Good evening.
Michelle, could you please give the invocation?
Lord, we thank you tonight for this city of Freeport.
We thank you that Freeport has a destiny and a purpose for your kingdom.
Tonight we pray for an increase in wisdom and understanding, unity and community.
Let this meeting be in order because you are a God of order.
Let each one speak in respect to one another.
Let grace abound in this meeting and let this meeting accomplish what it should, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Now we'll call this committee, Committee of the Whole meeting to order.
Madam Clerk, could you please take the roll?
Mayor Miller?
Here.
Alderpersons, Klemm?
Here.
Johnson?
Here.
Simmons?
Here.
Parker?
Here.
Stacy?
Here.
Shadle?
Here.
Sanders?
Here.
And Sellers.
And if you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Alderman Stacy.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Alderman, Klemm.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
That motion passes.
Item number five is approval of the minutes from the committee of the whole meeting held on June 9th, 2025.
Is there a motion?
So moved.
Second.
Take your choice.
We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Johnson.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
That motion passes.
We have no public comments on agenda items.
So we will move on to item number seven which is the presentation of the Tree City USA Manager, Boyer.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Good evening, everyone.
It's a privilege to stand before you tonight to accept on behalf of the City of Freeport our renewed designation as Tree City USA Community.
Since 2021, Freeport has proudly held this recognition, and in 2023, we earned the Tree City USA Growth Award, acknowledging our measurable progress in expanding and improving urban forestry in meaningful ways.
These honors are not just accolades, they are a reflection of our values and of your leadership as the governing body of the City of Freeport.
The Committee of the Whole ensures that the preservation and growth of our urban forests and many more.
We are proud to say that this city remains a part of our long-term vision.
Tree City USA, a program of the Arbor Day Foundation, set out four key standards, a tree board or department, a public tree care ordinance, a dedicated forestry budget, and a meaningful Arbor Day observance.
These aren't checkboxes, they're indicators the city is serious about sustaining quality of life and environmental stewardship.
And John.
This work would not be possible without dedicated partners.
First, my gratitude to the City staff, especially Pat Ingram, whose leadership has kept our efforts focused and effective.
Special thanks to our forestry crew, Keith and James, for their hard work maintaining and caring for our trees in all seasons.
I also want to thank Nick Connolly, who's done an outstanding job according to Arbor and others.
We are fortunate to partner with the Freeport Park District and particularly Bruce Cuberley who plays a major role in hosting Arbor Day events.
We are equally grateful to the volunteers who take the time to prepare saplings for planting and help many of those events truly become community centered.
The Yield Program led by Ted Odendahl and Robert Bush and Renata Weathersby continues to be a meaningful partner in this work.
Their team helps plant and maintain the trees while also building real life skills and a sense of purpose for program participants.
And I want to express special appreciation to Tiffany Bender who ensures our Tree City USA application is properly submitted each year, an important task that keeps Freeport and Good standing with the Arbor Day Foundation.
This year we also celebrate a remarkable new recognition.
Right here in Freeport, we are home to two rare American chestnut trees, a species once nearly wiped out by blight across North America.
These trees, standing approximately 73 feet tall with a 135 inch circumference, have been nominated as Illinois State Champion Trees for the inclusion in the Illinois Big Tree Register.
This is an extraordinary honor and a testament to the care and conditions we've cultivated Fremont.
It's also a reminder that the legacy we plant today can grow into something truly historic.
Committee members, this award and everything it represents would not be possible without your commitment.
You are the stewards of our shared vision for a greener, healthier Freeport.
Your leadership as both the city's governing body and our official tree board ensures that The trees are not an afterthought, but a foundational part of what makes our city thrive.
On behalf of our staff, partners, and residents, thank you.
Let's keep growing forward together.
Thank you very much.
Item number eight is the presentation of the Fire and Police Pension Actuary Reports, Jen Tuck.
I'm Jen Tuck.
I'm from Neihart.
We're the actuaries for the police and fire plans.
So our kind of role is to, as of January 1st, we give a snapshot of how well funded the plan is, how much unfunded liability is still left to be paid off, and then we determine and a contribution that's more aggressive than what the state minimum is.
The state wants you to fund to 90% by 2040.
The city has always been a little more conservative in their funding plan to get to 100% by 2040.
So we'll look at a few kind of highlights of our process.
First at the top there, you can see assets performed pretty well during 2024 on a market value basis, which, when we say market value, that's just what's in the bank, basically, as of January 1st.
So the market value for 2024 was about 10% returns.
