For wonks who want all the details.

“It’s good that they proposed higher taxes,” said Dora Lee, director of research for Belle Haven Investments, which holds Chicago debt as part of $11 billion in muni assets under management. “Politically, it’s one of the harder things to do especially right now, but getting through the next year is going to require a lot of politically hard choices.”

“We cannot responsibly enact any policies that make communities less safe,” Mayor Lightfoot said. Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) agrees – which is saying something, considering his tense relationship with the mayor. “We can’t just, you know, keep hiring police, but at the same time, right now is not the time to defund the police.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday she’s locking in property tax increases tied to the rate of inflation because her predecessors were so afraid to touch the third rail of Chicago politics, they put it off for decades, forcing massive increases that choked home and business owners.

“Lightfoot’s budget blueprint for the rest of this year and next year might not look painful to the average Chicago taxpayer. But it relies heavily on expensive borrowing; its balance sheet depended significantly on federal aid from June, not restructuring; and it does not make lasting changes to the tax-and-spend policies that drive deficit spending.”

“In thinking about the challenges and complications of this extraordinary year, a year in which we have been confronted with crisis after crisis, at times seemingly without end, I have been looking back on the history of our beloved City to glean insights on any other comparable time. In the historical record, I have searched for comparisons and solutions. The 1880s through the early 1890s marked a period in our history that has shades of our current experience. This is right after the great Chicago fire. A time in which there was great unrest. The modern labor movement took root

Lightfoot’s plan relies on $51.4 million in new property taxes. Approximately $16 million of that increase will come from property taxes on new construction, not existing homes and businesses. In addition, the plan calls for Chicago’s 5-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax to rise to 8 cents per gallon, the maximum allowed under the state law.

Since March, 161 McCormick Place trade shows scheduled for this year and early 2021 have been nixed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Those shows were expected to generate more than $2 billion in spending.

At issue are steps taken by city agencies to benefit General Iron Industries, a clout-heavy scrap shredder with a long history of pollution problems. An Ohio-based company that bought General Iron last year wants to move the operation from Lincoln Park to a site on the Calumet River in the East Side neighborhood.

With so much uncertainty about the future of the industry, even in the next few weeks, Steve Hartenstein, CFO and COO at Phil Stefani Signature Restaurants said, “People feel like, ‘Hey, I may as well stay home. I’m getting my money and I don’t know what is going to happen – if my business is going to be there or it isn’t going to be there.’”

Lightfoot’s hand-picked Board of Education rolled the dice by approving a budget that assumed $343 million in federal stimulus funds that has not materialized. “They’re going to have to cut. They’re going to have to reduce personnel. They’re gonna have to reduce all the different areas they had hoped to be able to fund that they won’t be able to,” said Civic Federation President Laurence Msall.