How well do you know the city you live in? Every line on this page is something the public record says — the city’s files first, and beside them the county’s, the transit agencies’, the water district’s, the pension funds’ and the federal government’s. Many lines are numbers this site computed from the cited records; the rest are official figures few readers have met. That is the whole method of this site, applied 49 times over. Each fact below is re-checked in code against its committed dataset every time this page is rebuilt, and each links to the piece that shows the work — the source, the counting rules, and what the record cannot say. Nothing here is an opinion about what the city does; where a number needs a caveat to be honest (captures are not tickets, requests are not verified floods, listed units are not available units), the caveat rides with the sentence.
Compiled from the site’s committed analysis datasets · every figure re-asserted at build time · last rebuilt August 23, 2026Did you know… the city’s money?
The city’s four pension funds hold $14.20 billion against $50.63 billion of pension liability — 28.06 percent — and none is projected to pass 50 percent funded before 2043 on the statutory schedule. — see the analysis
Over 2016–2025 the city paid 64.5 percent of what its pension funds’ own actuaries determined: $18.15 billion of $28.12 billion. — see the analysis
Chicago sold 75 years of its parking meters in 2009 for $1,151,355,186 — and has since paid the concessionaire $161.0 million in audited true-up payments. — see the analysis
Of the Skyway’s 2005 $1.83 billion upfront payment, $1.44 billion was still being counted as future revenue at the end of 2025 — and two of the three reserve funds it seeded were down to $134,000 and $4,000 by mid-2016. — see the analysis
The largest line in the city’s $18.67 billion 2026 budget ordinance is not a department: “Finance General” holds 44 percent of the money. — see the analysis
Ten payee names received 30 percent of the $5.72 billion the city paid vendors in 2025. — see the analysis
The city paid $467.7 million in overtime in 2025. — see the analysis
TIF district balances nearly doubled in seven reports: $1.42 billion in 2017 to $3.05 billion in 2024. — see the analysis
Since 1986 the city has approved $6.46 billion of TIF subsidy across 767 agreements. — see the analysis
Lobbyists filed $15.0 million in compensation for the first half of 2026 — the largest first half in the city’s file. — see the analysis
Since 2021 the city has waived $5.66 million of the $8.78 million in filming-permit fees its own file calculates. — see the analysis
The city’s $1.89 billion ARPA grant is 98.6 percent expended as of the July 2026 refresh. — see the analysis
Did you know… streets, and what’s under and over them?
Chicago has filled 2.76 million potholes since 2018 by its own patch file’s counts — the 2026 median patch clock is 5 days — and 2026 has already out-filled all of 2025. — see the analysis
More than half of CDOT’s transportation-permit ledger is marked Open: 985,144 of 1,801,871 applications. — see the analysis
The lowest posted clearance in the city’s truck-limit file is 9 feet 8 inches, and 590 of its 1,713 postings sit below 13 feet 6. — see the analysis
Speed cameras logged 20,565,979 violations across 490,578 camera-days — captures reviewed by contractors, not tickets issued. — see the analysis
Diggers have struck buried utilities enough times since 2015 to generate 14,508 hit reports in the 811 file — 6,216 of them on Peoples Gas lines. — see the analysis
Police and fire hold 53.4 percent of the positions in the city’s employee file: 16,960 of 31,768. — see the analysis
Did you know… water, air and weather?
The Deep Tunnel has pumped back 1.55 trillion gallons in MWRD’s 28 fully logged years — pumped back out, not “captured.” — see the analysis
The reversed Chicago River has been allowed to run back into Lake Michigan 36 times since 1985, by the district’s own log — and not once in 2025. — see the analysis
The median day on the city’s new 277-sensor air network reads 9.02 micrograms of fine particulate (PM2.5) per cubic meter; on July 17, 2026 — a day inside a stretch the state EPA flagged for wildfire smoke — the network-wide mean hit 167.8 µg/m³. — see the analysis
The older half of the city’s environmental-inspection file — 177,749 rows — records the result of exactly zero inspections. — see the analysis
The city’s mosquito traps have produced 3,894 West Nile-positive pools in twenty seasons — 187 of them in 2026 through week 32. — see the analysis
Of 9,524 beach water tests since 2021, 5.0 percent hit advisory level; 63rd Street carried the highest advisory-level share and North Avenue the lowest — 7.2 points apart. — see the analysis
One day — August 17, 2025 — produced 3,783 water-in-basement 311 requests, 5.4 percent of every water-in-basement request since 2018. — see the analysis
Did you know… trains, buses, bikes and rides?
