The maxim that timing is everything was on display Wednesday as Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled a tough-love budget that asks taxpayers, city workers and aldermen to sacrifice to avoid harsher measures down the road.
The city is running deep in the red. The storehouse of financial tricks has been greatly depleted. And the new mayor was elected with something resembling a mandate for change.
All of which meant Emanuel was free to offer up a spending plan that would hit up out-of-towners and suburbanites for more money, shutter three police stations, cut library hours, overhaul garbage collection and double city water bills for the average Chicago household by 2015.
Both in a 30-minute presentation to the City Council and later in speaking to the Tribune editorial board, Emanuel prided himself for having the moxie to make tough choices.
“I’ve taken on a tremendous amount of political sacred cows, walled off, things that were taboo because of the political sign: ‘Do not trespass. Politically dangerous,'” Emanuel told the Tribune. “Not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but multiple times across the budget.”
Continuing the soliloquy, Emanuel launched into a lecture about how a decade of deferred maintenance had left the city’s financial house structurally teetering. The freshman mayor returned again and again to the point that “somebody” could have acted earlier but didn’t.
Left unsaid: the “somebody” was Richard Daley, who ran the city for 22 years before Emanuel took over. Though often professing admiration for Daley, Emanuel indirectly ridicules Daley’s stewardship with regularity, transforming the former mayor into a political version of Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort — he who must not be named.
But the mess bequeathed by Daley has in many ways given an opening to Emanuel to act more boldly than his predecessor when it comes to charting a financial course for the city.
Laurence Msall, president of the watchdog Civic Federation that had grown increasingly dismayed by budget manipulation under Daley that masked mounting problems, praised Emanuel for resorting to “much less reliance on gimmicks.”
“This is a great first step for a first budget and points the city in the right direction,” Msall said.
Emanuel said he viewed the budget as not just a financial document, but an opportunity to carry through on campaign promises and demonstrate to taxpayers grown cynical about government that their leaders can deliver.
“One of the things I’m also trying to do is re-establish a trust between the public and those of us who do public service, not saying one thing on election day and (then doing) another thing,” the mayor declared.
That said, in wiping away a near $636 million deficit that loomed in the early stages of the budget-making process, Emanuel resorted to occasionally optimistic projections about how he can achieve savings. For instance, Emanuel penciled in $33 million in extra revenue by banking on the city’s ability to be more successful in collecting bad debts.
Emanuel also counted on saving a like amount by beginning the phaseout of a long-standing custom in which the city picked up the pension costs of some Chicago Public Schools employees. That presents city taxpayers with something of a shell game, shifting more of the pension burden to CPS. The school district, which recently hiked its property tax levy, will now cover a greater portion of its pension burden.
In all, Emanuel laid out a blueprint for spending $6.3 billion next year, up 2.1 percent from the current budget. But, the critical portion of the budget dedicated to day-to-day spending on city operations dropped 5.4 percent to nearly $3.1 billion.
To help accomplish that, Emanuel laid out a broad series of spending cuts, program revamps and fee increases. He did not ask the council to impose increases in general taxes such as the sales or property tax.
Perhaps the most politically perilous proposal are the water and sewer fee hikes. Bills on average homes would increase next year by about $92 for homes with meters or $122 for those without. Those bills would continue to increase in each of the next three years if aldermen sign off on the plan.
The mayor described some of his fee hikes as “value propositions,” meaning taxpayers would get something for their money. The city would impose a $2-a-day congestion fee for vehicles parked in downtown lots during the week. The $28 million a year that would raise would be used to improve “L” stations, build a new bus rapid-transit system and expand bicycle lanes, the mayor said.
Another potential flash point looms over the proposed closing of the Belmont, Wood and Prairie District police stations, with their operations to be merged into neighboring police facilities. Residents, even those in low-crime neighborhoods, have jealously clung to the idea of a strong local police presence, a reality that has made it politically difficult over the years to redeploy officers to higher crime districts.
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Ald. Robert Fioretti, 2nd, accused Emanuel of not giving the plan a full public airing.
“I think it’s been mishandled,” said Fioretti of the station-closing plan. “The rumors were spreading for the last month, and all of a sudden they did it at the same time as the budget.”
Emanuel also used his public safety budget to announce what his administration says would be nearly $82 million in savings by wiping off the books 1,252 vacant positions on the police payroll. He called the year-to-year budgeting of those empty positions a “charade” he would no longer engage in.
The mayor also said he plans to train 100 new police cadets. But the city still faces an overall reduction in police ranks because the new hires won’t come close to making up for the 500 officers expected to retire next year, said Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields.
“The city is in complete denial over this manpower crisis,” Shields said. “There’s not enough patrolmen. There’s not enough detectives. And it’s reflected in the crime stats and clearance rate.”
Emanuel also proposes eliminating hundreds of unfilled positions in other city departments, as well as laying off about 500 middle managers at an array of agencies.
Another effort sure to meet some controversy is a proposal to raise the cost of a vehicle sticker on large and heavy cars and SUVs to $135. Some of those drivers now pay $75 and others pay $120.
Some of the $14.8 million that would be raised through higher sticker fees would be used to fill potholes, the mayor said.
“Why just pick on the soccer mom?” asked City Clerk Susana Mendoza, who issues the stickers. She said the city would do better to increase fines on sticker scofflaws and sell ads on the decals.
Hotel operators are sure to fight Emanuel’s plan to boost the city’s portion of the hotel tax. Emanuel argued that New York and Los Angeles charge higher city taxes on hotel stays than does Chicago, but that calculation does not factor in state and other taxes added on to the bill.
Emanuel also would end the city’s practice of rebating $75 per unit to many condominium owners. The rebates, first enacted in 1985, were designed as compensation because condo dwellers in larger buildings pay for a city service they don’t receive because they are required to contract for their own garbage collection.
Tribune reporter Rick Pearson contributed.
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