City Council - Special Meeting

What happened was I put away other than Yeah. Yeah. Oh, just one jacket. No, this is

versatile. Good. You heard that? Got a lot of reading to do. Jen item.

Okay. We will call to order the regular meeting of the Betavia City Council for Monday, March 16th, 2026. And we will begin by having roll call, please. Barza, sorry, Barza absent. Lansancy here. Beck absent. Malay here. Malone here. Wolf here. Sulfa here. Baron here. Leman here. Lman here, Peeper here, Farenbach here, Anderson here, White here, 12 present, two absent, your honor,

very quick, we have the necessary form to conduct business and I'd ask you all now to let me do the invocation and then we'll rise for the pledge of allegiance. uh tonight as uh we continue to live in a very challenging world both in our country and surrounding us in the world. We are ever thankful for the good efforts that we find in Betavia and for the outstanding group of citizens who have stepped forward to serve our city and the various boards, but specifically the city council and their willingness to delve into some very intense issues that demand a lot of serious consideration. And we're very fortunate that we have that group of individuals with us on the city council tonight. We ask for just a special blessing on our community and for the ability of the alderman to understand and to react to issues in a very favorable manner. And we also ask for a special blessing on all those in our community who are under the weather and in need of health care. So we ask for all these blessings. Amen. Uh L.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we've already had the roll call. So, we remind anybody that's going to speak to the city council that the meeting is being recorded. And if you're coming from the audience, we ask that you come up and use the podium and speak into the microphone. Without it's going to be very hard for anybody to hear you saying whatever it is you're presenting. Uh, moving to item number six, items to be removed, added, or changed from tonight's agenda. Do we have anything?

Nope. Okay, very good. Okay, moving then to the consent agenda. We want to do matters from the public first. Number five. Okay. Excuse me. Matters. Do we have anybody in the public that wants to speak to us tonight?

I guess not. Oh, amen. Bond Woody, 1156 Pine Street in Betavia. Um, I have some questions, but I also have some concern concerns about that have been going on. Number one, um I wanted to know, as you all know, I've talked to you about TIFFs before, but how many of you have uh read the 10-year report for TIFF 4. And if you haven't read it, why haven't you read it? Because this is our tax dollars. These these monies are going to developers and and we should you should know what's going on with there. I'm in the process of doing an audit of all the tiffs.

Ivon, could you pull the microphone down a little bit closer to you so we can hear it? Thank you.

I'm in the process of doing an audit of all the tiffs in Kain County. It's going to take me a long time, but I expect to find a whole lot more than I've already found on TIFFs. And I am absolutely 100,50% opposed to TIFFs. Have been for over 40 years and will continue to be opposed to tiffs because it is a scam on the taxpayers. There is no reason on God's green earth why we should have to ensure the developers make a profit on property that they bought in speculation. If it's not ready to be developed, it doesn't deserve a tiff. Now, that was all of that. But this other part here is very concerning. It's regarding data centers. And as I understand it, Betavia was considering putting a data center in at one point. So I wonder how much you all know about data centers. Did you know that the data centers require 1.2 to 1.8 gigawatts of power to run the data centers? 1.2 to 1.8 gawatt. 1 megawatt, which is 1 1,000th of a gigawatt, is enough to power approximately 225 homes, single family homes, two or two large store boxes or two large box stores. The data centers also require 100,000 100,000 gallons of water a day. Now I don't know whether you all are aware of the fact that we've had water restrictions here in Betavia for at least 30 or 40 years and that the the aquifers the short uh the shallow

aquifers are in the process of running dry. So we don't have the water to fund to fix these data centers. And then on the 19th of February in the Daily Harold, I'm going to read just a part of this ordinance for you. Um it's it's regarding Butterfield Road, uh which is down near where uh the Cyrus One data center is and the the new Hollywood casino. It's ordinance 2512. Uh I believe that's 0102. I'm sure sorry this print is so tiny. It's an ordinance prohibiting the use of groundwater as a portable a portable water supply by the installation or use of portable water supply wells or by any other method within a defined area of the village of North Aurora at 730 Butterfield Road, North Aurora, Illinois 60542 and surrounding properties. an ordinance prohibiting the use of groundwater as a portable water supply by the installation of use of portable water supply wells or by any other method within a defined area of the village of North Aurora at 7:30 Butterfield Road North Aurora. That's just down the street from my house. whereas certain properties in the village of North Aurora including 7:30 Butterfield Road has been used over a period of time for commercial industrial pro purposes and whereas because of said use concentration of certain chemical constituents in the groundwater beneath the properties uh dis depicted in exhibit A may exceed the uh groundwater quality standards for portable re resources groundwater as set forth in 30

believe that's 35 Illinois administrative code 620 or tier one residential remediation objectives uh as set forth in 35 Illinois administrative code 74 and so on. I don't believe I need to read the rest of it, but this is very concerning because this is right down the street from my house. I've dealt in water reclamation for many years. You don't control where the water goes and how it goes. We're out the the door of Fermy Lab and there's already been reports over the last 25 or 30 years about frogs in the water at some of the facilities there having five legs or, you know, three eyes or what have you. So this is very concerning to me and it should be concerning to all of you too because wherever this water is, it doesn't stay just there and I don't know whether Betavia has done anything to check the water and whatever kind of chemicals they're talking about there. That's it.

If I'm if I can address two things that you brought up in your little speech. Um, first off, we did approve the building of a data center on the east side over in the industrial park. It's a maximum of 50 megawws. That's what they could go up to. Won't be built as as 50 to start with, but it can grow to 50 megawws. So, that's all the bigger it can be. And it is a closed loop system that does not use water every day to cool the system. still has to be drained on a a monthly or um every 2,000 days.

Yeah. Every 2,000 or 2200 days is when it has to be drained and changed. And they are planning on trucking the water in to the facility and it's still going to go into our sewer system and it will have to meet the standards to be able to be discharged into our sewer system just like any other uh property in the industrial park. it will have to meet the standards that we can accept it. Let you know where my data came from. There are um regulations being considered all over the area.

I totally agree with you. An evaporative emission system that just pumps water in and evaporates it every day uses a ton of water. Most of the data centers that are proposed that are big that are getting a lot of problem and a lot of feedback on are above a thousand megawws which is a lot different than 50. Well, a lot bigger.

