City of Chicago Annual Appropriations Over Time

What will you find here? 

This dashboard displays annual budget appropriations by year, fund type, department, and category. The annual appropriation ordinance is the final City budget as approved by the City Council. It lists the budget appropriations that each department will receive from the City for the fiscal year. A budget appropriation is the legal authority to spend a specific amount of money for a stated purpose.

Fund types are defined as follows: 

• Local funds are used by the City for non-capital operations with sources other than grant funds. These include the Corporate Fund, O’Hare Revenue Fund, Water Fund, and other similar funds. 
• Grants are financial awards given by the federal, state, or local government authority restricted for a specific project or service. 
• Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds are provided by federal and state governments to communities and people to be used in a variety of ways including housing, community development programs, healthy food initiatives, and sustainability services. 

Some questions can be answered using data in this dashboard include: 

• How has the amount of grant funding appropriated to public safety changed in the past 5 years? 
• What is the most common use for CDBG funding? 
• Which appropriation accounts have the lowest average amounts over the past ten years? 

Data Sources 

The data contained within the dashboards is provided by the Office of Budget and Management, and can be found in the Chicago Data Portal. All budget categories in the dashboards are shown as described in the budget data obtained from the City of Chicago Data Portal. For additional information regarding this data, or the budget in general, see the City of Chicago Budget Overview.

Data displayed in the dashboards is current as of the last updated date contained within the dashboard.