We're in the meeting of Planning, Development, and Committee for April 6th, 2026.
Dale, would you like to open us with an order?
Sure, thank you.
Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing this group together tonight to do the best of work for the county.
Thank you for all the blessings and watching over our county and citizens and guide us through this meeting tonight.
Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen.
We have approval of the agenda.
Motion to approve.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Motion carries.
On to the minutes from March 9th, 2026.
Motion to approve.
Motion and second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
I believe.
Aye.
Motion carries.
On to claims.
We have a total this evening for Planning Development, $550.89.
Motion to approve.
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Motion carries as well.
At this point, we have public comment.
Sanuc Date Reference Act, Jeffries Quarry, located at 466 West Fairview Road, Freeport.
The entire eastern length of that property borders my property.
At the end of this month, it's been a year since I first expressed concerns to the Zoning Director.
Per reference, Mr. Jeffrey's telling me his intentions for the quarry.
Mr. Fricke, your interest in the issue is appreciated and you're welcome to come out again to update the photos you took from my property in mid-January.
So much has changed in three months instead of planting trees.
As required, Mr. Jeffrey has ripped out nearly all of the mature trees that had provided partial screening.
From the end of February into mid-March for two and a half weeks, Mr. Jeffrey had not stopped unattended fires burning.
Please refer to the County Burning Ordinance, specifically 224-4B, commercial trade waste, which requires him to use an air curtain incinerator instead of 24-7, unattended, open, burning.
There's still an extremely large pile of logs on the northeast section, very close to our shared property line.
He put a whole bunch more brush there again today.
He's also brought in multiple loads of logs and tree trunks from other locations.
Over the past year, he has had multiple fires on the property.
Mr. Jeffery has dug and graded the northern portion rerouting water.
The water runoff from the property east of me flows mostly through a drain tube under my lane and empties into this area.
The water used to flow westward and has been a large hot wet till.
It parted with this excavated dirt and rock and widened its drive on the northern end rerouting the water flow.
Law.
Mr. Jeffrey has been in violation of a number of EPA regulations.
He should also be cited at the county level.
Beth, as Mr. Jeffrey complied with the county's conditional use permit requirements listed in the violation notice stated January 20th of 26.
Again, it's been a year since the quarry activities were brought to the county's attention.
Why is Mr. Jeffrey, continually allowed to operate without compliance.
I don't think we can answer that tonight.
If somebody could get back to me though, I mean, that's multiple questions, please.
Yeah, give me a call.
Come out.
I mean, it's from my front door.
You have a beautiful, beautiful of this, so, so.
Thank you.
Any other public comment?
With that, we'll move on to reports to the committee.
Well, we can start with the Mayor-President.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone, and happy Easter.
I'm going to pass a couple of articles out to you and walk you through these, and then just provide some general updates.
But the first thing you see is kind of an outline of efforts and methodology in targeting hotel recruitment for our Freeport and Stevenson region.
So, since the partnership's inception, and we've been tracking occupancy data of the three most consistently run hotels, Country Anna, Sweets, Hampton, and the Baymont.
What we do know is that consistently our occupancy is 70% or higher.
That's even during the midweek where we have a lot of business travel.
So that leads us to believe that our area would support another hotel development.
Obviously with that would bring the opportunity for additional hotel tax, sales revenue, support of our tourism events, which aligns very closely with some of the other things that are happening in the area, especially thinking of Highland and their addition and support facilities and the opportunities that come along with that with potential tournaments that could be hosted here.
And the other thing that we, well personally and professionally, we hear amongst businesses and we ourselves, we don't have a hotel complex that helps an event center or a conference center, which really limits our ability to host any regional or statewide conferences at different associations.
We've also heard that from a number of businesses.
So it would be our goal to try to attract another flagship hotel with conference space.
So we're looking at the process of what data that we need to start aggregating as well as potential sites that we could try to vet.
We're also exploring different funding options to make that enticing to a developer.
Star Bonds is something that we are broadly examining.
And this is a new program the state of Illinois has put out and it's really around development similar to a TIF district except in fact it doesn't work with property tax that works with sales tax generation and it's developed with the geography or it's outlined in geography, a specific geographic area that you're trying to target to build an event center.
The idea is really trying to attract people from outside the area for tourism related So we're still doing the due diligence, learning more about the program and seeing if there would be a location that would make sense.
It's a long process with the state.
Again, they're developing this as a new program that they currently don't have.
So there would be a letter of inquiry that we would send to the state if we were interested in the middle of the year.
Then that puts us in line to file a formal application that would be, that would happen at the end of 2026 and that the state would evaluate.
So there will be more to come.
And Tom.
And you will hear me talk about this as well.
The second one, the flyer that you see, and this is, I've mentioned this before, this is the Midland CEO program.
So it's creating entrepreneurship opportunities.
And this is a program that we didn't originate, but we're trying to develop a chapter or we are developing a chapter here in Freeport in conjunction with Freeport High School.
So this is set to launch in the next school year and it is targeted towards juniors and seniors and it's really, they undergo, it's a year long class, credit hour class, and they work with local businesses to be mentored, to understand what it takes to develop a business, build relationships with existing businesses, to develop their own business and both as a group and then an individual and it culminates in a trade show around this time of year, time of the year.
