Overtime comprised most of DeKalb PD’s excessive spending over budgeted amounts for FY2014, but another major culprit was spending in the “Commodities” category that came to roughly twice as much as the $260,000 budgeted. Commodities were clearly under-budgeted in 7 of 10 accounts in that category and in a couple cases downright unrealistically. For example,…
Tag: police station
Towing Fee Account Story Generates More Questions
The Daily Chronicle may have just published one of the most important investigative reports ever written about City of DeKalb finances. Since early 2013, the DeKalb Police Department has used around $300,000 of the $350,000 collected in administrative tow fees to buy a wide range of items outside of its regular budget. There are a…
City of DeKalb Might Have a Warming Center
Last Saturday on Facebook, I crafted a “status” asking where the City of DeKalb warming centers are. There was nothing on the city’s website or Facebook page about them, and the last council agenda seemed to have dispensed with the idea entirely. Warming Centers One of the current challenges faced with the moving of the…
November 25 Council Agenda
The city has put up another meeting agenda for tomorrow that’s a revision of the original, so all you early birds will have to read the new one. However, keep the old one handy because they didn’t include the rest of the packet with the revision. Highlights: Item 1: Another hit to the Public Safety…
Power Shifts and Pushback
Let’s cut loose a couple of these agenda items for tonight’s DeKalb council meeting and try to paste them into the big picture. It is odd that this fiscal year’s budget allows for the hiring of code inspectors into the police department’s Crime Free Housing Bureau instead of mingling them with the rest of the…
Police Station Contractors
Here’s the response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed late last month for the list of contractors/subcontractors who are building our new police station.
Comment on 8/27/2012 Council Meeting Agenda
OK, Council, you said you’d bond out no more than $12 million but now staff is coming at you with a proposal for borrowing $14 million. It’s not that Peace Road and the fire stations don’t need attention. They do — especially Station 2. But is this really the way to do it? Bundling the…
Basement-less Police Station, Costs of Moving a Sewer Line: Related?
[Change of title, minor reworking completed about 9:40 a.m.] From the Daily Chronicle yesterday: DeKALB – Some members of the DeKalb City Council raised concerns Monday about the lack of a basement in the new DeKalb police station. The issue surfaced while a representative from PSA Dewberry, the architecture firm in charge of designing the…
Opposition to New Police Station Location
Now that work has begun on the proposed police station site on Lincoln Highway, Northern Illinois University students have become aware what the city intends to build there. Some don’t like it. The most immediate issue is a station sitting across from the Center for Black Studies and NIU Resources for Women, and in particular…
Traffic Studies
A new police station on Route 38 is in the works, and a proposed expansion of the DeKalb Public Library would involve closing a portion of North Third Street. Clearly, each of these projects/proposals if built would impact traffic patterns at their respective locations. Mac McIntyre brought up the need for a traffic study at…