The Aurora City Council has given the green light to two facility improvement projects that together will cost the city roughly $1 million.
One project will replace the roofs of two downtown city buildings, including the fifth floor of City Hall, while the other will renovate a room within the Aurora Police Department headquarters building to expand the department’s digital forensic program.
Both items were approved at a meeting of the Aurora City Council on Tuesday, specifically as a part of the meeting’s consent agenda, which is typically reserved for routine or non-controversial items that are all approved with one vote instead of needing to vote on and talk about each individual item.
The Aurora Police Department’s digital forensic equipment is currently located within a small storage closet area, but the newly-approved project will move that equipment to a different room with the correct amount of space for the equipment and workstations, Aurora Police Lt. Tom McNamara said at a committee meeting last month.
The $312,503 buildout would convert an under-used conference room into a space capable of handling the electronic equipment, plus would install a small server room and cubicles where forensic investigators can work. The police department currently has one digital forensics investigator, is hiring for another and is expected to request a digital forensics analyst position through the 2026 budget process.
Digital forensics is important because nearly every investigation these days includes extensive digital data from cellphones, laptops and even vehicles which now have built-in computers, according to McNamara’s presentation last month.
He said the digital forensic program has expanded over the past several years, so while the small space originally worked for the needed equipment, the program has now outgrown that original space.
Some aldermen, both at the committee meeting last month and at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, had concerns over how the collected data was being handled by the police department.
McNamara said Tuesday that all data collected through investigations is treated just like any other evidence, with strict limits on who can access it and how long it can be kept. Plus, the server to be installed in the new room would be air gapped — or physically separated — from other city networks, making it harder to hack, he said.
Just this year, the Aurora Police Department has collected 25 terabytes of data, and the existing server has run out of space, according to McNamara.
Construction of the project is expected to cost $185,990 and be completed by Carmichael Construction, with the rest of the cost going to furnish the room. Asset forfeiture funds will pay for the project.
The other project approved by the Aurora City Council on Tuesday will replace the roofs of the fifth floor of City Hall, at 44 E. Downer Place, and the Development Service Center, at 77 S. Broadway, for a price of $687,300.
After a series of leak repairs, both roofs were evaluated in 2024 and found to have significant deterioration, according to a staff report about the project.
Both roofs will be completely torn off and replaced, Aurora Chief Public Facilities Officer Jim Birchall said at a meeting last month.
Since there are so many city departments and divisions located within the Development Services Center, the project will “clean that building up for many years to come,” according to Birchall. He said the fifth floor City Hall roof replacement is important because the city recently invested $1.5 million in the building to upgrade City Council chambers and remodel the building’s fifth floor.
Equipment that is no longer needed on the Development Service Center’s roof will be removed, Birchall said at the time, leaving a clean slate for whatever the city may want to do there, including installing solar panels. The City Hall roof has I-beams that run across it but “really don’t go to anything,” so those will also be removed, he said.
The roof replacement project will be completed by Bennett & Brosseau Roofing of Romeoville, which offered the city the lowest price for the project while meeting all requirements through a competitive bidding process.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
