The Chicago City Council is expected to vote on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed $17.3 billion 2025 budget on Friday. The proposed budget package now includes a $68.5 million property tax increase along with a Personal Property Lease Transaction tax on cloud-computing services that’s expected to generate $100 million in revenue for the city.
However, funding for the guaranteed income program has been cut from the new proposed budget. The guaranteed basic income program was launched in 2022 under Mayor Lori Lightfoot Johnson and relaunched as the Chicago Empowerment Fund under Johnson. The fund would have provided a $500 monthly stipend to Chicagoans in need.
“That was an unfortunate concession that had to be made to council members who are calling for even more cuts,” Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward) said, referring to the Chicago Empowerment Fund. “In my 10 years as an alderperson, I have never seen such a concerted effort from the council to cut vital social programs and neighborhood services.”
Ramirez-Rosa shared these details with The TRiiBE today during a nearly two-hour recess of a City Council meeting following an electrical fire on the Cook County side of the City Hall building. The cause of the fire, according to the Chicago Fire Department, was due to an “accidental ignition of paper products in a storage room.” City Hall was evacuated, and the meeting resumed after 1 p.m.
In total, the City Council meeting lasted about two hours, and they were meeting to discuss reports from various council committees. They voted to approve a zoning change to allow a quantum computing campus to be built at the former U.S. Steel South Works site.
On Dec. 10, the City Council’s finance and budget and government operations committees voted in favor of Johnson’s revised budget 14-12 and 17-16, respectively. Initially, Johnson proposed raising property taxes to close the budget gap. The first proposal in October was $300 million; then, it was reduced to $150 million before recently landing on the $68.5 million figure.
According to Ramirez-Rosa, an expansion of GoodKids MadCity’s (GKMC) Peacekeepers program is included in Johnson’s revised budget. The program will go from 100 jobs to 200 jobs.
Funding for existing mental health clinics will also remain in the budget.
However, the Chicago Department of Public Health will see additional funding cuts of $9 million, according to Arturo Carrillo, a co-lead with the Collaborative for Community Wellness (CCW). Carrillo discussed the cuts during a press conference before Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
The CCW, other community organizations like GKMC and Alds. Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward) and Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward) are pushing for the Johnson administration to reallocate $170 million in the proposed budget for over 1,000 vacant Chicago Police Department (CPD) positions to fund youth jobs, public health and the city’s basic income program instead.
Fuentes officially filed this amendment, called the Public Health and Safety Budget Amendment, on Wednesday.
“There is a way to ensure that we have a budget that is going to provide the services that our communities are asking for the most, centering young people and making sure that we are providing the mental health services Chicagoans need,” Fuentes said during the press conference.
However, there isn’t enough buy-in from Chicago City Council members to pass the amendment
in time for Friday’s vote, Ramirez-Rosa explained. He is a co-sponsor of the amendment and said they wouldn’t have to raise property taxes, or cut the guaranteed income program, if the City Council were to pass the amendment.
While the idea of closing CPD vacancies isn’t new, it could be reconsidered for the 2026 budget season.
“The majority of this council doesn’t support that,” Ramirez-Rosa said, referring to closing vacant CPD positions. “The only demand that is being made outside of ours on the CPD positions is that we cut mental health and youth employment.”
Twenty-eight alders wrote a letter to Johnson on Dec. 5 outlining their priorities and concerns about the proposed 2025 budget. In the body of the letter, they wrote, “We believe expansion of existing programs should be accompanied by structural revenue sources.”
One of the items listed under that passage includes keeping youth jobs at 28,000 and not increasing them further.
The Chicago City Council will meet on Friday, Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. to vote on Johnson’s latest proposed 2025 budget.
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