Good morning, and
welcome. Happy Monday.
Welcome to Committee on Budget and Government Operations. We'll roll call.
Vice Chair Lee?
Alderman Lospada.
Alderman Dowell. Alderman Robinson. Alderman Yancy.
Alderman Mitchell.
I don't see Mitchell. Mitchell. Alderman Mitchell. Oh.
Alderman Harris. Alderman Beale.
Alderman Ramirez.
Alderman Quinn. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Moore.
Alderman O'Shea.
Alderman Mosley.
Alderman Rodriguez.
Alderman Scott.
Alderman Sitcha Lopez.
Alderman Burnett.
Alderman Taliaferro.
Alderman Cardona.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez.
Alderman Conway.
Alderman Quezada.
Alderman Villegas.
Alderman Mitz.
Alderman Sposato.
Alderman Nugent.
Happy birthday.
Alderman Vasquez.
Alderman Napolitano.
Alderman Riley.
Alderman Knudsen.
Alderman Martin.
Alderman Hatton.
Alderman Silverstein. And Chairman Ervin, we have 22 members
present. We do have a quorum.
We have Alders Silverstein, Vasquez, Moore, and
Yancy who requested participation under provisions of Rule 59.
Get a motion to accept them into the meeting.
So moved. All in favor signify by saying aye. Any opposed?
Alderman Beale requests Rule 59 as well.
Okay, we'll add Alderman Beale to that list as well.
We'll revise that motion for Alderman Beale. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Any opposed?
Second.
Okay, Nick, we got you recorded.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and Alder Silverstein, Vasquez,
Moore, Yancy, and Beale. We'll confirm. Alderman Silverstein?
I am present, Chairman.
Okay. Alderman Vasquez?
Alderman Moore?
Alderman Yancy?
Present, Chairman. Happy Monday.
And Alderman Beale, we have you
in virtually. Okay.
Now all the preliminaries are taken care of.
We will now have public comments. Public comment is limited
to three minutes. We have three speakers who signed up.
We'll start with Carl Gutierrez from Chicago Land Chamber of Commerce.
Good morning, Chair Ervin, Vice Chair Lee, and members of the Committee on Budget
and Government Operations. My name is Carl Gutierrez with the Chicago Land Chamber
of Commerce, representing more than 1,000 companies of all sizes and sectors
here in the city and across our region.
I'm here today to express the Chamber's gratitude to the Committee on Budget for
having this hearing today, and specifically to Vice Chair Lee and her
42 additional sponsors for supporting the resolution on the status of our city's
progress in implementing efficiencies and other programmatic reform
options identified in the Financial and Strategic Reform Options
Report.
The Chamber and its members view this hearing and the issues surrounding it as
critically important, and for two reasons.
First is the direct one, and one that we've been outspoken about.
That is undertaking the needed savings and efficiency measures.
That
is the function of sound public stewardship at any time,
but especially critical during this time of fiscal crisis and funding
uncertainty. We need this done.
The second reason the Chamber and its members view this hearing as critical is
broader and fundamental.
That is the constitutional importance of the executive branch faithfully
implementing the policies passed by the legislative branch.
This is both as a matter of principle and a matter of practice, and it is
critical that this foundational relationship
and the process be respected and maintained.
We are experiencing the absence of that on the federal level, and are being forced
to grapple with the negative and sobering consequences of that, both here on the
state and city level.
Any notion that that same constitutional misalignment, breakdown, et
cetera, would take place here on the city level, whether in the form
of non-implementation or misimplementation, would be concerning and deeply
troubling.
It's for these reasons I want to once again express gratitude to the Committee for
having this hearing today, to thank specifically Vice Chair Lee for her
leadership in putting this resolution forward, to her many colleagues for
supporting it, and to Chair Ervin for hosting this hearing.
We look forward to hearing the details shared
today and following this issue closely in the weeks and months to come. Thank you.
Thank you. Next we'll have
Mr. George Blakemore, followed by our final speaker, Charles
Spence.
Good morning.
You are... It was 15 minutes late.
That's the first. You did not have an agenda
out.
Early this morning, someone said, "Good morning, Mr.
Blakemore."
I said, "Good morning." They go, "Where are you on your way?" I said,
"To the zoo."
The Brookfield Zoo, Lincoln Park, 120 whatever, North La
Salle. This zoo,
and you can look around.
Y'all take Mr. Blakemore as a joke, but look who's here.
Nobody.
It's something wrong with all of you.
Did you inform the people,
and you, Mr. Ervin, with this money,
the budget. And it's only for
information only, no vote. The games are being played
hereAnd the reason you can play these games,
because the people are not here. If they knew
better, they would do better.
It's something inherently wrong here.
It's something un-American here.
It's something corrupt here.
A one-party system. Now, I'm looking over here at Carla, and
all of them are dealing with finance. The money.
The stealing.
Uh-huh. With the budget.
And, well, the finance. And Salise with the
zoning. You know the
games that people play. They go, and then here come a new group
doing the same damn thing again.
And why don't you want to educate your public,
you aldermen, Mr. Law, and let them know, and this
place will be packed. When you have an intelligent citizen,
then you have a functional government.
But when you don't, you have a dictatorship.
A dictatorship.
The people... Look at these empty seats.
Why are those seats empty?
You chose for these seats to be empty where you can do
your fraud, waste, and abuse, all of you.
Now look at you, talking to each other.
Disrespecting the public.
The zoo. It's not Brookfield Zoo. It's not Lincoln
Park Zoo. This is City Hall Zoo.
Who is running this zoo? The animals or the
zookeeper?
It's something inherently wrong here.
It's something un-American here.
It's something corrupt
here.
Thank you for your comments. Our final speaker is Charles
Spence.
Thank you.
Good morning, committee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak.
You are here today to discuss the report on efficiency, cost savings, and
performance improvements. So am I.
Specifically, the CPD drone use mentioned on page
73 and detailed on page 91.
While the authors properly identified an area for change,
they erred on the change needed. Don't replace
helicopters, expand the CPD drone unit.
They mentioned the fiscal impact is small. That's wrong.
It is minuscule. It is almost nonexistent.
Just 1% of CPD's patrol budget for this year
gets you $1.6 million. Then there's
$13.9 million in S**T spider money sitting
there doing nothing. And if you can use federal forfeiture
fund 1505 to buy a helicopter, you can use it to buy
drones for the police department.
They mentioned feasibility as a medium. That is wrong again.
This is a very high, practically a gimme.
Illinois House Bill 3902 literally called
Drones for First Responders Bill authorizes their use.
The FAA, again, literally has a link
called Public Safety and Law Enforcement Toolkit that
regulates their use.
This is a gimme. It's all there waiting for you to take
advantage of it. Timeline, contact Captain Haidu.
He operates the drone unit out of the Special Functions Bureau.
He'll know what he needs and how long it will take.
As for efficiency,
national studies have determined drones are a four-to-one force multiplier.
Those same national studies have documented a
50% reduction in the use of force lawsuits.
Think of the millions it saved by following suspects fleeing in
vehicles instead of chasing them with police cars.
And a drone outfitted for night use costs $25,000.
One officer costs $150,000
annually for salary benefits, overtime, and special pays.
Not a subject of the report, but perhaps the most critical consideration here
today is safety. Last Friday, I sent each
aldermanic office an email with a video showing Las Vegas Police
Department apprehending a suspect with a drone taking the
lead. The drone located the suspect, reporting his
location, and identified he was holding a phone in his right
hand. Officers arrested the suspect without
incident or harm.
Interestingly, Las Vegas police used a Skydio Model
X10, the same drone CPD already has
available.
Committee, this is long overdue. Please allocate funds to
expand the CPD drone unit. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Spence. Okay. We have
two additional members who have requested participation under
Rule 59,
being Alder Robinson and
Chairman Dowell. Can I get a motion to accept both Alder Robinson and Chairman
Dowell in under Rule 59? So moved.
All in favor, signal by saying aye.
Second.
Any opposed?
All right. Thank you, Nick. We've got you recorded.
Thank you.
The ayes have it. We'll add Alders
Robinson. Alderman Robinson?
Alderman Robinson's here, Chairman.
Okay, thank you. And Dowell. Let me see.
Alderman Vasquez, I see you're here.
Yes, Chairman.
Got you.
Okay.
Alderman Moore, add you to the
quorum.Anybody
else need to be added?
We got them already. They're already on. Okay.
Just want to make sure we got everybody in.
Okay, cool. All right.
Today, we're hosting a subject matter hearing on the financial overview for
Q1 2026. This hearing will be anchored by our finance team.
You see here on the dais today, which is our budget director, Annette Guzman,
our comptroller, Michael Belsky, and
acting CFO, Steve Maher. In addition, in the box
we have with us
Commissioner Boatwright from DPD, Commissioner Hernandez Tomlin
from 2FM, Commissioner Lucius from DTI,
and CPO Roberts from the Department of
Procurement Services. And
also,
Ray is here, Ray Philip Santos, on behalf of the
Department of Law.
Everyone should've received materials electronically.
We also have a series of memos or anything that everyone
needs, let us know, we can provide for you.
But everything was submitted electronically because it is voluminous.
So, with that, we'll turn you over to Budget Director Guzman, who
will take us further, after which we will have,
I'm assuming, a Q&A. One thing,
we've got two items up today,
and one is the overview. Some of the items
for item number two may be addressed during this
time. So I want it to be a little I'll
call it free-flowing. But after the presentation is done,
then as we get into our Q&A. But keep in mind,
later this month, we will have
separate items on the police department, because we've got
that per the management ordinance, and we'll have one more hearing
around ERP implementation as well, which is a joint between our
committee and the Committee on Economic, Capital Technologies, and
Development. And then the second meeting with the police department will be a
joint committee with Chairman Taliaferro and Committee on Police and Fire.
So just to kind of give that overview, this isn't the only bite at the
apple coming up in the next 30 days, so this will be an
ongoing conversation. So with that, Director Guzman.
Chairman Irvin, Vice Chair Lee, honorable members of City Council
Committee on Budget and Government Operations, good morning.
My name is Annette Guzman, budget director, and I want to thank you for the
opportunity you've given me
to come before you to speak about how the administration is executing on the
2026 appropriated budget, including the many
efficiency and operational initiatives included in the 2026
management ordinance.
I'm joined today by my colleagues in the fiscal offices, Steven Maher,
acting CFO, and Michael Belsky, comptroller.
Our goal today is to demonstrate not only that implementation of the budget is
underway, but that it is occurring through structured governance, disciplined
decision-making, and transparency.
To drive that point home, we're also joined by the leaders of the many
offices tasked with that implementation, including Planning
and Development Commissioner C.R.
Boatwright,
Fleet and Facilities Management Commissioner Julie Hernandez Tomlin,
Department of Innovation Commissioner and Chief Information Officer Nick Lucius,
Procurement Services Commissioner and Chief Procurement Officer Sharla Roberts,
and on behalf of Corporation Counsel, Ray Philip Santos.
As you will see, the administration has embarked on an ambitious set of initiatives
aimed at reining in the cost of government, maximizing our revenue
streams, and bringing many of our work streams into alignment with operational
best practices,
all while ensuring the continued delivery of government services.
You've heard the saying, flying the plane while building it.
Well, these leaders are flying dozens of planes while also fixing
them mid-flight.
This work is deeply cross-functional and requires alignment across
finance, legal, operational, and policy
functions. Our joint appearance today reflects that
execution is not isolated to one office.
It is coordinated across core leadership.
Together, we are overseeing implementation, financial controls,
and operational sequencing, and doing so transparently with
frequent status updates to the mayor, city council,
and the public.
Thus, today, we will set the foundation of this work by looking at the
framework in which it is being conducted and how it is being implemented
across work streams.
We will then do a deeper dive into specific work streams for public safety,
technology, and financial initiatives before concluding with financial
monitoring and transparency initiatives.
We'll begin with the broader operating environment in which implementation is
occurring.
The administration is executing the FY 2026 budget in a highly
complex environment that requires coordination,
sequencing, and disciplined decision-making.
To manage this, we established more than 10 cross-departmental working groups
beginning in January.
These groups bring together the full force of government to implement both the
budget and management ordinance requirements.
This is not ad hoc. It is organized internal
alignment.
What you see here is our governance model. Execution is not linear.
It is continuous. Operational reforms generate initiatives.
Those initiatives are monitored financially.
Results are then reported publicly and to city council.
That transparency informs future decisions,
and this loop ensures implementation is disciplined, monitored,
and accountable.
We'll move into execution across core operational work streams.
This slide reflects more than just initiative status.
It represents a fundamentally new way the administration is managing and reporting
execution to the public and city council.Beginning with the February
13th memo to city council that I sent establishing the project
work streams, the administration has built structured work plans across each major
initiative with defined scope assigned departmental
ownership key actions milestone-based implementation
goals and regular progress reporting.
Rather than simply announcing initiatives or providing broad updates, we are now
reporting through a formal implementation matrix that allows both the
administration and city council to track progress
work stream by work stream.
This creates operational transparency and accountability by showing what initiative
is intended to do what, what phase it is in, what
specific actions have occurred, whether it is on track, delayed, or
facing constraints.
Importantly, this reporting framework acknowledges reality.
Some initiatives are advancing quickly, some are delayed due
to processes that take time. Some require
recalibration.
It is important to note that the monthly reports are but a moment in time
status update. But when reviewed over time, it creates a strategic
performance dashboard for the public and city council.
As work streams experience delays or obstacles, the working groups are identifying
them and working to mitigate them in real time.
This is a shift from episodic updates to strategic implementation management,
with city council receiving direct visibility into both progress and
constraints across every major initiative.
On this screen are updates through the end of February, with the April report
reflecting March activity scheduled for release on May 5th in accordance with the
management ordinance.
Even at this early stage, this new reporting framework demonstrates measurable
progress across multiple initiatives.
In real estate, surveys have been completed and in-depth site tours of city-owned
and leased facilities are well underway.
In fleet, utilization baselines have been established and surplus assets for
strategic disposition identified.
In land sales, parcels have been reviewed, lots have already been sold, revenue
has been collected, and broader analysis is underway to
address operational and environmental factors
that impact future sales execution.
For special events, a major cost driver across numerous
departments throughout the city, billing workflows have been mapped,
future state permitting and billing processes are under steering committee
review, and policies and ordinances are being evaluated against peer
city best practices for consideration.
Organizationally, the city has launched in-depth span and layer reviews
by department while simultaneously developing a roadmap
for centralized back-office operations and modernizing talent flow to
improve hiring speed and efficiency.
We're also advancing recommendations from the strategic options report by
reevaluating the city's fee and fine structure and developing a
more transparent, centralized fee schedule,
engaging in ongoing discussions with the Labor Management
Cooperation Committee around healthcare cost containment
and strengthening return to work policies, a report that is forthcoming
to city council,
while also modernizing procurement practices through improved data
standardization. Taken together, this is not conceptual planning.
