Michelle, if you'd give the invocation, please.
Lord Jesus we thank you for this time together to make decisions for the City
of Freeport according to your will for this city. Before this meeting gets
started I would ask that each one would examine their heart as read in Ephesians
4 31 through 32 and this comes out in the message version. Let all bitterness,
wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speakings be put away from you with all malice and
be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another even as God and
Christ forgave you, so that what needs to be done and accomplished for the City of Freeport
can happen through grace, wisdom, love, and forgiveness, through godly wisdom, not through
our own understanding, not our own understanding, our own will be done for the City of Freeport,
but the Lord's will be done to glorify Christ Jesus.
That God would bring the City Council, Mayor, and City Manager together and redeem what
and more.
The word says in Philippians 313, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended,
but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those
things which are ahead, transform minds and hearts tonight to unite, bringing Freeport
to its full potential and destiny in Christ Jesus.
James 119 it says know this my beloved brothers let every person be quick to
quick to hear slow to speak and slow to anger in Jesus name amen amen thank you
in the mayor's absence I'll call this meeting to order at 6 o 1 the mayor will
be marked absent and Alderpersons present Klemm Monroe aye Simmons here
Parker, Stacy, Shadle, Sanders is absent, Sellers, and we do have a quorum for our
meeting. Alderperson Klemm, if you'd lead the pledge and then the meeting is
yours to chair.
Thank you. We need to get to amend the agenda and then we need approval of the agenda. Between
items number 6 and 7, we need to have a presentation for public works employee of the year and
Public Works, and then we also need to move to second public comment before item number
14, the closed session. We will return to open session, but we need that, there's no
sense to draw that out, so could I have a motion to amend the agenda?
So moved.
Second.
Do we need to do a voice or all in favor? All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye. Motion passes. Approval of minutes of the City Council meeting of the hold
held on January 13th 2025. Can I get a motion and a second? So moved. Second.
Who was first, Joy? Thank you, Joy. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Public comments? Madam Clerk, do we need to approve the agenda yet? We did the amendment. We approved the amendment. You're correct, Greg. I apologize. We need a motion to vote on the agenda then. We voted on it. Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Thank you Alderman
Shadle for bringing that up. Public comments, there's nobody signed up for
public comments. So we have, now we have the presentation.
Thank you. I'd like to ask James Gobe and Randy Kolbauer to come up, please.
So I would like to start with James. James is the Street Department Employee of the Year.
He is Classification as a Tree Trimmer 1.
I'd like to start with a fun fact about James.
I recently was told that James likes to ride his bike to work on most days, which I think is pretty unique.
James came to the city with over 20 years of forestry experience.
Working different operating jobs in forestry positions over his career,
over his career, he took the opportunity to introduce himself to Pat Ingram while the two-man
forestry crew was doing some work outside the library one day.
Not even completing a full year of employment with the city, James likes to stay busy and
will make sure any task is handled to him and it completed without hesitation manner
and it will be done correctly and thoroughly.
and the crew guys enjoy working with James as he will do anything asked of him on a job
site without question.
He never hesitates for leadership and asks for explanations if something hasn't been
done before.
He comes to work every day with a positive attitude and his infectious attitude melts
into the people around him.
He has added a strong work ethic, sound decision making, collaboration and drive to the street
Department, a crew along with his vast knowledge of his position that he brought with him,
seemingly quiet, and I heard he didn't want to come tonight.
He started to come out of his shell and never fails to lighten the mood in a stressful situation
or day.
To say he's an asset to our department is an understatement.
That was something from his peers and we're happy to have him and look forward to many
Miller, Years of Service with the City of Freeport. James, I'd like to congratulate you with this award.
Another award we'd like to give tonight, and before I forget, I'd like to thank the Public
Works Department for coming out and supporting their crews tonight. I really appreciate all
for all your attendance after hours.
Again, our second award of the night
is Utility Department Employee of the Year,
which this year, Randi Kolbauer was selected,
and she is our Environmental
and Regulatory Compliance Officer.
I'm gonna give you a little fun fact about Randi.
She's actually got a few.
Randi is a former police officer.
She's part of the Rural Fire Department,
and she's also a Safety Officer at a Firearms Training Center.
Randy is a self-starter and a dedicated employee
to the City of Freeport.
She is a true teammate to all
and is willing to learn all duties as assigned.
Randy has helped build the Compliance Department
and she is considered an equal to the Streets
and Utility Superintendents.
Randy's compliant roles involve all areas
of required utility tracking
and reporting for state compliance.
This is an extremely important role
and the Utility Operations business.
Her assignments include working with many team members daily,
including the lab staff,
the water and wastewater operations staff,
our significant industrial users, landfill partners,
timber industries who maintains our woodlot.
Compliance reporting includes
annual and monthly water reporting,
consumer confidence reports,
and an annual and monthly sanitary sewer reporting.
Randy's role also performs field visits
for stormwater compliance, sampling, monitoring,
and reporting of MS4 stormwater authority requirements.
Other special duties assigned include iWorks
streets compliance and right away compliance.
She issues warning violations and issues right away fines.
She attends code hearings as the city's representative
and she does all of the EPA sampling as required
for the overall compliance system.
and until recently she did that in her own car.
Randy never backs down from a challenge.
She will make sure she's well-informed, educated,
when something is new presented to her
and won't take shortcuts to get a quicker result.
When presented with anything she listens,
absorbs the information being provided
and just does not react, she always makes the best decision.
Act, she always makes the best decision possible in the moment. Also, she humbles herself if
the decision is wrong. She is by far one of the easiest people on our staff to collaborate
with and never hesitates to offer help to all others regardless of what she already
has on our plate. I'd like to sincerely congratulate Randy for her contributions and congratulate
her as the Utility Employee of the Year for 2024.
and others.
Thank you.
Come on.
Take it out of the sleeve.
Oh, hey.
Hold on.
James, come back up here.
I forgot.
So I asked the utility department to come up with some special awards for these people.
And the mechanics came through for us today.
So we have inspired by the NFL touchdown necklaces.
We have made our crew members their own names.
And then since Randy, Randy is the Sheriff of the Talbot, he's got her violations, we got you.
Thank you.
Thank you again for coming, guys.
Rob, if I could before the guys head out, hey, on behalf of the council, we really appreciate
what you guys do.
It really shows the camaraderie of you guys coming out and supporting your team.
It's very important to all of you guys and to all of us.
We're proud of what you guys do. We're kidding around beforehand. We know it looks like we
got a snowfall coming up. The major thing in that is make sure you guys are safe. It's
no matter how fast you do it, it's no matter how safe you do it. So thank you guys for
all your work and gals for all your work. We really, really appreciate it.
We've put in record that Alderman Sanders was here at 6.06. Item number seven is a
presentation action plan for Safe Streets for the ALL grant. Questions and
answers in the presentation and that would be from this gentleman in front of us who I do not have his name in it.
So I'd like to introduce Matt. He's with ALTA Planning and Design. They were hired to do the Freeport Safety Action Plan. It's part of the SS4A grant.
Matt and his coworker Lexi are here in town for the next few days. We are also having an open house tomorrow night here at this facility for anybody in the public that wants to participate.
Matt's probably got about a 15 minute presentation on progress that we've been working for in the last quarter.
All right, good evening. Again, Matthew Deerdahl out of ALTA Planning and Design.
Really happy to be here. We got in on Sunday and had a really good day talking to people today.
And then I got to bike around a bit this afternoon and drove around to kind of check out some of the different areas we've been talking about for safety.
So I feel like I'm really starting to get to know Freeport and I think his in-person visits are really important.
Martin. So yeah, I'm going to try to go quick. I may or may not focus on the slides. We'll
see how close I can stick to it. But I definitely want to talk a little bit about the Safe Systems
approach, what a safety plan actually is and what we're trying to do here with it. And
then give just a little bit of an overview and some outcomes that we're hoping for. And
then I added some slides based on the information that we collected today. So again, I'm the
Project Manager for ALTA partnering with Fehr Graham
on this safety action plan.
And so why pursue safety action plan?
It starts with the safe system approach
that the FHWA decided to frame
because the traditional and maybe older school approach
to safety is about preventing crashes,
Improving behavior, individual behavior,
and then reacting based on where crashes are happening.
