a no. Alderman Yancey.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mitchell.
Desmon Yancy: Yes, the answer's a yes.
Council Chamber: Alderman Harris.
Michelle Harris: Yes.
Council Chamber: Alderman Beal. Yep.
Council Chamber: Alderman Ramirez.
Julia Ramirez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Ramirez?
Julia Ramirez: No.
Council Chamber: Okay.
Council Chamber: Alderman Quinn.
Council Chamber: Alderman Lopez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: Alderman O'Shea.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mosley.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez.
Michael D. Rodriguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Scott.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cicho Lopez.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: No!
Council Chamber: Alderman Burnett.
Council Chamber: Aldermatellia Farrow.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cardona.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez.
Ald. Rossana Rodríguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Conway.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cuesada.
Council Chamber: Alderman Villegas.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mitts.
Council Chamber: Alderman Sposato.
Council Chamber: Alderman Nugent.
Council Chamber: Alderman Vasquez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Napolitano, Alder Riley, Alderman Knutson, Alderman Martin.
Council Chamber: Alderman Haddon.
Maria Hadden: Yes.
Council Chamber: Alderman Silverstein.
Ronnie Mosley: Mosley's, yes.
Council Chamber: 22.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mosley, yes.
Ronnie Mosley: Yes.
Council Chamber: I got it.
Council Chamber: Audemattalia Faro?
Council Chamber: And Chairman Irving votes, no.
Council Chamber: So I have.
Maria Hadden: Chairman, my bad. This is Had, and I'd like to be a no. I'm misunderstanding what we were voting on.
Council Chamber: Okay, very well. I haven't reported out, okay.
Council Chamber: Alright, by a vote of 21 to 13, this, this passes.
Council Chamber: Alright.
Council Chamber: Knicks…
Council Chamber: Okay, item number 4 is the 2026 Management Ordinance.
Council Chamber: which amends various provisions of the Municipal Code regarding organizations and functions of city government. Representatives from the Office of Budget and Management, Department of Finance, and Law are here to answer any questions that, members may have. Director?
Council Chamber: Man's blowners.
Council Chamber: Thank you. So the management ordinance that's presented before you, was briefed…
Council Chamber: I don't even know how long ago this was at this point. October.
Council Chamber: Sometime in October.
Council Chamber: This updates a number of, ordinances related to, CPD, Department of Environment,
Council Chamber: as well as others, I… sorry, I don't have the deck right in front of me.
Council Chamber: The only change is to include, language around the tracking of expenditures related to automated speed cameras.
Council Chamber: I think that's it.
Council Chamber: Open to any questions.
Council Chamber: Oh, I'm sorry, and the other thing was to allow Sunday liquor sales at restaurants.
Council Chamber: Okay, any questions?
Council Chamber: Hold on.
Council Chamber: Audrey Moore.
Council Chamber: Thank you for the question, Alderman. This is about tracking of the revenue and expenditures, that are related to the automated speed camera,
Council Chamber: program that the city has. Oh, just the tracking.
Council Chamber: Tracking it, the revenue in a specific account with a report due from the comptroller around the revenue and expenditures related to that. Thank you for the clarification. Thanks, Jim.
Council Chamber: Thank you. Any other questions?
Council Chamber: Sure, Mr. Chairman, if there are any questions, I move to adopt a substitute for the management ordinance, which we can pass out and share with the group.
Council Chamber: This is largely the same as the Mayor's introduced version, and I can go through the high-level
Council Chamber: Could you… could somebody pass it out to everybody? Sure.
Council Chamber: Clearly, my colleagues are in a hurry. I've never seen anybody move this quickly. I'll take this out.
Council Chamber: I didn't care.
Council Chamber: Wow.
Council Chamber: Thank you.
Council Chamber: Mr. Chair, may I…
Council Chamber: Yep. Okay, sure, thanks.
Council Chamber: My homework.
Council Chamber: I go.
Council Chamber: Amazing.
Council Chamber: It could… can,
Council Chamber: Make a motion to move it?
Council Chamber: Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to adopt the substitute.
