The City of Monmouth is seeking bidders for the construction of the hangar at the airport that burned down in October of 2019.
The city had been waiting on approval by the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics Division on the building plans for the new hangar, having been notified earlier this month that the project could move forward.
City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher says that it took so long for the hangar plans to be approved because of the pandemic and lack of reviewing engineers.
“The number of aeronautic engineers available to review plans and what have you really extended the review time period,” Steinbrecher said in a Tuesday conversation with WGIL. “So, we’re just thankful that we finally have it and we think the timing is good. Contractors are probably looking to lineup their projects for this construction season.”
Bids for construction are expected to be approved at the April 19th city council meeting with construction to start a few weeks later. Steinbrecher expressed hope that the new hangar would be open by the end of the summer.
Also looking ahead to a future meeting, Aldermen next month will consider approving the city’s budget.
The total budget comes to over $22 million which City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher called a status-quo budget with no increases or decreases in personnel in all departments, maintaining municipal services at current levels.
One area that is seeing an increase is the city’s premiums for property and liability insurance coverage and the worker’s compensation policy, increasing by a substantial amount.
Additionally, Steinbrecher says there are unfunded mandates the city is responsible for. “We are still mandated by the Illinois [Environmental Protection Agency] to provide them with samples to ensure that there is no contamination leaking out of the landfill — which there isn’t. But, they continue to want us to monitor that before they officially allow us to close the landfill. So we’ve got some of those kinds of costs.”
Other unfunded mandates Steinbrecher would highlight includes an Illinois EPA phosphorus reduction plan and discharge optimization plan, totaling an estimated $90,000.
Additionally, the city is establishing an expenditure line item in Municipal Operations to fund deferred maintenance and repair costs for multiple municipal properties.