And so the safe system approach, kind of a newer approach,
starts with the premise that death
and very serious injuries on our roads are unacceptable,
and zero is the goal.
So zero fatal crashes, zero injuries
that impact somebody's life for the rest of their life.
So that's the start.
Also, we know that mistakes are going to happen,
so you can't engineer away mistakes,
but what we want is that when those mistakes happen,
that it doesn't impact people's lives.
And then there's a variety of other things out there.
Reducing speed is a big factor in it,
and then through our safety analysis,
identifying these risks and preventing them in the future.
I'm not gonna go over all of these,
but I just wanted to highlight at the national level,
the impact of traffic safety, of traffic deaths,
is staggering at the national level.
And then some Illinois statistics,
you can see on the screen there,
I'll just say about 300,000 crashes
involving motor vehicles, about 1,100 fatal crashes.
And then just some bicycle statistics up there as well.
and then Stevenson County here in Illinois.
You can see some trends there as well.
So why is this happening?
There's a lot of reasons and part of what we're gonna figure
out in this plan is try to really understand
what those particular reasons are here in Freeport.
But big picture, speed is one of the biggest factors.
When cars are going fast and they hit things,
bad things happen.
And part of the reason that motor vehicle speeds
are an issue, is because of the way streets are historically,
have been designed for high speeds,
so wide speeds, wide travel lanes, things like that.
We know that vehicle size continues to increase,
both personal vehicles like SUVs and trucks,
and commercial vehicles and trucks.
And then land use, so where do people live,
how dense is development around the city,
and then what are the connections between those uses,
and how can people get around.
So those are some of the big picture reasons
why it's happening.
So again, the specific thing that we're working on
and we'll produce as a part of this
is a document that'll be a safety action plan.
And so the elements here on the screen
are required by the federal government.
I won't go through each of these in detail,
but it starts with a leadership commitment
of wanting to tackle these serious and fatal injuries.
We have developed a safety committee
as a part of the project
through collaboration with the city.
A systemic level safety analysis
is a really interesting part of it.
We'll see a map in a few minutes
that starts to get at understanding
where crashes are happening
and particularly different severity levels.
And we'll get to that in a second
because that really starts to help us understand
where to target to make the most benefit
through our efforts.
Engagement is important.
This is an engagement week.
We've had several focus groups today and tomorrow.
We're having our second steering committee
or TAC, Technical Advisory Committee tomorrow
and then an open house.
So I wanna plug that a couple of times.
We have these cards here that are on the desk over there that will tell you about it.
And we also have a survey and an interactive map. The interactive map is a really cool
opportunity to get in in the city that you know and identify. It's very user friendly.
and others.
Identify.
It's very user-friendly.
Identify areas that you don't feel safe or where you see cars going too fast or not
yielding to pedestrians or if there's school issues, you can let us know all of that and
that'll be really important.
The federal grant requires us to look at equity considerations and basically that's mapping
a variety of demographic information to help us understand, you know, areas that we can
and we focus through our priority projects at the end.
And then as we get into the final stages
towards the end of this year,
we'll develop a robust implementation plan
that identifies short term,
medium term and long term projects.
And I think that's probably one of the biggest reasons
that we're doing the Safety Action Plan
is it gets Freeport eligible for attractive federal grants
to implement some of these things.
and then we'll also at the end we'll have what we call a dashboard that will show the work that we do to be transparent and let you all know and let the community know what's going on, where there are issues and what we plan to do about it.
Our approach, I think I talked about a lot of this. Let me just double check if there's anything else I really want to highlight. I don't think so, it's probably more of a duplicate.
So we are here in the second green box from the left, the second TAC meeting.
We started towards the end of 2024. We're going to wrap up in late fall 2025 with that document.
And so we're really looking forward to some public engagement.
We hope people here watching tonight or in the future will participate in the survey, Interactive Map,
and so on.
So I think that's the best way to engage if you're interested in this.
So our TAC that we developed as a part of this project is helping us to find the problem.
So we're going to have a mapping exercise tomorrow and we started that today as well
to really understand the context of Freeport and where the issues are across the city.
And again, the TAC will, towards the end, help shape the solutions and help prioritize.
I think I've talked about most of the engagement things here. We have the online map, stakeholder meetings. So I'll skip past that. So the fun stuff. This I worked on this afternoon. I hope there aren't any spelling errors in there, but forgive me if there are. But this is what we've heard so far in both the meetings we had today and then the bike ride and the drive around town. We stopped and took a bunch of pictures, which I'll come to in a second.
One of the things we've noticed so far and heard so far, again, speed of motor vehicles
was one of the first things that came up.
Wide streets and there's some particular areas around the city where there's some transitions
from four lanes, undivided, down to two or three lanes, so just some considerations there.
Accessibility for pedestrians, both at intersections, so how does it feel, how does it look, what
What types of curb ramps are available for people to cross the street?
And then how many lanes are they crossing?
Those things are really important.
And then also along the streets.
So looking at the sidewalk network, you know, is there space for people to walk or are they
mixing with traffic?
And then also, interestingly, there's a lot of discussion today about what are the primary
Routes in town, and then where are some of these cut-through routes that people are taking
that I think is interesting, and then how does that interact with where people are naturally
walking and crossing, so where are the schools, where are the businesses, where are people
working, and then just thinking through, you know, how is that space designed for all of
those different uses.
Then also we talked a little bit about behavior, so personal behavior, texting, while driving,
B. and Distracted, things like that.
All of these things are important.
So I have just a couple of slides of pictures.
Took several, I think 70 or 80, but I have a few to share.
This slide is just a few samples of pedestrian crossing
conditions and thinking about accessibility,
so some better than others.
The one on the left, South Drive and West Avenue,
does not have an accessible crossing, just wanted to note that.
Kiwanis in the middle, Empire, those are some areas
where there are marked crosswalks
with different signage present today.
And then also, so the Empire, there's a school there.
And then up on Kiwanis, I think it's the community college.
And then Walnut Road and South Street,
just kind of sharing a variation of a crossing
where there's a slip lane there,
so a free right to separate from the through lane
and then you can see the kind of the separated crossing
with the island there.
And I'm not necessarily sharing these to evaluate
or make suggestions at this time.
I think we're really in a phase of trying to gather feedback
and gather context and understanding.
So this one, again, I got a bike today
from Derrick Thompson from Fehr Graham
and got to bike around and found
some really interesting paths.
So Park Ave and Pearl City Road there,
I thought were fun and they're nice paths.
Adams Avenue and then near Clark Street,
those are connected and so there's this nice,
pretty low stress bike route
and I found that to be interesting
and I wanted to take off and see where it went
to the northwest because it looked like
and I, there's a lot of green and I thought that would have been fun but didn't have time
so hopefully tomorrow I can do that.
And then Stevenson Street is a good example right here and I don't recall the cross street
but where it transitions from the four lane undivided and pretty wide, no sidewalks, and
it transitions at the crest of a hill, so sight lines are an interesting issue there
and then transitions to Tulane to the east.
And I believe the street width is the same there.
And I think there's a speed transition
slowing down as they go eastbound.
Okay, and then just a couple more examples.
This is South Street and then Burchard,
if I'm saying that right, on the right.
So earlier I mentioned that I think
and others.
One of the more interesting aspects will be the data analysis.
So what we're going to look at is where the crash is happening, where are they most dangerous?
Again, getting back to the issue of wanting to prevent the most harmful crashes from happening.
And then what are the countermeasures or solutions that we can apply to what we find happening?
And so sometimes we'll, like we're going to end up developing crash profiles.
So we might find that there's a lot of left-turn crashes, we might find that there's a lot
of rear-end crashes at certain locations, side swipes, maybe lane departure, which I
don't know that we'll see that in a more urban area, but we'll identify specific counter
measures that the FHWA has listed as proven counter safety measures, and so that's kind
of the value of this in-depth safety analysis.
So we'll start with just mapping the crashes on the left and there, and again I'm not asking
and I don't think you can see the level of detail that well here, but the brighter ones
or the orange is the most serious crashes and they go down in severity from there into
the blue and green colors.
And then we start to identify corridors where the severity of those crashes and the concentration
of them, start to become higher and more concentrated.