There's another kind of asset value that we use, which is called that actuarial value, and that's more of a smoothed value, where we average out a few years of returns, so we don't have big spikes in the contributions.
So when we look at the return on that basis, we are at about four and a half, and we'll look at a chart that kind of shows the details behind that.
Not a lot of movement with the census.
The counts went up slightly.
Salary increases were just barely higher than expected on both plans, very close to what the assumptions would be.
The funding percentages came down just a hair from last year and that's because of that actuarial value rate of return being a little bit less than your, you know, hurdle rate, if you will, of six, seven, five.
And then the contributions go up a little bit depending on which set of assumptions the board decides to use.
So later this month we're meeting with both the police board and the fire board to talk about a few options.
And then so yeah I guess the that's kind of the high level this shows all the participant information that goes into our evaluation so we get a snapshot it's the same kind of consolidated fund I do I type filing that you guys do every year so you can see from last year to this year both the actives which is current Miller, and the other current employees had gone up.
I think three actives from the fire plant had left, but then six new people were hired.
And this counts as of January 1st.
So that could have changed a little in the interim.
A little bit more turnover on the police side even.
There was, I believe, six people had left during 2024 and 11 were hired.
So you can see it went up a little bit on both.
Not a lot of movement otherwise.
A couple new retirees, a couple new deaths, kind of and the rest of the groups.
And then on that bottom section, it shows kind of averages for the groups.
So in pay, that would include beneficiaries who are getting a spousal benefit, retirees, disabled participants.
So you can see their monthly benefit.
It goes up about as expected.
There's 3% COLAs on a lot of their benefits.
So each year you expect that to kind of step up as those COLAs get recognized.
St., so you see both the police and the fire, they went up about as expected at that 3%.
The bottom section you can see, the fire stayed fairly stable, there wasn't as much Fier stayed fairly stable.
There wasn't as much turnover on that side.
So the age and the service stayed very stable.
On the right-hand side, you can see that the average age came down a little bit, and that was due to that turnover.
So you lost a couple of, you know, longer tenured, you know, I don't want to say older, but more mature police officers getting hired in younger guys.
So age went down, service went down a little bit on that police side just because of that turnover.
So I touched on the assets.
So that market value, that red line, that's what's actually in the bank as of January 1st.
So it's at the whim of the market.
There could have been a huge swing that day and all of a sudden you have higher assets or there could be a loss that day and you end up with lower.
So to kind of take away some of that volatility We have that red line.
Those are rates of return.
We kind of smooth in, kind of do an averaging of investment returns.
And so instead of recognizing a million dollar gain in one year, we'd kind of recognize that gradually of, you know, over the four or five years.
So you can see the black line, that's the actual value, smooth value.
You can see it still has some peaks and valleys, but it really cuts through and kind of tries to maintain a little bit more of steady progress for your long-term planning.
So then this is just a different picture of it.
This is the actual dollar values of both of those types of assets.
So the market value, you can see more volatile.
The actual value kind of cuts through that to smooth it out.
So that's kind of exactly what we wanted to do.
Some years it's higher, some years it's lower.
But in the long run, we expect those would be the same on average.
All right.
A lot of numbers on this page.
I'll try and point out kind of the key ones that we want to look at.
So kind of halfway down, you can see that funded percentage.
That's a big kind of reporting item that a lot of places look at.
You can see you're very well funded.
Last year, that first column is the last prior evaluation.
You were at just a hair under 98 percent.
This year, if we keep all of the assumptions that we use, so salary increases, mortality, how long people are going to live, if we keep that all the same for this valuation, we'd be at that middle column.
So you can see the funded percentage comes down a little bit from a hair under 98 down to 96.
And then this bottom half of that page kind of shows the the pieces that go into the contribution calculation so that total normal cost kind of the first line that's the value of all the officers and the firefighters working another year so they're gonna work a year they're gonna go from you know 10 years of service on average to 11 years of service so they're gonna get a higher benefit and that's what that represents is the and a portion that is being earned in this upcoming year.
Employees pay a portion of that, so that's what that employee contribution line is.
They pay 9.9, I think we're at, or 10% ish.
There's, you don't pay any expenses out of that, so we don't count that.
Then that amortization, kinda in the middle of the calculation, that's where we're paying off that unfunded liability.
So it's being gradually recognized, kind of like a mortgage for the next 15 years I think we're at now.
So the contribution if we make no changes is gonna go from 700 up to 850 for the fire.
If we adopt, if the fire board and the police board adopt new assumptions that we're looking at, it'll be about 791,000 for the contribution.
Any questions?
It's a similar story on the police side.
