Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget team began its City Council defense of her tax-heavy 2021 spending plan on Monday, telling skeptical aldermen a $94 million property tax hike is an appropriate way to help balance the city’s books.
With lots of Chicagoans out of work and struggling during the pandemic, council members kicked off the two weeks of hearings on Lightfoot’s $12.8 billion budget package by wondering why the mayor didn’t propose using more of the city’s reserves or other sources of revenue rather than hitting up homeowners to the tune of $56 in extra property taxes for a house valued at $250,000.
Several council members also pushed back against Lightfoot’s proposal to raise property taxes each year by an amount tied to the consumer price index.
While Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett pitched the increases as reasonable, North Side Ald. Harry Osterman, 48th, pointed out residents also get slammed regularly by county property reassessments and tax increases from other public agencies, and it adds up, he said.
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“So we’re not divorced from other parts of government,” Osterman said. “And when homeowners get the assessments and their property tax bills, what all of us are struggling with in this incredible downturn economy that we’re going through with COVID is the ability for homeowners to be able to absorb that, and their ability to be able to choose to stay in Chicago and help us grow post-recovery.”
And South Side Ald. Sophia King, 4th, asked why the administration didn’t dip further into its $900 million reserves, rather than taxing and relying on so-called scoop and toss refinancing that can end up costing taxpayers more to pay off in the long run.
Bennett countered that the city could take years to recover from the pandemic. Relying heavily on reserves now could leave the coffers empty or further erode Chicago’s poor credit rating in years to come, she said.
The department-by-department budget hearings will continue for the next two weeks.
Twitter @_johnbyrne