And so what we want to stand out there is the red
and maybe the orange a little bit.
And that starts to tell us where the biggest issues are.
And usually one of the big headlines from this,
which we don't have yet, we're just diving
into the safety analysis, will be something along lines
of 60% of all fatal and serious crashes are happening
on maybe 10% of the roadways.
and so that's like, that type of statement,
we'll see what it is, really helps you identify
where we should be making the safety improvements
to get the best safety impact.
Again, plug for the open house tomorrow.
I hope to see you and others there.
City Hall, right here, from 530 to 730.
And it'll be fun, like I think it'll be fun
for most people because we're gonna have a map,
and a big map and we'll get to just ask people how they feel about safety and comfort when
they walk, maybe bike or drive around Freeport. And I think that's mostly it. This is the
same thing that's in my hand right now. I think I've talked about this enough so I'll
end there and thank you for the time tonight. I really appreciate it. And there's questions.
Yeah, I'd like to make a quick comment. So something that I wanted to make clear, the card that Matthew has, we will be...
that Matthew has we will be posting that on Freeport's website so community members have
access to the QR codes so they'll be able to even if you can't attend the meetings you'll
be able to make comments go on the interactive max trap you what you want as far as the level
of items that we're looking at here it's not just vehicles we're also looking at bicycle
routes pedestrian walkways and we could also lighting could be a safety issue as well so
so I'm just throwing that out there in general
that those types of items can be trapped within the plan
and also be part of the data analysis, correct?
Yep.
All right, thank you.
Darren, could you explain a little bit more
if you wouldn't take a minute?
I appreciate it.
We maybe have some questions for you
but a little bit more about the grant
so we know how it works.
Sure.
I believe the sitting council went after this grant.
It is a $500,000 project with a $400,000 grant.
The grant is through the IDOT chain.
This is called the planning stage of the grant.
And in order to open Freeport up to implementation money, which
means construction money, you have to do the planning process.
You have to have a completed plan.
it has to meet the FHWA rules, Federal Highway Department
is actually the main source of the money for this, excuse me.
It's very important to Freeport.
You guys have challenged us to find different ways
to find money to fix safety issues
and or road problems within Freeport.
This is one of the biggest funding sources
that's out there right now.
There's billions of dollars within that bipartisan deal
for this type of funding.
But again, you had to do the planning grant
to get to the construction grant.
And so that's why you'll see we have a timeframe
of less than a year to get this completed
so we can be on the next cycle of implementation money.
Okay. Okay.
Does anyone have any questions for Matt or for Darren?
Alderman Stacey.
Yes, can you tell me who are the members of this safety committee and how they were chosen?
Yes, so we, I don't have that on me.
Yeah, okay, gotcha.
So when we started the project, we met with city staff and then identified key stakeholders in Freeport.
So I think there's a lot of members of the city itself, so Police, Fire, Greater Freeport Partnership, there's Transit Representative.
Pretzel City Transit, yeah. Highland Community College, did you say Park District?
School District.
We sent invitations out to all the governmental and leadership
areas of town requesting that they be part of this.
That's the first, the key, the stakeholders list
is all the big partners within Freeport
to have input from schools and the park systems.
We even invited some of the, there's
a couple of different bike groups within Freeport.
We invited them as well.
Again, we've sent out numerous invitations
and those stakeholders, the tech program
is what he's talking about, the technical assistance.
That's really narrowed down to our local officials
of Wayne's on there, I'm on there.
I believe the fire department has a representative,
the police has a representative.
It's really our technical advisory committee
to make sure that we are using
the most up-to-date safety plans.
For instance, like the 2025 handicap pro ag standards,
where those are just standards that the city is making
to be able to have safe assessments for our streets.
You'll see those maps that the crash analysis came from.
That came from a combination
of the City of Freeport Police Department and also IDOT.
We worked with those partners to get that data.
and we also got some data from the county.
Anyone else?
Alderman Sanders?
Yeah, it's very interesting that this is on the agenda meeting for discussion.
I don't recall that this was even coming into preview at this time and now I'm gonna ask
and I just want to ask the question, what is the severity of obtaining a grant of this nature and what severity level that this project is to be presented to the City of Freeport and not only that, who's making these recommendations and whether you, I think what I heard was that it was a mandate or something of that sort by the
and others.
I'm hearing a lot of information but I have not had time to digest it all just yet.
I'm just listening to see what jumps out at me.
And what I'm listening to is whether or not the analysis, the data, the statistics and where all of this data information is coming from
and when did this project start, who set this up, this program up to start the analysis
to make sure that we are creating a plan, first of all, to create a plan to start something
of this nature and where did this come from and how did it start, why haven't the council
been informed, why haven't we seen any kind of surveys to, I know, I understand you went
Brown took a few pictures for slides and things of this nature to present to the council, but
it still doesn't give us enough detailed information how these things came into existence, how
these projects came into existence.
I think without us absolutely knowing what the severity of this reporting is, whatever
and
John.
So, whatever it is, we need to see where it stands in the
priority list of things to do. I love the idea of getting
grants for projects, programs and things of this nature to
create safety for the City of Freeport. I love those things. I
like that. But what I'm trying to figure out, how does this
whether this program, these grant proposals been in place for however long?
Are we just bringing this to the council at this present time?
Is it, has it been something that's been in the backup, in the back of the people minds
who's generating this program for grants?
How long had this been around, you know, I'd just like to know.
and I'm quite sure the council members would like to know
how we got started with all of this.
So I'm not sure, but I think you had at least 10 questions.
I know, I did that.
So I'll try to just stay with the ones I remember.
I did that on purpose.
I did that on purpose simply because.
If you want answers to them, you gotta slow them down.
I know, but the thing about it is,
the thing about it is as soon as I stop questioning,
then I have to run into brick walls
after I stop questioning.
Well, this program was approved by this council
and you voted for it.
Okay.
And so this project only started in October
and this is the first report as we said
to the council of where we're at.
This was requested by City Manager Boyer
to come and give a presentation
of where we're at in the project.
All the analysis data has come from our safety resources
which is the Freeport Police,
and I-DOT, Sheriff, County, all the data is accurate.
In the grant process, we've already committed to this grant.
We signed the paperwork when you, when this council approved the resolution.
So in the priority level, I would say it's pretty high since it was already approved
to move forward as a project.
I'm sorry, I don't remember all the other questions, but the data is what it is.
We're just getting to the actual stakeholders and the survey.
So over the last quarter, we've been developing the tax, the advisory, giving outlines of
issues that may or may not be.
But because we're doing public open houses, and we're doing the stakeholder meetings of
different people.
For instance, I did not attend the stakeholder meeting because this is for us to get other
Well, we're starting to extract future information from people outside of the city staff on what we think.
The open house tomorrow is to get outside information.
That was explained at last week's meeting.
If you want to have a voice, you're more than welcome to come tomorrow and mark down anything
you want as an issue or opportunity.
We're also doing the QR codes so people that don't want to come to a meeting can have their
input as part of the plan.
It's a citywide plan.
It has nothing to do with any certain area or not.
That's why the full map's up there.
Scott, that's why the full map's up there, and honestly I don't remember what else you
asked.
Following up with that, I appreciate all that you just presented to us again, refreshing
the people's memory about what took place at certain council meetings and things of
this nature, especially when I didn't realize this was going to be part of the format tonight,
which is appreciated that we do look at this seriously and I just wanted to make sure that
we are reiterating the things that we talked about back in October and that I understand
and understood if I voted for that, that means that there was a higher level of understanding
of why I did that and this is the reason why I am asking right now at this moment.
I appreciate you.
I believe that Matt had, you had something you wanted to add.
And I just wanted to say, you know,
this is just the start of this and in your program,
you mentioned the end of, or later in 2025.
And I just wanted to ask the question to Darren.
Darren, is this grant part of or separate
from the grant for the bike paths, that type of stuff?
This is independent. This is, I believe that was ITEP was the bicycle grants. This is actually SS4A Safe Streets for All and is more of a broad scoped that can focus on roads.
For instance, I know, I don't want to speak in very many specifics, but I know a couple intersections that have had a high crash rate that are local streets, which is one of them is Empire and Walnut
and another one is Greenfield and Stevenson
that have a high crash rate with multi-issues.
