The Taste of Chicago may no longer be run by the City of Chicago, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced Thursday.
Facing a record budget deficit of more than $650 million, the mayor said he is considering outsourcing management of the massive summer event as well as lakefront music festivals. The Daley administration also will try to privatize recycling collection and other city services, the mayor said at a City Hall news conference.
If the bids for performing these tasks prove too high, he said, the city will not move forward with the outsourcing plans.
Daley had promised to replace his failed blue bag recycling program with blue carts across the city. But the blue carts are only used by homes in part of the city, and much of Chicago is without recycling.
Daley said privatizing blue cart service could save money and allow the program to expand. Yet, he said he did not know when recycling might be offered to every home that has city garbage pick-up.
“No, you can’t, you can’t,” he said of a citywide blue cart program. “You can’t do it if you don’t have any money.”
Daley raised the possibility of again asking for labor concessions from unionized city workers. To balance this year’s budget, city employees have taken as many as 24 furlough days.
“No one likes to hear that, but, again, we’re all in it together,” Daley said, noting that he is taking unpaid days off that will knock $20,000 off his annual salary of about $216,000.
Daley said he would “look carefully at using a portion” of the hundreds of millions of dollars in city tax-increment financing, or TIF, accounts to help balance the budget. For years the mayor has fervently defended his practice of diverting money that would go to schools, parks and other taxing districts and hoarding much of those funds in TIF accounts.
With a city election looming on Feb. 22, tax and fee increases or new leases of city assets are not being considered, the mayor said.
Daley is scheduled to propose a budget for next year in October. He said the privatization of some tasks that city staff long have performed could be accomplished quickly enough to factor into the administration’s fiscal plans for 2011.
Under Daley’s outsourcing plans, a private organizer “would assume responsibility for planning and executing the events and providing security and clean-up services,” according to a news release from the mayor’s office.
Another city role that could be outsourced is the feeding of animals and cleaning of cages currently handled by Animal Care and Control employees.
City officials also are looking to drum up revenue from companies that would be allowed to place ATMs and movie rental boxes in city facilities.
Its about time.
These events are a net cost to the City.
I would rather have more police in the streets instead of the pretty fireworks and air shows.
Maybe private vendors can keep the gangbangers out too.