# Budget Engagement Roundtable 7.1.25

- Date: July 2, 2025
- Type: Video
- Length: 36:12
- Topic: Budget
- Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi9p5fWSjcM)
- Transcript: Machine transcription, 5,840 words ([text](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/files/transcripts/youtube/pi9p5fWSjcM.txt))
- Mayor: [Brandon Johnson](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor)

## Legislation

- [R2026-0023372: Call on Mayor Brandon Johnson and his administration to implement Year 2026 budget package](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/matter/R2026-0023372-call-mayor-brandon-johnson-his-administration)

## Description

Mayor Brandon Johnson attends the Kennedy King College Budget Engagement Roundtable.

## Transcript

[0:00](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=0) My name is Sarah Mathers. I am the Chief of Community Engagement for the Mayor's Office, and I'm pleased to welcome you here tonight to our 2026 Budget Engagement Roundtable. Let's have a round of applause. Excellent. Thank you. I'm hoping that the more I talk, the more people will come in here. I want to thank you so much for coming out this evening. There are a lot of other things you could be doing on this beautiful, beautiful night, but you have chosen to spend this evening with us talking about your priorities

[0:32](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=32) and how you want to see your hard-earned money spent to make this the greatest city in the world. So now it's time for you to give yourselves a round of applause. So a round of applause for you. There we go. Wonderful. Okay, I see people coming in. That's great. That's what we want to see. Keep it coming, guys. We thank you tonight. I also want to quickly thank some of our stakeholders that helped to design these roundtables. I've seen a couple of you throughout this, and so we really appreciate you. And I want to thank our design, our contractor that we worked with who is designing these from Great Cities Institute.

[1:10](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=70) That's Taya Crum. I want her to raise her hand and say thank you to her tonight. Thank you very much, Taya. You're going to see her and her staff around the room today, hoping to make this day great. So while people are still coming in, let me tell you about how tonight is going to go. First, we're going to have a short presentation about our budget. And that's not an easy job to do in a quick PowerPoint. But our budget director will walk us through some of the main points that make up our corporate budget.

[1:44](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=104) And she's also going to discuss some of the things that we heard from you last year and how our mayor and his administration and the departments prioritized what you shared with us. The budget roundtables from 2025 included key elements from our discussions at these roundtables. So we want you to know that we hear you and that what you say matters, and we want to do that again tonight. So I'm going to welcome to the stage Budget Director Annette Guzman and our Mayor Brandon Johnson.

[2:15](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=135) And if you could give them a round of applause, please. Thank you. That's right. Okay. All right, South Side, showing up, looking good tonight. So, as I said, we're going to have a short presentation first, but to talk about those priorities and why it's so important that you're here this evening, I want Mayor Brandon Johnson to come up here and join us first. So let's hear it from him about what the importance of these things are.

[2:48](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=168) Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Sarah. Good evening, everyone. So really grateful to be with you all this evening as we collectively come together to build a budget that speaks to the values of working people. I'm committed to building the safest, most affordable big city in America and working alongside of each and every single one of you has been the real joy and honor of my life. I'm grateful that we have our Budget Director, Annette Guzman, here this evening. You'll hear from her again, our Chief of Community Engagement, Sarah Mather.

[3:22](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=202) We're also joined by the Mayor's Office of Community Engagement, and then there are a number of commissioners as well as first deputies and many staff members that are here this evening to connect with you. I'm also grateful that this institution has made itself available to the people here at Kennedy Keene College, right here on the south side of Chicago. What an incredible staple. and an appropriate place to talk about how we build a more equitable, just society. I want to thank really all of you for taking time this evening to put forth your best effort

[3:54](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=234) to come together for this very important discussion. I'm also grateful that there are at least a couple of Alders that have joined us this evening as well for this great discussion, Alders Mosley as well as Moore. Can you give them a round of applause? It's in your feedback and your ideas and even your criticism will be vital as we build the city's budget for the next coming fiscal year. All of you are experts because you own your experiences and it's those experiences that ultimately has guided me along the way for the first two budgets.

[4:33](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=273) You know that your neighborhoods are neighborhoods that reflect our best and our brightest, but you know those specific needs, the challenges that we face in the respective neighborhoods, and what the community is ultimately calling for. With your knowledge and input, we can best allocate funding towards the things that truly matter, like affordable housing. housing, community safety, mental health, youth employment.

