The Empty Chair

$2,020,830.

That is the property tax levy the Marengo City Council approved in December 2024. It passed by a single vote, 4 to 3, with one of the council's eight seats sitting empty that night.

Change that one absence and the math changes with it. Had the missing member been in the room and voted no, the levy would have deadlocked at 4 to 4, and the decision would have fallen to the mayor alone. Instead it passed, and the number became the city's ask on your tax bill.

We tend to think of a council seat as simply filled or not, and showing up as a courtesy. The record says otherwise. Marengo's council agrees with itself the vast majority of the time. But on the handful of nights when it splits, who is sitting in the room decides the outcome. An empty chair is not a neutral thing. It can move real money.

How Often It Actually Matters

Not often, and that is the honest part.

Marengo Weekly reviewed every recorded council vote from 2009 through this spring, more than two thousand of them. In the last decade, nine were close enough that the members missing from the room could have changed the result, or forced a tie, had they been present and voted the other way. Nine out of thousands. Most council business is routine, and most of it is unanimous.

But nine is not zero, and most of the nine were not trivial. They set the tax levy, rewrote the garbage contract, and decided the fate of a solar farm. And the absences were not one person's habit. Across those nine votes, the empty chair belonged to eight different aldermen at one point or another. This is not a story about any single alderman. It is a story about the chair.

A word on how we are counting. This is arithmetic, not mind reading. We cannot know how an absent member would have voted had they attended. We only know the vote was close enough that their presence could have changed it, or forced a tie. That is the whole point. Being there is the difference between having a say and leaving the decision to everyone else.

One thing we did not count. A few other votes over the years looked just as close on the aldermen's side of the ledger, but the mayor had already weighed in. Illinois law pulls the mayor into a vote in a handful of situations beyond a tie, including whenever exactly half the aldermen vote yes, and once the mayor is on the record, an empty chair can no longer change the result. Those votes are out.

When One Empty Seat Sets the Bill

The clearest cases are the ones that reach your household.

Property taxes. The $2,020,830 levy above passed 4 to 3 in December 2024 with a seat empty, one vote away from a tie.

Land use, for the next forty years. In July 2021 the council approved a special use permit for a utility-scale solar project, on terms running to 2061, by a 4 to 3 vote with a seat empty.

City services. In September 2024 the council voted 4 to 3 to waive competitive bidding and amend the city's garbage contract. The eighth member was at the meeting that night but stepped out of the room for this item, so her chair sat empty for the vote that counted. Part of that change ended the leaf vac. If you noticed it stop coming, that was the vote. Bagged leaves still get picked up.

And not everything passes. In October 2019 a motion to waive bidding for wastewater treatment plant equipment failed on a 3 to 4 vote with a seat empty. One more member in the room, voting yes, and it becomes a tie, with the outcome in the mayor's hands.

When the Mayor Has to Break the Tie

Sometimes the margin is not one vote. It is zero.

Under Illinois law a mayor mostly presides and does not vote. The biggest exception is a tie, and when one happens, breaking it is simply the mayor's job. There is nothing improper in it; the law is written for exactly that moment. What is worth knowing is how rare the moment is, and what creates it. In seventeen years of Marengo records, the council has deadlocked and the mayor's vote has decided the outcome exactly four times. Twice, every chair was filled and the council simply disagreed down the middle, the system working as designed. The other two ties came out of thin rooms, with six members voting instead of eight. When a member is absent on a night the council splits, their vote does not just go missing. It moves down the table to the mayor.

The oldest is a clean illustration, because the stakes were plain. In October 2010 the council split 4 to 4, all eight members present, on a $107,000 contract for police dispatching services through the Village of Lake in the Hills. The minutes are blunt about what happened next: "The motion was tied, so Mayor Lockhart was requested to vote on the motion. He voted yes, and the motion passed." A six-figure decision, settled by the one vote the law holds in reserve for a dead-even council.

It happened again in September 2023, and this time the subject was a tax. With every seat filled, the council split 4 to 4 on an ordinance amending the city's municipal utility tax. Mayor Koziol voted yes, and it passed 5 to 4. A tax measure, decided the same lawful way, and a reminder of how much can ride on a single deadlock.

