Monroe and Simmons are absent. Parker? Here. Stacy? Present. Shadle? Here. Sanders? Here. And Sellers is absent. We do have a quorum, Chair. Thank you. Could everyone join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? Sure.

and item four would be approval of the agenda. Motion by Klemm, second by Parker. All in favor?

Hi. Opposed? Motion carried. Item five would be approval of the minutes from September 16, October 7, October 15, October 21, 2024 meetings. Yes. Why so many dates? I would assume that it It just took a while for the clerk. Go ahead. I think you just answered it. It just took a while for her to get them done. So we never approved these other dates before? No, prior to the meeting. We haven't approved the minutes of the meeting. Okay. Did we get a motion?

So moved. Motion by Klemm, second by Parker. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Motion to carry.

Public comments would be on agenda items, limited to three minutes.

Bernie?

I'll make this relatively quick.

I did some time, put a lot of time into the budget as it currently exists.

and I come to the conclusion that our governmental funds will expend about $67,819,000 which includes capital procurement of $14,919,000 leaving the cash reserve approximately $31,312,000 which is about 59% of the normal operating expenditures, 52,903,000 not including one-time capital requirements.

If our fund balance policy calls for six months of cash for operating expenditures, I think we are okay.

The same pretty much is true for the proprietary funds as it is.

I was able to determine from the budget documents I received through the emails that we have a capital budget of approximately $69 million.

That may have changed a little bit because I'm not privy to the current new information.

I see it is entirely possible to execute all of this according to the way that the city had put the capital into place with using reserves and within using loans and grants.

In the end, the city should end up with $176,430,000 at the end of next fiscal year of which $121,871,000 who belongs to the pension funds leaving a balance of approximately 50, if I can see these numbers, 54,500,000 in our cash bank which will meet almost all of our ongoing operating requirements for this physical year and for the next physical year.

So, I have, there are some things that are wrong in the budget itself. I have a whole list of suggestions that we should be looking at seriously to align the cost to the functions so we can determine exactly what the function, the service that the function is providing is actually costing. I'd like to get rid of the interdepartmental department and even and there's retirements in there, they should belong to our current operating departments.

There's still expenses to those departments.

Having said all that, I think I've said enough.

You guys have a good day with this budget.

When I get the next set of information, I can put it all together into my model.

My model can look at things and do some what if analysis on what we can do and what we cannot do.

So far, I'm cautiously optimistic. Thank you.

Thank you, Bernie. Thank you, Bernie.

Item 7 would be discussion of the following budgets by City Manager Boyer and Director Richter. It's grants, fire pension, police pension, foreign fire insurance, and library.

Fowler.

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Kurt, if you could go ahead and pull up the grants starting with the, yeah, OVW grant.

So this is the, we're going to go through all the grants and everything on the agenda for tonight, and if there's any time left over, we're going to discuss the tax abatements, tax levies, and any revisions.

and others.

The revisions would be anything that's needed to be changed since we started this process through today.

We have pretty much finalized everything in the budget.

Everything's looking good and it's balanced.

We have made some necessary cuts in certain areas and we have made adjustments where necessary.

So anyway, let's go ahead and move forward with the grants.

The OVW grant, so that's the Office Against Violence of Women.

The police department has received this grant for the past seven years.

The funds support a portion of the Special Victims Unit, Detectives, Wages and Training, and the grants also support wages of the State's Attorney Office and Voices, so that's one of our partners there.

There is no match on this.

Brownfields grant.

So we've got the EPA grant for the demo and remediation of the dry cleaners at 1719 West Main Street.

There's no match, and there's about three years left to complete this.

Bulletproof vests, that's through the Department of Justice grant, so that pays 50 percent of bulletproof vests for officer replacement vests.

It requires a 50 percent match.

Rob?

Yes?

We got a question?

I just wanted to let Council know, I didn't rerun, this was from last week, when we didn't move on what were you saying about this the the laundry mat so that's That's an EPA grant for demolition.

So it has to be remediated and demolished.

We're getting a EPA grant for that, no match.

