Aurora Mayor John Laesch is looking to replace the city’s chief legal officer and hire for a newly-created role focused on sustainability.
Under the leadership of the new mayor, who took office last month, the city has already hired a number of new employees
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in upper city management to replace those who resigned or retired as former Mayor Richard Irvin left office. Set to go before the Aurora City Council for approval on Tuesday are two new hires: Yordana Wysocki as the city’s next corporation counsel and Alison Lindburg as the city’s first-ever director of sustainability.The city’s current corporation counsel, Richard Veenstra, has been with the city since 2017. In 2022, he switched from being a city employee to a contract worker, a move that he previously said allowed him “more flexibility” professionally.
Wysocki, who Laesch has appointed to replace Veenstra pending City Council approval, has nearly 20 years of experience in local government law and specializes in litigation management and strategies, regulatory compliance and employment relations, according to her resume.
She currently works at Hervas, Condon & Bersani, P.C., a law firm in Itasca that specializes in local government law and litigation. There, she represents and advises local governments as general counsel, conducts employment misconduct investigations and handles a caseload of 10-15 litigation cases, among other things, her resume shows.
In addition, Wysocki is the incoming chair of the Illinois State Bar Association’s Local Government Section Council, which she previously held other roles on, according to her resume. She previously has been involved in other organizations including the Legacy Project, which promotes women leadership in local government, her resume said.
If her appointment to corporation counsel is approved by the Aurora City Council at its meeting Tuesday, Wysocki will serve as the city’s chief legal officer and will lead the law department.
Plus, she will be expected to provide day-to-day legal advice and counsel to elected officials and upper city management, review contracts and other legal agreements along with proposed ordinances, draft and negotiate agreements on behalf of the city, issue legal opinions, represent the city’s interests to other local governments and represent the city in legal actions, among other things, according to the corporation counsel’s job description.
The other new hire the Aurora City Council is set to vote on Tuesday is for the newly-created director of sustainability role.
Lindburg, who Laesch has appointed to the new role pending City Council approval, currently works as the director of building codes and policy at the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. In that role, she currently works with several states and their local governments to move toward decarbonization through energy efficiency policies like energy codes, and she leads research analysis around decarbonization and energy efficiency in buildings, among many other things, her resume shows.
She also currently serves on various boards and commissions including the Illinois Energy Code Advisory Council, the Illinois Building Energy Hub Advisory Board, the Chicago Sustainable Development Policy Committee and the International Code Council Sustainability Membership Council, of which she is the chair, according to her resume.
Previously, Lindburg also served on the International Code Council 2024’s International Energy Code Council as a voting member of the Residential Consensus Committee as well as the Envelope and Embodied Energy Subcommittee, her resume said.
If Lindburg’s appointment is approved by the Aurora City Council, she would lead the city’s sustainability efforts through “strategic planning, innovative programming and regional partnerships,” according to the proposed director of sustainability job description.
The six-page job description highlights many things Lindburg would be expected to tackle, including but not limited to developing a city-wide sustainability plan, creating a “public bank or green investment mechanism to finance small- and large-scale sustainability projects,” partnering with outside organizations to help train and certify those who want to “enter the energy efficiency world,” helping to develop a local “Passive House” laboratory and potentially helping to plan the city’s possible eventual switch to using Lake Michigan as its water supply.
Plus, Lindburg would also be expected to propose new city ordinances, or update existing ordinances, for environmental sustainability and to push for the approval of local building codes that go above the baseline in areas of sustainability, the job description said. In total, the job description lists over 30 “essential functions of the job” across five different categories.
Sustainability, particularly through green building, was a large part of Laesch’s campaign for mayor.
During the campaign, he told The Beacon-News that as mayor he would work to attract higher-paying jobs by “positioning Aurora for the green collar economy that’s coming” at least in part by encouraging businesses that create innovative building materials to move to Aurora. Later, when at his inauguration speech, Laesch said the city would be looking to partner with the local CEJA Workforce Hub to help train students for that coming “green collar economy.”
The appointments of both Lindburg and Wysocki were on the agenda of the Aurora City Council’s Committee of the Whole meeting last Tuesday, but aldermen did not discuss the appointments publicly at that time.