Oh thank you Jesus. I'm going to start out with Proverbs 21, 1, and 2. The Kings are the government. Heart is in the hand of the Lord. Like the rivers of water, he, God, turns it wherever he wishes. Father God, we lift up this council meeting to you tonight. We We ask you to guide this meeting by Holy Spirit.


Father, every word spoken tonight, let it be for the good of our city. Let the goal of this council meeting be for the good of the city of Freeport always.


Let humility and your divine order prevail here tonight. Father, we want our city to be pleasing in your sight.


Let everything that's hidden be exposed so you can correct it. In Jesus Christ's name, Amen.


Thank you. So now we'll officially call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll. Mayor Miller? Here. Alderpersons, Klemm? Here. Johnson? Here. Simmons is absent. Parker? Here. Stacy? Here. Shadle? Here. Sanders? Here. Sellers? Here. We have a quorum. And if you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Alderman Shadle.


Item number four is the approval of the agenda. Is there such a motion? So moved. Second.


We have a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Sellers. All those in favor signify signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes. Item five is approval from the Minutes from the Committee of the Whole meeting on March 9th, 2026. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second.


Motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Johnson. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes. Next we have a couple of proclamations.


and others. Thank you. Bless you. But you want to turn so the camera can see you.


Okay. All right. This is National Week of the Young Child. So, whereas Birth to Five Illinois and other local organizations in conjunction with the and the National Association for the Education of Young Children are celebrating the week of the young child and whereas the week of the young child was established in recognition that early childhood years, prenatal through age 8, laid the foundation for children's success in school and later in life and whereas its purpose is to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and caregivers and to recognize the early and others, as well as the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs, and whereas children's cognitive, physical, social, emotional, language, and literacy development are built on the foundation of children's positive interactions with adults, peers, and their environment, and whereas the week of the young child is a time to recognize that children's opportunities are our responsibilities, and to recommit ourselves to ensuring that every child experiences the type and many others in the early learning environment that will promote their development and growth, and whereas participation in high quality early childhood education prepares children to succeed in school, earn higher wages, and live healthier lives.


Therefore, I, Jodi Miller, Mayor of Freeport, hereby declare April 11th through the 18th, 2026 as National Week of the Young Child in Freeport and encourage all of our citizens to work to make a good investment in early childhood within Freeport.


Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Hi. I'm back to visit you all again this year. I have some exciting news for you. Birth of Five Illinois is going to be doing a couple of community things I want you to be aware of. In June, we are going to be hosting a community meeting. This will It'll be on Zoom. It'll be in the evening. It's primarily for parents, teachers, and caregivers. And it will talk about the new parent resource if they need something in particular for their child.


Therefore, United Way is hosting this website, which they will walk through and they will explain to the parents and the caregivers.


and so we will have more understanding about the availability of services throughout our three county regions, Stevenson, Joe Davis and Carroll.


Also in July, we will be hosting a grandparent parent cafe online. These are for grandparents raising grandchildren.


Again, that will be on Zoom. Follow us on Facebook for all the details about these things.


We would love to get the word out because we do have supports for families.


The supports are there. We just need to make them aware of it. Thank you.


So the Proclamation for National Travel and Tourism Week, whereas the Greater Freeport Fremont Partnership works on behalf of Freeport and Stevenson County as the tourism partner to promote and grow our region, and economic development and tourism promote economic well-being and quality of life for their communities by creating, retaining, and expanding jobs that facilitate growth, enhance wealth, and provide a stable tax base.


And whereas, economic development and tourism fuel industry and will continue to be an essential Fowler, John Fowler, John Fowler, John Fowler, Generating State State and local tax revenue to support essential services such as education, emergency response, public safety and more.


So now, therefore, I, Jodi Miller, mayor of the city of Freeport, hereby declare May 3rd through the 9th, 2026 as National Travel and Tourism Week in the city of Freeport and urge our residents to join in recognizing the essential role this industry plays in our economy.