And I think the total amount's about, was it $3 million?

$1.7 million we received.

$1.7 million?

And we have received it.

Yes, we've confirmed it.

We don't have the money in our account.

It's a reimbursement grant.

So we outlay the capital, and they reimburse us up to $1.7 million, which should be more than enough to complete the project.

You said it's a reimbursement?

Mm-hmm.

What portion of it is to cities?

Zero.

OK, so leaving off, any more questions on that Brownfields grant?

OK.

Moving on, we had the DUI forfeitures.

So that's restricted use.

The funds received through Stevenson County Clerk, used by the PD and the enforcement of DUIs.

Items include software and equipment, plan to utilize a portion for the implementation of the e-citation.

So that's a new electronic ticketing.

Moving on.

Canine, again, this is a restricted fund and it's funded through donations for police dogs.

This is a use to support the purchase of those dogs, the supplies, care and kenneling of the Cana.

And moving down to the sex offender account.

So these funds are received from the resignation, or I'm sorry, the registration of sex offenders in the local area.

Funds are required to be distributed to City of Freeport at 35%.

the Sex Offender Management Board at 5%, Illinois State Police Sex Offender Fund at 30%, and the Illinois Attorney General at 30%.

and Attorney General at 30 percent.

Okay, moving on, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, round two.

These are grants from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for demolitions, so there's no match on these.

Explorer Club, these are restricted funds received through donations, and they're used to support the Explorer Club at the police department.

The Explorer Club introduces young people to the field of policing.

Okay, Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grants.

We received about a $200,000 grant.

It was received for the purposes of demolitions and there's no match for this.

This was gained through Senator Stewart's involvement in the appropriation process.

Next Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity demo grants, and this is through Bivens.

It's a $100,000 grant, no match, and it would also go toward demos.

Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Community Development Block Grant.

So this is for housing rehabilitation.

It's a $500,000 grant with a $55,000 match.

Wayne, could you just mention some of the uses for it?

That's what you've been seeing lately with the housing rehabilitation grants.

We just did one on Center Street.

Got another two more coming up.

1010 South Adams is another one.

So that's the line item right there that you see.

that's grant that we received to fund those housing rehabilitations.

OK, thank you.

Yes.

What did you say it was a $500,000 grant?

Yes.

And what was, what did you say after that?

The match was $55,000.

So the city pays $55,000, we get $500,000, approximately 10%.

Next we've got the Police Auxiliary Restricted Fund. So these funds are received through donations and they're used to support the Auxiliary Police Department activities.

Next is the Illinois Housing Development Authority Strong Communities Grant. So this is a $300,000 grant for demolition of homes and there's no match for this.

Next is the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board Recruitment and Retention Grant.

This is $52,000 to be used to recruit and retain police officers, and this does not include a match.

Next is the 911 Emergency Telephone System Board. This is a restricted fund per resolution 2024-68, and the funds are to be used for the operation of the city's 911 system.

Illinois EPA grant for EV chargers. There's a $320,000 grant with a match of $180,000 that's required and this is going to be part of our first opportunity to install some EV charging stations downtown.

Rob?

Yes.

Oh, got another question. Yes.

The $300,000 grant for demo of homes?

Yes.

has that grant been used all up? We still got grant money for that. There's going to be another ten houses coming here for approval and next council meeting to be using that money. How much do we have left on that? We have most of it left at this point. I have ten, like I said, there's ten houses coming that will spend it and then probably I think I'm working on another six after that. So you'll see houses is coming up for demolition using those funds so those funds will be used up this year I anticipate close to it if not it'll leak over probably into the first quarter of 25 director Dutman do you know how much we spin of that thus far I think it's right around 25,000 the numbers on the screen left the balance of and the neighborhood of 29.

Pretty close.

Have we started on this paperwork today?

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

Have we get to this yet?

No.

Okay. So you just saw that on the screen.

Yeah.

And you said 27,000?

