OnLight Aurora (IL), Revisited: From Quiet Losses to a Proposed City Takeover
In February 2025, we checked in on OnLight Aurora, the nonprofit that leases the City of Aurora, Illinois’ fiber network to institutions, businesses and carriers. We found a network that had consistently lost money despite sizeable city contributions, and an accounting structure that made those struggles hard to see. In the year and a half since, a change in city leadership has brought OnLight’s finances into public view, and city officials are now seeking to wind the organization down and take its operations in-house. On October 13, 2026, the City Council was set to vote on ending the city’s agreement with OnLight, but aldermen sent the measure back to committee, citing unanswered questions and cost concerns. This post updates our earlier analysis.
Key Takeaways
OnLight’s 2024 tax return shows its largest loss on record, $358,297, and net assets of -$272,464. Excluding contributions from the city and grants, OnLight lost money in 11 of the 12 years from 2013 to 2024, a cumulative loss of more than $2 million.
City staff have confirmed that OnLight stopped paying the city its revenue share after 2020, while the city continued to spend millions extending, relocating and maintaining the network.
In September 2025, Aurora’s new mayor disclosed roughly $1 million in debt, a $27,000 monthly deficit and about $337,000 in questionable spending on inappropriate activities. A credit line had been raised to $950,000 under a city guarantee never approved by the council. OnLight’s customer count has fallen from nearly 35 at its 2020 peak to 19, and customer revenue fell by nearly $73,000 between 2025 and 2026.
The administration now proposes to terminate OnLight’s agreement, take over its customers and data center contracts, and create a city fiber enterprise fund. The city’s legal counsel has said the city, as OnLight’s guarantor, could have to pay OnLight’s remaining debt (about half a million dollars as of early October) and expects roughly $100,000 in legal fees to renegotiate customer contracts. No full public estimate of the liabilities, costs or revenues involved has been presented. On October 13, the City Council returned the termination resolution to committee, citing unanswered questions, the city’s potential exposure to OnLight’s debt and a projected 2027 budget deficit of more than $9 million.
The market OnLight was created to serve has changed. As of December 2025, 99.9% of Aurora’s residential locations had access to wired service of at least 100/20 Mbps, and city staff acknowledge that former OnLight customers “found cheaper service somewhere else.”
Background
Aurora pitched its fiber network in the mid-2000s as a “cost-saving measure” against high “leased line expenses” paid to private providers. Drawing on government grants, the city built its backbone between 2008 and 2011 for about $7 million, then used another government source of roughly $12–13 million from a Federal Highway Administration traffic signal grant to retire the network’s remaining debt ahead of schedule. As we noted previously, that grant was unrelated to broadband service.
OnLight Aurora was incorporated in January 2012, and its master agreement with the city took effect that May for a 20-year term. The agreement, revised in 2015, makes the city responsible for all maintenance, restoration and relocation of the fiber; entitles the city to 10% of OnLight’s recurring revenue and 20% of one-time dark fiber fees; allows either party to terminate on 180 days’ notice; and commits the city to guarantee up to $500,000 of OnLight’s loans. OnLight later formed a low-profit LLC (an L3C) to serve commercial customers, while the nonprofit serves government and nonprofit customers.
Performance: The Losses Deepen
OnLight’s 2024 Form 990 extends the trend we identified last year. Program service revenue, which peaked at $399,523 in 2018, fell to $247,340 in 2024. Beginning in 2022, “Other Revenue” has been dominated by OnLight’s share of the L3C’s losses, reported as a “net loss from partnership” (-$278,145 in 2024).
| Year | Contributions | Program Services | Other Revenue | Expenses | Net Income | Net Income, Less Contributions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | $0 | $247,340 | -$278,145 | $327,492 | -$358,297 | -$358,297 |
| 2023 | $0 | $298,765 | -$247,555 | $324,563 | -$273,353 | -$273,353 |
| 2022 | $28,662 | $383,729 | -$97,985 | $355,372 | -$40,966 | -$69,628 |
| 2021 | $0 | $332,972 | -$8,083 | $428,579 | -$103,690 | -$103,690 |
| 2020 | $251,685 | $334,425 | -$9,765 | $533,547 | $42,798 | -$208,887 |
| 2019 | $260,712 | $389,819 | -$84,953 | $584,933 | -$19,355 | -$280,067 |
| 2018 | $34,609 | $399,523 | -$62,597 | $542,675 | -$171,140 | -$205,749 |
| 2017 | $63,200 | $339,372 | -$101,915 | $486,741 | -$186,084 | -$249,284 |
| 2016 | $0 | $299,943 | -$18,074 | $424,834 | -$142,965 | -$142,965 |
| 2015 | $0 | $299,291 | $3,685 | $552,880 | -$249,904 | -$249,904 |
| 2014 | $0 | $237,477 | $5,135 | $167,410 | $75,202 | $75,202 |
| 2013 | $1,000,000 | $76,615 | $433 | $101,375 | $975,673 | -$24,327 |
Source: OnLight Aurora Form 990 filings, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. 2024 (highlighted) is new since our prior post.
