Photo:Mayor Rahm Emanuel hugs Ald. Carrie "Lard Azz" Austin (34th), head of the City Council budget committee, after presenting his 2012 spending plan today
Mayor Rahm Emanuel today called for raising water fees to repair an aging system, hiring new police and putting in place a congestion tax on downtown parking.
The new mayor delivered his first budget address to theChicago City Council and said change is needed. At the outset of his first budget speech, Emanuel criticized former Mayor Richard Daley's spending habits.
"The truth is, Chicago's last 10 city budgets have been in the red," said Emanuel, who did not mention Daley by name. "Chicago cannot afford this kind of government any longer."
During his half-hour speech, Emanuel said he's not going to raise sales or property taxes and will cut the employee head tax.
But water fees would increase if the City Council goes along. "Residents of Chicago currently pay the lowest price for water of any big city in America," he said. "Today, we are asking for an increase in the fee for our water system. In return, we will greatly accelerate its repair."
Emanuel said he's against privatizing the water system, but called it an aging one that needs upgrades. Water fee hikes would help pay for repairs.
The new mayor also proposed a $2 downtown congestion tax on parking lots downtown and in River North during weekdays. And SUV owners would pay more for city stickers, he said.
Library hours would be cut on Monday and Friday mornings to save $7 million a year. Three regional libraries would remain open seven days a week, he said. Branches could stay open six days a week, if library employees work with City Hall, he said.
Emanuel also intends to take police vacancies off the books to save money, ending the shell game where Daley and aldermen set aside money to fill Police Department vacancies but spent the money elsewhere.
"Finally, we're going to end the charade of carrying hundreds of police officer vacancies without actually hiring them. Protecting public safety requires officers on the beat, not phantom cops on the books. Yet, for years the city kept listing vacancies without ever filling them. Everybody knew what was going on, but nobody let the public in on it," according to a prepared copy of Emanuel's speech.
"Well, I'm not going to play that game any longer. We need to be honest with the people of Chicago. So those police vacancies -- and the tax dollars supposedly allocated to them -- are coming off the books," Emanuel intends to say. "My budget will pay for two classes of cadets at the Police Academy next year. They will be real officers on the beat -- not ghost officers on a budget line."
According to the budget book, City Hall will maintain vacant positions for 100 police officers from next year’s cadet classes. There are about 1,400 vacancies.
Emanuel also is proposing the closure of three police stations: Wood, on the near West Side; Belmont, near North Center; and Prairie, which is less than a mile away from police headquarters on the South Side.The Police and Fire Departments also would consolidate bomb and arson squads, the marine unit, and the anti-terrorism unit. And detective bureaus would decrease from five to three.
The Belmont station serves Emanuel's own neighborhood. Emanuel said he knows he gets police protection than the average citizen. But says he also knows he won’t have the job for ever. “And after everything I just went through, I plan to stay in my house for quite a long time,” Emanuel joked, a reference to a tenant that stayed through the end of his lease.
Other items in the budget:
*Salting away $20 million in a rainy day fund.
*Increases on impoundment fees for those arrested for DUI.
*Emanuel also would boost the city share of the hotel tax by a percentage point, to 5.5 percent. And there would be an extra fee for parking in downtown garages during rush hour that is part of a “congestion pricing plan,” the sources said.
*The budget also relies on declaring a relatively modest surplus in the city’s special taxing districts, the sources said. Sometime next year, the city also would move to pick up garbage based on a grid system, a step that could save tens of millions of dollars a year.
In late July, Emanuel pegged the city’s budget shortfall for next year at $636 million, or about one fifth of day-to-day city spending.
Emanuel ended his speech with a pep talk for aldermen who will be asked to approve his budget, saying they should defy doubters and come together and fix the city budget.
"Almost every one of these ideas has been discussed and debated before. But politics has stood in the way of their adoptions. It just wasn’t the way things were done in Chicago," Emanuel said.
"As someone who’s spent much of my life in politics, I understand that. And maybe in the past we could afford the political path. But we have come to the point where we can’t afford it any longer. The cost of putting political choices ahead of practical solutions has become too expensive. It is destroying Chicago’s finances and threatening the city’s future."
