How Do Upload Multiple Items at Once for the Lightfoot Foundation
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot'due south proposal to spend $16.7 billion in 2022 faces two disquisitional votes in the coming days, every bit members of the City Council wrangle behind the scenes on how to spend nearly $2 billion in federal aid while closing massive shortfalls acquired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several progressive members of the Chicago City Council gathered Midweek forenoon at City Hall to demand an up-or-down vote on a series of budget amendments they introduced to increase spending on public mental wellness clinics and aggrandize affordable housing while cut the budget for the Chicago Police Department.
Although the City Council's Finance Committee and the Metropolis Council'due south Budget and Authorities Operations Committee were originally gear up to run across earlier this week, those meetings were pushed dorsum to Th and Friday — a sign that Lightfoot has yet to circular up the 26 votes she needs to laissez passer the package of ordinances that make up the city's almanac spending plan.
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th Ward) introduced a mensurate to redirect $44 million now earmarked for the 300 positions in the Chicago Law Department that Chicago Police force Superintendent David Brown has said he is unlikely to fill before 2023.
A "common sense and responsible" arroyo would be to use that coin to expand efforts to renovate single-room occupancy hotels, which oft house the poorest Chicagoans in the worst weather condition, Hadden said.
In all, Lightfoot's budget proposes spending $635 1000000 on affordable housing initiatives, $240 million more every bit compared with 2021. That will create and upgrade more than iv,000 homes earmarked for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans, co-ordinate to the mayor.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward) introduced a proposal to have $15 million from the Chicago Police Department and add it to the Department of Family unit and Support Services' budget for violence prevention.
Chicago'due south progressive leaders must take advantage of the "once in a lifetime" opportunities made possible by the $1.9 billion Chicago will become from the American Rescue Plan to brand "big structural change," Sigcho Lopez said.
Lightfoot's proposal calls for the city to spend a total of $135 million on violence prevention programs, an increase of $85 million as compared with 2021.
Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward) introduced a measure to accept $10 meg from the federal relief package to reopen mental wellness clinics closed by erstwhile Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011.
However, Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Section of Public Health, opposes that proposal, saying Lightfoot's efforts to expand centers of care across the urban center by partnering with federally-qualified wellness centers is more than efficient and constructive.
In all, Lightfoot's plan proposes spending $86 one thousand thousand on mental health services, $52 million more than in 2021.
While the piles of federal COVID-19 relief cash the urban center has at its disposal — and Lightfoot'southward decision to fund a range of programs demanded past progressive groups and alderpeople — has muted dissent over the spending plan, sticking points remain.
Those points of contention include a plan to use $31.5 one thousand thousand to transport cash assistance to Chicagoans struggling amongst the continuing COVID-xix pandemic.
Members of the City Council'south Black Conclave remain opposed to the endeavor, after Chair Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward) spent months blocking an identical proposal from Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) earlier this yr.
Ervin has said city should beginning craft a plan to pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved African Americans. Those funds would exist better spent on violence reduction efforts, the group has told the mayor.
In addition, more than bourgeois members of the Chicago Metropolis Council oppose the plan in total, saying it is not a sustainable style to spend public money or elevator people out of poverty.
Other members of the City Quango have pressed the mayor to drop plans for to hike property taxes by $22.nine million to cover an increase in the cost of living, which was approved by the City Council as office of the 2021 spending plan.
In improver, the metropolis will raise belongings taxes by $25.5 million to beginning paying off the $ane.four billion the City Council agreed to infringe every bit function of the 2021 spending plan to repair Chicago's crumbling streets, sidewalks, bridges and shoreline.
With the argue focused on line items in the city'south spending programme, there has been no focus on Lightfoot'southward overall arroyo to the 2022 upkeep.
Lightfoot's proposal sets aside $1.3 billion, or most 68% of the city's share of federal relief funds, to cover the cost of providing city services and paying urban center workers between 2020 and 2023 to make upward for acquirement lost equally a upshot of the economic plummet triggered by the pandemic.
At the same time, Lightfoot has proposed spending an additional $one.nine billion equally part of her Chicago Recovery Plan on a host of priorities championed past progressives, including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth chore programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans.
In order to fund those programs, the mayor has proposed borrowing an additional $660 meg — even as the metropolis pays off other high-involvement debt it incurred concluding autumn as the second surge of the pandemic crested.
Representatives of the metropolis's Part of Management and Budget did not respond to a question from WTTW News on Wednesday virtually how much property tax revenue it would toll the city to pay off those bonds starting in 2023.
The city has a "very loftier debt burden" — $eleven.1 billion in general obligation debt and $16.6 billion in bonds backed by acquirement from the city's water and sewer systems also as the airports, according to the Civic Federation's assay of the mayor'southward 2022 spending plan.
It could brand sense for the metropolis to borrow another $660 million to fund one-fourth dimension expenses that improve the city'southward infrastructure, said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation. However, the city has yet to release a detailed list of projects that will be funded with those borrowed funds, making it impossible to clarify the mayor's proposal, he added.
It is articulate that the city's financial position in futurity years depends on how fast — and how completely — Chicago recovers from the COVID-nineteen pandemic, Msall said.
"That'southward the mayor's bet, that the city'southward finances will bounce back afterward COVID-xix," Msall said.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 |[email protected]
Source: https://news.wttw.com/2021/10/21/lightfoot-s-budget-faces-pivotal-votes-negotiations-continue-behind-scenes
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