Jody Wallnick, director of Kane County Environmental and Water Resources, presented the department’s 2026 budget to the Development Committee Aug. 1 and described proposed changes to stormwater fees, new wetland-bank construction, and planning for a regional drainage project at Big Rock.

Wallnick said fees for stormwater services have not been increased since 2019 and that state law and the county’s stormwater ordinance require fees to be tied to actual staff costs. “Under the stormwater ordinance, we are required, as I’ve mentioned previously, to utilize actual staff, dollars. We can’t just randomly select fees as per the state’s attorney,” she told the committee.

The department proposed fee changes for stormwater and a new fee for zoning-related work performed by the department; Wallnick said the combined, conservative revenue estimate from those changes is about $13,685 for 2026 and that the department will return with a formal resolution in September. She added the department’s overall general-fund numbers for 2026 are nearly unchanged from 2024, with a reported net difference of roughly $2,450 when accounting for planned changes and transfers.

Wallnick described special-revenue funds tied to stormwater and wetlands: a fee-in-lieu of detention fund (about $500,000 current balance, per her estimate) that will help pay for regional detention work at the Big Rock site along Route 30; and a wetland fee-in-lieu fund she said currently exceeds $1 million and is planned to finance a proposed wetland bank construction in 2026.

She said part of the county’s ARPA and riverboat-related grants are funding floodplain analysis and piping work related to the Big Rock regional detention project and that the fee-in-lieu funds will be used in combination with cost-share arrangements with local partners.

Wallnick also described the county’s electric aggregation fund balance (about $600,000) and the landfill fund (just above $5 million). She warned that leachate disposal costs are rising because of PFAS-related treatment issues and that long-term landfill maintenance and potential remediation will require proactive fund management.

On revenue conservatism, Wallnick said, “I do feel like these numbers are very conservative ... I didn’t wanna overshoot, being the first year.” The committee asked follow-up questions about fund balances, and Wallnick provided the dollar-range estimates above. The committee did not adopt fee changes at the meeting; Wallnick said a formal fee-resolution will be presented in September for committee and board consideration.