This dynamic is also clear in OnLight’s balance sheets. Unsecured notes and loans payable rose from $139,529 at the end of 2022 to $712,107 at the end of 2024. At year-end 2024, OnLight reported $1,058,657 in liabilities against $786,193 in assets, the largest of which was $789,229 “due from On Light L3C.”
On the city’s side, fiber costs still are not separately reported in Aurora’s annual financial statements. But city records and testimony now fill in much of what we could only estimate last year. In 2024 and 2025 alone, the council approved up to $1.49 million for fiber projects (including a $120,000 yearly maintenance and repair order), an $800,000 reroute at RiverEdge Park, and other relocation and extension work.
In September 2026, the city’s fiber network manager told the council that from 2020 to 2025 the city “spent about ten million dollars on capital projects” that extended fiber to city facilities, though that figure was not broken out from other project costs or by funding source. He also confirmed that OnLight paid the city’s 10% revenue share “through 2020 and then stopped.” Money also flowed the other way: through its No Child Left Offline program, the city paid OnLight roughly $100,000 a year, and a volunteer OnLight director told the council that “until somewhat recently, the city was actually the largest paying customer of OnLight.”
Residential Plans Stalled
Last year we noted the city’s 2023 announcement that it would expand the network by 700 fiber miles “to reach every home,” financed by a 30-year revenue bond, and the city’s subsequent silence on timelines and costs. That plan did not materialize. In September 2025, the new mayor told the council there had been “three failed attempts to take fiber to home,” one of which “resulted in over $113,000 in legal fees.” OnLight’s own account, published under its current city-appointed board, says prior leadership “took out over $1 million in city-guaranteed loans and traveled across the globe” pursuing the effort while “technical resources and customer relationships dilapidated.”
The only residential deployment is a pilot at a Habitat for Humanity subdivision. The city spent more than $500,000 extending fiber there in 2023 and 2024, and in December 2025 agreed to pay OnLight up to $90,000 through 2029 to serve the homes. As of September 2026, two homes were active; the city expects to serve 17 homes by 2028.
2025–2026: Collapse and City Intervention
Mayor John Laesch took office in May 2025. Both the former mayor and the city’s former CIO had sat on OnLight’s board. In September 2025, Laesch briefed the council that OnLight was “close to $1 million in debt,” running a roughly $27,000 monthly deficit (almost $20,000 of it debt service), and had “about enough oxygen to get us to the end of the month.” The city also released an itemized list of roughly $337,000 in OnLight debit card spending since 2018, which the mayor attributed to the former CIO and said was largely not legitimate business expense; the former CIO has called the accusations “unfounded” (additional details available via Beacon-News and Daily Herald). Former OnLight leaders have also disputed the mayor’s account of the organization’s spending and accused him of overreaching to target those associated with the prior administration.
The debt had also grown beyond what the council approved. In October 2024, the former mayor signed a letter to OnLight’s lender stating the city would guarantee an increase in OnLight’s credit line from $500,000 to $950,000. According to WTTW, the council never approved the increase. In September 2025, the city’s chief of staff told the Finance Committee that if OnLight dissolved, the city could take back the fiber but would “assume the whole debt.”
The administration initially tried to stabilize OnLight rather than absorb it. By the account of Austin FitzCorbett, who began volunteering with OnLight in summer 2025 and is now the city’s fiber network manager, the network was three weeks from shutting down when he arrived. Paid staff were replaced with a volunteer director, leases were cancelled, and in January 2026 the council approved an $80,000 advance, with the city’s chief operating officer acknowledging, “we’re not sure it’s reasonable that [OnLight] will be able to pay it back.” Spending cuts brought monthly losses down from $27,000 to about $5,000 by January, but OnLight was still losing money, with roughly 70% of spending going to loan payments.
Customers continued to leave. According to data FitzCorbett provided to the Beacon-News, OnLight peaked at nearly 35 customers in 2020 and had 19 in 2026, and customer revenue fell by nearly $73,000 between 2025 and 2026. FitzCorbett explained in January that most former customers “found cheaper service somewhere else,” adding that OnLight “was formed somewhat out of necessity. There was not a market to sustain broadband access, and now there is.” The city itself still relies on OnLight as one of its two internet providers, with no contract in place; in July 2026, a single fiber cut took city internet down for a full workday.
The City’s New Plan
On September 15, 2026, city staff presented a plan to “wind down” OnLight. The administration would terminate the master agreement on 180 days’ notice; temporarily take over internet service to OnLight’s customers; register the city as an E-rate provider to serve schools under the federally funded program; assume OnLight’s data center agreements; and create a fiber enterprise fund, similar to the city’s water and golf funds; and offer to lease conduit and dark fiber to interested private carriers, should they materialize. Over the longer term, staff said the city should avoid providing internet service except “where it’s strategic,” and the mayor described an eventual private partner that might build fiber to the home using city conduit. Staff also noted a $2 million state grant for new east-side fiber and plans to add conduit alongside lead service line replacements.
