Check our work.

Your bill, water, and lead service lines

• 14,085 confirmed lead service lines, 452 galvanized, 11,534 non-lead, and 29,304 of unknown material. City of Rockford Water Division service line inventory, completed and reported August 2024.
• About 4,400 lines replaced since 2017; 850 replaced in 2025; roughly 3,000 a year needed to meet the deadline. City of Rockford Water Division, reported March 2026.
• Every lead line out of the ground by November 1, 2037, with the compliance date falling in November 2027. U.S. EPA, Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, issued October 8, 2024.
• The city water rate rose 9% in 2025. City of Rockford water rate ordinance as adopted for 2025. The rate schedule beyond the current year has not been published — which is what the plan for your bill proposes to change.
• Rockford's source water contains essentially no lead; it is deep groundwater and lead enters through the service pipe. City of Rockford Water Division.
• Roughly 45,000 service line surveys mailed to property owners; about 2,000 returned. City of Rockford Water Division, inventory outreach reporting. The low return rate is why most private-side lines remain listed as unknown.
• Annual lead service line spending of around $4 million, against 850 lines replaced in 2025. City of Rockford Water Division and the adopted capital budget. The implied unit cost of roughly $4,700 a line is the campaign's own arithmetic, and the page says so. The campaign does not publish a total ten-year figure, because no defensible per-line cost for the remaining work has been published by anyone.
• Rockford was the first city in Illinois to qualify for the state revolving fund lead program and has taken at least five rounds of IEPA principal forgiveness. Illinois EPA Water Pollution Control and Public Water Supply loan program records, and City of Rockford Water Division statements. What has not been published anywhere is the share of program cost that forgiveness covers — which is the gap the plan proposes to close.
• Rockford metro had the fifth-highest effective property tax rate in the country at 1.86%, behind Binghamton, Champaign, Trenton and Peoria, against a national rate of 0.9%; the national average single-family bill was $4,427. ATTOM 2025 property tax analysis, released April 9, 2026.

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The city budget, the levy, and the pension payment

• The city's property tax levy has been held flat for thirteen years. City of Rockford annual tax levy ordinances, 2013 through the current budget year. The levy is the total dollar amount the city asks for; it is not the same thing as your rate or your bill, and the difference is the whole argument on your bill.
• City rates of $3.31 and $1.93 per $100 of equalized assessed value. City of Rockford levy and rate documents. These are the city's own rates and cover the city's share only — they are not comparable to the ATTOM effective rate above, which covers every taxing body.
• The rates and exemptions on Where your property tax goes. Winnebago County Clerk, 2025 District Rate Listing and 2025 District Rates by Tax Code, both dated March 30, 2026: tax year 2025, paid in 2026. The standard city code, 001, totals 8.8290 per $100, down from 9.4764 the year before, per the Clerk’s 2025 Municipal and School District Tax Rates. Exemption amounts are from the Winnebago County Supervisor of Assessments. Assessment at one-third of market value is Illinois law outside Cook County; each home’s actual assessment is on the county’s parcel search. The estimate is the campaign’s own arithmetic on those figures, and the page shows the method.
• The state-mandated public safety pension payment is about $40.5 million a year, against $9.6 million in 2013. City of Rockford adopted budget, police and fire pension contributions. The payment is set by state statute and actuarial requirement, not by the council.
• Ward-level capital allocations. The city's capital improvement program names individual streets and projects but does not publish a total per ward. That absence is the premise of the plan for your block — there is no document to cite here, which is the point.
• Monthly financial reporting. Historic City of Rockford monthly financial reports; the practice lapsed, and restoring it is commitment No. 1.

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Homelessness, soliciting and public disorder

• Rockford reached functional zero for veteran homelessness in December 2015 and for chronic homelessness in January 2017, the first community in the country to do both. Community Solutions, Built for Zero — Rockford, Winnebago & Boone Counties, and its Rockford case study. “Functional zero” is their definition and the federal one: a population is ended when the number experiencing homelessness is no greater than what the system routinely houses in a month. It does not mean nobody in Rockford is homeless, and the position page says so.
• The point-in-time count and the by-name list. The January count is required of every Continuum of Care by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the by-name list is maintained locally by the Continuum of Care for Rockford, Winnebago and Boone Counties. Both exist. Neither is published by the city on a schedule, which is the premise of the commitment — there is no current city page to cite here, and that is the point.
• “More people living outside than a few years ago.” This is a statement about what residents and the campaign are seeing, not a published statistic, and it is labeled that way on the position page. The number that would settle it is the one the commitment asks the city to publish.
• Rockford permits charitable solicitation in the roadway under Chapter 24-52 of the city code. City of Rockford Public Works, Charitable Solicitation Permit Application: registration with the Illinois Attorney General as a charity, two-way streets with a dividing median only, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and a signed indemnification of the city.
• The state provision the permit rests on, and its constitutional standing. 625 ILCS 5/11-1006(c) bars standing on a highway to solicit contributions except where a municipality expressly permits it. A content-based restriction on who may ask and for what does not survive the First Amendment: the Seventh Circuit struck down Springfield's panhandling ordinance in Norton v. City of Springfield, 806 F.3d 411 (7th Cir. 2015), and in litigation out of Downers Grove a court held 11-1006(c) itself facially unconstitutional in January 2021. That is why the position is to end the permit for everyone rather than to write a new ordinance aimed at anyone.
• Vehicles organising corners in a parking lot, and people being sent here from other cities. Neither is a documented finding and neither is stated as one. The first is what Bob has seen himself and is labeled as that; the second is a claim he hears constantly and declines to repeat as fact. Both are on the position page in those terms.
• Inpatient psychiatric capacity and the co-responder gap. Stated as the condition officers and hospitals describe, not as a Rockford statistic. The city figure the campaign has committed to publishing is mental-health-related calls for service by ward, which the police department holds and does not currently publish.

