Village Board of Trustees - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. Welcome tonight. This is the Village of Arlington Nights Board of Trustees for the night of June 1st, 2026. And our first order of business is calling the meeting to order and rising for the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join the board. Thank you, everyone. Maggie, if you could please call the roll.

Trustee Dunnington? Here. Trustee Santa Maria? Here. Trustee Gilbert?

Here.

Trustee Manganiello? Here. Trustee Schwengbeck?

Here.

Trustee LeBeds? Here. Trustee Zick?

Here.

Trustee Bertucci?

Here.

President Tenaglia?

Here. Very good. Thank you, everyone. I want to take a minute. We have a couple of things to do today on the agenda. But I wanted to take a minute to address the audience and everyone at home with a comment or two that I know that has been passed around through the social media. And in light of what happened over the last several months that culminated over the weekend late last night and early this morning, there's a statement here that I'd like to make regarding the football club that has been working towards Moving here to Arlington Heights, so I think now is an appropriate time to do that and It goes like this the village of Arlington Heights is disappointed That Springfield did not pass any legislation to facilitate the proposed redevelopment of Arlington Park this session While this outcome is not what many had hoped for The Arlington Park property remains one of the largest and most important redevelopment opportunities with long-term potential for our community, the region, and the entire state of Illinois. Personally, I'm quoted as saying the Village of Arlington Heights has spent the past five years working diligently to prepare for the redevelopment of Arlington Park. and we are truly disappointed with the outcome from the spring legislative session yet again. Although we recognize that these discussions are complex and involve many stakeholders, this is clearly a fumble for the state of Illinois. My commitment to the residents and businesses of Arlington Heights is unwavering. And we will continue to represent the interests of our community as future opportunities and next steps are considered. The Village remains committed to thoughtful planning, community engagement, and responsible evaluation and discussions of future redevelopment proposals with the Chicago Bears and stakeholders related to the Arlington Park property. That was my statement that was made to the media today and it's a representation of this board and this building of over 400 employees that have worked really, really hard over the last almost five, more than five years now. And while I don't believe it's completely over yet, I really don't, I wanna make a couple of notes on this beyond my statement that to say this, I've been interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of times by news organizations on the radio, on the television, in the newspaper print, and I have been extremely supportive, extremely positive, and confident that the leaders across the state, the legislators, our governor, that they have been working hard and doing a great job to help make this happen and keep our beloved bears here in Illinois. And I've never wavered from that. I've always been encouraging in saying so. My statement today is a little bit of the opposite of that because it's a disappointment. It's a disappointment that a legislative session can go for weeks and weeks and weeks and nothing happens until almost midnight of the last day. We have a room full of young people here that will be entering college, some of them, and they're gonna be faced with final exams. And let me tell you firsthand, never count on studying for your final exam in the 11th hour. It gets you nowhere. Work needs to be done early, work needs to be done often, have to work hard together sometimes to make good things happen and this unfortunately I believe the ball was dropped so I don't mean to be rude I don't mean to point fingers at anyone in particular I know a lot of folks tried really hard but it just didn't happen yet and I say the word yet because I don't think the game is over I think that this play was a fumble, but it's just one play in the game. We'll see what happens. The spotlight now is on Hallis Hall with the Bears organization, and I'll be anxious to see over the coming days what comes from that. So that's my statement. It's not about taking questions or commentary on that. I wanted everyone to know how I felt about it, how we feel about it because we've worked hard together with Manager Reklaus and all the staff that has worked so hard on this for the many, many, many months and years. And now we're gonna move on to the rest of our agenda and do some celebrations because we have some wonderful people in the audience that we wanna recognize. Before we do that, We have a couple of meeting minutes that we have to get approved, and the first one is from the May 18th meeting. Are there any comments or changes? Trustee Zik?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, just one thing I'd like to, I think, tighten up a little bit. It's on page six of the minutes, page eight of our packet. It has to do with the F discussion of the Downtown Social District. The last full paragraph, it says, the first sentence says, President Tenali and Trustee Schwingbeck, Zick, Manganiello, Bertucci, Dunnington, and Santa Maria were all in favor of moving forward with the social district pilot program for the 2026 Alfresco season. What I think it should tighten up to say is that we're all in favor of moving forward with staff developing a plan for the social district. This kind of makes it sound like it was a done deal and we had decided that we were absolutely going to do it. I just wanted to be stated in the minutes that we, all of us were in favor of the concept, but wanted to actually see a plan developed before we go ahead and actually implement it.

I think that's actually very accurate. I appreciate that, Trustee Zik. Anyone else? I think we can duly note that. Is there anyone that has to vote no or pass on anything in this minutes? If not, is there anyone in the audience that has any comments from the minutes? I see someone with a raising hand. No. Comments on the minutes from this meeting? No, okay. If not, is there a motion to approve?

I'll move approval of the minutes from May 18th, 2026. Second.

Motion made by Trustee LeBed, seconded by Trustee Dunnington. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And now we have the approval of accounts payable, and for that we'll call on Trustee Bertucci.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll move approval of the warrant register for the check date May 30th, 2026 in the amount of $2,689,792.80. Second.

Motion made by Trustee Bertucci, seconded by Trustee Schwingbeck. Is there anyone on the board that has comments or questions on that? Anyone in the audience, questions or comments on the warrant register? If not, this is a roll call vote. Maggie?

trustee bertucci yes trustee schwingbeck yes trustee santa maria yes trustee zick yes trustee dunnington yes trustee manganero aye trustee lebeds yes trustee gilbert yes president tenaglia yes thank you very much

All right, now the moment so many are waiting for here. We have a wonderful group of young students who play a sport of their lifetime. And this is from Hersey, BG, and Wheeling, if I'm not mistaken. And these young men, are they all men? no ladies on the team, have won a state championship, if I'm not mistaken. And so they're here to get recognized with their families. Manager Reklaus, is there anything we want to open up with, or should we invite the coaches up to speak? I think we invite the coaches up and have them tell the story of the season. Are the coaches here? All right. Why don't you come up, take the podium right there, and tell us a little bit about your season, a little bit about your team, and then what we're going to... Holy cow, look at this. Is that the Stanley Cup? Put it up here. Yeah, set that up here. What we'll do, just so you understand where we're going to go, you'll go ahead and tell us what you want to tell us, and then we're going to come up here to the dais and invite all the boys up to take a picture with everyone.

Sounds good. All right. Well, first of all, thank you for having us. This team is a really special group of young men, as you said, from three different schools. So we have a bunch of kids from Hersey, Buffalo Grove, and Wheeling High Schools. A lot of them live in the community. I just want to say how proud I am, first of all. Not only are they great athletes, but a lot of kids are really good at school. A lot of them graduated and are going to do some really great things next year as well. So good student athletes up here. Most of this team was with us the year before where we lost in double overtime in the state championship in United Center. And I tell you that because just the idea of the perseverance and the grit and determination that these young men showed over the course of the year with a big target on their backs. Everybody knew that we were front runners for the state championship this year. And their hard work, their teamwork, their listening, all of those skills, the perseverance they showed to get back there again this year. And then to overcome all that adversity from the previous year to win the state championship this year was, it's a great accomplishment to win a state championship, but to do that with what happened the year before and come back with even more determination and hard work, it shows you what quality young men these guys are. So I don't know, that's all I have to say about that for now. As good as this group is on the ice, it was the most fun I've ever had coaching because they're a really good group of men off the ice too. So that goes to their parents back there and their family and friends that support them. Anything else to add? And this is Chris Townsend. My name is Chris Waters. This is Chris Townsend.

Sorry. To add to that is these guys, after coming off last year, losing the double overtime, I know Captain Christopher made sure to make a statement before the Our second state championship game that was this year we won, we took the second place back, put it right in the middle of our locker room and made sure that everyone that was on the team before and the new kids that were on the team this year had something to play for. They never want to have the feeling of losing again. So they set out a goal and they executed that goal. Couldn't be more proud of them. We even got a shot to go to nationals. I believe we took fifth in the nation, losing to the hometown Minnesota team when we were out there. So getting to know these guys over the course of their freshman year to senior year has been a big honor to me and made me fall in love with the game of hockey again. I couldn't be more proud of them. So congratulations to you guys and the families. Meeting all these wonderful people means a lot. So thank you guys very much.

Why don't you come on up here, coaches, up to the front. I'm going to give you this mic. And if you would, please call each of the team members up here and introduce them.

All right. I wrote this down so I didn't forget any of you guys. All right. So our captain, Cam Christopher, why don't you come up first? Also, Cam was also the player of the year for high school hockey this year.

So, Cam, why don't you come up first?

Other captains, you've got Cullen Jones.

Yes. Let's keep going. As you're standing here, be thinking about what you're going to say, because you have to speak for five minutes afterwards.

Aidan Gogarty, one of our captains. Our last captain, Ryan Antonucci. All right. Jackson Ronkowski. Jake Forsberg. Brian Costanza. Carmen Carangella. Reid Gergerts. Ethan Yee. I don't think I saw him. Ben Rausch, I don't think he's here. He knows I got to clap then. All right, Davis Jaeger. Oliver Wisniewski. Matt Holonyak. Mason Burkicotter. I don't see him here either. All right, Mason's not here. Jack Selleck. Don Pasoli. Last person who's here is Nick Antonucci. I don't think our two goalies are here. You got Ronan Alaniz and Niko Klimas are not here with us either. And our two coaches that aren't here got Chris Wagner and Pat Wagner, who are also unable to be here today. So that is all.

All right.

Maybe one of the captains want to say a few words about his team?

I would.

Sure, sure, sure. Thank you guys for having us here and recognizing the accomplishments we had this season. I would just like to thank everything that went into the season from each and every player working hard at practice and just getting better throughout the whole year and to all the families that supported each and every one of us from driving to practices, driving to tournaments, all the things that go in to a winning team. And I just want to thank everything that went into it. Yeah.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Chris and Tontas, for your speeches. Thank you, everyone, for being here. And that's all I got.

I'd just like to thank my team for just a wonderful season. After playing for three years and the loss last year, this year really made up for it. So just thank you to everybody who was involved, and thank you all for being here.

First, I'd like to thank the board for having us. Obviously, thank you, family, friends, parents, everybody, the team for supporting everybody this year. Without all of you guys, we wouldn't have made it this far for sticking to the program. Going into the playoffs, we weren't really performing that well, but we pulled through in the playoffs, finished strong, and even had a deep run in nationals too. So I'm just so happy to share this moment with you guys, especially my last year. So thank you guys.

down on the front on your knees, a handful of you guys on the front. We'll take a big picture.

Moms and dads, if you want to come up forward a little bit, take a picture.

All right. Look straight ahead, you guys.

Oh, yep. Sure can.

Read in Ethan. Read in Ethan. Yes, I will. Perfect. All right. Ready? One, two, and three. One, two, and three. One, two, and three.

Good looking group.

Great. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I think it goes without saying that none of this happens without the families that get them where they need to go so congratulations moms and dads Okay, we have the next item as they're filing on out. We will go into the citizens to be heard program. And this is where you are invited up to speak for up to three minutes. And we can talk about anything that's not on the agenda. So if you're here to speak about something that's on the agenda, we'll wait till that item comes up. If not, this is your time. So the first person, I have a handful of cards here, maybe eight or nine. First one is Andy Skorenko. And on deck will be, boy, oh boy. Kevin? Okay. Andy, you're up.

Sweet, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Trustees, for listening to me again. I get my three minutes to voice my concern for a pending ordinance on a minimum requirement for short-term rentals. I think that there are a few issues to consider. Some of the concerns that the Board was trying to address by applying a minimum of 30-day stay on any type of rental in Arlington Heights does not really address why the problems are occurring and I think that I'd like to see some consideration on possibly grandfathering in some existing residents that are owners and operators of these small businesses within the community and consider extending the ability to run that business in this community and offer that service for the people that enjoy that type of option visiting us for a variety of reasons. So last meeting that I had a chance to speak, I shared our experience and the way that we run our business here. And we're a month away today. from this ordinance kind of taking effect and having a direct impact on what we do in the community and again, what we look at as a service for people coming to visit us. Again, it's kind of independent of the bears situation and it makes no difference in our discussion and concern about running our small business here in Arlington Heights. I've had the chance to speak with a few of the trustees and I think that the viewpoint that's been shared from a few of the residents since the ordinance was decided on is being considered as legitimate and there may be a better way to move forward by addressing the concerns but also keeping a good thing going in our village here. So I'm hopeful that the trustees and the board and the mayor are able to consider any new information that they're getting and possibly consider grandfathering in of existing residents that do run that business in Arlington Heights. Clearly this decision is impacting them. It was a fairly short notice and we're kind of left scrambling and not quite sure what to do personally, but Again, we're hopeful that the board will have some consideration based on new information that they're getting.

22 seconds.

Thank you for listening again. Thank you, Andy. You're getting better at saying my name, Mayor.

All right. Thanks, Andy. Next, is it Kevin Wormey? Did I have that right? Is it a G? Yes. Okay. Go ahead, Kevin.

Thank you for having me. My name is Karim Ghermi. I'm a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration. We're a federal agency, and I'm here conducting some outreach in Cook County.

Grab that mic and put it close to you.

Yes. Hi. My name is Karim Ghermi. I'm a U.S. Small Business Administration public affairs specialist. I'm conducting some outreach here in Cook County following the flooding and the storms that occurred in both July and August. August of 2025 and we have a couple of declarations going on and my job here is just to inform people and inform local governments about the program we have. So I'm part of the disaster recovery program and what we do at SBA is we provide loans for homeowners, renters, nonprofits and small businesses. The types of loans we provide are for businesses. We have both physical and economic injury. The physical covers the physical part of the business. And we provide funding up to $2 million for economic injury, which covers the working capital of the business. And we have funding up to $2 million for homeowners that have been impacted by the disaster. We provide up to $500,000. And even for renters, we provide up to $100,000 for personal property, which also applies on homeowners. The advantage that you get by going with, we are a federal agency, and the advantage that you get with going with SBA is very low interest rates, down to 3%, and also the loan terms up to 30 years with no interest or no payment necessary on the first year. A lot of people are not familiar with SBA. And once they hear the word small business administration, they think that we only provide support for small businesses. But we, the disaster recovery team, we provide support also for homeowners, renters, nonprofits. So, and as well as small businesses. So this is just, I would be happy to follow up with your office. And I have some outreach material here. And if you have any questions, feel free to.

Do me a favor and grab a business card from Manager Reclouse there, and that way we can have you connect. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Next is Norbert Piotrowski. Okay.

You've heard me before, I think.

You remember me, don't you? I'm starting to learn how to say your name right with the Piotrowski, not just Piotrowski. Norbert, I'm going to remind you, just watch that little clock up there.

This may be the last time, because what I'm talking about is over. My name is Norbert Piotrowski. I live at 211 North Dwyer Avenue, Arlington Heights, Illinois. i thank the mayor the board of uh trustees and this arlington arlington heights staff for the opportunity to speak tonight on the chicago bears move to arlington heights i started following the project closely in december 2025 when i spoke about it to the board i called for a re-evaluation because Due diligence was not followed. There was only one major old $300,000 survey that told the village what they wanted to hear, not what they should hear. This was a biased report for the stadium with Bears fever building up. No consultants report on the downsides of NFL stadium deals across the U.S., So I used ChatGPT AI to ask the question. In three seconds, it told me that 80, 90% of the megastadium deals, cities learned to regret taking these stadiums. The teams get all the profits and the citizens get screwed. Similar results can be found on Proplexity, Copilot, and Gemini AI app. I spent the next five months speaking at the board meetings and sending out emails to 65 people all concerned around the state and surrounding mayors and the governor. I labeled it a boondoggle project and bear fever. No comments from the Arlington Heights board. I think they just wanted to pass through, pass this poor management of this project Keep it a secret and no one will notice. The break came when I emailed a letter to the Arlington Heights Daily Herald. They published it. A week later, they led an article on the front page, May 18th. about the lack of transparency. The three surrounding mayors of Palatine, Rolling Meadows, and Schaumburg said they were ignored and wanted in on the project. The next day, the mayor and board went on the front page claiming full transparency. I have found that presentations to the board go nowhere unless it's blasted out on the front page of the Daily Herald. Then things happen real quick. Last night, the Illinois General Assembly shot down two plans. The project crashed and burned. The NFL is worth $250 billion, the Bears $8 billion. Let the Bears go to the promised land in Hammond, Indiana. Illinois will not bail out billionaires. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you, Norbert, appreciate it. Next is David, David Corney. Did I have that right? Okay.

Is there, first of all, good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Board.

Is there anything preventing the bears from saying we accept our property tax assessment, we'll pay the bill as assessed, and we'll start the process of building?

Well, if you haven't been here to do this before, go ahead and share all your thoughts. We'll make some notes, and then we'll try and answer them when you're done. That's my only thought. That's your only thought? Yeah. All right.

You want to take a stab at it? Sure. No. I mean, any business can come and pay their property taxes and so on and so forth. Obviously, the issue before us was the magnitude of the taxes involved. The projected assessed taxes on the property for a stadium of that size using the assessment practices in Illinois and Cook County would be in the ballpark of $200 million a year. highest paying property tax stadium, football stadium in the country, pays in the ballpark of $8 million a year. Many stadiums, including Soldier Field, Raitt Field, pay zero. And the issue is how do you get, what we were trying to achieve is how do you get a stadium to come where they do pay taxes, they do pay their fair share, but it's not an outrageous amount. And that was what the goal of our discussion was, was to do that. But as we know, many stadiums across the state pay nothing. And we were trying to get them to pay something, but not something that was going to be prohibitive.

Okay. But they could still decide to pay their tax bill as assessed and start the process?

They could. Okay.

They could. So they're choosing not to do that?

The ball is in their court right now, and we'll have to wait and see what the response is. Yeah.

So they're somewhat culpable for this dying, potentially.

Oh, there's a lot of ways to look at it, for sure.

OK. Yeah. Not just the legislature. Yeah.

OK. Yeah. OK. All right. Thank you, David. Next is Steve. Steve Froehlich. Froehlich. It's a tough one.

Froehlich.

That's what I meant to say. Go ahead, Steve. You're up.

All right. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for letting me speak. Yeah, my name's Steve Freilich. I am the president of the Arlington Heights Historical Society. I'm here tonight to spread a little bit of awareness for an event we're having this Saturday, which celebrates some of the local artists and celebrities is supporting three local nonprofits that we have. The Historical Society, the Hanna Group, and also the Arlington Heights Art Guild. We have two themes that the artists are kind of rifting off of. One was provided by Hannah, and I think is something that this board has wrestled with a little bit too, which is this idea of where you draw the line between modernization and historic preservation and kind of retaining your culture and your identity. Another theme is the story of Harmony Park that actually goes back into the 1800s with a couple that built what was the American Tavern. So we have, yeah, something, we put this event together, we're proud of it, and we think that local community will benefit from it. So we hope anyone who's listening or who's here that's interested in local art or our local culture or wants to just get a break from their screen, can stop by this Saturday at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum. It's right across from the library, also right across from where the farmer's market is. It's from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Yeah, this Saturday. That's all I have.

All right, great. Thank you, Steve. Great information. Thank you. Next is Devin Gray.

