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Sixth Ward alderman Freddrenna Lyle described it as a “bad-news budget” but said the council had fought for and won important revisions since the mayor introduced it last month. “We’ve done our homework,” she said. But the Fourth Ward’s Toni Preckwinkle didn’t think she and her colleagues had done enough homework. She called for an additional week of budget hearings next year. “How can we run through 40 departments in two weeks?” she asked. “I don’t think it leads to a very thoughtful process.”
The lone nay vote came from 26th Ward alderman Billy Ocasio. “Yes, these are hard times, but I think in this budget we haven’t been that responsible,” he said. Ocasio was angry that the city could find money for Millennium Park and the 2016 Olympics bid but not for communities like his, and he accused the administration of axing productive low-level workers instead of unnecessary middle managers. “For the reasons mentioned—the wrong people being laid off, my community being taken for granted, all the false promises, and the fact that this administration believes that everything and everyone is expendable—I vote no.”