[5:05](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=305) In fact, I'm grateful for the feedback that you all have provided, particularly around youth employment, because this summer, you all, we're going to hire 29,000 young people across the city of Chicago, a 45% increase because of you all's feedback. As we continue to expand mental and behavioral health services, know that these are the very ideas that you brought forward two budgets ago. So I'm counting on you. I want the people of Chicago to be with me every step of the way throughout this entire budget process.

[5:39](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=339) We want to build and expand on these partnerships with communities across the city, with stakeholders across the city to bridge the gap between the people and government. And we want to continue to expand and innovate in ways in which we bring people together. This collaborative approach is the only way in which we can build a budget process that ensures that all of our residents are heard and that their needs are met. And that is why the roundtables are so important. It will allow city departments to hear directly from you all.

[6:14](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=374) By submitting your ideas, this will submit ideas to the overall budget. I'm truly honored that all of you are here today and know that as we continue to build more affordable homes, create more opportunities for our young people, contribute to the overall strategy to community safety, because of you all's input, homicides are down 31% in the city of Chicago. Shootings are down 38% in Chicago. Shooting victims are down 40% in Chicago. Robberies are down in the city of Chicago.

[6:45](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=405) We have rolled up our sleeves. You have provided guidance for these first couple of budgets. I'm counting on you as we build the safest, most affordable big city in America, which is the greatest freaking city in the world, the city of Chicago. Thank you all very much. All right. Thank you, Mayor Johnson. I know you're the school teacher here tonight, but right now we've got Director Guzman, who is going to give us a lesson. She's going to drop us some knowledge on the budget and what it's made up of.

[7:17](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=437) So after she's done with the lesson, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to talk about how our roundtables are going to go. So please welcome Budget Director Annette Guzman to the stage. Thank you. Good evening. A little quiet. Because of the level of information you're about to get, I want to make sure that we're all awake and that we're all engaged. So I'll do this one more time.

[7:48](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=468) The energy you give me is the energy I'll give back to you, okay? Good evening. Good evening. Much better. Thank you, thank you, thank you. They were louder on the west side. Do we want to try it one more time to see if the south side can outdo the west side? All right, one more time. Good evening. Good evening. I think you beat them. I think you beat them.

[8:20](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=500) All right, but you know what? We're all one city. We all want to go together as one city. We all want to progress together as one city. So whether you live on the west side, the south side, the north side, we're all one city. All right, so I'm here because I think that any discussion about our budget, any discussion about what our neighborhoods need, what our communities deserve, needs to be grounded in a conversation about how our budget works and what it is that we invest in so that you can go into these roundtables

[8:50](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=530) and have discussions about how do we form our budget to better meet your needs. Sarah is right that the last few years we have listened, we've received feedback, and we've included your desires, what you've asked us for in this budget. But before I tell you how we did that, let me talk a little bit about how we make up our budget. So why do we do this? Why do we every year come together and talk about a budget?

[9:20](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=560) The simplest reason is because we're required to. We're required to by law, both at the state level and through ordinances passed by city council and executive orders that our mayor has himself entered into. So let's just start with the first. By state law, municipalities that are of a certain size or population are required to annually reflect the resources that they receive and how they will use those resources.

[9:51](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=591) Just as simple as that, right? By law, we're supposed to do it by, he's supposed to introduce a budget by November 15th, in which the legislature then has a chance to weigh in about whether or not those priorities are aligned. This mayor came in when he started in May of 2023 and said, I'm going to give myself some additional parameters to ensure that not only am I being transparent about the budget, but I'm going to tell you ahead of time what we're looking towards three years in a row.

[10:22](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=622) So I'm going to put together a forecast so that you understand the resources that we have and whether or not we have enough resources to meet the needs that we hear within our communities. And that will set a pathway for us to determine how we prioritize within our budget. And he will publish that no later than September 30th of every year. In fact, he does it much earlier than that. We do it by August. And so because of that, getting that information out there, He then set another deadline on himself to get his budget introduction out by October 31st, which is before the state requires.