Good evening, Mayor and Honorable Trustees. Thank you all for the time. Yes, my name is Devin Gray, and I'm an Arlington Heights resident. I'm also a short-term rental host. I understand some of the concerns about noise, parking, neighborhood character that we've heard about short-term rentals, and I think they're real. Nobody wants disruptive properties operating in residential neighborhoods, and I don't either. I live four or five blocks from here in a residential neighborhood. I'm raising my family here. sticking around I will be here for a long time and I think it's because Arlington Heights is a great place to live and I wanted to continue to be that. What I am asking is similar to my neighbor Andy that the village consider a balanced approach rather than a blanket prohibition to short-term rentals. Most short-term rental hosts here in town are not operating party houses and We are homeowners who are welcoming families, people visiting relatives, people coming back to their home and their community. We're welcoming business travelers who otherwise might stay in Schaumburg or Rosemont or Elk Grove, and we're capturing some of that revenue from our neighbors. And we're welcoming just visitors to our community. These guests support local residents, the shops, the businesses. while staying in existing homes, homes that in other scenarios, in fact, 19% of scenarios here locally would likely be facing eviction. So we are actually a solution to the affordable housing crisis. We are not a problem that contributes to it. I believe the Village can address legitimate concerns through targeted regulations and enforcement, noise ordinances, occupancy limits, parking requirements, registration programs. In fact, we have many of these ordinances in place today. Perhaps we need meaningful penalties for bad actors, but we don't need more rules that are not well communicated and are not easily enforced. I still can't find the recently passed ordinance on the Village's website within the ordinance sections under the section that should be listed. A complete ban treats responsible operators the same as irresponsible ones. It removes property rights from owners who are following the rules here, contributing positively to the community and paying taxes. It eliminates six figures in tax revenue for the village and an additional seven figures, a million dollars plus in local spending for our local businesses. So I encourage the board to continue working collaboratively with residents, neighbors, hosts, and develop something reasonable. with regulations that protect neighborhoods while preserving opportunities for small businesses that are operating here in town. As the mayor mentioned about another issue, I believe it's a mistake to wait until the 11th hour to address these things. Arlington Heights has a chance to score a win-win for everybody here in town, and I would encourage us not to fumble the ball and choose to punt while we're in the red zone. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Devin. Next is Cheryl Brown. Cheryl?

Hi everyone, thank you so much for work on this issue. There seems to be a slight pushback regarding the new ordinance beginning July 1st. I understand that the Airbnb owners are losing a very lucrative business, but the Airbnbs are a detriment to our community. I find the benefits of a house being owner occupied are families attending schools, churches, libraries, restaurants, grocery stores, and they spend more money than the weekend partiers. I am continuing to do the research as to the restrictions in other communities. Rather than read them, I printed out a copy of them for you to look at, and I'm sure there's many more than that. Due to the negative effects of having a hotel across the street from me that sleeps 14 people in a quiet residential area, Many communities are banning Airbnbs, verbos, short-term rentals that are less than 30 days complete, banning them completely. Thank you very much for your time.

Thanks, Cheryl.

That is the last of the cards that I have for items not on the agenda. I have a couple more cards here for items that we'll cover in a few minutes. Is there anyone else that wants to speak? I see a hand. Come on up. Give us your name. Anyone else? We'll entertain right after this. Tell us your name.

Hi. My name is Megan.

Hi, Megan.

Hello. Okay. I'm going to kind of beat a dead horse here, but a public comment on the bears situation. Okay. I will rip the band-aid. I'll just rip the band-aid off and say I'm not really like for the bears, but I'm very highly skeptical. And I'll explain mainly for two reasons, and I'll explain kind of both today.

Please pay attention to the timer up there as you go. Yes. Thank you.

So for me, this debate is primarily about character because I like Arlington Heights as it is right now. To me, Arlington Heights is an idyllic suburban town. It's quiet. It's quaint. I like knowing that on a Saturday morning in the summer, I can walk downtown, buy a cherry strudel, and drink a hot coffee in peace. knowing that the loudest sound I'll hear is someone laughing at brunch. And my main concern is I don't know if I'll be able to do that anymore if the bears move in. Before moving back home, I lived in a college town with a Big Ten sports program, and I took note of the dominant culture and the businesses that sprung up there. In that town, the main street was not peaceful and quiet. There were vape shops, dispensaries, and bars. I smelled a lot of stenches, a lot of weed, And when I lived on that main street, I heard a lot of screaming from various drunks. And so I know Arlington Heights has a drinking culture too, but I think that the drinking culture in college towns or towns in general with robust sports programs is distinctly rowdier and more unpleasant than the drinking culture in the sleepy suburb. And I would not like that to overtake Arlington Heights. So if this stadium does go through, I'm hoping that the village board will monitor some of the businesses that come to the village to maintain some of Arlington Heights' quaint suburban charm. My second reason I am skeptical is I'd like a little bit more information about the property taxes. Maybe there's like information about that online, but I think my main question is why this multi-billion dollar company wants like an alternative to property taxes. I would want to ask, what are they doing with all of this money? And I ask that because thus far I've only ever made minimum wage, so the thought of people making billions fighting over millions is unthinkable to me because that business currently has more money than anyone in my entire family line has made ever. and it's stranger to me because my understanding is that the village uses some of these property taxes to fund public services like schools and the library so i would like to ask how they would benefit all their arlington heights um if they do not pay these property taxes and if they do decide on an alternative contribution um i'd like to please ask them to support social services um their services i'd like to see more of like mental health resources for students in high schools and that's it thank you thank you

All right, anyone else that I missed that needs to address the board? Okay, seeing none, we're gonna move on in the agenda. And the next item on the agenda is what we call the consent agenda. and it is a list of A through F on the printed agenda, and it will be voted on with one vote, but before we do that, we have to ask if there are any board members that would like to remove an item to be discussed, and I know Trustee Manganiello would like to be recognized on this, so go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would like to remove item B, the resolution authorizing execution, excuse me, I got them backwards. The adoption of the ordinance of chapter 13 regarding compensation for elected officials.

All right, item B is what you're referring to. That will be removed for this particular consent vote and voted on separately. Are there any other trustees that would like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Is there anyone in the audience that would wish for a trustee to remove an item on the consent agenda? Seeing none, is there anyone on the board that wants to vote no or pass on any of these items? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the remaining A through F, excusing item B?

I move approval of the consent agenda items A and C through F. Second.

Motion made by Trustee LeBed, seconded by Trustee Santamaria. Any further discussion? If not, this is a roll call vote.

Trustee LaBedds? Yes. Trustee Santa Maria? Yes. Trustee Bertucci?

Yes.

Trustee Zick?

Yes.

Trustee Schwingbeck?

Yes.

Trustee Manganiello?

Aye.

Trustee Dunnington? Yes. Trustee Gilbert?

Yes.

President Tenaglia?

Yes. Okay, motion carries. And now we'll take up item B. Trustee Manganiello, you have the floor.

Thank you. We discussed this item a couple of weeks ago in the Committee of the Hall, and this, not to go too far in a sidetrack, this is one of the reasons I really believe that we, should be recording our Committee of the Whole meetings because we cover some very important issues that our residents care a lot about and I believe they should be able to see and hear what we say without having to FOIA a transcript or a tape. So this is one in particular that I think it's important we have a discussion with the care in front of the community about we did have a majority vote at the last committee of the whole meeting to significantly increase board and mayor compensation after the 2029 election and I do not have all the details in front of me. I can get to them if need be, but Manager Ricklaus, I'm hoping you can give us a synopsis.

If it's a will of the board, I have the brief PowerPoint. I can run through it very quickly for the benefit of the public.

I think we'll wait and see where the dialogue goes.

Sure.

So if I still have the floor, I believe that this is not the time to... take our own salaries up. I don't like the look of increasing our salaries when we are increasing levies. I believe at the Committee of the Whole some of my fellow trustees said that they would do this for no pay. I recall that during the election it was kind of a running joke among the eight people that were running for four seats. that the estimated hourly wage was about 40 cents an hour. Yet all of those eight people wanted to serve this village regardless of the compensation. I just don't believe that this is the right time to be raising elected officials' salaries. I may have more to say depending on the discussion. I would like to see there be at least a synopsis of comparison to other villages and so forth that we had at the Committee of the Hall.

But again for the moment suffice to say I will be voting no on this resolution Okay, thank you very good anyone else on the board that would like to speak on this item if it was a swing back trustee Schwingberg Thank You mayor Trustee mangan era, thank you very much for bringing this up. I think we had a very lengthy discussion about this at the Committee of the Whole meeting on the 11th, and we saw all the data that staff gave us. We're certainly not giving ourselves a raise because it's not going into effect until 2029, so I would be happy to put a motion on the floor and approve this. Is that a motion? Yeah, I would move that we approve item B on the consent agenda approval of an ordinance amending chapter two of the village code regarding elected officials' compensation.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, there's a motion made by Trustee Schwingbeck, seconded by Trustee Santamaria. We'll have further discussion. And I do see a hand up in the audience, so we'll let audience participation happen as well. Further discussion here, Trustee Zik.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, we do a lot as board members and as the mayor. You know, you don't know until you get into the seat, you know, just how much effort that there is. And, you know, and Trustee Swingbeck had talked during the last campaign a lot about how many hours we put in. And he's absolutely right. I mean, you could phone it in, absolutely. But this is one board, though, that I'm proud to be serving with. because everybody that sits up here does the work. They read the packets, they do the research, they do everything that they're supposed to do. Mayor, the amount of time that you put in, thank you. Trustee Santa Maria, Trustee Gilbert, you have young children and that's a lot of sacrifice that you put through. I couldn't do that when my kids were younger. That's why I didn't do that until I got to this period. And I know that both of you can continue doing that with whatever you do going forward. And the same with the rest of my fellow trustees here. There is a lot of work that goes into it. I am right now, though, going to be voting no for this also. And I know I'm going to be repeating myself a bit from the committee of the whole meeting, but I just want to say this also, really for a couple of reasons. One of them is that I've been very vocal about wanting to find strategies to keep us to 0% tax levies, where we're not increasing the tax levies. And this just does not feel like it works with that. I know it's not a lot of dollars and people can say it's not a lot of money, but at the same time, it doesn't feel right to be able to do that, to be wanting to try to figure out how we can not have the taxpayers pay as much and then go ahead and do this at this time. And as far as this time goes, we are in a time period right now where prices are going up. You know, we see it at the gas pump, we see it at the grocery stores, we see it at the restaurants. It is bad timing. Now, I do know that this is not going to affect until 29. I understand that completely, but we can only, we can't look at crystal balls. We have to figure out based on what's going on right now. And that's the only thing that we can go with. So at this particular point, it just doesn't feel as it's the right time, especially when we're going to be increasing them fourfold at this particular time. You know, a story I told then, and I'm going to tell it again, and it's just stuck with me. is that somebody came up to me and said, well, Greg, there's really two ways you should look at this. One, you should either compensate yourselves how you would be professionally for the amount of time. You know, that could be $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $80,000, $90,000, $100,000, whatever it is. Or take it in the spirit of being in public service and take no money for it, not something in between. And that really stuck with me. So at this particular point, I will be voting no on this increase. Very well. Anyone else? Trustee Dunnington.

Thank you, Mayor. I continue to be in support of this ordinance, but I do agree with Trustee Manganiello that we should record our Committee of the Whole meetings so that when we have a robust discussion like we already did about this item, that it can be easily viewed by anybody that wants to view it. So I agree with that idea. I think that we should budget for that for next year. Thank you.

Very well. Trustee Santa Maria?

Thank you, Mayor. I supported this amendment and I still continue to do that because I truly believe that public service should be accessible to everyone and not just those who have the financial flexibility to devote significant time to elected office. We've already had this very thoughtful discussion, so I agree. I do think we should look into recording our Committee of the Whole meetings, even if it's at a different level than having it broadcast like this. But my position remains that fair compensation is an equity issue. And if we want our board to continue or to not continue to look like what it does now and to be more representative of our village, then we need to consider compensation as well. Increasing compensation helps reduce barriers to service broadens who can realistically consider running for office and creates opportunities for a governing body that reflects diversity of our community. And so while reasonable people may disagree on the amount or the approach, I believe it is important that we recognize the substantial time responsibility and commitment required to serve our residents effectively.

Thank you, Trustee Santa Maria. Anyone else? Trustee Bertucci. Quickly.

Without repeating everything Trustee Santa Maria said, because I think she said it eloquently and I agree with her. I just want people to know that we, this board, the Village of Arlington Heights is one of the lowest in the Chicago suburban area. truly one of the lowest. And there are a lot, we are a lot of blessed people up here who don't necessarily, you know, count on it or whatever, but there are those who would like to be part of this process who, if they spent this kind of time, would need some compensation. Thus, I'm voting for some future board member. I mean, I may not even... run again next time, and I may not even see this. You know, maybe I'll put, I've given contemplation to putting term limits on myself of two terms. But looking forward, I'm looking at those future board members. And like I said, I'm not going to repeat everything Trustee Santa Maria said, but I think she said it well. Thank you, Mayor.

Very well. There was a hand in the audience. If you want to come on up and If there's anyone else, just raise your hand. I'll call on you.

Yes. Hello. My name is Devin Gray. You may all remember me from the short-term rental conversations of every meeting from this year. Listen, I've had the direct opportunity to connect with almost all of you one-on-one about this issue over the last several weeks. And I'm fully aware of the work that you guys put into helping to run our village you're completely underpaid. 40 cents an hour isn't fair. 14 cents an hour, 14, like none of the numbers are fair. $2,800 a year isn't fair. $11,000 a year isn't fair. You guys would, as you explained, trustees that probably need to increase the pay to a much more significant number to be fair for what you do. I didn't come up here prepared to talk about this today, but I did take a minute to look through everything. We're, As you mentioned, quadrupling costs. We're going from $30,000 a year for this board, $30,900, to $121,000 if I'm doing my math right. That's a jump of about $100,000. I looked through the data, and it talks about 22 neighboring communities. I'm a bit confused as to why we only present the data from 11 of those communities. And when you look at where we lie, that 75th percentile number is an interesting number to try and use to look at this. I have a master's in analytics. I understand why that's a good number to use, but it also is a problematic number when you look at it as it compares to the median and mean. particularly with respect to the mayor's compensation. If we were to jump to $33,000, we would be at the top end of the spectrum for the 11 listed villages. And that doesn't bring into comparison the other dozen that were not included in the data that was at least shown to the village. Aligned with everybody else, this should be discussed in front of everybody. I'm really glad Trustee Manganiello chose to move this to a conversation because I'd like to know everybody's vote on it. And I think on a day like today, The optics are very important. You have a village who's sitting here wondering what this board is doing and how they're going to deliver on the biggest promise in town. I don't think today's a good day to vote for a raise.

Thank you, Doug.

I have all the data, and since we're talking about it in the abstract, very happy to walk through the information for this, since everyone is kind of dancing around the numbers. Why don't you go ahead and do that? Yeah, if you can pull that up for me. So real quick, a couple of things once it comes up here. Okay, you can go to the next slide. One of the things is the last time that this was adjusted was back in 1996. And I think from a staff perspective, we try to look at things and try to keep them current to all of our, looking at salaries, looking at costs, looking at fees and that type of thing. And this is something that is really very much overdue. The individual who did the analysis is our assistant to the village manager. He pointed out that the last time this was done, he hadn't even been born yet. And I'll point out the time before that, the village manager hadn't been born yet. There's special rules for giving raises to elected officials. You are prohibited by law from giving yourselves raises. That's something that is a state law. That's an absolute prohibition. And so we'll talk about this in a second. That's why we're proposing this not going to affect until after the 2029 election. We of course have another election in 27. So this is two elections from now that this would be going into effect. So we don't have to have another cycle of this. Currently the mayor makes $8,500 a year And a trustee makes $2,800 a year. The village has a practice of paying at the 75th percentile of our comparable communities. These are communities that have been identified due to their proximity, their demographics, their budget size, their budget size per capita. A variety of factors have been identified as similar to us by labor arbitrators and other groups. And so that's the group that we compare to. The ranges that we're seeing are at the top end, 49,800 for mayor and 15,000 for trustee. And so again, we try to look at the 75th percentile. I'll cut ahead here. If we go to the 75th percentile, That would put Arlington Heights at around $33,000 for mayor and $11,000 for trustee. This is keeping in line with kind of trying to keep there to be symmetry in terms of the mayor's salary being roughly three times that of a trustee and also getting it roughly in line with the 75th percentile. So from our perspective, we think that that's a reasonable change. We don't think it makes sense to go another 30 years. Obviously, there's a lot of perspectives here. For us, it's really just keeping up with math from a staff perspective. And I don't think that... folks intended in 1996 necessarily for whatever wage increase they give to be in effect for 30 years. But ultimately, that's a decision that the board gets to make. We do the analysis, present the numbers, and the board gets to make the determination as to what they do want to move forward with.

Thank you, Manager Recklaus. I'm glad you had this handy to share with everybody today. Is there anyone else on the board?

Sorry, just want to point something out really quick. Randy, how big is our village budget?

ABOUT $225 MILLION. CORRECT. WHAT WOULD $120,000 PERCENTAGE-WISE OF THAT BE?

IT'S LESS THAN AROUND A YEAR. Right. So anyone who has done budgets, which I think all of us up here have, know that that's almost immaterial and that money can be shifted around. And if we say, for me, when I look at it from an equity perspective and ensuring that we're giving voice to people in our community who want to be able to do this but cannot, that is worth it. So that is how I will leave that.

Thank you, Trustee San Maria. Anyone else on the board? Trustee LaBence.

Thank you. I will be voting in favor of this. I supported it when we discussed it at the Committee of the Whole. I agree with Trustee Santa Maria's comments about the equity issue. I made a lot of comments regarding that at the time. But the one thing I would like to add, I've been sitting here 13 years now, and I can say, one can argue it is never a good time. There's always a reason not to do something like this. And I think that After 30 years, it's actually time to do something. And so I support this.

Very good. Anyone else? All right. Anyone else in the audience? I see one more hand. Come on up. Introduce yourself.

Hi, Viola Casebrook. As much as I agree, OK, you don't earn a lot, but Miss LaBette, if you sound happy, you're there 13 years, feel free to step down. Nobody's forcing you, right? And everyone else, nobody's forcing you. As of shifting, as of shifting money in the village, maybe we can shift from Mr. Reclouse. He's earning $400,000 a year. Well, I think we can skip a little bit of the 5% increase on his salary next year and put a little bit into your packet. Thank you.

Thank you for your input. Anyone else? I see a hand.

Robert Ecke, thank you so much everybody for, Trustee Manginero for bringing this out to the public discussion. I'd actually like to support, I really believe in what Trustee Santamaria was mentioning about equity. I had the thought about 20 seconds before you brought it up as well, that it would allow us to bring a more diverse income range of trustees and representation onto it. And again, those who have younger people, children and things like that, who maybe they need to commit some more time, get some more time with their family because they don't need to be committing. And I do also recognize having just had lunch with breakfast with Trustee Manginero a few weeks ago, how much work and time that is putting in. When we look at these numbers, you know, three years from now when these come into effect, they'll be even lower than what they are in comparison to our relative related COMMUNITIES. AND AGAIN, BECAUSE THERE'S A AND AGAIN, BECAUSE THERE'S A THREE-YEAR GAP INTO IT, IT THREE-YEAR GAP INTO IT, IT GIVES US SOME TIME TO KNOW IT'S GIVES US SOME TIME TO KNOW IT'S COMING AND TO FIND SOME CREATIVE COMING AND TO FIND SOME CREATIVE WAYS THAT WE COULD GENERATE WAYS THAT WE COULD GENERATE $120,000 EXTRA IN TAX INCOME $120,000 EXTRA IN TAX INCOME WITHOUT INCREASING THE BURDEN ON WITHOUT INCREASING THE BURDEN ON OUR PEOPLE, WHETHER IT IS HELPING OUR PEOPLE, WHETHER IT IS HELPING TO BRING IN MORE RESIDENTS, WHETHER TO BRING IN MORE RESIDENTS, WHETHER HELPING TO GET MORE CREAT

Good evening again. Andy Sklarenko, resident Arlington Heights, short-term rental business owner as well. I think that the board does a lot of work. I was very impressed with getting responses from every single one of you in one way or another. Some of you I've had the chance to connect with. And I know it's taking time out of your personal personal times. It's not always on business. And so I think that it's well worth considering higher compensation for the work that you do for our village. I think that there's very many ways that you can. increase revenue for the village without adding a burden to the village people, even in this time. I think with the opportunity to have a pilot program or short-term rental, you can even generate enough to cover the increase that's proposed for this board and mayor. So I think that there's a lot of opportunities where you guys can justify this increase by using opportunities in front of you without having any question and showing your value and highlighting the work that you do. Thank you. Thank you, Andy.

Norbert? Norbert?

Hi, my name is Norbert Piotrowski. What was, if you adjust for inflation in 1996, how does that come today?

