Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s announcement that he won’t run for re-election comes about a month before the City Council has to tackle a bad-news budget, and some aldermen say now those hearings will be more chaotic than usual.

Ald. Carrie Austin heads the City Council’s budget committee. She says aldermen with mayoral aspirations could use the hearings as a soap box.

AUSTIN: We will look forward for all those little antics that they’ll be doing. It’ll be alright. Maybe we’ll stretch out our budget a little longer than what it would normally do, but other than that, I think that when it’s all said and done—when the smoke clears—we’ll have a balanced budget.

The city currently faces a historic $655 million deficit. Daley has floated the idea of privatizing the Taste of Chicago and the city’s recycling services to help close that hole.

The first of three community hearings on the city’s preliminary budget begin Thursday evening at South Shore Cultural Center.