It is active implementation, supported by milestone-based work plans
and a level of structured reporting to city council that
is in scope, detail, and accountability new.
Turning now to the work within our public safety offices on overtime
containment, medical audit implementation, and progress on the early intervention
system implementation within CPD.
Public safety execution is being managed on two tracks:
immediate operational oversight through containing immediate overtime
costs, as well as long-term system-wide reform through the
implementation of an early intervention system to reduce the types of behaviors
that have led to prior large settlements against the city.
The implementation of recommendations from the OPSA medical audit conducted
last year, which will help return more officers to active duty
quicker,
and the transition of more positions within CPD to civilian roles in
alignment with our peer cities. The longer-term reforms are
anticipated to yield significant structural savings for the city, while
also strengthening internal operational controls and the use of
taxpayer-funded resources.
I won't go too much in depth on the OPSA medical audit because
there is a joint hearing of the budget and police and fire committee scheduled for
next month in which this will be
talked about in much more depth. But quickly, based
on the quarterly report submitted to city council this month, through March
2026 of the 20 near-term audit recommendations,
11 of 12 short-term milestones are on track,
while one is slightly delayed due to procurement sequencing.
Long-term modernization of our EMR procurement,
electronic medical records system,
is currently being procured, and the transition away from legacy paper
systems is well on track.
This is what we call substantial system reform.
Turning to our enterprise technology
modernization. Our strategy is layered, looking
first at the core enterprise modernization of our ERP system,
immediate operational deployment, as well as future state assessments.
The legacy systems that we have so long relied upon are being phased out.
Our ERP modernization will create foundational infrastructure for
our financial,
personnel and asset systems.
The first phase, our payroll and attendance modernization, will eliminate manual
processes that can risk
inaccuracyAnd we have deployed an
RFI through DPS and DTI that will work
to support long-term enterprise strategy through
continued assessment of our enterprise systems.
Again, I won't go too deep into the
work that's being done with our ERP, as there is a
hearing scheduled next month with the Budget and
ECTD Committees
but while the main focus of 2026 is the implementation of
the first phase of the new ERP system, timekeeping, and payroll modules,
DTI has been working prior to this implementation to deploy modern
technology to accrue structural budgetary savings,
including migrating the current ERP system from an on-premise solution to the
cloud, delivering the system $1.4 million under
budget,
and accruing $1.6 million in annual recurring savings to the city
from our previous state.
The next phase is the new payroll and timekeeping system,
for which the ERP Evaluation Committee recently identified and awarded the
implementation contract for, with rollout anticipated to
begin in early 2027 over multiple phases.
Again, more in-depth analysis and discussions on the
ERP system
implementation will occur in next month's joint budget in
ECTD Committee.
With that, I'm going to turn it to our acting CFO, Steven Maher, who will walk us
through the new financial initiatives which are being implemented.
Thank you, Annette. Can folks hear me okay? Yep.
Acting CFO Steven Maher.
So the CFO's office is providing significant assistance or
is responsible for three new financial initiatives that you can see
on the screen.
On the far left-hand side, you can see the vehicle debt sale.
After weeks of internal conversation, analysis,
and consultation with the Department of Law,
the city released a request for proposals in early April that
focuses on the sale of vehicular debt.
The city also has active requests for information out
and publicly available for both augmented reality marketing as well as
enhanced marketing program, which are associated with parking
kiosks, bridge houses, lampposts, and large city-owned vehicles.
Please go to the next slide.
And on this next slide, we show the implementation timeline for each of these
three financial initiatives. So the working group for the
vehicular debt sale actually started meeting in mid-January.
We've met weekly, if not more often, since mid-January,
including a meeting on Friday as well as this morning.
We had originally thought about doing a request for information for the vehicular
debt sale,
but as we shared with the City Council, the
task of this debt sale is untested and
unproven. It's without many precedents across the country.
So instead of developing the RFI, we went ahead and launched into an RFP
process with the hopes of finding a partner
that would assist us in this debt sale moving forward this year.
And by partner, I mean an intermediary that would help guide the
city through the conversations with institutional
investors.
As I mentioned, in early April, we released the RFP for the vehicle
debt sale. We're expecting responses back by May
7th, and then we will spend
a few weeks after May 7th evaluating those RFP responses.
In terms of augmented reality, we issued an RFI in early
February, February 8th to be exact.
That RFI closed in early March, but we didn't receive any responses.
It was re-released in April 2nd, after we went back to the drawing board to
understand how we could cast a wider net.
And the new deadline for the augmented reality marketing RFI is May
2nd, just a few days away.
And then for the enhanced marketing program,
my public-private partnerships team spent February and March
talking internally at the city with a handful of partners trying to understand how
this could be operational and legally feasible.
That RFI went out on April 2nd with a deadline of May
1st.
Thank you, Annette.
Thank you.
And as I mentioned earlier, this ecosystem of not only
reviewing and implementing initiatives, but making sure that we are
aligning financial oversight as an additional
benchmark on performance. And so, the budget
office every year sets our budget spread when we
anticipate receiving revenue throughout the year,
and that's finalized in early January of every year so that we can
track revenue as it comes in and provide monthly
updates in our monthly revenue reports to the City Council
as well as to the public. As you can see here,
this is split across the year. And as we came to you in
February during the Finance Committee meeting,
one of the things that we wanted to make sure that the City
Council as well as the public understood is when our revenues come
in. Our first quarter of the year has one of the
lowest
collection periods for the city at about 16%,
and that is because most of our revenue sources for the corporate fund come
in over the summertime. And that's as
economic activity grows throughout the year.
So our budget spread is based on historical
trends and what we see, and have seen for decades, in how our
revenues come in. It's also based on assumptions around the impact of
economic activity on our revenue sourcesAs well as
the collection activities of entities such as the
state who collect revenue on behalf of us and when they have historically
distributed those revenues to the city.
The
administration has provided more in-depth information about our revenue
through the revamped monthly revenue reports that are submitted to city council
and released on the budget website every month, providing not
only budget to actual performance, but month-by-month
views of each revenue source within the corporate fund and what they've
collected for that month. And you can follow along throughout
the year so you can see how we're performing against budget.
Because the 2026 budget includes a number of new revenue streams,
we also wanted to give you a sense of how certain streams have
been booked into our revenue assumptions and budget spread
to help with tracking those and their performance throughout the year.
So we just selected a couple here, advertising revenue, the debt sale,
video gaming license, and ground transportation tax.
Three of them, which are new for the
2026 budget, one of which was increased in the 2026 budget.
And so this gives you a demonstrative view of how those
revenue sources are booked into our revenue spread for the year.
Because of the work that needed to go in to develop
the advertising RFI and
enhanced marketing program,
we delayed the booking of any revenue related to
that into the budget for
2026. We used the
revenue
amount that city council put into the budget of 3.25 million and spread
that across
eight months of the year, starting in April.
For the debt sale, we know that that's going to be a one-time sale
of
debt for revenue based on, again, the initial
work plan for that, as well as the mandate set forth by city
council and the management ordinance, and the time to get the
RFP and placement agent in place. The 89.6
million appropriated and booked by city council in
the 2026 budget, we have placed as a May
booking. For video game licenses based on,
again, the
$6 million dollars
that was booked by city council into the revenue for 2026
for video gaming license, knowing that there's time needed for
the state to approve as well as for our
internal approval of licenses, spread that across the
budget beginning in July of this year.
For ground transportation tax,
that is a historical revenue that the city has been
receiving that increased
for this budget cycle. And so we evenly
spread it across the entire year with the bulk of the revenue coming in
the summertime and into the fall.
Again, one thing that we just want to stress is because we
typically see less
or lower amounts of revenue during our first quarter of
the year, which is reflected in the revenue report submitted to city council
thus far this year and will be reflected in the one you receive
at the end of this week through March.
This really highlights the need for really disciplined
fiscal cash flow management because our
expenditures are expended at a faster pace throughout the
year than our revenue comes in.
Turning to performance through February,
revenues are tracking very closely to budget, with strong performance in
recreation and transaction taxes.
Transaction taxes, the biggest driver there is PPLT,
which is over-performing budget estimates.
Two areas that are underperforming thus far this year are fines,
forfeitures, and penalties, which we anticipate
with the
increase in enforcement collection, which
Comptroller Belsky will talk about in a second, will begin to come more in
line with budget.
Internal service earnings are the revenue that the corporate fund receives from
enterprise and special revenue funds for the services provided by
central service offices to those
agencies on the special revenue and enterprise funds.
Is tracking below budget, but that is internally
mitigated through
booking the revenue that will happen by the
Department of Finance, and we anticipate to be more in line as we go throughout the
year.
So in summary, the $429 million received through February of this
year is tracking very closely to projections, so within less than
1% variance.
And we are continuing to monitor each of the revenue sources
and will continue to provide updates to city council, especially
as we finalize the ACFR from last year and as we
begin to embark upon the mid-year of the
year.
With that, I'm going to turn it to Belsky to talk a little bit more about the
Department of Finance revenue initiatives, which are seeking to
bring an increase of $118 million of increased revenue for
2026.
Thank you, Director. Thank you, members of the council
and Chairman.
So as you remember, we were tasked with bringing in
118.6 million in additional
revenue
for fines and fees in '26.
What this slide shows you is where we
are per quarter. Most of the large items are in
progress, and we'll see the revenue hit there
mostly in the third quarter.
In the first quarterAs you know, we raised our credit card
fees from 1.97% to
2.2%. That's bringing us in line with the state
and the county. Our fees were lower than theirs previously,
and that's netted $512,000.
On the Smart Street expansion, as you know, we doubled the
area for Smart Streets, and we increased some of the violations.
And that is being implemented now.
Just by way of scale,
with the new Smart Streets, there's a 30-day period
for warnings,
and then we start issuing violations.
So in 2025, for the full year, we
issued 34,000 warnings. We're now
at 20,000 year to date. So you can see that if that
tracks, we'll have many more warnings and then violations.
In 2025, we in total, just for again,
half the area, had 11,000
in violations issued. Year to date,
2026, we have 6,502.
So we do expect to either meet or exceed that target.
The other thing you'll see here is PSA campaign to be
determined. That's actually in progress.
I taped a couple of both
for television and for radio messages.
If you recall last year when we had our amnesty program,
we had a target of around 18 million.
A month and a half into it, we
had half that amount, and then we decided to run PSAs
on radio stations, television stations, and also
signage on CTA, and that 18 million came in
within a couple of weeks. So what we're doing now is doing PSAs on all of
our billing relief programs, utility billing relief, and
vehicle violation relief. So we expect that would be additive
to the 118
million. And then the third quarter
projects, the payment plan realignment and auto
pay, this is where we're storing people's credit card
information
in our system, and they're able to identify in a debt check portal
all the debt that they have. It makes it easier for them
to pay.
Even though
this is not going to be launched
right away, we have 22,000 people that have
signed up. So we're seeing people taking an advantage of that.
We also reclassified tax auditors.
As you know, these people, for every dollar spent, they're bringing in
$5 to $7. We've now reclassified
positions in order to attract people for those positions because they've been
vacant for a while. And we're having interviews at this
point.
I mentioned the debt check portal.
And then parking enforcement administrators, we're onboarding
the additional 27. So we should start to see results
from that once they're out on the street.
So that concludes. The only thing I would say is that
one thing we've set up in our department is a monthly meeting tracking
these revenues, looking at what's coming in relative to what
we expect based on past patterns. And we are
also using that as a forum for any new ideas.
As you know, we have a couple of pilots on stationary
cameras
at no cost pilot, so we'll be able to give you an evaluation of that
later in the year. So that's all I have. Thank you, Director.
And then finally, just how are we maintaining
line of sight into the work that's been going on with all of
our initiatives and work streams?
So we take a very multi-tiered approach.
Obviously, the first part of this is regular updates through
executive reports to city council that are also published
on my website as well as other departmental websites.
In addition to that, public dashboards and open data.
A lot of the reports that are available, also
the back end data is available on the open data
portal for download, examination, analysis
by members of the public.
In addition, we've had several check-ins with city
council working groups as well as individual alders.
And then finally, the establishment of public committee hearings,
this one being one of the first. But we also have a couple coming up in
May as mentioned prior.
You will find a number of the reports that were sent to you
in summary by IGA. A lot of those reports exist on the
budget website. Every time that my office sends a report, we also send
the link for where that report can be digitally
found.
And then, in particular, CPD's overtime reports
and their EIS reports are also reflected on
their dashboard and public report portion
of their website. So at the end of the day, the administration
in collaboration with members of city council are seeking to
provide more frequent, more in-depth
analysis as well as reporting out of the work that's being
done,
allowing for questions either
through direct
contact with those departments,
through hearings, or through briefings that will occur throughout the
year.This just gives you an example of the many
types of reports that you can expect, that you have been getting, but that some of
which are new.
Some of them on an ongoing monthly cadence, such as the monthly revenue reports,
again, which have been revamped to provide more information.
ARPA reporting, as ARPA continues to wind down.
Our efficiency initiative status updates, which started coming in
February of this year, highlighting each of the efficiency and
revenue initiatives that have been implemented in this budget and that are
taking shape through each of our departments.
The monthly CPD overtime reports and implementation of
the early intervention system, and the ongoing reports on
management ordinance initiatives that you receive directly from
departments who are managing them.
On a quarterly basis, you will continue to get the quarterly budget reports,
reflecting performance
on a quarterly basis of the budget.
Our quarterly ERP reports from DTI and the Department of Finance,
and quarterly CPD and OPSA reports related to the medical
audit. And then for long-term forecasting, our 10-year TIF
report will be coming out more frequently so that city council can get
a much more up-to-date analysis of the status of our TIF
districts.
And then our annual budget forecast and mid-year
reports, which will come out later this year.
As mentioned by Chairman Ervin, we have a number of
hearings that are coming up to continue to provide
the public, as well as city council, an opportunity to
ask questions about the ongoing status of
implementation of certain work streams, including the joint budget and
police fire committees,
and the joint budget and ECTD committees to dive
deeper into our OPSA medical audit,
overtime for CPD and early warning system, and the ERP
implementation respectively.
And then
proposed hearings later on this year to monitor
financial outcomes and performance, including revenue
hearings, as well as the mid-year budget performance,
reflecting information from the mid-year budget report.
And in closing,
I'd like to just continue to note the tremendous amount of work that is
going on behind the scenes in each of our departments that are tasked with
implementing the work of the 2026 budget, and to
publicly thank the many members of our teams who
are involved in that work on top of, again, continuing to
deliver day-to-day service
to the residents, visitors, business owners
that
come to the City of Chicago or reside in the City of Chicago.
And we'll turn it back to the chairman for
questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Director. Just a couple of housekeeping items.
We have
Chairman Dial and Alderman Burnett
wanting to participate remotely under provisions of Rule 59.
