As Chicago lawmakers try to come up with a city budget, a slew of proposals are getting plenty of attention, as Charlie Wojciechowski reports.
As a Dec. 31 deadline looms for Chicago's budget talks, aldermen got down to the nitty gritty in finding ways to address a billion-dollar budget gap.
One idea surrounds merging the function of the Chicago Board of Elections with the election operations of the Cook County Clerk's Office. According to Ald. Ray Lopez, nearly 70% of Chicago voters want to explore ways to reduce redundancy between city and county spending, and 19th ward Ald. Matt O'Shea has pursued similar options in other areas.
Another idea that caused a stir was to increases taxes on things like parking fees at downtown garages, which could raise several million dollars according to officials.
Already Chicago has one of the highest parking taxes in the nation. Depending on the day of the week, as much as 40 cents of every dollar spent goes for a county or city tax, according to officials. By way of comparison, New York City charges an 18.5% tax, while San Francisco takes 25%.
Parking operators are pushing back, saying they are still not seeing the numbers of cars they did before the pandemic. But Ald. Nick Sposato said he is concerned about a process where a deadline exists and few solutions are attracting the required support.
“We can’t just sit on our hands and do nothing. Whether it’s the property tax, the liquor tax, the parking tax, somebody’s against something,” he said.
A group of 15 members of the City Council have signed a letter to the mayor demanding that city spending be reduced to pre-pandemic levels, but so far the mayor is holding the line vowing no layoffs of city workers.
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He is still holding out for a property tax increase albeit a much smaller one than he had originally proposed.
The constant back-and-forth in negotiations, and the looming deadline, could cause things to go down to the wire, and that's the way many members of the City Council see it.
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” My opinion is that will be solved somewhere between the 26th and the 31st of December,” Sposato said.
