May we all stand for the place, please.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Madam Clerk, please call the roll.
Pat Odendahl. Here. Kathy Wilken. Here. Kathy Altensey. Here. Kevin McIlwain. Patrick Sellers. Here. We have a quorum. We have a quorum. The first order of minutes is the approval of minutes for the April 6th, 2026 meeting on the motion and the second please. So moved. I'll second it. All right, motion by Altensey, second by Wilken. Please take a look at the minutes if you haven't done so already.
Are there any questions for the minutes for last meeting? Seeing that there are none,
Okay, all in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
The next order of business is approval of Bill's payable.
I need a motion and a second please.
So moved.
Second.
Motion passed.
Altensey seconded by McIlwain.
Please take a look at the Bill's payable if you haven't done so already.
There was a charge for, um, there was a trust.
Yeah, I was, yep, I asked him about it.
Okay, so someone else for rental property doesn't have the trust.
All right, it was, it was, it was emergency assistance.
Gotcha. So that's the once a year, right? Yes. Okay.
Any questions on claims and demands, trustees?
Seeing as there are none, please call the roll.
Wilken. Aye. McIlwain. Aye.
Altensey. Aye. Odendahl. Sellers.
I will abstain. Oh, you're going to abstain? Yes.
Okay, let me put that this minute. Don't leave me yet. Odendahl abstains.
Okay.
Okay. Did you call? I did. I did, Patrick Sellers. Oh, okay. Well, all right then. All right.
Motion passed. Motion passes. The initial business is approval of appropriation ordinance T-26-2026, T-001, fiscal year 2026-2027.
We've had our motion and our second man. We've had our discussion. Did you guys see the adjustment that Liz made?
Is that what these tabs are? That's what those tabs are.
Did you guys know why she did it? Yeah.
It was in the email, but it's probably good to go ahead and explain it here.
Well, we have accounting services payroll fee, which is our QuickBooks fee.
She had it for a dollar but they adjusted the fee and it went up so she put $999 in it to make sure we have enough to cover.
That changed the number on the front page. It changed the number on page 2.
The bottom number, 810, it changed the number for our general town on page 10, and it changed the general town fund ending balance, the total funds ending balance on page 11.
So, and everything went up to $999 because that's, you know, she had to take it.
I don't have page 2 in here. I have 1, 3.
I have 3.
Those pages are the ones that have the changes on them.
So this is not the full budget, these are just the changes in the budget.
Okay.
Okay?
Thank you.
All right.
You need a motion to amend, according to this, because it was different than the original
that we...
Motion to amend.
Oh, that's true.
Yes, we'll need a motion to amend in order to accept these, this change.
I'll move to amend to the changes.
Okay, so...
Hold on a second.
So, we're going to do a roll call vote for a motion to amend, right?
Ready?
Yes.
Wilken?
Aye.
Mcllwain?
Aye.
Altensey?
Aye.
Odendahl?
Aye.
Sellers?
Aye.
Motion passed.
Okay.
Now, we're going to vote to approve the budget.
As amended.
Okay.
Okay. So, would I need a motion to approve the budget as amended?
We just did that.
Okay. So, Madam Clerk, this is the motion, this is to approve the budget.
As amended.
Well, no. I think we do need a motion.
We just did. Motion to amend.
We amended it. We just did the motion to amend it.
Michael!
But now we need a motion to vote on it.
Are you on the phone?
Right. No, no, no. We have the, we have the, we, we...
Yes.
Do we need a motion to, we did a motion to amend because we had a change to the budget.
Now we want to approve the budget. Do we just go for the approval or do we need a motion
to approve?
No, you need a vote on the approval of the budget as amended.
Okay. So we need a vote to approve the budget as amended. So Madam Clerk, call the roll.
Aye. Mcllwain? Aye. Altensey? Aye. Odendahl? Aye. Sellers? Aye. Okay. Motion passes. Good job.
Hey Ted, good catch too. Thank you. Appreciate that. The next on the business is the discussion
and approval of the renewal of the service provider agreement with Joharie Allen for
Operation Jumpstart Program. So I need a motion and a second. So moved. Second. Motion by
Altensey, Second, Mcllwain. Are there any questions about this? I made the adjustment, there was an adjustment on page 13, which we had in there 18 hours per month, it should have been 18 hours per week. So I changed the word from month to week. So that's the change that we had for the service provider agreement.
agreement. So I made that adjustment.
The only thing I would say is I think this is an important role.
And I think it's a complicated role, having had a little bit
to do with working with people in the same kind of background
and difficulties. I would like as we go along, if there's any
and Jihari.
And we're going to look at the different types of things that we're going to look at, and
how we're going to do that.
So, I think it's a great way to keep us kind of in the loop in terms of what the activities
are that are going on, and how successful that is.
The progress?
I think that there's a danger because it is complicated that it just kind of gets pushed
off and it doesn't have, I don't know exactly what kind of oversight it has right now.
I don't know who Jihari kind of answers to.
Me.
answers to me. As the creator of the program and as the actual program overseer, Jihari
answers to me directly. So I monitor what he's doing. He gives his reports to me. I
Will you guys get a report every meeting? No. But as progress, as we make progress, we will give you those, those, those reports. And as you guys can see from the last time I provided a report, the numbers have grown. The success is there. This program is necessary. And, and, and if we are going to help our youth, this is one of the ways that we do it. Okay? Um, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed, to get them employed,
Boyd, to get them in GED, to get them in college, to get them in the trades. These
are the things that we can do to help our youth. Okay? So the importance of this program
is just that, the importance of the program. And the importance of the program is to help
our youth, as we've been talking about doing. So we've been doing this. So your question
is the oversight. The oversight is me. Johara answers to the supervisor of Freeport Township.