Can I get a motion to accept the two of them? So moved by Alderman Casada.
All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Any opposed?
All right, Nick, I got you.
Chairman Dial, are you with us?
And Alderman Burnett?
Okay, we'll count them once they come online.
Alderman Moore?
You open up for questions now?
Not yet.
Okay. So,
I'm
wondering if we should put the timer on the clock, or are we
going...
We need the clock? All right.
He wants the clock, okay.
Let's
put seven minutes on. Can you do seven? Okay.
For the first round, we'll do seven.
If
it gets a little beyond that, we can come back around to that.
Also, recognize
Chairman Harris, for purposes of quorum. Anyone else?
I've got Cruz down as a non-member participating.
Chairman Harris, we have you down.
24.
All right.
Chairman Dial, are you
there?
Okay.
Point of information, Vice Chair.
Thank you, Chair.
So there's two items on the agenda.
This was the first one with the Q1 financial overview.
The second was the progress of efficiencies.
And I realize that many of the things around
efficiencies were already included.
Is there a second presentation, or should we just be covering all questions?
Yeah, we're going to cover pretty much everything at the same time.
Okay. Just wanted to be clear.
And then we'll
move item number two. Item number one is a voting item.
Item number two is a voted item. And it will be incorporated as
we move forward in an ongoing way. So I think all of this stuff
is kind of integrated together. So, I think we should be
able to tackle both items without having to revisit or re-go
through item number two, as we can have the same conversation
together.
Okay. I just wanted to be clear. Thank you.
No, we're all good. OkayWe're going to
open up for questions. I'm just going to go in order of seniority just to make life
easier for everybody that are people that are here that are
present.
Just a couple questions I'm going to start with.
On the amnesty month, how is that
going? I know we're getting toward the end of it.
Are there any early indications of what is it on target
or where are we at with amnesty?
The only amnesty month that's currently in place is with the city clerk.
As you recall, during the budget season, as part of the management
ordinance, the clerk is allowed and permitted to do one
amnesty without ordinance. And
she implemented that in April. I don't have an update on how
much more she has
collected versus budget, but I can get that to you.
Okay. All right.
The second piece is with this augmented reality.
You talked about, you did one RFP. We didn't get any takers.
What did you change between the first RFP, RFI
that you've done for-- You did the first one, now you've got a second one that's
due next week. What differences exist and what do you
expect to accomplish in that respect?
Yeah. Thank you for your question, Chair. Again, Steven Maher, acting CFO.
So we spent
the remainder of March thinking through, do we need to change the content of the
RFI or do we need to cast a wider net? Those are the two decisions in front of us.
We ultimately elected to not change the content.
We thought that the content that we put out in the original RFI was appropriate.
What instead we did was to talk with certain alders and also cast a
wider net of potential respondents.
We thought that it was possible that a month timeline
from February to March was not sufficient amount of time for
certain respondents, especially given that this is a new space.
So two things. One, against extending the deadline to May
2nd to provide even more time for potential respondents, and then second, trying to
cast a wider net than we did the first time around.
And when you say wider net,
why wasn't the net cast that way
to start with? When you say wider net, define wider net, I
guess a better question.
Yeah. So as I mentioned
earlier on, this augmented reality marketing
program lacks some precedent across the country.
What we tried to do with the RFI is to establish a
foundation or a game plan for how we might approach this throughout the course of
the year. When we released the RFI, it was not clear to us
what kind of responses we might get.
We did have some insight from a few interested parties that helped
structure the RFI itself.
But when we say cast a wider net,
I mean literally reach out to more potential
interested parties that may not even be working in the augmented reality space, but
may be working in an adjacent space to understand what capabilities
they might have that we previously weren't thinking about when we released the RFI
back in February.
So these are different operators or...
That's correct.
Okay. All right. And we don't know the answer to this, and this
is an RFI, not an RFP. And
from after doing the RFI, then we'll have to go through a second process to
actually more of a procurement process at that point. Is that correct?
That is correct.
Okay.
All right. We'll probably have that conversation at the
next quarter.
All right.
Alderman Bill?
Alderman Bill, you have questions?
Alderman Mitts, do you have anything?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In terms of the contract's
procurement process,
are we still looking for the
right type of equipment to
be able to process
the contracts more efficient
a-across the various departments?
Yeah, I will start and then I'm going to actually
give the rest of the response to both
CPO Roberts as well as
CIO Lucius. So one, part of
the ERP plan is to incorporate,
a procurement module, which will sort of be the
citywide centralized procurement
platform. And that is part of the multi-phase ERP
implementation. As it relates to the
recommendations that were in the report that was published last year
around the options that we have, that's more foundational.
How do we procure? Are we doing strategic sourcing?
How are we using data to make informed decisions
around what we procure? And so that's the work that
Procurement Chief Roberts and her team are currently
doing, which is much more foundational outside of a system,
and then bringing in the CIO and his team to
help with the data analysis and cleaning.
What was the timeline?
I will
turn that over to
the CPO.
The question was about the timeline.
I understand. Sharla Roberts, Chief Procurement Officer.
Could you clarify the question when you say as to timeline, is it for-
What would be the timeline for completion?
Is it the ERP system or is it the completion of the-
Completion of the
process that you're going through
... So the completion of the process for the goals that are outlined in
the Ernst & Young report.
Yeah.
But right now we have a delay in analyzing some of
the spin analysis because we are in the process
of updating our FMPS system, so we can have
data, so we can cleanse the data, so we could move to a more
category management,
so we could have strategic sourcing.
We feel comfortable that we could get...
I'm working with the controller's office and DTI, and they're currently
updating that system. Nick, do you have a timeline?
Thank you. Nick Lucius, CIO. So in DTI,
we have a work to do around
preparing the data for being able to do the analysis.
We have a set of recommendations that are complete,
and timelines around when those would be put
into the financial system,
and when we would be
able to do that data spending. I don't have those here with you.
Happy to get those through the chair, but the recommendations for the data
cleaning that needs to happen by the financial departments is complete.
You over the time, Alderman Morgan, point of information.
Yeah, because I don't want us to be repetitive in this, and it's answering some
stuff, but it's informational, it's not a question.
So with that saying then, based on what the chairman is
asking,
and the question was proposed to the CPO,
am I to understand, based on that question, that the CPO cannot do what she needs
to do until the technical side is done?
Director.
So I think one thing that the report that we put out
last year highlighted is there is significant work that needs to be
done within our procurement in order to get to best
practice, category management, strategic sourcing.
The data is a critical piece of that.
And so that's why her and her team have focused with
the DTI on
cleaning the data, making the data useful to be able
to move and shift into strategic category
sourcing and management.
I just needed to know.
Are we waiting-
Speak into the mic.
I just needed to know, and I appreciate that, but just in simple terms,
are there things, first of all, that DPI have to do?
Because I don't want these questions to go on.
Wow.
And if it's DPI, then let's get to that.
Is there a DPI issue or is there a procurement issue?
I don't think it's an issue. I think what we're highlighting, and this
is-
Not an issue. Maybe I should have said, do DPI have to be done first?
Because this is her thing. I don't want to prolong this.
Does DPI stuff have to be done first? That's all.
DPI. Yeah. So that's why they're focused on the data.
Okay.
There is work that needs to be done. We have very old systems.
This is why we are embarking-
I got you
... on the ERP to begin with. Our systems are extremely
dated. They're not always-
I don't want to take your time. I'm good. I'm good.
No, but I do want to get this point out, if possible.
Okay.
They weren't always geared for the type of data-driven decisions
that more modern organizations are able to make today.
And so with the constraints that we currently have in place in our current
systems, getting the data into a place where
we can, and Sharla and her team can create dashboards
that help them make data-driven decisions, that is the first step.
And that was actually-
All right, now back over here
... what was highlighted in the report last year.
Back over here.
All right. All right, Chairman. We got you.
Please, get back to me. I'm the one...
We got your time here. We're not running the clock on you.
Yeah.
We got you. We got you.
All right. I just want to ask you one more question.
I mean-
Go ahead. Go ahead.
He said reclaim my time.
He said.
You never lost any time. You good.
Do we have a contract in place? Have RFP been issued
already
and awarded?
For which part? The system or for the underlying
data work? Because those are two different things.
Either one.
So the ERP contract
has been in place for quite some time, and that process has been playing out for a
couple of years. So we do have a path forward to a system.
Okay.
The work that is-
The data
... foundational to procurement, there is no contract for that.
That's being done by Sharla, her team, DOF, and DTI.
Chairman, if you will, the way I describe it is it's a parallel track
that in the EY report and recommendations,
we're looking to do procurement reform.
So for example, there are departments outside of
procurement services that might be procuring things.
We want to make sure that's tied together so we're getting economies of scale.
It requires data for us to do that. So DOF is providing
data on what we pay out to
DPS and to DTI in order to be able to implement those
reforms.
I get it. I understand that that's critical, so we won't
be duplicating the procurement processes
when you have one centralized department to be able to do that work,
and that's what's going to help us to save some money,
if you will. But I was just wondering how long,
where we at, and I think I probably need
to sit down with you to get a better understanding, because it seems
like we're not moving in order to execute
items that's been put forth in the budget to be able to complete these
items. A lot of it was put in the
budget, and it seems like we're behind the eight ball right
now. So
Well, I would
just note, I think that there is a lot of work being done.
I think that the issues are deep-
I-
... and they are complicated, and until you sit down and
work through them and work through the complexity of it, you start
to realize what is needed to actually fix the
issue.
I guess that's why we are meeting here today to figure out and hear those
things, why things aren't moving when they
should. So,
the CPO don't get held responsible for something
that others should be doing, or she can't do it until
the other departments get their paperwork or we get contracts in place.
So thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Chairman. And also keep in mind, we will be having a second
conversation
with the joint committee, with the ECON Capital Technology Development,
which will center primarily around ERP and
in that issue. So we will have another bite at the apple related
to procurement, ERP, and its overall function
as it relates to
our system. So,
thank you. Next, we're going to have Chairman Harris, followed by Alderman
Walker-Spack.
Morning, everybody.
My questions are centered around real estate.
So have we moved to consolidate or
sell existing buildings that we have?
And are we on track to meet that $2.2 million
that we
budgeted? And I kind of want to throw land sales in, vacant
land and land sales all in there in that question too, because that was $8
million. So tell me if we're on track.
Thank you. I'll start, and then I'm going to pitch to my colleagues because they're
deep in the work.
So you hit on two very critical areas, real estate and
land sales. For real estate, we had just around
$2.2 million in savings booked for the 2026
budget, which is largely about getting out of leases that we
currently are in.
And one thing that we've done is we've built into the
working group that's working on this.
It's mostly 2FM, but we also have other members in other
departments who are also in the real estate working group.
But we've built in reviewing the leases that we currently have in place
before we bring it to City Council.
So before we put in front of you guys another lease to extend, we want to make sure
that we're putting the ones that we are not going to try to get out of.
Stay there with me for a minute. So how many leases are we talking
about that we're-
I don't have the number. I'm going to pitch to-
Okay
... the commissioner. I don't have the number off the top of my head, but are you
asking how many leases do we currently have as a city or-
That we're working to adjust.
To adjust? I'll pitch that to the commissioner to talk about.
But just quickly on the land sales, because that was another piece that you asked
about. The commissioner identified the lots that were
going to go up for Chi Block Builder this year and provided that to City Council,
but also has a number of lots that have been in
transition to be sold over the last few years, which are part of the
figure that's budgeted for 2026. She's already
sold lots this year, has more that are on deck to be sold.
And
that's the one that's currently reflected as off track because there's some
parts of the review that have delayed some of the process, but
we're actively working to mitigate against those types of delays so that we can
stay on track to meeting the goal. But I'll pitch to both Commissioner
Hernandez Tomlin and Commissioner Boatwright to go more in-depth with
your question.
Good morning.
The answer to your question of how many buildings or how many leases we're looking
at, right now, a handful.
Mostly because there's quite a few
vacancies within certain buildings,
so we're targeting those first,
and also the more expensive leases as well,
and it depends on where they are in the city as well.
So there's a lot of factors that go into what we're looking at immediately, but
eventually everything will be looked at.
And let's stay there. So since we have so many
vacancies, are we looking at consolidating and moving
to get out of leases early because we don't have the bodies, or we no
longer need the-
Yeah
... space anymore? Are we looking at even moving people back into
the hall in terms about saving money?
So I need you to speak to all of that to me so I can understand better.
We're looking at everything across the board, Alderman.
Consolidating, getting out of leases early.
Little bit of acquisitions, but more focused on the leases of what
cash is going out the door today.
And-
So all of the above.
Okay. So we're looking at all the above, but when do you think you'll have some
numbers to say what our cost savings may be?
Well, we're on track right now. I would say by,
what's this month?
Probably mid-year. Director Guzman, would you say?
Yeah, I think I can get back to you as to when we
assumed the savings in the budget
spread. And I would say that what we're
developing is a roadmap for not only getting out of
leases, it's buildings that the city owns that we also may be
able to put up for sale
because of the consolidation that you're talking about.
We do have a lot of vacancies, and we believe that there's a better way
to use our resources, which not only
includesYou know, getting out of leases
that we don't need, but also, and Julie can appreciate this,
there's deferred maintenance on buildings, and if they're vacant or we can
consolidate down, that's less deferred maintenance we have to pay, which is a
capital cost, which is savings on our debt.
There is
the amount of resources that goes into cleaning and
providing energy and utilities to buildings that if we are able to get out of
them, and sell them, that's a savings to the city as well.
So the roadmap will reflect not only the leases that we'll be able to
achieve this year to get out of, but also a roadmap for potential
building sales, which will have a sort of multiplier impact on savings.
And to that point, underutilized buildings are
also being looked at. So where there are buildings that have
multiple floors, multiple spaces, that are
city-owned, and we may only have one agency using them,
are we looking at those underutilized buildings in terms of the amount of
space,
and amount of utility costs,
and heat and all of that, that it's going to take to heat a building
with one city tenant in it?
Yes, absolutely. We're looking at operating costs,
all of the above, like I said. We're looking at everything.
So there is a strategic plan then, you're telling me,
to consolidate,
eliminate, and move things forward, and even put these city
properties
back on the road to sell them when they're
underutilized and-
We are develop-
Because I have an underutilized building in my ward, and it has one tenant in it.
I think it's
kind of criminal to not use that building
for a great potential, considering how much money the city has put in a
building to make it whole.
So,
I'll have an offline conversation with you about that one particularly.
But it's a concern of mine. I just think it's such a waste to use
less than a fourth of the building while the other three-fourths of the building
remains empty,
with zero tenants in it. We move them out,
close the building down, only to open the building back up.
And of course, then you lose your tenants. They're not coming back.
They found other spaces. So-
If I might.