Okay. Yes, I'm going to wait. Okay. Madam Clerk, would you please note that at 6.05 Alderman Simmons is entered. And then item number seven is public comment. I don't think anybody's signed in.


Weiser, no. So then we will move on to the Greater Freeport Partnerships Quarterly Report.


All right. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for your attention. As Nicole passes around our quarterly report, you'll see as in every other previous quarterly report we've provided, it is outlined in our strategic focus areas that are outlined on the screen above. However, our agenda for this evening is going to be slightly altered, and we're going to hit on some economic and others, and then we're going to highlight some of the initiatives that are covered in our quarterly report.


Currently, inflation is at 3.3% as measured by the consumer price index. I'm going to go back a slide here, we're not quite ready for that.


So inflation is high, and while consumer sentiment has plunged 11% to the lowest point World War II. When there is uncertainty in the market, coupled with inflation and an increased cost of everyday goods, consumers will naturally spend less. There will be hesitancy from business and consumers in making larger purchases or they might delay investment. As a whole, this sentiment, this was echoed by our businesses when we did our business retention visits this quarter. It's always interesting to see if St. Louis, and the state of New York.


We're going to be talking about unemployment in the next quarter. It's always interesting to see if those national trends are reflecting here at home.


And indeed they were. Moving on to job data, and this is not the first time you've heard me talk about jobs and unemployment here in Stevenson County and Freeport.


From January 20, 20, five, unemployment, excuse me, January 20, 26, unemployment in both Stevenson County and Freeport we have had unemployed looking for work.


Also consistent are the top occupations looking for employees are clustered into healthcare, logistics and manufacturing.


Just also highlight that when you look at some of the jobs, excuse me, I moved back a slide here.


We had over 1,200 unique job postings in March 2026 by 318 employers. Of those jobs that were posted, the median hourly wage was just over $32 per hour, which approximately equates to a 66, almost $67,000 annual salary.


To put some context to these numbers, median household income for Stevenson County in early Early 2025, this is from the census, is at $64,043.


Per capita income, so that's per person, is at $35,305. So what you would see here, the median, many of these jobs that we have that are available are paying above median household income wage.


The key to remember workforce development is a form of business retention. Without workforce, existing businesses were not able to grow or expand.


We must do something different if we want a different result. If not corrected, existing employers will hesitate to make future investments and expand because they cannot meet their future workforce needs here or they will choose to go elsewhere.


What we're finding is this not a temporary hiring cycle. This is not a blip on the radar.


This is a structural workforce imbalance. So what are we gonna do about it? This is not just an employer problem, housing problem, a marketing problem, but a regional workforce alignment issue.


All parties hold part of the solution. We know that workforce talent retention and recruitment is complex works.


Besides jobs, people have housing needs, childcare needs, transportation, quality of life. All these problems and solutions are mutually reinforcing and need to be worked on concurrently.


That's why you will find a diverse array of activities in our quarterly report. Ultimately, we want the job here, but we should really want the paycheck to come to a driveway in our community.


There is more return on investment. The paycheck helps pay property taxes, generate sales tax revenue for purchases made in our community.


Otherwise, without having more opportunity for workers to live here, it will undercut retention and weaken our tax base.


So we have a shared regional goal to stabilize and grow the prime workforce ages in that cohort of 25 to 44.


So just these are some key targets that were identified. Reducing the industrial turnover, increasing that population cohort, increasing workforce training programs and apprenticeships, working with our educational partners to do so, increasing housing units, working with our government partners to do so, and reducing that commuter We want those people who are commuting into Freeport and Stevenson County to also live here.


So last week we were able to convene players in this field, employers, government partners, educational partners, to really talk about this work.


We outlined these four target areas. It's hard to see on this screen, but the first one and the last one are bolded, and those were what we focused on.