29, the balance was 270 and change.

are we speaking about the this SCP grant or the demolition grant for the 300,000 is that what we're talking about or or I'm asking which one it is that's what I was speaking of yes she's speaking of the Illinois housing yeah okay So the Strong Communities Program grant, we've spent, we've demolished one house with those grant funds to date.

We had, I have nine properties coming forward where we're going to be using those funds for the demolish.

We're going to be using the funds for that grant to demolish them.

Part of the reason in the delay was when we first received this grant, the Illinois Housing Development Authority wanted us to have deeds to the property.

So I had, I believe, 12 properties coming through that I bought from the trustee so that we would actually have title or a deed to the properties.

Working with IDA, I was able to use the fast track demolition process, which is those orange signs.

We had a letter from our attorney that they were able to accept so that we no longer have to actually have title to the properties.

So all that being said, I anticipate now that I don't actually have to acquire title first to demolish the properties.

I anticipate this money being spent quite quickly.

Are the houses you're speaking of on the east side of town, the nine coming soon?

So of the nine coming up that are going to be up for the next bid opening is the 14th.

So of those, one of them is 217 Henderson is going to be on that list, is going to be in the third ward or east of the river.

Hold on a second.

Yes, so you're telling me that with whatever is left, you could use that for other houses, correct that's my plan I mean so what ended up when this grant started we had to have as I was stating Kleem title so I was using this grant money for properties that we would purchase from the tax sale from the trustee I was working with IDA to try to expedite our process because unfortunately we have a large amount of blighted properties to demolish and I worked with them and had and I have a question for you.

You said that our attorney write a letter stating that we had legal authority through the statutory fast track demolition process and they said, they look at that letter and said that would be enough for us to use on those orange signs to fund those demolitions.

So I anticipate this grant funding being spent quicker moving forward.

Yep.

Yes.

So in this whole year, we've had one house with the $300,000.

That is correct because I had to have clean title to the property at that point.

So there were no houses that were available to be condemned, I mean to be torn down previous before getting the 12.

That is correct.

We obviously, I believe the numbers are at this point 26 demolished properties.

I don't have the number in front of me, but that's what comes to my mind.

So we were using the city funds to demolish the properties as opposed to the $300,000 is the state put the requirement that that said if I put an orange sign on it that's fast track demolition that means the public or the person who owns the property actually still owns it but we put the orange sign on it which allows us to demolish it Ida at one point said you cannot do that you know you need to have clean title to the property to demolish it so I worked with them and said hey we've got plenty of blighted properties Fowler, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor Biles. So there's FEMA money that comes and it says here's a set of rules for you to demolish properties on the east side. That's acquisition and demolition. People who own the properties have to voluntarily sell those properties before we can demolish them. That's one pool of money. That's most of your east side demolitions that we talk about are in that pool of money.

This pool of money has a requirement that says the city has to have proper title or Fowler, permission, So back in the story I was told from my building inspector is that the building inspector went around in 2019 and condemned properties for demolition, put a lot of orange signs up and the city manager at that time told him to stop because they were in the process of getting the FEMA funds for a buyout so when you put an orange sign on somebody's property you give them 30 days notice and if they don't fix the property here comes a bulldozer they're knocking it down too bad so say you didn't fix your house up here's the bill that's what happens when the orange sign goes up well the city manager at that time said we would like to work with FEMA so that the person doesn't just get their house demolished they get actual funding from FEMA to buy the property and then also the city gets money to demolish it so that's why you and I.

We've had a lot of conversations with the city about how you see many orange signs that didn't get demolished.

It was a move by a former city manager to actually offer aid to some of those people.

Council, if you would be so kind, we do have quite a bit to get through, and this is a topic that we can definitely talk about.

I can always come in and ask.

Is that okay?

Yeah, no problem.

Thank you.

Excuse me, Chair?

Yes.