Maria Hadden: Do we have a… do we have a version of that in our inboxes yet, Sam? Sorry, Chair.
Council Chamber: That, that's being distributed. Soon as, we have a version, we will, send it to, all, all members.
Maria Hadden: Is it possible, then, to hold on the motion till we've all seen it?
Maria Hadden: Can't vote if I can't see it.
Council Chamber: Well, there's a lot of staff, I'm sure we can get… we can… So, let's, do we have an electronic version?
Council Chamber: Let's… quick question here. Do… while that's being distributed,
Council Chamber: the other two items are fairly routine, the IGA and,
Council Chamber: the salary resolution, could we go to that while that electronic stuff is happening, and then come back to this?
Council Chamber: Okay? All right. So we're gonna, we're gonna hold this item momentarily, and then we'll move to,
Council Chamber: Item number 5.
Council Chamber: which is the expenditure portion of the motor field tax funds allocated to the City of Chicago for 2025.
Council Chamber: This is, this is not a substituted item, so this, everyone should have this. Director Guzman, any… any questions? Or any questions for Director Guzman on the MFT ordinance?
Council Chamber: Automadow.
Council Chamber: Yes, I just wanted to ask Director Guzman, with the, changes at the state level and its decision to fund
Council Chamber: the CTA, or… Do we need to give them $5 million still?
Council Chamber: So I believe the IGA and the, the motor fuel tax, ordinance reflects
Council Chamber: $3 million, not 5, to CTA from that. I believe that we're under state requirement. Right, I'm sorry, $3 million and $2 million from Cook County, right. So we're currently under state requirement to, fund that, but I can, get that confirmed for you. I don't know if,
Council Chamber: we still need to. I think that this has been a long-running arrangement that we have, not only with CTA, but Cook County is also part of the IGA agreement as well. They provide a contribution as well.
Council Chamber: Excuse me?
Council Chamber: I'm through, I was just thinking, I mean, we need all the help in our budget we can get, so if they don't need to get it, we should,
Council Chamber: I'll send it over there.
Council Chamber: I believe it was part of the MTA Act.
Council Chamber: Been a long-standing state requirement.
Council Chamber: Thank you.
Council Chamber: Oh, okay, questions answered. Alderman Lopez.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Chairman. So then… Following Chairman Dahl's question, then, If this is not required.
Council Chamber: We are doing this because, just, we've historically done it.
Council Chamber: No, I think, Jill just answered the question, it's required under state law.
Council Chamber: She said she… It's required under state law. She believes it's…
Council Chamber: Is that a… is that a declarative? It is required?
Council Chamber: I will restate it, I believe it is. It has been part of the MTA Act. Now, I have not read through all the new legislation and whether that went in and changed that part of the MTA Act.
Council Chamber: But based on… what I've been told, I don't believe it was changed.
Council Chamber: But certainly, if you want to await confirmation, Department of Law can… Review the state legislation.
Council Chamber: Chairman, are we able to pass this and hold it to confirm that that's required?
Council Chamber: without having to actually table this item until we get confirmation. I think we can pass it out of committee… out of committee.
Council Chamber: And then when it's reported out, we could choose to do whatever we choose to do at the time we get to Council with it.
Council Chamber: Well, I mean, would you hold it until we get an answer from the law department, if it's…
Council Chamber: Oh, Corp Council wants to add something to this. Go ahead.
Council Chamber: And they took…
Council Chamber: Rade Tu Casa from the city's law department. Yeah, Lemon Lopez, this is required under state law. I don't have specific citation, but it's required by state law. The city contributes 3 million, county contributes 2 million, $5 million together, and that happened every time I have been here for the last 19 years.
Council Chamber: Well, if you were here for 20, I'd say I believe you, but… no. Fine, then Chairman, I move to pass, if there are no other questions. If you look at the IGA that is a companion piece to the ordinance authorizing the IGA, it has the RTA state law, reference in it.
Council Chamber: In addition, we just had to confirm a law that the transit bill does not take effect until June.
Council Chamber: So if there were changes in it, they're not effective yet. Okay, thank you. Renew my moment. I heard it. Oh, you're good?
