58 stories
Government
Behind the homes on East Forest Street sits one of the biggest pieces of empty land inside Marengo's city limits. The city approved a subdivision there by 2007, which marketing materials describe as 54 duplexes and 24 houses. None were built. Public records tell the story of what happened instead, and why the land is suddenly worth watching again.
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Marengo will ask the state why it can't add a fourth road off the I-90 roundabouts on Route 23, after a property owner asked the city to reconsider a 2018 promise not to seek one. The council also worked through a rewrite of the city's building code, due back for a vote October 12, and approved an after-the-fact $35,331.50 change to the Meyer Road paving job.
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Before the pandemic, both Marengo school districts had lower rates of chronic absenteeism than Illinois as a whole. In the most recent state data, both are higher. We asked all three districts serving the area what changed. None of them said the counting did.
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The Marengo City Council will discuss Monday whether to back away from a 2018 resolution in which the city agreed not to pursue or support new access onto Route 23 at the I-90 interchange. The land a new access road would reach includes a site the council approved for a travel center in 2023. This story also carries more of our own analysis than we usually run, and it says plainly what we cannot confirm.
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Marengo Township's board got a health insurance renewal quote 17 percent higher than this year's and sent it back to the broker for options. The highway commissioner has a state salt contract this winter when seven or eight nearby agencies do not, and the township will meet with IDOT about the Route 23 and River Road intersection.
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A 300-megawatt solar farm covering more than 2,600 acres around Marengo was approved in 2021, then went quiet for five years. We read the federal grid filings, county land records, and years of local meeting minutes to find out what happened, who owns it now, and which deadlines it is up against.
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The city has been setting aside downtown property taxes since 2011, and the fund has never been bigger. Here is what a TIF district is, what Marengo's two have done, and why the next thing the money buys is a parking lot.
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Settlers' Days turns 55 this year, with the carnival, the parade and Saturday Night on Main Street back downtown October 9 to 11. Here is the full schedule, which streets close and when, and what the police chief told the council before it approved closing Route 23.
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At this week's prices, about $1.09 of every gallon of gas sold in Marengo is tax, and the city keeps about 8 cents of it. Marengo's gas taxes are slightly lower than Woodstock's or Crystal Lake's, so a big price gap between them is not the tax. Here is every tax in the price, how a dozen nearby places compare, and what changed this summer.
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For the first time since June, Marengo's city council split. A Grant Highway property headed for a small grocery was rezoned 5 to 1 and got its six variances 4 to 2, after council members argued over whether the variances were the right tool. The Chamber's Settlers' Days beer tent passed 5 to 1 after a question about what the event costs the city. And a new $63,975.62 utility truck will finally carry a utility box the city bought years ago and never put on anything.
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Andrew Kjellgren has spent 20 years with the Marengo Police Department and became its chief this summer. In written answers, the new chief talks about what has changed over two decades, hiring, growth near I-90, and what the department needs from residents.
Continue reading →Park District
The Marengo Park District spent $78,500 building a new walking path at Indian Oaks Park. Asked for the contract, the plans, the board vote and any competing price, it answered the same four words six times over. Its own purchasing policy puts anything over $10,000 with the board, and three of the seven invoices clear that on their own.
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For a full fiscal year the Marengo Police Department worked with twelve sworn officers instead of the fourteen it is built for. The payroll fell 8.1 percent while the union contract paid a 3.5 percent raise every year. But overtime rose $87,083 over the same span, eating just over 80 percent of the salary savings, and the department's total budget fell 2 percent. The shifts still had to be covered, and sergeants covered them.
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Chickens are not allowed in Marengo. In 2023 city staff researched what neighboring towns do, wrote an ordinance with a license, a four-bird limit and coop setbacks, and recommended the council approve it. The council voted it down. The question has come back twice since, and the reason members gave the last time was not about chickens. It was about whether the city had anyone to enforce the rules.
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The park district's interim director has handed the buildings and grounds supervisor full authority over his own department, a change from an arrangement in which the executive director set the grounds crew's daily priorities. The board also learned the printed fall program mailer has been cancelled, that the basement is still flooding after heavy rain, and that the new walking path needs drainage work before winter.
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Beautify Marengo meets Wednesday, September 9, at 6 p.m. at the Marengo-Union Library District, and the group is asking residents to fill out a survey at beautifymarengo.com/survey first. What comes back becomes the meeting agenda. Open to anyone, whether or not you have volunteered before.
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On March 30, 2006, the Census Bureau counted 1,732 people in Marengo. Not the whole town, just part of it. Under the rules of that decade a city could ask the federal government to recount only the blocks where something had changed, and Marengo did. It cannot make that request today, and the reason has nothing to do with anything the city did. A rule that arrived with the 2020 census requires a town to contain at least one whole census tract before it can ask for a partial count. Marengo sits inside two and fills neither, which puts it with 87.9% of Illinois municipalities.
