Chicago Committee on Budget and Government Operations

Is the veteran status a status that you can lose, or there be some changes to it that would preclude one from no longer being a veteran?”

I’d like to understand the percentage of turnover goal for each department so far this year, if that could be provided?”

You know, we’re always thinking about new revenue sources. If you have an electric vehicle, uh, you don’t pay taxes for when you go to the charging stations.”

My question this evening would be if you could please share What would, what would be passing an unbalanced budget do for the city’s credit rating?”

…so we could just make the assumption that your budget comes from the from this body in the City of Chicago, correct?”

My first question is How do we not miss opportunities for competent staff at the City of Chicago when it takes us, from my understanding from other departments, 3 to 6 months?”

I have a question about, um, the credit rating with respect to a possible shutdown. Can someone offer some context about what those consequences look like?”

…OEMC currently have the capacity in terms of both personnel and vehicles to assist the Chicago Police Department with emergency traffic control citywide?”

From your lessons learned, from your experience gained, from your conversations with aldermen about a lot of the— particularly the challenged wards— about the issues that they face, what have you done from a legislative standpoint, policy procedures, to address all— to address the issues that we brought to your attention and you’ve noticed based on your, your background?”

…the fact that the, the tax property taxes are so behind. How is that affecting us as a city? Will it cost us money? Will we have to get a line of credit to keep up?”

…have we moved to consolidate or sell existing business, uh, buildings that we have? And are we on track to meet that $2.2 million, um, that we budgeted?”

So on the chart, it kind of shows that overtime is kind of up, but can you speak to what’s driving the reason why our overtime is up?”

I mean, the list just goes on and on. We have a lot of positions that are vacant that could be possibly bringing revenue into the City of Chicago, and I think those positions should be of the highest priority knowing that we have a budget deficit.”

Whose job is it to notify the state that the city was open for business to accept VGT licenses here in the city of Chicago? Whose job is that?”

We had a— we ended last year with a $217 million surplus, and that is in a reserve fund someplace, correct?”

I’m interested in online sports wagering. The budget called for $26 million in revenue. There’s some legislation at the state about preemption.”

…you speak to whether or not there are efficiencies that have already been implemented that we can account for, that we could sort of tick a box and say that’s been achieved or that’s well on its way, or is everything mostly in process right now?”

Budget Director, yesterday it was reported that CPS is going to lay off 600— 760 teachers, 5 furlough days. Um, my question is, what can we anticipate in terms of a TIF surplus?”

How many, if there’s a way we could sort of ballpark, how many officers are in the queue to be hired?”

Can you provide through the chair what projections you have based on what the new revenue that we’ve provided through the increased levy so that we could see what planning we have to start making for the library fund?”

What I’m asking is, but we do charge tax on— there is a tax though, right? We do get a tax on if somebody goes to the grocery store for something, right?”

I want to move on to, uh, the advanced pension payment. We budgeted $260 million this year.”

I know you’re only here part of the year— But our collections, our debt collections significantly outperform what we projected. What can you do this year to make those perform even better?”

Director Guzman, uh, with the hiring freeze that’s currently in place, have any exceptions been granted to management in departments like Department of Family and Support Services, Chicago Department of Public Health, where there was already a significantly off-kilter supervisor-to-frontline staff ratio?”

…these funds help our day labor situation at 87th and Dan Ryan in any way?”

I, I’ll end here, Madam Chair. Look, this is obviously an emotional issue. Um, we were on a call recently with the 10th District just talking about the posture that the police take in facing protesters and having their backs towards, um, these federal agents.”

I mean, I cannot believe that now, after some city council members proposed this budget, that we have the audacity to be blaming the administration for the utterly failure of balancing the budget. $130 million of the budget short of the projected revenue.”

We’ve been collaborating a lot on the studies around the inequity of the program. You know, for the last 40 years, about 70% of all TIFs have gone to the same areas, and that creates serious inequities.”

What happens when some of these go a little longer than that, uh, and the timing of impact? For example, I know we’ve been sitting on funds that have been allocated for TIF for the Division Street Bridge for years now.”

I want to really understand the severity of the situation that we’re in on a day-to-day basis. What is our current occupancy rate of shelters in these rental programs?”

It does seem though that it is an unfortunate trend that more people are gambling and doing sports betting. So it would be awesome to just get the data on around what those numbers look like, because I can see this being as much of a public health issue as it is just a revenue generator.”

…you all give us the list of vendors that you all actually use at OEMC?”

I wanted to see if, uh, you could share with us what has been the most successful initiatives where we have been able to reach the most people through the office?”

…will there be a separate, um, percentage for a line of duty hiring preference, or, or the preferences you’re talking about just talk about MBE and WBE and veterans?”

You know, so like if ICE agents pull up at the Chicago Public School parking lot and start doing operations there despite the mayor making executive action Does the department have any authority, or will they take any step to tell ICE agents you are breaking a mayoral executive action?”

The 3 things that I think have been highlighted, I just want to put on the public record that I have concerns with are debt and fines, um, the lack of structural revenue sources, and then the unstable revenue projections from the alternative budget.”

…you speak to a little bit about the, um, strategies that you are deploying in regard to vacant lots and affordable housing development?”

The time and attention— oh, $8.1 billion in debt. Is there any consideration of writing that off?”

Do you have, um, a list of organizations that the city utilized for summer jobs through the program?”

You know, whether it’s a big issue or not, do you have numbers that can reflect on the number of sex trafficking?”

All right, well, she didn’t text me yet, so maybe she’s not listening. So, uh, do we have a grant writer?”

I’m just wondering, is there a point person, a name of a person that I could contact or any of my colleagues could contact?”

According to the management ordinance, we were supposed to have proposals February 15th. Now you guys put out an RFI on February 10th. So what that shows me is that whilst you were working towards a goal, it doesn’t appear that folks were in any hurry to move on something that was passed on December 29th.”

And then I know we’ve talked about this, um, before, and I’m just trying to understand it. So procurement can enter contracts without council approval, is that— that’s correct? Right?”

…we have the ability through you, through, through the chair, because this would probably be a task, to find out how many people have applied for what vacancies that we have listed and how many people have been accepted and for what reasons they have been accepted or not been accepted?”

I understand that Department of Law, for example, did not want to allow the OIG investigators into that room unaccompanied.”

You’re saying the total amount of uncollected debt from employees to the city and sister agencies is only $5 million?”

…in those districts that do not have, for example, a care team responding. Is there anything that’s done to fill the gaps in those districts that don’t have the mental health specialists on hand day to day as other districts do?”

Through the chair would be terrific. Um, uh, okay, so presentation mentioned projected year-end budget gap of $89.3 million.”

…we would have made the $166 million back payment without borrowing, except for the fact that healthcare costs went up unexpectedly this year. Is that true?”

We, we had $0 in cost recovery for 2025. It looks like we’re trending that way now. Are we doing anything differently?”

And I find it very frustrating that you say that here you are trying to implement our budget and we’re seeing nothing. So, um, could you explain that?”

Could you tell us what the police are doing to keep these communities and all the vulnerable communities safe?”