Community discussions are underway for Chicago’s 2026 city budget season. Early estimates project a $1.12 billion budget shortfall, according to city officials. Between now and October, city leaders are charged with submitting department budget requests to the city’s Office of Budget and Management, releasing a budget forecast and then working to create a balanced budget by the time Mayor Brandon Johnson gives the annual address with his proposed recommendations in October.
On Monday, hundreds of Chicagoans attended the Budget Engagement Roundtable at Malcolm X College, eager to share their ideas about what Johnson and his administration should prioritize in the upcoming 2026 budget. The roundtable was the second of four total sessions happening citywide.
“I’m passionate about public health, and so that’s what brought me out here,” said Sarai Dean, a Chicago transplant and a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. What drew her to the meeting was the opportunity to listen to the concerns of longtime Chicago natives and discuss public health in more depth.
Dean expressed concerns about the city’s Department of Public Health’s emergency preparedness to respond to future disease outbreaks. The global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted gaps in preparedness policies within public health departments, both locally and nationally, according to a review by the National Institutes of Health.
“I want to make sure that we can get vaccinations to communities that need them,” Dean said.
The Budget Engagement Roundtables are one of the first steps in the city’s budget process, which begins in June and lasts through December, with the expressed goal of ensuring that residents’ input is reflected in the proposed 2026 budget. The third roundtable took place at Kennedy-King College in Englewood on July 1. The final roundtable is specifically designed for youth and is scheduled for July 9, from 5:30 pm to 7:00 p.m., at the Harold Washington Library’s Crystal Garden.
The city’s budget director, Annette Guzman, shared the administration’s framework and intentionality behind the budget with attendees at Malcolm X.
“We not only present a budget that reflects the vision of this mayor, but also reflects the collective will of the residents of the city of Chicago,” Guzman said. “And how do we know that? We talk to you, we listen to you, we poll you and we try to get as much information as possible to understand how we should be shifting our budget to support the work of the city.”
Guzman pointed to the Johnson administration’s investments from the last two years in homelessness, internet access, mental health, community violence prevention and summer youth employment as evidence that they use feedback from residents to set priorities in the city’s budget.
For example, the number of youth summer jobs increased from 28,000 in 2024 to 29,000 in 2025 due to the city dedicating $50 million towards it in the 2025 budget.
Johnson attended the roundtable. During his remarks, he explained how vital resident input would be in building the 2026 budget. Johnson added that, due to community feedback, the City Council passed a $1.25 billion bond for affordable housing and economic development.
“What your respective communities are calling for is how we have to show up in government,” Johnson said. “Because it’s your knowledge and input that will help us best allocate the funding that we put forward to invest in the things that truly matter, like affordable housing, community safety, mental health, youth employment, environmental justice and neighborhood development as a whole.”
However, not everyone felt their needs were reflected in the mayor’s budget talks.
For the past two years, Princess Shaw has been assisting seniors who are recovering from the damage done to their homes following severe summer thunderstorms and subsequent flooding in 2023. A longtime community organizer with the West Side Long-Term Recovery Group, Shaw said she doesn’t think the Johnson administration is prioritizing remedies still needed for seniors who require home repairs and mold remediation.
“They feel like they were still not heard. Most of them are still living with mold in their basements,” Shaw said. “We have several people who are on the verge of being homeless as a result of the flooding.”
Mold exposure can cause symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, congestion or eye irritation. It rarely causes serious illness or death, but it can worsen for people who have asthma.
Last year, the Johnson administration announced $5 million in funding for residents impacted by the floods, but Shaw said that funding doesn’t adequately address their needs.
“It’s disgusting for our mayor, Brandon Johnson, to sit here and say, ‘Oh, I’m from the West Side. I care and I love my West Side,’ but only put forth an effort of $5 million when there are millions and billions of dollars going elsewhere.”
The Budget Engagement roundtables aren’t unique to the Johnson administration; they are a community engagement tool that has been used by previous mayoral administrations, including those of Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot.
However, the Johnson administration modified the format in 2023, replacing the town hall style employed by the Lightfoot administration, according to Sara Mathers, the Johnson administration’s community engagement chief.
In this roundtable style, attendees sat in an auditorium at Malcolm X for a brief overview of the city’s budget process led by Guzman, followed by remarks from Johnson.
Then, attendees joined small-group discussions on issues important to them. The topic areas ranged from affordable housing, community safety, environmental justice and infrastructure to community and neighborhood development, arts and culture, and public and mental health.
Attendees spent 30 minutes at each table and rotated to a different topic of their choosing.
Commissioners, first deputies, and other staff members from some of the city’s 30 departments, which comprise the annual budget, were also present and joined residents for small-group discussions. They listened, took notes and answered their questions.
Johnson also joined a small group discussion where residents shared their ideas about community safety. Parrish Brown, a restorative justice practitioner with Good Looking Out, was one of half a dozen people seated at the table with Johnson and Guzman.
Their group discussed what community safety means to them and explored potential solutions to address safety concerns.
“So, being at the table with Mayor Brandon Johnson, we kind of talked about what already existed and what we wanted to see,” Brown said.
Brown said he also expressed talking points from the Chicago Public Health Coalition, which is calling for the city to redirect $300 million in police department funding —used for vacancies and overtime — to protect youth jobs and public health services, expand the 911 Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement CARE program and public mental health centers, and address understaffing in ambulance shortages in the fire department.
According to WTTW, the Chicago Police Department exceeded its nearly $2 billion 2024 budget, approved by the Chicago City Council, by $207 million.
“What I would like to see in the future is, how do we continue these conversations? And what is the actual plan that the city is moving to make some of the things that we talk about happen,” Brown said.
He added that he’d like to see restorative justice programming expanded beyond schools, so that it reaches families and other residents in need.
Prior to the roundtable, the People’s Unity Platform held a press conference outside Malcolm X to launch its “Babies Before Billionaires” budget campaign, which aims to secure $1 billion in new progressive revenue in the city’s 2026 budget.
Following the end of the roundtables, attendees were invited to complete a survey. Both surveys, notes, and comment cards are compiled by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute. The Institute compiles a research budget engagement report based on data from each of the four engagement events, which is typically released ahead of the budget address in mid-October.
“We take all of that data, the open-ended questions, the comments, and the ones that are coming in via paper get transcribed. They then get coded and analyzed based on themes, so that when we’re looking at and writing the report, we have a way to talk about these priorities from the community,” said Thea Crum, associate director of the Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute.
Between August and September, the Johnson administration will publish a budget forecast, and by October 15, 2025, he will deliver a budget address to the Chicago City Council. Details of the budget overview and process are listed here.