Some of you might be familiar with Whiteside Area Career Center, which is similar to our CareerTech host.
They already have a CEO program.
Actually, they have two branches of it or two cohorts.
And so towards the end of this month, we will go down and check out their trade show.
But we're in planning.
Currently, student registration at Freeport High School is ongoing for next fall.
This is one of the course offerings that will be there.
We're also in the process of hiring a facilitator for this class.
This is a program that is at no cost to the district or the students that are involved because it is facilitated and designed to be supported by the community, specifically the business community.
So we have business investors, some of which sit on a CEO.
Some of which sit on a CEO board and help operate this program.
The partnership sees this as a great opportunity to help create entrepreneurial skills within our young talent as well as interpersonal skills.
What we often hear about from our employers is those students don't have the soft skills when they enter the workforce.
And part of this program is They meet with businesses each week.
They go out, they tour facilities.
They have a business mentor themselves.
So it is really developing a professional skill set as well.
And also helping to create connections for that student so that they're less likely to leave the community for their career path or if they leave to return.
So there will be more to come, but we were excited to launch this program next year.
Some other things that are going on.
You'll hear me talk about Opportunity Zones.
So this is another incentive zone that was really created by the Department of Revenue at the federal level in 2017.
The initial program is set to expire this year.
Each state is going through a process of reviewing eligible census tracts.
Census tracts are eligible based upon household income, criteria, poverty rate, et cetera.
We have a number of census tracts in Freeport that qualify.
We have two currently in the existing Opportunity Zone that's set to expire.
We have a total of five eligible census tracts.
So that's the two original census tracts and three additional census tracts.
What I'm working to do is to talk to developers, potential developers, property owners, to educate them on the opportunity of what an Opportunity Zone could potentially do for their business or future investment and to garner a letter of support.
It will be a competitive selection process through the state to have our census tracts included.
And I'll back up here.
Census or Opportunity Zone is really outside of any property tax or sales tax.
It developed a qualified opportunity zone fund that allows somebody to, they invest in that fund, they can forego some capital gains tax or defer that capital gains tax, depending on how long they hold that investment in that property or that project.
So, some companies and or developers are looking at this as a potential vehicle to reinvest while gaining those benefits.
So, that's the conversation I'm having.
I'm aggregating letters of support and information from both public and private partners to then send down to the state so that they, DCEO is then kind of aggregating this information and ultimately will land on the governor's desk for his selection process, but trying to create a compelling argument that our census tracts are all added because there are potential projects in the pipeline.
It's a long way of saying I can be happy to provide a follow-up map as to what these census tracts are, where they are, and talk to you in more detail.
But that's been, I spent a lot of and a lot of time kind of talking with developers and meeting with them in the past month.
Additionally, we continue to work on enterprise zone boundary extension applications for the Village of Lena and AutoSmart.
We are also in the beginning stages of working with City of Freeport, developing a parcel list to talk about potential parcels to be added into the enterprise zone to help facilitate residential development.
The partnership is going through a meeting with all of the village boards throughout Stephenson County, kind of giving them an update on the 2025 annual activities that went on, giving them our annual report, answering any questions they might have and or, you know, hear what's going on in their community.
I know there's someone headed to Orangeville tonight, Dakota, tomorrow I'm in Rock City, and at the end of this week in German Valley, and I've already been to Cedarville and Pearl City, so we're making the rounds.
We have a workforce initiative event this Wednesday morning from 730 to 9 AM I encourage any of you, if you're able to attend, we have reached out to our partnership level members to have a heavy conversation with business leaders, with business leaders and educational leaders to talk about our workforce alignment issues.
We know at our last Economic Development Roundtable, we talked a lot about the trends in terms of migration information, our aging workforce and how it's key to the economic vitality of this area to really make sure that we're retaining our talent, able to attract new talent.
But one of the other things that we're identifying is when we talk to businesses, a lot of, especially our manufacturers, have great career laddering opportunities, but they're often not talking about that to their recruits or to their prospects and how can we help them become more aware of how to market that better and helping develop personas of who specifically they should be marketing to.
Alongside that effort, we do offer community tours for VP level recruitment for employers.
We have done this pretty frequently since Mercy Health has taken over FHN.
They have been very heavy handed in our physician recruitment, which is exciting to see.
And we are excited they're utilizing us to tell the story of our community, being the fact that many of them are newer to the community themselves, and may not be super familiar.
So very interesting to see it through the eyes of someone who's a newcomer.
And typically they seem to be more optimistic than some people who have lived here all their life or for a long period of time.
We've submitted mill race crossing for two RFIs that were issued by Illinois EDC.
We continue to market that location to logistics companies knowing that it still has the challenges of limited utility but it does have ample land and it has great access to to Johnny.
Last but not least, we will culminate Base Camp at the end of this month with our Pitch Competition.
We are very appreciative from the Illinois Farm Bureau for receiving a grant to help support that program and the Pitch Competition Awards.
Happy to answer any questions about anything mentioned this evening.
I do have a couple of questions.