I don't have the number. I mean, one number I do have, I was curious and I looked, gas prices in 1996 nationally were averaging about $1.25 a gallon.

Yeah. You know, in 30 years, there's a long time to go without. I mean, you guys are doing it to stipend. If you're doing that for money, you're in the wrong job. You do it because, you know, for the village and all that. I'm an election judge and I work in Cook County for 15 years. And what do we make about 18, 20 bucks an hour? But... I don't do it for the money. I don't need the money. It's just the idea you're serving the community in the elections. So you guys are kind of doing something like that. And it's just fair to adjust more or less what the surrounding villages are making. And you're not getting rich on the money. So I would say for an increase, I would go for an increase.

Thank you, Norbert. Anyone else? I see no additional hands. Anyone? I do see one snuck in there. Come on up. Say hello. Give us your name.

Hi, my name is Mary DeCristofano. I'm a resident of Arlington Heights. I will admit this is my first meeting. I'm shocked to see these numbers. So hearing a Forex increase sounded large and then to see these numbers is almost embarrassing. So I would vote to increase the salaries, but then could we also just build in an annual increase indexed for inflation or something so that 25 years from now we're not having this discussion again? and that it can just keep pace at least with something?

Well, the good news is we have some wonderful employees that will keep us on track. I think that that's kind of what's happening here over the past month or so when this came up. But you're not wrong. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. All right, back to the board here. Anyone else? If not, we have a motion on the floor from Trustee Schwingbeck, seconded by Trustee Santamaria, if I have that right. No further discussion. I think this is a roll call and vote, Maggie.

Trustee Schwengbeck?

Yes.

Trustee Santa Maria? Yes. Trustee Dunnington? Yes. Trustee Gilbert? Yes. Trustee Manganiello? Aye. Trustee LeBeds? Yes. Trustee Zik?

No.

Trustee Bertucci?

Yes.

President Tenaglia?

Yes. Okay, motion carries. If I have math right, seven to two. Thank you, everyone, for the excellent discussion. That wraps up the consent agenda item, and now we'll go on to new business for which we have four items. I do have a couple blue cards on a couple of these items. I'll call on you when we hit them. The first one on item A is 116 through 120 West Eastman Street, and I'll call on Village Manager Reklaus for an update on that.

You know, very quickly, this was a project that was approved some time ago. Approvals do have a shelf life. Last, I believe it was December, the board did extend the approval. The developer at that time was not ready to move forward. One of the conditions of that approval was that they report back to the board on the status of their project mid-year of this year. So here we are, and I don't know if Ms. Rodman has anything else she'd like to add before we turn things over to the applicant.

Nothing at this time.

They're welcome to come up and provide their update Thank You mayor Thank You trustees My name is rich Walper I am not a resident of the area so I'm from out west I've been a developer multifamily hotels hospitality for going on 30 plus years. I was coming in on the 15th, but it's my 60th birthday. So if you guys, if you were wondering why I canceled that, we have a birthday party. This project has had, I know, a lot of start and stops. One of the, when I took it over or when I joined, the project, interest rates were still a bit stagnant. We waited four to five months and we proceeded roughly 60 days ago towards construction and towards permitting and plans and all that is needed to get this ball rolling. Just a quick rundown. Demolition, of course, is first. I have not asked the building department or engineering or the council what a couple of the procedures are. Do you allow a individual demolition permit and then can we go to an engineering permit for horizontal construction, and then to a vertical permit. We're going down the path with all three right now. We're getting bids for the demolition, and there's a bunch of questions from our engineers, which over the next two weeks, we'll be asking as far as ending utilities. I know there was a huge concern, about traffic and safety when that demo is going on. So we've reached out to a couple of traffic safety companies for a comprehensive plan to be approved by staff so that we keep everything clean. There's no dust. I mean, there's minimal dust. And we have safety every day, all day. cleaning up the project every night, making sure that everything's safe and we don't have vandalism and so forth. I don't think that anybody wants those vacant buildings there much longer. So that was the first step to it. I don't know if you guys can talk to it, but I believe that we can get a demolition permit. We were just wondering... can we also receive a permit for the horizontal infrastructure while the plans are being finished?

Could you repeat your name for us?

Sorry. It's Richard Wolper.

Okay, Richard. Have you had this dialogue with the building department and the engineering department?

I've had it early on, yes.

Not able to get an answer?

Well, the answer was yes, but...

I just wanted to clarify it one more time.

Okay.

Manager Ratcliffe, anything?

You know, again, I mean, I think on technical matters, I would suggest Mr. Walper engage, continue his engagement with staff. I know he's been in contact with Ms. Rodman, and I'm not sure if he's had any further interaction with Mr. Weber, Director of Building and Life Safety. But I don't know if Ms. Rodman can speak to that. But certainly we want to keep moving the project forward and want to make sure that he can hit his marks appropriately for the different phases of the development. I don't know if Ms. Rodman has any further comments or thoughts.

There are a few items that the developer still needs to work through with staff that were part of the approving ordinance. Those of you that were on the board at the time may recall that. Minor items related to the design, the fire department connection, things like that. We have been in contact with them. They are aware of those items, so they'll be working with the planning department to finalize those few outstanding items as they prepare their building permits. And then we're certainly happy to work with them and Director Weber to facilitate them getting a permit so that they can remain in compliance with their development approvals.

Is there a timing issue right now that you may or may not fall short on that you're concerned with?

We're planning on attempting to pull our first permit in August to do demolition.

Does that meet with the requirements of what was approved with this extension?

So the requirement is that they pull a permit and begin construction by December, I believe it was December 18th of 2026. So that technically would be under the discretion of the Director of Building and Life Safety, but I believe he likely would consider demolition the beginning of construction.

Sure. Okay. Are you concerned with that aspect of it that you need some answers on?

No, I just wanted to clarify and I wanted to give you guys, you know, the right direction that we're going.

Okay. Well, we want you to succeed. We want you to move forward. I think everyone on this board would agree. It sounds like a great project. It looks like a great project. Um, my recommendation, continue to work with staff. And at this point, it sounds like there might be a couple of details through the planning department or the engineering department need to get resolved. But it's mainly in the hands of the building department for building permits and so on. They can't issue a building permit without having all the details solved from the other departments. It's kind of all together. But it sounds to me like you're on the right track. So I think you're in good shape. You got a little bit of time left here on your approval that you've been granted.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I didn't mean to kind of get off track there. No, you're fine. You're fine. One thing you guys could see, which was kind of cool with the hockey team here was that I built in park city right now. I'm still building it. Um, we built the 300 room hotel in park city that has a, NHL-sized hockey rink attached to it. So it's the only thing, only four-and-a-half-star hotel in the United States with a hockey rink attached to it. So I thought I would add that because of the hockey.

Well, we'll have one in downtown Arlington tonight, son. Well, there we go. All right. Thank you for being here tonight.

And thank you for working with me on my timing.

I appreciate it. All right, is there any, it's just an update for that item?

It was an update that the board requested as kind of mid-year part of their extension and, you know, gave him the opportunity to provide it. That was it. There's no action requested. All right.

Well, if there is further information down the road, Richard, if there's something else that surfaces, please make sure we know about it. Move on to item B, an ordinance granting a special use permit and variation for a restaurant, Hughes Chophouse. Fair. Mayor, can I just make a comment?

Absolutely, yeah.

Thank you.

I guess I'm a little disappointed in this, and maybe you can address a few things. When was this project, Randy, originally approved? Was it 24?

I believe it was, I think it was a year extension, so it would have been December of 24 when it was originally approved. Does that sound right?

It was actually approved in 2023, December of 2023 under village code. They automatically have two years, um, uh, in order to begin construction. They did not do that by the, or did not anticipate they would do that by the December 2025 deadline. And that is why on December 1st, we brought forward the extension request for one year.

Yeah. And I guess where I'm disappointed is. When we granted this extension back in December of 25, we asked for an update in six months. I really thought you were gonna be hitting the ground running. And hearing about this now, I'm not getting this warm, fuzzy feeling that this thing's gonna be done on time. I mean, we've been talking about this now for a couple of years and I think the thing that frustrates me about projects like this and empty land is it's not doing us any good sitting there as vacant property. There's nothing happening there. It's not bringing us an enormous tax base. There's no retail space. And this was such an interesting project that got the whole neighborhood involved. And I really thought coming back six months later that we would be really, really close to getting this project going. And I'm just sitting here listening to you where there still seems to be So much work to do yet. I mean, that's the impression I'm getting. I'm not getting an impression that you're going to be. You said August, but what concerns me is people come in. They buy property in our town like you did. You obviously paid money for that property. And I keep hearing at times financing to do projects, interest rates going up. I mean, we've had other projects in town. We approve it. Buildings come down. They're up and they're already renting spaces. And this thing just doesn't seem to be going as fast as I'd like it.

Understood. I will supply a more detailed schedule within two weeks for the staff.

Okay.

And for the council, like I said, I really understand.

Yeah. I thought there was going to be a, like not only an update, but this great revelation that this project was going to be going and you talking tonight, I still am kind of unsure on it.

It's a lot further than maybe I I've put, you know, in my, in my talking points, I'm used to, um, a different, you know, council than this. So I've been to about 250 of these meetings and, um, you know, uh, you guys, you know, you have your act together a little better than Wasatch County.

Yeah. I really want to see you moving forward. Understood. And,

I will supply that schedule for staff and council.

Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Yes, sir. Anything else? Trustee Bertucci, you had a comment?

Just so I'm not leaving Trustee Schwingbeck on the island by himself, I kind of felt the same way, and... Almost to the point, too, where I want to also look at staff and say, I mean, there seems to be a lot of confusion and disconnect here. I mean, you know, he really sounds like some basic things that should be, you know, happening. He doesn't know where to turn, and maybe... that is an issue on their side, but also on our side, I don't know that we've done everything to move this along and given them opportunities to make the connection. So I just hope staff is doing every possible, giving them every possible opportunity to get this moved along and not just waiting for them to approach us.

If I could just, If I could just respond to that, staff has been reaching out to the developer every month for the past eight or nine months on this project. So it has been on our radar. We have been routinely reaching out to them, sometimes getting responses, sometimes not. But we have been working to help them move the project forward when they're ready to do so. And when the board requested that they return in June, staff reached out to them to remind them that they needed to be here in June. Okay. So we had the prompt in following up with them.

Okay. And I appreciate that. But I sense a little attitude there. And I'm just going to say that if that was the case, why didn't we see something in our packet that said exactly where staff was at?

There was an update in the Friday digest this week.

Okay. Not with that kind of information. And I just don't appreciate that kind of attitude coming from staff to this board. Okay.

Mr. Petrucci, I'll just say one thing. I would put it on me, not staff. We've been working outside, working on this project for going on nine months now, and there's a lot of stuff that happens behind the scene, and if the communication hasn't been there, it's on us, not staff.

All right. Well, I appreciate you saying that.

Thank you, Richard. All right. I think... You have a comment on this project?

Come on up. Thank you for the opportunity. Dave Weiner, I'm at 201 North Vale. This property is approximately the kitty corner from where I live. Last summer, I was up in front of the board a couple of times regarding issues with homeless. uh... this property has had some issues uh... with people living around this property i noticed of several violation notices on the front doors of this property old notices that were ignored i'm concerned about this developer handling this project so that the neighbors have some peace and some stability as this project moves forward. So I just wanted to raise this issue. We lived through, I think it's 200 Parkview, with a number of issues that impacted our building. And I'm hopeful that this development, which I'm with the board, that I would like to see this move forward. but hopefully it's done in a manner in which it doesn't disrupt the entire neighborhood. Thank you. Very well. Thank you.

Another hand.

Quick comment, Devon Gray, Arlington Heights, love the project, think it's a great idea for the village, love to see it move forward, love to see all the projects that we have in town move forward. Only one recommendation after looking at where it is would be to possibly consider the introduction of a stop sign on the north southbound part of Vail as it intersects with Eastman there as we add construction traffic to this and eventually a homeowner and property traffic to that area. That's an intersection that is already filled with pedestrians on Saturdays for the farmer's market and is a bit of a problem already with cars not knowing who the right-of-way is seated to. So I don't know if this is the appropriate place to raise it, but in conjunction with this project, which I think is a great idea, a great project for the village, perhaps consider additional stop sign at that intersection.

I think it's fine that you brought it up. Thank you.

Mayor.

Trustee Dunnington.

Thank you. I was wondering if staff could just explain what would happen in December if this project wasn't on track, just so that everybody's on the same page as to what would occur at that point.

You know, as we've seen with other projects, they would have to request another extension, which could be granted or not granted. And the board could also, if it so wished, place conditions on the granting of the extension, kind of like they did last year, saying that there had to be a check-in. There could be additional conditions placed on it if it were not, if the progress wasn't meeting the board's standards.

Anything else? I see hands. Trustee LaVance.

Thank you. I want to thank Mr. Gray for bringing up the stop sign issue over there. Since I live right by there, I'm very familiar with that intersection, and I think it wouldn't be bad to take a look at whether a stop sign is warranted. Certainly on Saturdays when the farmer's market is there, it's crazy. But there are other times that it's really quite busy and people don't know what to do. They just kind of blow through the area on Vail and it's a concern. So thank you, I would appreciate looking into that.

Trustee Zik. Thank you, Mayor. I have to ask the question Mr. Weiner brought up about some notices that had gone up on the building. Are there issues that are sitting out there that are unresolved?

I'm not aware of any that are unresolved. I believe Mr. Weiner is right. There have been issues in the past. We have issued citations against the property owner to get those issues addressed. To my knowledge, all of those issues have been adjudicated. If there are new issues, we always encourage residents to report problems as they see them, and we certainly can have our inspectors do another swing by there to ensure that they're up to date. I agree, my recollection is similar to Mr. Weiner's, that it was last summer there were a handful of issues, and to my knowledge, they have been addressed.

Okay, thank you.

All right. Are we wrapped on this? I jumped ahead a little too quick, apparently, so we'll go ahead on to the next item. And that is item B, an ordinance granting a special use permit and variation for a restaurant, Hughes Chop House, 9 Northvale Avenue. And we'll hand it back off to staff to open up this dialogue.

Thank you. The petitioner is here this evening and does have a brief presentation they would like to provide before staff provides our presentation.

Before you begin, did I ignore a hand in the back on the last item, or is this for this item? Come on up.

Hi, I'm just sorry, I just have to say something about the interaction I noticed between Trustee Bustucci and staff. I just wanted to say something about that rubbed me the wrong way and I don't know what the interpersonal dynamics are between the two of you, I don't know, and that's none of my business. But what I will say is that I know in politics, in government, there are times where women are assertive and they get called bitchy. Women are confident and they get called bossy. And I just want to say that I hope people on the village board are treating people equally and with respect regardless of identity. Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, come on back up.

Good evening. I'm Matt Piotta. I'm one of the operating partners of Hughes Chophouse. I'll apologize first. I'm a chef by trade, so a very terrible public speaker. But I guess this story started about almost 16, 18 months ago with my partner and I. We kind of – I own a local business and operate Passero at 3 South Evergreen Avenue as well. And my partner and I had – originally really wanted to, he had invested in a building at Nine North Vale and was looking for an operator for a restaurant and my history background was before this restaurant was 10 years operating a steakhouse for a major steakhouse in the Chicagoland area. So it was something that was always on our mind and this village has always been so great with the community, for my current restaurant, that it was just something that I wanted to put forward in this village, too, as well. So we came up with the concept of Hugh's Chop House. Throughout this time, we've kind of had different concept developments in how we are going to portray this different restaurant. And we took into consideration all the different aspects of demographics. just the business in downtown Arlington Heights, too, as well, and what the customers were really looking for and what the village was really looking for to work for this type of concept. So we have kind of developed it into a chop house, Chicago-style, but also an American bistro to make it more approachable for everybody, too, as well, that's coming in here. Still sticking to the... The quality aspects that I have in terms of how I operate my business as a chef is paying attention to high quality food at a reasonable price for everybody and something that I think the village of Arlington Heights, the one thing I really love about it is there's just so many different opportunities for a restaurant, whether it's date night, whether it's families, whether it's a big celebration, a small celebration, So it's just a great place to have this type of business in here and I'm looking forward to opening this up and I think it's taken a little bit more time because we originally started with just the first floor, which is about 4,000 square feet, 3,800 square feet. And as we kind of kicked the can down the road and more ideas, we said, hey, let's develop the whole building, and that's where the special use permit came into play recently. so we plan on developing a full-service restaurant downstairs with a 16 seat bar another 76 seats I believe give or take my math excuse me downstairs full-service restaurant upstairs will be more of a lounge aspect but still you know having tables but also to you know one of the biggest things that I see in my current business is we have a private event space and we are consistently running out of room or don't have enough space in there because it only holds like 50 people. So upstairs we'll be able to hold about 90 as a private event. And then we'll also have a small bar and a little wine tasting room upstairs too as well. A small little stage for, you know, little small entertainment too. We have that on the weekends as well, so.

Very good. Okay, so you're here for a special use because of the fact that the second story kicked you over a square footage. Correct. Maximum. Yeah. What is it, 5,000 square feet?

I think maximum, well, now with the second floor, we're at about 7,100 square feet.

Okay. Staff want to do a presentation, please? Yes. Ms. Rodman? You can have a seat real quick. Thanks.

So as the petitioner mentioned we are here this evening to consider the special use permit and a variance for nine Northvale As he alluded to the village code does allow for a special use waiver for restaurants that are less than 4,000 square feet But because this total restaurant with both the first and second floor is 6,300 square feet That is why they're coming before us this evening with a special use permit So just to provide a point of reference, the restaurant is located at nine North fail. It is on the East side of fail, just North of Campbell. The lot size is about 5,400 square feet. It is zoned to be five in our downtown district. And the comp plan does designate the property for mixed use. Um, as we mentioned, they're requesting that special use permit for a restaurant and also a variation from our requirement to provide a traffic and parking study. So as the petitioner mentioned, they're proposing to operate a steakhouse slash American-style bistro on both floors of the structure. The proposed hours of operation are 4.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. during the week and 4.30 p.m. to midnight on the weekends. They are hoping within six months to a year to be able to expand that. the service that they offer and add brunch on the weekends as well as lunch service during the week. Um, so we are hoping that they're successful and able to do that. They anticipate that they will employ between 30 and 40 part time workers who will work alternate days at the restaurant with only about eight to 10 employees on any given shift at one time. As he alluded to, the evolution of this project has been a little bit unusual. This is a timeline just to help the board and the audience follow the progress of the project. So they initially submitted for a building permit for their interior work in March of last year. They did also have proposed exterior work, so that required a design commission approval, which they obtained in April. And then they obtained their zoning approval from Planning and Community Development for that first floor use of 3,200 square feet in August of 2025. And then subsequently got their building permit and were able to begin work last fall. They did rethink their concept, as he mentioned, and decided they wanted to expand the operations, which did require not only a change in the zoning approval, but an amendment to their building permits as well as their design commission approval. So they submitted their application in March of this year for the plan commission for that special use permit that we're considering this evening, and they submitted modified building plans to reflect the additional work on the second floor as well in April. They did receive their building permit to begin work on the first floor. We did want to work with them so they could make progress on the project and not be entirely on hold. So they did split the permit out so that they could do the work on the first floor now while awaiting the approval for the second floor. So they obtained their amended design commission approval in April and received the exterior permit work so they could begin that facade work in April. And then of course that brings us to the point this evening because We are looking to move this project forward quickly We are asking the board to both consider this project this evening as well as actually approve the ordinance that would grant them their final zoning approval and In terms of parking, they do require 16 parking stalls. The parking, as you see on the screen, is based on the public seating area because there is no on-site parking. They would be required to purchase parking permits for the Vail Avenue parking garage, which would be finalized at a later point in time. This is just a picture of what was the existing facade. They, as I have mentioned, already started the facade work, but this is what that building looked like under the prior tenant, and this is what was approved by the design commission as the ultimate new facade. So quite a significant change. The Design Commission, as I mentioned, did consider the project. There were a number of recommendations that they had. I will not read this very long slide to you, but they did have some suggested tweaks to the design just to provide some enhanced aesthetics, and they had some comments on the proposed lighting as well. The Planning Commission, when they considered this last month, did recommend approval of the project. They had some conditions as well. As I mentioned, one of the Planning Commission conditions is that they work with staff to purchase the appropriate number of parking permits for their employees. They have not included a formal signage package with their approval, so that will need to be submitted separately under a signage permit. At this point in time, they are not anticipating offering outdoor dining for this alfresco season, but there is the condition in there that before they're able to offer outdoor dining, they need to enter into the appropriate license agreement with the village. They do intend to serve alcohol, so obviously need to also obtain the appropriate liquor license, and then of course that last condition is our standard condition. This is the motion that's before the board this evening. I would like to make one note and I do apologize in advance for the oversight. The ordinance that is in your packet includes the plan commission recommendations, but it does not include reference to the design commission recommendations. So, staff would recommend that we adjust this language of the motion to say that it's a motion to approve an ordinance granting a special use permit and variation for a restaurant amended to include the design commission recommendations if the village board is amenable to that change.