Director Duckman, my recorder died.

could I borrow yours to finish up the meeting thank you we need to have a pause while you exchange that Kurt are we recording okay back there okay no pause needed thank you okay just moving along we're at the EV grants just one second Alderman Simmons well just a quick question before you move on from this for Director, Duckman. So my question is I understand that you have separate money from FEMA but there are about three houses on the east side that you have not been successful in the past few years purchasing to demolish with this grant. They are clearly abandoned and they are houses that are frequently being dumped at. So my suggestion is that you and Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Moving on, let's see we're at the DOT Safe

Streets for All. So the creation of a plan to increase transportation safety throughout the city. So there's a $400,000 grant. It's a match of $100,000 and that's split between 2024 and 2025. So we actually just had a meeting on that this afternoon. All right, moving on. A federal portion of the Pretzel City Transit, so there's no city match required for this. The grant amount is $198,000.20. The city employs a project compliance and oversight monitor, and the Senior Resource Center provides the Service here. Okay moving on to IDOT State portion of this Provincial City Transit Downstate Operation Assistance Program or DOPA. There's no city match for this and the grant amount is $1,268,740. Next is the Federal Capital Grant for Provincial City Transit. This is for cameras on the buses and there's no for this. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant. We've been working on this grant since 2019 for the purchase and demo of properties as we previously discussed in the floodway and it requires a 25% match.

The Fire Pension Fund, the presented budget has been accepted by the Firefighters Pension Fund Board of Trustees at their meeting on October 30th, 2024 and includes a projection of over $2.3 million in earnings for fiscal year 2025.

The Police Pension Fund, the presented budget has been accepted again by the Police Pension Fund Board of Trustees at their meeting October 30th and includes a projection of over $2 million in earnings for fiscal year 2025.

The Foreign Fire Fund. These funds are collected and remitted to us by the Illinois Municipal League.

Insurance companies that are outside of Illinois that provide insurance within Illinois to pay into the fund.

The Foreign Fire Insurance Board meets regularly and uses the funds for equipment to meet the department's needs and we've gone over the we've gone over this earlier and then last I'm gonna Send give over the podium to Ashley to go over the library budget Okay, good evening. And first of all, I want to remind you that this is a draft of the library's FY 25 budget We will not have a final budget until we receive the EAV, which is the equalized assessed value from the county.

Once Director Richter receives these numbers, I'll finalize the Library's budget and present it to the Library Board of Trustees for approval.

The Library revenue lines include income from property taxes, personal property replacement taxes, miscellaneous grants, and donations from the Freeport Public Library Foundation.

We make a transfer from our restricted reserve accounts to balance our budget.

All capital improvement projects are funded with library funds only. We do not receive any revenue from the City of Freeport's funds for our operations or capital improvement projects.

All our personnel expenses are on lines 213-000-5000 through 213-000-5295.

I've updated a couple of staff expenditures since this report was created and we are projected to spend about $16,000 less than what's on the report in front of you. The only large difference in the 24 and 25 budget line expense lines is 213-000-7010 and because this was moved to line and the EAB numbers.

Overall, this report shows we will overspend by $40,000.

If you subtract the 16,000 I mentioned earlier without the EAB numbers, we are projected to spend $24,000 over our revenue amounts.

This number will continue to decrease as I work with the library board and the finance director.

Finance Director.

As the budget becomes more balanced, I'll continue to share it with you.

So I can go up there and move the slide around if you want me to.

But do you have any questions?

Any questions, comments on the library?

Thank you.

Maybe I missed it in your last statement, but you said there's going to be a deficit, So you're gonna keep, you're gonna get back to us as you figure out how to manage that?

Yeah.

So right now the reason why we're not pushing too hard to take care of the deficit is because we could be able to capture that deficit with the EAV numbers, but without that we can't finalize the budget.

So once we have that piece, we will be able to report back.

Okay.

I did miss that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Manager Boyer.

And we should be moving on to item eight. So this is the discussion of the tax abatement.

Bear with me for a minute.

Bear with me for a minute.

So when the general obligation bonds are issued, they are backed by the city's ability to levy and collect.

the City's ability to levy and collect property taxes. Therefore, the County automatically levies the required annual debt service from the City of Freeport property owners on their property tax bills. The City has historically abated or canceled this amount on the property taxes. By passing an ordinance each year, the property taxes that would otherwise be collected from the residents is abated. The City instead makes the debt service payment from other city revenues.