[11:01](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=661) Last year, city council passed an ordinance that said, hey, that's great. You're going to give us the budget by a certain date, but we also want to know how are we doing throughout the year. And so this year, for the first time, my office, along with a number of different offices that I work with, will publish a mid-year report. In addition to the monthly reports that we do, the quarterly reports that we do, we will publish a report that helps you understand how are we doing financially throughout the year.

[11:32](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=692) And all of these things are available to you. You can go on our website. You can ostensibly use them to rate us. How are we being held accountable for using your dollars? All right, so now you know why we do it. What is it that we collect dollars for, revenue, resources for? It's to make sure that the services that we provide support the work of our departments. And who are we doing it for? So at the very top, this is our organizational structure.

[12:03](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=723) You've probably seen this before. It's in our budget book. But at the very top of our org structure, think of us as like a large corporation, is our residents. Our residents are our, if you want to say, they're our stakeholders. They own stock in the city of Chicago, right? But then underneath that are our elected officials. Mayor is the chief executive of the executive branch. We have 50 alders who represent 50 different wards that are the legislative body, the past legislation that guide the work that we do, guide the rules that we're all responsible for.

[12:38](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=758) We have a treasurer that is the chief investment officer of the city, making sure that the money that we receive is invested so that we are receiving returns. And we have a city clerk that's responsible for ensuring that the records of the legislative body are properly documented and that there are other types of registrations, such as our city stickers and so forth, that her office provides for all residents of the city of Chicago. So that's the body that we have and that you provide resources to.

[13:11](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=791) So under the executive branch, what is it that we do? You'll hear probably in a table discussion that you have tonight about a service you never even knew that the city of Chicago was the one that provides. One, I think that is a little bit of an indictment on the city that we need to better communicate the services that we provide. But they're so vast and there's so many, and they touch every aspect of the lives of the residents of the city of Chicago, with the businesses that do business here and the people that visit this wonderful and amazing city.

[13:44](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=824) So from infrastructure services, the roads that you drive on, making sure that those roads are kept up to date, the trees that are trimmed, the garbage that is collected, to public safety, the largest part of our budget you'll see in a second, police, fire, emergency management, traffic aids, city development. We are a huge proponent of making sure that our neighborhoods remain developed, that we are promoting housing, that we're promoting cultural institutions within our communities, and so forth.

[14:19](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=859) We also have regulatory arm. We want to make sure that the businesses that do business in the city of Chicago are doing it according to code, that the laws that those who want to do business in the city of Chicago are upheld and enforced. And then for those of you who interact with our departments, such as Family and Support Services or Public Health or our libraries, we do a lot as well as it relates to services in our communities. And then finally, I work in the budget office. There's a lot of other offices that serve as support to our departments

[14:53](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=893) to make sure that they're functioning and they can do the work that they need to do. So there's so much the city provides, and you can see all of them. Not only in our budget, but you can see that if you go to our website and if you attend any of the events that the City of Chicago puts on. So that's what our budget funds. One thing I want to make sure that is really clear, and we talk about all of these other institutions, we call them our sister agencies. Though they're not necessarily in our budget, we might provide support to these agencies.

[15:23](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=923) We might even provide them grants and enter into agreements for the transfer of services. When city council sits down and they're negotiating and they're thinking about the budget every October and November, it's not the budgets of these agencies that they are negotiating or approving and appropriating. These agencies have largely their own boards, or they might have their own elected officials. But we work collaboratively together to ensure that as a city we're moving forward.

[15:56](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=956) So you might have a question tonight about park district. You might have a question about CHA. You might have a question about the budget of CPS. Those are important, and we work really collaboratively with them. But as it relates to what I do every day, what I'm looking at as it relates to numbers, those are separate into park budgets. So let's talk a little bit about our budget. So in 2024, the City Council appropriated a $17.1 billion budget,

[16:27](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=987) and this just reflects how our budget has grown over time. What you'll see is a huge spike around 2022, and that is reflective of the resources that the city received, just like municipalities across the country, states across the countries, from the federal government in the wake of COVID-19. I know it's hard to remember what it was like back in COVID-19, back in 2021 and 2022, but we were recovering from a global pandemic. And a lot of resources came to our city in particular to help communities recover from that.

