DeKalb’s often at odds with its own community over issues relating to its water supply, and has been for almost 30 years. The city now properly mitigates the radium content of our water, but Water Fund usage and industrial water users are recurring topics. The posts listed below are foundational, but do consider checking the…
Category: Growth
5 issues ignored so far in City of DeKalb’s budget plans
Need for a finance director. DeKalb’s finance director left this year and it looks like there’s no plan to replace her. That’s too bad. Besides the risk of returning to subpar audits, a qualified finance director could fill in for the city manager if needed, which is particularly important since the assistant city manager’s position…
DeKalb’s commuter rail roadmap, ignored
City of DeKalb is spending $98,000 on a study of the feasibility of bringing commuter rail service to our city. But the information is already available. DeKalb County examined feasibility at the end of 2015. Led by then-county board chair Mark Pietrowski, an informal meeting of the Metra Rail Exploratory Committee included representatives from DeKalb,…
Ward meeting discovery: Alderman McAdams is having trouble keeping up
Fifth Ward alderman Scott McAdams held a ward meeting last week. I’ve listened to a recording of it that’s making the rounds. One item of note from the meeting is the alderman’s admission that he’s not read the draft update of DeKalb’s comprehensive plan even though the city is collecting public input. I’ve transcribed his…
The depot’s place in a comprehensive development plan
During DeKalb’s last Planning & Zoning Committee (P&Z) meeting, a member of the public asked whether Union Pacific Railroad intended to sell its old train depot. The reply: City Manager Nicklas responded he has had several conversations regarding the rumor of Union Pacific selling the depot, however as far as he knows they are not…
Water reservations in DeKalb
Water conflicts continue to develop in the Joliet area. A small but vocal group of protesters gathered on the steps of Joliet city hall on Monday night to rail against Mayor Robert O’Dekirk’s controversial plan to solve a looming water crisis by tripling rates on homes throughout the area…The protesters, which included Joliet City Councilman…
DeKalb taps into regional water trends
The Better Government Association recently published an article about Joliet’s ambitious and controversial mayor, who plans to buy Lake Michigan water from Chicago. [Water scarcity] tensions have arrived in northeastern Illinois, which, despite its proximity to the world’s fourth-largest source of fresh water, faces a coming water crisis. Among the first battlegrounds are Chicago’s southwest…
A look back: DeKalb and its radium water
25 years ago, residents of DeKalb organized to pressure the city to reduce the amount of radium in our drinking water. The city, which already had obtained a variance that allowed it to exceed EPA limits for radium, required a second variance in 1996 to obtain permits to extend water mains for new construction. This…
Let’s learn from Hammer before we incentivize Barb
Remember “Project Hammer,” the big food manufacturing and warehousing project that ended up unmasked as Ferrara Candy? We offered them a lot of incentives to come here. The incentives are flowing because that was the only way Ferrara would choose DeKalb for its new facilities over a city in Wisconsin, city leaders told us. From…
Task force a potential bright spot for Annie Glidden North revitalization
It’s no secret that my main concern for the Annie Glidden North revitalization effort is the possibility that City of DeKalb and NIU are preparing to push a secret agenda to the detriment of public input and outcomes. As I exhaustively outlined for you earlier, email discussions of private planning, from the “DeKalb 2020 Prospectus”…