(Crain’s) — Chicago now faces a projected $654.7-million budget hole — equivalent to a stunning 20% of its operating account — in 2011, city officials disclosed on Friday.
Releasing the city’s preliminary budget, Budget Director Eugene Munin said a combination of economically depressed revenues and still-rising labor costs will force the city to take a look at just about every aspect of its operations — including dipping into what have been sacrosanct tax-increment financing funds.
But an increase in the property tax remains off the table, as per the directive of Mayor Richard M. Daley. The city often releases gloomy figures in its preliminary budget.
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