I think I need to go to the next page and it won't let me.
It's a similar story.
The funded percentage comes down just a little bit.
If we keep the old assumptions, comes up a hair if we keep the new assumptions.
Similar story for the contribution goes up to about 482,000 if we keep everything the same.
And if we adapt those changes and so on.
So that's what the board is going to look at.
We'll be at 430,000, give or take, a couple thousand.
So any questions?
I know it's a lot to throw at everyone, but and then we have just for disclosure kind of items at the end here if anyone's really bored.
So this kind of shows the contributions or the assumptions that we're currently using and then this consolidated, that's the big study that the consolidated funds have done.
So those are the ones that we're looking at as an option.
So we'll finalize that at the end of the month, I guess.
Hopefully.
Legalities.
Anything?
Any questions?
Thank you, Jen.
Move on to item number nine, which is the Greater Freeport Partnership Quarterly.
Andrea Schultz-Winter.
Thank you.
Good evening.
We're going to start tonight's report a little differently than we have in previous quarterly presentations.
We took some feedback that we had received from previous reports asking questions about jobs, so that's where we're going to focus.
But as Nicole has handed out and I think as was attached into the agenda is a full digest of the partnerships activities in the last quarter.
And the City of Michigan.
And again, those are always organized by our strategic focus areas.
And those focus areas were developed from our strategic plan, which was done in partnership with the city's strategic plan as well.
So we're going to start, as I mentioned, with labor, with work.
So in front of you on the screen is a bunch of numbers, a little less than what your previous presentation had.
And others.
I want to draw your attention to a couple of key items.
The unemployment rate in Freeport went up slightly from April of this year to April to May 2025.
Those are the most current data points that we have at this point.
However, our unemployment rate is still below the state average, which is 4.8 percent, and the national rate is right at 4.2 as well.
Some things that I would also like to draw your attention to is there was in the month of May 927 unique job postings in May 2025 by 249 employers.
So in the previous month of April, there was 852 unique job postings.
So those are unique job opportunities from employers who are in Stephenson County.
And others.
Of those job postings, the median wage was $26.40 per hour, which equates to about $55,000 per year.
So, when you have an idea of what job opportunities are out there, I would say that this is a good paying job.
Some of the top employers posting are listed there before you, which as you look at the top occupations that you see, you can see some correlations.
So, I think if you have young people at home or who are looking for career opportunities, These would definitely be educational pathways that I know Freeport High School as well as Highland Community College have curriculum in and these are needed professions currently and into the future.
I know looking at preliminary data that already in June there is over a thousand job postings so there is an increase in the jobs that are available.
So what I'm trying to illustrate here is that there are jobs in Freeport.
And this correlates to what I'm really hearing from our business community.
As we do business retention visits, which we've done over 40 in this quarter, about 73 to date, is that employers would like to grow.
Their barrier to growth is having enough qualified employees, qualified talent.
And as we know and as we're going to talk about in our presentation today, employee growth, talent retention, talent recruitment happens because you need to have a lot of things going on in the community.
You need child care.
You need a purposeful, intentional talent attraction campaign.
You need training opportunities.
We need, once we get a new resident here, we need to make sure that they're sticky, that they know what's going on in the community, that they get involved, that they understand all the things that Freeport and Stephenson County has to offer, and they need to find somewhere to live.
They need to have a home.
We always want that paycheck that leaves that employer to come home to a bed in Freeport and Stephenson County.
That's critical.
If we have the jobs here, that's wonderful, but when that paycheck leaves the community, So does a lot of the money that goes with it.
As mentioned, there are 73 business retention visits thus far this year.
We're going to talk a lot about some of the barriers to employment and some of the activities that the partnership is working on to help overcome those barriers.
And two that I. And others.
We are working in collaboration with a lot of different community partners.
We talked about housing being an issue.
We have partnered with the NAACP Housing Committee as well as the United Way to hold a series of stakeholder engagement sessions.
I know many of you who are in the room tonight were participating in those engagement sessions and we thank you.
Future efforts, what we heard from those engagement sessions Sessions from the public, is that work will really need to be focused in three separate areas.
One will be around financial education, helping that renter become the future homeowner.
And what's the pathways to do that?
Housing improvement.
What resources are out there?
If I'm a homeowner, if I'm already a homeowner, how do I access some of these resources to improve my residence?
And then housing growth.
How do we get more residential units to come online?
And that's where the partnerships work will really be focused.
Additionally, in child care, we know that there are many people who would like to enter the workforce or return to the workforce after having a child, but they have nowhere for their young one to go.
