The Aurora City Council has approved a city budget for 2026 that includes cuts to funding across city departments, including the loss of around 140 positions.
The roughly $688 million budget for 2026 is far smaller than this year’s nearly $760 million budget, but most of that change can be attributed to a one-time increase in revenue from bonds the city took out this year for big construction projects.
However, the $253 million general operating budget for 2026 is also down roughly $2 million over this year’s — and it still has a deficit of around $3.3 million.
Contributing to funding cuts included in the 2026 budget — which have sparked concern among elected officials, city staff and the public — is an effort by city officials to fix what they’ve called structural issues with past years’ budgets. Aurora has been spending more than it brings in, and in the past money was moved from long-term needs to cover operational costs, city officials have said.
At a meeting on Tuesday, the Aurora City Council voted 8–4 to approve the budget. Voting against were Alds. Jonathan Nunez, 4th Ward; Carl Franco, 5th Ward; Patty Smith, 8th Ward; and Shweta Baid, 10th Ward.
Aurora Mayor John Laesch has said, both to reporters and in public statements, that budget cuts won’t mean a reduction in services for residents.
Protecting core services and public safety was a priority during the 2026 budgeting process, according to a joint statement from Laesch, former Fire Chief David McCabe and Police Chief Matt Thomas meant to address claims that the city was making “significant cuts to public safety.”
All departments saw some level of cuts through the budgeting process, the statement said, but police and fire saw the smallest percentage reductions. Plus, the police department’s 2026 budget is $7.1 million higher than it was this year, and the fire department’s 2026 budget is $1.5 million more than it was this year, according to the joint statement.
“Our residents will not see a reduction in the services they depend on,” Laesch said in the statement. “Response times, emergency services and fire protection remain fully secured. Correcting our financial course is difficult, but we are doing it in a responsible manner that does not compromise safety.”
The International Association of Firefighters Local 99, which represents Aurora firefighters, has publicly disagreed with what was said in the city’s joint statement.
“There is no scenario where fewer firefighters, less training support, fewer officers and fewer trucks on the street equates to the same level of safety, readiness or service,” Local 99 recently said in its own statement posted to Facebook. “To claim otherwise is irresponsible.”
Instead, the budget will mean “an increase in unnecessary risk to every citizen and firefighter,” Local 99 President Rob Deubel said in the statement.
Fire department officials and Laesch have said that they will be monitoring call response times and firefighter overtime throughout the year. Based on those metrics and on how many employees are lost over the course of the year, a ladder truck and a fire engine may need to go unstaffed, according to a presentation given by interim Fire Chief Kevin Nickel and Assistant Fire Chief Michael Kaufman at the City Council meeting on Tuesday.
The positions cut from the Aurora Fire Department’s budget include two Emergency Management Agency specialists, 18 firefighters, three battalion chiefs, a training officer and the entire cadet program, the presentation on Tuesday showed.
The Aurora Police Department also saw staffing cuts, with 35 less positions in the now-approved 2026 budget. Nine are sworn police officers while the rest are non-sworn professional staff, including the department’s 12-person cadet program.
Although positions are being cut from the police and fire departments’ budgets, only a single person is actually being laid off. The city just won’t hire new people to take the place of employees in cut positions who retire or leave.
The development services, law and public facilities departments saw the largest percentage cuts over this year’s budget, with reductions of around 20% to 30% to the portion of their budgets coming from the city’s general operating account, called the general fund.
The fire department and police department saw increases to their budgets year-over-year — as did the Mayor’s Office, community services department and communications department, but those increases may be misleading.
That’s because the 2026 budget totally eliminates the community affairs department, splitting its functions between the community services and communications departments, plus moves economic development and the clerk’s office under the Mayor’s Office.
Public facilities was also moved to be under the public works department.
Mayor Laesch has been putting a particular focus on the city’s budget since the first moments he took office. During his inauguration speech in May, he said the city was left in “serious debt” because of past mayors’ investment in revitalizing Aurora’s downtown, and that his administration’s number one priority would be to get the city’s “financial house in order.”
