Marengo, IL City Council Recap: September 28, 2026

Marengo will ask the state and the Illinois Tollway why a new road cannot be built off the west side of the Route 23 roundabouts at I-90, after a property owner asked the city to reconsider a promise it made in 2018 not to seek one. The council took no vote Monday night. It was a discussion item. Council members who spoke were open to asking, as long as it does not strain the city's working relationship with the state, and City Administrator Derik Morefield said the city would put no money into any new road.

The council also walked through a rewrite of the city's building code, which comes back for a vote October 12, and confirmed an after-the-fact change to the Meyer Road paving contract. Seven of the council's eight members were present. No one spoke during the public comment period.

On the consent agenda, the council approved the September 14 minutes and a $386,844.72 list of bills. The vote was five in favor with two abstentions; the two members who abstained had been absent from the September 14 meeting whose minutes were being approved.

The Fourth Leg

Each of the two roundabouts where Route 23 meets the I-90 interchange has three legs: the highway north, the highway south, and a ramp from the east. A fourth leg would be a new road off the west side into the land there. In July 2018, at the Illinois Department of Transportation's request during its review of the interchange plans, the council adopted a resolution agreeing not to pursue or support additional or new access along Route 23 between Coon Creek and Harmony roads. Marengo Weekly previewed the discussion before the meeting.

Morefield opened by saying the change was not "a for sure at all," and that the city might not be able to make it even with the council's support. The limit, he said, comes from an agreement with the Tollway and IDOT, and staff have put out feelers to both to see whether the language can change. His memo for the meeting says staff are still working out how binding the 2018 resolution is.

A council member asked why the item was in front of the council at all. Morefield said the request came from a property owner who wants to develop land there, and who understood that a fourth leg was ruled out because of the agreement. He said he could not find the reason for the limit anywhere: not in council minutes, agendas or emails. Staff did not name the owner, but later in the discussion City Attorney David McArdle did. He said the city should make clear that staff want to market and develop "those north corners," and that "it just seems so inequitable for Lazar not to have a leg from a circle that's right next to his property." County records list Lazar Bros Ent Inc of Hampshire as the owner of about 31 acres west of the north roundabout. A council member recalled that the city had tried for a frontage road across the same stretch years ago and been turned down.

Morefield set a condition of his own: he said he would not start down this path if the city had any money in it, and that any new access would be 100 percent the property owner's cost. Council members who spoke were open to asking. One asked whether pressing IDOT on one corner risked friction the city would regret as more development comes along the corridor. Others questioned whether a fourth leg would even help: a council member said the property can already be reached from Harmony Road, and that any new road off a roundabout would have to run about a quarter mile before it could have a curb cut. A council member compared it to the Route 20 interchange, where the Tollway and IDOT kept a gas station's entrance well back from the ramps.

Morefield said he would approach it as an inquiry, not a demand: why is it like this, and do the reasons still hold. Any change to the 2018 resolution would take a council vote at a later meeting, and the road belongs to the state either way.

The Building Code, Section by Section

The council's first discussion item was the next chapter in the city's code overhaul: Chapter 150, the building regulations. Morefield, a council member and Building Commissioner Dan Streit of HLR, the firm that runs the city's building inspections, reviewed the chapter together, and Morefield said staff leaned heavily on Streit's experience in other towns. The changes staff proposed:

