The pre-council meeting held on April 6, 2026, at 5:30 PM in City Hall Council Chambers covered presentations on the 2026 Water Main Replacement Program and the Will County Governmental League, followed by discussion of consent agenda items, ordinances, and resolutions. Key topics included a security services contract for City Hall, a safety consulting contract, and a proposed ordinance to allow early hiring of successors. The council also discussed a tax abatement for Hyundai Translead and entered closed session. No formal votes were taken on agenda items; decisions will be made at the regular council meeting on April 7, 2026, except for the motion to enter closed session.
Ordinance Amending City Manager Authority for Succession Hiring (Memo 202-26)
Property Tax Abatement for Hyundai Translead (Resolution 204-26)
Other Resolutions
Other Memos
That pre-council meeting for Monday, April 6th, 2026 at 5 30 p.m. meeting in City Hall Council Chambers. Call the roll, please. Okay. We'll begin with roll call. Mayor Darcy. Here. Councilman Cardinals. Councilman Clement? Here. Councilman Hug. Here. Councilwoman Abarra? Here. Councilman Moreno. Here. Councilman Mudron. Here. Councilwoman Quillman? Here. Councilwoman Ruden. Here. Okay. Next we have two presentations. I believe Hugh is stuck at a bridge. So we are going to have Alison Swisher present the 2026 Water Main Replacement Program. Director of Public Utilities. Good evening, Mayor and Council. We do this presentation once a year about the time that construction starts. So I guess with the good weather also comes the construction. So this is going to be an update on our 2026 water main replacement program. I was going to provide a quick reminder of the background of why we're doing this, talk about the details of the program, and then talk specifically about how we provide communication to our residents. So as a reminder, this water main replacement program, we began in 2022. The goal is to replace all of water main that are older than 1970s. These have been identified as the pipes that have the most leakage. It's about about 192 total miles and a cost of about 600 million dollars. So just the progress of where we're at today, we're about halfway through the project. Over the past four years, we have been we first two years at about 20 miles and then almost double that amount in 24 and 25. So this year again, our goals are number one to reduce non-revenue water, and then also to uh reduce a number of customer water outages due to water main breaks. So we have a lot of coordination that we do to make this a success. A lot of planning and prioritizing has gone into establishing the program. Um we do have our funding strategy in place. So this has all been funded with SRF, which is the state's low interest loan program, as well as WIFIA, which is the federal low interest program. We do a lot of communication with residents, and then we have to coordinate all of this with other programs going on in the city, such as the work being done by public works, the work being done as part of the alternative water source program, and then a lot of coordination with the work that IDOT is doing with the I80 improvements. So our 2026 program is about 20 miles. Uh construction costs about 53 million dollars. The loan funding for this was approved at the last council meeting. As you can see on the map there, we have projects in four of the five council districts. Uh so councilman hug in district one has most of our newer system. So a lot of these uh pro uh replacements are focused in the older part of town, and if you recall from the non-revenue water presentation that we did a few months ago, um this is where we have the highest water loss, is in that um older part of town on either side of the river.