Harvey residents gathered at a Thursday discussion event hosted by Alds. Colby Chapman and Tracy Key and City Treasurer Aisha Pickett to try to understand the city’s opaque finances.

Pickett was elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023. She said throughout her time as treasurer, she has not been provided the necessary information to understand the city’s financial situation and do her job.

“My tenure as treasurer has not been the easiest. As they mentioned before, there are things I don’t necessarily have access to,” Pickett said. “It makes my job very difficult.”

Harvey is in the midst of a prolonged fiscal crisis. The city government has operated on reduced hours and severely cut staffing since October, when the City Council voted unanimously to apply for designation as a financially distressed city.

That designation would allow the city to receive state financial relief and oversight under the Illinois Financially Distressed City Law, with the state appointing a three-person board to oversee the city’s finances. Only one Illinois city, East St. Louis, has previously received the status. Illinois does not otherwise have a mechanism in place for municipalities to declare bankruptcy.

Pickett expressed frustration, saying she felt she wasn’t being allowed to serve the residents.

“I’m hoping that with this current situation, maybe some things will turn around. I’m hoping things will be more open, that they’ll be more willing to work with us, because we are willing to do the work,” Pickett said. “We just need some little cracks in the door.”

Residents Glynis James-Watson and Amanda Askew assembled a spreadsheet compiling the various bills lists approved at City Council meetings over the past year to try to better understand the city’s expenditures.

The City Council approved the most recent bills Oct. 27. Both meetings scheduled for November were canceled.

“The only thing that we’ve ever received, ever, as it relates to our financial state, is the bills list,” Chapman said. “Anything further than that, when there’s a request for invoices, a profit and loss statement, or just, for instance, the settlement agreement where these businesses are paying $30,000 a year to operate without a business license, none of that has ever been provided to us.”

Harvey Treasurer Aisha Pickett speaks to residents about the city’s finances on Thursday. (Evy Lewis/Daily Southtown)

James-Watson, who works with budgets as part of her job, pointed out a few things she found strange about the compiled bills lists, including hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenditures being categorized under “miscellaneous appropriations.”

“In budget terms, there should not be a miscellaneous anything appropriated,” James-Watson said. “Everything you plan to spend for the year is supposed to be appropriated in your budget.”

Shortly after the City Council voted to declare the city financially distressed, Harvey laid off 40% of its workforce in what was initially framed as temporary furloughs, cutting nearly half the Fire Department and more than a third of the Police Department.

Another round of firings last week laid off eight additional staff from the Fire Department, Police Department and Public Works Department. Chapman said she found out about those firings on the news, despite being on the City Council.

One issue at the core of Harvey’s financial difficulties is a painful property tax double-bind. Harvey has one of the highest tax rates in Cook County. Correspondingly, it also has the third lowest property tax collection rate in the county. When the high rates mean that some people can’t or won’t pay their taxes, the tax burden falls even harder on those that do, and the result is a budgetary shortfall for the city.

The same day the meeting was held, nuEra Cannabis opened a dispensary in Harvey. A news release about the opening emphasized the benefit of the dispensary’s projected tax revenue to Harvey, estimating that it would generate more than $200,000 annually.

Harvey Ald. Colby Chapman addresses residents Thursday while Tracy Key, left, listens. (Evy Lewis/Daily Southtown)

Mayor Christopher Clark has said that blame for the city’s dire financial straits falls primarily with the former mayor, Eric Kellogg, whose administration was rife with expensive scandals the city is still paying for, including failure to make required payments to the fire and police pension funds and the diversion of water bills owed to the city of Chicago.

However, critics of Clark, including Chapman and Key, said the mayor is dodging accountability and has caused more problems by not being transparent with city’s finances from the beginning. Clark was first elected in 2019.

“You should know when you run out of money,” Key said. “We’re not trying to cause any trouble. We’re just doing our jobs.”

elewis@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/04/harvey-officials-piece-together-city-finances/