Artists conception of a $35 million jail expansion set to open in 2018.

“Challenges are constantly looming,” is how DeKalb Co. Board President Mark Pietrowski refers to the future of DuPage Co. government.

Trying to predict and prepare for those challenges is been the board’s mission last year and will be again in 2017, he said.

Pietrowski, 34, was sworn in for a second two-year term as Board President this month. He joined the board at age 30.

“I’m one of the younger county board presidents in the state, but I’m not the youngest DeKalb Co. board member,” he said.

County Board president Mark Pietrowski

Preserving a $100 million budget and avoiding dipping into reserves was one of the pro-active steps the board took in 2016.

“We are trying to never let the reserves fall below 25 percent of the budget,” Pietrowski said.

In 2016, for the first time in several years, the board presented a balanced budget with no red ink. That required $1.5-$2 million in cuts and the board plans to repeat the process next year, he added.

“We’re still faced with issues of revenues still down since the recession as expenditures as salaries increase,” Pietrowski said.

DeKalb County depends on $800,000 from the state of Illinois, itself in a financial mess.

“If we didn’t receive motor fuel tax revenue from the airlines headquartered in Sycamore, we’d had a hold of $2.5 million,” he added.

United Airlines was criticized in 2013 for negotiating fuel sales in Sycamore to avoid paying a then-9.5 percent Cook County sales tax. That tax has now increased to 10 percent. In a 2013, lawsuit, Cook Co. government officials and the Regional Transportation Authority called the United Airlines and American Airlines Sycamore storefronts  “sham offices.” But the process in Sycamore, with county tax revenue, remains.

Public safety is the biggest portion of the DeKalb budget, Pietrowski said, especially considering the new $35 million county jail expansion. The new jail will have a 163-bed capacity, up from 89, according to the DeKalb County website. In 2012, the daily jail population averaged 136 inmates.

“We were told by the state inspectors that our facility was not adequate,” Pietrowski said. “We had gone so many years failing to address [overcrowding] and we knew the state would come in and dictate what we had to do [to address the problem]. So we were proactive and did it ourselves.”

Pietrowski said the DeKalb Co. Courts are also working with diversion programs and reexamining cash bail as a way to keep the jail population lower.

“The new jail needed to be done, regardless of our attitudes toward justice and jail reform,” he said. “The hope is that the expanded jail could last for 50 years as we continue to try to reduce overcrowding.”

Jail construction in Sycamore, which began this summer, is being financed by bonds and $600,000 worth of waste tipping fees at the Cortland area landfill. The project will be complete in Spring of 2018, county website documents say.

In 2016, the county opened the DeKalb County Business Incubator in the DeKalb Community Outreach building.

“It’s low-rent office space for entrepreneurs or anyone in the area who wants help starting their business,” Pietrowski said.

So far the building houses offices for several small businesses as well as the community garden.

“We’re trying to get Northern Illinois University students in there to help them start their businesses,” Pietrowski added.

Workshops and classes pertaining to small business operation are being planned, he said.

Another county development for this year is the conversion of a brand new forest preserve on the floodplain site of the former Evergreen Village trailer park outside Sycamore.

Flood recovery funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paid for the relocation of trailer park residents to permanent housing, Pietrowski said. The new 59-acre site includes a fishing pond and parking lot.  In 2016, the Great Western bicycle trail was extended through the site.

“It’s the closest forest preserve to a population base in our county, just a hop, skip and jump away from downtown Sycamore,” Pietrowski said. “It’s a really beautiful area and it gives lots of recreation opportunities to our residents.”

Pietrowski works as an administrator at NIU, but has also taught journalism and public relations on campus.

As a Kishwaukee College student, he got involved in student government, and then ended up on the community college board of trustees. In 2010, after graduate school, he “got back into politics” when the county was voting to expand a landfill. He lost in 2010, but was top vote-getter two years later in 2012.

The board voted him chair unanimously.

“Even though I’m a Democrat in a very Republican district, the county board has worked hard to create a culture that is not contentious and partisan,” Pietrowski said. “We’ve been able to put those differences aside and work together towards common goals.”

— Balanced budgets, jail addition and green space highlight 2016 for DeKalb —