So what you'll see, and I don't know, Kurt, if you can pull that table up.

And if everybody could flip into their agenda and pull up this memo, there's a table that I'm referring to here.

Below are the individual bond issues, the amounts to be abated, and the source of revenue that will be used to make the bond payment.

We have also included the potential increased cost in property taxes on an average $100,000 home if these bonds were not abated.

Ordinances to abate these bonds will be on the council agenda November 18th, so the next council meeting 2024, and then we'll be second reading December 2nd, 2024.

So we have several of them here, and I'll just go over them briefly.

We have bond 2013A, and that is the fire improvement source.

The amount abated is $87,875.

So now we'll be moving forward.

And in addition to that, we have Series 2014B.

That's for $1,083,143.

And that is through the Sanitary Sewer Fund.

We have Series 2015A, and that is $753,365.

And the funding source for that is TIFF, General Fund, Storm, and Sewer Funds.

Series 2016, the amount abated is $181,855.

And that is abated by the General Fund.

Series 2018 is $90,215.

That is abated by the downtown TIF revenue.

The Series 2020-19A at $236,268.76 is abated through the Street Improvement Fund.

Series 2020 is $3,299,368.10, and that is abated through the General Fund.

And then Series 2021 is $240,800, and that is abated through the Street Improvement Fund as well.

Series 2022. Total amount is $252,232.50 and that is funded through the Fire Improvement Fund.

So the total amount abated is $6,225,122.36. And if the abatement for some reason was not passed, then that would automatically incur an increase to property taxes of $832.88. However, we will not do that because we're moving forward, you know, staff is recommending moving forward with the abatements.

Yes. I'd like to know how long or what is the plan to this six million two hundred and twenty five thousand? What is the plan to get that down and get that a We're paying on the bonds the payments that were generated at the beginning of the bonds. We're making those payments and then we're Continuing to service that debt. So each one of those I Michelle might want to fill in some details But as far as the total amount, we have some coming due soon But there's quite a few there that will be a number of years what Michelle could you kind of describe the scope of repayment?

So these bonds will take several, several years to pay off. When we take out a bond, it's usually 20 or 30 years.

We did have, there's nine bonds listed here right now. We currently have 10. We make the last payment on one of our sewer bonds this year.

But the way the bonds are structured, there's a, so like if I compare it to a car loan or house or something, you're paying a set amount every month.

and others.

Paulen and Stacy?

Holden and Stacy.

I just didn't hear what he said when he was at the end.

He said administration recommends something.

recommending moving forward with the bond abatement that we've done every year.

That's all. We're gonna have to vote on, not tonight, an ordinance on, at the next council meeting next week, on an ordinance to abate the tax level, saying that we're not gonna put it on the property tax, that we've got money in the budget to pay and Davey's Payments, that we don't have to put it on property tax.

Alderman Sanders.

Yeah.

Manager Boyer, you look like you might be a little perplexed a little bit there.

Nope.

You okay?

You got clarity there?

Crystal clear.

You're all right with it in other words?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

anything else okay with that I want to just move on to the discussion on the tax levy and as Ashley pointed out we have not received a city's tax levy yet we anticipated any day now but we have budgeted according to last year's tax levy we expect it might go up slightly but we're not we're not looking at those funds as a solid so we budgeted as of last year's tax levy for the purposes of and the rest of the board.

So that's the kind of discussion tonight.

Any questions on the tax level?

When that comes out, we'll bring it to council.

Do you have anything?

Okay.

Kurt, if you could go ahead and just flip by.

We're going to start, so we're going to move on to discussions of the budget revisions.

So these are, we started the budgeting process in August and then we've kind of got whittled down to our final revisions.

and others.

There's been a number of different changes to make sure that income is aligned with expenses.

So I'm just going to hit the high points as we go through this, and I'd like to start with revenue.

