Remarks by Mary Gibson
39 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
- Play at 24:35
“No, thank you. I appreciate Councilman Wilson's work and collaboration on this. I appreciate everybody's patience. One of the things I didn't know as a resident of South Naperville was that I was hearing that the asphalt plants closed down during cold weather, and I imagine both of those lanes south of 95th closed, and that won't be the issue. We'll be opening back up two-way traffic while the asphalt plants are closed. That was great news to me and my neighbors. I think we were all under the assumption that it was going to be CLOSED ALL WINTER. SO I THINK GOOD NEWS, AND I APPRECIATE STAFF'S…”
City Council · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 27:00
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 27:42
“OK. So when we're talking about our options later in the presentation and the options we've been talking about before, and we're talking about the need for staff or administrative This is essentially what IMEA did for us for several years.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 28:04
“So as a city, we have a history, though, of splitting up the energy procurement with the administrative, if necessary.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 28:25
“Okay, and so just to clarify the ComEd part, so this timeline starts in 2007. Prior to that, we're ComEd customers.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 28:33
“And then my other follow-up was you were talking about the PJM capacity concerns for 2030, 2035. Would where we get our energy from impact whether or not PJM I don't know if brownout's the right term, affected our power supply. So the reliability of the energy Naperville gets from PJM and the grid, is that dependent on whether we're with IMEA, a joint action agency, any of these other options?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 29:11
“Okay. So IMEA wouldn't necessarily cut Naperville's power in 2030 if there were outages to the grid based on where we're sending our money for the power?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 36:29
“Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Jane. As she mentioned, we talked about this a lot. And particularly, I appreciated Councilwoman Jane's background coming from District 204 board. As some of you may know, I was on the Park Board previously. And at both of those levels of government, I'd say we really worked a lot on strategic planning and vision and mission. And one of the things I took away from my time at the Park District is that a good vision mission statement is short. You want everybody in the organization to be able to say it at the drop of a hat. At the Park District, it…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 52:26
“THANK YOU, MAYOR. I AGREE. I'M GOING TO ECHO COUNCILMAN HOLZHAUER'S comments, affordability, obviously essential to bringing businesses, also reliability. And I think maybe even the tension between those two, if we have really cheap energy but it's not reliable, that's just as likely to drive away businesses and residents and people that want to be in Naperville. So personally, when I look at vision statements like this, I see five pillars. I don't see any hierarchy in the way they're ordered. I think moving it around and explicitly saying we're putting them in hierarchy, I think they work…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:19:36
“Thank you. I think what I had to say largely, Mayor, is what Councilwoman Jane just said. I'm concerned that the next step slide, 22, says direct staffed further research. And I feel like there's some really big steps in the middle of the decision framework. While I recognize that there's bullets in this presentation, I think the next step is that we need to talk about the decision framework as a council. Because coming up with the five pillars tonight even highlighted that we all have different understandings of each of those pillars. So I just want to make sure that we aren't just taking…”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:21:02
“OKAY, GREAT. THANK YOU. AND TO THAT POINT, YOU KNOW, FOR THE FOUR OPTIONS, YES. The only one I would be comfortable eliminating now is the sale of electric utility because that seems like a no-brainer. It's the opposite of local control and flexibility. For the other three, I hear your points about asset ownership without asset ownership, but I'm not comfortable eliminating any of those until we've, as a council, come to a consensus on the decision framework.”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:21:52
“And just for my thinking going forward, because these options, we would have more control and flexibility on it. THE OPTION WE CHOOSE EVEN INITIALLY IN 2035 COULD BE DIFFERENT FROM THE OPTION WE CHOOSE IN 2040, 2045, 2050, CORRECT?”
City Council · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:11:07
“THANK YOU, MAYOR. I'D LIKE TO START OFF BY SAYING THIS SLIDE 10 IS AN AWESOME GRAPHIC. REALLY HELPFUL. I KNOW I SENT THROUGH A LOT OF QUESTIONS KIND OF IN A Q&A FORMAT. And this sort of holistic view for projects is just really helpful going forward. And great question by Councilman Kelly about projected changes in cost. I hadn't thought of that. Just in general, I like this slide a lot. I was hoping we could level set about water main replacements. If you could just remind me, kind of standard is the goal of, what, 7 to 10 miles a year is what we've been hoping for?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:12:34
“Okay, thank you. And Director Blanis, what's like the lifespan of a standard 75 to 100?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:12:57
“OK, thank you. Because I do notice, I don't know if we can go to slide 13. This looks like a lot of water main replacement, and it absolutely is. But I also noticed that it's not a whole map of our city. Lots of areas to the south, to the west, and this is covering six years of plans. So I'm just throwing it on our radar that there's a lot of the city that this is coming up when we're talking about maintenance and increasing. And then on the next slide, slide 14, probably a very dumb question. Sewer main is different than a water main, correct? So this East Highland sewer main, 1990s, that's…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:14:16
“Okay, so presumably the neighborhoods that have been built later, say in the 80s and 90s, further to the south, are better sewer materials and won't need to be replaced?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:14:44
“Okay. All right. Thanks. That's really helpful.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:14:56
“Yeah, just in general, looking if we're replacing sewer main replacements that had been fixed in the 1990s at $4.3 million. There's a lot of new sewers that were put in around that time, too, and I'm concerned that that means we're going to have to start replacing those soon as well.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:25:33
“Yeah, thank you, Mayor. The tollway substation upgrades, how does the amount of work we've put into that substation compare to the substation at the other 15 around the city?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:26:16
“As a follow-up, would you say most of that works to meet current need or expected increased need in the future?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:53:51
“Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to go back to the neighbor settlement feasibility study. The $145,000 for this year and the neighbor settlement CIP, which is in the agenda for next week's settlement meeting, there's an additional $223,000 for a feasibility study. So if we just speak, is that next year's expense necessary to make this year's expense useful?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:55:47
“Okay, so the feasibility study is two separate studies, one for 145,000 and then in 28, a second part of the feasibility study for 223,000? Or it's a larger feasibility study for 372,000?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:56:23
“Okay. So if we spent the $145,000 this year and next year we decide not to spend the additional $227,000, does that make the first $145,000 useless?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:56:43
“So even if this expense is just at $145,000 and next year's is foregone.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:56:48
“I'm sorry, because I said useless, and you said absolutely. So I just wanted to make sure we.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026