It is a lot different than 50. But if you think about how many are coming into the area and how much collective water it's going to use that that has to enter into all of it too. You know, Aurora has five. Aurora has five in the process and they have a current moratorum. I think it expires in the next couple of weeks or so. Um, but they have a moratorum uh pending research on the the data centers and more information. And a couple of them Neighborville I think pulled or or reduced the size of the one that they're doing. But if you have 10 or 15 or 20 of them, you know, they're all going to be using power and that power has to come from all of us collectively. So

only control what happens within Betavia's boundaries. I understand that. But you know, the water the power Commonwealth Edison had puts power here in Betavia. They have the switching stations. Uh we have our own power here in Betavia. But but still Commonwealth Edison has some areas in Betavia that they provide the power. So you know you you can't just look at it as Betavia because it affects all of us this whole area. It's going to affect all of us. That's collective power and collective water. Thank you. Anybody else?

Ralph Pascal. I just wanted to bring attention in case it's not brought up is um Abby Beck's mom passed away yesterday. Uh she was a friend of ours. Uh she was born uh within a day of my son and um it's uh very sad and she's not here I'm sure for that reason. But it would be nice uh for us to all remember Paulie. Anybody else? All right. Uh moving then to the consent agenda.

Okay, your honor. The consent agenda reads as follows. Accept and place on file building report January 2026. December 2025 city council report 2025 budget transfers and reconciliation committee of the whole minutes February 26 2026 planning commission minutes January 26 January 21st 2026 and February 4th 2026 Historic Preservation Commission minutes February 9th 2026 approvals Payroll fund totals for 3132026 in the amount of 1,173,45966. The accounts payable total for March 16th council meeting is in the amount of $1,795 1,795,775.83 83 cents. City Council minutes February 16th, 2026 and March 2nd, 2026. City Council Executive Session minutes January 20th, 2026 for purchase and sale of real estate. March 2nd, 2026 for workman's compensation. Cow Executive Session Minutes February 29th, 2026 for purchase of property. Ordinance 2026-12 public urination and defecation resolution 2026-33-R authorization to purchase 1226 Altech TA60 bucket truck from Altech Industries, Inc.

Ordinance 2026-8, amendments to title 12, historic preservation and city code. Resolution 2026-32-R approving the 2026 zoning map. Resolution 2026-35-R accepting a plan of dedication of part of Northwater Street. Ordinance 2026-13 declaring certain property to be surplus and authorizing sale. Resolution 2026-36-R approving the 3-month extension for a final plaid of Main Street Place subdivision. Resolution 2026-34-R authorizing a one-year extension of the contract with Midwest Public Safety for body cam and incar video cloud-based data storage through March 31st, 2027 in the amount of $20,592. Ordinance 2026-11 temporarily pausing TIFF for TIF number seven. Your honor, I move we approve the consent agenda as read.

Second. Motion and second for the approval of the agenda as presented. Any further discussions on it? Kirk, call the role, please. Aaron, I Leman, hi Lman. Hi Peeper. Hi Farenbach. Hi Anderson. Hi White. Hi Lansancy. Hi Malay. Hi Malone. Hi Wolf. Hi Sulfa. Hi 12. Yes. No. No. to absent consent agenda is approved. Okay, moving down to eight is the main street presentation. Do we have somebody here from Betavia? There she is.

Thanks so much for having me tonight. Um, here we go. All right. I wanted to start off uh by reminding everybody that we have our first Step into Spring Winewalk this weekend. Um it is Saturday from 1 to 5. Um right now we're at 372 tickets of the 40 400 tickets sold. And of those 55% are from non Betavia residents. So we're really excited to have a new group of people coming into town. Um we want to congratulate Bokeaditos. They were the recipients of the Main Street America and American Express backing small business grant. Um that was a hundred thou not 100 that would be amazing a $10,000 grant um that they will be using for a new espresso machine an ice maker and an oven uh to expand their breakfast desserts and coffee offerings. Um just about that grant. This is the fifth business to get a backing small business grant in Betavia in the last three years which is amazing. Bringing $50,000 into our downtown. Um, we had some recent media coverage. Um, the indoor market was featured on NBC on February 20th. It ran three times throughout the days the day and Sturdy Shelter reported seeing a lot of new customers at the indoor market that weekend. So, that's really exciting. And then we also have a segment coming up that will air this Friday about the wine walk. Um, our recast leaders started. Um we've had two meetings with the cohort and we're in the exploration phase where we need to um come up with a vision for what we want to achieve in the in the cohort. And our uh team has kind of come up with the vision to create a vibrant downtown where small and unique businesses succeed and residents and

visitors actively choose to shop, dine and invest locally. This includes retaining existing businesses, attracting new entrepreneurs, increasing move-inready spaces for all for the small businesses. And then we also had to identify some of our key challenges which would include um some confusing processes for permits and grants, limited year-round foot traffic, and vacant spaces that are often too large large, costly, or in poor condition for small space, small businesses. and we will continue to um update you monthly on this process. And then finally, we re-released our restaurant guide in February. Since then, we just take uh February to update and uh kind of refresh our restaurant guide. We had 1300 over 1300 unique scans since February. So, we're really really happy about um the interest that continues in that restaurant guide. And that's all I have for today. Any questions for me?

Questions for the Main Street Georgia. Um, thank you for sharing um the update on the number of sales for the winewalk. That's really exciting. And the fact that 55% of the people are from outside of Betavia. Did you do some advertising outside to kind of pull those people in?

Yeah, we um invested. We also got an Illinois Main Street grant for new marketing initiatives and one of the things that we decided to do was um larger eblast through Shaw Media. So we hit 20,000 uh subscribers with that and picked surrounding areas. So that really worked well. And then we also did um a lot of press releases for that. So, we were really happy with what we've seen come in because it's just such a great opportunity for people to get into the businesses we have. We have such great retail in downtown. So, it's just really nice to have 400 people going through. Anybody else?

Hoping for good weather. Huh? Hoping for good weather. No, we will have good weather. We will have good weather. Maybe great. Yes, it's going to be great. Spring. All right. Thank you. Great work.

