Catch Up with the Elmhurst's Stormwater Communications Committee

Published Aug. 17, 2015.

Representatives from the City of Elmhurst, the Elmhurst Park District and Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205 continued discussing pending intergovernmental agreements to help mitigate stormwater in Elmhurst.

The third meeting of Elmhurst’s Stormwater Communications Committee was held Aug. 13.

Scroll down to view live tweets from the meeting and to watch the full meeting via YouTube.

Committee members present included:

City of Elmhurst (COE):

• Mayor Steven Morley
• City manager James Grabowski
• Sixth ward alderman Michael Honquest
• Third ward alderman Dannee Polomsky

Elmhurst Park District (EPD):

• Executive director James Rogers
• Commissioner Kevin Graf
• Commissioner Vince Spaeth

Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205 (D205):

• Vice President Shannon Ebner
• Board member John McDonough

Click here to view the meeting agenda.

Morley, responding to a question posed by Ebner, said after an agreement is signed, construction on mitigation projects could take roughly 3 to 6 months for engineering and 3 to 6 months for construction.

In discussions with the Elmhurst Park District, Rogers suggested altering the word “implement” to “consider” in the following point from their agreement draft: ”Whereas the city and the district agree to implement the stormwater projects at all five park stormwater detention sites.”

He said the park board can’t commit to all five sites right now because not all sites have been discussed by park subcommittees.

Morley said he had believed implementation of the five projects was a key of the lease extension agreement, but they agreed Rogers and Grabowski could work on wording the point to protect city interests and to communicate what they need in the agreement.

“Ultimately, what we’re doing as it relates to the park district is Jim Rogers and Jim Grabowski and the attorneys are going back and forth hammering it out,” Morley said. “In principle, I think we agree on about 95 percent of what we’re talking about, but ultimately the IGA, from our standpoint, will go through committees. So it’s going to go to Public Works for consideration, then it will go to the City Council for full consideration since this is an ad hoc committee.”

An active part of the discussion between city representatives and park board representatives revolved around the possibility of a penalty the city might pay to the park district if water causes damage or stays in detention ponds after a stormwater event.

“We can’t say for sure because we don’t have the final language, but we don’t want to send penalties ... We’re going to fix what’s damaged, and we’ll find a way to do that — either you reimburse us or you do it yourselves — and if neither of those things work, then we would have to have, as a last resort, termination of the agreement,” Ebner summarized after a tense discussion between McDonough, Morley and Grabowski.

For more brief highlights, take a look at the @ElmhurstPatch’s live tweets from the meeting. For a more in-depth understanding of the discussions, you can watch a video of the full meeting below. Contact your aldermen with questions and concerns.

The next Stormwater Communications Committee meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Aug. 27. More documents and information about the stormwater projects can be found on the city’s website.

Click here to catch up on all the past stormwater meetings from the City of Elmhurst channel on YouTube.