And the plan commission?

Correct. The plan commission recommendations are already reflected in the ordinance. It's just the design commission ones that are not.

Okay. All right, very well. Let's hand it off to the boards. Are there any questions or comments from anyone on the board? I see Trustee Manganiello has a question.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, Mr. Payette, I'd like to thank you for bringing this project forward and for your brief explanation that did clear up a couple of things for me, especially about the detail of the upstairs. I'm looking forward to seeing this space getting used again, and Ms. Rodman, the discussion about trying to expedite the project, and in that vein, I'm prepared to make a motion to approve the final documents granting zoning relief for consideration at this board meeting for PC 26, special use permit for a restaurant in excess of 4,000 feet and a variation to waive the requirement for traffic and parking study subject to the recommended conditions, all as set forth in tonight's board meeting, amended to include the recommendations of the design committee. Second.

Motion made by Trustee Manganiello, seconded by Trustee Santamaria. Further commentary, and before we go into further, can the petitioner come up really quick? You read the conditions from the plan commission? You have that packet? You agree with all of those? Yes. Very good. That's it. Thank you.

Trustee Zick, you had a hand up. Thank you, Mayor. I think this sounds awesome. I'm looking forward to this getting going, and that upstairs room that you're trying to put in, I think the whole thing just sounds really cool. I just got a question. This is for us internally. Parking comes up a lot in all these different things, and reading through the Plan Commission and Design Commission, I know the question came up, but I don't know if it actually ever got answered. If I missed it, I apologize. First of all, and this is part of the question, what was, I know it was on the bottom floor, what was on the top floor and the second floor before they started doing this?

Vantage Point occupied both floors, the office.

They did have both floors, okay. So they probably needed a certain amount of parking, even though it wasn't probably fluctuating as much when they were fully staffed, I'm guessing, okay. So, There are a lot of businesses down there I know, and I think the next thing we're going to talk about, it's going to probably come up in there too, talk about how there's not enough parking downtown right now. You hear people talk about that. I know we've got the garages and we've got all those type of things going on. When should we as a board be concerned about the parking? Because we always waive these things and allow them to go by. When as a board should we stop and say, well, wait a second, there isn't going to be enough parking here because if this goes away, I hope it goes for you, there's going to be an influx of people more so than what was there before. So when do we actually stop and say, hey, no, we can't do this. We need more parking.

So I think that's an excellent question and one that staff grapples with as well. As it relates to Hugh's proposal, they are requesting waiving the traffic and parking study, but they will be required to provide the parking, those 16 parking permits is what the code requires. They're not required to provide onsite parking because they're in the downtown B5 district and most buildings are not able to provide parking onsite. So the code allows for the purchase of permits. So they will be complying fully with the code if that is how the ordinance is approved. But in terms of the larger issue of adequate parking in the downtown, I think that is often the perception is that there is not adequate parking. And what is considered adequate varies from person to person, how far they're willing to walk. The sense that we have is that the Vale parking garage is rarely full. It fills up four sounds of summer on those Thursday evenings, but otherwise it is not typically full. But again, some people don't want to park on the upper levels of the parking garage or don't see that as convenient. Regardless one of the things that we will be looking at as part of the downtown update is parking Whether we do a complete parking study as part of the update or not probably won't get into a complete parking update But we will be looking at that we will be talking with the community about parking in the downtown and parking needs and then we fully Anticipate that there will be some action items that will come out of that downtown master plan related to parking So that is something that we anticipate looking at here in the very new future with that update

If I could add to Trustee Zick, everything that Director Rodman said is spot on, but we did do a full parking study, I want to say in 2017-2018, and one of the things that we note is there are parking lots, public parking lots, in downtown Ireland Heights that are underutilized. Parking lot S, if you're near the corner of you know, Vale and Wing, for example. Parking lot S, just on the other side of Jewel, it's probably not that far different of a walk than it is going to the Vale Garage. The other thing that we're looking at that staff has been playing with is facilitating valet parking for some of the restaurants, using some of those underutilized parking lots. And so we are looking at some creative items, and we do look at the data. One of the things that's nice about the garage system we have now is we do get parking data when all the sensors are operating properly. And, um, you know, we can see, you know, when they're crowded, when they're not. And, and I think it's, it's something we have to take seriously. Um, but at the same time, you know, we do have capacity. We are able to handle large events such as Harmony Fest, you know, you know, and it's not ideal, but it can, it can, it can be handled. I mean, it's kind of like the old Yogi Berra quote, um, Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. Busy downtowns have parking stretches, but they don't stop being busy downtowns. And it doesn't mean that we don't have to continue to invest and look at these things. But as you mentioned, we are going to be looking a little bit more deeply about this in the next year or two.

All right, thank you. Anyone else?

Trustee Gilbert. Yeah, thank you. Congratulations. I think this is great. Are you a resident of Arlington? I'm not sure. You are? Okay. That's great. I mean, Pissarro is awesome. I think this place is going to be great, too. Thanks for doing what you do. And I think that that's a big part of what makes our town special is we have residents that own businesses. And I used to own and operate a restaurant downtown Arlington, too. So I get it. And in terms of the parking, I feel like this has been something that's been brought up again and again. But I think that to a certain extent, a little bit of forward thinking on our part of people are taking the train downtown. There's a lot more ride share. I'm getting to the point now where I see people that can take their car downtown and send it home without them being in it. You know, the autonomous driving is coming in too. So I have heard time and time again that the parking lots are unutilized as they are, and I don't necessarily know that we need go in a direction of adding more parking. I just don't know that that's the way that it will evolve in terms of the downtown and things of that nature. So by not doing the parking study, I'm on board with that. I think it'll be just fine.

All right. We do have a motion and a second, if I'm not mistaken, right? Any further discussion from anyone here? Do we need a roll call vote for this? Roll call vote for this. Maggie?

I'm sorry. Who was? I did. Oh. Oh, I did write that down. Sorry. Trustee Manganiello? Aye. Trustee Santa Maria? Yes. Trustee Schwingbeck? Yes. Trustee Bertucci?

Yes.

Trustee Zick? Yes. Trustee Dunnington? Yes. Trustee LeBeds? Yes. Trustee Gilbert? Yes. President Tenaglia?

Yes. All right. You're good. Unanimous approval we will move on to item C. Good luck to you I hope you get the rest of that done smoothly and quickly. We're all ready for a good steak Item C is a motion to authorize staff to proceed with phase two engineering for the Vail Promenade project utilizing the grant from Representative Grassi in the amount of $450,000. So we'll hand this back over to Manager Raklos.

Thank you, Mayor. A couple of opening remarks and then I'm going to turn things over to planning staff who are going to do a deeper dive. This is the project that's been talked about for some time. The genesis of this came, it was actually kicked around in various forms even before covet and alfresco it really picked up steam after alfresco as a way to make permanent some of the the concepts and themes of alfresco and uh there's been this has been before the board a number of times most recently was formally discussed in august of 2025 there's been a number of updates that have gone to the board since that time but at that meeting Staff was directed by the board to get further input from the business community on the concepts as they were presented and the public at large. And so we're going to be talking about some of the steps that were taken. Aside from surveying businesses broadly, we spoke at the request of the board to specific business owners that are adjacent. We had a very well-attended meeting open house session that planning and our consulting team did a great job on to get input from the public at large. And the other thing I want to commend staff on is there was a lot of effort to try to get grants. We did get the aforementioned $450,000 grant from Representative Grassi's office. to support this, which we're proposing to move forward with phase two engineering. Phase two engineering is detailed plans. The other thing that we do have is a $3 million ITEP grant from the state of Illinois to cover a large amount of the expense of the project itself. So what are we exactly asking for today? What does this all mean? We're seeing this meeting really is, there's two purposes. One, We want to report out on all the public input that we've received and really three things. Second, we want to hear from the board in light of that input. Are we collectively as a board okay still? Are you all still okay with the design as presented? are there things that you would like to see changed are there things that you would like to see you know explored further beyond what we've done before based on either input of the business community input from the public or your own individual perspectives at the end of the day this project has to reflect the will of the village board we don't want to go forward with this and any further steps if the board doesn't want to The next immediate step is to move forward with that phase two engineering, which is really spending Brett money on the design. And again, we don't want to do that unless the board is comfortable. So we're going to be talking a little bit about, which we haven't talked before, some of the overall costs, because there is going to have to be a local component to this no matter what we do. We still can certainly... Chase Grants for picking up components of that, and we'll be talking about that. And also, like any major construction project, this is going to be a disruption to our downtown, and we have to weigh all of that. So this is, in my mind, kind of an on-ramp, off-ramp for this project. We've been plugging along on this, and we want to see, should we keep going? Should we change lanes a little bit, or should we stop? But with that, I'm going to turn things over to, I believe Director Rodman's going to start us off.

Yes, I just wanted to make a couple quick introductions, and then Assistant Director Lissakatos is going to provide the presentation this evening. I did also want to mention, though, that our consultants from V3, who you may recognize from August are here, Kurt Corrigan and Alora Su, so they're here as well to answer any specific questions you may have that staff's unable to answer.

Thank you, Director Rodman, and thank you, Randy. So I'll start off with a little bit of project background, I think we covered a lot of this territory at our meeting last year. And to reinforce the point that was made that the concept that was brought around and really talked up in 2020 really came into focus about creating that permanence around on to now fresco and the experiences that we're starting to happen with the sounds of summer. and the large crowds and just the more frequent visitation to that area. Some of the statistics or behaviors that we've noticed through some of our police or AI data is up to a half a million people come to our downtown every single year and using the concept of the Vail Promenade to really set that in place and focus on that pedestrianism and the importance of that safety. I outlined some of the progress to date as mentioned in 2020 is when it really came into focus with COVID and developing the concept of alfresco and moved forward in our discussions with IDOT in our first iteration of trying to apply for a grant, they really emphasized getting it to phase one preliminary engineering. It adds points to that score, it puts the project in a place where they understand that we're serious about it and the village in its wisdom put together money to do that phase one engineering We subsequently applied for the ITEP grant and were successful. Part of that resolution to apply for it also recognized the need to put up that 20% match for those funds, which is a key recommendation, a key requirement, I should say, for applying for the grant. Ultimately, we were fortunate enough to be awarded the $3 million and move forward with our phase one work at this point. The project overview, many of these slides will be from our discussion in August, but we also wanted to supplement it with some of the materials that we prepared for that public open house as they provide a little bit more detail and color to what we believe are the highlights of the project. We did not change any of the recommendations from that meeting. We felt we wanted to test the concept that the board received with the public, with the businesses, and not change it. We believe that we would have to have brought that back and gotten your feedback on it. So we wanted to test that same concept across the board. But as I alluded to earlier, that pedestrianism is really the core focus of this project with bump outs at the intersection at Campbell and Vail, extending essentially the functional element of Harmony Park with a curbless street. Those are really two of the major elements of this. There's many streetscape elements and seating that really dovetail well with some of the concepts you've been talking about lately. with the social district we're trying to limit some of the the bike and scooter traffic there's definitely elements here that traffic calmness whether it's the boulevard or the changing of the road widths all of these elements to really reinforce slowing down being in this space and accommodating the people that are coming here on a more frequent basis so this is a concept a little bit of a zoom in on the concept and and some of the things you see here that you saw last time where that Boulevard the the traffic calm pedestrian intersection some of the flexible seating options in Harmony Park Some of the slides that we prepared for a public open house focus on some of the specific elements those gateways and inner traffic on intersections coming into alfresco not only are safer, but also create a physical element that let everyone know they're coming into a new space, a special space. One of the unique elements that we provided, and we heard a little bit about how much green is being developed, how much is being introduced. When you look at it from an aerial, which is not how everyone sees these spaces on a regular basis, so it's a little obtuse when you present these plans, it's actually very similar to what's there now. On the left-hand side of the screen is what's there now. When you look at the canopies of those trees in the proposed, it's very similar in that respect. These are some of the new three-dimensional renderings that we provided to the public. I'll draw your attention to the one on the bottom left that actually shows a really good depiction the seating walls of the planners that really introduces some of that non-traditional seating that isn't just a bench or you know a specific seating element those are also reinforcing that narrowing of that roadway there are functional safety elements to keep the cars from going into that space since it's a curbless street and you can see by by Corning off different sections of the street how it calms that down makes it feel like a completely different area than that that is there now This is really highlights the overhead lighting the light canopy that we're looking to introduce into the space and Not change it completely but enhance what's happening there already. I This is an overview of the construction costs that have been updated. So as you see, what we represent here is the $3 million that we received from IDOT in the ITEP grant, the 1.7, which is the delta of what we have right now in the construction costs, and then the funding that we've spent already on our Phase 1 and what we're requesting tonight, which is the $450,000 to move to Phase 2 final engineering. As Manager Reklas alluded to, our August meeting, there were really three points that we felt were the emphasis of that meeting, which was the funding and the grant considerations and how we would accommodate that, that project scope, and some of the maintenance that would be required. We had the opportunity to speak to the other departments and get some information, which I believe we provided to the board. MAINTENANCE PRIMARILY WAS SOMETHING THAT WE BELIEVE WERE WELL SUITED TO MANAGE WITH OUR CAPABILITIES RIGHT NOW WE ALREADY MANAGE A PERMEABLE PAVER street and do so on a regular basis with snow removal. So we believe that wouldn't be a big lift from where we are now. In terms of the project scope, those are elements that we're open to in terms of changing design. Those are things that we specifically tested with the public and with the businesses. And I think we'll get a chance to speak through those a little bit further. We also looked at some of the elements of Harmony Park. And that was a specific question from the board was, Could elements of that be removed or taken out? And that is an opportunity. In regards to the ITEP grant, some of the park elements aren't actually eligible costs. But when looking at it a little bit in more detail, some of those pieces of the park will need to be maintained in the near future. We estimated around $300,000 of those costs. are probably going to have to be handled at some point regardless. So by introducing the whole project, we'll be able to encompass those funds we believe we'll have to spend at some point in the future here. And then funding and grant considerations, as was alluded to, when we get into the phase two design, we actually can look into some of the value engineering, changing out some of the ideas, addressing some of the concerns that we've heard. Also, we've been continually applying for more grants and continue to refine our strategy of what would be eligible within the project. We have a lot of really fantastic elements, with the pedestrian safety being first and foremost, that's what really qualified us so highly in the ITEP project. And that's a very highly competitive grant solicitation every two years. It's very hard to get those funds. But there's elements of open space that can qualify us. We can look to our representatives at the state level to see if we can supplement there. And we're constantly trying to be creative, even at Invest and Cook. And we're looking at that as essentially a functional element of some construction funds once we get into, or if and when we get into the phase two design. our business outreach following that meeting. We heard what you asked us to do. We reached out to all of the businesses adjacent to it individually. We also reached out to some of the business associations, our Economic Alliance, our Chamber of Commerce, DABA, and we spoke to all of them about the project, presented the concepts, and trying to get their feedback. And generally it was positive from each of those groups. There were some specific elements that we received questions on, whether it was how they would be impacted by some of the construction activities. We did hear that. And when we spoke to the businesses, we knew that was a concern. We brought that up and wanted to talk through it and told them THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT SPECIFICALLY IF WE MOVED INTO THE PHASE TWO DESIGN WE WOULD REALLY NEED TO FOCUS ON UP FRONT TO FIND OUT WHAT FUNCTIONAL CONSTRUCTION ELEMENTS OF THE PROJECT WOULD HAVE TO BE PUT FORWARD FIRST AND HOW WOULD WE WORK THAT TIMELINE. AND ONE OF THE INTERESTING POINTS OF FEEDBACK WE ACTUALLY at the Chamber of the Economic Alliance was from a local construction company who had done a very similar project, a little bit smaller in scope, but very similar in that it was a paved plaza area with businesses on both sides, and they were able to split their schedules and minimize that impact outside of their peak season, so outside of their summer seasons. So we know we can get creative, and I think that's definitely a piece of phase two engineering we can focus on. When we spoke to the individual businesses, there's a list of the ones we spoke to here, and they provided a general acceptance of the project, general positivity of it. I think they were specifically looking to make sure that Any impacts to construction, they would be mitigated for them. That's something at one point we talked through almost consistently with all of them. Whether some of the individual elements, we give them clear sight lines, whether it was trees or furniture, any of those elements, they want to make sure their patrons could take full advantage of the concerts or any other events. But we tried to do a good job of walking them through the design. As I said, not everybody looks at plans, detailed plans all the time, and we think sometimes you have to sit down and kind of walk people through them and what it meant. And the curbless street was one of those elements that I don't think was fully understood at first when we explained it. I think they were all generally supportive. Many of the discussions with our businesses really talked about their needs as a business, whether it was addressing some of the parking for their daytime employees, some more of the retail side, but they even The restaurant owners spoke to that, knew it was a concern. They wanted to make sure that they could just have the same environment. They wanted to possibly have more events during the week. That was really a big emphasis for them is removing barriers for the business to have more activity, have more people downtown. And many of them thought, yes, they think this could accomplish that as long as they weren't impacted or harmed. Our public open house summary, I think we had a pretty successful event. We had over 109 people show up that evening and we were pretty busy from the start to end. I think a few of you joined us that evening. I think we were very happy with the turnout and we kept it open for three weeks through the website. We received 53 submissions, 142 comments that broke down into generally about six comment areas. that you see up here. Generally supportive, we got over 30 just specific general statements of support for the project. There were other statements of support that came through functional elements such as pedestrian safety. That was a real focus for a number of the people who took time to submit comments was, They didn't believe even the existing conditions were pedestrian-friendly, especially when the streets were open, that there were high speeds, that it wasn't safe to cross, that there really wasn't a focus on pedestrians as soon as the cars were allowed to come back. So it really reinforced the purpose and need of the study. Cost and funding was definitely a concern. I think we heard that concern from you, and that's a concern of the staff as well. In earnest, our consultant's been really great at trying to give us ideas of where to apply. They work with many of their clients to try and pursue these funds, and we continue to refine that strategy. Design and maintenance, I think one of the things we heard from folks was when the streets are back open with that curbless concept, I think people are relatively unfamiliar, but I think, again, when the functional elements of that curbless street come in, And you see some of the vertical barriers that aren't necessarily curbs, but they're planters or bollards or other elements. It's easy to see where you're supposed to go some of our other neighboring communities have these and they have them without incident Parking loading the interesting kind of comment We heard from that is currently the parking and loading crates issues with people going around cars and seeing pedestrians so we believe that's something we may have to refine and look out to see if we can designate parking or Manage that I mean many of the pieces of a downtown are managing the issues of a downtown, whether it's parking or pedestrians or business needs, you're never really fixing or solving something at once. It's always evolving and changing based on business needs and what the public is reacting to. So to that end, some of the final design considerations we wanted to talk through today, and by no means are we limited to these, but we felt these were the ones that really came to the top from the comments that we heard from you in August from the businesses and from the public are here. A couple of these points I just want to reinforce with the public comments was the stage orientation. Many people believe the stage should stay where it is. And I think we heard a little bit of that from you as well. So that's one of the pieces we wanted to revisit and confirm that we go in that direction. THE BOULEVARD PLANTINGS. THE BOULEVARD, ONE OF THE IDEAS THE BOULEVARD, ONE OF THE IDEAS ACTUALLY CAME OUT OF THE PUBLIC ACTUALLY CAME OUT OF THE PUBLIC WAS WE COULD JUST USE THE MATERIALS WAS WE COULD JUST USE THE MATERIALS TO DIFFERENTIATE THE BOULEVARD TO DIFFERENTIATE THE BOULEVARD TREATMENT. TREATMENT. YOU CAN PUT IN STREET FURNITURE YOU CAN PUT IN STREET FURNITURE THERE, AGAIN, ACTING AS THAT THERE, AGAIN, ACTING AS THAT TRAFFIC CALMING ELEMENT. TRAFFIC CALMING ELEMENT. WHEN YOU'RE COMING SOUTH TO NORTH, WHEN YOU'RE COMING SOUTH TO NORTH, IF YOU'RE CHANGING THAT VISUAL now your eyes stop on that boulevard, maybe it's street furniture, not necessarily trees, instead of all the way down to Wing Street, you're not as apt to pick up speed, whether it's on your bike or in your car, and try to get to that finish line, if you will. We also heard in several cases that people wanted natural grass in the Harmony Park area. I think there was a debate about what materials you could use there, natural grass or a turf. And a lot of comments really moved to the natural turf, some additional bollards for safety, and then potential uplighting to give us a more permanent solution to lighting the trees and some of the streetscape elements in the park. Finally, our next steps. So we're wrapping up the phase one engineering. Now we're finalizing up the report. The public open house was part of that. So the federal guidelines requires to basically send out, get some public feedback through some notice. We went way above and beyond. One, because we heard from you and really wanted to hear from the public and find out about these issues. So at this point, we're ready to submit and hopefully have that back in the fall with an approval. that'll set us up for the phase two engineering design, which was mentioned earlier with the $450,000. And most importantly, refine some of those concepts that we were talking about, some of those topics. And then, as I said, continue to identify those funds to close that gap, that funding gap for us. Timing of phase two, to keep our federal obligation. So our federal obligation has to be completed by 2029. In order to do so, we really should have phase two engineering started by July. I think we could probably start at the beginning of the year. That would be following our phase one approvals. But really, by July 2027 is the latest we would want to start that. And as the mayor alluded to, we don't want to start the 11th hour. We'd like to always start ahead of time to try and have these things I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE THE PROJECT WE HAVE THE PROJECT Bring the motion up, but I'll go back to any questions and take any comments. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

I just wanted to make one note in case it wasn't entirely clear. So while the motion that is before you this evening, and I realize there's a lot of discussion to have before we get to this motion, the motion is to authorize staff to proceed with Phase II engineering using Representative Grassi's grant. This isn't actually authorizing staff to spend the money yet. we would still need to negotiate the contract with our consultant and bring that contract back to the board for you to formally approve. So I just wanted to make that clear. You're just providing direction for us to negotiate and move forward with that next step, but the contract would ultimately come back to you.