[17:04](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1024) And so you see a very large spike in our budget at that time, which has since modulated down. The other thing that you'll notice here is our general fund or our corporate fund, which is the main part of our budget, really has remained steady since 2019 with some growth. The area of our budget that grows the most and has grown the most over the last several years is the funding that we have contributed into our pension funds. You've probably heard a lot about this over the last several years, but you know that the city of Chicago, state of Illinois, pensions are underfunded.

[17:36](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1056) And so on a plan that was put in place several years ago, the city has ramped up its funding into its pension funds to ensure not only that the retirements of our workers are funded, but that we can ensure that in the future, because that's a huge liability, that our kids and our kids' kids aren't still paying those down. So the other thing you probably hear a lot about is how the city's budget is structurally imbalanced.

[18:07](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1087) And this is, if you think about it, think about your own household budget, what does that mean? It usually means that one side of your budget is growing out of whack with the other side. And for the city, what that means is that our expenditures are growing at a faster pace and a faster rate than our revenues. And so, as you can see here, our expenditures are growing about 8% year over year, and our revenues are growing about 5%. And so the work that we have is to ensure that we are making sure that those are more in balance.

[18:38](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1118) So, revenue. What makes up the city's revenue? And this is really important. I could spend all day talking about this, but I won't. The largest part of our revenue source is our local tax. So as a large city in the state of Illinois, we have what you call home rule authority, which means that we can put certain revenues in place that we control, that we collect, and that we administer. And so that's the largest part of our budget. It's a growing part of our budget. And it's one that provides stability for the operations of the city.

[19:15](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1155) The other large part is local non-tax revenue, and that's largely things like fines or fees. So if you are not in compliance with city ordinances or there's a service that the city is providing to you, those are the things that we collect in order to provide that service. The third largest bucket is our intergovernmental revenue, and that is revenue controlled at the state level. Roughly 40% of our revenues are collected and authorized at the state level. And what we have seen, you won't see it in this chart, but if you look at our budget over time,

[19:49](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1189) what you'll see is our intergovernmental revenue is the revenue that is under a lot of pressure and is shrinking year over year. Turning to our experience. If you look at it both by departmental function and by expenditure category, two things probably leap out. The first is public safety makes up the largest portion of our budget at 43%. And so that's, again, your emergency services, your police, your fire, the things that you depend upon in moments of need.

[20:21](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1221) Second is our general financing requirements, and those are things like benefits, pensions, debt. When you look at the expenditure category, again, the thing that probably jumps out at you the most is personnel services. Like most organizations, our labor costs are our largest expense. Second largest is specific items and contingencies. Again, pensions, debt service. And debt service is related to the capital improvement projects that the city conducts, So the roads that we surface, the bridges that we rebuild or maintain, the housing developments that we are responsible for.

[20:59](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1259) So now that I told you a little bit about our budget, let's turn to a little bit about what our budget is invested in. So as Sarah said, as the mayor said, these budget engagements are crucially important to how we end up investing funding in our budget. you know every year we put out a report that reflects how the surveys that we take at these engagements the discussions that we have the tables that we're about to have how do those

[21:30](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1290) find their way into our budget and so through this engagement process and we do this across the city and importantly we do it with youth which will come up next week we begin to make investments in areas that truly matter and uplift our communities. And so in the 2025 budget, based on what we heard at this engagement, based on the surveys that we collected, two things probably were top of mind and biggest priorities and had to do with housing and homelessness service in the city of Chicago.

[22:02](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1322) And so one of the biggest priorities was how do we expand services to persons experiencing homelessness. So in the 2025 budget, for the first time in decades, the city was able to expand the number of beds that we have in our shelter network, had stayed at 3,000 for decades, and we doubled that and more in one year at 3,800 beds because we do know that helping people out of homelessness is on a spectrum. But this is one of the most immediate needs, and with an investment of $40 million, we were able to expand our shelter network.

[22:39](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1359) Another kind of complement to our shelter network is rapid rehousing, and this provides up to 24 months of support for those who need not only shelter and space, but also wraparound services to help them as they're moving out of homelessness. And so this was another $29 million investment and allows for us to help 1,000 people this year as they're moving out of homelessness.

[23:09](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1389) One priority that was big amongst the youth engagement that we had was expanding broadband access to areas of the city that have connectivity issues. If you are someone who lives in a part of the city, because I think you think the city of Chicago, a global city, what part of the city would not be connected? There are parts of our city that don't have extensive broadband access. And so with an investment of $23 million, we're able to support those areas of the city, expand their connectivity.