As you can see from the crash map,
a lot of our crashes also occur around I-DOT roadways,
especially traffic signal areas,
which may mean that our traffic signals
are very dated, very old.
Again, the entire point of doing this SS4A assessment
is to find and and and and find projects that we need to do to make it safer in
the city of Freeport and that opens you up to implementation money by doing part
A to get to part B. Appreciate it. Matt, you had something you wanted to ask, I
appreciate it. Maybe just at a high level where safety has been coming from at the
federal level and I won't have the exact dates but in the in the 2015s right so
for that decade.
Vision Zero was kind of the hot topic across the country.
So it was mostly at the city level.
So cities saying, any death on our streets is unacceptable.
And so cities started developing Vision Zero action plans.
And then that kind of evolved
and then became a federal DOT priority.
And I believe with the Biden administration, the IIJA,
so the Infrastructure and Jobs Act at the federal level
created the SS grade program.
So that's just a little bit of like how it's kind of evolved
that helps at all.
Appreciate it.
Alderman Stacey.
Yes, can you explain what equity consideration is?
Yes, so there's a variety of ways
that we think of equity in this plan.
One is looking at data, so demographic information.
So it ends the product of the equity analysis in that regard
is a map that's sort of a bit of a heat map across the city,
which we're going to be developing.
We haven't started that yet.
But it's looking at a variety of factors,
such as race, income, availability,
or like car ownership, things like that.
and then that gets aggregated, our data people do that,
I don't, I don't.
Did you say car ownership?
Car ownership, yeah, yeah, so like zero vehicle households,
one vehicle households, things like that.
And then that gets mapped to kind of show areas
that either have high equity consideration or low
and it kind of like shades throughout the map.
And that just gives us a sense,
along with community engagement and the crash analysis
of where we may want to prioritize projects.
And then the second part, so that was data.
The second part of equity is just talking to people
and trying to make sure that we do a good job
connecting with residents in Freeport
and understanding what people are dealing with
as they walk, bike, or drive around Freeport.
Alderman Monroe. Thank you Alderman Klemm. I just want to clarify a couple of things. So you didn't really break down anything directly to Freeport, but you did Stevenson County. What are the dates of the data that wasn't real clear in the slides that you showed?
Yes, so we start with the most recent 10-year data set through the IDOT data that Darren
referenced for an overall crash analysis, so really trying to understand trends at a
high level that are going on, and then as we get deeper into the analysis and look at
the high injury network, we do the most recent five years, because we think that gives us
and others.
So I guess better certainty of the recent crashes because a lot can change in 10 years and roads
get reconstructed and resurfaced and things like that.
So five years feels like a better analysis for that.
The local data that we got, Alderman, Monroe, was a five-year span of crash data or wreck
data or pedestrian incident data.
Awesome.
Thank you.
and to follow up this more of a comment and this is one of the reasons why I
initially ran for an alderman seat equity to me is very discouraging to hear
when it when it comes to this type of a project because we put in a brand new
sidewalk network on the east side of the city that was in a flood zone we spent
all of that money and yet some of the streets that are our most dangerous in
and the City that service our community college still have no sidewalks.
They're high speeds, there are lots of near misses, there's a lot of incidences of accidents
and that to me is concerning because when you start throwing money at a problem that's
perceived based on the color of the skin or the people's financial earnings or whatever
and
Governor.
It misses the broader support for the community as a whole.
That's very concerning in that sense because we want to create a better free port at the
end of the day.
I see roads.
I think of Kiwanis, I think of Stevenson, I think of Laurel.
I think of some of these roads that are very, very heavily traveled in the city, have no
and others.
I want to make sure that this money is being spent in the most beneficial way to all of
the citizens in Freeport and not just being put into a certain
Myers, and
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towards the equity portion of the projects and people that may or may not need it.
I thought this project fit Freeport well because some of our diverse areas need the most help.
Right? So again, if we're talking about, just theoretically, if we're talking about a roundabout
at Empire and Walnut to make that a safer intersection, it's got to be required about
and
Mr.
Dixon.
Thank you.
Item number eight is discussion on a resolution approving a retainer with Nepoli for potential
litigation for PFAs at Albertus Airport presented by Manager Blair.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So forever chemicals, perfluorinated compounds, PFOS, PFOA, these are all the same things.
for many years starting in the 70s these chemicals were produced, sometimes under the trade name
of Teflon, various other forever chemicals.
We are in the process
We are in the process of replacing our current water, source water, to get away from the
old treatment plant that had issues in the raw water supply of the perfluorinate compounds.
And we have worked with Napoleon Shacolnik as our litigator for this process, and we've
been very successful, and they've been successful in terms of negotiating settlements for the
and the communities involved in this.
This is kind of a logical extension of what we've already been engaged in.
There is a dramatic amount of use of these firefighting foams that's been used at airports
all over the country and there is residual at those locations.
So this is essentially a continuation of what we've already been doing with the water supply
Except going, there's going to be a new lawsuit related to aviation or airports.
So we're, Napoleon Shaconek is asking us to work with them on the next phase of this program,
which is airports.
And so it's my recommendation that we continue to work with them and as we navigate this future
litigation.
Just a little, if I could add on that. A few weeks ago, if you noticed in the minutes, in the notes that you had, this was discovered that it was an item at the airport. It wasn't originally thought that, but this company has already worked for us on the other plants with the fire department, I believe, in all the situations, and there has been a major lawsuit that has been won in favor
of getting monies into the city. So this is basically really a continuation of that to add the airport onto it if we could. So, any discussion, any questions, Alderman Sanders?
One thing that I do want to know, have everything been conveyed as far as the water? I hear about water. Now I hear about the airport. Now I hear about the polyfoam. All of these things, have they been conveyed to us of all the detailed information and why, now, that these situations are coming up?
are coming up and that they're almost like mandated. Is it because of the lawsuits that
has been presented to the city? Are we, we have a mandate, do we have a mandate to put
everything in perspective? Do we have all of the nuts and bolts of the reasons why we're
Walker.
I am just walking into these venture programs, especially out at the airport.
I am trying to understand the connection with the airport and the water tower and the water
and the polyfoam and how the city is handling it, how is it that we as the citizens not
and I.
And I'm going to talk about the
whole mechanism of the whole process.
I'm going to talk about understanding the whole mechanism to everything.
How is it that these things are beneficial to the city?
Who does it support the most?
How much of a debt does that put the city in?
If the lawsuit is awarded, was there a lawsuit awarded to the city to move forward to take
care of these types of problems?
and many other problems and that's one of the, I'm not done but the thing about it is I'm just curious but now I'm surface, I'm doing a little surface test here just to see where we're at.
I'm sure Manager Boyer can answer all that.
Absolutely. A lot of these firefighting foams are used in aviation. They're like the one of the few substances you can use and it will snuff out the fires and they have been used for training in the past and I'm sure the Fire Chief could confirm or bring in in just a minute
in just a minute, any other details he might have. Essentially all this is doing is if there is contamination of this sort at the airport, which I'm not sure that we have, but if there is, we need to be going after whatever revenue is out there because, well, I'm sure we'll be cleaning it up someday. So that's kind of the idea. And Chief, did you have anything you'd like to add on some of these, your experience with some of these? Sure. Well, I'm not familiar with any application of the AFFF foam out at the airport. However,
We also practice the safe environmental uses of firefighting foam.
So July 6th of 2023, we engaged a licensed waste hauler to take away the PFA, AFFF foam
that we were in possession of.
Instead of us using it in the environment, using it in a fire, having strict guidelines
to follow when you do use that PFA type foam, filing also with the EPA and the county EMA
department. We chose just to get riven and now we have an environmentally safe substitute
foam which is essentially soap suds. It's more expensive, you have to use more, but we're
We're not exposing our personnel to that type of carcinogen.
We're not exposing the environment
to that type of situation.
So we're 100% PFA free with our forms.
Manager Boyer, follow up.
Thank you.
I'd just like to also add,
we've kind of gone full circle.