And if I can, while you bring that up, Is there an estimate of what this round of design, how much of this $450,000 grant would be utilized for this portion of the work? Is there an estimate?

We would have to finalize the negotiation, but it is around that number. So it is in that $400,000 range, yes.

Okay.

All right. Anything else from staff on this?

One other just quick comment, you know, as this project has kind of evolved, and I certainly don't want to give the impression that was the intention of this, but lately, given current events, we've been talking a lot at the department head table about the enforcement of bike and e-bike rules in our downtown Alfresco zone. which all we know has been somewhat of a challenge. And enforcement is not as easy as one might imagine. And one thing that can be considered is looking at putting physical things up that deter people from kind of hot-rodding down the streets, but doing it in a way that allows people with mobility challenges still to come in and out and go wherever they want to go, and to do it in a way where when you are in vehicular mode in the downtown, you still have opportunities to have lane usage and so forth. And as we were going through this, it dawned on us, the boulevard concept and this type of concept really could would be a way to deter some of the e-bike type activity in alfresco as well because you're narrowing those areas still plenty wide for people to go and enjoy it but but if you narrow those spaces there's less opportunity for people to kind of go down the street quickly and so forth and so it was just an added thought as we went through that at the end of the day Again, I want to make it clear, the board has to be comfortable with all aspects of this. We do not want to go down this road without the board feeling very comfortable with any element of this. These are all just suggestions and recommendations, but the board gets to make a determination on any of these elements, and that's what we're here to hear. Okay, very good.

Is that it for staff for the moment? Okay. We'll go to the board. We'll start. Who wants to start?

Trustee Zick? It's all yours. Go for it. I guess I will. Thank you for all the work that you've done to this point. Question I have, though. I've got a lot of questions, but I want to start with this whole $450,000 and what we're talking about right now. So we're talking about a total package that could be designed or whatever. But all you're looking at doing right now is starting the design work, taking this grant that Representative Grassi got, and thank you very much for doing that. And starting the design work, it doesn't mean that, and the issues that we talked about, you know, the cost and the stage and the natural grass versus turf and all those type of things, that's going to be what you're going to work on during this phase, correct?

Correct. It's getting all of the documents ready to submit for final construction. So we would have to work out all those details.

So, can I interrupt you for a second? Would you mind, Michael, putting up the slide that has some of those different, I think you just passed it up. Go back again. Again, again, again.

I think go towards the back.

There was a list of questions. Oh. Stage, this one here. That one. Okay.

Okay, so you're going to work on all those issues, come back to us, and then at that point we're going to have more of an actual idea of what the cost would be.

Correct. That is where you really – the devil's in the details. And final engineering work is when you get into those details. And we've even discussed with our consultant here being the first piece of that phase two work is to revisit some of these issues to really get a specific look at what flexibility we have, what options we have, and get around those costs. Okay. Yes.

So – While I know this isn't ideal, you know, the discussion that we had last time was the overall cost of this. You know, sure, we're getting a $3 million grant. We've got a 425 here, but we're at 4 point, was it 4.3 million is that we're estimating? I think it's 4.7 right now. So 4.7. Okay. So that's an additional 1.3 million. million or so let's say above the above the grants that we have that we have to figure out how to that we have to figure out how to spend and is it are we going to get the return you know I know I talk a lot about you know zero percent tax levy and all that but I am willing to spend money I do want to spend money when it's for the right thing it's enhancing our village and it's enhancing the businesses and doing all that I know there's been a lot of discussion of trying to figure out what kind of return are we going to I saw some emails say what kind of return are we going to get from from doing this And I know that's a really hard thing to figure out. I get that. But I think to go forward, though, I want to have a little bit more of an idea of what can we expect? What are the positives that we're going to get out of there? Do we think that we're going to, let's say on an average night we have, I'm just using numbers, I have no idea if these are accurate, but let's say we have 500 people that come down there on an average night. If we do all these, we think it's going to get up to 750 or 1,000 or whatever, which means more people are spending money in our businesses, which also means more tax revenue that we're bringing in. You know, I don't want to do all this. all this, you know, we do all this work to do all these plans, and then you come back and say, oh, no, this is where it's going to be. We don't have enough, and we're going to have to spend all this money, but we really don't know what we're going to get out of this.

I was going to say, I mean, I think, I mean, you hit on it, Trustee Zick. I mean, it is a challenge, and again, you know, we're a mission-driven organization. We're not a for-profit organization, and I think, you know, one could ask the Park District to boy, you're spending a lot of money on rec park, what's the return on that investment? And there isn't a financial one. I mean, I think that there might be more of a financial one here because it involves some element of it's a commercial center and so forth. But I mean, to be totally candid with you, I think this is not something being done to increase our tax revenues or so forth. It's really looking at creating a public space The downtown is kind of the center of Arlington Heights. It's the most Arlington Heights place that exists where you're in the center of town and you identify it the most with our community. And the idea is when people come there, they feel a certain way. And that's part of what we do. That's part of what we manage. It's part of the brand that we have that impacts not just those businesses, but anyone visiting Arlington Heights. That's what they have in their head. So, I mean, we certainly can try to, you know, look at that somewhat. But, I mean, I'm just going to be candid with you. I don't think there's a dollars and cents answer to that question. And if the board at the end of the day... you say, well, that's not good enough for me. That's okay. Ultimately, those are the kind of philosophical questions that the board is supposed to ask itself, and we're just posing the question because we think it's worthy of conversation, but you all have to be comfortable grappling with that notion. Sure.

I understand that. And please, always be candid. Thank you for that. But at the same time, yes, you're absolutely right as a board. We have to sit back in the $1.3 million or whatever it is, additional spending that we're going to do. Do we feel it's right? And I know we're not a for-profit business, and it's hard to figure out those type of numbers. But at the same time, I've got to have something to kind of figure out what makes sense for me. So, all right, that's all I have for now. Thank you.

I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. YOU CALLED ME OFF GUARD. YOU CALLED ME OFF GUARD. I DIDN'T EXPECT TO BE DONE I DIDN'T EXPECT TO BE DONE THAT QUICK. THAT QUICK. SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS SIDE? SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS SIDE?

ANYONE ELSE?

ANYONE ELSE? SURE. SURE. AND IN THE INTEREST OF AND IN THE INTEREST OF CONTINUING TO KEEP MOVING, CONTINUING TO KEEP MOVING, COULD I SEE THE MOTION AGAIN? COULD I SEE THE MOTION AGAIN?

ABSOLUTELY. ABSOLUTELY.

I WOULD LIKE TO PUT IT ON I WOULD LIKE TO PUT IT ON THE TABLE BECAUSE I THINK THAT'S THE TABLE BECAUSE I THINK THAT'S WHERE WE NEED TO GET. WHERE WE NE

All right, we have a motion made by Trustee Manganiello, seconded by Trustee Libeds, and let's go ahead and continue discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have some questions, and I'll start by, we have a comment. Some of the questions I sent in today, and I appreciate you getting to them, because I know I got them in later than I would have liked, were about that REVENUE VERSUS EXPENDITURE QUESTION AND I THINK WE'RE IN A PLACE ABOUT THAT AND KIND OF HAVE TO BE ON THIS BOARD THAT WE WEREN'T TWO OR THREE YEARS AGO AS WE DISCUSSED IN SOME OF THE BUDGET CONVERSATIONS AND SO FORTH WHERE WE ARE STRUGGLING TO AVOID LEVY INCREASES IN A WAY THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE TO TWO THREE FOUR YEARS AGO And so I think it's a very valid question, and I also think the answers I've gotten are understandable. Then it happens, after I sent those questions in, I had a conversation with one of the leads from the DABA group, and it was kind of the same answer. It's really very difficult to quantify, and I can appreciate that. I can also appreciate the value that it can bring to the community. And so it's not in the presentation here, but the thing I've focused on is what you all put on page 534 of the PAC at the pie chart of the funding. And we have that million dollars that we kind of need to figure out how we're going to get. And here it is in a staircase chart. Great.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Yeah, just to clarify. Yeah. IT'S 1.7 IS THE GAP, THE DELTA IN IT 1.7 IS THE GAP, THE DELTA IN IT RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW. THE TOTAL CONSTRUCTION BUDGET, THE TOTAL CONSTRUCTION BUDGET, AS WE ESTIMATE, AT THIS POINT, AS WE ESTIMATE, AT THIS POINT, IS 4.7 MILLION WITH 3 MILLION IS 4.7 MILLION WITH 3 MILLION COMING FROM ITEP. COMING FROM ITEP.

SO THIS IS WHAT I'M LOOKING SO THIS IS WHAT I'M LOOKING AT HERE. AT HERE. TALKS ON TAKING THE GRASSY GRANT TALKS ON TAKING THE GRASSY GRANT OUT OF THAT. OUT OF THAT. AND I DO SEE THAT WE HAVE A AND I DO SEE THAT WE HAVE A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS IN QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS IN CAPITAL FUNDING IN THERE AS WELL.

CAPIT The phase two will come out of the 450 that's there. Nine of the one of those count towards our match. So our match, a minimum match for this is the $600,000 that would have to go into to utilize the $3 million. And then the balance of that could come from wherever, whether it's state money, capital money, what would have to be made up for it on that side.

So one of the comments from the staff report on this that jumped out at me was that deferring the grant could have a negative impact on future grant requests.

Did I understand that correctly? I might actually ask our consultant to come up and speak to that because they have a lot of experience in working with these grants in multiple communities.

Hi, Kurt Corrigan with V3 Companies. So speaking about the grant, and Laura's with me tonight as well. So, yeah, it's always a balance to work with IDOT and grant funding because there's a lot of effort that goes into the grant process, the valuations. You reapply a number of times. And then when you were to receive the money and then all of a sudden we don't move forward with the project, You know, it's a little bit, you know, we just wasted your time. They kind of put you at the bottom of the pile. Now, none of that's on record, right? I mean, I can't say for certain, but we can all understand that, hey, they spent a lot of effort and tried to lobby and improve that funding source. And then we do a lot of lobbying to get the funding as well. And then we don't utilize it. So it's a chicken and egg a little bit. I'm, you know, if it's a There's no real answer. I mean, if we're serious about doing it and we go to IDOT and we really lobby the people there to review the grants and approve them and we want to move it forward, we certainly want to move some portion of it forward. I've had experience where we've given out We've given part of the funding back, but we've only used it maybe for a block or two of a bike path. But we still were able to utilize the money that IDOT appropriated for the project. It wasn't the full scale project, but it was still a portion of it. So you still are in good eyes and good graces with the DOT when it comes to approving and spending the money. So they have the money. They want to spend it. That's the key to the whole thing is there is money out there to be spent. So, very well.

So kind of the follow-on question to that, because some of the public comment that we've gotten, and I think some of the things that boards and businesses have said, is that we should be expanding this east to cover the entire alfresco area at a minimum. Does successful execution of a grant improve our chances of getting funding in the future? Because it's a lot of money to do without that kind of support.

I would say yes. If you're able to utilize the money, you spend it in the timeframe that's given to you, in this case, four years, you can certainly show and make the case that, look, we go for the money, we utilize the money, we spend the money, and we have a great project out there. Now we want to replicate that along the way. So I would say all the different funding sources, it is always good to go after the money and make sure to spend the money, regardless of what funding mechanism it is.

And then last question in that regard is, in your experience, have you seen municipalities be successful in getting serial grants? Have you seen municipalities be successful in executing grants and getting additional grants to follow?

Yeah, so I do a lot of work in the city of Lockport. A lot of their streetscape in their downtown area started the exact same way. Arlington Heights is very much more in a position that you have a great downtown already. So they really had to revitalize. So we were able to use ITEP. STP, we've gotten some DCO money for them along the way, every step building that story of continuing to build and revitalize the downtown, so yes. And as much as we are doing it here, they use every different kind of angle to try to get any sort of money, whether it's for lighting or this or that, kind of mixing and matching and having certain people, you know, especially economic development money for sure. So to your point, yeah. The more you can get, the more you can spend it, and the more you utilize it and build the story, I think you're in a good position moving forward.

Thank you. Anyone else over here? Trustee Gilbert?

Thank you. I will say I'm not 100% comfortable with this. I mean, you asked. So that's my answer. A couple of things. I don't know that it's necessary. I have never heard of anybody coming to me and saying they didn't want to go downtown because it wasn't nice and it needed to be cleaned up. And I really, it's the issue of that 1.7, right? I don't know if it's worth us spending 1.7 million for something that I don't know is very necessary. On top of that, It definitely, in a vacuum, I like the idea of we're going to try to work on improving downtown, but I wonder how that looks to the other businesses in town. You know, a few weeks ago, they came here on bended knee asking for help and the video gaming terminals, and we weren't able to help them. And now we're going to throw another $1.7 million into the downtown. And how does that look to them? What are we doing for those other businesses as well? So like I said, looking at this project alone, yes, I would love to be able to further beautify the downtown. I don't know that it's necessary, though. And I don't know how that is going to, I don't see this as being any help to the businesses outside of downtown. And again, I don't see this as the downtown as some area that we have to all of a sudden raise awareness about or bring people to, because everything that I hear in this room connotates that it's doing great. And there's really not a whole lot we need to do to make it better. and particularly spending 1.7 million of taxpayer dollars to do it so those are just some of my initial thoughts in terms of comfort level about this particular project i'm just not comfortable with it as it sits with the expenditures we have to make for it trustee the bets thank you um

I am in favor of going forward with this. I can appreciate the comments of Trustee Gilbert and my fellow trustees and those concerns. I do think it's important to, things shouldn't be stagnant. I think that there comes a time when it's important to refresh A particular area even it doesn't have to be in disrepair. It doesn't have to be blighted. It doesn't have to be Someplace that people aren't coming to but it becomes wallpaper If it's not changed up every so often I mean you kind of see that in the grocery store when all of a sudden you the aisle that always had the canned tomatoes now has the bread so Things get changed up, and I think that's good for us in terms of vitalization, keeping us vital. I don't want to say revitalization because we're there. I'm not trying to do that. I'm also in favor of this because of the traffic calming Aspects of it to me. That's really important. I gave a rant two weeks ago about how I was concerned about the excess speed of the bikes and Not just and the pedal bikes the e-bikes the e-scooters and also when we don't have alfresco up I can tell you in my household, we call the intersection of Vail and Campbell the intersection of doom because it can be so hard to get through. So I really want to see the traffic calming parts of this going on. Some of the questions that were raised and that were brought up also by the businesses in terms of wanting to have the sight lines closed Are important and I think there was some discussion of the trees Not Being careful that they don't block the businesses like Hey Nani and Armand's and big shots seeing into the park itself. So I Those I want to make sure we we take care of and then the issue of the stage because that was one of the questions and and It almost seems like Well with the with the curvature in the design I don't know if we could keep the stage in the same way, but it almost seems to me that the stage should be in the same location or kind of close to it so it faces more north-south than to the northwest. Sorry, that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. I was trying to bring up in my packet, is there a slide that has this with the stage specifically? Yeah, that one, that one. Because then it seems to cut off the seeding, the people that would be seeded in the grassy area that's curved if it's if it's too angled. So that's my thought on the stage. And I think there were a few other questions, but I think I pretty much covered what I want to cover. So I'm in favor of this, and I look forward to seeing all this come to fruition.

Trustee Bertucci.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, Randy, thank you for, I appreciate the way you're presenting it and that you're open and looking for comment and not just plowing through with this. So with that being said, I do have quite a bit of questions still. One is, first, I agree with Trustee Gilbert. I have some real concerns about spending $1.7 million for just that specific area, because I do know that our other businesses on the north and south often criticize us as a board, so to speak, for how we spend a lot of dollars per square foot for that corner versus other areas. My other question, and to also maybe, is it Mike? I'm sorry. If you could put that slide back of what questions or what thoughts you wanted from us Thank you. So I would believe that the stage orientation, and again, I'm not the expert, would be better off where it's at than changing it. I guess one question I have is when was Harmony Park last redesigned? I'm not sure that I think we should spend so much money on redesigning all of Harmony Park the way we're talking about redesigning it. Does anybody know?

I believe it was about 25 years ago that Harmony Park was installed.

Was created.

The way that you see it now and with all the improvements was about 25 years ago from what I have researched.

okay okay great thanks um the i know nobody knows for sure but what do we expect the timing of when um we would be doing this from you said you're going to be creative and then how long will we will construction last that there will be disruption down there i think kurt could probably give a better estimate of that than i would

Yeah, so right now we're sort of targeting 2027 to be in the phase two engineering design phase to kind of go through some of these details, refine everything and get the construction documents. And then since it's a unique area with you know, closing the streets from May to September and you have a short period of construction after September, so October, November, try to start it up again in March, April, May before we close downtown again. There's pieces and parts of the project that can be done in those periods, but there's this fact of the matter is some of the stuff is going to have to be done during the summer. So I was anticipating sometime in 2028 to start and probably try to limit to 2028, but All reality, it's going to filter into 2029 would be the best case scenario. Because there's a lot of different stages that are going to be in play, you know, between keeping the area closed and keeping the businesses up and running to try to get things built. We have some other intersections that are not just at Vail, but we have a couple of the outlying intersections. We can do those outside of the time periods of Alfresco, but the Alfresco and the Vail Boulevard You know, it's going to be tricky. And having done a few of these streetscapes and downtowns in the Chicagoland area, it's always a concern of how we're going to keep the businesses open during construction and to try to be efficient during construction to actually get it completed. Because the last thing we want to do is expand the time frame more than what's needed.