Okay. Uh we are through Main Street. We are going to regular agenda which is 9.1 ordinance 2026-009 granting a conditional use permit for government offices and facilities use at 812 Main Street. All right. Um, this was discussed at our last cow meeting. Um, it's a, um, conditional use for office and facilities for the school district um, at 812 Main Street. They own the building just to the east of that at 804 Main Street. And this is a property that they want to continue to stay centralized in that spot in town to be able to have storage and facilities u that are support facilities for the district. I don't know if anybody comments or questions on it or if there's anybody coming

just quickly and I I won't rehash what I said last time, but first I think um we're lucky to have a school board that is prudent enough to try to find ways to consolidate and put things together. I think they made their need very clear and I think their needs genuine and true. Um I'm I will remain a no vote on this simply because we do have a vision for that district and that vision is for commercial and mixed use. Um again I really do think BPS has a strong need and I think we're we're lucky to have folks who are trying to find those savings where they can. Um I just happen to believe that there's better spots for it that don't um undermine our particular vision uh for that area. Um, last thing I'll say though is that since um it it seems as if uh this this will pass, um I do hope the school board hears us and hears me when when I ask that they really commit to the beautifification. Um one way we can mitigate uh what I believe as a detriment to our plan in that area is if uh that storage space becomes um uh less of a gez I'm trying to be diplomatic about less of an eyesore, right? um that it that it kind of fits a little better in with our vision and our goals in that area so that the neighboring businesses can uh can grow and thrive.

Anybody else other comments? Um I'll make the motion that we approve ordinance 2026009 granting a conditional use permit for government office and facilities use at 812 Main Street. Motion second. Any further discussion? Could call the role. Wolf. Hi. Sulfa. Hi. Baron. Hi. Leman. Hi. Lman. Hi. Peeper. Hi. Farenbach. No. Anderson. Hi. White. Hi. Barazza. Absent. Lansancy. Hi. Malay. Hi. Malone.

No. Uh 10 in favor. Two opposed. Two absent. Motion's approved. Okay. Moving to 9.2. Two, Ordinance 2026-010 amending title 6, motor vehicles and traffic of the city of Betavius code ordinance regulating e-mobility devices. Who's got this one? Is it me? You want to take it? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I miss where it has like the little um abbreviations afterwards. So, um talk to Max about that after the meeting.

Okay. So, this is an ordinance that um our police chief um worked with our active transportation team along with a business owner um updating our ordinance um for e-mobility. Um just to put a little bit of uh more law around and understanding of what is acceptable, not acceptable. Um it also um goes along with what the uh state right

with what the state has implemented. Um it does have a um potential for um violation with fees associated with it um at the discretion of the police department. I guess I butchered that enough. No, I I think that's that's correct. We're trying to fill some of the gaps that are that exist currently in state statute um for some of those unregulated or undefined devices uh while mirroring state statute as closely as possible for the devices that are regulated under that statute. So I think you summed it up perfectly.

Um so I move that we um Oh, anybody have any comments? I'm sorry. Go ahead, Kevin. Yeah. Um I I just because we maybe have some more folks in the audience who maybe didn't watch last week, I really like this uh this ordinance. I think it threads the needle well of kind of allowing and permitting uh ebikes, uh e- scooters, and other sort of e devices while also working in some accountability, right? Making sure that uh folks are operating them safely, appropriately. Um they're a great benefit to our town and uh I think it helps people get around and and shop in our shops and get to school and do the things. We also want to make sure people are safe and using them appropriately. So, I really like that that we've kind of threaded that needle, I think, in an appropriate way. I really like this a lot.

Lancing. Yeah, Kevin. I mean, Kevin summed up a lot what I was going to say. I just want to thank the parties involved. I think, you know, it's a classic example where filling those gaps is absolutely necessary. I think, you know, the state is behind the times a little bit on this. These things are absolutely prolific, fun, uh, everywhere. Um, you know, I've ridden the fast ones, the not fast ones. They're all fun. Um, but we definitely need some more regulation around them as, you know, kids are riding around on them and some of these things are super fast.

Just one more thing on top and that's education, education, education. Uh if this goes forward tonight, I think it's critical that we as a city council are out at the farmers market talking about the difference between a a one, a two, and a three and an e-mobility device versus an emoto. Um and the active transportation and also the uh the service officer in the schools as well. Uh education, education, education is critical on this because there's a lot of gray. Anybody else? I move that we um accept ordinance 2026-10.

Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Could you please come up to the mic, please?

I'm glad you brought that up. I brought my 45-year gold pin as a federal employee involved in transportation safety and engineering is the um education is the number one thing we always look for. Engineering number two and enforcement number three as in levels of effectiveness to get the public involved. The I have a question then I have a comment. I driving in here. I saw the bike paths. Will ebikes be able to ride on the bike paths? Oh, good. Cuz I get past I'm doing 18 and I got bikes going by me like I'm sitting still. Okay. Um second count. I find the I find the ordinances a lot of reiteration of the state law plus some of our ordinances, but I find it very long and cumbersome and I don't know who's going to understand it. So, I'm back to education. I would like like you saw Ivonne come up here with a cane and it's the only way she can get around and get out in nature anymore is on her ebike. Um, I don't know what you can do, but I'd like the committee to think about how we could get some cliff notes or shorter shorter ideas of what what's really important for an ebike owner to know rather than read that whole ordinance which I read which has graphs and charts and all kinds of stuff in it. So that's my only suggestion is education, education, education and simplifying. Thank you.

Thank you. Did you want to go ahead? Yeah, I just wanted to address that. I completely agree with you. Um expecting someone to read the entire ordinance and understand everything in there um is challenging. Uh we we do need to be able to address a lot of different potential situations, which is why there are so so many different regulations within the ordinance. But um our goal over the coming weeks is to craft uh very easy to read um uh both diagrams, charts, things like that that kind of explain where these devices are permitted, what types of devices are permitted, and various regulations related to them that would be most impactful for the citizens to know.

And Chief, could I um would you be able to explain to us some of the uh public outreach and public cooperation you've had in in working on this ordinance? And

so we work very closely with the Bav Bavia Active Transportation Commission. Um we've also relied heavily on guidance by Riot Illinois who is one of the primary advocacy groups for um all sorts of mobility and transportation issues and in the state of Illinois. I know that they are actively working with the state legislature on uh improving or updating some of their regulations as well. So we've had uh those different conversations. Um, moving forward in terms of education, we plan to partner again with Pavia Active Transportation Commission to provide education. Um, and we're going to also uh share information through our social media channels on our city website and uh utilize our our connections and network at the uh school district to try to share information there as well.

Yeah. And I I think this is a great opportunity to highlight how lucky we are to have um our chief of police here and our police officers. I think this is an example of great community outreach, community collaboration in trying to craft an ordinance that both meets the needs of the city and safety as well as the dealerships. I know you've also worked with uh Bogeikes uh our ebike dealer here in town as well as uh the active transportation commission. So, I also want to want to thank you for all the hard work you've done to make sure that this was wellcraftrafted and it looks like you have a a great plan moving forward to address the concerns we just heard. Anybody else? All right. If not, I move that we accept ordinance 2026-10 amending title number six, motor vehicles and traffic of the city of Battavia code of ordinances regulating e-mobility devices.

