(CHICAGO) — As the city creeps closer to the end of the year and a budget deadline looming, aldermen have tweaked an alternative budget with hopes of winning over Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Ald. Gil Villegas (36th) Monday morning issued a statement on behalf of the Alternative FY26 Budget Aldermanic Coalition:
“Our Aldermanic coalition convened throughout the weekend to fine tune revenue and spending options and in consultation with our budget and finance advisors, we have finalized a financially responsible budget that will be introduced this week. As part of this collaborative process among Alders, we have come to an agreement to remove the garbage tax as part of our proposal and maintain funding for youth jobs as initially proposed in the FY26 budget.
Additionally, we have figured out how to balance this proposal while fully funding the collections budget in the Chicago Public Library and providing additional funding for gender based violence.
We believe that this final proposal represents the position of an even broader number of alders than we had just a few days ago and are excited to move forward in this process to avoid a shutdown and give residents, families and businesses the peace of mind they deserve as we close out 2025.
We also want to share for the record the confidence we have in our revenue projections. Our advisors are among some of the city’s best budget and finance experts who dug deep into the numbers alongside our coalition going on eight weeks. As we all know, every spending and revenue number in a budget is an estimate and that applies to our numbers as it does with those assumed in the Mayor’s proposal. Our budget is balanced, and we are ready to move forward with our spending and revenue projections.
We look forward to meeting with Mayor Johnson this afternoon to discuss our proposal and it is our hope that we can walk out of this meeting united on behalf of the people of Chicago and move forward with this financially responsible budget that will better position us ahead of a more challenging FY27.”