[23:42](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1422) So if you're someone who's looking for a job or you're a student at a school who needs to be online in order to get access to your classes, building out our broadband network will allow you to do that. You heard the mayor talk about all the efforts that the city is doing to reduce violence. One of the ways that we're doing that is by providing direct grants to neighborhoods, community organizations, whose whole purpose is to disrupt violence in those neighborhoods.

[24:16](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1456) And so across a number of different types of programs, whether it be gender-based violence, rapid rehousing, supports for youth, supports for those who are returning into our communities, our reentry programs, $100 million in 2025's budget is supporting community violence prevention programming extensively throughout the city. You heard the mayor talk about mental health being a priority,

[24:46](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1486) and we heard that loud and clear at every single one of our budget engagements, so expanding alternate response programs so that it is citywide. So with an investment of just under $2 million. We have created a dispatch unit within our Emergency Management Communications 911 call center that will help route mental health experts throughout the city under our care network, which also expanded this fiscal year.

[25:18](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1518) CDPH does a whole lot of things. One of the things that they're also focused on is maternal health. I know this is something that's near and dear to our First Lady as well. And under the Family Connects program, for those who are in need of postpartum care, we're able to provide grants to participating hospitals that can provide that care directly in the homes of those who have just had a newborn baby. And that was an investment of $13 million in the 25 budget. So I know I heard a lot of clapping about youth employment and youth engagement.

[25:52](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1552) For the first time in the city's history, we're able to provide 29,000 paid jobs. So the city's always had jobs, but they haven't always been paid. And so this is an increase year over year of 1,000 jobs. And I know that that's something that is near and dear to the mayor. I know it's something that has been talked about a lot at our engagements. And that is an investment of $50 million in the 2025 budget. And then the last investment that I'll go over is arts and culture.

[26:25](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1585) During the pandemic, this is an industry that was hit extremely hard when we had to all quarantine. And so it's not necessarily just the big, big arts organizations. We have individual artists, and those are the ones that suffered the most during the pandemic. And so we were able to increase our arts and cultural grants to individuals and arts programs by a million dollars to just under $10 million for 2025. So where are we in the budget calendar?

[26:55](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1615) So through the ingenuity of Sarah and her team, and I have to also give a shout out to my budget office because they work tirelessly throughout the year and have helped a lot with this engagement. We actually moved our budget engagements up an entire month, and that was to allow our departments to be able to sit with you before they ever put pen to paper writing their budgets for 2026. So we're just in the sort of beginning phases of our budget cycle where we have not yet opened up our budget requests to our departments.

[27:29](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1649) But after these engagements, our departments will sit down, they'll start writing their budgets, and they submit them. And then they work with myself and the mayor's office to develop a budget that he will then present in mid-October. Then, after it's presented to city council, city council has the opportunity to advance amendments to that budget based on alignment of priorities. We are required by state law to finalize our budget by December 31st.

[28:00](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1680) So the legislature has to pass a budget before the end of the year in order for us to be able to move into the coming fiscal year. So I mentioned this before, that the Budget Office does a lot to provide information to the public about our budget, the process by which we develop our budget, and then information about monitoring our budget throughout the year. And so I encourage all of you to go online, to continue to educate yourselves about how the city of Chicago invests its money,

[28:30](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1710) and then to hold us accountable to how we invest it. And so I am so honored to be here with you tonight, to sit and talk to all of you throughout this evening's roundtables, and to hear about what's most important for your communities. So thank you, and I will turn it back to Sarah. Wonderful. Thank you. I also want to acknowledge a couple more people in the room. I know we have the Alders here. I know we have some members of our police boards here.

[29:04](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1744) I know that we have task force members here, our stakeholders here. We have the chair of our other budget working group, Karen Freeman-Wilson, that's in the crowd tonight. So why don't we give a round of applause to all of the people that came out this evening. So I want to thank them for that. And I also, of course, want to thank Director Guzman. Every single time that I see that presentation, I learn something new. It's a lot of information to, very dense information to process. I know we've given you handouts for it this evening so that you can go back and reference them.