The first one is, and this may have happened before your time, but what happened to the trailer parks in Freeport?
Why are they, well, they mostly disappeared.
There's a couple of them that closed completely.
There's one on Stevenson Street Road that's, you know, a quarter of what it used to be.
There's one on La Della that's completely gone, I think.
I'm familiar with two, the one off of Walnut, and then the other one would be kind of, part of it goes behind Sullivan's, that's still there, although there are a lot of vacant lots there.
If there were more than that, I'm not- There was one, used to be one down Waddell Street.
Help Orient Me.
Where's Waddell?
Waddell is left.
There were two.
There was Sullivan's.
Yeah, just on this side of Sullivan's.
Well, yeah, you go in there by McDonald's.
Right.
And then there's one on the other side of Sullivan's.
And I was in that one a couple years ago delivering Christmas dinners for a church or something.
And there was like a third of it, like a third of the trailer park was full.
And the one on Stevenson Street Road, the reason this came up is I was talking to somebody about the Pearl City School District losing census and all the children that lived in the one on Stevenson Street Road went to Pearl City Schools and that's a shell of itself and I just wondered what happened to them, if the state changed something, I talked to Beth and she said as far as she knew there was no county regulation that There's nothing that I'm aware of that was done to empty those, so I'm not sure that I can answer your question with any certitude, so yeah.
Theoretically, it's affordable housing.
I mean, that was a big draw back in the day, you know?
Sure, sure.
And I know we're looking for housing.
It is, and yeah, it can be a solution.
Also thinking about how it is not assessed as real property.
So there's an implication or that, you know, that has ripple ties in terms of if you're creating, if families are living there and, you know, there are going to be students in a school district that have a relationship to funding, not saying that that's a reason to not have them, just stating that fact, but- Check Dan and Jess and see if he has any idea.
I mean, I don't really know where to go from here to find out, you know, any of these things.
I don't know if there's just not, there was an interest or people moved out because they knew the debtor.
Part of it had to do with Stevenson Estates was that it was always a problem getting.
That was always a problem getting the owner of the facility to do the maintenance work.
A lot of those mobile homes out there were owned by the owner of the facility.
So they were rentals on top of being mobile homes.
So that was a problem to some extent.
And I think we always forget about the mobile home park that's right there next to it, or You know, the maintenance might be the problem with the other two, it could have been very easily that, you know, to yarn.
And I know the one up behind Sullivan's was used for when they were doing the pipeline through here.
It was used for the workers that had their own mobile homes that they brought in, and they used that facility for that as well.
Okay.
But there's a lot of empty spaces out there.
The other question is about employment in our county and we've been looking at the numbers over several years and the open jobs seems to maintain a, you know, right around 1,100 and the unemployed is right around 900 and those two numbers should just equal them, you You know, write themselves off, you know, in a perfect world, but my question is, I certainly don't know individuals, but what are these 900 people that have been looking for a job for years?
What are they doing?
I don't understand how, I'm assuming that most of the same 900, I don't know that of course, but I can't answer that with a hundred, with, you know, yes, I'm, no, that speaking from employers, there's a certain amount of churn, you know, and they see the same individual kind of work their way through the system.
That's probably not the full story for all 900 individuals.
I will have new data for you next month.
They were going to release January.
So because of the shutdown, they're still delayed and releasing on employment information.
So I should get Januaries on April 8th.
But yes, looking, I was just looking at this before tonight's meeting.
December was the lowest that we had seen in four open jobs and there was somewhere around, I want to say 900, open publicized job openings.
And then by February, it had jumped back up to 1,100 and some.
So, you know, you sometimes see some of that curve through the holidays.
I don't think we saw as much holiday, like retail hiring as maybe we have seen in other years.
There's certainly some, but maybe not as prolific as it has been.
But yeah, it still seems to be, so part of the conversation on Wednesday morning is not necessarily diving into what's, what are those 900 doing?
But I think making sure that as we graduate, how do we make sure that those graduates aren't leaving and also knowing that some of them will pursue Highland or trades or go on, leave the community to go to school, that some of them will enter the workforce right away.
And how are we making that on-ramp as easy as possible because there are some really fantastic opportunities here that you can start and make a very decent hourly wage and there are a lot of opportunities to expand.
I was just visiting the local manufacturer and they talked about they will provide the education and training and even send someone to school on their dime while they work.
Work.
So, you know, there are good opportunities, but I don't always know that those students realize that.
How can we make that more stations?
Yeah, I know there's a school, I went to their, working on their mission statement, they had a couple of minutes, you were there.
Yes.
And that was one of the things they talked about was retaining the students and trying to bring some of them back.
So they're, they're We're aware of that too.
So, yeah.
That's.
It will take their partnership.
Yeah.
For sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you.
Sure.
Well, one other thing.
I got a call today wanting me to go to work for some company.
They said that my resume, and I'm 72 years old, I said, no, no, thank you, get rid of that resume.
Steve, if I could, the whole hotel leakage data, 28,000 marine nights a year.
So approximately 2,000 a month.
Does that mean people are coming to town, but staying elsewhere?
Yeah, we often see the spillover.
