* Click here for the mayor’s official budget recommendation briefing. Click here for the mayor’s budget address as prepared. Tribune…
Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday will propose Chicago’s largest property tax hike in almost a decade as part of his $17.3 billion budget plan for next year.
The $300 million increase that would hit Chicago homeowners, landlords and other property owners is a major flip-flop from Johnson’s campaign vow not to employ the widely unpopular, and often politically toxic, revenue-raising tactic. It is also one his team justified as necessary in order to balance a projected $982.4 million shortfall in 2025, along with sweeping tax increment financing funds and eliminating hundreds of vacant positions across city government. More than half of those will come from the Chicago Police Department.
In unveiling his second budget proposal as mayor, Johnson acknowledged his earlier red line against raising property taxes, but blamed his predecessors for the city’s financial predicament and said the primary alternative — layoffs — would be devastating to the city’s workforce.
“Look, this a very difficult decision, but to be quite frank with you … we’ve just have had irresponsible administration after administration that has kicked the can down the road, and now it’s in front of my door,” Johnson said about his backtrack when talking to reporters Tuesday about the tax hike. “This was a very excruciating process, but it’s one that I recognize in this moment that the alternative is just not acceptable.”
His own budget forecast published a year ago predicted the coming deficit almost to the dollar. Instead of mitigating the upcoming damage, he waited several months to do things like impose a hiring freeze that was nowhere near freezing levels.
* More…
But keep this in mind…
Former WBBM-Ch. 2 investigative reporter Pam Zekman on Oct. 21 sold her six-bedroom, Prairie-style house in Uptown’s Buena Park area for $1.5 million. … Zekman … first listed the house on May 7 for $2.1 million, and she reduced her asking price later that month to $1.89 million. … The house had a $15,883 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.
If you click here and scroll through, you can look up the property tax bills of comparably priced homes in Naperville. Those taxes are far higher.
* NBC 5…
In order for a proposal to pass, Johnson needs 26 votes by Dec. 31. As of Wednesday, 14 alderman signed onto a letter to Johnson yesterday, sharing their community’s demands and concerns and saying they would not support a budget that includes a tax hike.
“We cannot support a budget that includes a property tax increase,” the letter read in part. “Period. The recently released poll shows that 90% of Chicagoans oppose increasing property taxes as an action the city could take to raise revenue. Of those 90% of residents, 79% strongly oppose raising property taxes. This is a non-starter for us and our constituents.”
The letter also supported a renewed ShotSpotter contract, finalizing a a contract for Chicago firefighters and keeping the police budget intact.
More from that poll…
Whew.
* Gov. Pritzker was asked about this topic today. Prepare yourself for a very long answer…
Q: Mayor Johnson is set to announce a property tax hike today. You have previously said the state has provided enough assistance so that municipalities can lower property taxes. Do you think that’s true in Chicago today?
Pritzker: I would not characterize my comments the way you just did. Enough assistance? [Beginning of optional reading skip] I think that all of us who believe in a better public education for kids across the state of Illinois believe that there are more resources needed for public education, and we’ve been doing that every single year that I’ve been in office. And indeed, I think the total amount of new funding that’s been provided since I took office is more than $4 billion. We’ve added $350 million each year, except for one where we had a lot of federal funding coming in at the beginning of the pandemic, where the state was also challenged. But in addition to that, hundreds of millions of dollars more to education that are not part of the evidence based funding model. So more than the 350 a year.
So as to the question of whether the state should provide more money to local governments, in other ways, I’ve been doing that literally every year in every other way. Schools is one major important part of the issue of property taxes, right? Illinois, just to remind you, this is maybe a longer answer than you wanted, but just to remind you when I came into office, Illinois, the state, was providing 24% of education funding. That’s the worst in the country when I came into office. The rest of it being provided by property taxes, vast majority and a little bit 10% or so from the federal government. Today, we’re up in the 30s, so we’ve gone from 24% to better. The average state is providing 46% of funding from state government, so we have a long way to go, but in the meantime, we’re doing a lot better than we’ve ever done before, putting more resources into schools. And what does that do? It allows local governments to at least abate the pressure to increase property taxes. Many have not taken us up on that, which is just disturbing to me. I know that there’s a need for more funding that people feel like, you know, there isn’t ever enough, but property taxes are already too high, and so the more that attention can be given, and that is by local school boards, including the one in Chicago, but the local school board when it is fully convened and elected, but across the state of Illinois, it’s local school boards that impose property taxes related to schools, and honestly, they’ve received more money than ever before from us. I think that they should take that seriously and try to abate the increases in property taxes.
[End of optional reading skip]
Q: [Tries to refocus the governor on the mayor’s announcement today]
Pritzker: Well, yeah, the city’s in a little bit different position. But look, I you know, property taxes are too high for everybody. I mean, if you’re asking me that question, I think that’s an easy one for everybody. And I understand, though, that there is stress in the city budget. You know, they’ve got to figure out. I have talked about the need for efficiencies, the need to make sure that you’re not, you know, haven’t put your ARPA dollars entirely into your operating budget. And I don’t know what the percentage is for the state, for the city rather, but it’s, it’s a reasonably high percentage. And so that obviously caused problems. We tried not to do that at the state level. We also have, you know, tight budgets, and you know, we’ll continue to but I would like to see some recognition that property taxes already are a burden.
Q: Would you support layoffs and furloughs instead of property taxes?
Pritzker: I can’t tell you what all the levers are. I know that’s been talked about. I you know, nobody wants to lay anybody off. That’s a hardship on the people who get laid off, for sure. I can tell you that when we were faced at the state level, just to go back to a day when it was really hard during my term in office, was when the pandemic hit, and we were in the spring of 2020 and putting forward our FY 21 budget. We had a budget we passed, and then going into FY 21 it was clear, it seemed clear, that we needed to make cuts at that point because, you know, revenues were falling off a cliff, and we didn’t have what ended up being the American Rescue Plan Act. And so we found $700 million of cuts to make. I mean, that is not easy. I’m not suggesting anybody wants to do that, but we did it. We did it without laying people off. But you know, we did it, and I know I don’t want to see anybody laid off. There are lots of solutions to these problems that need to be brought to the fore. I’m sure the mayor is examining all those. I have no idea what he’s saying in his speech today about that.
…Adding… Predictable…