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Jobs

• Winnebago County unemployment 5.0% and the City of Rockford 5.7% in May 2026; the Rockford metro down about 1,900 nonfarm jobs year over year. Illinois Department of Employment Security, May 2026 release. IDES publishes monthly; this page is updated when the figures move materially.
• Rockford Brake Manufacturing: four former Gunite workers, a 619,000-square-foot plant, about 150 jobs. Contemporary Rockford business reporting, 2025–2026, and the company's own announcements. The jobs figure is the buyers' stated target, not a count of people currently on the floor, and the jobs page describes it that way.
• Collins Aerospace and Woodward operate in the Rockford area; air cargo at Chicago Rockford International Airport has been among the fastest-growing in the country. Company locations are a matter of public record; the air cargo ranking comes from RFD's own published tonnage reporting and Airports Council International rankings. Growth rankings move year to year, so the plan page states it as a period claim rather than a current title.
• Rockford metro labor force, employment and jobs by industry, July 2026. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rockford, IL Economy at a Glance. Preliminary, not seasonally adjusted; extracted September 4, 2026. The metro is Winnebago and Boone counties.
• Occupational shares, wages and location quotients, May 2025. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages in Rockford — May 2025, published July 24, 2026. Excludes the self-employed. Both releases are laid out on Rockford Works.
• Arts and cultural production: $1.17 trillion, 4.2 per cent of GDP, 2023. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account, released April 2, 2025. BEA posted in February 2026 that it will no longer regularly produce the series, so 2023 is the final official year. The education and city-growth studies behind arts and culture are cited on that page.

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Seniors and the senior center

• The Golden Agers senior center was destroyed by fire in 2015 and has not been replaced. Contemporary reporting and City of Rockford records, 2015 to date. More than a decade, as of 2026.
• Beloit, Wisconsin operates a municipal senior center serving a substantially smaller population. City of Beloit published programming and budget documents. The comparison is the campaign's, and it is drawn on purpose.
• The senior center funding timeline: a $300,000 request over three years ($100,000 a year); council approval 12–1 on February 2, 2026 for a 20,000-square-foot building on East State Street; the agency's withdrawal on February 3, 2026; the Living Well Center's 5,000-square-foot lease on South Alpine Road; and $250,000 in secured state capital funding. City of Rockford council agendas, committee minutes and roll-call records, December 2025 through August 2026, with contemporary local reporting on the withdrawal. The August 2026 outcome was still unconfirmed when that page was last checked, and it says so.
• Roughly one in six Rockford residents are 65 or older. U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates for the City of Rockford. It is a rounded share, used as a share and not as a headcount.
• What Rockford spends on older residents across all departments. No single published figure exists. Producing one is commitment No. 10, and the cost estimates on the age-friendly page are the campaign's own arithmetic against the adopted budget, labeled as such where they appear.

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Corrections and updates

When a figure on this site changes, the entry above changes with it and the date on the entry moves. When a figure turns out to be wrong, it comes off the page and the correction is recorded here rather than quietly deleted.

Two figures the site deliberately does not carry: a total ten-year cost for lead service line replacement, and a median Rockford home sale price. Neither has a defensible published number behind it yet, so neither appears in an argument anywhere on this site.

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How this page works

A campaign that quotes a number owes you the document behind it. Every figure that carries an argument on the homepage, the six plan pages, the age-friendly page and the positions page is listed above, checked against the primary record rather than a news summary of it. Where a number is the campaign's own arithmetic or its own count, the entry says so in the entry rather than leaving you to work it out.

If you find a number on this site that isn't accounted for here, that's a defect and we want to hear about it. Tell us and it gets added, or the number comes off the page.

This page is about the figures. For the reporting other people have done about Bob — which the campaign neither wrote nor controls — see In the media.

Where a figure is the campaign's own arithmetic rather than a published number, it says so — and where the honest answer is that no published figure exists, it says that too. Those gaps are not oversights. Three of them are the reason particular commitments are on the first-90-days list.

Nothing on this page is the official source for voting. That is the Rockford Board of Election Commissioners, at 815-987-5750.

Last updated: August 24, 2026.