The Chicago City Council emphatically voted down Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to hike property taxes by $300 million Thursday, creating a yawning hole in the city’s 2025 budget that must now be closed.

The overwhelming vote was largely symbolic. Negotiations aimed at reducing or eliminating the property tax increase and replacing it with a healthy mix of new revenues and reprogrammed federal pandemic relief funds began last weekend.

The City Council will take a vote Thursday on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed $300 million property tax hike, announced when he unveiled his $17.3 billion city budget for 2025 last month. That means the mayor could make it official that he’s essentially giving up on his proposed property tax hike for city residents,

Members of City Council will now be able to take credit with their constituents for shooting down an unpopular budget proposal from Mayor Brandon Johnson that was essentially already dead.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is all but giving up on his proposed $300 million property tax hike before aldermen kill it, and pushing them to find other revenue in its place to avert layoffs. Johnson’s administration is combing over alternatives to the tax jump ahead of a meeting Wednesday where the City Council is expected to vote it down.

Dozens of aldermen called for a special meeting to vote down the mayor's proposed $300 million property tax increase.

In a special meeting, Chicago's City Council voted unanimously to remove the mayor's proposed $300 million property tax increase from the 2025 budget plan. Why it matters: The removal of the tax hike will force Mayor Brandon Johnson to make hard decisions on other ways to generate more revenue or where to make cuts to city services.