Chicago’s American Rescue Plan grant from the U.S. Treasury — $1,886,591,388, spread across 67 program lines in the city’s own running ledger — is 98.6 percent spent. As of the ledger’s July 31 refresh, $1,859,400,552 had been expended, every allocated dollar showed as obligated, and $27.2 million remained unexpended across 22 program lines. A general deadline governs what remains: under Treasury’s rule for these funds, dollars not expended by December 31, 2026 must be returned; a narrow set of project categories carries different dates under the same rules, noted below. Forty-four of the 67 lines are exactly fully spent. The largest single unexpended balance sits on the 911 Alternative Response Program — $5.2 million of its $8.9 million — and one broadband line has recorded $695 of spending against a $4.0 million allocation.
ARPA Road to Recovery files, Chicago data portal · refreshed July 31, 2026; retrieved August 9 · cumulative figures since grant inceptionReading the ledger
The city’s grants summary report carries three cumulative numbers per program line: allocated (the program’s budget), obligated (committed), and expended (spent), each identified only by a cost-center code. The names come from the city’s companion program-details dataset, which joins every one of the 67 codes to a program name, department, and policy pillar. Unexpended on this page means allocated minus expended, nothing more. The deadline is not this page’s judgment: the U.S. Treasury’s rule for State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds set December 31, 2024 for obligation and December 31, 2026 for expenditure, with unspent dollars returned. Treasury’s rules give certain surface-transportation and Title I project categories an earlier expenditure date — September 30, 2026 — and this file does not say which lines, if any, fall in those categories. Whether any given balance below will be spent in time is not something the ledger can say, and this page makes no prediction.
Where the unexpended dollars sit
- 911 Alternative Response Program (CARE) (Public Health)$5.2M$8.9M
- Neighborhood Broadband Connectivity (Finance)$4.0M$4.0M
- Management and Administration (Budget Office)$2.9M$12.1M
- Essential City Services (Budget Office)$2.0M$1,174.2M
- Essential City Services (Family & Support Services)$1.8M$110.0M
- Family Connects Program (Public Health)$1.7M$16.2M
- Tourism and Hospitality Recovery (Cultural Affairs)$1.7M$16.0M
- Community Justice Initiative (Family & Support Services)$1.5M$5.0M
Eleven of the 67 lines carry more than $1 million unexpended, and 22 carry any positive balance — $27.2 million once one over-expended oddity, disclosed below, nets against them. The 911 Alternative Response Program — the CARE program, listed under Public Health in the details file — has expended $3.7 million of its $8.9 million allocation, leaving $5.2 million, the largest balance in the file. Neighborhood Broadband Connectivity appears on two lines: the budget office’s $4.5 million line is fully expended, while the Department of Finance’s line shows $695 expended against $4,002,087 allocated. And the ledger’s single billion-dollar line — Essential City Services, at $1.17 billion the largest allocation in the file by far — is $2.0 million from fully expended.
What is already finished
Forty-four lines are exactly fully expended, and the finish is uneven by theme. Every one of the ten Community Safety lines is complete. The remaining balances cluster under Effective Governance ($8.2 million, most of it administrative lines), Mental Health & Wellness ($8.2 million, dominated by CARE), and Housing & Homelessness Supports ($4.7 million, dominated by the broadband line). Obligation, the earlier Treasury deadline, is not the open question in this file: every line’s allocated and obligated amounts match to the penny.
Known limits
The figures are one refresh of a cumulative ledger, dated July 31, 2026; balances can change with each refresh, and this page describes only that snapshot. One line is a bookkeeping oddity the file does not explain: a COVID-19 Emergency Response cost center showing $0 allocated and $32,280.70 expended; it is included in the totals as published. Ten cost centers appear in the program-details dataset with no row in the financial summary and are outside every figure here. Program names repeat across departments — the ledger’s unit is the cost-center line, and this page keeps it. Nothing here measures what the programs accomplished, and nothing here predicts what happens to any balance by December 31.
- Sources ARPA Road to Recovery Grants Summary Report (9yp3-9pdz, 67 program lines) joined to ARPA Road to Recovery Program Details (m9g9-cj96, names, departments, policy pillars) on the cost-center code; both refreshed July 31, 2026 and retrieved August 9, 2026. Every summary line matched a name.
- Counting Unexpended = amount_allocated − amount_expended per line; unobligated = amount_allocated − amount_obligated (zero on every line). “Fully expended” means an unexpended balance within one cent of zero; the one over-expended line is counted separately. Dollar figures over $100,000 are shown in millions, rounded to the nearest $100,000; exact figures appear where precision matters.
- The deadline December 31, 2026 is the expenditure deadline in the U.S. Treasury’s final rule for State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, per Treasury’s program page linked above; it is reported here as Treasury’s rule, and this page draws no conclusion about any specific balance’s fate.
Computed by KCM Desk from records retrieved August 9, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.