This started to become pretty prevalent
or on the radar of a lot of different,
not only communities, but companies in the mid 2000s, early 2000s. And as time went on, there was testing done. Freeport was one of the pilot communities to have our source water tested. And I believe about 2015, we've been working through and that's why we have the new water plant, Burchard. And that's why we need to finish finish out our redundant capacity with well 12 is coming up. But essentially,
Essentially this is just a natural aggregation of what's been happening here with this, particularly
these agents that are toxic and they're also in our environment.
Alderman, Monroe.
Thank you, Alderman Klemm.
Chief, do you know, did we use the AFFF foam at the airport at any point in the past or
would we have records of that that we could pull up?
As I indicated, I'm not familiar with any events that took place out at the airport that
required the AFFF-type foam.
I'm not sure how far back our records would go to show that.
I mean, we could do a query for, based on that address and based on that incident type.
But again, I'm not familiar with any involvement out there.
I know many years ago, it was permissible to use that for training.
Actually, to this day, my understanding is AFFF foam is permissible in extreme emergencies only.
There's some large towns who have a vast quantity of that and they still go ahead and utilize it when appropriate.
But, again, they're potentially exposing their personnel to carcinogen of PFA.
They're potentially contaminating the environment and the soil.
and then the paperwork required to be filed when you do use that type of firefighting foam is pretty rigorous with EPA and also with the county EMA.
Yes, thank you.
and so the reason I ask is have we ever tested the ground water at the airport since they
are on well water to see if prior to your being here, my being here, if it had been
used and if the ground water was safe and had been tested out there because one of the
reasons why I'm asking this is we've been trying for years to get water and sewer out
Davis, Frank, Joe, and John.
So I think that's a pretty big safety issue, if it is in some way damaged our environment
out there as well as anybody's wells that may be around that area as well.
Just thinking out loud.
Go ahead.
I'd have to check.
James, I don't know the answer to the testing question.
I assume based on all of our testing requirements that the well water out there has been tested,
I will find out that answer for you. Another reminder I just wanted to say is remember these types of lawsuits are class action suits right and so since Freeport was one of the first 500 municipalities located with PFAS, POFAs it would be natural for us to know that you know at some point some of these chemicals leached into our water fields or we wouldn't have them right so they're just offering us an olive branch to be part of
of the Class Action Suit based if there is financial monies coming, which we all know
on the water side there is money coming, that's already been determined.
What they're doing is holding the makers of these chemicals responsible.
They knew producing these and putting them out that they were a liability.
and others, and putting them out that they were a liability to our environment and they
continued to produce them and sell them without exception.
Alderman Sanders?
Yeah, one of the things that I wanted to observe is the study that took place to make these
determinations whether we should go or whether we should not follow through with it.
How did we come up with the study to know that there's contamination possibly?
Because right now everything is at a presumption at this moment and has not been definitively
been factual at this present time.
And I'm just trying to figure out where is the presumption of anything that might be
Walker, and John, I think.
If you're not aware, the
city is, a lot of things are happening out at the airport.
Was there a filing complaint?
Was a lawsuit taking place to bring this
complaint to the city?
And the fact that we're contemplating
possibly changing things out there at the airport to make
things right, and what is the, what would it cost, if it's
Lawsuits that are going to offset the expenses for the chemical, possible chemical well water contaminations that are going on, if there is, because we're still under the presumption, if there is anything going on, where's the study analysis that we can look at, that we can see where these things are coming in at?
because as far as I am concerned, when I look at this thing, a pre-lit, what was it called,
a litigation per and poly kind of thing, what was the decision made on whether the defective
poly foam out there was the reason why we're making changes to bring water, wells and checking
Waterwells and all these. Who is doing all of these studies? Because this is an expense.
It is going to be an expense at the end of the road. And I just wanted to see where we
were at with that.
Mr. Boyer can answer that. But please remember, you know, all we are asking for at this point
is a resolution to go with the company that we have. There is no cost to us as part of
a class action suit. It is a matter of receiving funding back. But go ahead, Manager Boyer.
If I could address some of your points, sir, Alderman Sanders, as far as I understand,
so we haven't kind of got to the scope of the issue, so we need to work through that.
And so to be participating in this part of the process is going to be identifying the
scope of the issue, if any exists.
We don't at this time know that there's an issue.
We just presume that there may be due to the fact that these foams were used quite extensively
at airports in general. We don't really know if they were used at Albertus. However, we're
going to, you know, it would be great to work with Napoleon Shaconek in case we run up and
find that we do have some issues there. So essentially all this is doing is kind of lining
us up as the kind of second step on getting remunerated for these types of contamination.
and
Thank you.
Any questions? We need a motion and a second to move this forward to the next meeting.
I make a motion to move it forward.
You need a voice or a motion to move it forward. All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed, same sign.
Motion passes. Item number nine regarding ESRI Municipal and County Enterprise Agreement for GIS by Director Sutman.
Hello.
Why is there?
I'll first just kind of go through basically what's in the memo that you guys all got.
We've got the background. In 2011, the city, I kind of built the GIS for the city, the water and sewer system.
At first, it was just on my computer. It wasn't super useful. Over the years, we started kind of handing it out to more and more of the water curves, to the point where now a few are using it.
Kind of a big part of this enterprise agreement is we want to put it in even more people's hands and increase that functionality even more.
and I, GIS is Geographic Information System, and I'm going to explain in a minute here what that is.
One of the biggest places we think this agreement will help is with, definitely with Water & Sewer and kind of the field crews.
The idea is to put all the information they would need day to day directly in our hands on a tablet,
and others.
They're not having to go back to the office necessarily and look through paper records.
It's kind of a two-fold advantage because then also they can add data in the field and
doesn't have to wait and go to drafting and touch a lot of hands to get into the real
time system.
The financial aspect of this is it's a little over 30 grand a year and this is a three-year
agreement.
for the 2025 budget and it will probably be split out about 21,000 modern sewer and 9,000
city funds will be the breakout. Aaron does this have to be approved or is it just informational?
Ultimately you would need a motion at the committee level, motion second,
a vote in favor to then get it on to the council agenda. So that's our intention tonight is to
give you a lot of information and hopefully get it moved on to the next meeting for approval.
And as I state in the memo, I do believe it hits every, basically every strategic vision we have, this would benefit.
Now as far as what GIS is, when I was just getting into GIS, people would say it's AutoCAD with data attached.
And I didn't really know what that meant until I saw it.
So on the screen here you have a map.
Yeah. So this is our data. This is storm sewers, sanitary sewers, and water main.
And right now it looks just like lines. So that's not a lot different than a paper map.
But if you zoom in, you can actually click on these.
When it refreshes here, go click on one, and you can kind of see the data attached.
So that one there, it's a 24-inch clay pipe. So you know that just by clicking on it.
It's not terribly useful to go around and click on it, but you can also go ask GIS questions.
Not like you'd ask an AI, you know, you can write queries.
But you could say, so when we're out in the field and we gather data on these, which is a little data at this point,
you know, we rated them. You know, inlets with blocks falling out of them, or
a sanitary manhole looked like they were backed up.
For project season, you could go and maybe ask questions like, how many do we have backed up?
You know how many linear feet so it's a it's a great planning tool as well
I do have a little presentation. I don't know if we need to go through it, but
Yeah
When you brought up the GIS
Study
Have we already had that
Mechanism for the city yeah, we have at one time and who was governing it then
Men, who was supervising that GIS study, who was doing the supervising of that particular
because what the data that you are demonstrating right now is pretty much was data that was
already accumulated back when, I don't know when, but I am just trying to figure out what
and others.
So that firm or company was supervising those particular studies, those GIS studies.
And if that is the same study, can we also use that data as well, I mean, to increase
what it is that is going on within the city?
So this GIS you're looking at, let's frame it as the water and sewer system.
That was created by me between, let's say, 2011 and 2017, and that was done through a
combination of the paper records down at Water & Sewer, which those guys did an amazing job
for the last 100 years, digitizing those into the computer, and then also went out in the
field and hand-verified depths, condition, things like that.
My supervisor at the time would have been the City Engineer throughout that.
But this data will go into the new one.
it's always keeps accumulating on top of itself.
What this is, it almost,
the value here is the deployment to others.
It's putting in the hands of staff
to make their everyday tasks faster, easier, better.
For...