Council Chamber: I thought we had a,
Council Chamber: implementation of June, so that's correct. Okay, alright, we're all clear?
Council Chamber: Alright.
Council Chamber: You have a motion moved to pass. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed?
Council Chamber: In the punitive chair, the ayes having this matter will be reported out.
Council Chamber: at our, next available meeting. Item number 6 is an intergovernmental…
Council Chamber: is an enter… wait a minute, we just did 6, right? I missed 5. Oh, okay. I did… wait a minute, I just did 5, I thought.
Council Chamber: Oh, no, alright, so let's… Correct. 4 hasn't… we haven't done anything yet with 4. Okay.
Council Chamber: We just did the motor fuel tax.
Council Chamber: We just did number 5 on the motor fuel tax, okay? Alright, now we're doing number 6.
Council Chamber: I think we just jumped the gun on the question, that's all. So I think we're clear on number 6, which is an intergovernmental…
Council Chamber: agreement with Chicago Transit Authority and Cook County for the allocation of motor fuel tax.
Council Chamber: Any questioners?
Council Chamber: Seeing none, Alderman Bell has a motion.
Council Chamber: Maybe he doesn't.
Council Chamber: Oh, okay, I didn't hear you, my bad. Okay. Alright, automobile moves do pass. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Depending on the chairs, ayes have it, and this matter will be reported out.
Council Chamber: At the next available council meeting.
Council Chamber: Item number 7 is the salary resolution.
Council Chamber: An amendment of the regulations governing administration of classification plan and employee benefits for classified positions set forth in the annual appropriation ordinance regarding salary schedules, automobile allowance, holidays, vacation, and sick leave. Now, it's my understanding that there's a substitute
Council Chamber: There's no substitute for this one, okay, alright. Well then, the, then…
Council Chamber: Alright, any questions on this one? Any…
Council Chamber: No questions there? Motion?
Council Chamber: So, move… There's no substitute, I misspoke.
Council Chamber: Alderman Bill moves to pass. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Council Chamber: Any opposed? Independent chairs, the ayes having this matter, will be reported out as well. Going back to item number 4…
Council Chamber: That's… that's item number 4, all the…
Council Chamber: Alder Hatton, have you received item 4?
Maria Hadden: I have not yet received an email with item 4.
Council Chamber: Oh.
Council Chamber: Check your, check your city email that has been sent.
Maria Hadden: I am in my SETI email.
Council Chamber: Okay, alright, we're gonna just begin the explanation from,
Council Chamber: Alder Nugent, if you could, begin the changes that have been, that are in the management ordinance as we've, passed out. I have a quick question. Are the…
Council Chamber: the strikes and adds, your changes, to what you've, put up? Yes. Okay. Yes, sir.
Council Chamber: Yo, what I do with it.
Council Chamber: I'd like to…
Council Chamber: Well, I guess I can wait till Alderman Haddon gets it, because then I would like to renew my motion for the sub to be adopted.
Council Chamber: Okay, well, I guess Committee of Standard Ease… No, no, no, I'll do my changes, or I'll talk it through, and then… Okay. …let Heather let us know. So… Yeah. This is largely…
Council Chamber: This is largely the same… sorry.
Council Chamber: This is largely the same as the Mayor's introduced version. Most of it has been untouched, just a few pages. The big highlights are, in Article 4, we removed language that required CPD and OBM to request additional appropriations from Council if the department exceeds its overtime cap in a budget year.
Council Chamber: Section 13, we amended to require the Chief Financial Officer, requires the Chief Financial Officer to report around the payment of advance pension contributions.
Council Chamber: Section 16 refers to the addition of debt collection.
Council Chamber: Section 20 is amended to require relevant city departments to establish a marketing and advertising program to permit advertisements on city lamppost parking meters.
Council Chamber: Bridge tenderhouses and large city-owned vehicles.
Council Chamber: Section 26 is added to create planning requirements for the administration to implement recommendations contained in the EY report. Also includes some reporting requirements and calls for meetings every other month between, the Committee of Budget and Finance.
