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Acts of God and the economy have lots to do with it—budget department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams says she can’t provide specific figures because they’re so fluid, but the unusually long, messy winter cost the city far more than it had expected, as have rising fuel costs. And the rotten economy—especially in the foundering construction and real estate sectors—has slowed the rate of money coming in.
There are a couple ways to look at this. On the one hand, city officials couldn’t have predicted how many inches of snow were going to fall last winter any more than they can control national economic forces. Then again, maybe their projections could have been more conservative. Chicago hadn’t gone through a full-on winter in a number of years, and sooner or later it was bound to happen. The housing market was in a free-fall well before the 2008 budget was drawn up.
· Same deal with the sale of city-owned land, which rises and falls with the pace of development and real estate speculation: the city projected making $16 million this year even though it only brought in $12 million in 2007.
