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Elgin’s proposed Capital Improvement Plan for fiscal year 2025-26 outlines millions in planned projects — but with limited available funding, city officials said they’ll have to rely on grants to move anything forward next year.
The city’s five-year plan, presented in draft form by Public Works Director Michael Gonzalez, includes a detailed breakdown of infrastructure and facility priorities across Elgin. While nearly $13 million in projects have identified grant funding, more than $38 million in additional projects remain unfunded.
“This year … we’re going to have to skip a year,” Interim City Manager Isaac Turner told council members during a meeting in June. “There was not any funding for capital improvements projects for next year — either from the general fund or from the utility fund.”
Turner emphasized that while the city traditionally prepares a CIP annually, this year’s plan reflects tighter financial conditions.
“The only (projects) that we’ll be able to do are ones that are funded by grant,” he said. “I don’t know if there were any plans in anybody’s minds to have a capital project next year, but there won’t be.”
Gonzalez introduced the CIP presentation with a reminder that every major project begins without funding — highlighting a list of completed initiatives totaling over $66 million since 2017. Those included the new Morris Park playground, County Line Road improvements and the city’s $16 million wastewater treatment plant expansion.
Of that total, nearly $19 million came from grant sources, records show.
“When we go to cut a ribbon on one of these large projects, the joys are all there,” Gonzalez said. “But I’d like us to think back and remember how each of these projects got started.”
The CIP is not a budget document, according to Gonzalez, but a long-range planning tool that guides future development.
“This does not obligate any funds from this current budget or next budget,” he said. “It is strictly a planning document that we work through to try to get us on the same page.”
The nearly 100-page draft includes completed projects as well as proposed infrastructure efforts across parks, transportation, water, wastewater and stormwater systems. About 50 unfunded projects appear in the current plan, with roughly $8 million under the utility fund — covering water treatment expansion, new water mains and well development — and the rest in the general fund, for miscellaneous infrastructure upgrades.
Council members will revisit the document in more detail at a future session, Gonzalez said, after developing questions and providing feedback.
“We want to put ideas on paper, share that vision with the council, get some feedback and move forward from there,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a shared vision of the council and the staff — of what projects are important to us and to the community.”
The council received a financial improvements overview during its July 1 meeting, after press time. A presentation of Elgin’s proposed budget is expected July 15.
“We’ll continue to have budget discussions — clear ones — and as many as you need to have,” Turner said.
More information to come in the Courier.