And, Kurt, I'm just going to pop us over here just to kind of show you the total revenue we originally budgeted was a little over $25 million, and upon further analysis, it should be a little over $26 million.

So that's a main change.

However, we are bringing in a million dollars from Fund Reserve to pay for one-time grant matches for projects that we're working on.

One of them is the EV Chargers, the ITEP grant, the Flood Mitigation Grant, the Safe Streets for All.

These are all one-time expenses that we want to pull from Fund Reserve to go ahead and cover our match on those.

Let's see here. Not a whole lot has changed on the City Council. You'll see the salaries have been, the salary increases are reflected there.

Not a tremendous amount, looking like about a $2,000 impact to the budget.

Item 112, commissions, nothing's changed there.

Mayor, City Clerk. We've had a couple of small changes. Oops. I'm sorry about that, Kurt.

Step on it. We, we, one change we made here was we had a part-time clerk to help Dovie.

We've, we've removed that. And there's a few other little changes there.

What do you mean we moved that? Well, for budget, we went back to the budget to line everything up and we had to take out the part-time person, the part-time clerk. Did we vote on that? No. This is basically compared to the original budget that was put forward in front of council starting in the end of August and going all through the fall. City Manager, Mayor, there's a few changes there. I'm sorry, so are you saying that we're not going to have a part-time? That's correct. We're not.

Can I clarify? We have a, I think the misunderstanding is the Deputy Clerk that We have no, no, we still have a deputy clerk.

She's budgeted for, but this was in an original budget showed funding.

Yeah, it showed up for a part time.

Yes.

I'll let Dovie speak to that. I think we can afford a part-time or we don't need a part-time.

Well I mean I'll let Dovie speak to that. I think we have a new deputy clerk who's doing a fantastic job and when this was originally put together it was based on the understanding from before our new deputy clerk so but please tell me if I'm right there. Go ahead, Clerk Anderson. That's hopeful however I mean it basically means I'm still behind if more work needs to be done and I have to do I'm salaried so I just make less per hour while I do it. There's no room in the budget for it.

Mr. Chair. Alderman Klemm. So the moral of this story is if you want a part-time clerk, speak up.

If you want a part-time clerk, what? Speak up. It's your budget.

I guess at that point if it was put in there the first time at the original time and and we did discuss that Dovie did need the extra help if she says she's behind there's no need and if you're already behind and we got more coming down the pipe you're gonna get even more behind I know we have the Deputy Clerk and she's doing a wonderful I'm not saying we don't need it. I'm just saying in all the priorities that we have that did not rise to the top of the priority list, we have Street Department. We've had a number of different cuts plus we're looking at other future things for AFSCME. So we're trying to do everything we can on this end of things. Taking out things in the budget that we can live without. Okay. And so I know Dovie does a tremendous job and she does deserve as much help as she needs but the budget is kind of demanding this.

And Chair? Yes. Let me add I'm okay with that. I mean there's other things that got cut. I'm I'm okay, and I'm certainly okay with giving it a year, re-evaluating and seeing what next year's budget looks like, seeing what our current workload and the new deputy is doing.

I'm fine with that, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Clerk Anderson.

Okay, Mayor, City Manager, a small increase on the education and training travel item with everything else pretty much being level.

Communications Department, no change there.

Finance, very little change, very minute changes there.

Legal, we did reduce legal slightly to line up with our activity for this last year, and our anticipated activity.

Public Works, this is the Public Works Director.

There's no budget there and no changes.

Government Buildings, we had $200,000 in for storm windows.

Those were removed.

Hoping to get that finished up yet this year, if possible.

and others. Airport, we had no significant changes, no changes at all for the airport.

Street department, we made some changes on just tweaks on the withholdings and the wages and that. We reviewed that several times. We did take some out of contracted building repair and maintenance. We pulled a little bit out of infrastructure repair and maintenance.

We did take $100,000 out of engineering.

We're changing project scope.

So in addition on street budget, we also removed on equipment.

We made some changes on the equipment.

So it was originally budgeted at $70,000 out at $45,000.

