A Naperville City Council member faulted city staff Tuesday for not following council direction over a planned electricity procurement workshop.
“I hate to say this, but council sets direction for the city (and) staff follows that direction,” Councilman Ian Holzhauer said. “This, to me, is not an example of that.”
The remark emerged out of what was supposed to be a routine scheduling request at the council’s meeting Tuesday night. What ensued, however, was an argument over the city’s continued efforts to chart a path forward for its electricity grid.
At the tail end of the council’s agenda was a request from staff to approve the “city council meeting schedule for July, August and September 2025.” As part of that schedule, staff included a proposed date in July for the energy procurement workshop the council approved previously.
That workshop, per council direction, is set to be the first in a series of workshops on long-term energy options, concentrating on strategic objectives and excluding tactical decisions about any one specific option. But when the matter of scheduling the initial workshop came up Tuesday, discussion devolved from deciding timing to debating content.
Councilman Josh McBroom proposed in May that a workshop be held as an opportunity for the council to discuss energy procurement options before any of those options are off the table.
Naperville’s contract with its current electricity provider, the coal-reliant Illinois Municipal Electric Agency (IMEA), could expire as soon as 2035. Contract terms technically extend through 2040 but the city and IMEA both have the right to terminate it earlier with five years’ notice.
Though still at least 10 years’ out from possible expiration, IMEA — citing the need for long-term planning — gave Naperville and its 31 other members an April 30 deadline to decide if their contracts should be extended to 2055.
For more than a year and a half now, Naperville has been preparing to make a decision.
Naperville Electric Utility Director Brian Groth has said the offer for contract renewal has not closed. The IMEA Board of Directors is expected to vote later this month on formally extending the offer to August.
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As of Wednesday, 28 of IMEA’s 32 members had voted to extend their contracts with the agency, according to Groth. That includes Winnetka, which opted to do so Tuesday night.
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At a meeting earlier this month, Naperville officials took the idea of a workshop in a different direction, deciding that if the city holds sessions on its energy future, the focus should be purely strategic rather than centered on IMEA’s renewal request.
The start of those discussions is what staff were trying to schedule Tuesday. When City Manager Doug Krieger started to broach the matter, Holzhauer asked for clarification about what staff envisioned for the initial workshop.
Krieger said he and Groth intended to have the council hear from many of the experts and consultants who spoke to the city’s Public Utilities Advisory Board on the matter earlier this year. That would include Philadelphia-based Customized Energy Solutions, energy market experts, the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force and advisory board members, he said.
Upon further prompting from Holzhauer, Krieger also said that staff envisioned the workshop — on a high-level — going through each of the city’s energy procurement options, including the option of continuing with IMEA.
After Krieger’s overview, Holzhauer said staff’s vision was “substantively, significantly different than, I think, what we talked about.”
Krieger said, “The one thing that staff would like to do is keep all options on the table as it’s presented to council. … (We) wanted to be able to get to a point where we wouldn’t be excluding one of the potential options unless that was council’s direction.”
Later, during the new business portion of Tuesday’s meeting, Holzhauer called staff’s suggestion to schedule an initial workshop this summer “shoehorning in a meeting before an IMEA deadline to consider one, and only one, option,” adding “that is the opposite of what was requested.”
McBroom disagreed.
“I’m just going to call out this joke of a charade,” he said. “This is a deliberate attempt to eliminate an IMEA option. That’s all that’s going on here.”
McBroom said he did not agree to a workshop that did not engage the experts and consultants that taxpayer dollars paid for to help inform the city as it decides the outlook of its electric utility.
“And yes, I’m going to make you all vote on the IMEA contract,” he said. “It’s going to happen.”
Councilman Nate Wilson, who is the council’s PUAB liaison, said it was “wild” to him that “we seemingly don’t want to look at these issues.”
Councilman Benny White, addressing McBroom, said, “I’m not sitting here trying to kill the IMEA contract.” Rather, he said the “idea that’s been projected here is let’s find out what we want to do as a city, instead of just coming up with options when we haven’t … made a determination as far as what’s important to us.”
White said he won’t be pressured into making a decision on something that is 10 years out.
Holzhauer asked for a show of support from his fellow council members to agree on deciding at their July 15 meeting to schedule a workshop in September or later. As part of his request, Holzhauer also asked that all Naperville electric utility customers be notified of the workshop ahead of time.
Councilman Patrick Kelly said he doesn’t “really care all that much” when the workshop is held but that to him, it was “more important to have everyone aligned in terms what the substance, maybe not the outcome, but what the substance is going to be.” He recommended that staff have conversations with council members behind the scenes to discern expectations for the workshop’s agenda, whenever it takes place.
Ultimately, Holzhauer’s request failed, with only White raising his hand in support.
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