So one thing, and I know that our updates don't go into
extreme depth for you guys just because it's a lot of work and it's a lot
of moving pieces, but
one thing that we did note in the report, and you'll see even on the screen,
the report that we released last year identified what we believe
are possible leases to get out of, possible buildings that should be up
for sale because of a high level
analysis of vacancy count within those buildings.
What Julie and her team are doing now is very
in-depth site visits, interviews, and focus
groups with departments, but they also have deployed a new type of
survey that everyone's going to start getting every single year to help us
with ongoing analysis of our
building use. The other thing that we are developing is a
much more structured way for space allocation going forward.
If a department believes that they need more space, they're going to have to
justify it in a very different way.
There's going to be a committee of people that look at that from a lot of different
lenses and angles, to make sure that we are making not only
data-informed decisions and data-driven decisions, but also looking
at both the long-term and short-term impact of the cost
related to those types of decisions.
So there's a lot of work going on in the background that aren't
just, well, what are the buildings that we own and what are the buildings that we
lease? It's a multi-phase, multi-factored analysis.
And so, with that, I hear that it's a lot of work, but
will we be complete? Will we be able to complete this by second
or third quarter?
We are on track to having a roadmap of considerations
for both leases to get out of and buildings to consolidate,
and ones that we would like to be able to put up for
sale.
Obviously,
there's a lot of factors into the final decisions around any of those.
We're here to provide the information, and decisions will have to be made.
Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Chairman Harris. Alderman Waguespack.
Morning, Chairman.
Thank you for having this hearing, first of all, and thank
you to all the commissioners who are here, and all of our
staff here that have been working on these different issues.
I wanted to just start off with discussing some of the fleet issues,
so Commissioner Hernandez, Tom on there.
I read
through a couple of the memos that came out,
and the tracking of fleet disposition, and it
looked like it had a green target on it,
but it didn't have some of the information in it.
So I was wondering if you could tell us
what exact FY26 savings are we going to be assuming
from the fleet efficiencies, and
if you could break down across disposition, utilization, and
the repair and maintenance aspect,
life cycle modeling. I think it was in one of the memos, but it didn't really
detail it. So could you break that down for us and just
discuss
what those savings will be and
how you would break down each aspect of it?
Thank you for the question, Alderman.
I do not have the exact numbers.
I can get those to you through the chair, please.
Okay.
The savings are being realized
as we go out throughout the year. Are you speaking of the disposition process
as far as the auctions?Is that the particular
process you're speaking of?
Pretty much across the board. So there's,
in the EY report, it has several different aspects of
what we're looking at. It's
accelerating the disposition process.
And that's a follow-up question too that I have is, what are the
implementation costs required to get to these fleet
savings? In the EY report, one of the things that it talks about
is outsourcing to a managed service provider and
then engaging either third-party brokerages or
additional ones. So that
comes under the disposition process.
So I don't know if you have gone through each one of those, but could
maybe break it down for us about where it sits in
what you were saying was this, for instance, life cycle methodology
disposition.
Yes. So right now we have accelerated our
disposition process
with our auctions, with the partnership with the CPO,
Cheryl Roberts, and her team. We
have gotten more revenue than we anticipated
so far this year.
For the corporate fund, we're about $248,000
of the $3.3 million that we're committed to achieving.
As far as a third-party vendor, I would have to get you more information.
We're not there yet.
But we are talking about it and developing something
if, in fact, that's a path we need to take.
And if I might add to that, because that's a very good question.
Right now the analysis is looking at do we
do 100% remarketer or do we do it specific to
certain types of equipment, right?
We have internal staff that sell at auction.
And have really been ramping that process up this year.
We are looking at how other cities do it.
Other cities have a 30- to 60- to 90-day disposition
timeline. Ours is
much longer.
And so looking at do we have a full remarketing
process or do we have a hybrid where we do some of it internally and then
we have specific equipment that's done through remarketers.
That analysis was just completed and provided to
FM and
DPS, and they are thinking through what works best
within the operations of their teams.
Okay. And that's just on the disposition. Okay.
If you could provide some of that information through the chair, and
maybe let me go a little bit deeper into some of these other ones.
So
on the expanded warranty recovery savings,
it was supposed to include two analysts, FTEs, full-time.
Have you worked to get those people approved or the positions
approved?
No, not yet.
Let's
see.
If you could provide just a target date on that as well as
the life cycle remodeling,
that would be helpful,
through the chair, I guess.
Understood.
Let's see.
Just as a note, Alderman, the timelines for each of the
work streams, including each of the
sub-parts of each work stream, are in the public
documents that we provide every month.
So if you look at our monthly efficiency publication,
because of the amount of work that is involved in each of these work streams, it's
phased out. I believe for fleet, the
expanded warranty
recovery anticipated completion date is actually the end of this year,
because the utilization metrics, disposition process,
and maintenance optimization and repair maintenance operation are
incredibly time-intensive to change how 2FM
does their operations. So those are sequenced first-
Mm-hmm
... with the other ones coming a little bit later.
But the completion dates are reflected in the reports that you get every month.
Okay. I think I was maybe looking at the
February report.
So I think what I'll do on these, I also had some
questions on a couple other areas, but
if you could provide through the chair just specifics on,
as you're moving forward, utilization targets
for finishing up 2026. I understand if they're getting
closer to the end of the year, that's what we have to deal with.
But
I think what I'll do is, Chairman, I'll put more specific questions through
the chair and try to get those broken down if we could.
Okay.
And then I have some questions after
about special events.
Go ahead.
Now I have 18 seconds.
No,
go ahead. You're probably, in the council, probably in the top five
group of people that have spent a lot of time on this.
I'm going to give you a little deference on the questions that you're going to ask
in relation to that. So go ahead. You can proceed.
Okay. Thank you, Chairman.
And thank you, Commissioner. I'll get those through the chair for you.
And this is for the budget director.
So I know we've been talking and
trying to get more special event cost recovery for some time now,
going back several years. But
how much do we expect from the current ordinance authority versus the ordinance
changes that we need to put in place
that will help us get to the end amount that we're looking for
the FY26?
So we were a bit conservative for the FY26 budget because one
thing, and this is borne out in the-- this is a
multi-department workstream. Like
all of those people over there were in this workstream,
and it's because it touches so many departments.
And it is sort of getting the city into a place of best
practice is going to take some time.
But what we put in the budget was, I believe, $6.8
million increase from 2025.
We are launching our centralized
interim data repository for us to be able to bill and
track
against the
events as they happen. And so a couple of things, and this is kind of
exciting. It sounds like it's small, but
just getting everyone to use the same tracking code across
departments is one way that we know we'll be able to track this
better and also get billing out a lot quicker.
So we've been working-- Our biggest obviously department
that accrues in, that incurs in costs are
CPD. And one thing that we found is all the
departments were using different tracking codes for the same event, which made
trying to really understand how much we were spending from a cost perspective
on an event very difficult,
and then making sure that we were billing accurate that much more difficult.
So we are launching our new interim
tracking repository at the end of this month with the
departments.
It will be able to get you much more accurate numbers, not only on what we
can currently
bill for within our existing codes, but we're also going to be tracking what we
can't currently bill for. So we don't currently bill for
non-personnel costs like equipment.
We don't currently bill for departments that are not within
our ordinances, but we're going to be tracking their costs nonetheless so that we
can get order of magnitude of what we should be
recovering.
Is there a central individual or group that
is responsible for,
I won't call it tracking, but like...
Well, I know we got the permitting issue, but like cost
control or just understanding what the costs are,
and going back to your last question,
why aren't we billing for equipment if we got to sit a truck out there
with a
person in it, where it sounds like we're covering the labor, we're not covering the
cost of the police car, the cost of the
salt truck or whatever that's coming along with that.
Are you moving to do that, or is that something that you need ordinance authority
to do?
So we're not always covering the cost of the person, right?
Our ordinance doesn't allow us to recover for Streets and Sands being
out there for
being a part of the public safety
infrastructure.
So part of the reason is because it's not ordinanced, right?
Our ordinances reflect what we can, as alderman
just mentioned, what we can bill for.
That is part of the other work that this working group is doing.
We have a policy working group that is looking at our
ordinances, and we'll be putting
together recommendations to bring us more in line
with our peers. So, last year in the report, we
highlighted how we're different from our peers.
Now we actually have to think about how that works in the City of Chicago,
and come up with proposed ordinance language.
There's going to be a lot of stakeholder discussions before any of that happens
because it'll be a shift for how the city works.
And so we want to make sure that we are being thoughtful about that shift.
But to answer your particular question,
it's because we're not ordinanced to do it, but that's part of what we're
looking to change.
No, it's a good question, Chairman, because I think you mentioned who,
and that was part of my question too.
I don't know, Director, are you doing it now?
It used to be John Roberson, I think, that was tasked with-
With what?
I thought it was John Roberson that was tasked with-
Like accumulating costs for, is there one person or-
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't answer that question.
Start the-
So there's one. So no. This is all the things that we're finding out, right?
So DOF will bill for things that are put
within their arms system. But you also have
PSA that bills separately on top, which is one of the things
that we're finding is it leads to uncertainty for
event planners and event organizers as to how much the city is actually going
to be billing because we might get one bill from DOF, which is
accurate, but then PSA might send another bill later on in the year for the same
event. And so this is part of why we're doing this centralized interim
repository of tracking.
We're coming up with new processes and workflows around
billing in particular so that we can provide that level of certainty.
And what we
hope to be the outcome and what we're moving toward is actually being able to bill
once, so you get that one bill for your event.
Thank you, Chairman. That was kind of the path I was going down
here. Just a couple other questions on that.
So we're expecting to recover about $7 million this
year, and you had mentioned earlier as summer
revenue starts to pop. Where do we stand today on that $7 million?
Are we anywhere close to that without-
I will have to get back to you on that because, again, as I mentioned, we're just
about to launch our centralized tracking tool.
I can get you what we've billed so far this year, but that won't be under this new
sort of more centralized
process.
Okay. And then when are the ordinances going to be introduced to the
City Council?
That is to be determined.
Obviously,
it's a policy discussion. We want to have a lot of policy
analysis, but also
stakeholder discussion.
I will try to get a better timeframe for when those will be
introduced.
But that work plan is still being put together.
Okay. I would just suggest, Chairman, that
some of the chairmen might be on that work committee, because it really is the
aldermen that see a lot of the
festivals and the wards. We
see a lot of the, whether it's waste or inefficiency.
And so I would suggest maybe some aldermen be on that working group, and then-
I think-
... expedite the ordinances.
Well, I think that once these things are identified,
and
this is just me, I don't think anybody's going to be really happy
with this, because it will create a cost barrier for a
lot of our smaller neighborhood events.
And these are going to be some policy decisions that we're going to need to make.
But I do believe it's important for us to at least capture what it's costing us.
Yeah.
But we are making the decisions on who, what,
when, and how we charge is going to be a huge
undertaking and a huge discussion.
So once we kind of clarify what the costs are, then we can probably have
a better discussion on how we want to implement
these things, because I think it's something we just kind of ignored, and we just
really don't know or didn't know. We can estimate, but I think we can get a better
sense of what that looks like. And we're going to have to just make some decisions
as a council as to what we're going to allow to
remain as it is and what we will bill for going forward.
Yeah. And I've always looked at it as a different tiers of events.
I think when people heard, "Oh, you're going to get the block party,
go after that," or the small school events or whatever, it's nothing to do with
that.
Yeah, and I think that's where we have to
get some clarity and understanding, and knowing that there is a
cost to a lot of these things. So, and I think that once we get
the data, we take a look at it, and we just need to make more of an informed
decision on how we will tackle those issues.
Yeah. So if we could get a timeline on that, that would be helpful.
It's okay.
Thinking just
trying to do this this past year, I know has been difficult,
but we tend to know exactly
how all these big events go and what the annual costs are.
So hopefully we can move quickly to get these, especially parades and some
of the larger tier events that we see in the city.
They should be
our priority. So, all right. Thank you, Chairman.
All right.
Appreciate it.
Vice Chair Lee has deferred to
Alderman Nugent because it's her birthday.
Are you ready to have these conversations, ma'am?
I can. Thank you, Chair.
All right.
So first, I appreciate and want to thank the folks that put this
together. This was pretty robust and very helpful.
So, thank you. I wanted to go back a little
bit to some of the procurement spending and maybe just
ask the CPO some questions surrounding...
When we had that EY report in the fall, one of the big
findings was there are a lot of duplicate contracts
across departments. Like for example,
one vendor had eight contracts across 25 departments.
Can you talk through if we've
reduced some of our contracts or we're able to get a handle on
that?
Thank you, Alderman. Yes, we're in the process of
organizing and adopting our category management system,
and we established a working group within DPS and
also including other departments.
So we are reducing those contracting spends by,
we created a new intake process within DPS,
so when the department has a need, we send those contracts
directly through our new intake
process to reduce some of the inefficiencies
to ensure that we are looking at contracts from a strategic
sourcing perspective, so we could strengthen our buying power and drive down our
costs. So yes, we've put systems in place
to address your concerns.
Have we been able in that process to, for example,
go from nine contracts with vendor A to two?
Is there any
evidence of actually that?
Yes. We've done strategic sourcings in the area of information
technology, as well as looking at our JOC
contracts for construction, where we have several departments that have JOC
contracts.
Yep.
We're analyzing those contracts to see where
that we have one vendor,
versus having three contracts in place.
So, yes, we have reduced some of those contracts.
Can you get through the chair? Can you send actually
the specific example of where we've reduced the
contracts?
Sure.
Okay. And then
also in the EY report,
there was significant time spent on
maverick spend or off-contract spending.
How have we addressed that at all, or have we done
more on that front?
Thank you again, Alderman.
Just as I stated earlier, we put those strategic
processes in place. One of the things, as I mentioned earlier, we
revamped our intake process at DPS.
And we are implementing it too, so we can analyze the data that we
currently have on all our contracts that are about to expire.
So we're using that data that we have, as well as
the revamping of our intake process within DPS, so we could
identify what those maverick spends are that are outside of procurement
services, to work with those departments to ensure that
procurements that we've already have in place for strategic
sourcing, they're utilizing those contracts and continue having working group
meetings with them weekly to identify what those other maverick spends are.
So we are addressing those concerns.
Do you know, I think-I think we were at 52%
Maverick last year. Do you know what percentage we'll be for Maverick?
What are we right now?
What was outlined in the EY report was 49%.
Okay.
And one of those things that I brought up early is
we're modifying their systems
to ensure that we're able to have the data so we can cleanse it.
So I don't have a direct number because that's one of the
impediments that we ran into is we're
modifying the system so we can have accurate data.
But we're looking at everything,
and bringing everything that we see that could be strategic sourcing
that's not unique to the department.
So I don't have a direct number, but we are looking to reduce that number
significantly.
When would you have that number?
We're still analyzing the data.