[29:36](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1776) We're going to add them to our website. I know somebody asked me about that earlier over e-mail, so we will provide that for you so that you have something to reference, and you can have that in electronic form also. These budgets, they're complicated documents, right? This is a complicated thing, and we need to make sure that we center the highest priority. And as you saw on the staff, That's the residents in the city of Chicago. That's you guys. You're a key part of this, as you've heard several times this evening.

[30:08](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1808) So we have created some guiding frameworks around how we developed our budget engagement along with our partner at Great Cities Institute, and that's what we want to do here tonight. That's making sure that everybody participates, that it's participatory, right? That it's steeped in equity, that there is education, just like that wonderful presentation that we just saw, and that there's transparency and accountability. And that's why we provide these reports to you, why we make these things available to you. While you can pour over all of this wonderful information, we want you to have that.

[30:44](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1844) And then we have five different topic areas that we're going to talk about tonight, And that will be affordable housing and homelessness, community safety, environmental justice and infrastructure, community and neighborhood development and arts and culture, and, of course, public and mental health. And when you walked in this evening, you were given a packet with a bunch of programs and projects and initiatives that our departments would like to get a little bit more engagement on.

[31:16](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1876) All right. So when you go into your roundtables, please look at these things, talk about them a little bit. Our community stakeholders help to narrow down from a really long list of things so that we could inform people about these things or get that feedback from them, because we want to know how these impact your community. Now, this isn't the only thing that we're going to talk about this evening. You are welcome to talk about whatever comes to your mind about the experience that you have with the city.

[31:46](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1906) The programs that you love, that you want to make sure stay strong, maybe grow, but that could use some improvement or what's not working for you. Right. We want to know whatever that it is. Please let us know. And we also when you go into the big round, the room where we're going to have our roundtables, we've got a lot of a lot of other projects because, you know, there's a lot that goes on in the city and perhaps you don't know about it. So we've got things there that you can reference, that you can give feedback on, and we're just looking for you to give your voices to what our budget process looks like.

[32:22](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1942) And with everything that we do in this city, every single thing, an underlying focus will always be in youth, right? That's the intersection between all of these different topic areas. You can talk about youth with community safety, with public health and mental health, arts and culture and business development, housing, environment and infrastructure. There's youth throughout all of those things. We keep them in mind with everything that we do, so please keep them in mind also when you're thinking about how these programs impact your community.

[32:52](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=1972) Now, this is our last budget roundtable for the adults this year, but we will have an exclusive one for youth. Only from ages 13 to 24, if you adults show up, I'm putting you in the back. You're not allowed to talk. We're giving them the full range of discussion. That's going to happen on July 9th, so we'll have those. But still, keep them in mind when you're talking about things, and hopefully we've got some youth here tonight also to be represented.

[33:23](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=2003) Now we're going to get up really soon, and we're going to walk into that other room, and we're going to get into topic areas and start these discussions. And we at the city, we consider this a listening session for us. It's your turn to talk. Of course, you can ask questions and get clarity on things, but take up a lot of space. Tell us what you want. Tell us how these things work. And if you can't get it all out tonight, tell us online. We also have comment cards at each table.

[33:55](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=2035) And please, please, please, please, please, please take our survey. There's a paper survey that you were handed in when you walk in. That's how we write that big report that we put online. and we put every single comment that you guys write down into that report. Well, we don't do it. Our contractor does it, and they spend a lot of time doing that data entry because we want to get all of your comments, and we want to hear them all. So please, before you leave, because as soon as you walk out of here, you're not going to take that survey, so we need you to fill it out on paper

[34:28](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=2068) and tell your friends that they can get to that survey online. We do have it posted on the website so you can still get to it, But leave comment cards, fill out those surveys. There's a little thing of boxes where you drop a blue coin, you get one coin. Don't overvote. No voter fraud in this house tonight. But choose what your favorite priority is out of the pillars from this administration. So that's it. We want to hear from you tonight. Everybody, get up and move on to the roundtables.

[34:59](https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM?t=2099) It's time. talk. Go forth and engage. Thank you very much.

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Source: https://www.chicagopolitics.org/mayor/videos/pi9p5fWSjcM · Chicago Politics, an independent tracker of the Chicago City Council. Guide for agents: https://www.chicagopolitics.org/llms.txt