Council Chamber: Section 28's amended to include the affected alderman, as required in a consultative party, and Section 30 and 31
Council Chamber: requires the administration to seek approval of its capital improvement projects by the Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development, and subsequently seek the approval of the funding schedule through the Committee on Finance.
Council Chamber: And those are all the major changes, Mr. Chairman. Any questions?
Council Chamber: With that. Alderman Vasquez?
Council Chamber: Oh, I'm sorry.
Council Chamber: Thank you. I just wanted to get a better understanding on one of the amendment changes, really related to the overtime vote.
Council Chamber: I think when we have colleagues who want to position themselves as fiscally responsible, not having a hearing related to overtime, when we know it's
Council Chamber: constantly going up every single year as it relates to CPD. Just want to get some of the logic behind it. As I think most of us know, it would likely pass in a committee, but it is fair to have a hearing to understand why it continues to go up.
Council Chamber: Especially for folks who are thinking about finding efficiencies and being fiscally responsible, so I'd love to hear the thought process behind it by any of the colleagues.
Council Chamber: Alderman, hold on, Alderman Nugent?
Council Chamber: Do you want to defer to someone else? Sure, I'm, I'm…
Council Chamber: Alderman Beal? Alderman Beal might be equipped to answer that one. Go ahead. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, you know, this body has the ability to call hearings at any given time. I just think it's a, it has historically been a function of the executive branch.
Council Chamber: And not the legislative branch, and so…
Council Chamber: The logic is to leave that control in the executive branch. However, we still have the ability to call the department down and talk about the checks and balances as it relates to overtime.
Council Chamber: Alderman Vasquez.
Council Chamber: I just want to know how effective that has been as far as curtailing our overtime.
Council Chamber: All you're hearing.
Council Chamber: I think I can answer that. It's not. So… I think that was a statement, it wasn't a question. Okay. Do you have any other questions, Alder? No, just very, like I said, very curious about our fiscally responsible and conservative folks. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions related to the management ordinance?
Council Chamber: Alderman Conway.
Council Chamber: I actually… I would agree with my colleague, Alderman Vasquez. I know he has been working on an alternate management ordinance, and if there's an amendment at some point in the future to give us additional overtime oversight, I think that would be welcomed. I'm certainly going to vote yes on that today, but I appreciate his comments in that regard.
Council Chamber: Any other questions related to this? Alderman, lopez, do you have questions or a motion?
Council Chamber: There is a motion on the floor. Oh, no, I'm just… do you have questions? I just want to speak to that comment. Okay, go ahead, Alderman Lopez. While we're waiting. Thank you, Chairman, and good evening, members of the committee.
Council Chamber: You know… I think it's real easy to… to…
Council Chamber: Think you're getting cheeky and throw a temper tantrum because you didn't get your way on one department.
Council Chamber: Not being able to have their overtime Monitored closely by this body.
Council Chamber: But how many departments offer overtime?
Council Chamber: Nearly all of them.
Council Chamber: How many departments do we micromanage? Only one, our own.
Council Chamber: So if you… if someone who's been here for 6 years would like to introduce an ordinance to make that happen, feel free to do so.
Council Chamber: While we are having conversations today, while we are trying to address, we could also start addressing some of the things that deal with settlements which we see, and all the other spending that happens without our knowledge by this body.
Council Chamber: But to say today that somehow we're… that you're gonna question the fiscal bona fides of individuals who've been driving this process to hold the line and to avoid a shutdown is incredulous at best.
Council Chamber: If you have real solutions, come with it. Otherwise, keep walk… keep pacing the back row, and shut up. Thank you. Oh, come on, Alderman. Alderman, Alderman, Alderman. I didn't say… Alderman… No border! What is that? Alderman…
Julia Ramirez: Yes.
Council Chamber: Alright, let's, I know we… I know we… I know we a little frustrated, but let's, let's… is he hangry? Okay, let's, let's… hold on, Alderman Vasquez. Didn't name a person. I understand that, we, we, we understand.