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The nuisance and outdoor storage rules Marengo has worked on since summer were adopted Monday night, one section lighter after the council pulled it on the floor. What passed puts a fourteen-day clock on junk piles and on vehicles that do not run. The council also awarded a $623,682.80 paving contract and licensed ten security cameras that staff went out of their way to say are not Flock.
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The Open Meetings Act treats closed-door secrecy as temporary. Every six months, a council is supposed to re-read its own closed-session minutes and release whatever no longer needs sealing. Marengo's council took that review up in October 2023, put it off, and did not come back to it. On August 10 it caught up all at once, opening thirty-one sets of minutes going back three years. Here is what the paper trail shows.
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A request to rezone three parcels at Prospect and Prairie for a 24-unit apartment building split the Marengo Planning and Zoning Commission 2-2 on Monday night, sending it to the City Council without a recommendation. That is not the same as nothing: under the zoning code, granting the three variances that travel with it now takes a two-thirds vote of the council rather than a simple majority. Two members were absent and a third recused because he is one of the applicants, leaving four to decide, and the code required all four to agree before the commission could recommend in the applicants' favor. It separately recommended rezoning 605 E. Grant Highway from residential to general business for a grocery, along with six variances describing setbacks and a lot size that are already there.
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The council approved $32,161 to take down trees on city property. The estimate lists them by address, so we mapped it: nineteen trees at fourteen places, seven of them within about 900 feet of each other on the southwest side. Nothing goes back in their place, and the city says its own code bars a resident from planting there either. That code is not an accident. Marengo used to replant, and in 2016 the council closed the parkway to it.
Continue reading →Community
Locust Grade School's community event returns Monday, August 17, 2 to 5:30 p.m. in the big gym. Scouts, cheer, tackle football, theater, the library, and more, plus on-site vaccinations. Free, and you don't need a student at Locust.
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Two different sets of rule changes were in front of the Marengo City Council on Monday. It adopted one, a renumbering and cleanup of the entire city code, and only discussed the other, the nuisance and outdoor storage rules that would change what property owners can do with their land. The second one drew the crowd, and nothing was decided on it. The council also approved a health insurance renewal that trims a 20.7% PPO increase to about 13.5%, a $629,578 sewer lining contract, and $32,161 of tree removal with the bid process waived.
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The biggest street rebuild in years is finishing on Prospect Street, and a resurfacing program covering about 2.3 miles of the numbered avenues is next in line. Here is what the city has planned for its roads this year, what it costs, and who pays.
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Marengo is looking at a broad rewrite of its property and nuisance rules, the first piece of a full update of the city code: what can sit outside and for how long, where you can park in your own yard, and screening for dumpsters. The council discusses the package August 10, with an adoption vote planned for August 24. One change since the first draft: the trash-can size cap that, read literally, ruled out the carts residents actually roll to the curb is gone. Here is what would change, and how to weigh in before it's final.
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After a 4-3 split in July, the plan to turn a long-idle Route 23 factory into five contractor spaces is back before the county with a lighter zoning request. The new hearing is August 13.
Continue reading →From the Newsroom
Marengo Weekly has run without our names on it. Here is who we are, how the paper works, and how we handle the fact that one of us is running for city council.
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The Marengo Park District has named Amanda Damisch, who represents Ward 1 on the city council, as its interim director. The appointment took effect July 30.
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The Marengo Makers Market set for Friday, July 31 has been postponed for weather. Organizers moved it to the date already listed as that market's rain date, Friday, August 7, same time and same place: 5 to 8 p.m. at Calvin Spencer Park.
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The city has paid at least the state minimum every year since the 2018-19 budget. The fund is still barely half full, the bill keeps climbing, and this spring the city dropped a $150,000 catch-up pledge.
Continue reading →Local BusinessSponsored
Marengo is getting a tailor. Simple Stitches is opening a second location downtown, bringing alterations, custom sewing, and dry cleaning drop-off to State Street.
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Marengo has a new Public Works Director: the council unanimously approved Tyler Ankney's appointment Monday night, with a start date the morning of its next meeting. It also approved the lift-station change order it tabled in July after the city's engineer called the added cost fair. The council discussed a first-ever mural policy. The night's expected centerpiece, a package of tougher nuisance and outdoor-storage rules, slipped a second time, pulled from the agenda with the code officer who wrote it unable to attend.
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The county board declined to ask voters the binding home rule question and sent two advisory questions to the November 3 ballot instead. Here is what happened, and how every member voted.
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We compared Marengo's 2025 water-quality report against ten neighboring towns, using the annual report card every Illinois municipal water system must publish. The complaints about taste and staining check out: Marengo had the group's only manganese violation, and by far its highest levels. Safety is a separate question, and the numbers answer it differently: Marengo's lead and radium results were the cleanest of the eleven towns, and its copper was among the lowest. Here is the full side-by-side.