Buses have recovered far more than the trains: bus ridership stands at 86 percent of 2019, the L at 65 percent. — see the analysis
A Chicago rideshare mile cost $4.21 in 2026, up from $3.81 in 2023 — and 35 percent of the fare is now fees and surcharges, up from 18 percent. — see the analysis
The city’s Divvy file lists 1,197 stations; Divvy’s own live feed lists 2,048. — see the analysis
Did you know… homes and buildings?
Chicago’s tax roll carries 119,978 two-flats; Austin alone has 6,777, and the Loop and Near South Side have zero. — see the analysis
The federal fair-market rent for a Chicago-area two-bedroom rose 46 percent in seven years: $1,195 to $1,750. — see the analysis
Chicago has 3,852 registered house-share units across all 50 wards — and 2,230 buildings whose owners filed to prohibit them. — see the analysis
The city’s affordable-rental list carries 29,550 units in 598 developments; Grand Boulevard leads with 2,406, and eleven community areas have none. — see the analysis
Every one of the 144,837 hearing dockets in the city’s ordinance-violation file belongs to one department: Buildings. — see the analysis
Chicago licensed 1,386 taverns in 2003 and 758 in 2026 — and liquor stores have outnumbered taverns every year since 2013. — see the analysis
Sidewalk café permits barely moved citywide (1,192 to 1,169, 2019 to 2025) — but the Loop’s fell from 144 to 108. — see the analysis
Did you know… property taxes?
Across 11,719 matched sales, the median Chicago home was assessed at 81 percent of what it actually sold for. — see the analysis
Homeowners who appealed without a lawyer won 60 percent of the time; with a lawyer, 39 percent. — see the analysis
Of owners who lost at the Assessor, 93 percent went on to the Board of Review — and 42 percent of them won there. — see the analysis
Cook County’s 2025 second-installment bills come due October 1, 2026 — 61 days past the statutory August 1 rhythm. — see the analysis
Did you know… schools?
CPS’s own school-progress file carries a growth rating for none of its 649 schools: 611 read “NO DATA AVAILABLE” and 38 are blank. — see the analysis
The same file’s attendance column holds one value — 88.3 — for all 640 schools that carry it. — see the analysis
The median CPS school’s chronic-truancy rate is 37.6 percent. — see the analysis
Did you know… living here?
Of Chicago’s 412 individual landmarks, 230 — 56 percent — were designated under one mayor (Richard M. Daley). — see the analysis
Only 19 of the 408 dated buildings on the city’s landmark register predate the Great Fire — Hull House (1856) is one of them. — see the analysis
The Eastland disaster killed 844 people in the Chicago River — more than the Great Chicago Fire, under either of the Fire’s common estimates. — see the analysis
The city’s mural registry holds 458 works; West Town leads with 66, and the oldest entries date to 1971. — see the analysis
Library visits fell from 8.0 million in 2019 to 6.6 million in 2025. — see the analysis
The city’s fastest timed 311 clock is the traffic-signal fix (median 0.12 days); the slowest is the garbage-cart request (14.89 days). — see the analysis
Chicago logged 44,181 rodent-baiting 311 requests in 2025. — see the analysis
How this page works
Each sentence above is the headline finding of one of this site’s analyses, restated in one line. The numbers are not typed here — they are read from the same committed data files behind the parent analyses, and the build fails if any figure no longer matches its committed dataset. The linked piece in every line carries its sources, retrieval dates, counting method and limits. When a source file updates and a parent analysis is refreshed, this page inherits the correction on its next rebuild. If you spot an error anywhere on this page, corrections come first.