In an October interview, FitzCorbett described the goal as a network that is “self-sustaining financially, instead of relying on loans and city funding as OnLight previously did.” The city would temporarily run the service while seeking established internet service providers to partner with, and would eventually like to expand the network and win back former customers. He said half the network is unused and “ready to be maximized,” and that revenue could grow by modernizing equipment, improving customer relationships and building partnerships. He also acknowledged the scale of the equipment problem: “It’s like a 1970s car, so if you want to go buy parts for it, you can’t buy them new anymore … Your best option is to replace them.” He cited Kane County, St. Charles, Urbana-Champaign and Highland in Illinois, and Lincoln, Nebraska, as models.
Council members offered differing views. One alderman, who sits on OnLight’s board, said he would like the city to move “in the direction of providing this as utility if possible.” Another asked whether the city should “be even in that business or should we be handing it over to the private market.” In January 2026, the chief operating officer had said that leasing or selling the network “is potentially one of the options on the table.”
On September 21, 2026, the Infrastructure and Technology Committee took up Resolution 26-0606, which would terminate the agreement and authorize the city’s Law Department to negotiate transferring OnLight’s contracts to the city. Asked whether 180 days would be enough to complete a plan, the deputy CIO said “probably not.” Aldermen pressed on the debt the city would absorb, the staff it would need and the cost to taxpayers, and one warned against small appropriations adding up to “maybe a half a million dollar investment without having maybe a clear path.” The committee forwarded the resolution without recommendation. At an October 6 Committee of the Whole meeting, the city’s legal counsel said renegotiating OnLight’s customer contracts could cost about $100,000 in legal fees over 12 months, and that the new contracts would require council approval. When the resolution reached the full council on October 13, aldermen returned it to committee. Ald. Patty Smith, who proposed the delay, cited unanswered questions about the network’s future and concern that the city could be on the hook for OnLight’s debt, and cautioned against taking on new costs while the city faces a projected deficit of more than $9 million for 2027. She also said aldermen had not had enough time to review information, provided that afternoon, answering a long list of questions from Ald. Ted Mesiacos: “We need more than two weeks to make a decision that is so important for our city.”
Open Questions
Last year we observed that OnLight’s separate nonprofit structure and the city’s limited reporting obscured how the network was performing. The current plan would bring the network directly onto the city’s books, which could improve transparency. But several basic questions remain unanswered in the public record:
What will the city absorb? The 2015 agreement obligates the city to guarantee up to $500,000 of OnLight’s loans. OnLight’s remaining debt stood at about half a million dollars in early October, and the city’s legal counsel has said the city could have to pay it once OnLight stops making payments. The mayor has said treatment of the portion above the council-approved limit “probably becomes a legal question.” Renegotiating customer contracts is expected to add about $100,000 in legal fees. OnLight also carries legal bills from unidentified litigation and a pending wage claim from its former executive director. The resolution would also transfer OnLight’s equipment to the city, which staff would first need to review, categorize and value. No estimate of the city’s total exposure has been released, and the mayor has said an executive session is needed because “we need to know what all we’re absorbing.”
Will revenues cover costs? Under the plan, most of OnLight’s 19 customers would move to private carriers within a year, leaving the city with lease fees in place of service revenue. Meanwhile, maintenance, relocation, staffing, data center and upstream costs remain with the city. Customer revenue is still falling, and staff describe OnLight’s equipment as fully depreciated and in need of replacement, which is also central to the city’s plan to grow revenue. No revenue projection, equipment replacement estimate or operating budget has been presented.
What role does the market leave for the city? According to the FCC’s National Broadband Map, as of December 2025, 99.9% of Aurora’s 42,589 residential locations had wired service at 100/20 Mbps or faster, and 99.9% had gigabit-class service. Fiber availability rose from 20.4% of locations in June 2022 to 35.6% in December 2025, and 42.4% of locations now have two or more wired providers. City staff agree: right-of-way permit applications for fiber have doubled or tripled in five years, and the network manager said the FCC “would not classify 99% of Aurora as underserved.” He has also said some current OnLight end users “can not get other options in the market today.” Identifying which customers those are, and what it would cost to serve them, would help the council decide how much of the network the city needs to run itself.
Looking Ahead
The termination resolution now returns to the council’s Infrastructure and Technology Committee, which next meets October 26. City officials have said the resolution is the first of several measures to come before the council as part of a broader overhaul of the network. Aldermen have asked for a schedule, a history of the L3C and a comparison of options. With the city projecting a 2027 deficit of more than $9 million, producing that comparison, with a full accounting of liabilities, ongoing costs and expected revenue, would give the council and residents what has been missing from Aurora’s fiber program from the start: a clear picture of what the network costs and what it returns. We will continue to follow developments.