Second motion and second for the approval of ordinance 2026-010. Any further discussion? Ask the clerk to call the role, please. Baron. Hi. Leman. Hi. Lman. Hi. Pifer. Hi. Baronbach. Hi. Anderson. Hi. White. Hi. Lansancy. Hi. Malay. Hi. Malone. Hi. Wolf. Hi. Sulfa. Hi. 12. Yes. No. No. Two. Absent. Ordinance is approved.

Okay. Moving then to 9.3. Uh, ordinance 2026-037, authorization to execute a contract with Sunb Belt Reynolds Perimeter Security for $124,626. Who's got this one?

I'm going to take it. Um, we kind of bypassed cow, so I just want to give a quick brief um, synopsis of this. Um I believe it was last fall some of the police met with um this contractor vendor to kind of show us some of the safety measures that you can put in place. I don't know if you guys been to other communities where they put out the barriers to block people from potentially driving through um an event. So, we want to be prepared and um protect all those people that are coming to our events and looked into this. We put out an RFP. This was the lowest bidder. Um and they're able to provide us these mobile safety barriers that will come on a trailer. We'll be working with ESDA and um to get them set up and taken down and deployed for different events. um mainly the farmers market, but we will be able to utilize them out in front for um anything that happens in the green space in front of Peg Bond or even the fireworks. So,

where's the trailer going to be stored at? Public works. Okay. And will this replace the current barriers that are being set up for those events then? Yes. Okay.

I would say not necessarily. Um, it depends on the size of the event and whether or not the existing jersey barricades that we have could still be useful. They still certainly provide a safety benefit. Uh, depending on the size and footprint of the event, they may be uh necessary. We're going to take a look and see. Um, for events that are of a shorter duration, such as the farmers market, it's not practical on a on a weekly basis to roll out jersey barricades, set them up, then take them back down. there's a heavy manpower involvement with that in terms of utilizing a forklift. They're very heavy. They're not very mobile. Um whereas these these sorts of barricades are a lot more mobile, rapidly deployable. Um something that is a lot easier to set up in the field and cover a larger area um in an significantly lighter footprint. So

thank you. Mhm. You have some I was just curious uh any particular reason we landed on this manufacturer or was like did Sunb Belt show us a whole bunch of different ones? Was it purely money or I'm just curious. We had um Meridian Barricade come out and demonstrate, but they were more than twice Oh, wow. the cost. That's one of them I saw. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's one I've seen as well. Um, but this does the same thing and it gets us in the right direction.

And so then are we believing during the farmers market this would be sort of fully deployed um as the far, you know, the farmers market's opening up, we deploy it somewhere, then the farmer farmers market's done, we we put it back away. Is that kind of the the concept here? Okay. And all right. Um, are people able to get through this relative? I'm looking at a picture of it right now and it doesn't look very people friendly either. Um, how are we envision how are we envisioning humans interacting with this as sort of those large groups are are going through the farmers market? It would divert them more towards the sidewalks where it would be within the roadway section.

There's also pedestrian pass through points that can be uh configured in the setup. So, uh, they would be linked the the fence pieces would be linked together with some sort of a chain with a ADA, uh, ramp over that so that it's not a tripping hazard. Right. Okay. Thank you, Questions. Make a motion. I make a motion that we accept resolution 2026-37-R, authorization to execute a contract with Sunb Belt Rentals Perimeter Security for $124,626.

Motion and second for the approval of resolution 2026-037. Any further discussion from the council? I apologize. I had one more question. What was the age expectancy on something like this? Is is this something we're going to have to replace every 2 years or do we expect to get something like 8 to 10 out of this? I don't have that information in front of me. I it it is a it's much longer than 2 years. Yeah, especially being housed in a trailer, I would think 8 to 10 would be a very safe estimate and probably significantly longer than that. Thank you. Roll. Leman. Hi Lman. Hi Keeper. Hi Farenbach.

Hi Anderson. Hi White. Hi Lansancy. Hi Malay. Hi Malone. Hi Wolf. Hi Sulfa. Hi. 12. Yes. No. No. Two absent. Motion's approved. Okay. Moving to 10 city council updates. The administrator's report.

Um Laura unfortunately cannot be here tonight. She's under the weather. So um I'm going to go ahead and take this tonight. Um this morning a group of us um from police, fire, public works, HR, and administration um facilitated a small tabletop exercise. Um this is a part of our ongoing emergency preparedness work um to make sure that we're ready um for whatever comes our way. Um I can also say that the River Street Plaza, we had a precon meeting last week and we're expecting to have construction tenatively start on April 13th. Um and we're hoping to have it completed by June 15th. Um, so hopefully that all goes to schedule and we're going to have weekly check-in meetings to to keep you apprised of that. I also want to mention that on uh March 19th, there is an ESDA emergency preparedness uh community event um at 6:30 at station 2. Um you know, if you were thinking during some of the severe storms, what do I need to know? What should my family know? and whatnot. This is a really great opportunity to um learn from our experts in Betavia about how to be prepared, um how to build things like a little go bag, um what sort of things you should do if there's a tornado, a warning, a watch, and all those sorts of other things. So, that's at 6:30 on March 19th over at station 2. Um and that'll be put on by Betavia Asda. Um I also want to shout out the police department and uh Lori Bottoman for working on the um blue envelope project. That's a really cool initiative that our police department is um taking on to um make sure that um persons uh on the autism spectrum and other things like that um have um the ability to kind of hand the police department a blue envelope that may share some of their um considerations and whatnot. And um I'll let Chief go into that in a little bit if he wants to talk about that more. Um phase one permit for QT9 project on South Water Street has been issued and construction is underway there. Um you app the Historic Preservation Commission approved an approval matrix um which identifies some things that may be able to be a little more administratively processed at the um staff level um to