So we developed a survey to engage our child care providers as well as our employers to really understand what the impact of those shortages are.
And I'm going to talk about the child care resources that are being used to inform a public information campaign that will be launched in the third quarter.
But I can tell you already that some of those focus areas of that campaign are going to be around targeting our employers to let our employers know what child care resources do exist.
Some people don't know that the YWCA is a service area within Freeport, and they provide a lot of the subsidies that help and the other thing is we're going to be talking about is trying to build that capacity attracting new child care providers.
Also helping those that are here, how do they grow more slots?
How do they expand?
And if there are any in-home child care providers that are in existence or there are more that we're seeing, how do we make sure that they're able to grow more slots?
And and others that are in existence or there are more that want to come online.
What resources, what processes do they need to go through to offer in-home child care?
And lastly, also targeting the information for parents and guardians, helping them know what resources are out there.
I'm going to turn the presentation over to Nicole, who's going to talk a little bit more and more about marketing the region.
Good evening.
We have spoke to you in previous presentations regarding our talent attraction strategy.
That was really trying to organically grow who we got back to Freeport.
So letting people know who were here, hey, this is really great, things are advancing, here's some new opportunities that are happening, come on back.
And so on.
It was hard to reach people that way.
So we're being much more creative about that now, being a little bit leaning into the weird is the one session I listened to the other day, but just saying, you've grown up, so have we.
And kind of highlighting some of the ways that our community continues to thrive and bringing the people back who want to be part of that progressive movement.
So one of them is bringing back alumni families, who already have a connection to this area and want to raise their children in a similar way.
And then also young families because that is the demographic that's going to help us continue to enrich our communities.
And as Andrea said, some of those barriers are housing and childcare.
So again, all of this kind of has to work at the same time.
And then also helping employers to understand the resources that we as the partnership can and John, and I have people say well really who moves to Freeport?
And 158 postcards were mailed to new residents in the second quarter.
That's in all of Stephenson County, but it's, what I'm going to say, it's passive.
When you mail out a postcard, we can't, I don't have more contact information than just the address that they purchased, but we've had 15 of those returned back to us, so 10% and say, yeah, I want to know more about Freeport or Stephenson County or where I live.
So I've had the opportunity to meet with two different group meetings and then three people individually for coffee and tell them about the area, explain to them about what resources or who they can reach out to if they have questions.
And overall, it's positive sentiment.
We've had people from Florida, from Texas, and then more locally, Monroe, Wausau, Wisconsin.
And so on.
My last one that I did, I had a lot of people from the Cowler County region who had moved here and they can't say enough about how friendly the people in Freeport are.
Somebody was saying, you know, I go to Walmart and the lady asked me how my day is and she genuinely wants to know the answer.
I go to the DMV and the people are nice, like they're nice.
And so those are the types of things that we really love to hear.
They're not naive to the fact that every community can always do more to progress, but they understand and the community.
We love hearing that feedback knowing that people who are coming here are really enjoying their experience.
I will turn it over to Bill.
Thank you.
One of the ways we work on jobs is we try and help existing businesses to thrive and and we help those who want to start businesses to get the access to the tools and the resources that help them grow.
So we've done a few things in the last quarter on that realm.
One, we held a session on succession planning.
We know that one of the reasons some businesses close is because business owners can't or don't want to continue and they have a hard time finding someone, they don't have someone to follow to take over the business for them.
And so we held a session working with the local law firm to talk about the strategies and to start planning that early on before you need it.
And we are looking forward to other opportunities to continue that conversation with the businesses and organizations that are interested.
We also had a home show in April.
A home show, it's the second, third time we've done the home show.
And it's just an opportunity for some of our businesses, our contractors, our small businesses to interact with people.
We have a wide range of usually small businesses that participate, over 30 businesses this year participated and got to talk to several hundred people that came to the home show.
We finished up the 2025 base camp in the beginning of the second quarter.
We had our last class and then we had our pitch competition.
Our pitch competition was a chance for the participants of the base camp to show what they learned, to talk about their business, to pitch their business to a panel of judges that then rated them and we were able to give out over $6,000 in prizes, in cash prizes to those businesses so that kind of helps them, you know, thrive and do some things.
This year in base camp we had 14 participants, 11 women, 3 men, and it was a busy group during the class that started in January, ended in April.
We had two of them open businesses.
One was Full Circle Cafe, which is in the library, and one was a lawn care business, which was kind of a side business for one of our participants.
Another participant changed focus and decided that she was interested in working in purchasing a business, and we helped her connect with a business that was interested in selling, and they're actively discussing that, and we're working with them about resources.