Reviewing, as I already talked about, we all hold a responsibility in driving towards a solution.


So we talked about what are those responsibilities of employers, public partners, and the partnership in retaining and attracting this talent.


Alongside that, we need to understand is the educational and training alignment component needed. So we're going to touch upon some of the aspects that the partnership is going to be working on in coordinating migration and employment data tracking.


We're going to create a dashboard and get feedback from our HR representatives to understand their employee pool, excuse me, attrition, onboarding, and other barriers to retention and Attraction. We will lead the talent and branding and communication. We will work with area school districts to connect directly with seniors to market job opportunities to those individuals who are graduating within the month or next month. And we will continue to market career pathways to underclassmen and to upper elementary and middle schoolers to understand and what opportunities are here within the community.


Also, we understand our best business attraction tool is growth and expansion of our existing businesses.


Businesses will locate in a community where they see existing businesses grow. However, as we've already discussed, there are more jobs than people to fill them.


And at this time, attraction of a major employer Mayor will cannibalize our existing workforce and tightening our already shrinking pool of workers for our existing employers.


However, long-term, we know economic development strategy necessitates greenfield site development. To do that, in an effort to promote that, we will continue to do environmental assessments on key greenfield sites.


We are doing this work through a site readiness grant that we procured from the state of Illinois.


Also kudos to the city, your key investment of Well 12 now opens up new corridors for potential retail and industrial development.


Early conversations with those landowners have already begun. Additionally, part of our role as economic development professionals is advocating for for our region to be included in any new program or zone that could be beneficial to our local businesses or SPUR investment.


As such, Opportunity Zones will be coming up for renewal in June, and the partnership has secured several letters of support from local businesses and property owners to demonstrate the economic potential if the Opportunity Zone were expanded into other eligible census tracks.


Ultimately, the Governor will decide which tracks are added into the Opportunity Zone, but we will make a compelling argument that all census tracks in the City of Freeport should be included where there are opportunities for investment. The map you see on the screen, the areas highlighted in green designate the different census tracks that meet the eligibility requirement from the federal Co. Government to qualify to be in the Opportunity Zone or considered to be in the Opportunity Zone. I will now turn the presentation over to Nicole, who will talk about hotel and conference center development. Good evening. Doing something a little different and talking different types of data from a tourism perspective. You hear me talk a lot about and it's in your packet as well about our occupancy rates. And yes, this time of year in third quarter, or I'm sorry, in first quarter, they aren't as high, but we aren't in the tourism season. What we notice is on key times here in Freeport, which houses all of the hotels within Stevenson County, we are losing hotel rooms to other places because ours are full. In our top three key hotels, we only have 200 hotel and the City of Freeport. Yes, there are potential for vacation rentals and other places for people to stay. But when you're looking for business travel, which is where we desperately


need to bring in more people midweek and tournaments for sports or graduations, family reunions, all of those types of things throughout the summer, we are maxed out. Hotel and conference center development are a priority for the partnership, as is spelling the word conference Correctly, so apologies on that one.


I was so worried about getting the graph to fit in there right, I misplaced that word.


But as you'll see in this graph, trying to show that is through January of 2019, through June of 2025.


Those deep dips are, of course, the times of year, like first quarter, when we don't have as many hotel occupancy, but those large spikes but those large spikes is where you see all of the occupancy in the tourism season, so May through October.


What you're looking at though is those peaks, that is our leakage trend over time.


Leakage means that people are coming to this area for whatever it is that they are drawn to the area for, family reunions, games, that kind of thing but they're staying outside of our area because there are no hotel rooms.


So on any given weekend between May and October, we are losing money because people have to stay elsewhere.


In addition to just needing a hotel, we desperately could use a conference center here in Stevenson County.


There is no place, none of our hotels currently have a meeting space that can fit over 25 people.


It doesn't exist. What we are also missing is this time of year, We don't have as much occupancy because we don't have anything for them to come here for.


