The Centralia City Council has hired Kory Smith to begin working full-time as city attorney. Smith previously worked for Centralia as city manager before departing in December 2024 and taking a job with the Illinois Municipal League. Current city manager Galen Mahle, who filled the vacancy left by Smith, said that bringing him onto the city payroll would benefit the city by providing more efficient legal work without raising costs for the city.
“It led into a conversation of whether having a full-time city attorney on the city payroll as an employee would make sense,” Mahle said. “We went back and forth on what that would look like. We’ve been talking about this for months… We feel like having someone under the same roof as the administration and the department heads will allow for a more efficient way to get our legal services met.”
Mahle said that paying a law firm for the same amount of hours Smith will be working as a full-time employee would cost over $400,000. Smith’s salary of $120,000 plus benefits is roughly in line with what the city already spends annually on legal services.
Smith said he was excited to begin work as the city attorney.
Council member Bunny Garrett gave the lone no vote on the motion, saying she wanted to table the hiring of Kory Smith for a future meeting.
In other items at the meeting, the council approved the temporary use of Centralia City Hall by the Illinois Secretary of State as an alternative office location while its DMV facility in Centralia undergoes renovations. The use period will be Monday through Friday from October 2 to October 23.
An engineering agreement was approved with Gonzalez Companies for the required inspection of the Raccoon Lake dam. The agreement includes a fee of $2,250 for the inspection plus other services and fees as necessary to complete the inspections.
The city accepted a proposal from Ironhorse, Inc. to perform maintenance on the railroad track spur at the Industrial Park. The project costs $43,297 and includes the rehabilitation of 400 track feet north of Hawkins Switch.
In his report, the city manager noted that Centralia has received its fourth cycle of Lead Service Line Inventory grants and plans to apply for a fifth cycle this fall. Once the inventory is completed, the city can apply for a Lead Service Line Replacement grant. Mahle says the city plans to apply for that grant in March. Lead service line replacement would be a multi-year project with a multi-million dollar price tag, supported by grant funding. The full scope of the project will be better understood once the inventory is completed.