Okay. I just
think benchmarks are really important and I
understand that it's
difficult. I'm just trying to figure out if we're improving, if we're doing a good
job on Maverick Spend or not,
what does
it look like to streamline contracts, and I just always hear we're sort of in the
process, but I never see a number to say, "Hey, we took
this vendor with nine contracts and now they're down to two."
When do we see that kind of stuff?
That data
from a progress standpoint, and we also at the procurement service believe in
benchmarks as well. The reports that are provided
for you with OBM documents where we are in our process.
So from a benchmark standpoint, it is our goal to have that process
done from a analyzing the contract and looking at the spend.
There's steps to it, but overall, we should have that process
done by the end of third
quarter fiscal year '26.
By the end of third quarter?
No, we're in the second.
So we won't know until the end of the third quarter how we're doing?
Well, not that you will on the Maverick Spend, because we're constantly working
on it every day and tracking that success.
So I can provide you through the chair what we've done so thus far.
Okay.
I would appreciate that, and
whatever data you can give that sort of answers the questions,
what I'm trying to get at. And then I know we've talked about this
before, and I'm just trying to understand it.
So
procurement can enter contracts without council approval.
That's correct, right?
Yes.
Okay. And is there a dollar amount threshold on how
much a contract you can enter into through your office
without council approval?
So,
none of the contracts that we procure through the department procurement
services come before the council.
And is there any dollar threshold on the contracts you enter?
We procure everything from
buying contracts for the
Chicago Aviations, as well as buying
for
2FM. So there's no specific dollar amount.
I think the only dollar amount, Alderwoman, is the budget
appropriation for each department.
Okay. And then,
you're also able to enter into sole source contracts, and
I know I've asked this before. Do you know how many...
With permission. Thank you, Chair.
How many sole source contracts have you entered into in the last 12 months?
Approximately around six sole source contract, but I can get
the accurate number through the chair.
Okay. I'd appreciate that.
Thank you.
And then I know we had spoken about this in other meetings, but
there was conversations around procurement entering into another contract with
Ernst & Young, whether a direct contract or through a pass-through.
Have you entered into another contract with EY?
At the end of March, we signed a reference contract with EY.
And what is the contract for?
It was a contract for the OBM.
And how much was that contract for?
I think roughly
seven million.
So
I'm just going to ask the questions, and it might be to you, budget director.
When we met in the fall, there was conversations about,
and this was through the EY meeting, that, hey, this was a $3 million report that
EY did,
that I think is a very helpful report.
And there was conversations about,
I think it was another $3 million where EY might be able to advise us on how to
effectuate. And my understanding from that hearing was that we couldn't afford
to enter into it. So
what's the $7 million contract for?
So in the 2026 budget,
part of the sources of expenditure set
aside was to be able to obtain
support to implement a number of the initiatives that were part of the work
stream. The contract that the commissioner is talking about is not related to
procurement. It's a two-year contract to support
the organizational review process across
every single department in the city of Chicago.
Both spans and layers, centralizing our back office, support
services, because right now it's very decentralized.
And that was one of the items that was identified as
overlapping functions that slow down our processes,
as well as looking at how do we implement a more centralized talent flow
process, which will speed up our hiring for the City of Chicago.
Will they be giving a report that council will be able to have access to?
We will be able to provide any updates the council needs on that work.
We just kicked it off. Just was actually on a call earlier today
with one of the departments who's going through the review process right now.
But this is... different than what we were referencing in the
fall that we couldn't afford?
If you could say more. So if you're talking about in the
fall, that was based on last year's budget.
We-
No, I guess maybe I should be clear.
When EY came to present to us the report,
they had indicated that this was a report outlining what they
identified are our problems. And they said, "There's an
option for another $3 million for us," something along those lines, basically for
them to tell us what to do and how to implement what's in
this document. And
to the best of my recollection,
what was said was, "We're not going to enter into that contract vehicle because we
can't afford it."
I think what was mentioned was, at the time, because that
was in 2025, there wasn't sufficient funding to
embark on a contract at that time, during the
2025.
But we have funding now?
We're under a new budget. We baked in the cost of
doing this work for 2026.
Got it. Okay.
Chair, do I have two more minutes?
One more minute?
Half a minute?
There you go.
Okay. Real quick.
Last quick question.
Stay
I saw this weekend, it looks like we entered a contract vehicle with
GoodKidsMadCity. Was that through an RFP or a sole
source?
I think that
must be with DFSS.
And I think that they have procurement authority for delegate agencies.
So that's part of the conversation that you just had with the commissioner around
procurement authority that lays outside of
DPS, but they do have ordinance procurement authority to do
delegate agency contracts, and I do think that they do most of their stuff through
RFPs.
Okay, so that was a delegate agency through an RFP,
we believe?
I would have to confirm that, but I believe that is through DFSS.
Okay. Actually, if you could get that through the chair,
whether they're a delegate agency,
if it was an RFP.
If it wasn't an RFP, if they are the only entity that
can provide the type of services as defined, I'd be grateful for that.
Thanks, Chair, for the latitude. Appreciate it.
No problem. You have questions or you have something?
Go ahead.
Could you turn his mic on?
Along the line of questioning my
colleague, Alderman Nugent, had regarding this executive order,
GoodKidsMadCity,
is the commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services in the
building today? Can IGA
confirm that?
The reason I ask is, on April 3rd,
I sent an email to the commissioner of Department of Family Support
Services,
and for more than two weeks, she didn't respond.
Twenty-one of my colleagues, 17 of which are in this room right now, were
copied on that.
I sent a second email last week,
five days ago. The commissioner, Commissioner Green, still hasn't
responded, and now we have an executive order
announced over the weekend.
So my question is,
all these things are going on, and we're not brought up to speed on that.
But what's worse is, a commissioner
in this government ignores two separate emails
from 20 aldermen.
If she's in the building, I think Commissioner Green should come down to this
chamber and answer some questions on where we're at with youth
guidance. Thank you.
Okay.
Where is she left?
Vice Chair, you ready?
All right.
She'll be followed by Alderman Villegas.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you Budget Director Guzman
and everybody that's here. I'll echo some of what
my colleague, Alderman Nugent, said.
A lot of really good work here, so I appreciate the time and effort that's been put
in. I'm going to jump around a little bit.
I'm going to-
She's the vice chair.
We got you, man. You got somewhere to go? I got you. We got you.
Oh.
We got you, man.
All right.
Can I ask?
It's what we have. Right.
I'm going to take care of you, Alderman Moore. Vice Chair, please proceed.
Thank you. I have a
sort of general question on the
overall efficiencies is, and I know that you've got
individual timelines and forecasts for everything.
Can you speak to whether or not
there are efficiencies that have already been implemented
that we can account for, that we could sort of tick a box and say, "That's been
achieved," or, "That's well on its way," or is everything
mostly in process right now?
Everything is primarily in process.
I
don't want to underscore the scale of change operationally that
these efficiencies are bringing to the city
government.
We're talking about how-Differently, 2FM
will manage and repair our cars. We're talking
about how they will dispose of cars going forward.
Some of that might require a contract to be implemented.
I think the fact that we have created centralized
project management teams for each of these work streams means that
information is flowing so much quicker, which means things are getting done
quicker. But as far as it relates to the actual changes
of how the work is being done, that's in
process.
By the end of this, we will have written standard operating
procedures which are different than what we're currently doing.
And so I know that's not a satisfactory answer, but we're talking about wholesale
change to how we currently operate.
I'm an alderman, I'm used to giving unsatisfactory answers all the time
too.
So, we've
targeted 46.6 million in
inefficiencies overall, and I think we all agree that a lot of this
is a process worth going through
because ultimately, whether it's this year, we hope to see some of
it this year, and I think that's sort of where we are right now, right?
So we're interested in the small things that we think are going
to materialize this year. And are really just sort of
interested in how we
see them and what we anticipate may or may not materialize, I guess, is more
directly to the question. And then, what's the
contingency plan to close any gaps that we can see
coming?
So one thing that I will be able to highlight, not in the report you'll
get in May, but in a future report probably starting in June, which will
cover April. You'll start to see
a saving and revenue tracker for each of the initiatives.
So you will actually start to see what revenue we've brought in from the
initiatives as well as the savings.
And the reason why we are doing that in sort
of beginning with the April activity month is
because part of this is we had to set up functional teams, we had to set
up internal working groups and so forth.
And so those savings or those revenues, while some have started to come in, as
Julie mentioned, the
revenue around fleet, and as Commissioner Boatwright has mentioned,
land sales and so forth. A lot of these things, we had to set up
full-scale working groups in order to start changing our operations.
And so we even budgeted seeing those savings and seeing those revenues
actually later in the year. But some of them are, again,
over-performing.
So we wanted to start putting those in the reports
starting around June of this year.
As it relates to when are we going to pivot if we aren't
seeing some of those things come in.
I think
one of the things I've mentioned on the public
hearing schedule is we do anticipate having a midyear
performance hearing, and we also anticipate having more regular
revenue hearings so that we're keeping you much more abreast
of what we provide on a monthly
report perspective, doing that and having those conversations more publicly
so we can have the, "Well, if this revenue doesn't come in by this
date, what are we going to do?" And also midyear performance,
having data through May will give us a much better feel
for where we are, both on the revenue side as well as
expenditure side, so that we can put forth in front of you, like, "Here's
an option for how to deal with underperformance."
Thank you.
I know in an earlier slide
with the revenues that have already come in, I'm interested
in online sports wagering.
The budget called for $26 million in revenue.
There's some legislation at the state about preemption.
I know we've already been collecting some taxes.
Can you talk a little bit more about kind of where we are, where we think we're
going to end up depending on what happens in Springfield?
Yeah. I can't speak about what's happening in Springfield because I'm not down
there. What I can tell you is that we're over-performing in online sports wagering
against budget by about 3 million more than what we anticipated to come
in by this time of the year.
So it's actually tracking relatively well.
So by the middle of the year,
we anticipate being well over budget,
and performing positively. I will get you a forecast
of that as well as
get an update from IGA on where those conversations are in Springfield and how
that might impact that revenue source going forward.
Got it. Well, I'm glad it's over-performing because maybe we'll
just-
Be able to reach our-
Maybe we'll just push for the year.
Yeah.
Okay.
Regarding,
you covered real estate earlier.
I know you mentioned that, it seems to be during the budget, we got
a list of the city-owned buildings.
Can we get that updated, with just progress
on where all these surveys are and everything?
I'm really interested in just the...
I've got some city-owned properties in my ward that I've had people that are
interested. I've talked to commissioner about that as well.
I'm looking for just sort of broader picture and
sort of disposition on these
assets,
especially as we think about what's realistic
to move on in this year. Obviously, we're
most concerned about this year and going into '27, we want to see that
as well.
Yeah. Very early on in the working group on real estate,
we scoped the buildings that were high priorities to look at.
As Julie mentioned, the leases were really important because that's also what our
budget was based on, is getting out of leases.
And so we identified the buildings that we wanted to do surveys
in immediately with departments, as well as site tours.
So we can, and I'll let Julie talk, but we can get you the list of
both the buildings that were surveyed and the buildings that
we did very in-depth site tours of.
You want to just respond to that?
Yeah. Thank you, Alderman. Yes.
To go on what Director Guzman was saying, we conducted
over 20 site visits. Actually, I think it was more than 30
site visits. We're doing interviews with departments.
We filled out surveys with them.
And that's work in progress. So yes, we can get you a list of
where those site visits were.
So you've done 21. How many more do you have to go?
I think we only have maybe one or two more departments.
Okay. That wasn't a trick question.
I just don't have
the number in mind.
I can yield my time and
go to the next person, or are you going to give me a couple more minutes?
How much do you have left? What?
I could go on. That's okay. Go ahead.
I can submit-
I know you can go on.
I can submit some things through the chair.
All right.
I think my colleagues have other questions.
All right. Very well. So I'm going to-
Yeah
... as Alderman Moore pointed out, he's ahead of Alderman
Villegas by luck of the draw. So we'll go to Alderman
Moore.
I want to add to the record, Alderman Beale has joined
us in chambers, as well as Chairman Dial.
Also, Alderman Burnett has joined
online.
Do either of you have questions for us? No. You do? Both of you do?
Okay, go ahead, Alderman Moore, then we'll follow back.
I'll go, but I'm about the business.
You said seniority.
I did.
The chairman is here, and Beale is here. Let's just go with seniority.
They just got here. I wanted to give them-
It don't matter. We didn't say who first. We said seniority.
Alderman Moore, thank you for your comments.
All right. Y'all got to start sticking to rules.
No. The fact of the matter is that they just got in the chamber.
I don't think it's fair to them to put them on just walking in the door.
So that's why we're going to go to you, and we'll go back in order.
It's not the problem here.
Okay, Dial. All right. Well, first of all, thank you, Chairman, for having this
hearing. And I really want to give a really a shout-out to the budget director.
I know this is not budget hearings, but thank you for having an open door
policy always to discuss things even before we get to
these things and
answering these questions. I know some things just have to go on record,
and that's why we have these meetings.
But I just want to say thank you and your team for
always having that open door policy, and that's the same way with many of the
commissioners here. I know you're the last.
The
planning commissioner and the procurement commissioner in the same way, and
like you, it's that open door policy.
So getting that information that we need, but I know
just things have to go on record.
For me,
real quick, the
numbers that we have here, and when we're talking about where
we're at on revenues right now, is that as of the end
of March?
It's at the end of February.
Okay. End of February. I just wanted to be clear.
You probably state-
The March report you'll get by the end of this month.
So by the end of this week, actually.
So we're just dealing with two months right now, basically. Okay.
And then the other question I have
in relation to
what Alderman Nugent was talking about with this
Maverick, and we was talking about
the data.
And again, this is stuff that's been going on for years, and we're trying to get
this stuff together. As part of that,
I think this is to the procurement
commissioner, as part of that, do you have all
the data to make your decisions, or is
DPI still working on getting that data to get to you?
Thank you for the question, Alderman.
So I'm working really closely with commissioner on
this. And what I can say about the
system first. The system has the capability to do this
data collection. So we know that we have outdated
systems, but I do want to
say that when it comes to procurement categorization and spending analysis,
we have what we need to be able to do that.
The work that we're doing right now is taking a look
at the data that's there available that's been put
in by departments. As every department has a financial team, they
categorize transactions in the system.
And we're identifying that there's an improvement that we can
put into the system for what kind of data we capture from departments as
they categorize spending.
And there's just some work that we need to do in order to make those new screens
available, make those new fields available, so that we can have
finance
issue those trainings out throughout departments so that the data coming
in now, all of a sudden, we can start to use it to better categorize all of our
spending through procurement. So that's the work that we're doing in DTI right now
with
DPS, and we're just hitting a point now where we're ready to put
that into the system and get it out.
