On August 25, Mayor Daley officially kicked off the campaign to get his 2010 budget passed with a hearing at the South Shore Cultural Center. The mayor and his top aides hold a few of these hearings every year about this time, but this one was unusual for attracting hordes of reporters waiting to hear Daley say the city had “screwed up” the implementation of the parking meter privatization deal—language included in a draft of his remarks leaked the day before to the Sun-Times.
After the hearings the action moves behind the scenes as Daley and his aides put the final touches on a budget to bring before the City Council. The council holds a couple weeks of hearings before voting on it sometime in November.
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At this point last year, the mayor and his budget aides began pointing to the global economic meltdown while projecting a 2009 deficit of more than $400 million. They promised to close it without a property tax hike, and instead to put together a package of fee hikes, services cuts, and employee furloughs.
And now, a year later, it turns out the projections were wrong. The city has a $300 million deficit. But not to worry—the mayor says he’ll fix it by making $34 million in “expense reductions” and spending $269 million from the money the city got from leasing the parking meters (or, as he and his aides call it, the “parking meters budget stabilization fund”).
As I said, my guess is that he won’t play his hand until after the IOC’s meeting on October 2, when it won’t matter anymore what people around here have to say.
I guarantee you one thing: you’ll never hear him apologize for that.