And several other businesses have told us that the skills that they learned and the connections that they made during base camp have helped them with their business.
And then the last thing that we have in the entrepreneurial section is our CEO program.
This is a brand new program that we're doing in conjunction with the school district, with the Freeport School District, that is a class that doesn't cost the school district anything and it takes a class full of students, it's a four credit class and it teaches them entrepreneurial and business skills, kind of the soft skills, puts them in front of 80 different businesses over the course of the year and teaches them those soft skills but also teaches them about all the industries that are right here in Freeport that they can make a career out of and the Midlands CEO program is already being done in over 70 different communities around the country so it's been road tested.
So it's been road tested and the evidence shows that a lot of those kids that go through that program end up staying in town.
They realize they can have a career, they can start a business, they can work for a business that they met during the class and have a very fruitful career.
So we're working right now to get that program up and running and we're looking forward to that as a great way to grow some entrepreneurs that we think will feed right into our other and other services.
So, with that, I think we're open to any questions.
Any questions, Council?
Thank you.
Next, we'll move on to the discussion regarding ordinance establishing a fee for overweight.
Manager Boyer.
Thank you, Your Honor.
The City of Freeport has We have a codified ordinance, Section 460.16, that requires updates and modifications for overweight and oversized permitting.
One of the challenges here is many communities have updated ordinances related to this.
We have a lot of folks coming through town accessing our transportation network.
One of the challenges is we need an opportunity to have a fee to recover the costs that are related to reviewing that permit and also that gives us the opportunity to Keep heavy loads off of certain routes when we repave a new street in town.
We don't necessarily want a Shorter route that happens to go across our newly paved street to take priority over an other route that may be a little longer but doesn't take doesn't take operators right through some of our nicest redone sections.
So city staff and the attorney are suggesting the following changes in 460.11 section.
So the title should be modified to say overweight and oversized vehicles.
Create an overweight and oversized City of Freeport permit that has to be submitted with the exact route for the trip permitting process and invoicing methods.
Permitting should be required inside city limits no matter what roads are being used within the city limits including state IDOT routes as they can still turn off onto local streets once they come into city limits.
We need to add 625 ILCS 5-15301 to this section and that created an O&O fee schedule that currently does not exist West, and that would include $150 for an individual one-time permit, $1,200 for an annual permit, and the annual permits are tied to the individual license plate of the vehicle only.
The oversized and overweight vehicle will still need to report the exact route every time by email with permit numbers each time for record approval.
Also suggest a $500 penalty for noncompliance of permitting.
The penalties in 422.99 are set at a $100 penalty and companies will not get permits and will change if it's not increased.
So staff and the attorney time is the only financial impact to this at this point and staff recommends this ordinance amendment.
If applicable, it will be done for the July 21st meeting for council approval.
And for questions I'd also like to invite Darren Steekle to add to anything that I missed.
So I just want to give you guys a clear overview of this.
So this is not for standard semi loads.
This is not for buses.
This would not apply to garbage trucks.
It would not apply to the fire department.
It would not apply to agricultural during season.
So our main routes are permitted at 80,000 pounds, so this would be trucks that are over 80,000 pounds, which is the legal load limit.
This would also protect our bridge that we have on Hancock.
Anybody that's oversized or overweight would never be permitted to go across our bridges.
Obviously, we've got to get Hancock, Vidoc, complete before we can put that in place.
But it's one of our largest most expensive structures to protect.
I have done research on this.
Many towns our size and larger have different rules.
Some of them are done on weight where they pay by the pound, but we don't have certified scales that are available to us that the city owns.
And so talking with Chief Shenberger, we would not be able to enforce a permit at a weight limit.
We took them to weigh them.
We wouldn't have any officer that would be qualified because we don't own certified scales and the cost would be prohibitive to have.
So what I came up with after reviewing a bunch of them was just a flat fee.
And I talked to a few of our regular trucking companies that do oversize and overweight in Freeport.
And they felt that the fees that are here are similar to other communities our size and very fair for annual permitting costs.
So I'll give you an example.
Normal semi that's hauling freight through Freeport would not need a permit somebody that's moving a very large excavator That's a wide load to a specific job That would need either a one-time permit or an annual permit to move that and then they have to Submit their route with the axle weights that they're running so we can review the route and say hey We just paved this street.
We would want you to take a different route.
So we're managing where they're going within the city It's a very fair expectation We have had an oversized and overweight permit, honestly, for years on the books, but it does seem that it has never really been enforced and there's never really been a permit process to it where there's actual physical permit filled out.