Council Chamber: We understand. Okay, next, we have, Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: No, you're not. No, no, no. He… he was next. Alderman Moore is next. We'll come to you after… if there's no one else that wishes to speak on this, I'll come back to you on the second… on the second round. Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: Okay, and yesterday in finance, passed the financial part of the marketing and advertising. Help me understand the management.
Council Chamber: peace, I need for clarity.
Council Chamber: I'll go back to the, maker of the original motion, alderman Nugent?
Council Chamber: Sure, thank you, Chairman, if my friends could move their caucus over. I believe if Alderman Moore had asked about
Council Chamber: the…
Council Chamber: Can you just tell me what it was? I couldn't hear his complete question. Alderman Moore, could you repeat your question for, Alderman Moore? I understand the financial piece that we passed yesterday… that was passed yesterday for the marketing on, you know, the light post. I guess I'm not understanding the management.
Council Chamber: Ordinance piece, so explain that to me.
Council Chamber: You clear? I can… I can help you answer that. It's… it's by no means something huge and in-depth. The relevant section is Section 20.
Council Chamber: It's amended to just require relevant city departments establish a marketing and advertising program to permit the advertisements on the lampposts, the parking meters, bridge tenderhouses, and large city-owned vehicles. The program. Okay, I get it. Thank you, Chairman. Okay. Okay, any other questions?
Council Chamber: Any other first-round questions, I'm gonna say?
Council Chamber: Okay, Alderman Vasquez.
Daniel La Spata: Hand was raised on the screen, sir, sorry.
Council Chamber: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Alderman Lespotta. Alderman Spotta.
Daniel La Spata: You gotta get a screen there, too. That's all right, I'm just trying to understand the… because I don't have my City of Chicago email on my phone, I'm trying to understand
Daniel La Spata: The scale and scope of the projects that would need to be approved by the Economic Development Committee?
Daniel La Spata: Is it projects over?
Council Chamber: Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Daniel La Spata: million.
Council Chamber: Hold on, Alderman Nugent is about to answer your question.
Council Chamber: Sure, sure, and I think Alderman Villegas is probably best placed to answer this. Very well. Alderman Villegas. Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for that question, Alderman Lespada. Historically, under the rules, the economic capital and technology development is responsible for infrastructure and CIP,
Council Chamber: And as a result of that, what will take place is that the departments will come before the Economic Capital Technology Development Committee, the infrastructure ones.
Council Chamber: to talk about projects, as well as allow members to talk about projects. Once the final product is completed, then it would go, move on to finance to be funded.
Council Chamber: Does that answer your question, Alderman Lespada?
Daniel La Spata: It… it doesn't, because… well, here's the thing, like, everything from, like, a…
Daniel La Spata: the size and scope of CIP projects is…
Daniel La Spata: Very variable, so, like, are we talking about…
Daniel La Spata: Projects over $500,000, over a million dollars, or are we talking about Any project that…
Daniel La Spata: CDOT is engaging with that's outlined in the CIP.
Council Chamber: So… so, Alderman Lespada, at this point, we do not line item projects so much as we approve lump sum project… lump sum line items for the… for the, departments. So, for example, if you looked at the CIP,
Council Chamber: deck that was put forward, they identified, resurfacing. They identified bridges, but at… but the department did not identify the actual locations, and so that's where we had…
Daniel La Spata: I mean, yes and no, sir, because there's also the 150-page version of it that does outline
Daniel La Spata: all of those projects, and we received that from Dennis Barrett as well. That's what I'm talking about, because I was reviewing that actually earlier.
Daniel La Spata: Today, I'm trying to understand it on that scale.
Council Chamber: Right, so again, this is something that the body has had concerns for some time, and this is an opportunity to clarify the process, and in accordance with our rules, as I stated, the Economic Capital Technology has oversight over infrastructure and CIP, so this starts the process, and then, once approved, goes to finance for funding.
Daniel La Spata: I understand it. Oh, I understand it. Okay, thank you.
Council Chamber: Okay. Any other questions, related to the management ordinance?
Council Chamber: No, you, you, you had a round two.
