Lightfoot’s precariously-balanced budget will sail through the City Council, but how long will it last?

Mayor Lori Lightfoot deliberately dodged a City Council rebellion by steering clear of a massive property tax increase and using one-time revenues to erase nearly half the $838 million budget shortfall she inherited.

She tore up the time-honored mayoral script that calls for a big tax hike early in a four-year term to live off the money and give voters three more years to forgive and forget.

She cleverly tied her 2020 budget to a $15-an-hour minimum wage to appease progressive aldermen miffed at her failure to reopen mental health clinics and devote all of the revenue generated by a graduated real estate transfer tax to combat homelessness and build affordable housing.

A former federal prosecutor who is no fan of political horse-trading, Lightfoot even found the $1.25 million needed to increase the annual aldermanic expense allowance by $25,000.

For all of those reasons and more, there is zero suspense to Tuesday’s City Council vote on Chicago’s $11.6 billion budget.

The rookie mayor will easily have the 26 votes she needs to win the most important test of her political strength since the day she installed her City Council leadership team and made mincemeat of indicted Ald. Edward Burke (14^th).

That leaves only two major questions:

• How many progressive aldermen will cast protest votes at the behest of United Working Families, the Grassroots Collaborative and the Chicago Teachers Union?

• And, more importantly, how long will a shaky budget that is already “Plan B” hold up before Lightfoot is forced to turn to the massive property tax increase she has tried so desperately to avoid?

The mayor is making no promises after coming up empty during the Illinois General Assembly’s fall veto session.

“It’s disappointing … for people looking to see how the state is going to help Chicago stabilize its finances that Mayor Lightfoot was not able to get the basic casino language regarding the tax structure — something everybody has known for more than three months,” said Civic Federation President Laurence Msall.

“Another disappointment … was the lack of action on her proposed graduated real estate transfer tax. It doesn’t seem like it really reached a debate. … It was just that the General Assembly was distracted. It does seem like there is a pall over the General Assembly not knowing who’s wearing a wire or who’s gonna be next.”

All bets are off if Lightfoot strikes out again during the spring session — or if the 16% pay raise she gave to striking teachers turns out to be a floor for police officers and firefighters, whose contracts expired 2.5 years ago.

According to the City Council’s Office of Financial Analysis, the budget now includes funding to cover a meager police pay raise of 1.6%.

Property taxes — more than doubled by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel — will likely be raised, yet again. And they’ll go up by a whole lot more than the $18 million increase Lightfoot has proposed to open Chicago Public libraries on Sundays.

Msall calls that a scary thought.

“The idea that you could raise property taxes at this time — the city is really in a place where there’s a lot of tax fatigue. The anticipation of the graduated income tax. The anticipation of a high-level real estate transfer tax. The uncertainty of whether that’s going to be enough to stabilize not just the state of Illinois, but Chicago’s finances, is something that’s corrosive,” Msall said.

“The greatest threat that Mayor Lightfoot and the City Council and Governor Pritzker have is that people are leaving our city. We’re losing population. We have to turn that around. We cannot afford to be a city that continues to decline in population.”

For now, Lightfoot’s budget includes $104.2 million in taxes and fees — on everything from ride-sharing, restaurant meals and recreational marijuana to cloud computing and parking meters.

The ride-sharing fee has been the most controversial — and not simply because Lightfoot has accused Uber of offering black ministers a $54 million “payoff” to kill her $40 million congestion fee.

It would more than triple the tax on passengers riding solo to and from downtown and slap a 74% increase on ride-hailing trips in Chicago neighborhoods that go nowhere near downtown.

There’s also a $65 million property tax increase that includes the $18 million for Sunday library hours, $15 million for new construction and $32 million to retire general obligation bonds authorized in the waning days of Emanuel’s administration.

Four years ago, 15 aldermen voted against a tax-laden Emanuel budget that included a $588 million property tax increase for police and fire pensions and school construction. It was the largest property-tax increase in Chicago history.

If 15 aldermen were to line up against a Lightfoot budget nowhere near as painful to beleaguered Chicago taxpayers, it could spell trouble for the new mayor down the road.

That’s particularly true because she tried so hard to avoid putting aldermen on the spot and postponed her threat to end aldermanic prerogative over zoning.

But 15 “no” votes are unlikely. Dissent is more likely to be in the single digits.

Then, there’s the larger question of how long this “Plan B” budget will last.

It’s precariously balanced with one-time fixes that include: the largest tax increment financing (TIF) surplus in Chicago history; a $1.5 billion refinancing with all $210 million in savings claimed up-front; and a $93 million clawback from the Chicago Public Schools for pension and security costs that previously have been covered by the city.

“A significant amount of the $838 million deficit is closed by one-time revenues. It’s not the best-practice way to do things. The question is, what alternatives does the city of Chicago have?” Msall said.

“The risk in the one-time things is not so much whether they’re going to occur or not. It’s that they don’t bring down the structural deficit for next year. So, you’re left next year trying to plug that hole without that one-time revenue.”

Msall credited Lightfoot with “significant restructuring,” pointing to her plan to merge administrative functions of the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications into a new Office of Public Safety Administration.

“If they’re successful in getting non-sworn officers to deliver those administrative services and get more policemen out onto the street, that will be a significant savings and an important modernization,” he said.

The City Council’s budget office is not so sure about the merger, which will create a new department run by an executive director, a first deputy and three managing deputies.

“Success will depend on whether there is enough symmetry and overlap between the kinds of records and reports required by each department so the tasks can be consolidated into a single system handled by a single staff,” the COFA analysis says.

The City Council budget office raised similar concerns about the mayor’s plan to merge the Department of Information Technology and Fleet and Facilities Management.

“We do not see any overlap or duplication of services provided between the two departments,” its analysis states.

Lightfoot is also counting on $150 million in unspecified cuts from “zero-based budgeting” and $163 million by raising ambulance fees paid by private insurers and getting federal approval for reimbursements administered by the state for ambulance transports for low-income patients on Medicaid.

That hasn’t happened yet. Msall is concerned whether it will.

Lightfoot says she is “very confident” the feds will green-light the ambulance plan, despite her repeated attacks on President Donald Trump.

“We have … alternatives, as we always do. But it’s not my expectation that we’re gonna have to turn to them,” the mayor said last week.

Pressed on whether “Plan C” includes a massive property tax increase, Lightfoot said, “I don’t want to speculate about what it is. Obviously, we have lots of different options in the event that one or more revenue sources doesn’t come through. But I don’t have any expectation that this will not come through. In fact, I expect that we’re gonna hear about it shortly.”

The mayor is equally confident she’ll get $40 million from her “congestion fee,” even though Uber has sued the village of Skokie to block a similar tax and could do the same in Chicago.

The bottom line is a budget Lightfoot claims is on solid ground and her critics say is a house of cards certain to come tumbling down.

Only time will tell who is right.

“We need to get beyond, `We made it through this year. What a relief. Let’s take a victory parade,’” Msall said.

“We need a long-term plan.”