It was always just kind of done by emails or word of mouth and I would like to formalize something that is a record keeping process just like our other permits.
So it's fair to all and everybody has to do the same standards to be able to have it done.
If it's approved we would send this out to the people that we know that truck through Freeport all the time and we would give them a grace period to get this you know implemented so it's it's not something that we would be punitive on obviously we need to let people know that we we have this permit out there.
I do want to let you guys know the reason this came up and others.
And one of the things that came up was the state of Illinois has been detouring oversized loads outside of town down Henderson Road.
We own Henderson Road and it's a local road to the city limits and they're killing that road and breaking it apart.
We didn't know that was happening.
We actually had a truck that had an accident and we asked him why are you on this street and he said well the state's telling us to take these roads and so we did look at their permit paperwork and it was the case but they detoured them on local roads that are not made for that kind of weight.
So it kind of woke us up to the process here and that we need to have some more checks and balances on it to be fair to the constituents that are investing in the roads.
Discussion Alderman Sanders oh I can wait I can wait for anybody else that was there someone else that wanted to ask something manager where I just wanted to also add to that we've had a number of different cases where large heavy oversized loads have been trying to detour onto Empire Street obviously we've invested quite a bit there and we're not terribly interested in having We're having overweight loads going down Empire to Pearl City Road, and it's a convenience factor for the haulers, but we also have to protect our investment that we've made in these roads.
And I think Darren's example of Henderson is a great example because it's on the edge of town.
It's not really, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind for most people, hardly anybody lives there.
There's just a couple of businesses out there, some important and major businesses, but they don't get back to us and say, hey, did you authorize this enormous gen set to go down here on a, you know, on a 16 axle trailer that, you know, is going down Henderson Road.
So I think one of the issues and we're trying to tighten up is some of these ordinances that have to do with this, it gives us a little more enforcement capacity and then recover some of our review costs, which we currently don't have.
Yeah, one more point I would like to make, Alderman Sanders, if I can.
So Rob brought something to my memory.
We do have these enormous generator loads that have been detoured because they don't fit under the bridge north of town.
Something that's happened quite often is they get off route and they rip down either cable, frontier lines, electrical lines, and without permitting we don't know who did it and we can't track it down and it ends up costing the city time and money that we should be recouping from these permittees if they make the damage.
And others.
But often they just drive away.
If we have a permit process, then we can track down who was there during those times and generally find out who's made the damage, you know, if they're driving through the right aways, if they're dragging trailers off the streets, and it happens more than you know.
Alderman Sanders.
Yeah, I was just curious about some procedures or protocols that can be put in place.
And I understand what you guys are saying in regards to the damage that these big overload trucks can create.
I just wanted to find out because I know the state Now, because I know the state police, they have some kind of a system in place to have trucks to come in to weigh that, if they're knowing what their weight capacity is before, while they're traveling the road, before they leave, they stable.
If they know what their their weight capacity is could they not be instructed to go to some kind of waiting mechanism or whatever before they enter into Freeport when they realize that if they see signs on the road that they could be overweight coming through the city, there should be signs like and and the City of Kansas.
So, I just want to ask you, what is the cost to the city when you're traveling through this city that the police department might interject or whatever, or what kind of monitoring system that we have that monitors trucks that are coming into Freeport and how we setting that up and is that going to be a cost to the city to have them to navigate around these areas so you had a bunch of questions there so I'll do my best okay so currently this permit would resolve most of the issues that you talked about because we don't have that could we weigh them yes there are places that we could weigh them locally but it would probably be unenforceable because the city of Freeport doesn't have a weights and loads officer on their staff that is Strain, if we specifically wanted to weigh a truck or a group of people that we thought were breaking our ordinance or rules, we could call in a state officer backup with portable scales.
I would be unsure if we would have to pay for that or not because we would likely have to pay for their time in order to bring those scales into town and they do do stings sometimes on state routes Hicks to check the oversized loads.
Again, farmers have permits that they can do different processes during agricultural times that they can be 10 to 15 percent overweight in the state statute.
So I think this process here would clean up 90 percent of all the issues that we're having at this time.
And the good contractors that come through town, they're They're good about calling and giving us routes and that and I direct them on the routes as I see fit or say please don't go on this street or don't go over this bridge type stuff but this would clean up the process currently is very hard within our system to find this process and so we want to bring it to light.
We want to get council backing of it.
We want to have fees that honestly have contractors want to do it right the first time and I again and I have looked at the current ordinance and it's very basic and it basically leaves a lot of discretion to the Public Works Director that I don't like.
