ROCHELLE — Recent and future federal changes originating from the White House are not expected to have significant impacts on the City of Rochelle and its operations, City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh told the News-Leader on March 26 in a conversation about federal funding cuts and potential tariffs. 

The city receives federal funding for its Rochelle Municipal Utilities water and wastewater department projects through the state’s revolving loan program. Those federal dollars go to the state and then through the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for loans to communities for water and wastewater projects, such as those RMU has planned. Current planned funding is not in danger, Fiegenschuh said. 

“We were a little concerned when they had that federal funding freeze,” Fiegenschuh said. “But I do think a lot of lawmakers started to hear from communities about projects they had planned with that funding. Everyone agrees we need potable water and flushable toilets. I am not as concerned about federal funding. I do think maybe in the long run they might cut back on the program, which would just mean there's less dollars available. I'm not concerned about the freezing of those dollars. There are some political things going on that they're targeting. Having a water line that brings clean, potable water to a house has nothing to do with DEI or any terms like that.”

RMU Superintendent of Water/Water Reclamation Adam Lanning said that he assumes a reduction in budgetary spending by the federal EPA will further reduce the availability of principal forgiveness loans for the city, which brings about uncertainty on funding future water projects. The executive action on the issue affected over 50,000 municipal water jobs nationwide, Lanning said. 

The city also has federal funding planned for improvements to the railroad system it owns. Fiegenschuh said due to the nature of the work being hard infrastructure, he does not have much concern that the project will be affected. 

“I do think those dollars will be more limited in the future,” Fiegenschuh said. “I am not concerned about our current rail projects. We have these grants guaranteed and I'm confident the dollars will come in. They may not come in as quickly as we want, but I think they'll come in.”

When potential changes to federal funding arose, the city did contact U.S. Congressman Darin LaHood’s office to make it known how important those funds were to RMU and its railroad. That was when funds were cut before the courts put a stay on the matter and the decision was reversed within a week and funding started flowing again. 

On the topic of potential future tariffs on products from foreign countries, Fiegenschuh said one potential concern he has is purchasing electrical equipment for RMU. 

“Transformers are only made in America up to a certain size,” Fiegenschuh said. “If there are larger projects, some of those transformers may come from another country including China. If tariffs are being placed on China and the only place you can get them is China, then you're just going to pay the price plus the tariff rate. That is a concern. If we operated our organization worried about every decision that's made outside of our purview, we wouldn't be able to function. We just continue to function as normal and as issues develop, we deal with them. We'll deal with this. I do think maybe the tariffs could affect us depending on the size of transformers that we might need to buy.” 

Potential tariffs could be added to a list of supply chain issues that the City of Rochelle has encountered since the COVID-19 pandemic including higher prices and longer lead times to receive equipment. 

Fiegenschuh said equipment and supplies for RMU’s electric and water department would be items most likely to be impacted by something like tariffs. Those are the items the city buys most with the highest price points. 

“Most of what we actually spend our money on is staffing, salaries and benefits,” Fiegenschuh said. “There's no tariffs on people. And then it's infrastructure. Things like asphalt are bought locally. When I think of what could be impacted by supply chain issues or tariffs, it would be any type of equipment for our utilities that we can't get locally and have to buy overseas or things that are in high demand and take a long time to get. Those are our concerns and where we'd be most impacted.”

Working through the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy prepared the city for today’s climate and a potential issue like tariffs, Fiegenschuh said. RMU saw items that once took three months to receive increase to 9-12-month lead times. Inventory work became more complicated and a fine line to walk, he said. 

“Our utility departments do a great job of planning ahead,” Fiegenschuh said. “COVID-19 was a great lesson in asset management. We manage through change. We've actually been managing through change since 2008 when we had the Great Recession. That's why it's so important to keep elected officials in the know and have a really good staff around you so you have a lot of good ideas coming to the table to solve problems.”