Litchfield Council Creates $110,000 Public Works Director Position

Article Summary: The Litchfield City Council on Thursday, July 2, 2026, approved a resolution creating a full-time director of public works position with a salary of $110,000 for fiscal year 2027, with city officials arguing the post will pay for itself by reducing costly construction change orders.

Public Works Director Key Points:

• Salary set at $110,000 for FY2027, funded from general funds, with annual increases matching other non-bargaining employees and three weeks of vacation.
• The director will oversee the street, lake, water and sewer departments and lead long-range capital planning; existing division heads remain in place.
• Absent Alderman Bob Garcia submitted a letter, read aloud at the meeting, formally endorsing Dominic Maza for the job.
• The council took up hiring a candidate for the position after entering executive session later the same night.

LITCHFIELD — The Litchfield City Council on Thursday, July 2, 2026, voted to create a full-time director of public works position at a salary of $110,000 for fiscal year 2027, adding a department-head layer that city officials said is needed to coordinate infrastructure projects and rein in construction change orders that have repeatedly pushed street work over budget.

The resolution, brought forward by Alderman Josh Hughes under the administration heading, passed on a roll-call vote with no members voting no. It creates the position and sets the salary; the resolution recites that general funds are available and that future increases will track those of other non-bargaining employees.

The council took the vote roughly 40 minutes after approving $130,062.72 in change orders for a single street reconstruction project — a juxtaposition Mayor Jacob Fleming raised directly from the chair.

“You know, his salary on there, which is coming up, is roughly $110,000,” Fleming said during the earlier change-order discussion. “Well, this was $130,000. If you look at almost every council agenda that we have, there’s lots of change orders.” He said the position would “more than pay for himself” if it reduced the volume of unforeseen work, and pledged that the city would track change-order totals over time and show residents the comparison.

A New Layer, Not a Replacement

City Administrator Breann Vazquez told the council the role is standard for municipalities of Litchfield’s size and said it would not displace the existing street and lake superintendents.

“There’s been some concern of what about our street superintendent, what about our lake superintendent,” she said. “Those division heads are staying in place. This position is a higher level of support to oversee those functions, make sure that the projects are being coordinated properly, make sure that they have the administrative need.”

The most important function, she said, is capital planning. “This person will be roadmapping what the next 10, 15 years look like as far as infrastructure upgrades go for the city of Litchfield.”

According to the agenda packet, the director will perform capital improvement planning for city infrastructure, manage projects and provide oversight to the public works departments. The position comes with three weeks of vacation — the same package the council recently approved for the fire chief — with all other paid time off accrued under the city’s personnel manual. The director will report to the city administrator, and department heads will report to the director.

Asked how council members should route constituent complaints once the director is in place, Vazquez said the existing channel stays open. “The council can still direct any issues to me and then I’ll delegate to Dominic as necessary,” she said, adding that funneling concerns through the administrator’s office “will just help all of us stay on the same page.”

Letter From an Absent Alderman

Vazquez read into the record a letter from Alderman Bob Garcia, who was absent from the meeting and who wrote that he was at the University of Mississippi attending orientation with his oldest granddaughter. She said she was reading it in open session rather than after executive session because “executive session can be long and not everyone sticks around for it.”

In the letter, Garcia wrote that “with all of the difficulties the city has had with public [works] in recent years, it would serve this city well to have one individual overseeing all of the projects that will help keep everything on schedule.”

“I am formally endorsing Dominic Maza as the public works director,” Garcia wrote. “I believe this is a critical role for our city and I am confident that Dominic possesses the leadership, expertise, and dedication needed to serve effectively.” The letter cited military service and experience managing a multi-million dollar business.

Vazquez said the salary figure was set after a study of comparable positions in the area.

Skepticism, Then Support

At least one council member said publicly they had started out opposed.

“I honestly was not for this position at the beginning, because we all hear city hall’s top-heavy, there’s too much administration,” one council member said. “But if this person can stop these change orders that we keep having project after project after project, I think it will be worth it.”

Vazquez said residents who saw the daily volume of concerns passing through the administration office “would see that this position is needed.” Fleming noted the city runs a roughly $37 million budget with fewer than 70 full-time employees.

Council members tied the position to flooding and sewer capacity problems of recent years. “We can’t just go in and dig all the sewer pipes up and fix it overnight,” one member said. “But if we don’t set that plan in motion for the next 20 to 25 years, that is going to be on this council’s back.”

Fleming said much of Litchfield’s underground infrastructure was built 80 to 100 years ago and that the problem is regional. He said the new director would report to the council publicly on infrastructure the same way the ordinance officer did earlier in the meeting.

The council then voted to enter executive session under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, 5 ILCS 120/2, citing closed-session minutes review, personnel matters, litigation and the setting of a price for the sale or lease of city-owned property. The posted agenda listed two items of new business to follow the closed session: approval of executive session minutes from June 18, 2026, and a motion to approve the hire of a candidate for director of public works. No formal action can be taken in executive session; the available recording ends as the room was cleared, and the outcome of the hiring vote is not reflected in the materials reviewed for this story.