help make sure things are be being moving quickly. Um and then those will be shared on an HBC agenda when they are done at the staff level. Um we're welcoming Eric Sunval to the manager of electric operations position and today was his first day. I hope it went well for him. Um for city council, um save the date for the employee recognition breakfast on April 9th at Lincoln in um where we'll recognize employee milestones and our wonderful staff. Um electric division Steve Allen and Eric Sunball also held a training at public works on uh March 11th for the um ESDA staff were onboarding. So they're aware of electric safety. So should there be a situation where they're called out um they have knowledge about how to be safe around electric lines and whatnot. Um, I also want to let people know that the utility dropbox that's currently right out there um at some point is going to be moving to that roundabout in the uh um government center lot. Um we're going to put up some signage and make sure people are aware of that. That's just to kind of address some circulation issues and other things with on our our property. Um officers Li Liz Webb and Austin Robinson participated in the Polar Plunge. It is still very cold in the river. Um so we thank them for doing that for Special Olympics. um they've been great at that and um our police department has long time had a really good involvement with Special Olympics or torch run and whatnot. Um and then I also want to shout out that our police department met with the Illinois law enforcement's training standards board, also known as um who confirmed that our entire department and all of our officers are fully up to date and compliant with the state of Illinois training requirements, which are extensive. So give a round of applause to our police department for being all up to date on that. Do you want to talk a little bit about the blue envelope project and and share kind of what we've launched so far and um I think it's a really cool thing that our police department and communications team worked on. So,

sure. Right now, we've done kind of a soft launch launch of the program. Um looking at getting some more uh public marketing and and uh information out there in the very near future. Uh but this is a great initiative. It was started by the Autism Hero Project. uh kind of encouraging uh law enforcement to um work with uh individuals with cognitive uh difficulties um or uh somebody on the autism spectrum. Uh the way that this is done is through uh we provide the driver with a special uh logoed uh blue envelope where they would store their uh necessary documents, insurance, registration, driver's license, those sorts of things. And it's a really uh quickly readily uh observable sign for law enforcement upon approaching or interaction uh with an individual. A there there may be uh some communication challenges here and to really approach the situation with patience and empathy and and work through it that way. So it's it's a great initiative. It kind of reduces stress both for law enforcement and for the the uh vehicle occupant and and something that we're really excited to start pushing out very quickly. Is that something that could be used by other people with disabilities?

Yes, we'll be publishing more information about that soon. Um, I just know we've we've kind of gotten that underway a little bit and it's a really good initiative that our police department and communications team have been working on together. Question for the

uh any idea when the uh bathroom for the plaza will be delivered? Um, we have a meeting with them later this week. Um, I know it's further along than we anticipated. So, we're still working out kind of when everything quite literally fits in. Um, what I will say about the bathroom is we are expecting it to come on a flatbed and require a very large crane. Um, so we may be filming that and making it so that you can see the um the giant bathroom dropped down like a little claw toy or something like that. Um, but we're uh we had a really good precon last week and so trying to fit everything in and where it goes is going to be a bit of a challenge, but we're up for it.

White Peace Bridge railings, the new ramp, the railings. Do we have a schedule on that or any update on the schedule? Our public works director supposed to be 70 Saturday. You know, they it is not going to be done and or opened by then. Um,

I know that they're dealing with weather. they've been out there. We still have to seal the bridge deck and work on a grand opening. So once we can figure out all the pieces um with the railing and then getting that obviously the weather has to cooperate for us to do that. So um as soon as we know more, we will coordinate that and convey that information publicly, but you know construction everything changes when it we're waiting for mother nature. Thank you. All right. Uh, do we have any other business from the council? I have two things I'd like to just comment upon under the mayor's report. First of all, uh I I think you've all gotten a memo that was sent out to you about out trying to outline and this is very difficult this new bill that the governor of Illinois has proposed in which basically he's going to take away the zoning rest abilities of each city in the state of Illinois and the idea that he will allow for smaller lots and houses that can be built on adjoining pieces of property that somebody may own and you'll be able to resubdivide your lot and put a one-bedroom house on it. Uh I've now been in the last week and a half, I've been to four meetings of regional mayor's groups and everybody's howling and screaming about this. So, I'm somewhat optimistic. This thing isn't going any place real quick cuz there's all every city out there is really taken back by the idea that the state of Illinois would come in and assume their zoning responsibilities. Uh, it's amazing to me how much interest this thing seems to land in Betavia. I had three realtors from out of town show up here the other day and wanted to ask

me a couple questions because they were quote unquote scouting Betavia for potentially developable side lots that they could go to the person that owns the house and say, "Hey, would you like to sell sell off your sideyard or your backyard?" And under this new law, you may be able to get the state to reszone that for you and put up a small home. You know, I think we do a pretty good job, the council and the plan commission and kind of keeping track of what's going on, what's being built, where it's going to be built, how big it's going to be, following our zoning ordinances are in place, and to come in and kind of totally retrofit the place with all kinds of smaller, newer stuff. I can understand that the governor's idea that he's trying to get more people involved in things, but I don't think this is going to work. Uh, some of these conversations I had with a couple of realtors were they already had been out driving around over on the souththeast side of Betavia and I think they were on every place probably west of JB east of JB Nelson School going all the way to Kirk Road and they were scouting out lots that they could see that may be able to be retrofitted with a instead of a 10,000 ft lot maybe a 2,000 ft backyard where you could run a driveway to. I told him, I says, "Well, if this gets passed," I said, "I can tell you that you'll probably get some fights from the city council and the plan commission about some of these ideas cuz people have, you know, in Betavia have long enjoyed their investment of their money and their values in a in a nice home lot. And to have somebody come in and now say, "Well, we're going to redivide these and put in more housing." I'm not I don't think that's going to work here. Uh so I'll be anxious to see how it be given that the political ambitions of the governor I I'm surprised that he would make this conversation right now given

how much problem negativity he's going to get from this from probably almost every city in the state. So we'll see. But it's certainly got a lot of people stirred up and I just want to let everybody know that. The other thing is I I as most of you know I serve as chairman of the Tri City Ambulance Board and as most of you know the many years ago when we were served by notice at the then Delnor and the then community hospital in Geneva first they said they didn't want the ambulances based there anymore and then subsequently within a couple years they both kind of remade themselves and went went out of business and now we have a very nice hospital in right up on Randall Road in Geneva serves all three of us and they do a great job and that was a step in progress. But the Tri City ambulance ended up coming to the cities and so the fire chiefs agreed at that time that we would put these ambulances in the fire departments. There was initially one in each one of the three towns with a fourth one up in St. Charles as kind of a backup. and uh they are manned by a private contractor that is hired and we've had the same one here since it was started paramedic services of Illinois. We currently have uh 32 employees working for Tri City Ambulance and we've given the call volume that we have we've had to increase the the number of ambulances. So now we basically have six, two in each town. And the way the system works, if if the ambulances get real busy and we're down to only one left, that one changes quarters to the fire station in Geneva on the west side off of Randall Road, which then puts it central to the three towns if if there's another one needed. But uh last year the Battavia Fire Department responded to 5,369