Council Chamber: I did… you're right, you're correct. My apologies. Alderman Vasquez. Thank you very much. Yeah, I just,
Council Chamber: One, I really don't want to continue and have another one of our colleagues have a tantrum. That's just not fair for anyone. I just had questions more related to the matter. Are there other city departments that are multi-billion dollars in nature?
Council Chamber: Are there other city departments that take up over half of the corporate fund?
Council Chamber: I… just on the record, sorry.
Council Chamber: So you are asking me? Sorry, yeah, sorry, sorry, Budget Director, I apologize. I'll restate the question. Out of the 30-something city departments, are there any that are also multi-billion dollar in nature? No.
Council Chamber: Okay, are the… Of the corporate fund? Yeah, well, the first was just multi… yeah, departments. Second, are there any city departments that take up more than half of the corporate fund? No. So it's only the Chicago Police Department.
Council Chamber: Roughly, yes. Correct. Also, just for the record, let's audit all of them, and start with the biggest one first, for clarity, because it's about fiscal responsibility. I don't question anyone's bona fides, I question their sincerity. Thank you very much.
Council Chamber: Thank you, Alderman. Any other questions?
Council Chamber: I heard a motion moved to pass by Alderman Quinn.
Maria Hadden: We'll call.
Council Chamber: Roll call has been requested.
Council Chamber: All right, hold on, we gotta… okay, my apologies, we have to accept the substitute. Alder Haddon, we're going to accept a motion, Alderman Nugent had a motion to accept the substitute. Alderman Nugent
Council Chamber: has a motion to accept the substitute. If possible, I'd like to do that by voice vote. Do you have any objection to that?
Maria Hadden: No.
Council Chamber: Okay, all in favor signify by saying aye.
Maria Hadden: No.
Council Chamber: Opposed? All right, now we have the substitute before us, and we had a motion by Alderman Quinn to move to pass on the substitute with the roll call requested by Alderman Hatton. Is that… are we okay?
Council Chamber: Alright.
Council Chamber: Vice Chair Lee.
Council Chamber: Yes?
Council Chamber: Alderman Lespata.
Daniel La Spata: Nope.
Council Chamber: Hold on it down.
Council Chamber: Alderman Robinson.
Council Chamber: Alderman Yancey.
Council Chamber: Alderman Mitchell.
Council Chamber: Alderman Harris.
Michelle Harris: Aye.
Council Chamber: Automobile.
Council Chamber: Alderman Ramirez.
Julia Ramirez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Quinn.
Council Chamber: Alderman Lopez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Moore.
Council Chamber: Alderman O'See.
Lamont Robinson: Chairman, Robinson is a no.
Council Chamber: Got it. Alderman Mosley.
Ronnie Mosley: Yes.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez.
Michael D. Rodriguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Scott.
Council Chamber: Alderman Citro Lopez.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez: Sixture Lopez votes no.
Council Chamber: Votes no.
Council Chamber: Is that a no? No, okay.
Council Chamber: Alderman Burnett.
Council Chamber: Alder Metalia Farrow.
Council Chamber: Alderman Cardona.
Council Chamber: Alderman Rodriguez-Sanchez.
Ald. Rossana Rodríguez: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Conway.
Council Chamber: Alderman Casada.
Council Chamber: Alderman Villegas.
Council Chamber: Ottoman mids.
Council Chamber: Alderman Sposato.
Council Chamber: Alderman Nugent.
Council Chamber: Alderman Vasquez.
Council Chamber: Alderman Napolitano.
Council Chamber: Alderman Riley.
Council Chamber: Alderman Knutson.
Council Chamber: Alderman Martin.
Council Chamber: Old Manhattan.
Maria Hadden: No.
Council Chamber: Alderman Silverstein.
Council Chamber: Alderman Yancey.
Council Chamber: Alderman Tellia Farrow.
Council Chamber: Chairman Irvin votes no.
Council Chamber: Motion passes by vote of 22 to 11.
Council Chamber: All right. I don't believe it, seeing there's no other business before the committee with a motion to adjourn.
Council Chamber: All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed? Appear the chairs, ayes have it. We're adjourned.