I would rather have rigid and firm rules that are not at my discretion so nobody's getting any favoritism and that we're just toeing the line that the city should.
Background company appreciated.
Anyone fromigeen Rf e the rehears and say OK this is what I have t hem to do.
This is the rules.
They are refre.
Ter is a.
So we need to develop that.
And Robert.
We will create a permit app similar to the right-of-way permit form that somebody can fill out, email to us, has a time required ahead of time that it will be processed in so we have reasonable due time to get it done and then we will invoice them accordingly with online payment options if they choose and the people that truck through all the town all the time, we will set up an annual account with them just like we and the rest of the city.
So, we're going to try to make it simple and easy on them.
Is there warnings that would notify any overweight vehicle?
So part of the process then second fold is once this is done, we would notify on the outside limits of town that permits are required for overweight and oversized.
Those are signs that can be added to the city limit signs.
Right.
Good.
Okay.
Thank you.
Just a touch on process that if the council tonight at this committee meeting decides to move votes to move forward then I'll draft the ordinance there so that it will be brought back to you guys at the next city council meeting for first read there so but again you guys got a vote to move forward so I have direction to actually draft the ordinance up.
Alderman Stacey.
I thought you said that we could not move forward with this until the bridge was done.
So we can move forward with the overweight and overpermit, we just, we will not be able to allow weights that are over 80,000 pounds across the Hancock Bridge.
We cannot do that, it's not in good enough shape.
So that process will not be allowed at any point.
And in the state statute, if you look through it, it actually says in there, if you adopt and Cora, to the right.
And then back to the beginning.
Well, there's no charge that you can go over a bridge that you're overweight on.
You can always go over it, but that's not the state statute that bridges are always exempt to overweight.
They want you to drive 20 miles around and then go over a bridge that you're overweight on.
It creates too much damage to the structures.
I can't actually answer that question.
There's no real penalties or teeth in it.
So there's really, they call us, we review their permit, we approve their permit, but we really have no consequence for them not obeying our permit.
And up until recently, I think we had verbal conversations with them.
I know I've had several years ago when I first stepped in the door, and ever since then, Darren's been We've been reviewing those and it's been going fine.
I just think that we don't, we need a little more enforcement penalty involved with this as well as being able to recover our time for the review.
The question I would have is this codified ordinance is very antiquated, been on the books for a long time.
It references stuff.
I'm sure it was pulled from somewhere at one point but was never finished with an actual fee schedule or a permit app.
We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Klemm.
Any further discussion?
So now we can vote at a cow?
No, we're just voting to move it forward.
That's it.
To move it to a first reading, to approve them to do the ordinance.
So by moving it forward, we'll create the ordinance.
Aaron and I will, to come back, we'll create the permit application and then we'll bring it back for a first reading and a second reading.
Right, right.
I just didn't wanna spend the time and money redoing it if we're not, if the council doesn't and we have interest in moving it.
Can that be ready by the June 21st meeting or do you need more time than that?
If there's no further discussion all those in favor of moving this forward to the next regularly scheduled meetings signify by saying aye aye opposed okay then we will move on to item number 11 which is public comment is there any public comments this evening Wintory, and a lot of other folks.
Those are the things that we're going to be discussing in our next meeting.
So I'm going to ask you to do some kind of comment.
Is there any public comments this evening?
Page care 103, Arbor Drive.
I mostly just have a question of the $55,000 salary that you're pretty proud of.
Do you generally think that that's enough for the public?
Fowler.
You see all these, you listed it.
So we should really take a look at what are we doing here.
We're forcing our public to require this assistance, genuinely, $55,000 a year is not enough.
We have the water bills that are going higher and higher.
You guys are choosing to put back on that grocery tax.
Your events that you host, you take money back from us.
From those people that you pay $55,000 a year.
And there's people that get paid less than that, and there's people of course that get paid more than that, but that's not enough, and that's not something to be proud of in this community, your workers are not thriving, they're surviving, they're paying their bills and that's it, they're lucky to go to your events on that kind of salary, you better hope you have a double income, you're gonna have retention with that kind of salary, because those kind of people cannot leave, they are stuck working for you, another opportunity opens up, but in this town there's not.
There's not good opportunities for the youth, for anyone.
We do nothing here.
So take a look at yourself and really look at the core.
What are we doing?
We're forcing our public to require your help.
It's disgusting and it leaves a bad taste in the public's mouth.
Thank you.
Is there any other public comment?
Go ahead, Tommy.
Dwayne Dickenley?
Yes.
You said about Queen's is going to be September 3rd?