They're going up in a row and they're staying in Rockford.
We have some information from a software we call LASER and that tracks the cell phone.
And we also have a call or we've purchased some STR data.
And I can't tell you, I forget what STR stands for, but it's really more delving into a hotel leakage.
And again, they will capture the bulk from larger chains.
They're not necessarily going to the townhouse motel and finding that information.
But we're looking at when someone's coming to visit an area, they're typically wanting to stay in a chain they recognize.
Sure.
And then also the Workforce Initiatives meeting on Wednesday, I got notified of this, I think, a week ago, Tuesday, was there a previous invitation sent?
I looked at my email and I didn't see it.
There might not have been.
I think there was some delay in us getting that sent out due to some just, I think, spring break and getting that finalized in schedule.
So if you can't make it or if there's someone else, you could send in a proposal.
If I had a little more notice, I'd probably have to rewrite my schedule, but unfortunately I can't.
So I was just curious about that.
I looked it up.
I hadn't seen it before that.
So anyway, okay.
We will make sure to kind of encapsulate what happened and what was discussed and send those out to the full group.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks, Steve.
All right, this is the deposit for the month of March totaled $11,566.78.
Total deposits to date to the general fund are $135,030.97.
We issued three court enforcement violations for the month of March.
We closed two of the cases and one is pending.
Nicole performed Nine inspections.
I prefer them 12 for the month.
We had our monthly meeting with the representative from the IBEW, uh, Nicole completed the records disposal paperwork for the secretary of state.
We met with Ms. Hummel on the 31st to review the paperwork.
We are now awaiting our final approval, which will allow, then allow us to start the, um, disposal process properly.
I attended the annual I FSM Illinois Association of floodplain and stormwater Management, two-day conference in Champaign.
Ms. Newcomer and I met with Carrie McWright of Diamond Brothers Insurance to discuss a situation involving a property owner's failure to maintain their property and to evaluate whether to and what to extend the county should be involved in cleanup efforts if the property does not comply following administrative hearing.
This would be the property on 26 North.
Ms. McWright did receive guidance from the insurance carrier.
They stated it would be a good idea to go ahead and clean up the property and to try to recover the costs from the homeowner.
It was stated this mitigates further risks and that they are generally seen with uncut properties.
In addition to removing an eyesore and doing the right thing for the community.
It was recommended we document everything as well.
The County can hire a third party attorney or we can take this on ourselves.
I also spoke with Eric Burnham and our zoning office Attorney, and he recommends continuing to send out the violation notices.
Um, more than likely this individual will not comply, have another administrative hearing, then we do have, um, that on the books that we can either hire a third party to go clean up or have the County go clean up.
And he also is looking into a judgment of foreclosure on the property since we already have the $60,000 lead on it.
I attended a conference, a seminar held in Springfield on data centers.
Commissioner, Heldon Springfield on data centers and Nicole and I met with Sheriff Stovall to discuss a road use agreement related to wind, solar, and energy storage projects.
He attended the Township Road Commissioners meeting that was last week where an agreement was discussed.
So he came in and talked to Nicole and I about that.
Questions?
Yes.
Why wouldn't we pursue foreclosure before we clean up and why would we clean up if we're not the owner of the property?
According to liability that it's a good idea to, since it would mitigate risk to the area, that's just what we were told with them.
Not necessarily the risk to the county.
Correct, right.
And according to our attorney, he recommended having one more hearing to get that on the books so we can have that as a judgment as well.
We know what the CIP year this person is.
And Hotel down in Jacksonville.
Before we clean anything up, can we talk about that a little more?
Oh, definitely.
I have to send out all the formal letters and everything.
So there's the whole long process we have to go through.
I would really like to pursue foreclosure.
Oh, definitely.
Yes, that's what Warnerman recommended.
We were, I think, just getting more information, trying to figure out all scenarios.
Right.
And I'm sure we are covered.
So I just have a question.
Because we talked about this one property on 26 because we see a lot of people traffic by there.
But what about the junkyard that's in the middle of Winslow?
You ever hear anybody talk about that?
Winslow is not my territory, unfortunately.
And yes, I tried to help them out.
You mean the Stevens and Conway?
They're incorporated.
The village of Scott.
I have also reached out to my office and I helped them two years ago.
I sent Mr. Kramer a letter off the books stating, you know, I've been asked by the village of Winslow to help out.
And he did clean up some, but he brought just much, as much back as he did.
So unfortunately I can't, anything that's incorporated, even with the new statute that we, the new code, that the dangerous buildings and such, we can't touch incorporated.
Health department would have been able to, but we can't.
I talked to somebody, so I can't remember who it was in the village and they were gonna contact the Illinois UTA about that.
I don't know if they ever did.
I don't remember if they have or not.
I know Ryan Penny is the Board President or Mayor.
I don't know how they- What's the problem?
There's a lady that contacts me.
I can't remember her name off the top of my head.
Yeah.
Mr. Chairman?
Yes, sir.
Anything of interest from the seminar about data centers?
Yes, I'm doing a lot more research.
This was put on by an attorney.
So he was more or less telling us how we should and what we should include in our codes that like the closed loop systems only use that amount of water.