And
I want to make sure my line of questioning is taken in
the right spirit in terms of it's not a
blame thing. It's making sure that you have
what you need, you understand what I'm saying?
To get her what she needs,
to give us the information that we want.
And so as you're doing that, which I believe you're doing a good job in doing that,
we got to focus that if you need something additional, because I don't want us
having meetings and saying XYZ, and we don't know where
the bottleneck is. And so if you need something from us to
expedite that to help her get the information she needs so that we can
be satisfied, let us know that.
But as long as you're good right now.
But I just want you to know that, because we want to make sure we're supportive of
you, and she can't do what she do until that part is done.
I guess the last question that I have,
if I can find it
againAnd when we were talking
about
contracts, I just want to be clear when we're saying procurement can
procure without council approval.
So through the budget, everything has come through the council.
That's what we can spend. And I know she mentioned things with aviation, but there
are some things that, because we approve projects, we
approve things on a budget, but there are a
lot of things that do come back. So I guess
to get at her point, so we're clear in this,
like we say, spend paper, right? We're not coming back to
city council and saying, "Can we go buy from Xerox or
XYZ?"
Give us some of those small examples, like I mentioned with
Xerox, and then some of those big examples that, hey, yes,
they do have to come back to council for, even
if we
allotted for it in the budget.
So,
I think to best answer your
question, it's multilayered, right?
So no department can spend anything, no department has any
funding without the appropriations
provided by city council. And in that appropriation are
dollar limits by category, right?
Whether it's professional service contracts, whether it's how much we spend on IT,
all of that is appropriated by city council.
In addition to that, there are certain things that clearly require
city council approval
as it relates to what we spend money on.
And there are mechanisms and committees that have to approve those
things. As it relates to the inking of a contract or the
RFP process that is set forth in the procurement code
that Charla has to follow, and even for the departments that have procurement
authority, they also have pretty detailed
requirements when it comes to, A, the scope of their procurement authority
and how their procurement process has to work.
Once the departments go through those processes, the actual contract
doesn't have to come back to city council to literally approve the
contract.
But a lot of the other ways in which we have to abide by the
procurement code, how the RFP processes have to work, that's all
set forth in the ordinances that are
set forth by city council.
Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Alderman Moore.
Next, we're going to have Alderman Villegas, followed by
Alderman Beal, then
Chairman Dial. Go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon to everyone.
On page 19,
you put together revenue stream and timeline.
I was wondering if we could get a timeline for all
revenue, not just these items that were selected here.
We'd like to get a true picture as to how everything is going as well.
Are you asking for our budget spread on every single revenue source?
Yes.
We'll determine how to best provide that to you.
That's a-
Well, I-
... huge amount of data.
Yeah, no, I just think that the budget was passed, and so
I know these items were items that
were not part of the initial mayor's budget that he did not veto, but it's part of
the budget. So we'd like to see the entire budget and the revenue streamline as
well.
ERP, someone said ERP. ERP has been finalized?
You have a contractor now, a vendor that's doing ERP, because my understanding that
it was not.
And then also around time and attendance, I'm just curious, has all that been
finalized?
Thank you for the question, Alderman.
So we don't have a contract in place.
It's in an active procurement, and-
Yeah, I know, but it's been active for a long time.
It's been active for a long time, and we're counting on savings.
We're counting on revenue stream.
So there has to be a time when we make a decision here.
This has been going on for years.
Years. You couldn't come to an agreement with the other vendor.
You went to the second one, and here we are again, still talking about it.
We need action, please.
We're depending on the modernization in order to realize some
savings. Please.
Thank you, Alderman. I appreciate your concern. I share it, too.
In February of this year is actually when we issued the
actual system implementer RFP. This is the contract
for the actual firm that's going to come in here and do the development and-
Right. But they're implementing. You haven't selected the software yet.
So the software,
if we were to enter into a contract with the software already, we'd be paying for
licenses. It would be a significant cost.
Okay.
And so at this moment, the system
implementer contract is the one that we need the fastest in order to get
started with the development, and we'll time our software purchases
accordingly so that we don't-
Okay
... spend before.
Thank you. Appreciate that.
What exact fiscal year 26 revenue amount is the administration assuming
from fees, fines, and service optimization actions,
and could you provide the item-by-item breakdown?
Can you ask the question one more time?
Yeah. What exact fiscal year 26 revenue option is the administration
assuming from fees, fines, and service optimization actions,
and what's the item-by-item breakdown?
If I might repeat the question so I make sure that I understand it.
What is the budgeted amount for fees and fines
optimization?
What is the-
Is that across all funds or just across the corporate fund?
Across all funds.
I'll have to get that exact number across all funds to you through the chair.
Cool. Has the city participated in the local debt
recovery program that's administered by the state?
I believe the city is a part of the state's consortium
on debt recovery, yes
So the city
Yes
You're telling me that the city is actively utilizing the local debt recovery
program in order to
pursue outstanding debt from businesses as well
as citizens
Right.
That's correct. Through our debt check process,
we work through the state. So when they're providing anything from lottery
winnings to
tax
rebates or
tax returns coming from the Department of Revenue,
our debt check is coordinated with them.
And so that we're able to collect revenue from those people that are getting money
from the state.
So I think that's the program you're referring to.
We have been active in that program for some time.
Okay. And has it been successful? Because
it's been $8 billion
outstanding, so I'm just curious as to whether or not that program's successful or
not.
Well, the $8 billion's debt going back to, I think,
2001 for all categories. But
since I've been here, we've been active in it.
Okay.
I guess I will refer to my deputy to see if
there's an exact number from that particular
program.
But if not, we can get that for you through the chair.
Cool. Appreciate it. Thank you.
In the EY report, it said the city reviewed 35 categories of fees
and fines and identified up to 74 million in annual
revenue opportunities. Which of those 35 categories has the
administration actually selected for implementation?
And how many of these were already implemented in the fiscal year '26 budget, and
how many remain left outstanding?
I don't have that off the top of my head.
There was a through the chair on this as part of the '26 budget.
I'll re-up that for you because we'd laid out exactly the ones that were
implemented in the 2026 budget.
Okay.
This is to the commissioner of DTI.
EY says service optimization includes reforms of fee structures and
adoption of new technologies. Which public safety fee changes and
technology-driven changes are being pursued into fiscal year '26,
and will there be an FY26 financial impact?
I can start, and then I'll pitch it to you. There's a number.
The first one, and the DPS director can also talk about
this, is the upgrade to the CAD system that is overseen
by OPSA but used by CPD in their
work. That implementation, I believe, is supposed to be done
and everyone trained by third quarter of 2026, which is a
significant savings for the city of Chicago to
upgrade from the existing CAD to the new system.
The second one is, we have completed the--
I'm going to say we completed, but I'll let Nick confirm,
completed the NextGen 911 software
implementation for our 911 system.
Which will help with
tracking and geo-tracking specifically where people are calling from,
which means that our first responders will get to them a lot quicker.
CPD is in the midst of, and this is part of their
consent decree implementation, they're in
the midst of updating their records management system, which will
help to reduce the amount of time that they take
to
document things within their systems, leading to less overtime because they
spend a lot of time just papering over a lot of the work that they have to put into
their system. And then finally, which will come out in the
joint budget ECTD hearing next month
around the OPSA audit, they are in the midst of implementing an
electronic medical records system.
I believe they're in the RFP stage for that, but that will be significant
improvement because most of their systems are paper-based right now and in
boxes, which makes for getting first responders
back to work that much more time
intensive because you have to go pull a record rather than being able to look at
modern systems like what you and I have with our doctors and
our MyChart electronic records. So those are just some of them.
Nick, I don't know if you have others that you want to-
So Budget Director, you mentioned twice significant, which is great.
You said significant savings.
Can you quantify that? Just an estimate.
I would have to get back to you on the actual dollar figures.
Okay. I love significant, so...
The DTI commissioner.
Thank you, Alderman. Beside the significant
answer from the budget director,
I would add to that, which we will have a hearing next
month to go further into, which is the time and attendance system as well.
Public safety has a lot of timekeeping activities that they've
spent a significant expense on, as well as tracking
overtime, is going to become much more
modern and digital through the time and attendance system.
And we'll talk more about that at the next hearing.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I just have one more question.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The March report from 2026 says the
city was still-- I'm sorry. The March report says the city was still developing
the centralized fee and fine inventory and beginning a revamped annual
survey for fiscal year '27.
If the inventory is still being built and the survey is aimed at FY27,
could you talk about what specific FY26 actions
support reaching the current revenue target?
I'm sorry, which report are you referring to?
The OBM March 2026.
Oh, thank you. So the city doesn't have a
centralized fee or fine
schedule. Departments,
and not all of them, but departments have their own fees
and fines on their websites, which makes it really difficult for
people who just want to know justWhat am I being charged by the
city in a lot of different ways
because you might be a business owner, but you also
might have a fee related to something else that you're
involved in with the city of Chicago.
So what we're in the midst of doing, and it's actually pretty tedious because we
have a lot of municipal codes we also have been working with the Department of
Finance because we have what we call a caps code for every single fee, fine, tax,
or other type of revenue source that we take in.
And so we've been doing a lot of cross-walking to make sure that we've identified
every single fee and fine, and that is ongoing work.
What we have done in the interim is we've revamped our
annual fee survey,
which is the survey we use every year to determine if we are recovering enough of
the cost that we incur by providing a
service. And we've expanded that to also now include fines because
we were never really reviewing our fines.
And a lot of our fines are actually aligned or tacked onto a fee.
So if you don't pay a fee, you end up having to pay a fine.
And so what we've done is we've completely revamped that process,
tried to streamline it so it's easier for departments to actually fill out.
And we want to use that not only to tell us where our costs
are more than what we are charging, but also to look really deeply
at whether or not we need to make efficiencies in the work stream
that gives rise to that cost, right?
Are there learnings that we can get
from this annual review that will help us look at
whether and when we need to actually bring more
efficiencies to our processes to actually drive down the cost?
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Okay.
Autumn Bill, you ready?
Okay. Followed by Chairman Dowell.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I do apologize for being late. I had an engagement this morning, but I got down
here as soon as I could.
First,
I was listening to the public
comment, first of all, and I want to echo the one thing the gentleman
said about drones. I think we are so far behind in
times in this city as far as drones as a first responder.
I've had conversations with the superintendent,
and it is phenomenal technology. I have seen it
firsthand. I've talked to other cities firsthand and seen
demonstrations firsthand on what that technology can do.
And I think it really behooves us to do whatever we need to do to
get ahold of that technology and use it here in the city, because
all the accidents we're having, crashes, and things like that will
all be eliminated
with having drones in the air and at a fraction of the cost
of helicopters. And so we can have a whole, what they call
mesh of drones throughout the city of Chicago, where
we would have tremendous redundancy
with several drone operators to be able to track and
follow these offenders to help crime in the city of Chicago.
So I just wanted to echo that gentleman that testified
earlier today.
The first thing I want to get into is sweepstakes machines.
We've had several conversations with these illegal
sweepstake operators here in the city of Chicago.
How come we haven't tried to tax these sweepstakes machines?
Because they're paying $150 just for a sticker or a
medallion, and they're saying that they've been trying to be
taxed here in the city of Chicago, and they've been met with
resistance. How come we refuse to tax sweepstakes machines?
I wouldn't say that I am in the position to say that we're refusing to
tax them. The
commissioner from BACP isn't here today, but I can
definitely
follow up with him on the conversations around that particular item because I'm
just not as conversant on it. But I hear you.
I hear your point, and I will try to get you an answer.
Okay. Well, let me just give you some quick numbers.
In 2021,
we had 1,999 illegal
sweepstakes machines that were licensed or so-called
received medallions here from the city's department to bring in
$299,000.
2022, we had 2,032
medallions issued from the city for a total of
$304,000.
2023, we had 1,994 for
$299,000.
2024, we had 2,511 for
$376,000 in revenue.
2025, when the conversation struck
a nerve here in the city of Chicago, we went from
2,500 to 5,200 in 2025
to bring in $792,000 just on
medallions alone.
That's twice the amount.
What's more alarming is 2026. So far in the first
quarter of this year, the first quarter,
4,775
medallions have been issued here in the city of Chicago for
$716,000. That's a
lot of money with just medallions and not
receiving revenue
from these machines. And so they're saying that they want to be taxed up to
30%. That's the conversation they had with us.
They want to be taxed up to 30%. I'm not in favor of it because I think they're
illegal machines. But if we're issuing the medallions,
how come we're not getting that revenue?
That's an issue that I have. So hopefully, you
start looking at that. So getting to my next
questionWhose job is it
to issue
the letter to the state after the budget was passed that the city was
open for VGT machines?
I think that's a legal question. I'll pitch it to our Department of
Law.
Good afternoon.
Afternoon.
Can you restate the question? I was-
Could you identify yourself for the record as well?
Thank you. Ray Phillips. I'm just on behalf of the Department of Law.
Whose job is it to notify the state that the city
was open for business to accept VGT licenses here in the city of
Chicago? Whose job is that?
I don't have that expertise right now, but I'm happy to answer that through the
chair.
You don't have the expertise on whose job to
notify the state that we're open for business.
So therefore, that means anything we pass here, we don't know whose job it is to
carry out their job.
That's a problem, but I understand why you don't want to answer. I get it.
So let's move on.
If
it took this council five minutes to issue a letter to the state
for the state to open up VGT machines, why has it taken us until
July to start looking at bringing in revenue?
So,
the
licenses are approved at the state level,
and so they have to exist within a state
regulatory regime. And so based on
just assumptions and conversations around the length of
time that it takes the state to license,
we made some assumptions looking at other cities and how long it
took for their licensing regime to be stood up.
Okay. But if we're giving medallions to sweep staking machines, they can
come in, pay $150, walk out, and they got a medallion
for their machine. Why can't we expedite it that way?
Again, we are working within the state regulatory regime that
requires for
a person to hold a VGT to actually be licensed by the state.
Okay, but the state says that sweep staking machines are illegal, so why are we
issuing licenses?
I would have to look into that. I'm not
the commissioner of the ACP.
Okay. All right.
I heard you mention that we're entered into a contract for $7
million for EY for
efficiencies and identify different things.
Are they working with all the commissioners throughout the city?
All the different departments?
This particular work stream is on organizational
restructuring. So they'll be looking and working with every single department.
It's a two-year contract, first of all, so it's not $7 million in one year.
Mm-hmm.
And it's not actually $7 million. And
I literally was just on a call about this earlier today.
They're doing it in phases. They can't do every single department at the same time.
And so they're looking at some of the larger departments and priority
departments first, and similarly to some of
the other ways that we have to phase in because we have almost 40 departments,
but they will be working with every single commissioner.
Okay. So let me ask you, why are we paying these
commissioners a large sum of money if they can't identify efficiencies with their
own department?
So when it comes to org analysis and the work that we're doing in that
regard, this is
changing how the city of Chicago has operated structurally.
