>> Hearings on Mayor Brandon Johnson's budget proposal for next year are underway at City Hall and the centerpiece of the spending plan to a close to close a 982 million dollar cap.

Got a chilly reception from members of City Council.

Our Heather Sharon joins us now to break down the start of these marathon sessions.

Heather, we're talking about a lot of money here.

So the mayor's finance team defended his decision to propose a 300 million dollar property tax hike, the largest increase since 2016 as necessary in the only possible solution to the city's financial woes.

>> That argument didn't go over very well.

Why not?

Well, older people didn't seem convinced that there wasn't another way to make the city's financial ends meet, so to speak.

And the easiest possible way would be potentially to cancel an additional 272 million dollar payment that the mayor wants to make to the city's for pension funds, which are woefully underfunded.

Now, Chief Financial Officer Joe Jaworski said that the city has to pay more than required by state law because other was the city's pension funds are going to have trouble paying retirees.

What they are entitled to after working for sometimes 30 more than 30 years.

So it's a really difficult decision.

It's going to be really difficult decision because no politician wants to raise taxes on the people who vote to send them to city Hall.

And what happens if City Council refuses to hike taxes?

Well, budgets are kind of simple, but a lot of money, right?

You have 3 basic options.

You can either cut.

So that means services cutting layoffs, or you can raise taxes or you can borrow money.

Now, the city already has a massive amount of debt.

So borrowing to fill this gap does not seem like it's an option, but nobody wants to lay off city workers either.

So the mayor and now the city council find themselves with few good options and a looming deadline racing up to us at the end of the So even with the property tax hike, the Chicago Department of Public Health facing a budget cut of 60%.

According to the mayor's proposal.

Why?

Well, Cdph is going to lose 16% of its funding because COVID-19 era relief grants from the federal government are ending the pandemic at least as far as the federal government is concerned is behind us.

And now that money that the city got to sort respond to the crisis is going away, which means the cities.

But it is going to have to shrink.

Well, thank you, Heather and I are gonna stay on top of all these