The city council first heard about EAC’s plans to consider changes to the current burning ordinance at the July 27 Community Development and Planning Committee meeting. At that time, Dave Leonard from the EAC stated he had received complaints about the city’s current open burning ordinance.
Leonard indicated the purpose of the public input process is merely to open up the issue for discussion to see if there are reasons to make changes.
Alderman Matthew Wiesbrock disagreed with Aschauer’s attempt to block the public input process, stating that those who oppose open burning have valid reasons to counter the ordinance as well as a right to the public process.
“This does not mean . . . I don’t think they’d ever get a vote from me at this point, that we would ever stop fires, but there are some situations that need to be looked into,” said Wiesbrock.
The council then accepted the Community Development Committee’s recommendation and voted to allow the EAC to begin the process of determining if changes to the open burning ordinance are warranted. Aldermen Aschauer and Fred Bevier were the only members who voted against the recommendation.
However, Aschauer did convince his fellow council members to postpone approving Strand Associates Inc. as the city’s representative to the DuPage County’s West Branch of the DuPage River watershed planning update study.
Strand had been hired by the city after last year’s September flooding to study why Warrenville flooded and how to prevent future flooding. Mike Waldron, a representative from Strand, presented the results of the study at the July 27 Community Development and Planning Committee meeting.
At the August 3 city council meeting, Aschauer stated he, Alderman Bevier, and Community Development Director Ron Mentzer had a scheduled meeting with Strand the next day (August 4) to discuss flooding issues that were not addressed at the July 27 meeting.
After Mentzer stated that postponing the vote two weeks until the next regular city council meeting would have no negative consequences on the city’s involvement with the county’s new watershed study, the council unanimously approved Aschauer’s motion.