So this isn't just looking at
small
E efficiencies. This is looking at how do we
align our structure more like we see in other cities,
irrespective of how a particular
commissioner in any particular administration wants to
align that department. So this is looking at not only
org structure, it's looking at work streams and if we have
duplication across departments, and that's more than just one commissioner's
responsibility to be looking at. It's across the entire city.
It's enterprise-wide,
which is why we're also looking at back office support.
Why do we have HR in every single department? Things like that.
So,
class and comp
resides within the authority of the HR director-
Mm-hmm
... commissioner. And how we want to
structure ourselves is a little bit more enterprise-wide than it
is the
purview of one single commissioner.
Okay.
Director, every budget season,
we identify cuts and efficiencies that we think
should happen here in the city of Chicago, and that doesn't cost us a dime.
We're paying commissioners, deputy commissioners, deputy to the other commissioner,
and assistant to the deputy of the deputy commissioner, and we're paying
these people a lot of money, but we got to go outsource $7
million to identify efficiencies in these departments
when we do it
here every single year. So I think that's a waste of money.
I think that's hiding behind the veil,
and another way of saying we're doing something, but yet we're not doing anything,
but we're spending $7 million of the taxpayer dollars that we just
found out about.
We just found out about.
So let's get back to Good Kid, Mad City, because I heard
my colleague, Alderman Nugent, mention that one.
Do we know whose ward they're going to be working in?
As I mentioned earlier,
the commissioner of DFSS is not in this hearing.
I am-
Alderman, alderman. We're
working on it.
Yeah, I think we should. I think we can recess until she gets down here.
Is she in the building, Chairman? Can you find out?
I
do not know where she... I don't think she even works in this building, so.
Well, she has 37 minutes to get over here.
It took me 28 to get down here.
Are you finished with your questions, or?
Well, I would like to know
whose ward GoodKid MadCity is going to be working in, because if we're
doing an executive order and giving people, I think, what is it,
900,000,
and we don't even know what they do, how they do, or
what they're going to be doing, whose ward they're going to be in.
I would like to know if they're going to be in my ward because if we're going to be
forced to partner with these people, I at least like to know what they do and what
they're going to be doing in our wards.
So what we'll do is, we'll get that information through the chair to find
out exactly what the scope of their particular assignment
is and get that information to those who are impacted directly by that.
Sure.
Well, I still believe that we
should've been notified if they're going to be working in our ward before an
executive order goes out. Because I'm going to tell you, I just believe that we're
paying 900,000 for potential future campaign workers to
be in these wards.
And I think we need to get to the bottom of this, because that's a lot of
money just to issue an executive order to somebody, and we don't know what they're
doing and whose ward they're going to be doing it in.
That's a problem.
So that's all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Comptroller.
Alderman, just with due respect about the spending
on EY, one thing I would say is that
when you're running a department, you got a lot of just day in and
day out, drinking out a fire hose. So it's very hard sometimes to look
up and figure out, "Well, how can we do things differently?" I think
we all do that. I know I do that in my department, and I think that's where you
see those efficiencies baked into other budgets.
But the EY report was a unique thing in that
they're taking an entire look at our government.
And one thing I would say is that if you do the report,
you want to make sure it's implemented.
So by keeping them around,
because they've had experience doing this with many other cities, you
ensure implementation, and you ensure those
savings that they're representing, and that should pay for that.
That should pay for itself.
Thank you. Alderman Cohen.
Thank you, sir.
Madam Budget Director, you'd mentioned that the total cost of
the second EY report isn't seven million,
or is it?
It's not a report, sir. We're not doing another-
Whatever it is, how much is it?
I will get you that through the Chair.
You don't know how much it is?
I don't have the exact number off the top of my head.
But you said, correct me if I'm wrong-
It's not seven-
You did not say it was seven million.
It's not seven million.
But you don't know how much it was.
I will get that to you through the Chair.
I guess, is there a desired outcome of financial
savings from this multimillion-dollar report?
As the initial report that we put out stated, there
are
anticipated savings by implementing certain options
that are reflected in that report.
That is the desired outcome, is to achieve those structural
savings over the long term.
So why is it that we need a second report?
It's not a report. I never said it was a report.
Whatever the case.
It just seems like we're wasting money here.
What we have identified-
The fact that you don't know how much it is...
You asked me for a specific number. I don't have the specific number.
But you are the budget chair.
I am.
You're not?
I will get you the specific number that you're asking for through the Chair.
I look at a lot of numbers every day, all day.
I do not want to say something to you that is inaccurate, which is why I've
mentioned I will get you that number.
But you did say it wasn't seven million.
I said it's not $7 million.
Fair enough. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Hold on, hold on. So let's take a step back here.
I think there's an approximation as to what the
report is going to cost in the time period that is going.
Well, whatever the engagement, again,
the engagement-- Let's calm down here.
We're about to go off the rails. The engagement over a period that's
spanning more than one year. That's what has been
put on the table. She'll get back to you with the necessary
information for exact. There was an approximation that was given out,
but again, you're asking for an exact number that no one has
right now, but that will be given
back through the Chair.
Do you have a point of information, Alderman Moore?
Yes, and thank you, Chairman, because I'm lost. It's an engagement of what?
An implementation. So again, the report that was issued last year
made recommendations and options of how we can streamline
government to get structural savings and structural revenue.
You have to implement those things. You have to change your internal workflows.
You have to change your organizational structure.
You have to change
the types of titles that do certain things.
You have to look across departments to see if there's duplication in
workflows. That is the implementation-
Thank you
... of the options that were identified in that report, that
identified if we put these things into place, how much can we, high
level, say that we would save as a city structurally.
And doing that is going to cost us a number.
It's going to cost us a number, and it will
bring back magnitudes in savings.
Thank you.
Yes, Fletcher.
People listening
Okay. Do you have a point of information or...
Just-
Okay.
Who is overseeing the EY
effectuation report, whatever we're calling it, just to-
It's an engagement. It's an implementation engagement.
Sure. Who-
Go ahead.
Is it under procurement? Is it under the budget office? Who owns it?
It depends on which work stream you're talking about.
So as it relates to the contract that you're talking about, it
is DHR because it is an organizational
restructuring of departments.
But who signed the contract? Like for example, in a
different life, when I entered into a contract vehicle for $10 million
and I might have had seven of my team leaders working on
several deliverables, I still owned it.
It was my name, and I had to follow up with all of them. Who owns it?
So the organizational review contract is a collaboration between OBM
and DHR because we both have responsibility under
ordinance on organizational analysis and structure.
OBM signed the contract, but it is led by both
departments.
Okay, so you and Commissioner Blakemore?
Correct.
Thank you, Chair.
Chair Dowell.
Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, apologize for my
tardiness. I had a groundbreaking of South Bridge
1C in my ward this morning, which took priority, but
I'm glad that I'm here, and I thank my colleagues for calling for this hearing.
I just want to say, I too listened to some of the public
comment, and I have to say that,
we're spending $900,000 on GoodKids
MadCity.
That may not be a problem, but there is a segment of the population in
Chicago that would like us to see money spent on things that
the police really are asking for, which are
drones and ShotSpotter. So with that,
I lay that there.
I'd like to start my questioning with Commissioner Boatwright.
Can you give us an update on the vacant land sales?
And I want to know if we're on track to meet
the goal that we set in the budget.
Sure. Commissioner Boatwright, DPD commissioner.
The report that is referenced here reflects a moment
in time, and so it states that we're off track because the $14
million revenue goal
is broken up against 12 months, and at the time we had less than
$300,000 in revenue.
To date, we have closed over
$2.1 million in revenue, with additional closings
scheduled before the end of this month to increase the overall revenue
goal. Tied to the management ordinance, which stated that I needed to
list high-value parcels, April 1st, we listed over
638 parcels for sale through the Chi Block Builder
platform, and 110 of those parcels were parcels
referenced in the management ordinance, recognized as high-value
parcels from a revenue standpoint, that's valued at approximately
9.5. We don't have applications for all of those yet because the
Chi Block Builder round is still open.
But as of right now, as stated, over
$2.1 million in closings.
Okay.
There are some efficiencies that are underway between my
department and the Department of Environment, which signs off from
an environmental review standpoint on all of those parcels.
And I'll argue that with tight communication, and I think we have a
path to increase efficiencies there,
I'm pretty confident that we can hit the goal set forth.
Okay, thank you for that. Then my next question is to Commissioner
Hernandez Tomlin. One of the
concerns that I have is that sometimes it takes a long
time to get the land sales done because of
the environmental remediation
review and work that has to be done.
Have you given any thought to how you can cut the
timing on that, where
we could get our land out the door quicker?
It takes sometimes over a year
or more
to get the land, and I don't believe the hold up is
in DPD. I believe the hold up is on the
environmental side. And is there a way that we could
maybe turn our property over to the private
market
with a caveat that you're taking, and an understanding that you're
taking this on, this liability on?
Thank you for the question, Chair Dowell.
EHS, Environmental Health and Safety review was moved over
to the Department of Environment, and I'm going
to punt this question to Commissioner Boatwright because she has been working
closely with them on the process.
All right. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner Boatwright.
The reference to working closely with DOE is a result of the
shift
with them now taking ownership of the review under
the new department. We are working closely together.
We have calls every two weeks. I think we acknowledge there are some bottlenecks,
and we can be far more efficient in how we review and disclose
environmental conditions on land.
We've made suggestions that we adopt what the private market does, which is
disclose what you know and sell the land as is, where is so that we can do two
things, increase the revenue, but most importantly, or equally as important,
promote more economic development in our neighborhoods.
The majority of our lots are on the south and west sides-
So-
... and so we're aggressively moving.
So Commissioner, are you saying that you all are looking at
ways to
speed up that review?
I'm saying that we're coordinating much closer, and that the
Department of Environment, we've made recommendations.
The Department of Environment has reviewed those recommendations, and
I think that we have identified some
efficiencies that we can implement.
And those-
Can those be shared through the share,
those recommendations?
I think so, yeah. I'm happy to share what we've agreed to
to date. But it's a moving target, I would say.
We don't want to rest on what's been agreed to.
We want to actually promote-
Right. I just want to see that there's some thinking going on-
Absolutely
... in this administration about that.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Will do.
Now-
Hold on one.
If we're selling something as is, where is,
why do we need to go through this huge environmental
process?
I can't answer that question. I think that's more appropriate for the Department of
Environment to answer.
No problem.
I can talk about what happens in the private market, and you disclose what you
know, and you sell parcels as is, where is, and the buyer assumes any
risk that may be available. That
they may acquire by purchasing the lot.
But I'll defer to the Department of Environment to talk about their
concerns and the process and the policies that they've
been working under for quite some time.
So I know this process just transferred over to
DOE, but prior to that, 2FM pretty much ran
that process. What are your thoughts on that, Commissioner?
Julie Hernandez, Tomlin 2FM commissioner.
So we were working on that,
looking at the process as soon as I started two years ago.
And
it came to the point where we did cut out quite a few
steps, and I think we did shorten the time.
However, it was still taking long, Chair Dowell, to your point.
And it's an ongoing conversation, but unfortunately, now I
don't know where it's left off because it was taken over by
DOE. So I would be hesitant to answer on
specific questions about the process.
Chairman Dowell?
Yes, thank you.
Now, I realize that we're not going to be talking
about OPSA today because you said there's another
hearing. But because I went through that 53-page report last
night,
I'm going to ask at least three questions.
One comment I have, you talk about the percentage
of
police officers that are on medical leave
as a percentage of the total head count,
and it looks like that is going up every year.
You did not provide any information for 2026 so far.
And so I'm wondering if you could give us that
information. And the fire department information is missing
completely. So I would like to get that through the chair.
We can make sure
that
the Office of Public Safety Administration provides that.
I think one of the things that we'd like to work with them
on are those performance metrics so that you can have a clearer
indication of how
what they're implementing actually is leading to the outcomes that the medical
report has identified.
Right. Because the
12.3% percentage for the police
department
going up from
10.10% in 2021
seems like it's a big increase. Is there an industry standard
here?
That I don't know off the top of my head.
That report was actually released last year to city council, so that's why 2026
isn't included in there.
It was completed in October of last year.
I don't know
that there's an industry standard because it really does depend on
each city's structure as it relates to their
fire and police. But we can work to try to get you as much information
on what outcome and what target
percentage we would be driving towards.
Okay. And then in the report, it talks about
that any changes that are made to OPS
related to...
No, I'm sorry. Any changes made to departments under their
directives or general orders
can only be made by the employing agency, which means that
CPD and the fire department
are going to make those changes.
Does the police department or the fire
department have access to the
information that OPSA medical
services system section has
information on?
This will probably come up in the hearing next month.
I haven't gotten an update on that. I think that's an open question.
I know that there's some legal questions and
concerns around HIPAA that they're trying to
work through. One thing I can tell you is
that historically, CPD and CFD have had access to those
systems. I don't know where that stands today.
But I do know that there's questions around legal and
HIPAA-related concerns.
CPD and CFD both have general orders
and, for CFD, I can't remember what they're called, but there are orders around
police officers who are on leave of absence that they
want to make sure are implemented by OPSA when it comes to medical.
So that is an area that we're making sure that we focus on because
we want to make sure that those orders are abided by.
Okay.Now, I recall when we had
the... Oh,
Chairman-
Go ahead.
I recall that when we had our budget discussions, there was
only one full-time physician in the medical
services,
Concentra or whatever they're called.
Is that staffing model adequate or not?
So one of the things that OPSA is undertaking right now
is a staffing analysis. They have
brought together an advisory,
a group of occupational health experts, which again, I don't
want to steal Executive Director Patterson's thunder here.
She'll probably talk at length about this.
But one of the things that they've done, right now they
have Concentra that is serving the role of the
medical director, and they have multiple.
So they're able to have
that direct medical service with
more staffing, although it is currently contracted
out. And part of the work that they're doing with their advisory board is looking
at what staffing is needed to fully
live out the recommendations in the medical audit.
So we're still working with one?
No, so they have Concentra that has been able to enhance.
They don't currently have a medical director, but they have Concentra who is
serving the role of medical director and providing many more than we
had before by just the one that was employed-
Okay
... directly by the city.
Part of the fiscal year '26 budget called
for savings as a result of the
OPSA timekeeping system.
Where do we stand with that?
I'm going to defer to Nick Lucius. Part of that
savings was not fully hiring all of the timekeepers
in OPSA, because a couple of things are going on.
One, the work that we're going to do to continue to
civilianize more roles within CPD.
And the second thing that's playing out is once that
new timekeeping system is in place, and it's not just for OPSA,
it's for every single department in the city, we anticipate
that there'll be a transition of functions.
As an example, when Cook County implemented their timekeeping system,
they didn't need full-time timekeepers anymore.
So, in anticipation of that, we have
been looking at what a transition in roles and functions would
be. But the timetable, I'll let Nick talk about.