The two most recent ties are the ones this story is about, because empty chairs helped create them. In November 2025 a couple came to the council seeking a liquor license, the first step in redeveloping a storefront in the Sullivan's Foods plaza that had sat vacant for years. Their plan paired a new Dairy Queen, in the old Little Caesars space, with a video gaming café next door, pitched to the council as a way to fill what they called a persistent vacancy and to keep entertainment spending in town. That night one alderman was absent and another had stepped aside from the vote. Only six of the eight could weigh in, and they split 3 to 3. Mayor Proffitt broke the tie in favor, and the project moved forward. A quarter of the council was unavailable, and a piece of Marengo's commercial future came down to a single vote.

The most recent tie-break came only three months later, and it shows how ordinary the trigger can be. In February 2026, with two seats empty that night, the council split 3 to 3 over something as routine as closing a city parking lot for a downtown festival. Mayor Proffitt broke that tie too. The subject was small, but the mechanic was identical: an even split, an empty chair or two, and one more decision moved down the table to the mayor.

There is even a case that runs the other way. In March 2011, with three of the eight seats empty that night, the council split 2 to 2 on a request to reduce the city's fees for a Habitat for Humanity house. Mayor Lockhart broke the tie with a yes vote. But a measure that spends or forgoes the city's money needs the backing of a majority of the whole council, not just a majority of the members in the room, and with three chairs empty the votes were not there. The minutes record that the motion failed for lack of a majority. It is the same empty-chair problem from the other direction. Sometimes the question is not whether the mayor will break a tie, but whether enough members showed up for any decision to hold.

The Chair That Stays Empty

So far we have been talking about a chair empty for one night. Sometimes it stays empty for months.

Right now, Ward 3 has only one alderman. The other seat went vacant on April 27 when its holder resigned. Since then, the council has met with only seven of its eight seats filled, though it expects to make an appointment at its July 13 meeting.

A skipped meeting silences one vote for one night. A vacancy silences half a ward's voice on every vote, meeting after meeting, until the seat is filled.

A vacancy is not, in itself, a failure. Resignations happen, and what matters is how a council fills the gap. This one has been handled in the open. The city posted the seat on its website under the banner "Seeking Leadership," spelled out the qualifications, and invited any qualified resident to apply, with a two-week window. Rather than leave the choice to a single appointer, the council decided to interview the candidates as a full body, with every member taking part, in closed session, as state law permits for filling a seat. The front door is working the way it should. And yet the open call drew only two names at first, for an entire ward's seat. By early June the field had grown to four.

The Deepest Empty Chair

And then there is the version almost no one sees, which is a seat that no one runs for at all.

Four times in recent memory, a Marengo council seat drew zero candidates on election day: Ward 3 and Ward 4 in 2019, Ward 4 in 2021, and Ward 4 again in 2025. When no one files, voters never get a say. The mayor appoints someone and the council confirms the choice. Ward 4 has been filled that way five times since 2019. Its last genuinely contested race, with more names than seats on the ballot, was in 2017.

And it is not only the seats that go empty. Since 2009, forty-two ward seats have been up for election, and only thirteen of them drew a real contest. Twenty-five drew a single candidate, and four drew no one at all. In 2023, every race on the ballot was uncontested. Most of the people casting these tie-breaking, tax-setting votes were never chosen from a field, because no one stepped up to offer voters a choice.

Why It Matters

None of this is an accusation. Attendance and votes are public record, most members show up most of the time, and honest disagreement on a council is a healthy thing, not a failure. The point is simpler and larger than any one name. The empty chair, whether it is empty for a night, empty for months, or empty on the ballot itself, has quietly decided real things in this town. Your taxes. Your garbage contract. Whether the leaf vac comes in the fall.

Source: the City of Marengo's published council minutes, posted by year at cityofmarengo.com/agendas-minutes, and the McHenry County Clerk's official election canvass reports. Marengo Weekly reviewed every council roll-call vote from 2009 through this spring to find the ones a single empty seat could have changed, and the ties only the mayor could settle.