• Code updates on a schedule. The building commissioner would review the city's adopted building codes at least every three years and recommend updates to the council, in line with state law, which does not allow them to fall more than three cycles, or nine years, behind. Morefield said Marengo is not close to that limit.
• Small fee waivers without a council vote. The city administrator or building commissioner could waive or reduce building permit fees up to $500 per permit, on written request, with the amount and reason recorded in the permit file. Today every waiver request goes to the council. Larger requests still would.
• Longer permit extensions. A permit could be extended once for up to six months instead of three, at the building commissioner's discretion and on written request; new construction is excluded.
• The 300-foot rule goes. Current code says construction equipment and materials must be stored at least 300 feet from the nearest house, which Morefield said is impossible on a subdivision lot or an infill site. The recommendation deletes it.
• Fees out of the text. Dollar amounts come out of the narrative sections and live only in the fee schedule, section 150.17, so a fee change is made in one place. Morefield said the codification process found fees in the text that had not been updated to match the schedule.
• Deposits by item. The single grading, seeding and driveway deposit would become a set amount per item, so it is clear what each dollar secures.
• Appeals to the council, not the planning commission. Appeals of architectural design requirements currently route to the Planning and Zoning Commission, which Morefield said has no role in them. They would come to the council.
• No historic preservation commission. A reference to review by the city's historic preservation commission comes out, because the city has no active, appointed commission.
• Elevators. The inspection language is trimmed to match practice. Streit said Marengo is a certified community that contracts elevator inspections out, and that there are fewer than a dozen elevators in town.
• One basic fee. The basic residential permit fee rises from $1,750 to $1,950 in the ER, R-1, R-2 and R-3 districts, matching what the other residential districts already pay, and the fee schedule will be reviewed every year.

The one section staff made no recommendation on is the architectural design standards, several pages of rules for how houses must look. Morefield asked who is supposed to enforce them; the code does not say. Streit said he had never seen standards this extensive outside a downtown district, and that towns typically rely on an anti-monotony rule instead, requiring neighboring houses to differ in real ways, such as roof lines, porches or windows, rather than paint or siding. A council member said the standards as written would discourage building more than invite it, and another noted that they raise the cost of a home. Staff will rework that section and bring it back.

Morefield also said the dumpster rule the council discussed on September 14 is waiting on Marengo Disposal. The city wants to be sure the rule does not conflict with its garbage contract; he said he heard back from the company the afternoon of the meeting and would call again the next day, and that its answer will shape what comes back to the council.

Meyer Road, After the Fact

The council confirmed an amendment to the Meyer Road resurfacing work with Peter Baker & Son Co. for $35,331.50: 340 tons of leveling binder at $101.60 a ton, and five steel riser ring inserts at $157.50 each. Morefield's memo calls it an "after the fact" approval. He authorized the work before the meeting, he wrote, because waiting for the September 28 meeting would have delayed the paving and risked pushing it further into the fall. The quote says the leveling quantity is an estimate and that payment will be on the tonnage actually placed; the memo says it will appear as a formal change order in the final payout. There was no discussion, and the vote was unanimous.

Around Town

• Settlers' Days runs October 9 through 11. Public works planned to sweep streets through town the week of September 28, ahead of it.
• The mayor asked drivers to watch for farm machinery now that harvest is starting.
• The police department has held its written entry test, and interviews are next.
• The fall brush pickup was set to finish Tuesday, September 29, with the main routes, Routes 20 and 23. The trees in the city's removal contract are all down; stump grinding comes next, likely the week of October 5 or the week after, scheduled around Settlers' Days. Public Works Director Tyler Ankney said trees that were marked but left out of the contract will be a question for next year's budget.
• The city has made a conditional offer for a street maintenance worker position to a former city employee, who is going through a background check, Assistant City Administrator Megan Lopez said.
• Lopez updated the council on a business on East Street whose fence permit, already extended once in June, runs out October 1. The owner has three surveys that disagree by about 13 feet and is waiting on an official answer before building. Asked whether a missed deadline would send the owner back to the planning commission, staff said the permit sits with the building department, so it would be a matter of another extension.
• A representative of McMahon Associates, the city's engineering firm, said the Meyer Road resurfacing was expected to be finished September 29 or 30. On the first phase of the water and sewer extension, the representative said staff did a walkthrough with the contractor on Friday and are narrowing the punch list ahead of the contractor's September 30 deadline.
• Morefield is looking for a council member to sit on the new mural and public art committee, an informal group that will meet when applications come in. Two volunteers, an art teacher and an artist, have signed on.

The council did not go into executive session. Its next regular meeting is October 12, when the building code changes are expected back for a vote. Agendas and packets are posted at cityofmarengo.com before each meeting.