For the second straight year, a delegation of Galesburg community leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., to make the case for federal investment in local infrastructure — and Knox County Area Partnership for Economic Development President Ken Springer says the effort is paying off.
The four-person delegation — Springer, Knox College President C. Andrew McGadney, G&M Distributors’ Adam Vitale, and City of Galesburg Public Works Director Aaron Gavin — spent a day and a half in Washington in April meeting with federal legislators and agency officials. Springer noted that all four delegation members funded their own travel and volunteered their time.
“By the time we hit the ground in DC, project information is already in the hands of the staffers in those legislative offices,” Springer told WGIL. “We can come in, pick the conversation up — they will already have been briefed on the project.”
Ken Springer joined Galesburg’s Morning News on Monday, April 27. Listen to the full interview below:
Who they met and what they asked for
The delegation held face-to-face meetings with Senator Tammy Duckworth, Senator Dick Durbin, Congressman Eric Sorensen, and the legislative director for Representative Darin LaHood. They also met with five officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration — staffers who are directly involved in grading federal grant applications.
KCAP presented three projects for federal support: planning and preliminary engineering funding for the replacement of the South Street underpass, wellfield development to improve the city’s water quality, and construction funding for a new fleet maintenance facility.
The fleet maintenance facility has already cleared an early hurdle. As WGIL reported last week, Congressman Sorensen selected the project as one of his 20 congressionally directed spending priorities for fiscal year 2027. Springer said the Washington meetings helped build the case for that selection — and that the conversations with the senators on the delegation’s other projects are still ongoing.
“We really think our projects are strong,” Springer said. “We’re hopeful that we’ll get funding on both of the CDS requests that we put in.”
Senators Durbin and Duckworth are expected to release their own community project lists later this spring or early summer.
A long-term strategy
Springer said two years of consistent Washington advocacy is beginning to produce dividends — not just in project selections, but in the relationships being built with federal staffers and legislators.
“The conversations picked up this year where we had sort of left them off in 2025,” he said. “The familiarity was there.”
KCAP works with Mercury Public Affairs to navigate the federal funding process, develop position documents, and identify which projects are better suited for congressionally directed spending versus competitive federal grant programs.
“There’s trillions in federal funding every budget cycle,” Springer said. “The smart communities are the ones that are going out and really pushing to bring their share of those tax dollars back to their districts.”
Growth is Galesburg’s story
Beyond the Washington trip, Springer discussed a new national communications initiative KCAP has launched called “Growth is Galesburg’s Story” — a series of profiles designed to reach housing developers, companies, and site selectors outside the region.
The series highlights major economic development wins including Western Smokehouse Partners, Burcon NutraScience, Galesburg’s top-25 ranking in Site Selection Magazine’s micropolitan rankings for 2025, and the national attention generated by Judy’s Cafe.
“People are talking about Galesburg in a different way in 2026 than maybe they were 10 years ago,” Springer said. “We wanted to capture that and tell a story about how cool that is.”
Springer said the series is aimed specifically at outside audiences — developers and site selectors in Chicago, Champaign, Iowa, and elsewhere who may not be fully aware of the community’s recent growth.
“Economic development is a momentum game,” he said. “You get one deal done, then that becomes the talking point for the next company. Over time you start to build this inertia.”