calls of which over 70% of them were ambulance. And that just gives you a idea of our call volume. I know St. Charles had a little bit higher number and they had about the same percentage as did Geneva. So, this is a service that we we have and we do bill you if you we give you an ambulance ride because the costs of this are significant and uh it it's working very well. But uh I just wanted to share with you the call volumes. And so I was in Chicago with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning recently and they were analyzing some of the populations of the cities in the region. And uh there's a lot of cities and the 200 I think it's 284 that surround the city of Chicago in the sixcount area. Many of the cities are losing population. uh they're going down, but there's a few of us that are going up. And Betavia, Geneva, and St. Charles are three of the towns that are are going up. And Betavia's our percentages are rolling pretty high. And as I think I've shared with you before, between 2022 and 20 26, we will have added about 900 new living units to Betavia. And the one thing that is impacting us and they're we're finding this out in the other towns too is we are we we've taken in now in Betavia six senior living communities and they're great to have and you know River Rain up here I can't say enough for the nice things that I've seen happen there. But uh they they have a demand on us and it's kind of a quiet demand. They don't play noise or make noise or yell and scream at each other. Everybody's kind of peaceful and calm, but they do need the ambulance with great regularity. And so that's where our call volume really shot up as did St. Charles was telling me they had the same experience that their ambulance is

going up because of all the senior living communities we have here. So, I just wanted to put that all in your ideas in your head as to what's going on here because the Alderman Wolf represents myself with myself on the Tri City Ambulance Board and we have two aldermen or in my case the mayor from each one of the towns. Uh it's a six member board and we generally get along pretty good and get a lot of things decided and whatever and we meet every 3 months I think it is. Yeah, we meet uh four or five times a year and uh the fire chiefs obviously are the ones that kind of run the show for us and everybody does a great job, but it is a an increasing volume of of command in the in that business. And so we've got we've got the older people here and they're great to have and I'm not encouraging us to do anything but try to serve them and do nice things, but that is a demand on us. uh the boys in Chicago have told me that they're now trying to calculate what's going to be the increase in population in these suburban communities. Now, there's some places where the populations are falling, including the city of Chicago supposedly, and there's a number of the suburban areas where the also the populations are falling, but there's a few pockets and uh one of them is the tri cities, Betavia, Geneva, and St. Charles. We're going up, we're not going down. And I I guess the fastest growing city in the region is Huntley right up on the Kain Mckenry County border up at Route 47 and 90. Uh that's got several Dell Webb senior communities in it and a bunch of other stuff going on. So they're the they're the fastest growing one at the moment. But we've got a lot of lot of population that they're suggesting that Betavia's population in the 2030 census will be over 30,000 people.

What's the source of funding for the ambulance service? Pardon? What is the source of funding for the ambulance service? Well, we charge for every one of the calls and then we we each one of the cities shares a a small percentage of that and you know every now and then we get somebody that can't make their pay their bill or whatever and we kind of have to work around that but there's there's a lot of calls. I mean we're really popping the calls. So, uh and as I say the the 32 employees we have working for us now up there on the ambulance are not city employees. They're working for the contractor that we've hired and we've just renewed their contract the other day. So, we're good to say. You want to add anything?

Yeah, I wanted to add to I'm glad you brought that up about the funding. Um, one of the things that is a real bonus to being a consolidated unit between the Tri Cities is the savings. Um, for Betavian St. Charles, it's over a million dollars a year that we save versus having it inhouse. If we had firemen that we paid for the firemen, their pension, all their benefits, we would spend a million dollars a year more to have the same staffing levels on the ambulances. Geneva is just under a million and St. Charles is over a million. What's the issue?

If it's selfunded and you're charging for the service, is it an issue for taxpayers? It's a good thing for the city of Battavia that we are part of that and and not doing it on our own. The fact that the mayor is bringing this up, is it an issue for taxpayers if this is a a a privately funded situation where it it's part of the fire department and etc. But if they're being charged for the service except for the few who can't pay, okay, there's a lot that gets written off every year. I think is is that an issue for taxpayers? No, I think it's something to be aware of and and to know that that's all I believe the reason he brought that up.

I mean, I would tell you the way we run it is cheaper than if it was done otherwise. M I know you

Yeah, I would just like to comment on this. We've talked about this before and and we really don't know. Thanks for bringing that up. Uh you said that there's there's revenue because we charge fees and obviously those fees are increasing enormously because we're having over 5,000 calls 5,369 calls and you just said that the money we charge fees but the cities get a small percentage of that. I understand what you're saying Allan. How do we know that the profits being made? Now, I think Tri City Ambulance is a uh a wise thing that we do. It's the outsourcing of the uh staff, the the ambulance uh paramedics outsourcing that. We don't know how much they're making cuz I've tried to get that and was told that's prop proprietary. I think we need to look at that and I would like to put have this added to a discussion if uh someone would join me so we could have further discussion on this. Tony, we can give you that right off of the budget from Tri City Ambulance. It's a contract with PSI. It's listed in a dollar amount and you can divide out how many employees there are. That's the contracted amount.

It's real easy to figure out. I would like to see that. I've been asking for that information for years now and I was told that proprietary. So, you can tell me how much PSI is getting. We can tell you how much the contract is that that Tri City Ambulance pays PSI for the services they provide. I've see that. I've been asking for that and I was told that that is proprietary and we we wouldn't be able to get that. Give me the

cuz it didn't make sense to me when the paramedics that are hired by PSI were being paid more than our uh starting uh firefighters and given uh large bonuses. it just, you know, a big big red flag went up in my opinion and I have yet to be be able to get uh solid answers that convince me that we should continue outsourcing. The most vital service this city provides and the the hour of greatest need of every one of our citizens, the people that show up at the door are not even city's employees. They don't get a pension. They don't get the benefits that the receptionist gets. I think this is a huge issue that's been and and don't get me wrong, Tri City Ambulance is an excellent thing. It's the outsourcing of the paramedics that we have to take a look at cuz I think we might be losing money to be honest with you.

I don't I don't want to get into So I would I if someone will join me, I would like to add this to a for further discussion. I'll join you for no other reason than when I got elected. My biggest question was how does a single entity hold on to that contract for 38 or whatever years? That to me needs to be at least examined. I think we the board just for transparency purposes. They've done a good job. I that's fine. But I mean I work in the public RFP space. Anyone who holds a contract for 38 years. I I'm just saying from a pure transparency standpoint, we should look at it and make sure we're all good. for bid I don't know probably four or five times since I've been on you know for a multi-year contract.