So are you expected? So just to make sure I'm hearing you properly, are you expecting to a fresco time period or two summers? Possibly.

It could. Fortunately, in this case, we don't have a lot of utility work. In speaking with Public Works, there's going to be some minor utility work, so that really takes off a lot of the time frame. But again, if we're trying to stay outside of the Alfresco area, you're only talking October through April to try to do that. I understand. You know, brick pavers, some of the fine detailed work is going to have to be done in the good weather. So depending on when we start, we might start in the end of 2028 and filter into the 2029. So start and stop before or after alfresco season. to get done during or before the next one would be the goal. But until I start working through the whole construction sequencing, you know, I'm kind of just laying it out there. I would expect 2028 and possibly into 2029.

Okay. And that's what I want. I mean, we want, you know, what the expectation would truly be not to be because...

I'm not up here to tell you that it's going to be done in 2028, and then all of a sudden I'm here in 2029, and then, you know, we're having the same conversation.

Okay. I mean, that was one of the biggest concerns, too. And I know you guys probably heard it, but that I've heard from is this idea of disruption. I mean, they look at two things. terrible possible years of ongoing construction. It's going to turn people off in a way, and nobody's going to want to come down there. And now you're really going to see businesses screaming and maybe even some going out of business. So that's a concern that we're hearing. When did we know our commitment would be as much as $1.7 million for this to happen? I mean, when we applied for the grant, did we kind of have a sense that we would need to be in for $1.7 million?

SO THAT'S YOUR 20 PERCENT MATCH SO OKAY SO IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A WE KNEW GOING INTO THE GRANT THAT IT WAS GOING TO BE 20 ON OUR END YEAH AND I THINK OKAY AS PART OF THE GRANT PROCESS THERE IS A RESOLUTION EXPLAINING THAT SO WE KNEW IT'S GOING TO BE 20 20 GOT IT WE DIDN'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE CONSTRUCTION BUDGET WAS GOING TO BE WE HAD A BALLPARK ESTIMATE THE CONCEPTS THAT WE HAD THAT HAVE BEEN PUT TOGETHER UH I THINK AROUND 2021 2022 WERE VERY WERE VERY GENERAL THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY ARTISTIC RENDERING WITH SOME BASIC QUANTITIES PUT TOGETHER SO THE COST WASN'T AS HIGH. ALSO COSTS HAVE GONE UP EVERY SINGLE YEAR SINCE 2020. SO THOSE TWO THINGS AS WE GOT MORE DETAILED THE COST WENT UP A LITTLE BIT MORE AND ALSO AS TIME WENT ON COSTS HAVE GONE A LITTLE BIT MORE KIND OF BROUGHT US TO A BIGGER DELTA THAN WE ANTICIPATED AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS PROCESS.

Okay. Okay. And again, I appreciate the frankness so that we know. Again, that's, you know, I'm not sure that we should, again, spend that kind of money, but I'm still trying to understand the big picture. One of the other things that I've heard, and I've had these discussions with Manager Reklaus and the sight lines to the stage, particularly from our businesses along that corridor that everybody's mentioning, the Ironmans, Big Shots, Piano Bar, Hainani. And so what I'm hearing from Manager Reklaus, and if I could hear from you as our consultants, is that any trees or whatever's plantings or whatever's put is not going to create a sight line problem if you're sitting outside at one of these restaurants to the stage?

Well, I guess depending on where you're sitting.

Well, if you're, for the most part, because if I am sitting at any of those restaurants and they're on a Thursday night, I can see the stage. Right. So what I'm asking is, will that change?

Well, I think part of the discussion on the plantings, A, we're not 100% sold on the number of trees we're going to put into the corridor. And two is to keep and make sure the canopies are up high enough where the restaurants are, A, and where the placement is in front of the buildings. Because that's over the years, that always comes up. You're trying to plant from a landscape side of things. and then you actually just forget about what's in front of the building. So you're covering up the windows, you're covering up doors and those things. So we want to be cognizant of that in addition to, you know, the sight lines to the stage. So not only is it landscaping, it's going to be some of the hardscape features as well, the planting, some of the benches. We certainly don't want to be sitting alongside of the restaurants and then you have, you know, tables and chairs or benches or whatever that everybody else is going to be sitting at, so you can't see through that either. So you have a bunch of different components playing a part in the sightlining of the stage. And I guess I'll add to the stage itself, This is only a concept when we started this a year and a half to two years ago. One of the ideas that we heard was take a look at the stage orientation. It was just, so we took a look at the park itself and said, okay, if we wanted the stage to be a little bit more northwest versus north-south, this would be a consideration to put the stage. You have a stage area that's functional as it is today. I don't, I mean... It's all right there. I mean, we're not, you know, married to this by any stretch of the imagination. One of the assignments as part of phase one is to kind of look at things and to say, okay, this is how you could orientate that in a little bit northwest direction to bring in the plaza area and the Werner for this curbless street area into play versus just north and south of the park. So, you know, again, the stage orientation. I guess it's a focus, but it's not the focus of the street elements and the traffic calming and the bump outs and those types of elements that we're really trying to work through the IDOT process with.

Well, but it is a focus for those restaurant owners. And they're one of the people that we're supposedly doing this for, or one of the reasons why we're doing this. So I have to ask my question again, because I don't know that I could vote to go forward if we don't know for sure if sight lines are going to change.

If I can jump in. Thanks. Mr. Bertucci.

Sure.

Again, They don't, you don't have to have anything even coming close to blocking it if the board doesn't want it to.

Okay.

I mean, I think if the board, part of your direction, if you do decide to move forward and, you know, all that goes along with it, because again, we're trying to be real candid here, if part of your direction is, we want this designed in a manner that doesn't block views, we will come up with ideas on trying to figure out how not to block views. And then again, that's something that can be evaluated through that process. The thing that I'll point out is, Again, the number of trees that you have between, let's say, big shots and the stage is not really increasing. They're just being moved. And so that's really the difference is they're getting moved a little bit to the middle of the street. And so... How much will that block? I mean, I guess if you had big giant trees it could but if you're having similar Caliper trees is what you have now It shouldn't make too big of a difference as long as they're tall enough that the sight lines as they are today are good enough to go through but Again, you don't have to have the boulevard. You don't have to do any of this. Ultimately, that's what we're here to find out is what.

Yeah, I would. Yeah. So to answer your question, I would say sight lines is an issue more so than the number of trees. At first, I thought, you know, the issue might be the number. And I guess the bottom line is the issue is more sight. I mean, other than spending money for more trees, you know, obviously. So that you could take as my feedback. My other question is the maintenance of the street during snow and ice weather. How much harder will that be? How much more expensive will that be to maintain that area? And Chris, while you're thinking of answers for that, The other part would be if you could compare and contrast just maintenance in general and paver streets versus What do we use now asphalt? I guess is that what we would call it?

so They're more labor-intensive. They're more labor-intensive to install and I think we do utility repairs. It looks like we're in and out of there without any difficulties when you have a brick paver because I can establish that brick much easier. That's why we kind of went with the entire design of the downtown with a concrete barrier and brick. But, you know, it is going to be more labor intensive to do maintenance on it. On the brick and paver? On the brick. So I have to sweep it instead of scraping it. Or if I scrape it, I can't use steel blades. I have to use rubber blades. But the downtown is expensive already. I mean, it is. I have one dedicated unit just for the downtown because there's always activity. There's always cars. I'm always going in and out of places. So for me, I don't see it as different. Is it more expensive than asphalt? Yes. Considerably, I'm not going to hire another person to do it. We'll be able to do it in force drive to ask for more equipment at some point in time possibly.

OK so minimal so the bottom line is it's already somewhat expensive to maintain downtown it's just going to become more expensive, I think that there are OK and then how many parking spots are we losing.

Top of my I should I yeah I was around 11 spaces.

Okay. I mean, this is obviously when there's no alfresco. And then one of the things that I'm hearing from business owners is how drop-off is important. And especially, I can't think of his name, upstairs, the Metropolis Ballroom, And, you know, he talks about, you know, he calls them my brides and the high heels and what kind of accommodations are, how easy will it be for... To be dropped off during snow and ice time for the metropolis ballroom The you know when they have people dropped off Obviously during alfresco that it's they have to walk anyways, but I guess well I guess what that what question I'm hearing is is more during snow and ice time is there going to be drop-off areas and

So I brought this slide up so you could see the white hatched area on the bottom of the slide. We started thinking through some of those solutions. And again, as we get into more of the detailed final engineering, we can look at what flexibilities to increase that, put multiple drop-off areas. But we were thinking through some of those things because we also heard about delivery drivers. There's a lot of Uber Eats and those kind of things accommodate some of those activities so we could pull those folks out of the cartway so we can keep that pedestrian flow, the traffic flow, even when it's open, safer. Because a lot of people are working around those things now. They'll stop on the corners and have to move around those people. The bump outs, keep them away from the corners, the drop off zones, pull them out of there.

While there is a designated drop off zone that is shown and we intend to stripe, at least at this point in time with the project design, drop off should be in essence easier because you don't have the parking and there's more flexibility for cars to pass each other. So we are sensitive to that. We will continue to look at that, but that is already contemplated.

Okay. Thank you. I THINK THAT THE ONLY OTHER although we talked about it, was I just didn't see Carlos and Carlos on that list, and when I talked to Carlos, he had said that nobody reached out to him, but Brandy had since told me that there was a reach out, and that... We did try, we called, we emailed, I think we tried to stop by it a couple times, and he wasn't there, so we He has a coffee farm in Honduras and a restaurant in Guatemala. So he might have been out of town.

We can arrange to go there if you like. Honduras, check it out.

So anyways, don't worry. He's not afraid to give opinion. So at some point in time, we can throw the hook on him. I'm sure of it. THAT'S ALL THE QUESTIONS I HAVE FOR RIGHT NOW, MAYOR.

HAVE FOR RIGHT NOW, MAYOR. THANKS. THANKS. TRUSTEE DUNNINGTON. TRUSTEE DUNNINGTON. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. SO FAR THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF SO FAR THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF TALK ABOUT THE BUSINESSES. TALK ABOUT THE BUSINESSES. AND WHAT I JUST WANT TO SHARE IS AND WHAT I JUST WANT TO SHARE IS THAT I THINK THAT I WAS LOOKING THAT I THINK THAT I WAS LOOKING AT OUR BUSINESS PLAN AND WE'RE AT OUR BUSINESS PLAN AND WE'RE GOING TO BE STAFF IS GOING TO BE GOING TO BE UPDATING THAT. UPDATING THAT. I THINK IT'S WE'LL FINISH IT IN I THINK IT'S WE'LL FINISH IT IN LIKE THE END OF 2027. LIKE THE END OF 2027. AND it seems like that is the plan that is gonna look at recommendations for parking, financial strategies, and redevelopment. And that's where we're really gonna see information about the downtown and kind of return on investment and things. whereas it seems like with this project, this is more about our residents and more about promoting active transportation, increasing biking and walking, and making our city more livable and safer. So they kind of seem like two different things. And so that we should be thinking about how this project really impacts our residents. I think that Trustee Labad's made a good point of keeping things fresh and new. We know a lot of other towns are doing like alfresco kinds of things. And so this is a way to to improve the environment for residents. I also wanted to share this weekend, I just happened to be in Denver, Colorado, and they have a street called 16th Street. It's a mile long pedestrian friendly street, and it's just packed with shopping and restaurants and attractions. And so when you are on like 17th Street, and then you come to 16th Street, you really feel like this big change. They have the curbless streets and then they have this beautiful granite that's gray and red and it looks like a blanket or they say a rattlesnake. It just immediately feels vibrant and welcoming in a place that you want to hang out. And so my hope would be that that's how this would feel to residents as well. I also think that we're hearing from businesses and from residents that they want more events, not just Alfresco. And so this gives us the opportunity to be able to do some different smaller events, maybe like a winter event or a night market or something fun like that. And then I especially like that it is slowing down traffic in our downtown. And I wondered if we had looked into any more information about having raised crosswalks so that would, again, signal to people when they're coming to the downtown, this is a different area. You need to go slow.

Yeah, we did look at it, and Chris had some very specific insights on it.

Yeah, unfortunately, for the intersection of Valen-Campbell. Chris, could you grab that mic closer so we can all hear? Absolutely, I apologize. That's okay. Valen-Campbell is an overflow route for sewer for our stormwater that floods Metropolis. Okay. So every single meeting they had on this, I said no to raise strictly for flooding. I challenged the team, I said, if there's any way you can get around this and still maintain the water flow, I'm great. I flooded Metropolis three times in my career, I'm done with that. We can't add to that problem. So, they just weren't able to create a solution that allowed the overflow that would head south on Vail and drain as it was needed. So, that was a limiting factor there. You could still have raised crosswalks around the perimeter of the downtown, just not at the intersection.

At the staff table, every once in a while, the curmudgeonly public works director wins an argument.

Every once in a while. I would like to see the raised crosswalks in the areas that we could do it. Because I think, again, it's like you're coming into this new space, and it really shows that. So if we can't do it at the one intersection, I think we should look at the other intersection. Finally, I'm hoping that this promotes a lot of biking and walking to town, and so I'm wondering, I didn't really see anything in the plan where there would be more bike parking. Is that included at this point?

We'll definitely be, when we get into the details of this, we'll definitely have to look at that. I think we're already talking about what kind of bike facilities we need to accommodate that, especially if people are walking through Alfresco. And I think it gets part of the detail of street furniture and flexible seating. All the kind of pieces that set a new sort of, as you said, kind of a new vibe for the downtown, a new sort of enhancement to those little pieces.

Okay. And finally, I know that there was talk about maybe not updating everything in Harmony Park. But the way I was thinking about it is that if you've ever painted your room and you have a white ceiling and you paint and you're like, we don't need to paint the white ceiling because it looks fine. But then once you paint your room, then you realize you should have painted your white ceiling because now it looks like it needed to be done. And so I think that's the same kind of analogy for this, that while we're doing this project and why we have the supplies and the time and everything that we should just do it all at the same time and get it done. I did have what my last comment is when we are looking at the pavers and kind of like a lot of the details I think that we should connect with the Disability Commission to make sure that we're choosing materials that are good for just all different kinds of modes of transportation and for Any kind of discipline?

Yeah, I think accessibility is one of our goals here, but I don't know if you have anything specific to add to that.

Well, no, in talking with engineering and public works staff, I know there's some specific details and pavers that they utilize in the downtown area, so we want to keep with that as well. So, yeah, versus a cobblestone type of look, that really wasn't even on the questionnaire. If you thought about it as more your traditional pavers, that would... Be more compliant to that and for that accessibility.

So great I think we should get their impact their input and then I mentioned this in the last meeting But absolutely not the a in the middle of the crosswalk. I know that we can do better than that Thank you Thank You mayor

Well, I agree with a lot of things that my fellow trustees said. Certainly, Trustee LeBeds, you do need to always refresh when you let things fall apart and get old. It's not attractive. I think the plan, in theory, looks phenomenal. I mean, it's beautiful. I agree with... I know when we first started talking about this, it was something that was done in Europe, you know, with the Fuskanger zones. And they are long. You know, people can stroll down these foot zones for a mile or three quarters of a mile. We're talking about a block from the intersection of Vail to the parking garage and And that's where I'm really struggling. Trustee Bertucci mentioned that we sometimes are paying so much attention to these businesses downtown and not elsewhere. This is really only affecting one block in our downtown. To me. It's a tremendous amount of money. I I've voiced this concern before We've created a wonderful alfresco zone and Every single year we find a way to make it nicer and nicer I remember when we first started it, you know in June of 20 people said boy we got these concrete blocks sitting at the end of the block and then you guys started draping them and making them look nicer and and every single year we add to it um I know a lot of times when you remodel your homes, you're spending the money for yourself, not necessarily going to get a return on your investment, but you're doing it for yourself to make living in your house. In this case here, though, I think you had mentioned like the Park District, when they expand and did some of their projects, we heard at one of our joint meetings that they expected maybe I think three or 4,000 people signing up for, uh, the, uh, the rec plex, and they ended up getting 12,000 and, and it is a money-making opportunity. I think when you're looking at 1.7 million here for, for just a block of our property, it's a tremendous amount of money. And, I mentioned it last time. If we're going to do something like this, we should do it to help our businesses. Yes, it looks beautiful. And maybe people are going to come down to our downtown and look at it and say that it looks beautiful. But I just don't see this bringing any more business into our downtown. That's my big concern. Concern with this is it's it's a lot of money. We've talked about doing some other things in our in our village Whether it's downtown or throughout Arlington Heights, it's gonna Bring in some added revenue for our businesses. We brought up You know gaming or we last week we were discussing creating a social district in our downtown that potentially is going to increase sales and help our businesses. And I just, I don't see this necessarily helping just a few little businesses unveil. And I don't really see a reason to be changing Harmony Park either. So I, for the amount of money that it would be costing us, I just, I, I, that's where I'm really struggling I'm kind of in in line with trustee Gilbert where we've created a beautiful downtown it's the envy of a lot of neighboring communities and we continue to to make it more and more beneficial to our businesses and look better and I this would obviously create a wonderful aesthetic situation for one block, but I just don't see the money being spent wisely here. I mean, we've already got what I think was 188,000 sunk in there, which is gone. We're not gonna recoup that if we don't move forward, but to be spending this kind of money in our downtown, I just don't see the benefit.

And to your point, just as far as I think Trustee LaBette's kind of talked about refresh, there are some elements we know we have to maintain here in Harmony Park, pieces that we have to fix. Um, we also, from the businesses taught, they've told us, um, they want more events here. Um, you know, pun intended, we're sort of setting the stage for some of that. I think COVID was a game changer for us, um, for a lot of places. Right. Um, and not to refute any of the points you're, you're saying, I think they're all about. And I think if we move forward with this, if the board chooses to move forward, I think it has to be with the mindset of, um, how does it change what we're able to do here what does it do as far as giving us and the businesses or even some of the other businesses to come in and have a piece of the downtown and a piece of Harmony Park how does it allow us to have that flexibility to do so to sort of share our this space with everyone in that regard we have the concerts but what else can come in here we're also sort of setting the groundwork for how we program new improvements in the downtown whether it's additional bump outs in other sections, those gateway intersections, changing what they look like, and sort of programming how we turn some of that over as we have to. I mean, there's just, I think Chris spends a lot of time programming those maintenance improvements over time, year over year, and we're seeing new demands, whether it's the sidewalks that might need bump outs, and we hope to get into that with our downtown master plan, to find out what are those other needs. Some of our sidewalks are a little bit narrow in different parts of town. This can maybe give us some of those training wheels to how to do it. So just as you're considering it, what other benefits does it give us? Those are some of the things we're thinking through as we're progressing through the phase one design. Right.

Yeah, and the other thing too is, and I understand with the design of this, the objective would be to slow down bikes and things like that with the trees in the middle. I just came from an area where it was fairly similar and you had bikes riding all over. So, I mean, we, we're not stopping the bikes coming through Alfresco right now. And I understand this is going to slow them down a little bit, but I still see if we're not going to stop the bikes right now, they're going to be riding through here too. And that's another concern I have. Now instead of just a through street, now there's no curbs. They don't have to worry about going over curbs. They're going to be weaving through trees. So I don't see it getting the bikes and the skateboards and whatever else is going through there. unless you have a different opinion on how it's going to happen. I don't see it slowing it down at all.

You know, I think what we would say is anytime, you know, it's the idea, the same idea as a road diet, if you will. Anytime you're narrowing the space, folks are going to slow down somewhat. It's just human nature. If you have a big wide open space on the highway, you gun it. If you're driving through a narrow alley, you're going to slow down. Does it slow it down in and of itself to a satisfactory level? That's a subjective question, but that's, you know, like I said, it's one element among many, but it's certainly not the only reason to look at this. That's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

Trustee Santa Maria.

