Chicago's Split System: How the City Plans Big Infrastructure While Aldermen Fund the Streets Outside Your Door

Chicago funds infrastructure through two distinct channels: the city-wide Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and the ward-level Aldermanic Menu. The article examines criticisms of the CIP's lack of transparency and needs-based evaluation, contrasting it with the localized Aldermanic Menu.

Rafael Mendoza

October 28, 2026 · 5 min read

Chicago plans major infrastructure through two largely separate channels: a five-year, city-wide Capital Improvement Program (CIP) covering large projects such as roads, bridges, and municipal facilities, and the ward-level Aldermanic Menu, which hands each of the city's 50 aldermen a fixed pot of money to choose local improvements like sidewalk repairs and alley lighting. A December 2020 audit by the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General, under Inspector General Joseph M. Ferguson, found that the city-wide track lacks systematic needs-based evaluation, transparent prioritization criteria, and documented public input—a fragmentation that civic watchdogs argue undermines coherent planning.

Understanding Chicago's Capital Infrastructure Planning

Chicago's capital spending is not governed by a single unified plan. The City of Chicago released its FY2021–FY2025 Capital Improvement Program in October 2021, and, as the Civic Federation explains, the purpose of a CIP is to establish priorities that balance capital needs with available resources, pair projects with funding sources, ensure orderly repair and maintenance of capital assets, and estimate the size and timing of future debt issuance. The first year of a CIP serves as the capital budget for that fiscal year, and capital projects are costly and paid for over the years the funds are borrowed.

But a substantial share of infrastructure spending flows outside that central document. The Civic Federation notes that hyper-local projects are not part of a central capital budget: the Aldermanic Menu allocates money annually to each ward, and tax increment financing districts divert a share of property taxes for economic development within specific areas. The result is a planning landscape in which a street resurfacing project and a bridge rehabilitation may be selected through entirely different processes, by different decision-makers, under different rules.

Chicago's Infrastructure Funding Tracks: CIP vs. Aldermanic Menu

The table below contrasts the two tracks across scope, decision-making, funding, and project selection, drawing on the OIG audit and Civic Federation analyses. The comparison shows which process a given type of project follows, who controls the decision, and the scale of money involved in each.

Two parallel systems for Chicago infrastructure funding
Dimension	Capital Improvement Program (CIP)	Aldermanic Menu Program
Scope	Five-year city-wide plan for major capital projects and deferred maintenance, including municipal facilities, lakeshore, and open space	Hyper-local ward projects: streets, alleys, curbs, sidewalks, ADA ramps, lighting, beautification, schools and parks
Key decision-maker	City departments and the administration; project selection often driven by departmental requests or political considerations, per the OIG's findings	Each of the 50 aldermen selects projects for their own ward from the menu
Funding	Approximately $11.2 billion proposed for FY2021–FY2025, including Chicago Works' $3.7 billion five-year commitment	Fixed per-ward allocation: $1.5 million per ward as of 2021, raised from $1.3 million
Project selection process	Lacks systematic needs-based evaluation, transparent prioritization criteria, and documented public or stakeholder input, per the OIG audit; aldermen do not formally approve the CIP	Selected at the ward level, separate from the central capital budget process

Read side by side, the two tracks reveal a structural inversion: the larger, more expensive system is the less transparent about how it chooses projects, while the smaller system concentrates clear discretionary authority in one local official per ward.