Lou Leone has worked in four states, and he says he has learned to tell the difference between a city that says it wants to grow and one that means it. He took the Monmouth city administrator job because he thinks Monmouth means it.
Leone joined Galesburg’s Morning News on Monday to talk about his first weeks on the job, what he is hearing from staff and residents, and where he thinks the city is headed. He replaces Lew Steinbrecher, who spent nine years as Monmouth’s city administrator.
“A lot of people put in their job descriptions or their brochures that they wanted to grow, and I’ve run into a few communities where it seems more like they had that in the brochure, but they weren’t showing it,” he said. “In my field, if you’re not growing, you’re dying is kind of the motto that we go by.”
Lou Leone joined Galesburg’s Morning News on Monday, July 27, 2026. Listen to the full interview below.
Monmouth’s new city administrator: what to know
- Leone’s first move is a budget review, aimed at freeing up money for a new fire truck and an additional firefighter.
- Aging water and sewer lines are his top infrastructure concern. He found brick sewer lines still in the ground.
- A proposed TIF district would buy a little more than nine acres and install infrastructure for 18 to 23 new homes. The council votes at its next meeting.
- On economic development, Leone says the city should connect businesses with local leaders rather than spend heavily to attract them.
- He says he returns every phone call and will visit residents at home if they can’t get to City Hall.
The budget comes first
Leone said his most immediate task is sitting down with the city budget to see where money can be freed up.
Near the top of the list: a new fire truck and an additional firefighter. He said the police department appears to be in good shape, with the right rotation for equipment.
Leone has spent more than a decade in public administration, working in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and Wisconsin. His approach to budgeting was shaped in Kiowa, Kansas, the smallest city he has run, on a total budget of about $3 million.
“You had to learn very quickly how to streamline the budget, get the most out of every revenue dollar that you get, to try to clean up the system, make it more efficient,” he said. “In each of my cities, I’ve always managed to be under budget as far as expenses and over in revenue at the same time.”
Water, sewer and brick
Leone said aging water and sewer lines are the least glamorous part of the job and among the most urgent.
“I know whenever we talk about water and sewer lines, it’s the less sexy part about city administration planning,” he said. “But it’s critical. If you don’t have good water coming through, if you don’t have the sewer lines fixed, it can create a nightmare.”
He said he has worked in communities with transite, an asbestos concrete, in their water lines, along with lead, galvanized and various plastic pipes. None of that has turned up in Monmouth so far.
What did surprise him were the brick sewer lines still in the ground.
The city is also working with the Illinois EPA and the Community Development Block Grant program on reimbursement to replant trees lost in a storm earlier this summer.
Nine acres and up to 23 homes
Leone said a housing study completed a few years ago confirmed what officials already suspected, and the city council is now weighing its response.
A proposed TIF district would buy a little more than nine acres and install the infrastructure to support between 18 and 23 new homes. A vote is expected at the council’s next meeting.
“This is something where the city, it needed to kind of take the first steps in order to encourage that development,” Leone said. “And then once you get it going, a lot of times that housing takes on its own momentum.”
Where the city does and doesn’t spend
On economic development, Leone said he sees the city as a connector rather than a funder. He has met with the Maple City Area Partnership and is working with the city’s IT staff on Monmouth’s marketing and social media presence.
“If it’s a matter of connecting a local leader with, say, a business, that’s a great middleman action for us to do,” he said. “But as far as dumping a lot of taxpayer funds into it, I’m not a big believer of that, and I don’t think very many communities are.”
He said business retention starts with one-on-one conversations about traffic patterns, road conditions and code enforcement around a business, and he has floated moving some city meetings into local restaurants.
‘The citizens are actually the bosses’
Leone said he has finished one-on-one interviews with most city staff, has met with about half the city council, and is now working through local leaders before he turns to walking the town.
He described his open-door policy as something closer to a standing offer.
“I serve at the pleasure of the council, but it’s the council that serves the community,” he said. “So really, it’s the citizens that are actually the bosses.”
Leone said he returns every phone call and has gone to residents’ homes when they could not get to City Hall during business hours.
“I can’t fix it if I don’t know it’s broke,” he said.
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