At one point in time, of course, they're going to have to, some evaporates here and there, but they're never going to have to take up that big a volume of water again.
But there's a lot of things that we, he gave us that we still need to research and everything like that.
So, yeah.
I would comment on that as well.
I attended two meetings on data centers, one over in Rockford, more on AI than it was on data centers but then the question always comes up as we talk about AI.
We need, if we're going to continue to expand AI, the data centers are going to be an issue that I have to deal with.
But Highland did their Boyer Colloquium on AI and data centers and there was a really, one of the best crowds I've seen at the Boyer Colloquium as they talked about this and there was a lot of concern.
And I think, I don't know where you get specific data and you can say exact, you hear a lot of different things on the water, whether it's a closed loop or whether it's water that comes in contact with equipment or whether it's water that just goes near equipment as it does in other cooling situations, but I think we've gotten not just our community, but I think we've gotten community and General concerned over AI.
And at this point, other than those areas down around DeKalb, and some of the other areas out east where there's a lot more of them built or in process of being built is, and I already told you that I was solicited for one for looking at property form.
But we're looking at, it would take 10 years to get one from think about it stage here now until it was going.
We do have one that had contacted Nicole and I out by the wind towers, wind turbines and the solar.
Axiona, they had discussed a smaller size adding on to the wind turbines and the solar to create the extra energy that they would need for that data center and their plan was a five year plan.
The other thing creates the problem though is that we can do that.
They're looking at they have some power availability because of the wind farm.
As we talked at this last meeting, it was and to give you an example, we had a solar facility looking at some property and anything that's on the south east or southwest side of Freeport is already out of the picture because the substations on the south side of the county can't handle any more power coming into them.
So that if they built more solar facilities, they're going to sit there because they don't have a way to get in.
Plus I got paid 2 million now than it is to get connected with ComEd, but that's going to be our bigger concern is how can they generate the power?
Then you got to go back Director, Dale Stang, what do you want, Dale?
Nuclear, man, nuclear.
Right, I just have one question to ask of the committee and the Board.
If anybody ever knows of these meetings that are happening, I don't know about them, the IACBM ones, I do not get the emails, Mr. Hadley was the one that would tell me about those, I know he's going to be off the Board, so any meetings, any webinars, anything that has to do Solar, Wind, Energy Storage, Data Center, Zoning, anything, please shoot them my way.
So I can attend, Nicole can attend, somebody in the office can attend so we can learn more.
Did you talk to Kelly Murray about it?
I did.
I asked her to be put on the list again and she said she'd get to it.
So.
Let me know if you don't.
Okay.
You don't see anything.
So I get emails from them at least once a week.
Okay, perfect.
Yeah, I haven't gotten any since I went to that one.
So.
Yep.
That's all I have.
On soil and water, interesting conversation there as well when you look at data centers is that some counties and some states are wanting to employ the soil and water conservation districts to do water use studies so that they can provide that information to those companies and to those counties that had the potential to have a significant portion of their water used for those type of facilities being built.
So they're concerned about what what's that mean for them?
That was an interesting conversation there.
They're in the process now.
Springfield work is soon to be here and they're working with farmers to get their Program, Recreation and Trails, I told them that with our financial situation, you know, 16-5 is what we thought we could afford and they weren't very happy with me because I didn't communicate that to them.
So anyway, I talked to Mr. Helms about it and I suggested to Steve Elbeck that someone comes to a finance meeting like many other entities do and explain to us why they need extra money, how much money they have.
And Steve said that I should let him know when that opportunity arises.
And I wanted to ask, do you think we should be getting a monthly statement or a quarterly statement from them?
I'm assuming we don't.
I mean, I see them at the meetings, but do you want to see a financial statement from them quarterly or I think it would be a good idea, so when we're talking about giving them the money, you can see what they have in reserves and just like the VAC.
We're following the agreement with them.
The agreement with them.
I was going to say, I just wanted more.
Yeah.
And they assumed that they were going to get it.
You know, they missed that.
Well, we had an agreement.
I think we had a three-year agreement.
So we just renewed it automatically that, I mean, if it's a three-year agreement, I think it does.
We'd have to look at it again.
It's the same conversation I had with them from Pre-2022, when I was in your slide.
So, it's not new to them.
They may not be remembering.
It's not new.
I mean, I like the trail light.
It's a good investment, but there's a lot of other things that we obviously need to fund.
Well, maybe we'll talk to Steve about about that when it comes to, I'm assuming it will be Steve.
He's still the Chair, I think.
Yes, he is.
Okay.
Other than that, anything else that's going on smooth?
Well, I had a tree fell over on a bridge and damaged a bridge, didn't take the bridge completely out, just took out some of the handrails and stuff.
They're getting that fixed.
Bridges aren't cheap.
They didn't take out the bridge, just the handrails.
Maybe leave with that this time.
Sorry.
I think we're responsible for a third of that expense, so we have to report Orangeville and not us.
Okay.
It did take out the budget.
It's Park District.
Anyway, I'll be quiet.
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Okay.
I don't have anything from Blackhawk Hills in last semester, Chair.
No, sir.
Okay.
