By Bob Seidenberg
The second installment of property tax revenues has finally arrived at the city, leading finance officials to revise their figure for the budget deficit the city will face in 2027 from about $11.4 to $8.4 million.
The city had entered 2026 still waiting for property tax revenues from Cook County.
The revenues, which had been delayed reportedly due to a software glitch, is now over 90 percent, officials said in a report on the city’s financial picture at Wednesday’s Finance & Budget committee meeting.
Other big revenue generators in 2025 include a pair of Northwestern University construction projects — the Daniel P. Jacob’s Center (2001 Sheridan and Kellogg Educational Center (2169 Campus Drive), which added an estimated $6.3 million to the city’s revenue stream, officials reported.
The city is hardly in the clear, though, officials stressed.
Eventually the excess reserves fund, sometimes referred to as the “rainy day fund,” is going to be exhausted, predicted Finance & Budget committee member David Livingston has pointed out.
The reserve built up due to decreased spending during Covid, allowing the city to increase its contribution to public safety pensions, “knowing there would be a time we’d have to find additional cuts or additional revenues,” he noted.
As recently as 2022, excess reserves in the General Fund stood at $57.8 million. It is now hovering around $21 or $22 million, Clayton Black, the city’s Deputy Finance Officer, estimated at the meeting.
“Our big challenge for this year, I think,” Livingston said during discussion, “is if we only have $5 million of excess reserve (remaining) at the end of this year — if so, how do we start talking about what we’re going to do for the (2027) budget.”