And then lastly, we had made some adjustments to the capital outlay, one of which was the salt shed.

We took that out of the budget.

The salt shed?

Yes, the salt shed needs pretty significant repairs.

But we're going to have to look and figure out what we can do differently there.

Alderman Sanders.

Manager Boyer, is that going to happen soon?

The salt shed?

Yes.

It'll probably be next spring at the soonest.

But we can get by?

Yes.

I mean, we'll get by.

We're going to have to look at some other alternates to make that salt shed last, so.

OK.

There's just been a few small adjustments to the cemetery budget, nothing notable there.

Same thing with forestry.

Traffic engineering, similar situation, no changes there.

Street lights we did we did reduce street lights originally we had 20,000 in for a contract equipment repair maintenance we dropped that to 10,000 and this is a common thing we really made some hard decisions making things work so when you talk about the street lights are we talking about just the bulbs are Glendale, and Phil Manning. There's a lot of different lights. Are you planning to add more lights or are you looking to see if they're changing or are we... is there anything out there for adding more lights?

So all the lights, most of the lights that are out in the city are actually ComEd lights. We... a couple years ago we redid all the downtown street lights and that was through a grant through ComEd. And then we budget so much money per year to maintain the lights that we maintain.

Just to give you an example, there wasn't a tremendous amount coming on this budget item and in order to get things balanced out We reduced that by 10,000 but Would that also include residential?

No, sir Residential? No, sir. No, it doesn't. Okay. I didn't hear you. No, it's it's primarily our downtown street lighting power bill That's what most of this budget is Well, yes, there's a, right now I think most of the light bulbs in the residential areas are owned by ComEd and they're 35 watt LEDs. That has been brought to the attention of ComEd and no change has been forthcoming.

So what can the city do about that?

We can continue to ask, but we are dealing with a large corporation and it's governed by the Illinois Commerce Commission and if they have developed the standard for all communities at 35 watts, they're in line with their policy, that's what we get.

But if they're not lit up, if they're not at the potential of 35 watt?

So are you saying if we haven't measured the lumens, I think they have a replacement schedule. I don't know precisely what that is, but I would say within 15 or 20 years, they need to be replaced. But again, 35 watt LEDs are not real bright. We did put much brighter lights downtown because we control those, and then on IDOT corridors, we're going to be searching outside money for getting the IDOT corridor lights fixed. So like the intersection of West and South, up and down on West Street, on Galena. These are areas that are I-DOT controlled and we're looking for changes to our status as a preferred community with ComEd that will open up dollars that will give us grant money to take care of those lights in the I-DOT corridors.

The standard street lights, when ComEd did their replacements, that's part of the energy reduction program, and that's why they switched them over to LEDs, and there are lower looms, and that's throughout every municipality, was to green energy and reduce their take on the cities for lighting dollars.

I would like for us to try to find out how we can add more lights to residential areas because I do get a lot of complaints about how dark areas are and then even how dark they are when they're committing crimes because it's dark there and I'm telling you that's everywhere. So if there was some way that we can, I know $300,000 for downtown but we need to get, you know, maybe if there's something out there that we can get more bright lights all over the city. I know years ago, Tom, remember they were looking at trying to get more lights throughout the community.

throughout the community especially you know in dark areas. Joy just keep in mind that that is actually that just the power bill. Oh. That's the 300,000 power bill.

I have a question. Alderman Stacey. The ASME Union went from 168 to 177. What is that? Wage increase? We put in a nominal figure just to get you know to have something in the budget for that what does that mean you just made up a number no we know we're gonna be doing increases but we are looking at a Michelle if you want to jump in that's fine so we did like city manager said we did put in a We are negotiating right now with police. So those were two things that are really, I don't know, pressing upon me and the City Manager as far as moving forward and getting a balanced budget.

In the past, what we've been, what we could do is once things are negotiated and settled, we've done re-budgets before.

Like for example, when COVID happened, the city put a hold on everything in that March and we redid the whole budget, brought it to council, talked it through.