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Since last summer, a code citation in Marengo can be decided at city hall instead of the county courthouse. How the city's hearing program works, what it can and cannot do, and what to know if a ticket lands in your mailbox.
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An advisory home rule question is headed to the November ballot. Here is what home rule is, what it is not, and what it would mean at a Marengo address.
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Marengo Park District executive director Dr. Dan Bertrand will leave August 3 after more than five years. The board of commissioners has opened a search for an interim Director of Park Operations.
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Marengo's City Council lost power ten minutes into its July 13 meeting and finished in the dark, working through nearly the whole agenda before adjourning early. Members adopted a $32.94 million appropriation ordinance for the year ahead, awarded a $4.86 million contract to extend water and sewer along Route 23, seated new Ward 3 alderman Ryan Mueller, and swore in Police Chief Andrew Kjellgren and Sergeant Roy Amaya. A lift-station change order was tabled, and a nuisance-rules discussion was pushed to a future meeting.
Continue reading →Schools
The MCHS cheer program hosts a youth camp Thursday, July 31, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the high school. Open to pre-K through 8th grade, $50 with t-shirt and bow included. Register by July 24.
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Marengo's annual water-quality report for 2025 is out. Most of what the city is required to test for came in under the legal limits; the one violation was manganese, which went over the state's limit late in the year. Here's the plain-English version of what the report says, and how to read it yourself.
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Marengo overhauled its water and sewer rates in the spring. We put the new numbers next to ten neighboring towns and built a calculator so you can check your own bill.
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Don't toss a worn American flag in the trash. There's a flag retirement drop box at Marengo City Hall, and on August 17 the American Legion and local scouts will retire flags properly at a public ceremony at Indian Oaks Park.
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Day in the Park returns to Indian Oaks Park Saturday, July 11, 4 to 11 p.m. Food trucks, live music, kids' zone, beer tent, and fireworks at 9. Free admission, donations appreciated.
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Marengo's council agrees with itself most of the time. But on the rare nights it splits, who is missing from the room decides the outcome. A review of every council vote since 2009 shows how an empty seat has quietly moved the property tax levy, the garbage contract, and the ties only the mayor could settle.
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The McHenry County Conservation District is asking residents to help shape its next long-range plan for the county's open spaces, trails, and natural areas through a short public survey.
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After ten years leading Marengo United Methodist Church, the Rev. Howard "Doc" Newcomb, known as Pastor Doc, gives a final service on June 28 before moving to a DeKalb congregation, and the church welcomes the Rev. James Fu the following Sunday, July 5.
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The Marengo Makers Market is back Friday, June 26 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Calvin Spencer Park, and this month brings a first-ever food truck, the return of face painting, a kids' dance party, and a Glory Bound Rescue Ranch adoption event and supply drive.
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Zion Lutheran Church is serving free breakfast and lunch to any child 18 and under, weekdays through July 30. No cost, no reservations, just show up and eat.
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The Marengo City Council met June 22. Members approved three engineering work orders for the city's water and sewer upgrades and talked over possible new rules for e-bikes and scooters. The city also expects to launch bank-draft autopay for utility bills on September 1. In closed session, the council interviewed four candidates for the vacant Ward 3 seat but didn't make an appointment.
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The downtown tavern at 214 S. State is back after months closed and a reversed liquor-license revocation, and it's hiring bartenders and cooks. Owner Leslie Boomgarden: "We will be glad to see familiar faces as well as new customers."
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Marengo cut the ribbon on its new $7.55 million water filtration plant on Greenlee Street on June 15. The city says the facility, now fully operational, removes iron, manganese, and radium from the municipal supply and, paired with a new 1,020-foot well, adds capacity for the town's growth. City Hall says the project will not raise residents' water rates.
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The Marengo Park District needs 50-plus volunteers for Day in the Park on July 11. Sign up for a two-hour shift to help pull off the annual celebration.
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The City of Marengo is accepting applications for a new Director of Public Works, a full-time, salaried position overseeing one of the city's largest departments.
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Through Beautify Marengo's Adopt-a-Block map, 33 residents have claimed 112 street segments to keep clean on their own schedule. Roughly one in five blocks in town is spoken for, and the rest are up for grabs.
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The Marengo Makers Market is back Friday, June 26 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Calvin Spencer Park, with around 35 local vendors and monthly markets running through September.
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The empty fields by the Route 23 interchange have frustrated Marengo for years. The exit opened in 2019, and the businesses everyone expected never showed. A new state grant is, in theory, what changes that.
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The council named Andrew Kjellgren chief of police. It approved engineering for this year's road program after pushback over Railroad Street, and locked in a two-year natural gas contract for city buildings.
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