That's right, September 3rd, Tommy.
Jodi Moos, she does a good job of that Teddy Baker day poke and the chief do a good job with driving that Please please sing Anyone else go ahead Hi, Sue Cook, Winchester Drive, and I have a question about the trees at Cray Park.
The two trees that are very, very rare, will we be taking cuttings from those or anything to kind of generate saplings so that we have the ability to not just have two, but the ability to have more because that's a tourist attraction.
That's how you bring and the Tourist, is to say we have this.
This is not in every single park, but we have it.
So if we can generate more of the trees, if we can grow more trees, more saplings, and use that, I think that would be a wonderful way to add to the tourist attraction.
Are you guys hearing this or am I muffled?
Okay, good.
Then the other is on the tree-lined back road and Jeanne.
We are, as you know, going to be a two lane road that goes back like where you would go to Walmart, going out of the park.
I noticed that a lot of the the morma trees are down.
Are you taking the mature trees down to add saplings?
Or will that become a two lane road?
I know that for a very, very long time, photographers use that for weddings, because it had the picturesque canopy that came over top.
And I know that it also blocked out a lot of light.
So I can understand putting in smaller saplings, but will that be a two-lane road?
The next is for the GDP, have you thought about the Monroe idea?
Because we're coming into Christmas, and we have these six months, and we have a lot of open storefronts.
And something that Monroe did that I think that we could do and do very, very well is is to offer, Monroe offered these storefronts at a zero rent, zero rent for a period of time.
And I think it was six months because they wanted us to run through Christmas.
You had specific guidelines.
If you didn't meet those guidelines, boom, you were paying rent.
You had to have your plan.
You submitted your plan ahead of time.
The council actually looked at the plans.
The mayor and the council, the city manager, I don't think they have a city manager there.
Look at the plans.
They filled up their downtown.
I think they had one that backed out afterwards.
Also, please add x-ray to your list when you have nurses and things like that.
X-ray and radiation therapy, because we have those departments in Freeport.
We have a radiation therapy department.
Not a lot of places do.
We have a standalone radiation therapy department.
And then also just one thing for the ADA board is that TuddyFest for parking for the handicap, if you could get.
Your time has exceeded, thank you.
Well, that was close, but.
Any other public comments?
Alderman Stacey.
I just want to close out in prayer.
Father God, in the name of Jesus, you are the author and the finisher of our faith.
So Father God, I lose your healing power over the city of Freeport and I speak to the north, the south, the east, and the West, oh God.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for opening up our eye gates and our ear gates, that we may hear and understand what you are calling for Freeport this season, oh God.
Continue to order our steps according to your word for we know if you don't do it it won't be done so now we just give you the honor the praise and the glory for you alone are worthy and we speak victory over this city for it will be all that you intended to be it carries the name free port for a reason and I just speak healing and victory in Jesus name.
Amen.
Any other public comments?
Oh I have.
Go ahead.
I would just like to say that I was really I'm really impressed by Teddy Baker Day this year.
It brought a lot of community out and it was just a fun time and it brought a lot of churches out.
My church had a tent and we had multiple churches and ministries involved in it.
And I just want to kind of give a praise report that we ended up praying for 422 people and we had 13 salvations and 6 rededications and we gave away 930 bottles of free water.
And it was such a blessing and just to see the community come together like with the community church event that was down there there was multiple churches that came down there and they worshiped together and I've heard nothing but good things about the fireworks I don't know if you guys all saw the fireworks but they were pretty amazing and if it wasn't for this festival and bringing the community together think about it 422 people said and Mary.
Thank you.
I just want to remind everybody that on Wednesday, they're going to have out at Highland.
It's called Shoot Hoops and Not Guns and it's sponsored by the Boys and Girls Club and it will be at the YMCA, so if you got some time, come out and support the kids at 5 o'clock.
And then on Saturday, July 19th, at 8 o'clock, we will have, on King Campus, they will have a movie night, and the movie is Praise This.
Bring your chairs and snacks and families and just come out and enjoy the community movie at 8 o'clock at the Boys and Girls Club.
Any other public comments?
Nonology, yes ma'am.
Wasn't there an event for the 40 Days of Peace Saturday?
There's an event every other weekend that's in addition to what she just talked about.
So isn't there an event this weekend?
Yes, that's at Nolten Park.
What is the event?
The same thing as before, it's a cleanup on Friday, it's a resource party on Saturday and church in the street on Sunday and they'll be at Norton Park.
At Norton Park.
Any other public comments?
I will entertain a motion for adjournment.
So move.
Second.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Have a good evening.