If we can attract a meeting, a conference, and this is the time of year in which that's done, I'm sure you've all been to some, I'm going to one at the end of the month, we can attract those things here and therefore fill existing hotel rooms until we have something for them during this time of year.


So not only will we see an increase in hotel stays, but with the conference center, We are giving them more reasons to come here in the times of year when we need to see more occupancy.


So we have a list of developers we are speaking to, to continue this work forward, as well as some sites identified that are best positioned near existing amenities.


We don't want to put up a hotel where there's nothing else to do around it or no other place for them to spend money.


They want to come to a hotel where you can buy gas nearby, there's a restaurant nearby, and you can see things to do.


So those are the places that we are really looking for to bring in the best investment for Freeport and Stevenson County.


Also, I asked Tim to stay after we had done a photo with the mayor just as we were getting started that Lidditz, Pennsylvania, our pretzel sister city that was talked about here several months ago and we are sharing a little bit of their fare.


Lidditz, Pennsylvania is home to Tom Sturgis Pretzels, which is the oldest commercial pretzel bakery in the country and therefore makes it a really fantastic sister city for us.


Our community liaison, Tim Connors, is going to be taking the key to the city, to Lidditz, Pennsylvania, for this week and meet our fine folks in Lidditz because, well, now he's the former mayor, but at the time mayor of Lidditz.


Tom Snyder was here last September. So we're doing a little bit of an exchange program, if you will.


And Tim will be spreading all of the good news of Freeport to Lititz, Pennsylvania. We do hope future partnership with Lititz continues. Pretzel Fest didn't work out for 2026. They'd already picked their date of May 2nd. We already had our date of April 25th. So we're going to try it again Sturgis, Tom Sturgis, Tom Sturgis, Tom Sturgis We're also really happy to have a new small business startup, the Freeport Pretzel Company, that specializes in soft pretzels, another great small business that we want to continue to see thrive, that will be a part of our Pretzel Fest on April 25th.


Also, similar to how we made the Big Pretzel in the Art Plaza last year, we're doing another community engagement event on April 25th. I hope you can all make it.


Crockett, it's called the Great Pretzel Bite. And you are going to all get another pretzel like we give you today. And we are all going to stand in a line and take a bite of the pretzels together. So we last time we had 630 people attend. So we are hoping for just as many, if not more for great weather. And it's really about bringing positivity and and energy back into Freeport to show that when you have community minded people together, you can see all of the potential and goodwill right here in Freeport.


Lastly, our community guide should be arriving any day. It is newly titled Simply Stevenson County.


This is both our tourism and business publication. So we, tourism, one of the great things about our collaborative organization is when we talk about quality of life, there are a lot of people who live here who forget about the things that there are to do here.


And then when you are visiting the area, sometimes you need to know where you can go get your car worked on or where you can look for other amenities because something happens in your life.


Really having the tourism and the business publication together is beneficial to both audiences. This year's publication features two new highlight stories because it is both 100 years of historic Highway 20 and also 100 years of Freeport High School. So those are both featured in this year's guides, great commemorations that you'll continue to see promoted throughout the year. Then when it comes to the tourism campaign, it has the same name, simply Stevenson County, because we're going to continue to promote exactly what we are, which is a little bit slower pace, which is what you want when you're traveling, and outdoor recreation, retail and restaurants, events, and these are specifically marketed to people 25 to 45 in major metro areas that are more than 40, 50 miles away. So that's Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago suburbs, we get a lot of Bloomington, Peoria, things like that. And we've chosen social media channels that best target those key demographics of 25 to 45 because believe it or not there are enough social media channels out there now, different people check different ones. All right and that's all we have for you tonight so we'll Take any questions. Thank you, Council.


Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we will move on to item number nine, which is public comment. Is there any public comments this evening? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.


So move. Second. Motion made by Alderman Sellers, seconded by Alderman Shadle. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.