So so PSI's revenue is not just what they're collecting getting from the fees from the city. I am Ambulance bills the fees to the the the service recipient. Then they collect whatever they collect off of that depending on how much gets written off. If it's Medicare, Medicaid paid insurance. Let me see how much how much uh I'll bring you a copy of the budget to the next time we bring this up at a meeting. I appreciate I'll bring you a copy of the budget. Thank you.

Yeah, I just think we're getting a little farfield here and uh I think we have multiple other folks who would love to see love to learn more about this and get all the information on the table so we can kind of make an informed decision and and have our debate. It's important that the council understand you know what the volume of business is for the ambulance service in Batavia. These days it's up there, way up there. And so far it's being handled professionally. I don't get many people ever call and complain about the fire or the ambulance or the police department. Everybody is quite complimentary. So anyway, yeah, we'll continue to to discuss the calls are increasing so much.

Changing topic slightly. Are we still going to have a cow meeting discussion on the Illinois Build Act? We had discussed that previously and it wasn't on the last week's cow agenda probably because it was pretty full. But is that still coming up at the next cow on the what? I mean for the Illinois build act. Yeah. If there was multiple older people request we can put it on the next cow. What Laura wanted to do was try to get everything condensed into something that she can present. You know we've all had updates. I think three of them that I know of that were sent out to us, maybe four. And then any other information that they had available.

And next week, um myself, Laura, um Alder person Lman and Mayor are going down to Springfield for the Metro West Drive. Um we anticipate we'll probably hear about this bill amongst other things. Um so we can kind of when we come back, we'll report kind of what we found and what we've learned while in Springfield. Um and so that's coming up next week. Let's put it as an agenda item on the meeting. The next meeting after that, next cow meeting after it.

Next week is the municipal drive down to Springfield to talk about legislation and the various groups mayor's caucus and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and everybody that has the mayors in it says everybody's going. They think it may be the biggest collection of mayors in Springfield, maybe in the history, to get down there and talk about this bill. So, it's not being h taken lightly by what's going on. So, I can tell you more about it after I go through it. Yes.

Yeah. You know what? Just one final note on the bill. So, it's I I think it may be a simpler conversation than we like to think. I'm just looking at who donated to the politicians who propose this bill. Um, you know, their top contributors are the the uh Carpenters Union and then also the Illinois State Realtors. So, I mean, it's not surprising. I I also donated to those politicians so I don't know what Jim I like I don't know if that means much. Sorry. Did you have something else? I'll just say though for that discussion I've actually received a fair amount of interest from citizens who I think would like to be, you know, speak on that process. Positive interest actually. So it'd be a good to have that conversation.

It gets passed. I'm sure we'll spend several nights down here trying to figure out ways to work around it. I guess not necessarily. I've heard a lot of people who are um basically in favor of it. So there's it's it's um there's mixed interest. Yeah. Yeah. You take a piece of property that you have no money that you owe on. you can turn around and sell it and put up an 8-unit building on what you had a single family house on. That's an interesting thing to think about. That's not the only interest involved. We've heard a lot of people who want to have it's going to be

perhaps we can save this discussion for uh for the day it's on the agenda. I've stirred the crowd enough here tonight. I'll call move item number 11 which is the adjournment because we got to adjourn. All in favor? I.

And now we're going to have a special committee of the whole meeting uh immediately following the city council meeting. And I will turn this over to change seats with Oldin Wolf and he's the chairman of the No. Still got speakers at the school. This little speaker going. Oh yeah. Couple

minute recess and then we'll start. Who's this guy?

I think he's my taxi later. I just collect my This person said something like

I actually connected once So you get the sergeant um I want to kind of apply for that. He was like a vote. Is that a voted location? Is that he wasn't? He was originally going there. It's my brother-in-law.

He's talking. Yeah, he's going back. Oh, look at it's like he's perching. You know,

I have a quick question for you since Laura's not here. I've gotten two of these from Christian No, I'm not. That's why I was wondering why. So, it doesn't matter. Right. Okay. Cuz I'm like I don't think I ever So, but that's who it is. Okay. Okay.

Okay. I think he was kidding. I just thought maybe there was some thing I didn't know about.

I think we should discuss and then let's discuss some more and then the idea is that But just being my never get it done in the time we're supposed to. So I I think my is going on and all the time isn't allowing you.

Yeah. the the law. It's one of the two and I don't Yeah, I've wrote so much stuff over the last Well, that's the next Well, no. The next thing we have to do is 297. Okay.

Well, do you want people sign up? So, we at least have names spelled right. Not tonight, but from now on, let's do this. That'll just be simpler.

I never put it in, but I could name it. Everyone's freaked out, right? Can you see the mental?

Oh god, it was ugly. That was also a very volunteer to give this do in 3 years in like 6 months. All right. So I'm like, dude, come at it. Get a bus. All right. I heard Bob, you're up. Grab your seat. city

like to call to order the special committee of the home meeting for March 16th, 2026. Uh first item on our agenda this evening is roll call. Arza absent. Lansancy here. Beck absent. Malay here. Malone here. Wolf here. Sulfa here. Baron here. Leman here. Lowman here. Peeper here. Fenbach here. Anderson White here. 12 present, two absent.

Um, just a reminder to everybody that's here, if you come up to speak, make sure you can see the little green light on the microphone and you can hear it in the background. That way we know it's getting broadcast and recorded. Um, up next is item three, which is item be uh to be removed, added, or changed. I do not think we have anything. Okay. Um, and then matters for the public for items not on our agenda, which I doubt anybody is here for anything not on the agenda. Um, and then we'll move right into item five, which is our regular agenda, which is a discussion on preliminary IRP public comment session. And what we'll do here is we're going to have presentation that Max is going to give us. We may have a little discussion before that and then we'll go right to public comment uh to listen to what you have tonight.