Well, there's a lot of problems, I think,
that are important, but one of the maps we have pulled up,
So this is, this is how we
So this is a couple of things we have on our website. So a citizen can go to a pull up their address and see the, for example, they can see how their property is owned, pull up a link to that zoning ordinance and see if there's anything to do with their property, pull up data from the assessor, things like that.
Some of that is easily made public. Other parts of the data is a little more difficult to make public simply because of informational requirements in the state, things like that, personally identified information on that.
So being able to share some of the data with vendors and things like that is really difficult right now. The idea being with additional licensing we'd be able to share some of that information with.
For example, the Safe Street folks who were just here, some of that data came from me.
Ideally, it would be that we could share that data with them in a more usable sense than copying it and sending it to them at a U.S.E. drive.
If I could, Kurt.
First of all, I want to thank you and congratulate you, because you've been around a while, and I know how hard you've worked with us over the years.
Congratulations to you guys, as Kurt said, for keeping the records that they have for 100 years on it.
City of Freeport, fortunately, is very far ahead of other communities on this, as far as what's recorded,
as far as any breakage, anything they need to know, they know instantly, which is worth
the fortune as far as, number one, how do you fix it, where is it at, what is affected
by this. So this is really good, and the GIS to be able to get that and pass it on without
a doubt would be helpful, whether it be a developer, whether it be anything, you know
what you have in the area so you can draw from.
So I appreciate what you've done so far in this and look forward to doing this, you know,
but thank you guys for what you've done.
Alderman Sanders?
Yeah, the accumulation of the data that is being retrieved without going into great detail.
What I'm concerned about is when this program start, when you start implementing this study,
how much feed data that you have, where have you not been, where's the demographic areas
that you have not been to do studies and then we still need to accumulate more data to put
and
other
people who are
working
in the
City
Department
and
being
able
to
have
a
public
office
and
a
public
office
and
to
have
a
public
office
and
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public
and I were able to evaluate that throughout GIS studies and that that information has to be part of the situation, that you are able to go back, that far back and look at what was the structural linings and things of this nature with the piping, the water lines and all of these kinds of things. You would need a history count of everything that has been going on throughout the city over decades.
and
the rest of the city.
So, I'm just wondering, what is the
point of the process that would help you to understand what you're up against when you approach any project problem or whatever the case is?
I just want us to understand that this is where you're headed. This is what you're continuing to develop.
This is what you want to put into your program and that we can spit it out at the other end when you do your assessment studies.
Wond, but that's right there is the main goal. This is a living document. Yeah. Okay. So it's all the history. And we do have some of the guys through the draft and now they've been here a long time. And that's part of the one of the reasons we want to do it now too, is to make sure we get that institutional knowledge kind of baked into it. Yeah.
So I'm supporting Kurt on this. The utility really needs an upgrade to this system. One of the Kurt and I discussed this earlier today. We still have people that are drafting on my LARS down at the wastewater treatment plant regularly for updates that we make. It's very antiquated. It's very time consuming. We calculated some numbers today that we believe this system will pay for itself.
Duff in Modern Upgrades. Also, when we do project work, and I'll pick Adams Avenue,
for example, the way we track our systems and the way we build them, we will be able
to actually port that information to Kurt's team, and he'll be able to drop it right
in there, and the new data will all appear magically as we do the construction inspections.
We track everything now with our GPS equipment, and that will continuously update the system
as construction updates are made throughout the city.
The system that we currently have,
that's not capable of doing and the upgrades are tough.
And another point that we have is that we're probably using
the system that we have right now beyond our means
because we don't have as many licenses
as we need to actually use it.
So we're kind of cheating the system a little bit right now,
just trying to make it work,
knowing that we would get to an upgrade
that would be budgeted for this year.
Absolutely.
Do we need a motion to move this forward? I'll make the motion to move this forward.
Okay, Alderman Parker. Do we need a voice vote? Okay. All in favor signify by saying
aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign.
Did I understand you to say that it's going to cost about $30,000 a year and it's in three-year
terms?
Yes, it's a three-year term, so it's $30,000 every year.
And that it was budgeted for the 2025?
Yes.
Okay. So if we budget it for it, hasn't it already been approved?
Not the agreement. The funds are allocated, but the agreement to enter a contract with ESRI hasn't. That's what this is.
Okay.
I just wanted to add, if I could, until we move to the next one, I'd really like to thank also, I thank Eric and Kirk for all the work they did,
and also Tom Glendening. As we know, Tom Glendening put his heart into this to really start to move it forward, but thanks to all the people involved at this point.
Next item is item number 10.
Tom, you actually got to take the vote. So you got to do all those in favor, still.
All in favor.
You got to take the vote now. You got a motion and you second?
No.
You had a...
I think completed.
No, because I had a question.
Question. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed same sign. You take the vote. Okay.
Item number 10 regarding resolution adopting Northwest Illinois Safety
Action Plan as part of participating in Steveson County's
application to the Department of Transportation Federal Highway Safe
Street Scrims, and this will be presented by Darren.
Yeah, so not to confuse the subject because we talked about the City of Freeport's program.
We are also part of a small piece of the Stevenson County SS4A plan because we're part of the
county.
Their configuration includes, I believe, five other counties, so it's a much larger broad
base program.
We started that program, I believe, just over a year ago.
They're getting towards their finality of it, and as part of their plan, they're asking
us to have a resolution stating that we are a part of their plan, and if they go to implementation,
which would be the final reporting, that we're just signifying that we're part of the plan.
We have been from the start. City Manager Boyer sits on their TAC team and has represented
the city. Again, the reason we did two different programs, not to confuse it, is there's a
much broad-based program that's covering six counties. Freeport is just covering Freeport.
This is, as Darren explained, this is no cost to us or anything else. It's just being part
of the county's program. Do I have a motion to move forward?
So moved.
Kemp,
All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed same sign. Motion carries. Item
number 11. Discussion regarding distress communities grant funding presented by
Alderman, Stacy, Monroe. Good evening. I wanted to bring this to the council to gather a little
more understanding on this distressed grant program. City Manager Boyer, can you tell
Tell me how many times and when we have received it?
We received it one time and I believe it was the end of 2021 and I, yeah, so.
One time in 2021.
Can you tell me how much we received?
Off the top of my head, I think it was about $81,000 Okay, because that number is much,
much lower than what it was when you and I spoke the other day.
And I also mentioned that I didn't have it on top of my head, but I thought it was a
certain range, but since then, we've got the actual documents and you have a copy of it
now.
I have, I didn't know if the document that I have received was partial to the money that
was received.
I believe that was the whole thing, however, the money never came through the city, it
went directly from ComEd to the contractor, so I don't know if that included any discounts
and others on light fixtures or whatever. So, but that was the information that I had.
So Manager Boyer, kind of moving forward, I know there was a lot of discussion about
the Distressed Community Grant funding and, you know, the actual title of Distressed Communities.
Do you see that as being a negative for the City of Freeport as we move forward to be
titled that and to have that as kind of a slogan almost?
I don't have an opinion on it for getting funding from ComEd to do lighting.
I'm not really in a position to tell them what to call their grant funding, but I understand
it's now called the Select Communities Grant and it looks like we have a representative
here that might have some more information on that okay for all the right oh it's fine with me George yeah George would you like to speak on this please and since it's a comment and we thank you for coming and while he's you're
welcome George Golarap citizens Freeport Illinois employed his external affairs
manager for ComEd we no longer have the distress community program it's now
to receive either discounts off.
So Freeport is a member of the select community.
So when they go and buy light fixtures
that are assembled or produced in Illinois,
there's a 10% reduction in the cost.
And we have many other reductions in costs
and all these are stackable,
which means you don't get 10% only.
You can go through the program and stack these up to 100%.
It's a great program.
It's listed for communities that do struggle. Out of 400 communities that ComEd serves,
there's 125 communities on this list. I mean, 25 percent. I mean, it's a lot. I mean, northern
Illinois does have a lot of issues. And with your support and with your administration
support, you can dig out of this. And it can be much better for the city itself. So I have
I've been working with Rob Boyer and Mayor Miller since August, July of last year I believe,
to try to move things forward and make sure that you are eligible for these stackable discounts.
