Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget plan made it through the City Council on Monday, a hard-fought victory for the mayor that spares City Hall an unprecedented government shutdown after one of Chicago’s most chaotic budget cycles in recent years. Aldermen voted 27-23 to approve Johnson’s $17.1 billion spending plan for next year after his team proposed a fourth version that completely eliminated his property tax hike in the face of widespread aldermanic objections. The revenue package containing a mix of other tax and fee hikes also passed 27-23. After the voting was finally done in the early evening, the mayor addressed the chamber and thanked the weary audience for their “patience.” “I know this was a long and arduous process, and seemed insurmountable,” Johnson said. “For far too long, this city has balanced its budget on the backs of working people with cuts to vital programs. … No one budget can fully reverse that legacy. But the budget we passed today is yet another down payment on securing a better, stronger and a much safer future for the people of this fine city.” It was the closest budget vote a Chicago mayor has faced in decades but nonetheless a relief for Johnson given the looming Dec. 31 deadline to pass a budget or risk government services shutting down and the city’s financial standing suffering. His opponents, however, will likely use the thin margin as another opening to pounce on Johnson’s leadership abilities after the last few months of clumsy budget negotiations and high-profile personnel scandals spelled a new nadir for the freshman mayor’s political capital. In the end, the 2025 budget process that began with the mayor presenting a staggering $300 million property tax increase concluded with a winning package that brought that number down to zero. Instead, Johnson’s team on Sunday offered a combination of cuts and extending $40 million in debt to plug in the new hole that came from nixing his most recent $68.5 million property tax hike. Though Johnson escaped the worst-case scenario, he has dealt himself political damage by spending the last few months trying to make the case that he had no choice but to break a signature campaign promise to not raise property taxes. And he has relationships with City Council he must repair, including with fellow progressives, if he hopes to regain control of the body and move more swiftly on his stalled legislative agenda and the next two budget cycles. Monday afternoon, there were no champagne bottles popped as the spending plan writhed over the finish line. Instead of celebrating its passage, many aldermen used the moment to blast Johnson for leading what they described as a frustrating process that lacked transparency. Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, voted for the proposal, but not before excoriating the mayor for the negotiations he led. Johnson failed to listen to aldermen, and the much-delayed budget process showed a “disrespect” for aldermen’s time, fractured City Hall relationships and will pit the city against daunting future challenges, she argued. “We are not prepared, and the fault lies squarely with you and your administration,” Hadden said. Her Progressive Caucus co-chair, Ald. Andre Vasquez, came out against the budget despite leaning toward a yes last week, citing the “repeated failure to take seriously the calls for efficiency” and other issues. “The disingenuous talking points that are disconnected from reality, the expedient decisions that will cost us in future generations — all of that needs to end,” Vasquez said to the mayor. “We cannot continue down this path that undermines the progressive movement.” Supporter Ald. Daniel La Spata labeled the budget not a “complete and perfect reflection” of his values. The Northwest Side aldermen had pledged to vote no unless money to test city-run snow plowing was added, a threat that ultimately secured $500,000 for the program. “Is it a budget that moves us forward in ways that I think are responsible? Yes,” La Spata, 1st, said. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson listens to comments from alderpersons during a discussion about the proposed city budget at a City Council meeting at City Hall on Dec. 16, 2024. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune) Steadfast opponents of Johnson’s argued the final budget “nickel-and-dimes” Chicagoans with its array of higher taxes. Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, predicted the City Council will face the same debate over hiking property taxes next year because the budget failed to address the city’s structural deficit. “We did not defeat it, we simply delayed it,” he said. “We will be right back here at this time next year, dealing with the same set of circumstances that created this structural deficit. And it will be even larger.” In the week leading up to Monday’s vote, Johnson, who dubbed himself the “collaborator-in-chief” during budget negotiations, scrambled to come up with concessions to win over at least 26 of 50 aldermen. The mayor’s team planned to try to pass his third version of the budget package during last Friday’s council meeting, but yanked the vote at the eleventh hour when it became apparent he had failed to shore up enough support. Many of the holdouts had maintained they could not stomach even his revised $68.5 million property tax hike and demanded he trim more fat from various city department budgets. But Johnson flatly refused to consider layoffs. That he stuck by that red line will be one of the more critical triumphs Johnson can boast about to his labor base when he tries to claim wins from this arduous budget cycle. The mayor also escaped defeat in part due to some successful deal-making with wavering aldermen who wanted to secure promises for pet projects of theirs. The bloc of those he failed to convince included moderates who have proven to be reliable opposition throughout his term, but also some progressives who likely fretted over the political risk of tying themselves to an unpopular mayor when it’s time to run for reelection in 2027. Johnson’s road to approving his second spending plan has been unusually lengthy and difficult. He must now play his cards carefully as he stares down the barrel of two more budget cycles that will likely be just as fraught given the diminishing bully pulpit of the mayor’s office and lack of long-term fixes to the city’s historic pension and other debt liabilities. The size of Johnson’s initial $300 million property tax hike propsal for 2025 