DeKalb city clerk Jenny Johnson does not know where the official seal of the city is located, or whether it is secure. We found this out last Saturday, when she held a meeting to inform citizens of her current role, and to gather information about what we envision for the future. A dozen citizens attended,…
Want Candidates for DeKalb City Clerk? The First Step is to Restore the Compensation
If you are a resident of City of DeKalb, this post is for you – especially if you voted in the General Election of 2012. DeKalb has an at-large city clerk elected by the people, despite at least two referendums over the past decade asking to switch to an appointed clerk. The latest question came…
DeKalb Mayor Vigorously Defends Council’s Breaking of Its Own Law
In a recent letter to the editor, Misty Haji-Sheikh asked — and answered — who is supposed to ensure that DeKalb ordinances are enforced. Why? Because she found out there is an ordinance that is not being enforced. The mayor, city manager and city attorney all have legal duties regarding ordinances. Since the ordinance 2015-30…
DeKalb Administrators Don’t Think it’s Their Job to Enforce the Electrical Aggregation Contract the City Signed
If you participate in the City of DeKalb’s electrical aggregation program — and about 5,800 electric customers in DeKalb do — your rates should have dropped as of July 1, but they didn’t. There are two disturbing elements of this story. One is that resident Mark Charvat began making inquiries about the rate change in…
Growth of Part-Time Wages
City of DeKalb’s three-year-plus hiring spree and pensions are not the only budget-busters we have to face. The wage growth for part-timers hired within the past three years, obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, is another area that appears out of control: [table id=96 /] This is a sample of eight part-time “Chapter 3”…
Illinois Attorney General Removes ‘FOIA Shield’ of Personal Email
***Update 8/18: The Facebook discussion of this post has prompted me to expand and clarify it. What I’ve added, I’ve placed in italics.*** The Illinois Attorney General has issued a binding opinion concerning public employees’ use of personal email accounts when messages pertain to public business. What the opinion does is to remove doubt that…
The Mayoral Vote is the Problem When You Have Odd Aldermen
This happened on Monday. DeKalb’s council is made up of seven aldermen chosen by ward and a mayor. Aldermen seemed interested Monday in establishing a rule that would call for at least four aldermen to be in favor of a measure before it could pass. On most questions brought before council, a simple majority vote…
NIU’s Meddling in City Business: University Village
You may recall that Security Properties, a real estate investment and development company in Seattle, fought hard for much of last year to get approval for zoning changes for DeKalb’s University Village apartment complex. Security wanted to buy and rehabilitate UV, but first had to meet its government lenders’ conditions, and those requirements included action…
Local EAV and TIF Performance
DeKalb County has placed online a variety of property tax information at DeKalbCounty.org. Among the reports are breakdowns of Equalized Assessment Value (EAV) by type of zoning, which include farm, residential, commercial, industrial, and railroad properties. In City of DeKalb, the two top property tax-producing categories are residential and commercial. You can see below that…
This is Why Your DeKalb City Property Taxes Have Gone Up So Much
People have been asking me why their city property taxes went up sharply this year. While much of it has to do with your assessment, of course, here’s the rest of the story. [table id=95 /] Until recently, City of DeKalb levied property taxes for pensions and FICA only. I went back as far as…