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…
Tag: water division
DeKalb’s Transportation Fund a model for Water Fund budgeting transparency
Let’s start with a summary of the problem. City of DeKalb secretly charges its Water Fund (Water) to help compensate employees in other operational departments and divisions. Because the Water subsidies into the General Fund (GF) aren’t tracked in budgets, the expenses shown in Water budgets misrepresent the actual personnel costs of providing water to…
A return to “meaningful and understandable” budgets begins with Water Fund dependency confessions
Last spring, DeKalb’s city manager was pushing for water rate and fee increases of 3.8% for infrastructure projects such as water main replacement. In the city council agenda for April 28, 2025, he wrote, “It should be noted that the Water Fund is an enterprise fund that should cover its operating and capital expenses from…
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 discussion of lead service line replacement leaves out key provision of new law
City of DeKalb appears to be unaware that a new state law changes the rules for how lead water service lines are replaced. During its regular meeting Monday, the city council discussed whether to use grant money to offer incentives to property owners to replace the portions of lead service lines that lie within their…
Water is the new TIF
For years, DeKalb bailed out its general operating budget with tax increment financing (TIF) funds. TIF administrative fees helped soften the blows following the 2008 market crashes and assisted the hiring spree after that. Now the enormous “TIF 1” district is gone, replaced by the “Downtown TIF” that is but a shadow of its previously…
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…
Charging the Water Fund for salaries in other departments is a masterpiece of nontransparency
*Note: “Departments” as used in this article should be read as shorthand for “departments, divisions, and offices.”* Take a look at this budget from DeKalb’s Finance Division: Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, it’s not. It does not show all the wages the Finance employees get paid. This is a budget that accounts only for the…
City Still Losing Water Customers
These are the numbers of City of DeKalb water billing accounts for the past 10 years, as reported in DeKalb’s FY2015 Comprehensive Annual Financial report released last month. [table id=93 /]