Then, at a town hall meeting with residents in July, Laesch said the city was facing a “significant hole” between revenue and expenses in 2026 based on early budget analysis. That gap was later said to be nearly $30 million.
Aurora Director of Fiscal Integrity and Operations Management Brian Caputo has said that expenses outpaced revenue, but past budgets were balanced by moving money typically set aside for long-term needs like insurance and capital projects into the general fund, so the “fundamental financial structure of the city” doesn’t work.
Aurora Chief Financial Officer Stacey Peterson previously outlined some of the funds officials have said haven’t been getting enough support.
One such fund, the Property and Casualty Fund, was budgeted to receive around $5.2 million this year. However, nearly $9.7 million has been spent from the fund this year, wiping out its starting balance of $3.4 million and putting it over $1 million in the hole.
Another fund she highlighted, Employee Compensated Benefits, was budgeted to receive $1.1 million in 2025 but has seen $4.3 million in expenses this year, which has taken the balance of that fund into the negative, too.
However, the Employee Health Insurance Fund was actually budgeted for more support than it needed, and is set to end the year with a $3.6 million balance.
Some, including Ald. Franco and former Mayor Richard Irvin, have questioned city officials’ claims of a budget crisis.
“I’m not very happy that the funds, in my opinion and a couple of other people’s opinions, were excessively funded from the general fund to maybe create a deficit,” Franco said at Tuesday’s meeting. “I still think we have questions about how that happened.”
Irvin, who was mayor for eight years before Laesch, previously told The Beacon-News that claims money was moved around to cover operational costs are “absolutely incorrect.” Laesch’s philosophy, he said, is to manufacture a crisis and fall back on that “as an excuse to not do anything.”
However, Laesch has said that this 100% is a budget crisis and that “numbers don’t lie.” The city has taken as balanced of an approach as possible to address the issue, he said.
The Aurora City Council this year has taken a number of steps to increase or stabilize revenue across its various funds, including an increase to the city’s hotel tax, an increase to parking fees at the city’s two Metra stops, an increase in the number of gambling machines businesses are allowed to operate and the local continuation of a grocery tax set to otherwise expire statewide at the end of the year.
A major source of revenue for the city is property taxes. The Aurora City Council on Tuesday also approved the levy for this year at $103.7 million, an increase of $11.1 million over the previous year’s.
However, the part of that levy going toward city operations isn’t seeing an increase. Instead, the rising property taxes were attributed to required funding levels for police and firefighter pensions plus to higher debt payments.
The levy was raised in years past, but the newly-approved increase will also raise the tax rate for the first time in years. The tax levy is the total amount the city of Aurora is looking to get in property tax revenue next year, but the rate is the percentage of a property’s assessed value that the owner has to actually pay in taxes.
City staff previously said that the tax levy wouldn’t be considered for final approval by the City Council until Dec. 16, but it was included on the Tuesday meeting’s agenda and approved after the budget with a 7–5 vote. Alds. Nunez, Franco, Smith, Baid and Juany Garza, 2nd Ward, voted against it.
A new tax was proposed during the meeting’s lengthy budget discussion — a $1 tax on tickets sold by the Aurora Civic Center Authority. Ald. Mike Saville, 6th Ward, proposed the tax alongside an increase to the budget of $400,000, the amount expected to be made through the tax, as funding for the Civic Center Authority.
The change to the budget was approved at the Tuesday meeting with a 9–3 vote, with Alds. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward; Javier Banuelos, 7th Ward; and Keith Larson, at-large, voting against. The related, proposed tax still needs to be approved by the Aurora City Council at a later date.
The $400,000 payment now included in the 2026 budget will be in addition to $2 million the city has already promised the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which operates the Paramount Theatre and other local venues, to plug a hole in that organization’s 2026 budget.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
