DeKalb Times

Dixon Mayor Liandro “Li” Arenallo is already well into the planning stages of making use of two State of Illinois grants for infrastructure that were recently green-lighted for the city.

“The city of Dixon has been committed to stretching local tax dollars as far as possible,” Arenallo said. “By building a great development team and planning ahead, we have consistently won grants towards economic development and key infrastructure goals. Today’s grants represent two more major wins and show our community is taking exactly the right approach.”

News of the Fast Track Capital Grant and the Opportunity Zone Grant being steered to Dixon were recently announced by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The additional $2.72 million in state funding will be added to the $3.4 million the city is set to receive from the street resurfacing program. Altogether, the current street resurfacing project will now total a record $6.1 million in street improvements.

City officials also recently signed off on a 25-acre development in the Interstate 88 corridor known as the “Gateway Project,” which is expected to produce at least $1 million in new annual tax revenues and over 600 jobs by focusing on areas such as hotels, fueling stations, restaurants and other outlet developments.

Since returning from a yearlong deployment overseas as part of the Army Reserves, Arenallo hasn’t been shy about voicing his thoughts on the policies and actions he feels are in the best interest of the people of Dixon.

Arenallo recently took on Pritzker and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, chastising him over what he sees as his broad-based approach and the way he feels it hampers some parts of the state.

“We can’t just keep losing our small businesses,” Arenallo told the DeKalb Times. “It’s only going to make it that much harder to recover. Many small business owners already feel like they’re being targeted in favor of bigger corporations and something like that may add to that.”