I'm just a little...
Last week we were told, well, why didn't we know it was select and not distressed?
First of all, second of all, why did we not know that we're on this select community grant?
I found out about it last week in an internal staff meeting.
I was very excited about this and as soon as I found out about it, I communicated this
with Manager Boyer, but he said he had already seen the letter from ComEd earlier that Freeport
was eligible. But they're still under the old name, not the new name. So if you want
to blame anybody, you can blame me for not knowing earlier than last week.
No.
But we had an internal meeting and I was really grateful to find out that Freeport was on
this list and is eligible.
It's not about blaming anyone, Mr. Gorab. It's about understanding what we have and what we're able to do with what we have.
Yes, and you're also working with a group called the Will Group. They're the ones that provided the city with an application,
and we're trying to make sure that that application is acceptable.
There were some mistakes put on there by the World Group inadvertently that Mr. Boyer pointed
out so those have been corrected.
I'm working with two outreach people, Ian McAdams and Eric Hennessy to make sure the
application does get accepted and that's step one on the first set of discounts on the project.
So we're still at the application level though.
It's completed. It had to be by January 30th and it was. We're just making some corrections
and as we go on you become more eligible for more and more discounts along the way.
So some of the discounts. What ComEd wants you to do is be energy efficient. So they
want you to take the old high pressure sodium lights or whatever lights you may have and
and I believe for every watt you reduce, it's $1. So if you take a 400 watt light and you
reduce it down to a 60 watt light, you have $340 of credit on each light that you do.
And that adds up rather quickly.
Darren, do you have any other?
Yeah. So I want to clarify something to the council. So George and myself and City Manager have been working for over a year, actually probably two years now, on getting the select community, distressed community, whatever we're calling that, it's ComEd's designations, not the City of Freeport's designation, trying to get back on that list.
We were on it in 2021. Somehow we we were off the list. We were trying to move forward with lighting projects, but the cost was not acceptable to us knowing that we we qualified for these larger rebates. So George is the Northern Illinois Affairs Manager for ComEd. So we contacted George. We also contacted our congressman. We also contacted our area reps and we sent letters down
and the rest of the county and all of our community.
I think that the state is not the only party
that has to agree to put us on this list.
The State of Illinois also has to allow to it.
By evaluating the list, we saw that there were communities
in much better shape than were already on the list.
And so that's what we've been trying to do
and we've been waiting to get this select status.
We actually had a project in the queue,
which was to remove the high pressure sodium lights
down the IDOT corridors because they're all older lighting.
And so that's the program that we had been working on
when we started talking about the safer areas
that Chief Shenberger had applied for, right?
So we just found out, Rob actually texted me
from the city manager's conference
that we were selected as a select community.
And that's how we found out.
and we spent a lot of time last week fixing the paperwork
to get it in in time to...
to get it in in time to qualify for the IDOT corridor lighting. So when this
money cometh, I'm gonna speak it into existence. It's not money, it's credit.
It's credit, cometh. Discounts? Discount, cometh, yes. Is it gonna be limited to a
and George, and I'm going to be reading the information that George gave us.
It's a community function.
It's just we have to remember what he said earlier.
If you're reducing wattage, there's more of an incentive than increasing wattage.
So in the areas of our safe streets, we will be looking to increase wattage, which will
reduce some of the energy that we're using to increase the wattage.
We will be looking to increase wattage, which will reduce some of the stackable credits, but there's still other credits, correct?
So we might not get as deep of a discount, but we'll still be able to stack other items like made in Illinois or or other designations there.
I won't say that the application isn't kind of confusing because it is.
There's a lot of different information on it.
So, Alderman, Stacy, if you would like, I'm not for sure the next City Council meeting or the one after that, what I'll do is I'll get all the discounts and we'll put examples in if you qualify for all these, what the total cost would be at the end of the day, I'll work with City Manager and also with Darren to get that and we'll put it in easy form to figure out, because a lot of times things from ComEd aren't in easy form to figure out, but we will simplify and get back to that.
I just want something that's going to affect all of Freeport and just not a certain area.
Because to my understanding, the last distress slash select grant we received, all that funding
went downtown. I can answer why that is. Okay. Because the downtown lighting was our number
one bill for the city of Freeport. It was a huge expense because those were all incandescents.
By switching them to LED, City Manager Boyer reduced the cost of the city greatly in the
amount that it takes to light the downtown regularly. So that was the whole purpose and
mission behind that project. Okay. That was City Manager Bucus. Bucus, but City Manager
Boyer was the Public Works Director at that time. Because we had 150 wattage and that
I was traded out with LEDs at about 32% lighting and that was one of the biggest mistakes made by the city when it come to lightning our city.
Are you saying the lights downtown are less bright?
No, I'm not talking about downtown.
Downtown is lit up, I could go down there at two o'clock in the morning and walk my three miles with no fear.
I'm just saying that these other concerned areas that we must and will start working on has got to get better.
I want to thank you for what you did do on Salon Park. I respect that and I acknowledge that. It still was not enough but thank you for your efforts.
Well, the intersection is well lit. Salon Park is not. But again, Salon Park is private property, and it would be pretty tough to use taxpayer dollars to light a private property. So whoever owns that, is the one that needs to put the light in.
Okay. Thank you. But one thing, I did receive some bad news. I mean, Oak Street was sprayed with gang symbols on the utility poles. I think Rob Boyer and the Public Works Department, they went out and painted over those and at the same time we discovered a light over on Elk and Cherry that wasn't there.
and
and can you thank you once again just give the number out if you have a
streetlight out that they can call our citizens can call you directly yeah so
the number you want is 1-800-334-7661 so it's the edit 1-800-Edison-1 if you want
to contact me directly they would have to go through the mayor city council
member, Public Works or City Administrator and they can contact me. But the easiest
way is a straight line. Agreed. Thank you. You can also do call Public Works because I've called those and they call them in right away and get it done too if you call Public Works.
Or you can call Alderman Sellers because she has my phone number. Thank you. Thank you, Jodi. Appreciate it. Item number 12, discussion regarding fundraising money
& Company, Collected for Downtown Decorations, presented by Alderman Stacey & Monroe.
Well, I had hoped to discuss this tonight. However, the person that could probably answer
my questions, for whatever reason, is not here. And so, I would just like to carry this
matter to the next council meeting the 18th of February since I was the second
I would agree to that as well is this the is this 13 item number 12 well okay
move to the third meeting of the month please the 18th of February okay we got
Stacy, Monroe. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Aye.
Okay, so that will be up on next week's agenda. Item number 13, Discuss Potential $2 million
Illinois Department of Transportation Surface Transportation Program Urban STU Funding for
St., by Darren. You're a popular guy tonight, Darren. That's okay.
that I didn't have adequate time to get a map on the agenda. I have been working
for probably the last three months with IDOT working on trying to find an avenue
to find more transportation money for Freeport. This map that I handed out,
Surface Transportation Program, so we were hoping to present a program that
could still be pulled off in 2025. I found out from IDOT last week that even the modest plans
that we want to do for these roads will require an ESR, which is an environmental survey report,
which takes nine months to complete. So to give, you know, not belabor it, I've been working,
we have an STU fund I've asked IDOT to contribute two and a half million dollars towards this project
they will agree a Freeport will support the engineering cost so the just so the audience
knows the streets that we're looking to do these will be mill and overlays only with ADA ramp
We would do Walnut Avenue from Empire to South.
I would love to keep going on that project, but the north side is in too far of a disarray
to be able to just do a mill and overlay that needs to be a full reconstruct.
I would also like to finish the Adams Avenue project that we started this year.
We were not able to pave completely from Float Street down to Exchange.
Davis.
and others.
This would suggest that we would mill and overlay the rest of the road to make that
project finally a new the entire length.
Also in my travels, Lincoln Boulevard from West Avenue to Locust Avenue.
I'm proposing to fix that section.
That street probably had the most lead service lines that we replaced on one street.
I believe there was 25 in that little section was almost every house and the streets turned into a roller coaster and wasn't on any current list for replacement again I would just suggest based on the information that we looked at as a mill and overlay and a few ADA ramps on that and then another section of concern that I saw was Stevenson Street from Locust Street to basically Park is starting
to fall apart pretty heavily.