And I've already added enough in my conversations here, and I don't know if we have any report from facilities.
Wally stepped in my office today just to let me know he was going to get the mower serviced and tuned up and ready to start mowing.
To have some sort of an end-of-year plan for both the truck and the horse and things, so it was handled this time.
If you can relay that maybe to Wally, Chadley.
Okay, I have no other old business on the agenda.
So with that we have New Business, which is who will have a temporary use permit for the Pearl City Historical Organization for use of black hawks.
If you would like to just let us know what your plans are.
I sent them in.
Did you bring them forward?
Yes.
Well, what we would like to do is we're having a day of history in the making.
I have talked to a lot of people because I didn't know we needed a permit before I started all this.
But I'm going to have vendors come that will teach us skills of the past.
Like there's going to be rope making.
I have a rug making, I have a blacksmith coming, and he's using charcoal, because I've told all the people that are coming, there is no electric, and there's only a hand pump, there's no water hookups or anything like that, everything they have to provide themselves.
Okay.
Let's back up just a little bit.
The idea of it is a fundraiser for our historical organization.
With the new museum we have, we now have more expenses than we had, so we're exploring different areas to fundraise in.
We would like to use the Black Hawk Park because of the historical significance of it.
And what Lynette's talking about is the different events we want to have there, but there will be a fee to come in onto the property just as a fundraiser type thing.
And others.
It's a one-day event.
We want to make it historically as accurate as possible with the different crafts and different skills and different talents that they had back then that we might not even have anymore.
That's the basic idea of what we're trying to do here.
Yeah, and most of it, like you're going to have Jake Andrews come and he's going to sit beside the monument and tell about the people that are buried there.
It's a learning experience for kids and adults.
We're trying to get it to be family oriented.
It's from 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon.
Well, I call them vendors, but they're classes, sort of.
They're teachers, because we have Joe Wenzel is going to bring out a whole bunch of quilts and talk about her different quilt, maybe patterns.
I'm not sure what all she's going to do.
She's also going to have some maybe a little craft for kids to do, like some different stitches.
She can show them how to do stitches and things like that.
Dr. Domman from Lena has agreed to come with some of his Civil War memorabilia and medicine.
He's had, I don't know if you've all heard Dr. Domman speak, but probably he's fantastic.
Yes, very good.
So he said he would come.
We're having a lady that's from my church, her, she and her Family, are going to teach us how to do hand-dipped candles.
And I said, this could be interesting in their playing around with it, because in June 30, 93, hand-dipped candles may be a challenge.
But she says, we're working on ice water and things like that.
We have a sort of riding creature stopping by, walking through the property, because that was a very important thing at that time.
I've also, we have a high-wheeled wagon at the museum.
And they were talking at the meeting They Needed No Wheels Grease.
And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't be greasing those before the event, because that's a big thing.
How many people have seen a high-wheeled wagon take the wheels off and grease them and put them back on?
So that's going to be one of the projects they're going to have that day.
I've contacted some wood carvers.
They're coming.
And the Rock Valley Wood Carvers Group is going to come.
And some of these will have items they will sell, but most of them are teaching but we said if they're coming and they have items we will allow them to sell if they want to sell things we're charging a $20 boost fee it's not much but if they they that helps us build our things we've got a basket weaver the blacksmith uh rich Tobin is bringing a bunch of wooden games they're Indian games that for kids to play he does a lot of rendezvous he does S. B. O. B. Roundaboose.
And he's got a whole bunch of different games.
I've got some pictures that he's going to bring.
He's also going to do beadwork that he does beadworking.
Ken McCleaver is going to do some Native American stuff and maybe sell some books.
We also have Alan Harris.
He's from Dixon, he's a teacher in Dixon and he's going to show Native American tools and weapons and spheres or life skills that were used back before the Indians even.
And I have soap making.
Nikki Keltler from the Extension Office wants to come.
She takes care of the plants out there.
I don't know if you guys knew that or not.
She does the flower beds and stuff out there.
There, she wants to do a project with Native American Plants and she'll have the kids talk about them and show them and things like that.
So we have some more embroidery and needlepoint maybe too.
I haven't got a, I would sort of like to get someone that would work with leather so we can show, because that was an important thing back there, you know, all your horses, harnesses and stuff like that.
And also maybe a fur trader, I don't know, we've got some trappers around, they can maybe bring some traps and she'll explain why they did it and things like that.
So that's why we're having this.
It's our first year but a lot of people are excited about it in our group and so I don't know what do you want to know about it?
Well I think I think you've done, yes go ahead Fisher.
No go ahead.
I have a couple of questions.
Um, first, I guess you're talking about putting quarter highs out there, which I guess is great.
Well, there's one there, but we're going to get more.
We're going to have two additional.
Yes.
Right.
What about garbage?
The trash cans from the, um, gross city.
They've got a bunch of trash cans they said we can use.
So we've got that.
Your organization would handle.
We We handle the trash sheets.
Yeah.
Monument has been recently repaired, I guess.
I'm only just concerned if you're going to have.
Well, it's been a lot.
Yeah, there's a little fence there.
I just want to make sure that.
No one's climbing on it.
