An independent guide to Chicago public budgets

Independent, not an official government site

This project is not operated by or affiliated with the City of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools, or the Chicago Park District. The figures come from public records, but the organization, explanations, and any derived estimates on this site are our work. The three governments publish separate budgets with different periods and accounting rules. Their headline totals are not one consolidated budget.

How to check a claim

Start with a budget box and follow its cited record. Our source directory lists the public documents and datasets. The dataset catalog describes downloadable data and its limitations. See what we could not find and disclosures before treating a figure as a complete account of spending.

Methods and corrections

The separate methods guide explains the box hierarchy, labels, net versus gross amounts, estimates, and how far the underlying data can be opened. It is the place for calculation details, not this project overview. The contribution guide explains how to inspect the build and report an error. Corrections should identify the affected box and an authoritative source, rather than assume an estimate is an official allocation.

Privacy and measurement

We do not need free-text searches, names, or individual browsing histories to evaluate whether this guide helps readers. Optional first-party action counts are off unless collection is configured and a visitor explicitly opts in. They store only daily totals by action type and budget group, not individual events or unique visitor counts. Scheduled maintenance removes counts older than 90 days; removal happens when maintenance runs, not at an exact 90-day deadline. Network infrastructure still processes the request. When action counts are available, you can turn them off again in the footer. Cloudflare Web Analytics, if separately enabled by the site operator, measures page traffic and performance, not custom actions.