Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners Toni Preckwinkle announced that in the first year of the City-County collaboration, $33.4 million has been saved, and that over 85 percent of the savings will recur on an annual basis.

The $33.4 million in identified savings and new revenue puts the partnership halfway to the initial goal of at least $66 million in savings by the end of 2014. In addition to saving taxpayer money, the collaboration efforts have generated significant service improvements, including:

• The formation of the Chicago-Cook Workforce Partnership–a merger of three workforce boards into a single organization–which has saved $2.2 million in annual administrative costs and led to an additional $3 million workforce innovation grant.
• An unprecedented collaboration on anti-violence initiatives. Further, the partnership has set a goal of making Chicago the safest big city in America by 2020. To accomplish this, 11 action steps have been put in place to improve prevention, intervention, and response to violent crime.

The partnership continues to expand; anti-violence, animal care and control, broadband, and human resources are all areas of current collaboration that were not envisioned in the original report. In all, 23 different initiatives have been part of the collaboration.