Just a question. Randy, how was Vail the street that was chosen for this to happen?

So where this came from, again, when we put in the string lights, we had to put in those big poles. This was before COVID, those were put up. There was an original plan that had string lights, had some other features throughout the Harmony Park area. And it was the idea of updating Harmony Park, making it more pedestrian friendly. Again, this was before Alfresco. When Alfresco came at that time, and this was a success, those plans were kind of dusted off and revisited. Again, Harmony Park is in many ways kind of the center of community life at Arlington Heights. And so it's the place where we have a lot of people gather, both in commerce and celebration and so forth. And so how do we... make some of the gains of Arlene O'Fresco more permanent. And I think, too, the sense was you do something along this stretch, if you like it, it starts to spider out a little bit into the other areas of downtown and so forth. That was the idea.

Okay. And the grant from Representative Grassi can only be used on bail.

Is that correct, or is it... Do you want to comment on that? I believe it was assigned to this project. And then what happens is when the board decides what those funds should be used for, we then program them with the state. So we go in and provide some more information on what we want to use it for. So they have flexibility, but within this project scope.

Okay. Okay, thank you.

Is that it? All right. I have a couple thoughts that, and you hit on the very first one just a minute ago. My question was, how did this start? And you were just explaining that it was actually before Alfresco was even a thing. Yes. It was before the whole COVID program happened.

Yeah, there were a number of elements that were being played around with. with lighting, with pedestrian-friendly. There was even an element of talking about you could do someday a curbless street. I remember doing a tour, a driving tour. We had a small amount of consulting funding on this. This is back in, I'm going to say, 2018, 2019, where we did a tour of different locations that had done these types of things. And we looked at it, and you know, the issue was, are we going to spend more money to pursue this further? And like I said, it was one of those projects that was being kind of nurtured along a little bit. And, you know, when Alfresco hit, planning was, I think it was before either of these folks were here, was kind of like, oh, well, maybe this is the moment for this. And that's when we started applying for grants, and the grants started hitting, and there was some additional momentum gained. Fair enough.

And Is it safe to say that as we kind of gathered here tonight, this is actually not a business move? It's more of a pedestrian resident maneuver?

Yeah, I mean, I think we always think that anything you're going to do to make this area more enticing, exciting, pedestrian friendly, you know, it's going to help. the business community, for sure. How you balance that with all of these other factors, I think that's subjective. It certainly was, I mean, this is an area for a lot of commerce, a lot of economic activity. It certainly had that in mind, but I don't think anyone, when they first conceived this, thought, if we do this, it's gonna pay for itself in three years or something like that. That wasn't the intent.

It's not that kind of an investment. Right, right. I GUESS THE NEXT QUESTION THEN IS KIND OF HITTING OFF OF TRUSTEE SANTA MARIA'S, WHY NOT SINCE THIS PARK WAS FAIRLY RECENTLY DONE? I REMEMBER LONG ENOUGH AGO There was another park on the other side of the block, maybe Trustee LeBenz remembers, and it was called Cartwheel Park. And that was by Trustee Cacera because she saw some kids doing cartwheels in the park. So she thought, we're going to name this park Cartwheel Park. But it was exactly on the opposite block, end of this block. And then this one happened to get developed. Is this the right place to spend $1.7 million redeveloping something that is already pretty nice? It may need some repairs. Okay, I don't know all the details of what Public Works needs to do here. But my dilemma is that To spend the kind of money we're talking about spending here for design, engineering, and ultimately construction, even though there's a pretty hefty package of grant money that's available, do we need to spend it here? Should we be spending it here? Or should we consider doing something down Campbell? or even further exploring and expanding the whole alfresco zone. And you've heard me talk about the fact that I would love to see the other side of Dunton come alive. It's good to refresh. It's good to... Not sit on your hands. It's always important to keep growing and doing more. But I feel like we're sitting on our hands on the other side of Dutton, from Dutton all the way to Passero on Evergreen. That entire block has very little invested in it publicly. There's a lot of businesses over that have invested quite a bit. This one... feels to me like it's already pretty good. But I do remember when those lights were first put in, overhead lights were first put in, it was very underwhelming. Yes. And for some of us who have been here long enough, we remember thinking it was going to be this wonderful canopy of lights that were going to just make this whole place glow. And then when it showed up and it was just the X over the intersection, like... What happened to our lights? This is not what we thought it was gonna be. So embellishment, yes. Growth, yes. Refresh, sure. But is this the right place to do it? Or could we get more bang for our buck further in and deeper in or expand beyond That's where my challenge in my brain is. Why right here like this right now? And then you know where I'm going next. As the musical guy sitting up here, I cannot get my arms around spending this many millions and still have to bring in a portable stage for one night a week when we could have a real stage there doesn't have to have the sound system doesn't have to have the lights doesn't have to have the engineer but a raised stage with a roof over it that covers it that the community could use seven days a week every week all year long because it's there so for my my money if If we want to do something grand here, I would lose the boulevard down the street, I would have bollards put at the end of it to slow and calm traffic, but I would not spend the money on all these raised planters. I would spend money on, and I know I've heard a couple hundred thousand dollars or more to do a stage, whatever the actual math is there, I feel like that stage needs to be where it is now, directing straight north, not on an angle, facing, you realize that if it's on an angle, it's gonna throw all of its sound directly at the Vail building. We just draw a line on this drawing, and it's gonna go to the front door of Peggy Kinane's, and all the residences above there. whereas if we keep it straight, it'll go directly north and blow the windows out of Courtlands, which is perfect because they like to have loud noise in there anyway. You can't hardly talk in that building when you're in there. I'm questioning some of these details, some of this spending and some of this usefulness. Do I want to see something happen here? Absolutely. Does it need to be this big? Does it need to be this expensive? I love the idea of having curbless, what do we call them? Like a curbless gutter, right? Is that what we call it, Chris? Yeah, a curbless street. Because the gutter's still going to be there, right?

There's no concrete gutter in there. What's the white lining in there then? So the white line is just a, so it's almost like a faux curb. It's just a different. Concrete ribbon, right? It's a concrete ribbon, so it looks like it's a curb, but I don't know if we have a profile.

It's so like when you're not in alfresco mode, there's still a delineation of where people walk versus they drive their cars.

It won't be used as managing flow of water, like a slight difference?

No, it would be tilted very slightly towards the middle of the road, towards that boulevard, and all the drainage would actually be collected. We invert it. The boulevard's permanent. The middle of the boulevard is permeable pavers. All the water actually comes to the middle as opposed to it going to the edges.

I love the idea of having this a promenade where it all kind of flows together. I like that. I'm not sold on the boulevard in the middle. I'm not sold on the raised planters. really struggling with that whole stage concept and why that's the way it is and what it's missing I think that's really it it's a it's a million seven to start and chances are that might grow as time goes on most things do So I'm struggling with this, and for some of the same reasons that Trustee Gilbert and Trustee Schwingbeck brought up, I don't want to deal with the wrath of businesses that can't get a little bit of help on the north and the south, and maybe even on the east side of our downtown, and we're spending a lot of energy and money right here. I still need to give this some thought. I'm not prepared to move forward spending another almost a half a million dollars in engineering and design on something that I'm not totally comfortable with yet as it sits. That's just my gut feeling for what it's worth.

Mayor, I have a question. Could we possibly make a motion to direct staff to ask if the money could be utilized elsewhere downtown?

Well, there's a motion on the floor now with a second.

Through the mayor? We do have an answer to that question. So we, and our consultant might be able to expand on this. So we did actually look into, and they have experience with the phase one process. So the phase one process, when you go through, you're basically applying to the federal government through your Department of Transportation. They set a whole bunch of requirements for your phase one, which is sort of the first step. And some of that's environmental review, You look at historical background, green space, all those kind of elements. And Kirk can go into a little more detail. We would, if we wanted to expand the footprint, maybe reduce what we're doing here and do some of these elements in a larger footprint, we basically have to be going back and redoing our phase one. Because we're expanding that scope. Not to say that we can't do that, but we would... As such, from the phase one standpoint, be going back to the drawing board. Sure. And we're not saying you can't.

Michael, how much money was spent so far? Was it 180? 188. 180,000. I think it's a valid question. I think it's something, I mean, I know you don't like to waste money, but at the same time, going forward, now you're spending another almost a half a million dollars in professional fees when we haven't, Well, I guess I should be careful how I say this. There's at least a couple or few of us at the board level here that are not completely sold on this the way it sits right now for varying reasons, different reasons. And I know that's kind of what you wanted to hear tonight.

That's why we're here. And the one thing I will say is to resubmit for the grant would cost money. It could be another $150,000, $200,000 to resubmit. Yeah. And that's the, you know, like I said, and I'm not trying to be a troublemaker. I'm just, you know, like I said, we're trying to lay out the challenges.

There's nobody in this room that's trying to be a troublemaker.

No, no. And like I said, it is a catch-22. On the one hand, if we don't go forward, we're handing back money someone gave us. However, then you're spending money on something that, you know, It's a judgment call as to whether you want to spend the money and I think that you know Those are kind of the crossroads. I'm the only thing and I guess I'd ask Emily and Michael, you know, what are the limitations for the 450,000? Is that more flexible?

I'm not I don't have an exact answer for you. We would have to probably connect with their office and find out With community fairs by now exactly how that works.

It's the 450 D CEO specifically

I believe that's who manages the funds. I think so, correct.

So there's some flexibility there.

Yeah, so that's who you, and they've told us there is a flexibility here, but that was on the path we were. But we could obviously reach out to their offices, but they manage all those funds, correct.

So Mayor? Yeah, Trustee Zik, go ahead. So the motion that we have right now, this is spending the money that we got from Representative Grassi. Correct. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So this particular motion doesn't take anything out of our coffers. Now, the questions that you asked, Mayor, and the rest of you asked, being uncomfortable with that, really the number of is it doesn't come into fruition on this particular vote all this is saying okay let's do a plan and they've heard a lot about what we about what we're saying here now it's We have to, with the $3 million, we have to spend 20% of the budget has to be from us, correct? So that means 80% of it is the $3 million, so that works out to $3.75 million that this project has to be, including this $450,000. It does not include the $450,000. Could it include the $450,000 though?

If we program it for construction, yes.

Okay, so if we did that, And we said, okay, you know what? We're going to max out at 375, $3.75 million. We got this 3 million, at least 750. Now you've got this 450. You take that off. That means that's $300,000 that we have to spend in order to get this 3 million. That's something that's a lot more workable, at least in my mind, than the 1.7 million. If we could somehow take all the things that we've done here, Whittle it down to where this total project comes out at that 3.75, and we still get that 3 million.

If I may, I've been quietly listening. No one's mentioned any cost cutting. Everything we've talked about was restricting construction. That increases costs. Bigger trees for line of sight. That increased costs. Maybe a stage. Just to be fair, none of the ideas were cutting costs.

Okay, fair. But what I'm saying right now is that we start at that particular point. We take all the words that we have here and we say, okay, this project with this 450, with this right now, it's got to max out at 3.75 so we can get that $3 million. And all we're doing is spending 300,000. And if we vote this and we push it through and we say, here you go, you got 450.

3.75, figure it out. And we are still, no matter what project version of this we do, we are going to still need to spend something around 450 for engineering. Yeah. And so that money is still, that is tied up. And the only other factor that we touched on, just to put in the mix, and I think we all need more complicated math problems at 11 o'clock at night, but the Public Works Department is deferring maintenance on... items downtown right now. We're making some judgment calls on a year-by-year basis. There's some of those little, what would you call them?

railings on the planters need maintenance. All the trees need to be replaced. I mean, that's why the timing of this worked well for us. Just because they're Bradford pears, they're invasive, no one would plant them today. We've gotten away with it. And then all the abrovitis are overgrown and covering planters. So it's time for a refresh in my mind. What that refresh is, you know I'm plus.

If we didn't do this project at all, We're probably, what, $200,000, $300,000 worth of work? $200,000 in landscaping and then easy hunting. Just to keep what we have. And as we're putting some of that off, if we go another season or so not knowing what we're going to do, then it starts to, you know, like I said, we've got to make a decision. We'd like to make a decision relatively soon so we know, are we or aren't we engaging in that work? Because there's... Again, I don't want to overstate it, but little hazards we've had to remove and that type of thing that we're dealing with.

One more comment too, and that is, and I know we said this at the beginning, and we can't promise that it will come to fruition, but we do still fully intend to seek additional grants for the project. So again, we don't know if we'll be successful, but if the board does decide to proceed, staff fully intends to try to further narrow that gap, both through value engineering to see where we can save some costs, as well as through additional grant opportunities.

I mean, I guess so it's just to, you know, and I'm thinking out loud here. Based on what trustee Zick said, you know, if the board. Were to direct us to proceed with phase 2 engineering. With the goal of, you know. reducing the scope somewhat you know reducing that spend down so that the villages portion of the expenses you know dramatically reduced that could be part of the phase two engineering process and and you know basically saying that you know we want to do something here we want less of it because we don't want to spend this much money conversely if the board know and we've heard this too just doesn't really want to spend a sizable amount of money on this particular location in town i think we want to know that and if that's the majority of the board we probably i don't know if there's much value in you know dramatically continuing down this road from staff time perspective from a money perspective and all of that um so that Chris can get back to work with his team in maintaining that area. So, I mean, I think that's the idea. If we want to do something here, we can reduce the scope and get something where it's a manageable amount. If you're queasy about spending money in this part of town, then, you know, I think we look at what the limitations are of that GRASI grant. Maybe there's something we can eke out and, you know, we go on.

All right, so here's what I think we should be doing right now. We have a motion on the floor and a second to spend $450,000-ish, I guess. Maybe that's a max. Maybe that's a real number. I don't know.

That's the amount of the grant, yeah.

On final engineering for the concept that's in front of us. There's been a lot of talk about modifying this concept, or reducing this concept, or as in some cases, expanding this concept, but I think what we should be doing right now is having a vote on what is in front of us. Am I correct? We do have blue cards. Let's see, on this one. And this one is, I have one blue card on this from Rob. Rob Rodecki, come on up.

I said it was gonna be short, but stuff got added as we kept talking, so I'm gonna probably get to the full three minutes.

All right, we're watching. Just be careful.

All right. Good. I'm going to keep an eye on it, too. Okay. First off, though, just generally, I want to say thank you to the staff for bringing up one of the things that usually gets ignored when we start talking about street safety and preventing dangerous street conditions, engineering. Usually people focus on education and enforcement, but as this project attests to, engineering is a very powerful third E in the equation. Now on behalf of the Safe Streets Alliance for Arlington Heights, we strongly support this upgrade to Vail Avenue and the Alfresco area. These upgrades recognize this place for what it is, a pedestrian first zone area where people should be free and safe to enjoy the area and partake in the businesses. I will say, Trustee Gilbert, that as a resident with young kids who gets concerned about them hanging out in Harmony Park, by the fountain with cars going around, it is something that I feel would really benefit and need some safety improvements in the off season. There's a lot of kids that run around that fountain and play there even when Alfresco's not going. Now also on the money situation, it is a tax generating hub for this village and these upgrades should help pump that up and keep it going for many more years. Perhaps you can look at a group like Urban 3, which does a lot of analysis on where tax revenue is coming from in a municipality to confirm how it breaks down between the different business zones. And if it works like this, will help keep the alfresco area's tax zone strong, if not growing. As Trustee LeBedge said, we need to do sometimes refresh things to keep them vital long term because it would be just as bad if we don't invest in downtown like this and then 10 to 15 years from now it's no longer a destination where people are going to other suburbs that did invest and now we're lacking sales tax revenue. So it's not just about bringing in more, it's keeping what we have. It's about lost revenue as much as it is about new revenue. I very much would love to see also the main downtown area expanded and other parts glow just as much. Ms. Robinson and I had some discussions about this at this very open house. If we can flex this to cover a wider area for the same cost, fantastic. You know, 25 years is a long time. It might not seem it, but trends change. Things age, as Director Paperniak has been pointing out. 25 years from now, will people still want to come to AH if we don't update the heart of downtown? And on the cost concept, there is a way that we could use, potentially use some of that grant money based on what Trustee Schwingbeck said, instead of looking at some cheaper things, some ideas about it. For a small amount of money, relatively, we can get cheaper wooden planters. We could paint these streets and intersections bright, vibrant colors so that they stand out differently. We can get plastic bollards to do the curb bump out to. And we could do this in an off season. We can have this done by the end of this year. Then we can test it in real life. Does this do better? Do these changes actually work? Is it worth the larger 1.7 or whatever it might be investment? And then just to bring it back to parking, perhaps this whole concern about costs and about more costing, what I'm getting is that parking that is close to the stores, it's on the first couple of levels of the parking garages, is a premium. Maybe we should stop doing free parking. Maybe we should start charging for those, whether we make it market rate, whether we do what things like Evanston or Omaha, just off the brain, are doing. Charge a couple bucks an hour, but at least enough where it makes people think about it, and so they churn, and so we get more there, and we get some revenue to start paying for these things that we're looking at, even if it's just maintenance on these parking garages. Thank you.

Thank you, Rob. Is there anyone else in the audience that wanted a way on this? Come on up.

I'll introduce myself again. My name is Devin Gray, and I live here in town. Listen, I love Harmony Park. It's beautiful. We spend a ton of time there. I have a three-year-old daughter. This time of year, come five o'clock, I ask her, hey, what do you want to do today? And every single day, go to the fountain. That's what we want to do. That's what she lives for every evening. And we are there, I don't know, four, five, sometimes six nights a week. It's beautiful. It's an incredible place to be. The arguments mostly that I'm hearing for this change are, hey, we started this long ago. We thought maybe we could sneak it in for alfresco. But at this point, primary argument seems to be the sunk cost fallacy. We've invested in this, therefore we must continue to invest in this. We're in for a penny, we should be in for a pound. 1.7 million is a ton of money. Like, I'm a taxpayer here in town, this is a beautiful park, it's a beautiful area, and what we're talking about is potentially shutting this down or interfering with the businesses for one or two seasons, potentially? I don't see any benefit to it. I just don't. It's beautiful the way it is. When we walk there, we walk through the other part of downtown Arlington Heights. We walk past the CMX movie theater. We walk past Cold Stone. We walk past Wild Fish. We walk past Panera. No, sorry, we don't walk past any of those, because all those businesses are closed today. And that area is becoming borderline blighted. If Starbucks leaves, I shudder to think about what that little area looks like in Arlington Heights. And so we do need to refresh parts of Arlington Heights. We just need to move about three blocks east when we're thinking about it. Or we need to move a couple miles north to town and country. There are plenty of places in town that are begging for this kind of an investment. I remember hanging out at the Riv and going to the old park, Cartwheel Park, that you're talking about back in the day. I remember when we made the change to Harmony. It was a great change. This is a beautiful neighborhood. We don't need to disrupt everything and risk having other businesses potentially even close because of that disruption, all to add, I don't know, some pavers and an A in the middle of an intersection. It seems like a lot of money for some pavers. Just speaking from my spot, thanks. All right, thank you.

Anyone else in the audience? All right, back to the board here. We have a motion and a second to move forward spending grant money on phase two engineering drawings. If there's no further commentary on it, we're gonna have a roll call vote on this.

Mayor, can I ask a question? Yes, sure. What happens if this doesn't pass? What happens if it doesn't pass?

I think that's the next logical question. And I think Trustee Santa Maria and Manager Rucklaus and some of staff have said that the next step would be to find out can that money be used elsewhere or to confirm that it can be used. I think that the tendency is to agree that it can be used somewhere else.

We think that the $450,000 the $3 million we think is pretty limited. Yeah, right.

So if I am understanding that correctly, if we do not proceed with this, we are going to forego or defer the $3 million grant with a knock-on effect that we will have less ability to get grants in the future, a likelihood. and potentially taking money away from us in the future to do development on other parts of downtown and elsewhere in the village. I don't see it as, I'll leave it there.

Maggie?

Trustee Manganiello? Aye. Trustee LaBette? Yes. Trustee Schwengbeck?

No.

Trustee Santa Maria?

No.

I don't know yet. Is that an option?

I don't think so. Would you like me to circle back? Yeah.

