CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Community activists are getting in their final push to try to win changes in Mayor Lightfoot’s proposed budget before it is voted on this week.
Chicago aldermen met Monday afternoon with the mayor's proposed budget on the agenda, but there's a good chance there'll be a successful move to "defer and publish," which results in the matter being pushed off until the next meeting, which is Tuesday morning.
"Instead of a moral budget, we got a do-nothing budget," said Emma Tai of United Working Families.
She said that, as part of the Defund CPD Campaign, more than 250,000 calls and texts have been made to Chicagoans "and [we] have now submitted over three thousand emails to aldermen urging them to vote ‘no’ on any budget that does not include Treatment not Trauma, that does not tax the rich, that does not cut the police and that does not protect essential workers."
Gary Jimenez of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association thanks aldermen who plan to vote against the proposed $94 million property tax increase.
"One of the most obvious things that people see when they think about an increase in property taxes is that, that means higher rents and that’s going to hurt families in neighborhoods across the city," he said.
Jimenez also asked why billionaires aren't bearing the brunt of higher taxes.
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Damon Williams of the #LetUsBreathe Collective calls the work activists have done during this budget season "an historic push to transform the way city government works."
He said citizens want tax dollars put into areas such as mental health care, education, and addiction treatment, not policing.
"For generations now, we have seen a divestment from black communities. We’ve seen a disinvestment on South and West sides. And, what we’ve seen, on a compounded generational level, is an increase in spending into a militarized, torturous police force," he said.
Carmen Orozco of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council said, "Our communities deserve treatment, not trauma."
Emma Tai said Chicagoans will not forget aldermen "who caved to pressure" to vote for the mayor's budget proposal.
More than 40 community organizations last week sent a letter to aldermen urging members of the City Council not to approve a budget that does not have the organizations' proposed changes.