Mayor Johnson’s Budget Plan Calls For Reopening Dept. Of Environment, Some Mental Health Clinics
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CITY HALL — Brandon Johnson was elected mayor earlier this year after committing to remake Chicago by investing in its people, making its streets safer and protecting its environment.
In his first budget address to the full City Council on Wednesday, he proposed a spending plan for 2024 that he said was “just our first step” toward delivering on those promises.
Under his plan, the city will open two mental health clinics and reestablish a standalone Department of Environment, using a combination of savings and projected revenue surpluses to make the new “investments” and confront a budget gap without raising taxes, he told the council.
Johnson announced last month the city was facing a $538 million budget gap, about $200 million of which was related to costs for housing asylum seekers. More than 11,000 migrants are “currently in the city’s care,” Johnson said Wednesday.
Quinn Myers explains how Mayor Johnson’s proposed budget is funded:
The shortfall is “driven by rising labor expenses, dwindling COVID-era federal funding and an unprecedented, escalating wave of migration that our city has never budgeted for before,” Johnson said.
According to Johnson, the city will balance the 2024 budget by finding $243 million in “expenditure savings” and $321 million thanks to “improved revenue projections,” including more money from the city’s share of state tax revenues, a tax-increment financing surplus and “strategic use of the City’s fund balance.”
The budget must still be passed by the full City Council.
The budget recommendations include a slight increase in police spending, about $90 million more than in 2023. Department staffing levels will stay flat, but the mayor promised to promote an additional 100 detectives while creating around 400 new civilian jobs to free sworn officers from desk duty.
In addition to the two new mental health clinics, which will open in current health department buildings, Johnson’s budget also calls for expanding a co-responder pilot program that deploys non-police workers to mental health emergencies — one part of a larger proposal known as Treatment Not Trauma.
Notably, the budget will not increase the city’s base property tax levy next year, a promise Johnson made repeatedly on the campaign trail.
“We also have relied too long on a tax structure that heavily burdens our lowest-income residents, and is too reliant on property taxes, fees, fines and rates,” Johnson said. “We know that a 5 percent annual rise in property taxes is rarely associated with a 5 percent increase in income to pay those property taxes for families already struggling to keep up with their mortgage.”
The proposed budget banks on a projected increase of about $229 million in the city’s share of various state taxes, as well as just over $100 million from the city’s TIF surpluses.
It also anticipates an 8.1 percent increase in revenue from taxes on “recreation” activities including boat docking, concert tickets and liquor, cannabis and cigarette sales; a 9.5 percent increase in taxes on parking, gas and ride shares; and a 20.7 percent increase on “business” taxes, led by hotel accommodations, which the Johnson administration expects will climb, according to budget documents.
Progressives hailed Johnson’s budget proposal as a major step toward enacting the agenda he ran on.
“There’s a lot of progress being made in this budget: funding for Treatment Not Trauma, opening two new public mental health clinics, making sure that we’re expanding the Office of Labor Standards, the Department of the Environment to address climate change,” said Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), Johnson’s City Council floor leader. “Things that progressives have been asking for for a very long time are in this budget, and it’s accomplished not on the backs of working class Chicagoans, but by surplus TIF dollars that too often go to connected developers.”
Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club ChicagoIn his address, Johnson also focused on the migrant crisis that has overwhelmed city shelters, additional public safety and mental health initiatives and plans to protect the environment.
The 2024 proposal includes more than $150 million to support housing and wraparound services for the thousands of asylum seekers who have come to Chicago over the past year, most of them bused here from Texas.
Chicago has received more than 18,000 asylum seekers since last August, the vast majority of whom have arrived since May. In recent weeks, the pace of buses bringing migrants to Chicago has accelerated.
The influx of people has created a logistical and political crisis across the city. In predominantly-Black neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides, some neighbors have expressed outrage over dedicating resources to migrants while their own communities suffer from decades of disinvestment.
Johnson addressed that dynamic Wednesday, saying his administration can both house asylum seekers and make long-term investments in communities.
“Chicago is a place strong enough to welcome and embrace newcomers while honoring our commitments to those who are already here,” he said. “I’m going to be perfectly clear: What current residents need and deserve from our city is not the same as what new arrivals need in this moment. But we must meet all demands if we truly love all people. I am fully committed to doing just that in the coming months and years ahead.”
The budget proposal also funds key aspects — though not all — of the long-stalled Treatment Not Trauma intiative, which calls on the city to create a network of professionals to respond to mental health emergencies without armed police officers and reopen city-run mental health centers closed in 2011.
Chicago will open two new mental health clinics next year under the budget recommendations, while also doubling the number of staff dedicated to a 911 alternate response pilot program.
Called Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement, or CARE, the initiative currently deploys behavioral health workers, paramedics, officers and other experts in several neighborhoods to respond to certain 911 calls for mental health emergencies or non-fatal opioid overdoses.
The budget items follow the creation of a Treatment Not Trauma working group last month tapped with forming a plan to implement the proposal.
Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd), the original sponsor of Treatment Not Trauma, called the allocations a “huge accomplishment.”
“It is amazing that we got an increase or an expansion in the alternate care model. It is amazing that we’re going to be able to reopen two clinics. It is amazing that we were able to get a working group that is going to help us shape what this is going to look like as it’s implemented,” Rodriguez-Sanchez said. “Of course we don’t stop here: We continue to advocate and to organize for what we need. But we have been able to move in ways that we have never moved before.”
Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club ChicagoJohnson’s budget also calls for the creation of two new city departments: the Department of the Environment and a Department of Technology and Innovation.
The environment department has long been on the wish list of progressive City Council members, who argue it’s necessary to coordinate and enforce the city’s efforts to combat climate change.
Last year, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot established an office of Climate and Environmental Equity, headed by the city’s chief sustainability officer.
The new proposal calls for expanding that office into a standalone department with a $1.8 million budget, a move Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) said would allow it to launch substantive policy and enforcement measures.
“Departments have more authority, more power. And as we now have a framework and a structure where we can add positions, where we can migrate and build the type of department that we need, I think we’ve got a very positive next couple of years to look forward to,” said Hadden, who chairs the council’s Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy.
The new budget will also include pay raises for most of the City Council and Johnson himself. The budget proposal shows the mayor will take a 2.24 percent raise, or about $4,800, for a total salary of $221,052 in 2024.
Last month, the mayor’s office declined to confirm whether or not Johnson was taking the annual cost-of-living raise, which Lightfoot instituted in 2023 for the mayor, clerk and treasurer positions. Chicago elected officials can opt out of taking the pay bump each year.
Asked during a news conference after Wednesday’s budget address why he decided to take the raise, Johnson dodged the question.
“Look, the budget hasn’t been passed yet. It hasn’t been passed. Fighting for the interests of workers, that’s always been my top priority. Black women got raises, we did that, we abolished the subminimum wage, we’re fighting to Bring Chicago Home. We have an entire division within my office that’s dedicated to workers and the labor movement,” Johnson said. “And so the budget has been presented and people get to cast their votes.”
Alderpeople will hold a series of budget hearings over the next few weeks, with a final vote on Johnson’s budget expected in November.
Block Club’s Mick Dumke contributed.
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