It's protected, especially it's a grave area as well.
Sure.
Food trucks, correct?
A blacksmith looked at your Certificate of Liability.
It's fairly vague, which is normal, but I'm assuming they're going to have pretty hot.
He uses charcoal.
He uses charcoal for his heating element.
He doesn't have anything else.
He might have a bellows though, to magnify it a little bit, but he's more into like.
Have any of you been up there lately?
There's like a sandbox up there too.
And I thought I was going to put him close to that sandbox because that would be a good place to, you know, help extinguish any claims.
The Certificate of Liability of Accounting does need to be listed on that as an additional insurer.
I got a new one I think that Stanley was asking, or we were told we were sent that.
Yeah, that's perfect.
Stephenson County, I think this is the one, I mean, this is Stephenson County and Blackhawk Mountain.
The address is the correct way, yes.
You just need to list the address here, 50 West Douglas Street, not the monument itself.
So Stephenson County needs to be listed.
Okay.
With our address here, which 50 West Douglas Street.
I know.
I work here.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Steve.
All right.
And more questions.
Have we ever had anybody this big here before?
I don't know how big it's going to be.
I like to think it's been a huge, but it's the first year.
It's during the time, you know, and Jake will be talking throughout the afternoon and then he'll have the presentation at the end, probably our ending will be the biggest.
Again, it depends on the weather.
We do not have a rain date or anything.
So we're going to try having it no matter what.
Um, but we don't really know how well it's going to go over it.
The people that we've contacted and talked about seem very excited about.
They want to be helpful and help us with them, stuff like that.
Um, I'm hoping to use that as a recruiting tool for more members.
But at this point we don't know, we're hoping it'll grow as over the years and it'll be now a use of monument but educate people about the monument and what happened up there in that area and stuff like that.
Okay, well parking, so if it gets to be bigger than what you expect, I get that you have the field next to it, but it can't be.
We have three spots and one even on the north side of Kent where we'd have to help transport them, but we're, we're going to have plenty of parking if it got big.
And then it says golf carts too, rolling them around?
No, just.
Just, there's a little, um, I would call it pasture to the south of Black Hawk monument.
It was on your map.
Where we're going to make a mock Kellogg's trail that comes up, they parked down at the farm, Riding Cart, most people will walk and many for the elderly, you know, you got his cart to be able to take up through the trail and we'd have like, well, here you go, well, pretend Buffalo Grove, Polo and stuff like that.
And you'd have little stops on the Kellogg's trail as it gets to.
See, we had it here on your map.
And the gate to come into the park would be in the backside.
There's like a fence line there.
So it's got a, yeah, it's got a break in it.
Back by where the cabin used to be.
And the vendors that are going to provide the items are all going to park in the main lot up here and none of the people that come to the place will park there.
They will all park here and there's enough cars for like 30 at the time.
I think I put it into parking lot but then Kim Plans, she was like three-fourths of a mile down the road and we're working on getting, I was I was hoping to get the antique engine for those wagons and use tractors, you know, because they're enclosed and they don't run out.
I just found that out today.
So I'm still working on getting more transportation if we need it.
We have parking spots.
The logistics, how to get them there from there.
But because we don't want people walking.
Nobody got to walk on the roads.
We have to get to this part first.
Let's be honest with them.
I mean, I'll second it.
And I still am very iffy just because it's pretty big.
And we're hoping 150 at the most, probably.
I don't know.
You don't know.
I know.
Were you there for when they dedicated them?
Monument?
No, when they did the Lincoln Statute.
I was.
How many people were there?
Not many there is not many there I sat right in the front row maybe 50 people you were there I think maybe I don't think there were 50 there nicole has was there and I felt bigger than that I was there too but well I'll go for it to pass it to board and I'll ponder on it I'm like man that's pretty I mean it sounds like a great event but it's on county property and like I'll second.
I've got a question.
What are you worried about the county property for?
I mean this is used for smaller events and your event sounds pretty amazing and big that I don't I don't know if there's enough.
I mean, I don't know.
I just, and what happens if something damaged?
So if the limits of liability is involved.
Is there the shelter house, which the benches are not in good shape.
And also, there's something you could put on the agenda sometime.
That sign that tells a black pocket is just ripped into pieces.
You can't even read it.
That's horrible.
It's horrible up there.
You guys wouldn't want to own this park, would you?
That's not beyond possibility.
We'd be willing to entertain a discussion on it.
It'll cost you a lot more than a dollar.
We understand that.
That's why I. We'd be willing to discuss that.
How much we spent on the rehab environment itself.
Sure.
Well, yeah, and that is, it does look very nice.
If I can, I think this might be a good test to see.
The park was obviously never designed for something like this.
Obviously there's not parking.
There's not water.
There's not, I mean, there's outhouses, basically, that's all there is.
If there's going to be more of these down the road and it's going to get bigger, we're going to have to figure out different logistics for them though.
I don't know how realistic it is to have people parking at farms, and I think it'd be great if that's a good problem to have, I guess, right?
If you're getting all of that, but it just, I echo your concerns.
It was just never designed for what may be coming, I guess.
It's amazing how many people do come to this park.