was a non-starter for many, including Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez, 25th, a staunch ally who exited council chambers after the mayor’s budget address and immediately informed reporters he would be a no. Johnson backed off the figure about two weeks later, suggesting he made the proposal “to get people’s attention” and that he was taking a “collaborative approach” to negotiations going forward. Two days later, aldermen took the unprecedented step of proactively voting 50-0 to reject the $300 million figure. Johnson eventually landed on a fresh mix of cuts, tax and fee hikes, along with restored spending and some sweeteners, that cleared both the city’s finance and budget committees last Tuesday, if by a very small margin. But after weeks of knocking the property tax value down until it eventually stood at just $68.5 million — roughly equal to what it would be if the city stuck to the inflation-related hike — it still wasn’t enough. Friday’s meeting was recessed before a vote. By Sunday, Johnson’s budget team was promising aldermen the $68.5 million figure will be zeroed out entirely. Taken together, the budget varies drastically from Johnson’s first proposal in October. To recap: the city entered the budget process with an anticipated $982.4 million gap. According to the latest briefing from Johnson’s team, that gap grew because Johnson proposed $56.55 million in new investments — including youth jobs — and an additional $22.9 million from the telecom tax snafu in Springfield. Johnson’s ultimate decision to reverse cutting 162 vacant consent decree positions added another $8.8 million to the deficit. The city used a series of one-time fixes to help close the gap that are unlikely to be accessible next year. From the start, that included $139.6 million from using surplus revenues from prior years, a TIF surplus that will bring in $54 million more than 2024, and improved debt collections. That now-common short-term fix to declare a record $570 million surplus from the city’s special tax-increment financing districts, known as TIFs, will net the city a total of $132 million and deliver $311 million to Chicago Public Schools. The city is also relying on other familiar financial maneuvers to generate upfront savings. A simple refinancing for savings was estimated to net $13 million. Over the weekend, Johnson’s team also proposed extending the payback schedule for about $40 million in accrued debt from the city’s purchase of the former Michael Reese Hospital site. Though he promised to some fanfare to revive the city’s guaranteed basic income program to provide no-strings-attached $500 monthly checks to low income Chicagoans earlier this year, Johnson walked back those plans, as well as a round of small business grants and other spending to make $74 million in cuts. Those federally-funded American Rescue Plan Act dollars expiring at the end of 2026 will instead plug the budget hole. In a last-minute bid, Johnson’s team also announced on Sunday they will make $1 million in staff reductions at the mayor’s office, $2.8 million in “middle management cuts,” and $1.1 million in shifting costs from Business Affairs and Consumer Protection to a “cable TV origination fund.” In the end, though, Johnson stuck to his guns in his refusal to lay off any city workers or mandate furlough days. Another $215.4 million in “structural” fixes came from changes in how the city assumed revenues would come in next year. The biggest was the hope that CPS would make good on its promise to pay the city for a $175 million pension bill for non-teacher employees. And $165.4 million will come from raising various city taxes and fees. That includes boosts to the city’s lease tax charged on things like car leases and software licenses, the tax on streaming services, parking and valet rates, plastic bags, the added speed cameras and a mix of other smaller fee and service increases. Streaming taxes will rise from 9% to 10.25%, and lease taxes will go up from 9% to 100%. Taxes on garage and valet parking will climb to 23.25%, up from 22% on weekdays and 20% weekends. The plastic bag tax would climb to 10 cents. Surcharges on Uber and Lyft rides that start or end near downtown would expand to be charged on weekends, bringing in an extra $8 million. The city is also counting on about $10 million from a yet-to-be-passed ordinance that would charge event organizers for city services during special and athletic events, including overtime for police, fire and emergency services. NASCAR and Lollapalooza, for example, have agreements to pay the city back for some of those services. The new ordinance would cover sports matches that affect traffic flow, big outdoor special events and allow the city to back-charge organizers of unpermitted events, but would not make smaller neighborhood events and parades pay up. All throughout negotiations, Johnson flatly refused to abandon an important Lightfoot policy making extra payments to the city’s four pension funds to keep them afloat. The 2025 planned payment is $272 million, a figure which has not budged in any updated budget proposal. That supplemental pension policy was a key reason the city received upgrades from junk status toward the end of Lightfoot’s term. Moody’s Ratings previously described cutting the payment as one of several “factors that could lead to a downgrade.” The mayor’s second budget process started off on the wrong foot when he pushed back his budget address by two weeks, a delay compounded by the November presidential election and Thanksgiving holiday. That rankled aldermen who wanted more time to parse through the proposal and engage with constituents and the Johnson administration. The last time Chicago passed a spending plan in the year’s final month was in 2009, when Mayor Richard M. Daley held the vote for his 2010 budget on Dec. 2. But the mayor has shrugged off suggestions that he needs a reset with City Council and other counterparts after a year of ever-increasing headwinds for his administration. He instead argued last week that he was ushering in a “seismic” moment of inclusiveness at City Hall. “Look, I’m the first person to admit that the mayor’s office, as well as City Council, won’t be our grandparents’ mayor’s office or City Council,” Johnson said at a news conference after he canceled Friday’s budget vote. “We believe that this budget has to begin to set a different tone and a different tenor for the people of Chicago. And I believe this collaborative approach has certainly opened up a wave of that.”