It is saveable yet without a full reconstruction.
I believe we could mill and overlay
three to four inches on that street,
replace the remaining ADA ramps.
We would also stay out of the west intersection.
That's IDOT right away.
So we'd stop short of each one of those areas.
And again, it would just be a mill and overlay.
Alderman, Susan.
Did you say Stevenson, Locust too?
On the sheet, we put sunset
because we're already doing a project in 2025
that's the intersection of park.
And so this would just butt up to that end of that project.
We were just hoping to finish that
on the 2025 streets program already.
We have the park and Stevenson intersection being done
where it's all falling apart with the rail tracks
and sinking, just that intersection is getting redone.
and so this project would bud to that.
As you can see from the map that I gave you,
I'm trying to attack streets
where we have some of our heavier traffic corridors,
trying to finish projects and connect projects
that we've already done.
Again, the city of Freeport, just for some understanding,
we have a list of, they're called FAU routes
and IDOT established this list many years ago,
this surface transportation funding
can only be used on those streets.
And so we can't just take this to Kiwanis Drive
or Catherine Street or Santa Fe
or any street we wanna pick.
It has to stay on the federal urban assistant routes
that I'd established many years ago.
So anyway, the reason I'm bringing it to you guys tonight
is I would like some kind of direction as a council, whether we want to move forward and have a contract brought forward to try to capture this money and do a program for 2026 with this funding, or if we don't want to do it, I don't want to spend any more energy or resources on it.
A quick question, if you would, what's engineering costs on it? Engineering costs are what we have to pay for it to get to $2 million.
Correct. On these type of mill and overlay projects, you could probably expect 7 to 8% for engineering costs to get it permitted and approved.
These service transportation funds are federal funds, not state funds, so there's more requirements to do federal funds.
Some of the most expensive costs will be ADA ramps and under federal program you have to design them in whole back 15 feet in every direction so that survey time and the design portion of that is quite labor intensive.
Alderman Stacey.
So again, what are we looking at cost wise to accept this?
So, if we accept this, we would be accepting the engineering responsibility for the design and the construction engineering.
The construction cost itself, based on my estimates, would pretty much wholly be covered by this program, just for mill and overlays only.
So I know a lot of people have asked me before, you're not replacing the curb on my street, you're not, you know, doing this and that.
This would just be patching in areas enough to mill and overlay the street.
We're trying to treat everybody the same.
I know there's areas of these streets that, you know, the curb's not perfect.
I know it's not overlaid perfect.
If we don't attack something on this area of Stevenson Street soon,
that section will turn into a total reconstruct as the intersections are falling apart.
Again, our goal was always to finish the Adams Avenue project.
We just didn't have enough money to resurface it
all the way to exchange.
Walnut Street, we know is a problem.
And I think North Walnut will be our next largest project
in the city of Freeport because that is a full reconstruct.
And Lincoln used to be a heavy, thorough way through there
until the street really got topsy-turvy
with the lead service line, so.
Anyway.
I think you misunderstood my question.
Okay.
what is it going to cost us to go after this money? So far it has only cost you my public works time.
I have this all it's just a paperwork process at this time probably a thousand dollars in paperwork
to secure the money for these projects for 2026 and then we have to do the design which would be
about seven or eight percent of the cost of the project which is two and a half million dollars
That's a pretty standard for engineering fees on a new one overly.
Yes.
I think what you're getting at is the dollars.
Yes.
Seven to eight percent, as he mentioned, and a two million dollar, that would be $140,000 to $160,000.
Just to do the paperwork, the nine months.
Get it designed, get it approved by the federal government.
Seven and a half percent is $187,500.
and I'm here to do this.
It's actually closer to $200,000 down to $160,000 if you go $2.5 million.
$2 million it says.
$2 million.
He just said $2.5.
Yes.
So listen to the man.
Yeah.
The sheet, the agenda tonight did say $2 million because I hadn't got the cost estimate fully
ran.
And you also have to remember when we do cost estimates is a very high level.
We're not spending hours with our teams digging into this.
We use some averages.
So I'm saying around two and a half.
It might be 2.3, it might be 2.6.
I can tell we actually dig into the engineering.
I'm not gonna be able to come up with an exact cost.
But I think it's rough to say that in my estimation,
187 to get two and a half million.
And yes, we would have the construction is a no brainer.
Anybody that wants to trade me that money,
I'll do it any day.
I guess that's what I was going to say, Darren, if we could get four streets done for $200,000, it's well worth it.
Yeah, I just want to be clear, you know, we are really working hard in the background to try to address the infrastructure.
I'm trying to be creative with what we come, and again I want citizens to know that, you know, Stevenson Street,
I would say is one of our heaviest local traffic streets in Freeport.
We're treating it just the same as we've done every other street.
It's a mill and overlay project.
It's not all new curbs, not all new sidewalk.
I've said this numerous times at the council floor.
The citizens of Freeport, I know that's what we deserve, but that's not what we can afford.
Alderman Station.
So these four streets that you mentioned is in addition to our five-year plan streets?
Yes. Yes. What we would do is we would stack these on top of next year's program, but we
got it. I don't want to say we got it. That's not a good statement. I want to say if we
We really want to do it next year, we have to get a contract signed because the environmental
requirements from IDOT are a minimum of nine months and if we don't go through that process
it just will push it another year and that is their new federal process and it's making
the projects drag out longer and farther and you asked me to start trying to bring stuff
to the couch so we could discuss it and entertain it so instead of just bringing a contract
to the next meeting.
I wanted to have a discussion whether we want to move forward
this as a group.
And I think it's a good decision,
but it's ultimately your decision.
Do we have a motion to move it forward?
So moved.
Second.
Chair.
Yes.
so you'll you'll have an agreement we're moving forward an agreement at the next
meeting so we can start the process okay thank you so we went more than a voice
vote on this considering dollars and cents no it's not necessary okay all in
favor signify by saying aye aye opposed same sign motion passes item number 14
Public Comment. Yes, Mr. Tate. Please state your name and your address and we'd appreciate it.
Not address. Name. Name, please. Name. Okay. Sorry.
I do apologize for bothering you this evening. My name is John Staben, 1070 North Canyon
Drive. I was once a member of the Freeport Airport Commission, and I was comfortably
sitting at home when the discussion came up regarding the firefighting foam that may have
and
Mr.
Daryl Jensen brought it to the attention of the commission. At that time, it was publicly known that it was hazardous material. The commission immediately decided to get rid of it. There was a small trailer with, I don't know, six, eight, five
Kans, and we called up the Freeport Fire Department. I have no idea where it went or what they
did with it, but the Freeport Fire Department disposed of it, and that was about 12 years
ago. So before that, to my knowledge and since, I don't know that foam has ever been used
at the airport, but there was foam there just in case, and it was disposed of about 12 years
ago. Thank you.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Tommy?
I want to ask you to do a good job with public library.
Thank you, Tommy.
And Travis Davis, you do a good job with the police department.
Thank you, sir.
Dickman. What's this about? Holiday Inn is closed. Stay away. Don't make any reservations.
Don't make any reservations. And we are working on getting rid of or demolishing it.
and
No, go ahead
Thank you Alderman Klemm. I just want to remind everybody if you missed the previous I pass on demand
Opportunity there's another one coming up February 21st
830 a.m. To 6 p.m.
at
314 West Stevenson Street if you don't know where that is
It's real close to this spot
and you know it's it's a really good program otherwise you've got to go I
think the closest place now is the Belvedere Oasis and that is a pain so if
you want to replace your eyepass come here to City Hall and they will help you
on the 21st of February. Any other public comments? I would like it then we'll talk
Talk about going into Executive Session pursuant to 5ILCS120-C-C-15 for the purchase or lease
of rental property, real property, for the use of public body, including meetings held
on for the purpose of discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired.
We need a motion and a second to move forward.
I'll move.
Second.
Klemm, aye.
Monroe?
Aye.
Are you going to count?
Aye.
Doesn't matter to me.
No, I'll do it.
Simmons?
Aye.
Parker?
Aye.
Stacy?
Aye.
Shadle?
Aye.
Sellers?
Aye.
Sanders, and we have Sellers to return to regular session.