Okay? Anybody have any more concerns, questions, comments, concerns, give them to me. Because
tonight is the night we vote to approve.
because tonight is the night we vote to approve this contract because I want to keep the program going.
Yeah, no, I mean, I'll just say, um, gosh, it's been in existence for two years now? It was three years.
What's that?
The program.
No, this is the first year?
One year.
This is the second half of the first year.
Yeah.
Because it was a six month program, more of a trial year.
And then we extended it to the end of the year.
Which is April 31st?
Or 30th?
Funding an independent personal organization that has no accountability, as in this case again,
Johari does report basically directly to Patrick because his checks come directly from Township
and the checks are basically bi-weekly. So there is a firm set of controls there to monitor what's
We've had progress reports. We had the one that was done a couple of months ago, then we also had an initial one shortly after it started.
So, I'm comfortable with the controls that are in place, don't see where the complication comes in at, because the mission of the program is pretty straight forward.
Yeah, so I guess, so you mentioned complication, what complication do you refer to?
I'm saying the work is complicated. Working with people with the kind of backgrounds and problems that most clients have is complicated. It's complicated work.
I'm not criticizing the program in any way. I'm saying it's complicated work, it's important work. All I'm saying is I think it's, in part because it is, there's a danger that it kind of becomes left over there because it's, you know, because you don't want to,
Everybody tried to get in and understand everything that's going on and such.
So I'm just saying it's good to have periodic
reviews and make sure and that's why I was asking the questions about
accountability.
So it wasn't a criticism. It was a
question of kind of the lay of the land and a statement to support that this is
important work.
Maybe this will help clear things up. There are different mechanisms in the program.
There are different gears. There are all these different nuances inside the program.
But please understand that I wrote those nuances. I created those gears.
So I know every piece that's working in this program, how it's supposed to be working.
And Jahari reports to me directly all the time, and I'm keeping close tabs on numbers.
I want to see progress. Now I know there's going to come a point in time where the program is going to plateau.
Every program does that.
and that's when we sit down and we kind of reinvent the program to make sure it keeps progressing.
We haven't reached our plateau yet, not even close. We're getting more and more people calling to join the Jumpstart program.
Actually, we had a gentleman call from Rockford who wanted to be a part of the Jumpstart program.
Unfortunately, you're not from Freeport, so we can't assist you.
All is fair? Any more questions, comments, concerns? We're good? Yep.
Madam Clerk, please follow the roll. Odendahl? Yes. Altensey? Aye. McElwain? Aye. Wilken? Aye. Sellers? Aye. Motion passed. Motion passed.
The next item is the Supervisor's Report. I'm not going to bore you guys to death with a whole bunch of talking.
I think this might be the last one for the fiscal year, if I'm not mistaken.
So I really don't have a whole lot to discuss. I mean, I can think of something to have a whole lot of writing, but I'm not going to do that. I wouldn't do that.
And then do it in a different language.
Yeah, do it in a different language.
Well, just to make a comment, just to point out to something, that hopefully kind of,
the question kind of came when we were talking about the budget, in terms of how it's, the
way we project our ending balances, kind of on the surface it looks like we're digging
into reserves, but essentially, I mean, minus a week.
This essentially is pretty much, I mean, I'm speaking correctly, this pretty much is where
we're landing at the end of this, at the end of this fiscal year.
And you see we're 72% of what was budgeted, so that's kind of, this is kind of a good way to kind of show on paper the conversation we said that typically we end up less than what we budgeted.
Yeah, so clearly we're ending 18% below what the budget was.
So even though there is an ending balance that on the service you may think it might look higher, in reality, based on our past experience, it's going to be higher than what was approved.
So we were budgeted for $1.5 million and we're coming in at $1.1 million.
Right.
So that's all I just want to point that out.
Alright.
So we should probably be returning maybe like maybe 400 something thousand the way the way it's looking but you know we will gauge that once the once the fiscal year actually ends and then we'll go back and take a look at how things end but as you can see we are under budget.
Yeah, no problem with being on the budget and no problem with that turns into a surplus, that's fine because it's good to have reserves in place because you never know what may come up.
Right, absolutely, absolutely.
Alright, the next order of business is the Assessors Report.
Okay. Next on the business is the trustees report. Trustees, anything? Next on the business is public comment. Any public comments?
Yes. Yeah, I'm Steve Carroll, and at the last board meeting, Mr. Orlow spoke about, well, school year is ending, kids are going to be out, and he can talk about an undercurrent, and these kids will be sick.
These kids will be spilling into our neighborhoods.
Two days later I saw exactly what he was talking about.
Across the street, right in front of my house, 12 to 15 kids, ages from probably 16 down to about 14, 13,
were confronting individuals that lived across the street who were part of the Batten Forum.
The police were called. They cleared the streets.
There's been an ongoing problem that's getting worse.
worse. There's some individuals moved into the neighborhood several months ago and brought their problems with them.
The cities, I got the call log and everything sent it to everybody on the city council. Of course, you don't hear back from them.
But,
this is going to be a problem, and I'm so afraid that it is going to escalate from words to something much worse.
So,
this could be a very bad year.
and the city is on total lockdown as to what's really going on. I think we all know that so
it's happening and it's real.
Thank you. Any more public comments?
Seeing that there aren't any other business coming before the town.
Okay, I intend to motion to adjourn until Monday, May 4th, 2026 at 4.30 p.m.
26th at 4.30pm.
So moved.
Second.
All in favour?
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carried. Meeting is adjourned.
Thank you all for coming.