Thank you, Alderman. So the
procurement to bring in the firm to actually do the development, we expect to have
that contract in place next month in May.
And then to begin the IT development work to
start to release software to city departments at the
beginning of next year. And so,
the public safety departments are a major focus, and we will,
early next year, be rolling this software out for time and attendance to be able to
save the money on those time-
First quarter, second quarter, third quarter?
First quarter.
And the reason why that's important, as you probably know, and I think you and I've
talked about, CPD doesn't use our timekeeping system right now.
And they're, again, a major cost driver, not only in straight time,
but overtime as well. So getting them into the city's centralized timekeeping
system is going to save the city money.
All right.
I have one.
As I was coming in, I heard
the procurement director say that we had
six sole source contracts. That is
unbelievable.
But if that's the number, that's the number.
I guess my question is, are these emergency contracts?
Thank you, Alderman. Charla Roberts, CPO.
They're not
emergency contracts. They are sole source contracts that go before
our NCRB board, and they have to justify that they're the only known
vendor, or
only known vendor through a board
that asks very stringent questions on why this
contract should be approved by the NCRB board.
So in the procurement space,
you have to prove that this is the only known
vendor. So
six is not, as you stated earlier, bad in a
procurement space.
All right.
Do we still do emergency contracts? I know we did them during COVID.
The CPO has authority to implement emergency contracts.
And what constitutes an emergency?
Off the top of my head,
it's defined by the municipal code.
Do we know-- I
don't have a municipal code in front of me. Do you know?
Just give me some examples.
Tornadoes, pandemic.
We don't have tornadoes in Chicago, thank God.
No, that's not true.
Have we had one?
Yeah, we have. Yeah.
Okay. Well-
I don't know if that qualifies
... I haven't seen any in three, so I-
The definition
basically is
risk to the health and safety of our citizens.
Those types of
scenarios.
All right. And if we do a sole source
contract,
does the department requesting the sole source contract
have to give you something in writing?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Okay.
Oh, I just wanted to say-
What?
... on,
there's like 33 schools under Wild and
Bam.I would hope that the funding that's still
remaining from within DFSS budget
will cover what they're asking for.
I can't speak to the specifics. But what I can say, so city council
allocated $3.5 million for group mentoring in the
2026 budget. It's my understanding that DFSS is releasing an
RFP,
relatively shortly for
that group mentoring work.
Well, then my expectation will be that the
contract that's being let for 900,000 also went through an
RFP process.
We can find out and get back to you.
That's it for me, Mr. Chairman.
All right. Thank you, Chair Dowell.
Just want to make sure, just for the record, we have
in person,
Chairman Dowell,
Alderman Mosley, Alderman Sancho Lopez, and online
we have Alderman Burnett. Alderman Burnett, can we...
Okay.
Alderman O'Shea, do you have questions?
Any other people with first-round questions?
Thank you, Chair.
Go ahead.
Director Guzman,
with the hiring freeze that's currently in place,
have any exceptions been granted to management in departments like
Department of Family and Support Services,
Chicago Department of Public Health,
where there was already a significantly off-kilter supervisor to
frontline staff ratio?
So, the exceptions to the hiring freeze are
limited. They're for public safety operations,
for technology,
for healthcare workers.
So the limitations and exceptions are very narrow,
and in the areas that impact public safety and the health and
wellness of the residents of the Chicago.
As it pertains to the Department of Family and Support Services,
how do headcount changes in the fiscal year 2026 budget rectify that
issue?
Sorry, can you ask the question again?
As it pertains to the Department of Family and Support Services, we had
a significantly lower span of control number than any other
department as far as headcount to supervisor
ratio.
Is there anything being done to address that?
Yeah. So the work that we're doing with every single department, the spans and
layers control,
as well as looking at back office support functions, will address
exactly the item that you're talking about, which is why we have a hiring freeze.
We did not want to continue to hire into the
structures that were existing in departments.
But we also didn't want to,
I don't have the right word for it, so I'm just going to say willy-nilly, just cut
positions without
really looking at the program service provision as well
as the staffing models. And so we did the hiring freeze, and over the
course of this year, DFSS is actually one of the very first departments that will
go through that. Looking at the spans and layers
analysis that was done, we just did 10 departments as part of the report that was
released last year. DFSS was one of them.
So they're part of the first phase, as well as Chicago Public Library,
CDPH, and a couple of others.
Okay.
Of the many EY recommendations,
one was to increase staffing in the Department of Law,
and that would assist in reducing legal outside spending.
That was reflected in the budget that we passed back in December.
How has hiring been going,
and have we seen a subsequent decrease in outside legal spending?
So I believe that the corporation council released
a memo to city council recently on this very topic.
So it was twofold. So it was both a savings
goal that
DOL was looking for, but also increase in revenue goal
as well. So I believe we gave them 10 additional lawyers.
Part of it was within their federal
reverse convictions unit, and the other was in affirmative lit
and their cole division. Cole division works directly with the Department of
Finance to enforce collections, and the
affirmative lit both defends us against
things like the federal government taking our money away and
trying to terminate contracts, as well as going after bad actors
in an affirmative way, such as the case against the gun manufacturer.
So,
I believe in that memo that they submitted last week, all of those positions
have been hired and they're in different stages of onboarding.
Okay. Thank you.
I'm going to switch gears here. Talk a little bit about organizational analysis.
What exact savings from the fiscal year 2026 budget is
the administration assuming from organizational analysis,
and how much of that
comes from spans and layers, vacancy management, hiring
position management, back office standardization,
and other actions?
So, as we discussed during the budget season, we baked in a $50
million target for savings, and that is primarily through the hiring freeze.
This is very intense and deep
analysis that takes place. These are structures that have been built over
decades within departments. Some of them are related to programs that are
required by ordinances. And so, the hiring freeze
was the space that was needed in order to
do this analysis. So $50 million was baked in savings into the
budget. Over the course of this year and next year, we'll be doing that
analysis in phases across all departments in the City of Chicago to
both re-look at the structure, look at the
processes that overlap across departments, and then to
also make decisions around the management structure within
departments as well as other structures below management level.
And do we think we're on target with that?
So we are on target with the $50 million savings.
As I mentioned to Vice Chair Lee earlier, future
reports in the efficiency reports that you get from the
budget office, I think starting with the May report...
I'm sorry, starting with the June report, which will reflect April activity, you'll
start to see both the savings and the revenues from each of the work streams.
As it pertains to the EY,
I don't want to call it a report, but whatever this latest thing we're working with
them on,
do we have a copy of that that can be shared with the council?
A copy of?
Whatever the agreement is.
Contract?
Yeah. It's on procurement's website.
And then lastly,
it's been brought up here,
Good Kids, Mad City,
33 schools have youth guidance in their schools.
Many of us, these are schools that we've had historically significant
issues with
kids going down the wrong path.
I've emailed the commissioner. An hour ago, I
asked someone in the mayor's office in this room,
there's numerous,
and I still don't have an email, and nobody's come down here.
I'm going to ask, do we postpone this meeting until someone comes down and explains
to us what this is?
Because since April 3rd, Chairman,
the commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services has still not
responded to multiple emails.
All 21 aldermen have these programs in their school, have been CC'd on those.
Many of those aldermen have asked me today.
I haven't heard from anybody.
So when we're talking about youth guidance,
and we're not getting responses, and yet the mayor is hosting a
press conference this weekend announcing
another executive order,
I think we need answers to that. I think we need answers to that before we walk
out of this council today. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman. Any other questions?
Go ahead, Alderman Vegas.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Could
you explicitly give us
information about what exactly the 46 million
additional savings beyond introduced budget that you're
trying to attain?
You had mentioned earlier about $46 million.
I didn't mention that.
It's okay.
The Vice Chair Lee mentioned that number.
So,
hmm.
Okay, I misunderstood then. Thank you.
Chairman Dowell?
Yeah, she got way too easy on that. So you don't agree with that number, or do you?
So I think this was the conversation we had during the budget season.
We are implementing the budget. We are working diligently
to both make the revenue targets as well as
the expenditure targets that were set by this council.
I'm sorry, could you say that again?
It was passed by the council, but it's approved by the administration.
I mean...
I can't speak to the-
It's okay
... I can't speak to the parliamentary parts of the budget process.
All I can say is that
part of why we set up so many working groups, part of why we have
continually provided reports to city council, continually met with
members of city council throughout the year, and we've made that commitment, is
because you pass the budget, we're required to
implement it. We want to be really clear about the risks
that are involved in every single aspect of this budget,
and we want to be able to do that early on so that we can make decisions about how
to pivot or to bring in additional revenues that might be
needed to cover any shortfalls, both on the revenue side or the expenditure side.
Thank you.
Hold on, I'm coming to you.
Alderman Nugent, and go to Alderman Beal.
Sure. Thank you, Chair. I
know I had asked questions earlier surrounding the procurement process, and I've
been thinking about it since I asked questions.
And
I know the CPO had said that you were going to get us data by the end of Q3
about
consolidated contracts and maverick spend, but
that could be September 30th, and we'll be in the new budget.
Can you get numbers to us sooner than that?
I'm really uncomfortable
with us not having any numbers until the end of September.
Yes. Alderman, I will be able to provide what we've done
thus far. When I said by Q3, that means finished
implementing the entire process.
But we are collecting data as we work on the process.
Sure. I know I keep beating this. Maybe it's turning into
a dead horse, but I
don't know if I'm asking the wrong questions or not saying it the right way.
I
would feel better if we could see, like, "Hey, we've consolidated these
contracts. Hey, we've reduced maverick spending here or there."
Because roughly around
October last year is when the EY report came out, or when we were
able to
get our hands on it, and actually have EY here to answer questions, and they said,
"Hey, this is really an area where we think
city, you could do some work." And so I have grave concerns
if
the procurement office knows this, and then
we don't know anything until we're in the middle of the
budget for the next year.
Do you see why I have concerns?
I'll be able to provide you the information through the chair.
Okay. Thank you, Chairman.
Okay, and Alderman Bill?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I make a motion to recess for 20
minutes until we get the commissioner from DFSS down here.
So it's
my understanding that she is going to have something
lined up
by the end of day, is my
understanding.
If she's working on it, that means she can get down here.
Well,
I don't think that's necessarily prudent.
I think that getting the information is probably where
we want to do, and get that information that he has
requested.
Mr. Chairman, there's a motion on the floor.
And what is your motion?
20-minute recess until the commissioner gets down here.
Those are two different things.
We have to adjourn or recess to a time certain.
20 minutes
until the commissioner-
You're asking for a 20-minute recess?
20-minute recess-
Okay
... giving the commissioner time to get here.
So you want a 20-minute recess?
Until the commissioner-
You're asking for a 20-minute recess.
No, let me answer first. We want the commissioner down here.
I can't
guarantee the commissioner to be here.
So the question is, if you want a 20-minute recess, then-
You're the chairman of the Budget Committee.
You can get the commissioner down here.
Again, if you would like to make a motion for a 20-minute
recess, if that is your motion, then that is the motion on the floor.
Are you going to contact the commissioner to come down here?
I motion that you contact the commissioner to get down here in 20 minutes.
Sir, you cannot motion me to do anything.
Oh, okay.
I'm
very clear-
That's obvious
... very clear on-
You want to play games with words.
I'm not playing a game with a word. I'm just asking you, you want a 20-minute
recess, but you're also asking for a condition that may not be able to be met.
We need an objective
point so that the people that are listening to this under our
Open Meetings Act can know what to expect.
So you're asking for a 20-minute recess, which is totally fine, but you
can't add that somebody else has to be here in order for us to begin.
So if we have a 20-minute recess, then we have a 20-minute recess, and that's fine.
If that is your motion.
Let me ask, can the commissioner Zoom in?
I can't answer that question. We could take
a brief recess to see if that's possible, if that is
your desire.
My desire is to have the commissioner here in 20 minutes.
Well, I'm not able to guarantee any of that stuff.
If you want to take a short recess-- Here, why don't we do this?
Why don't the committee stand at ease, and we come to
some conclusion on that
matter.Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, we're
back on.
All right. So looks like we've
solved the challenge for
Alderman Ose and the issue with DFSS.
They'll be following up on that.
With that, I don't have any other questions or any other individuals lined up.
With that, then we could go...
Almost getting there. All right. That's very well.
I was going to ask that
Chairman Bill reap withdraw his motion.
I withdraw my motion, Mr. Chairman.
You say that again?
I withdraw my motion.
All right. Thank you, sir.
With that being said, you have a question?
Just one quick comment.
Go ahead.
If that's okay. Thank you, Chair.
I just want to say thank you to everybody that made the time
today. I know there's been a lot of work that's gone into this.
We are all in this room and throughout all of the city departments,
doing a lot of work that has not typically been done
in the city before. So I just want to acknowledge all the work that each of the
departments have been doing, each of your staffs.
There's a mountain of work here, and it's all in the service of the
city's budget and making sure that we're staying on track.
So, I just want to thank everybody staffs, including our aldermanic
staffs, who are also working very hard on all of this as well. So thank you.
Appreciate it, Chairman.
Thank you. Also, this is Q1.
We will have a Q2 in our mid-year as well.
Also, let's keep in mind we have the ERP component with the
joints between budget and then econ, capital, and
technology, as well as the joint committee between police and fire and this
committee as well. So, we will be deeply engaged in this
conversation as we continue to move forward.
I think we're all trying to get to a place where
we can
deliver the services that citizens of this
city are looking for. But we also have to keep in
mind that we're definitely going to have to be making some
trade-offs in everything that's going on.
So while this work is necessary, this
work is difficult at best, and there may be winners and
losers in these conversations. So let's make sure that we are
being judicious in our deliberations so that we cannot
have unnecessary impacts as relates to providing services
to our constituents. And at the same time, we know we have a fiscal
responsibility to deal with as well.
So again, glad we're having these conversations.
Look forward to the next two meetings, which I think are already scheduled,
and look forward to that greater participation in these joint committees so that we
can move forward on our implementation of our
spending plan. So with that, is there a motion to adjourn?
So moved by...
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Actually, if you could, we withdraw
that motion because we actually had item number two on the
agenda that we needed to approve, which has kind of been
discussed through this part of this conversation.
So,
Vice Chair Lee, you have a motion?
Yes. I make a motion to approve item two on the
agenda.
There's been a motion to approve item number two.
All in favor, signify by saying aye. Any opposed?
Any opinion, the ayes have it. Item number two is passed and will be reported at
our next city council meeting on May 19th.
With that being said, Chairman Moore.
A raise, yeah, help me out. Appreciate it. Oh, you talking about Ursula. Oh, okay.
Okay. With that being said, Alderman Moore has motion to adjourn.
All in favor, signify by saying aye.
We got ayes on this. Any opposed? Okay. With that, the meeting is adjourned.
All right.