Chicago’s $17.1 billion spending plan is now in place for 2025 — but it didn’t come easily.

Forceful pushback from alderpeople blocked property tax hikes — but the budget still includes $165.5 million in additional taxes and fees to generate revenue.

Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman joined “Chicago Tonight” to discuss what this could mean for residents’ wallets and the city’s fiscal future.

On the property tax debate:

“I think, you know, hindsight is 20/20,” Guzman said. “... Those conversations start in earnest, but a lot of times, because of the many things that we’re balancing, it does take the introduction of the budget sometimes to have some of those conversations in more earnest. I will say that the introduction of a property tax to begin with was one that was made based on what we’re looking at, you know, in out years as well. … We’re always looking to the most stable of a revenue source so that in out years, we can depend upon revenues that are going to come in.”

On generating revenue through taxes and fees:

“A lot of these had not been looked at in over a decade,” Guzman said. “Yet, the price of goods and services has gone up. And the city, despite having to administer a number of programs, had not had its revenues grow at the same rate as some of the costs that it takes to actually administer those programs. And so in conversations with members of City Council, they asked us the question, ‘Which ones are the ones that we haven’t touched, that we haven’t looked at in a long time, and is there room based on where the economy has has grown or changed for us to make some changes, whether small or large, to bring in more revenue?’”

On future budget concerns:

“Any municipality would be concerned about a (credit) downgrade because it goes towards how expensive your debt might be,” Guzman said. “For a city of our size, where we have a lot of infrastructure projects that are necessary to ensure that our communities are safe from a public safety standpoint, that we are able to develop our communities, to incentivize businesses to come and set up shop and help that community thrive … We are talking pretty regularly with our credit rating agencies, helping them to understand how so much of what we did is structural in nature, meaning that these are revenue sources that will be available to us year after year, and that these are not those one-time fixes that are delaying and putting off costs into the future.”