Are we able to move this or table it? Yes. To Trustee Santamaria's point, I mean, there's...

You could table this, you could request additional information. Yes, this doesn't have to be voted on this meeting. But we already have a motion.

That can be discussed after this motion is concluded.

Yes, but there's a motion on the floor that's begun.

We have to finish this motion. After this motion, if it were to fail, we can ask... FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION OR ALTERNATIVE MOTIONS. AND CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, ATTORNEY, A TRUSTEE CAN PASS OR ABSTAIN. ABSOLUTELY. IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE VOTING, IT'S YOUR PRIORITIES TO SAY PASS. And I'm not recommending that, I'm just saying that.

You mentioned that. Yeah, so in the absence of a conflict, a trustee or member of the board's always able to pass or abstain, but in this case, because there's no conflict, any pass or abstention would be attributed to the side with the majority of the votes cast.

Say that, it was very quiet, say that again. Sorry, I'll speak up.

In the absence of a conflict when a member of the board passes or abstains in a motion like this, their vote will be attributed to the side which garners the most votes.

Can you just come back to me?

And what happens if... Considering there's eight of us after that pass, it ends up being four to four.

Motion fails. The motion fails because there was no majority.

Oh, my God. Okay, so I should just give you an answer now?

I know our number one job is to vote.

doesn't change what we said a moment ago about additional information and additional dialogue and additional, so on and so on. Let's complete this motion knowing that, or complete this vote knowing that there's always more to talk about. So go ahead. We have, can we repeat where we're at? So let's start over with everyone where we have it. I wanna make sure we know who's doing what here.

Trustee Manganiello? Is an aye. Is an aye. Trustee LeBeds? Yes. Trustee Schwingbeck? No. And that's as far as we got.

Okay.

Trustee Santamaria, would you like me to circle back? Yes, you can circle back. Thank you.

Trustee Bertucci?

No.

Trustee Gilbert?

No.

Trustee Zik?

No.

Trustee Dunnington?

Yes.

President, no. Trustee Santa Maria?

I'm going to go with a no.

President Tenaglia?

No.

That is three A's and six A's.

Say that again?

THREE YES, SIX NOES. MOTION FAILS.

SO ALL THAT MEANS RIGHT NOW IS THAT THE MOTION TO SPEND THE $450 TO GO FORWARD WITH PHASE TWO ENGINEERING FAILED. THAT'S ALL THAT MEANS. IT DOESN'T MEAN THE PROJECT FAILED. IT MEANS THAT SIX OF US ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH WHERE WE STAND RIGHT NOW. THAT'S MY TAKE ON THIS. DOES ANYBODY DISAGREE WITH THAT? do a little bit i'm not comfortable where we stand right now and i made the motion because i think it's the best way forward no no what i think i'm asking is does everybody under understand and agree that there are six of us here that are just uncomfortable with moving forward with it as is does not mean that we don't like Some components of the project or some amount of it, but there are six of us uncomfortable with spending more money to go down this exact path. So we're looking for alternative options on how to proceed or not proceed at all.

And I guess what I would say, you know, we still have one more agenda item on the meeting tonight, is perhaps this staff can, given that the motion failed, we collected a lot of feedback, perhaps staff can regroup and come up with some alternative things to, you know, kick around on this and report back.

I think that's, if I'm not misreading, that's what I'm hearing from the majority of the board right now.

Yes? Just a couple, I'm sorry, through the mayor, just a couple points of clarification. The one thing we do want to kind of put a paw on is we are at the end of the phase one and we've spent that money. So I do believe we want to submit that just to finalize that process. So no matter what you decide, we have the flexibility to move forward or not.

Sure, that makes sense.

That would be sort of bad money after good, if you will, to not submit that. We are at the end of that budget. So we would, to a manager's point, KICK AROUND SOME IDEAS AND FIGURE OUT WHAT ANSWERS WE COULD PROVIDE FOR YOU OR WHAT INFORMATION, COME UP WITH POTENTIAL PIECES OF INFORMATION THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL TO YOU. YES. AND THEN FLEXIBILITY ON SOME OF THE GRANT MONEY. I THINK WE HEARD THAT RIGHT OFF THE BAT. AND THEN GO FROM THERE. CHANGING THE SCOPE OF WORK AND GETTING SOME OF THAT DETAIL.

WE'RE NOT REQUIRING ANY FURTHER MOTION THIS EVENING. I DON'T THINK WE WOULD DO THAT. NO, I THINK NOT.

But my question is, are we going to incur other costs, additional costs?

And that's where I was kind of going. So we don't have any additional funds in the phase one to do that. That was something we were potentially going to do with that first piece of phase two. Maybe that's what we find out about with the flexibility.

I don't think we are. I think this is not, we're not going to be doing design work. We're going to be doing administrative thinking about options doors to walk through so internally as opposed to Consultant fees that's kind of what I'm getting the only outside thing we're gonna have to seek out is get a way to gauge the flexibility of the grassy grant Because that's something that's a little bit more amorphous, and then we can develop a couple of alternatives for You know doors to walk through for the for the board on this matter and Um, you know, everything from just being done, doing some work, you know, trying to utilize a portion of that $3M. So.

Mayor can ask question trustee Gilbert is, is there a way for us to be able to start doing some of the deferred maintenance downtown that needs to be done?

Well, if we're going to be replacing in these components, we'd be throwing good money after bad. You know, we'd be essentially replacing something that we may be replacing again.

I guess my point is if we're not able to come to, if there's not going to be any construction or anything happening this season, you know, doing some of the railings, trimming some of the arborvitae, some of the more minor things.

I mean, the railings, that stuff lasts, what, 20 years? So, I mean, we can look at that, and we've been playing that game a little bit. We will continue to do so. But I wouldn't want to spend significant money on something that we're going to undo. Sure.

I just still want it to look nice for our residents because it is a nice space.

Yeah, absolutely. We'll continue to be creative.

And to trustee Gilbert's point and to worry Richard so Removal would have to be done Anyways, so if we look to what you know, for example if I think of the south end of harm behind the stage so to speak where you know You literally have overgrown whatever those are.

Arborvitaes.

Arborvitaes, yeah. I mean, we could almost, some of those could almost be removed and it'll look nicer than what we have there right now. I mean, that might be a thought too because it would have to be removed anyways.

We'll take a look at those items and make some judgment calls on that. Please do, sure.

And I think reporting back to us with some of this information, even if it's little by little, piece by piece, I think is important. And it can be done via email with the board and set up another date for talking here. Right. I thought I saw a hand go up.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I need to make sure I understood Mr. Lasikados' last comment about submitting phase one.

So, yeah, so basically we're at a point where we're ready to submit the phase one. We've gotten preliminary comments from IDOT on scope of work and the purpose of need. Basically, that's what you're setting with the phase one. We submit that for approval. That probably won't get back to us to the fall, so we do have some time to strategize those next steps. But to not submit that would be...

Basically, we would have spent the hundred eighty eight thousand for nothing and there's not additional cost associated with that we are we're ready to go Okay, I think we're done with that dialogue if I'm not mistaken So we're gonna move on in the final item on the agenda, which is pool attendant ordinance and Hopefully this is about as benign as it can be for a discussion point FOR TONIGHT BECAUSE IT IS 10 AFTER 11. YOU HAVE THE FLOOR.

OKAY, THANK YOU. On May 4th, we spoke about the swimming pool ordinance and the subject of possibly eliminating the pool attendant requirement. So tonight we're going to revisit that conversation with two important updates based on our May 4th conversation. To remind everyone of the background, the village had received a request to eliminate the ordinance and at that time it was made by a property owners association, and we also had a question come up on one of the multi-unit housing developments as well. The language that requires a pool attendant dates back to September 8th, 1986, so some 40 years ago. Since that time, neighboring communities that also had a pool attendant requirement have since removed that requirement. So the two updates for this evening are one about state law. We talked about what the state law required specifically about lifeguards. The second one will be about the data and findings around drowning related incidents in the village. So state law specifically about lifeguards requires that they be provided at all wave pools and water slides. The second point there is that they are required when persons under the age of 16 are allowed in the pool enclosure without supervision by a parent, guardian, or other responsible person at least 16 years of age. So those are the only two requirements for lifeguards by state law. Additionally, facilities that do not have lifeguards or they're not provided, they're required to post a sign that says the facility is not protected by lifeguards. And again, it references the age of 16. If you are under the age of 16, you must be accompanied by a parent, guardian, or other responsible person at least 16 years of age. There's an additional note that swimming alone is not recommended. It does not say prohibited, it says recommended.

And that last comment is regardless of age.

Right, regardless of age, exactly. In the village, through Health and Human Services, our environmental health officers inspect our indoor pools monthly and our outdoor pools semi-monthly for the following criteria. They look at the chlorine levels, the pH, that's for water quality. They look at the required safety equipment and those requirements. That includes the signage we just spoke of. They look at water clarity. They look at the required fencing and gates and good repair. That includes the latches and the enclosures. where they close at the gate. They look at pumps, chlorinators, make sure they're operable. And then lastly, if it is an outdoor pool, they look at the presence of a pool attendant. So that is what we do as our health inspectors in the village. The second point we were looking at this evening was the data and findings around the reports of drowning-related incidents by the Arlington Heights Fire Department. So this goes back to 2008, so some 18 years. Since that time, there were 10 incidents that were noted. And if you look at the bolded areas, those are the ones that involve a pool. There are six of them. Two of the six involved tragic situations where in 2008 there was a 14-year-old death, and that was an individual that climbed an eight-foot fence when the pool was closed. The second incident that involved a death was a 12-year-old, and that was in 2014, also at an apartment complex. That occurred while the pool was open on a Monday afternoon. An apartment complex employee, presumably a pool attendant, was there and provided aid. The other bolded areas there are home pools, Northwest Community Hospital's Wellness Center, another apartment, a complex pool, and a swim school. Those, as far as we know, did not result in deaths. And then the unbolded incidents there are other bodies of water in Arlington Heights. And you can see the outcomes that we're aware of. And this data, again, was provided by the fire department. I want to pause for a second just to see if you have any questions on those two updates. That's a little bit about what we talked about on May 4th.

If I could add, the thing that we found that were interesting data points is that by what we were able to find is the apartment deaths that we had, one of them occurred after hours and would not have been prevented by a pool attendant because they wouldn't have been required to be there. The other two were pretty sure a pool attendant was present and they were unable to prevent the death.

Yes. Okay, hearing no questions. In summary, if we eliminate the pool attendant requirement, there are advantages, including alignment with our indoor and outdoor pool policies. Additionally, we'll be aligned with our neighboring community policies as well. The other advantages are that it will decrease, potentially decrease costs for our semi-public pool, outdoor pools. And then it will allow those pools to have increased hours and length of their pool season. The disadvantages there are, again, it may decrease pool safety and it may decrease access for our pool inspections. The staff recommendation is to move forward with removing the pool attendant requirement.

And one other thing I would add is we did, and if Mila mentioned this, I apologize, I was talking to staff. We tried to get data from other communities. It was very difficult to come by. And it just, there was no consistent source of information that we could rely upon that we felt was worthy of presenting here other than anecdotes here and there it wasn't something that was you know what would lead to you know an epiphany about other communities pool dots okay thank you mila um i have two blue cards here um we can go to the village board here first so i can hear from the audience and we have points i want to make go to the audience

Oh, I'm sorry.

I do have some questions. So just as I read it, it looks like there were two deaths in an apartment complex, the one where the kid jumped the fence after hours, and then the one in 2014 that happened on a Monday afternoon. Yes, also an apartment complex. Yeah, and so were the other, did all the other things, everything else, though, resulted in a death, correct, or no?

No, the other areas, unless a death is indicated, so you'll see that some, for example, the bottom two there, so Lake Taramere and Lake Arlington, those did Those are deaths. But the other pool ones, not all of them, no, were deaths. And we're looking at the fire department report. So if something happened at the hospital after that, I don't have that information. A good point. But what we have from the fire department indicates you can see there's, you know, if they were transported, it was a seizure. And if someone was transported to the hospital after a pool accident, we don't know which way it went from there.

okay okay but something happened yeah those were incidents yes the events in a pool or a body of water yes caused a call to the fire department right so um so i might then the question that i have is if we if we eliminate our requirement for a pool attendant and and i don't know if you know the answers but then how would Who would be responsible for opening and closing the pool? Do these complexes have somebody on site that would open and close it if there's bad weather? Is there somebody that would monitor that? And that's the kind of questions that I have, which doesn't necessarily mean there has to be a pool attendant there all the time, but just to ensure that there's somebody there and then because you also during the inspections check for things like the safety equipment the life rings and stuff like that those would still be we would still do those do those okay okay and when we do the inspections they look for signage the sum of the signage there we talked about the lifeguards but it also includes things about the other pool rules

including lightning and weather and things like that. In terms of opening and closing the pool, that's left to the individual homeowners association or the community pool with what they would do in those situations, whether they include that with their other contracted services or they have somebody on site. Okay. They still can hire a pool attendant or a lifeguard.

Yeah.

It just leaves that decision to them. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Other board members? I HAVE TWO CARDS, JIM REAGAN AND FRANK BEGA. JIM, YOU'RE UP FIRST. FRANK, SECOND.

THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR AND TRUSTEES. APPRECIATE YOUR TIME AT THIS LATE HOUR. I totally agree with the recommendation that the superintendent of health has recommended about removing that kind of obscure or not obscure but ill-defined requirement of having a pool attendant, we would really like to have the option to swim at our own risk if we want to. We have been very diligent about our small little pool that we have and have lots of signs and of course you know, tall fence and everything. Also in terms of access to the pool itself, the way it works is there's a men's and women's locker room that people have to enter to get into the pool. And there's a fob system that is programmable to Whatever hours we want to have people access the pool with one of these little things, there's only one per household or one per address. So there's not like 1,000 of them out there. There's only 192 that people are entitled to as a homeowner. And that FOB system is also on the tennis court. but it's programmable and we value safety a lot and our pool has been a great asset and we haven't had any issues in the past and it's been in operation since 1968. So I think I would really like the option for us to be able to swim at our own risk. And I think that removing the pool attendant is something that I would hope you would all vote for. So I appreciate your time this evening.

Thanks, Jim. Frank, you're up.

Thanks for, my name is Frank Bega. I live in Regent Park. I was president of Regent Park for 10 years and I've been on the board for 20 years and I am strongly in favor of not repealing this ordinance that we have. I think that Mr. Regan, whom I've served on the board with, mentioned that we have a good safety record, and that is precisely because we have the lifeguard. People have asked me in the past to try and come to you and get the lifeguard ordinance removed, and I refused. I didn't think it was the right thing to do. As the president, every year, one of the things that I would do with the lifeguards is I would meet with them before the pool season and stress how important it was that the safety of all of our swimmers was the most important thing they had to do. and that has worked. Fortunately we have not had any incidents at Regent Park. This particular request, I believe, has come up because some of our adult members wish to be able to ensure that they're able to swim during the very hot August months when a lot of the lifeguards go back to school and go back to college. And that is a problem. But there are other ways to deal with this other than to allow mostly our kids and potentially adults to have potential safety issues at the pool. And that could involve hiring an attendant independently or a lifeguard independently. paying more money for that, I don't think we should be risking the lives of our children so that we could swim a little bit longer during the hot August months. And there is a regulatory framework within the state of Illinois, there are those rules, but I think the Board of Trustees of Arlington Heights needs to keep its own additional regulatory framework in place to ensure that this happens, not just at Regent Park, but at other pools that are like this, so that our kids are safe, and I think it's very important that you keep it. I don't know how the state rule would be enforced It says that lifeguards shall be provided if children under the age of 16 are not allowed in the pool or are allowed in the pool. Whether having a fob system where you only have 192 fobs is allowing them in the pool or not, I don't know what the legal interpretation of that is. But there are going to be kids in that pool who get in with their fobs from their homes, and that creates a bigger danger, in my opinion. So I urge you to not repeal the ordinance. Thank you.

Thanks, Frank. Okay, back to the board here. Questions or comments? We'll start on this side this time. Anyone over here?

I'm giggling because you have one more comment. Oh, boy.

I didn't have a blue card from you again.

Didn't, no. thought about using a fake name this time but my name is still devon gray um i came up here and spoke a couple weeks ago when we talked about this ordinance originally i think i was the one who requested that maybe we look into this and find some information about whether or not there have been drowning accidents in town so i really just want to express my appreciation for the board and for the the staff for looking into this i'm kind of surprised by the number of incidents that we've had here in town i think that it's a pretty clear indicator that um Well, we put an ordinance in place for a reason, right? We did this 40 years ago for the safety of our community and for the safety of our children, which is paramount. I agree with what was said here before. There's nothing more important than that. But it seems as though perhaps this ordinance, while well-intentioned, did not achieve the intended goal. And I think that happens sometimes, right? Despite that requirement, tragic drownings still did occur in town. It's not to criticize anyone who supported the ordinance. It was adopted with good intentions. The question is whether or not it actually worked. And I think anytime we have a regulation here in town, that imposes costs and it imposes administrative burdens and it strips away freedoms from property owners and business owners here in town, we should routinely be asking, does this work? And my hope is that when we have ordinances that we pass that do similar things here and we limit behavior, we revisit those more frequently than every four decades. Thank you.

Thanks, Devon. okay did I miss any other hands not okay back to the board here but I think I understand is that this does not take away the right for a complex to hire require manage maintain all those requirements they want it's just that we're not this can you put the motion back up please motion just removes the villages requirement to impose that you're correct but there's no nothing that says that they can't do it right right and hire ten lifeguards if they want to yes gotcha right okay any other discussion on the board if someone's ready to make a motion I'm all ears I'll make a motion. Just a quick comment, though, before I do it. Yeah, go right ahead.

Please do. Is a homeowners association, an apartment company, they can set their own rules. Yep. So, obviously, if the majority of, I mean, we're talking about, say, a particular place like Regent Park, they could, as a homeowners association, say, no, we're going to continue to have one, if that's the will of their organization. Right. So yeah, I would recommend moving forward to remove the pool attendant requirement.

Point of order, technically, and I apologize, that should have been written differently. We do have an ordinance on the agenda, so it would be a motion to approve an ordinance, you know, removing the pool attendant requirement.

Okay, so I would move that we... We modify the ordinance that we currently have on the books.

We have an ordinance on the agenda. So there would be a motion to approve the ordinance on the agenda that removes the pool requirement. Okay.

Yeah, if you want to state it. I can state the motion if that would be easier. That would be great. It would be a motion to approve an ordinance repealing section 19-402 of the Municipal Code of the Village of Arlington Heights repealing pool attendant requirements. So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right. Motion by Trustee Schwingbeck, second by Trustee Bertucci. Is there any other discussion from anyone in the room?

Trustee Zik. I just got to say, I've been thinking about this all day, and you can talk to some people in the Parks District. Where I landed was, you look at the, you know, Devin, you had said that you're surprised at how many numbers there were. The thing that kept coming through my head was that, one, it wasn't a lot. I expected actually a lot more and how many were prevented because these were there. Obviously, we'll never know. That's a philosophical question. It's never there. But if we repealed this, if I voted to repeal this and even one person... wound up getting hurt or worse because there wasn't a pool of the tenant. There was something that's worked for 40 years. It seemingly seems like it's worked for 40 years. I couldn't take that. So yeah, just so everybody knows, my vote is gonna be no.

All right. Motion is made, seconded. This is a roll call vote. Maggie, please.

Trustee Schwingback? Yes. Trustee Bertucci? Yes. Trustee Manganiello? Aye. Trustee Dunnington? Yes. Trustee Gilbert? Yes. Trustee LeBetz? Yes. Trustee Zick?

No.

Trustee Santa Maria? Yes. President Tenaglia?

Yes. All right, motion carries. If I'm not mistaken, that's the end of our business for tonight. Yes, sir. Anything else from the village manager? Nope. All right. I look for a motion to adjourn.

I move that we adjourn.

Second. Motion by Trustee LeBed, second by Trustee Schwingbeck. All those in favor say aye. Aye. No. Trustee Gilbert wants to keep going. We're adjourned.