You probably don't know it, but every time I'm up there, there's people there.
Well, if they're reserving it, we absolutely know.
Well, but, I mean, it's a public park, so people, like I went up the other day to look at some different measurements to figure out how I was going to hook stuff, and there's this car comes in and, well, they were from Savannah.
They just hadn't been up here before and they wanted to come see it.
And I'm between Colvin, my mom and my family is five of us there so we went out there for a picnic.
There was three other families having a picnic out there that day and it's like you know so it is used a lot more than you probably realize.
Well locals even like being up and taking photographs on sunrise and stuff like that because it is a beautiful location and the view is so great so My last question was when you signed up did you ask in advance before or did you just say oh we're going to have it here like did you reach out to the Stephenson County to say hey we want to have this and we're looking at it?
I didn't know we needed a permit until I started with the advertising.
I sent something to Greater Port Partnership because we are a partner.
And she says, oh, do you have a permit for this?
And it's like, huh?
I didn't know I did.
Sorry, this is the first one and they're all.
That was actually me because we were responding to the email asking about the industrial port Lepotty's.
So then we were like, oh my gosh, because I had all the letters, I still have them to send out to the vendors to have them, you know, like contracts this summer.
And I still have them because.
We put the brakes on real quick once we realized some of our mistakes.
Awesome.
All right, I'll second it.
Any questions?
No.
Any other questions?
There's no service.
All those in favor of granting the permit, signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Thank you very much for coming.
We'll go to the County Board next week.
To the County Board next week, right?
Right.
And we should show up there too.
More than welcome to the first time people ever do.
Well, we've got it on our calendar.
Yeah, we've got it on every time, too, so you know.
My daughter did that in Pearl City.
I don't know this, but we have these every time.
Okay, I just passed out some, I don't know if you want to see this.
These are just some pictures from this office building that Newell has, they're going to have for sale.
That wouldn't say that I did a good job of taking the best representative pictures.
There's trouble there that show how the office area looks now.
I was really looking at some of the other areas that were not out there to the public where if we were to look at potentially using it for County Office and should come with access to.
Thank you, yes.
Access to computer space and networking areas and that sort of thing.
So that's what those pictures are.
The reason it's on the agenda here is that we have this available, we had a price of 250 on that, I'm sorry, 350 on that.
The question is, are we even interested in pursuing this any further?
Or maybe we should talk to them about, you know, are there other alternatives that they would have to make it less expensive Forest, or are we content with where we are because of our track record of building maintenance and so forth?
So that's why it's here tonight, because we have the opportunity, but if we're just.
I think it's worth looking into.
The building is telling one story, right?
So the Well there's no money in the budget to purchase a building, right?
26.
Right.
And their representative knows that.
Ideally, I think what we looked at the on-trend and currently have runs through 29, I believe.
Yes, April 30th.
Yeah.
I've been talking to someone else about another building, but that's been very slow going.
It's not even, it's hardly even worth mentioning, I guess, how slow it's going.
But we probably need to do an assessment of what needs the 10th floor, the 5th floor, and our storage that we utilize here.
What that actually is, yes, try to find a space and maybe this is, maybe this works.
Find out what the build out would be, how much that would cost and then plan for it in future budget.
Now that means the building may be gone too by the time you get there.
But I don't know that we have a good idea beyond what's here right now, what the needs are.
I have no idea for IT infrastructure, you know, what that's like in that building.
That's probably, I shouldn't say it's the biggest issue, but it is an issue.
Yeah, I just want to know what kind of shape the roof's in, the HVAC, well, I think I'll need to know what our needs are before we get real.
You probably got to know what the needs are anyway, to ensure the reference, you know.
Sure.
Well, we do know that the roof is new.
Perfect.
We do know that the exterior is basically new.
We do know that the heating and air conditioning units are less than five years old.
So there's a N, whatever you want that's inside it is included.
If you.
That's good.
That's all there.
Plus, it's designed since it was redone on the inside for easy access for IT.
That's why it's set up the way it is.
It's pretty open right now.
I mean, it's an open room, except for the spaces on the outside where there would be rooms large enough for conference rooms, which I think there's three meeting rooms, plus a room that would be large enough for a board to meet in, not this size, bigger space than this.
So I didn't have that one in my pictures.
Parking seems to be adequate, isn't it?
You hit, you did that whole parking except for about the front door of the ice cream place.
Why can't I think about the front door, east that belongs to the cleaners.
I think there's a hundred and some spaces.
And it does have access, front and rear, so it doesn't have to be just one spot on exchange or just an opportunity to take a long, I don't know where we go from here as far as asking I would have George and put together some sort of assessment for the needs for the 10th floor and the 5th floor and figure out the space size wise and I mean we think I'm pretty simple to figure out what space we currently have.
I have no idea of the 5th floor if it works for everybody.
I assume it does.
Nobody's told me it doesn't.
Having the Assessor and Clerk all together like that.
I would assume if it's been working and nobody said anything it is working and we know That's the discussion.
That's all I've had.
We can at least go from there.
See what's available.
Anybody have anything else for the pause then?
Motion to adjourn?
So moved.
Second.
Aye.