Reading the numbers, and where they come from

Three budgets, not one

The City of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Park District are separate governments. Each passes its own budget under its own rules. The City and the Park District budget by calendar year; CPS’s fiscal year 2026 runs from July 2025 to June 2026.

The front page adds the three together only to show their relative size. Treat the combined figure as three budgets side by side, not one Chicago-wide budget: some money moves between these governments, and their periods differ.

A budget is a plan. It says what each government expects to spend, not what it has already spent. Where a box shows actual payments, it is labelled Paid so far with its period.

Boxes inside boxes

Every budget is a tree of boxes. Each box equals the sum of the boxes inside it, to the cent. You can open boxes until you reach one that has no detail inside it. That last box says, in one sentence, why it cannot be opened further.

Some boxes subtract money, such as savings targets or corrections. They appear in the list view and below the map, not as tiles, because a tile cannot have a negative size.

“More facts” on a box, like last year’s budget, 2025 pay by job title, or payments made so far, are context. They are never added into the box’s amount.

What the labels mean

Money counted twice

The City’s ordinance prints a gross total. Part of it is money that moves from one City fund to another, such as pension payments and reimbursements, so it would be counted twice if added up. This site uses the City’s net total and keeps the counted-twice money in its own branch.

The ordinance’s single adjustment figure cannot be fully rebuilt from its line items. The part that no line explains is shown as its own box: “Adjustment the budget office makes that no line explains.”

How far down the boxes go

The share of each budget’s dollars that ends in a small box, measured by the size of the last box you can reach. “Strict” judges that box by its whole amount. The “build rule” counts a group of budgeted positions as small when the pay for each position is under $1 million.

What the data cannot show

Some boxes stop while they are still large. That does not mean all the money went to one person or company. It means public records do not show a reliable smaller split. The largest dead ends:

How this site groups the money

Two groupings on this site are not official categories. Both are classifications of existing boxes, and both still add up to the official totals.

Purposes. Every top-level box of each budget is assigned to one of nine purposes:

What the money pays for. Each final box is classed as pay and benefits for today’s workers, services, supplies and construction, or pensions and debt. Pension and loan payments at the top of each budget count as pensions and debt. Otherwise the class comes from the budget’s own spending-type boxes (such as “Pay for workers” or “Contracts and services”), with a keyword rule where a budget has none. Pension contributions inside a school’s own budget count as pay, because they are part of today’s staff costs.

Bubbles. The front-page circles are boxes of about $12 million or more. Smaller boxes are grouped into one circle per parent, and leftovers under $3 million and negative adjustments are not drawn. Group totals still use the official sums.

Privacy

No individual’s name appears on this site. Budgeted positions are job titles and pay rates, not named employees. Public source records may contain names; the ChicagoBudget.com website export pools payments to individuals under “Individual (name hidden)” while retaining their amounts. Pay averages are not shown for job titles with fewer than five people.

Glossary

Sources

Every box links to its own source. These are the records the most boxes cite, by government:

Credit and license

Data and writing: ChicagoBudget.com, licensed CC BY 4.0, from the open repository gettty/chicagobudget. This presentation regroups boxes into purposes and types, divides amounts per resident, and reformats labels. Some definitions on this page are adapted from ChicagoBudget.com’s glossary and disclosures.

This is an independent presentation, not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools or the Chicago Park District. Source records keep their publishers’ own terms.

City of Chicago data notice. This site provides applications using data that has been modified for use from its original source, www.cityofchicago.org, the official website of the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago makes no claims as to the content, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data provided at this site. The data provided at this site is subject to change at any time. It is understood that the data provided at this site is being used at one’s own risk.