So the process of bargaining, we don't know how things are going to come out at this time, so we're doing our best proactive work here in this budget.

Okay, so this number that you have inserted, at what rate increases that?

City Manager. Yeah it's approximately five percent is there now. Okay with that I'd like to continue on. There you go. Thank you. Community Development. We made some adjustments there. Nothing are shaking but there was an adjustment downward on Education Training. Police, we made several adjustments. Several of them are down slightly. We're looking at various over times, doing our best to control that.

Also, we had some other up, you know, upward pressure on the budget and then we also had a position that we removed from there that was not, was not currently, was not going to be filled.

I'm also reflecting here the decrease in PEP as our negotiation goes forward, that will be impacted by our police negotiation.

Okay, with that, I'd like to move on to fire.

Again, working with Chief Miller, identified areas, Potential Savings, however, we are looking at the safety grant.

We've programmed in some funds for training for recruits that could be funded through the safety grant.

We'll have to see where that goes.

And we also did some, we removed a project from the contracted building repair and maintenance.

There's a sewer line that needs updating over at the park fire station, so that was taken out.

Any questions on fire?

Okay, moving on to building Just just a number of slight changes there nothing nothing of any significance there Animal control again just slight changes nothing of significance Taylor. Hearing and Admin, no change there. Human Resources, just some slight changes, nothing significant. Information Systems, it was requested a full-time helper with IT.

again we're looking to kind of keep things level therefore that was removed from the budget. We also had a few you know ancillary wage level changes you know the withholdings and things changed in combination with that.

Interdepartmental some of this is related to our retirees we believe we We have a couple of people dropping off of group insurance this year.

So that's reflected there in the change.

And then we've also got capital improvement and grant match.

Those have been added.

The grant match there is the projects we talked about earlier.

And the last one is the landfill withholding.

We're reducing the amount going back to the landfill fund.

House Fund, basically we're taking the sidewalk grant down from $20,000 to $10,000 and so that's essentially some savings that we were able to gain there.

Neighborhood Housing Fund, some marginal changes, Michelle did you want to comment on any of those?

Neighborhood Housing, we just added the real estate tax line item.

So when we acquire a property, we take on the property taxes for that property until we can get it exempted.

So we have to fill out some paperwork to get it exempted.

So we're usually liable for a little portion of the property taxes for a property when we acquire it.

So I thought it more appropriate to be in this fund rather than the general fund because we're gonna, you know, usually demo it out of this one or a grant.

So that's the difference there. And the $55,000 transfer out, that is the grant match for the single family housing rehab grant right there. So that's where the grant match comes from for that particular grant.

Alderman Sanders?

Yeah, I can barely read that last line you were speaking of. What is those numbers?

Alderman Sanders, we actually have a printed out hard copy there at your desk.

Oh, I was just following the...

You've got a hard copy if you need it as well.

Which one?

Just the line, transfer out.

Yeah.

I couldn't see that number.

55.

That 55?

OK.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

OK, well, we're getting close here.

We've probably got time for a couple more.

Health care, oops.

Health care fund, no changes there.

Let's see, OV, we've already discussed the grant funds. I'm going to move that down.

What is OVW for?

That was the Violence Against Women grant for the police department. We talked about that earlier.

Clearance, Library Funds, no changes there, Ashley discussed that, I'm sorry, Ashley just just brought that up, motor fuel tax funds, just realigning some of the revenue figures here, no major changes.

Downtown revitalization loan funds, that is set up for downtown redevelopment, no changes Public Safety Fund, no changes there. Cemetery Care Fund, no changes there.

Downtown TIF, we had a couple of small changes, but pretty much everything lines up, Lamro, Tiff, no changes, and I think I'm out of time. So that will pick this up after the meeting. Thank you. Is there, we'll save the summary discussion for later.

Should we save public comments until after we finish?

I think so, yeah. If we have to finish this out, it's not time for public comments yet.

So, we would need a motion to recess this meeting until after, after the regular council meeting.

Could I get a motion to recess this motion by Sellers?

Second.

Second by Klemm.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Opposed?