Inside Chicago Government has created a monthly picture calendar for 2025.

It features photos of Chicago city employees on the job, which we gathered from all over town.

We've titled the calendar "The City that Doesn't Work," cribbed from Chicago's unofficial slogan, "The city that works."

We'll send the calendar—printed in Chicago on high-quality, photographic card stock, with its own desktop stand—to folks who subscribe to Inside Chicago Government at the Chief of Staff level.

Our inspiration for the calendar is captured by this quote from former inspector general Joe Ferguson, in a Sept. 5 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times:

"The Water Department operates under 17 different collective bargaining agreements . . . It routinely involves staffing modest-sized street projects with a whole array of people who have to take turns doing their job with everybody else sort of standing around a hole or standing by waiting for their turn. There have got to be ways to do this better."

Learn about Chicago's "The city that works" slogan here (requires Superintendent or higher subscription):

In an audio interview, former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson described an effort to formalize the training of new aldermen, and gave insights into why it failed.

The Chicago City Council still doesn’t officially onboard and transition its members, despite efforts to do so.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben listened to audio from a special meeting of the full Chicago City Council on March 30, 2023.

In an audio interview, Dave Glowacz spoke with a former city budget analyst. The analyst explained his startling claim: The real cost of the Chicago Police Dept. is 75 percent more than the $1.9 billion that the city's 2023 budget allocates to the department.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben listened to and evaluated meetings of the Chicago City Council that took place in October and November of 2022.

The Chicago City Council's Office of Financial Analysis has produced reports with material lifted word-for-word from outside sources.

In a discussion by journalists Dave Glowacz and Ben Joravsky, Dave and Ben evaluated the Chicago City Council's "unfinished business" that was in evidence at its January, 2022 meetings.

Fortieth Ward Ald. Andre Vasquez was caught on video doing a public-service rap at a neighborhood event in his ward.

In recorded audio, we hear Chicago Inspector General Joseph Ferguson warn members of the City Council about departures of key officials—and the effect on reform of the Chicago Police Department.

A 2018 lawsuit by a firefighters pension fund caused much of the spike in Chicago's 2021 property taxes.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Dave and Ben analyzed the Chicago City Council's vote on Mayor Lori Lightfoot's 2021 budget ordinances.

In an audio interview, Dave Glowacz talked about ideas for the city of Chicago's 2021 budget with former city budget director Paul Vallas.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben and Dave react to audio from 2020's August and September meetings of the full Chicago City Council.

The city of Chicago's spending on the COVID-19 emergency has been held to account by a little-known aldermanic working group. But its future is uncertain.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot battles, along with the pandemic, aldemen's frustrations with her emergency powers.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Dave and Ben listen to the first-ever videoconference meeting of the full Chicago City Council—and a half-dozen aldermen who resisted an emergency powers ordinance proposed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Reactions came swiftly to Mayor Lori Lightfoot's COVID-19 pandemic executive order—which gave her power over city's budget "as needed to maximize effectiveness of the city response."

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky Show, Dave and Ben listened to audio clips from the Chicago City Council's February, 2020 meeting—including a rich aldermanic debate on a city lawsuit settlement.

Audio of Chicagoans who gave Mayor Lori Lightfoot their advice and pleas at budget town halls that took place in September and October of 2019.