All right. Thank you, uh, chairperson. Wolf. Um, thank you all for being here tonight. Especially thank you to the many people behind me. Um, this is not a simple topic, but it's one that's very important and one that um will help help shape the future of the the city of Bavia. Um, so the purpose of tonight's agenda and and discussion is to give staff direction on where we go from here and to give, you know, guidance on how based on what we've presented as part of the preliminary IRP, where we want to take our final. Um and there was a lot of really good actionable comments both from council, the public, um people from um all levels of uh knowledge and from experts in their field to people that um just have some concerns about the plan. So um I'll dive a little bit into all the public comment, what the the gist of it is. Um but tonight we'll talk about kind of where we are now, where we're at in the process of putting together an IRP, but also um the context of our additional um electric studies that we're conducting. Um I mentioned that down at the bottom. We're also working on cost of service studies, which looks at how much does it actually cost us to provide the services we provide to our um various rate payers. We're also working on an infrastructure study to look at our physical grid that we know um is both aging um and we'll also need to adapt to increasing electrification long term. Then we're also eventually going to get into rate design. We've had the same rate structure for I think at least you know 10 plus years. Um and for the most part had rates the same for the last 10 plus years. So we'll talk about those eventually as well. Um that's my way of saying there's a lot more still to come on this project. Um there will be numerous other touch points and check-ins throughout the next year um until we get to a product that everyone on council is satisfied with and you'll obviously have um it's your vote it's your plan your vote um at the end of this. So um that direction is important to help make sure that what we're

bringing back to you reflects what you want to see in a plan and whatnot. So like I said where we are here is in October we completed our preliminary IRP. We released that um on Halloween and and opened it through the end of the year. Um we spent about two months working on the Q&A responses and and putting those together and then also compiling the the public comment. Tonight, we're having council discussion with this. Um from here, what you can expect is staff will take all of the feedback council and and the community has provided and we'll work with Brattle to make sure that what we're bringing back to you um and the conversations we have throughout 2026 are continuing to inform that plan. Um, another thing we'll do is issue a RFI to actually get some ideas of what things could cost, what big technologies out there. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about that today. And then ultimately in 2026, we will be seeking to finish up this IRP, finish up all the other studies, um, and go from here. I do also want to add a little bit of context as to where we're at and, um, what this document is, what an IRP is. Um, it is a planning document. It is an integrated resource plan. um it does not commit the city of Battavia um to build anything or to make any final decisions based off of an IRP. City council retains the full authority as they do with um nearly everything to amend and adjust at their their wish. Um and this upcoming all source RFI seeks to identify market pricing and available technologies. It is not an authorization for or for construction um in any way, shape or form. Um throughout the year, we'll also be coming back to council on a more regular basis with more specific questions as we put together this final IRP. We may have more specific questions about um topics that we'll we'll address with you all kind of as we go throughout the year. Um and you can also expect that with a final IRP, you you can expect it to be more robust and built out um based on the feedback and the

comments both from you all but also the community as a whole. I also mentioned we're doing the cost of service study, infrastructure study, rate design and what and all those those are still ahead. So those are being worked on at this time. We'll bring those forward to you kind of as they're being uh put together. And then things you decide as part of the integrated resource plan or things you decide as part of the cost of service or rate study may cause us to do a revision of an IRP, may cause us to do a revision of the electric infrastructure study. So if we aggressively promoted a certain piece of technology or something that might shape how the load changes which could shape how the infrastructure needs to change as well. Um so it's an iterative process where multiple things build on each other. Um and then this is all designed to comply with public act 1040485 also known as the municipal and cooperative electric utility transparency or transparent planning act. So we received actually 54 public comments. I got the one to you that um I inadvertently missed. Um there was also a petition with about 290 signatures on it and we had comments open for 60 days. Um the community petition had about 90 Bavia resident signatures and 200 non-Bavia resident signatures. Um that petition called on council to learn from Prairie State and refuse any recommendations relying on fossil fuels. Um require the IRP to consider future electrification opportunities, residential, commercial, and industrial. um listen to residents willingness to pay modest increases for more renewable energy and then demand flexible modular clean energy alternatives including solar battery uh storage and demand response programs.

Where did that get put out? Why do we have over double non betavians? Um that petition was submitted to us um on the December 9th meeting. Um I can certain if you haven't seen it I can certainly show no I remember I just I don't remember it being double non Batavians and I just curious why interesting

um so in terms of what we heard from public comment um the most salient theme was opposition to fossil fuels and a natural gas reciprocating internal combustion estrogen um here on they'll refer to it as a reip um this was by far the strongest theme most people cited uh prairie state lessons um climate inequitable job acts, compliance risks, also known as SEA, stranded asset concerns, which basically means we own something that isn't super useful. Um, considerations for climate goals, um, and the narrow cost margin as part of that and ultimately encouraging us to reject a new natural gas uh, facility. There's also about 28 comments in favor of support for renewable energies and storage. Um, this was primarily solar plus storage, battery energy storage systems, wind, and other distributed resources. Um, and then this also uh pointed a lot to the July or the June 2025 community survey showing a plurality of respondents willing to pay a premium for cleaner energy. Um, and many comments echoed this preference. There's also significant enthusiasm for demand side program management, things like time of use rates, uh, smart thermostats, uh, electric vehicle managed charging, etc. Many people viewed this as a lowrisk strategy um to reduce load. And then multiple commenters said that um demand side management should come before we look at any new supply side additions. If we think about it in the context of our problem, any reductions in demand reduces what we need to purchase on the market. What we purchase on the market is our main exposure. So reducing the amount we purchase reduces that exposure. Um a number of commenters also noted that the the data center was not explicitly included within the IRP analysis. Um that's primarily because we will not be procuring power for them. So we're not needing to buy power like we do for our residents and then sell it to them um at that price. They're buying it off the open market. Um but um nonetheless, that's something that will be addressed in the cost of service and infrastructure study um because there are provisions in that contract that do

contain um things like a distribution fee and whatnot. There's also about 20 comments about the the NPA and PC transition risk and what that entails. Um commenters drew parallels to the the PAC experience and what we're all uh working through right now. Um under SEAP PAC needs to have emissions uh by the late 2030s and be emissions free by the mid2040s. Um the main issue is our NPA bond obligations go through 2041. Um so if you think about it this way, you bought a house, you can't live in the house, you need a place to live. And so that's a situation that could come in the the the 2040s as uh the state and others um uh implement SEA and whatnot. There's also the energy policy alignment. Uh commenters noted that the IRP's key observations uh are are focused a lot on reliability and affordability. Um, we do believe the draft addresses all these points, but we're definitely going to work on how we can make those uh considerations more salient for the final IRP um and better uh align the IRP with city council's energy policy. So, you can expect that to come as part of the final IRP. Um, a broader analysis and cost concern. Um, multiple residents requested these hybrid portfolios which may uh look at multiple different types of resources. That's something that we've already started having conversations with Bradle about and something that will be included within the final IRP as a consideration of hybrid portfolios. So that may be a combination of wind and solar, wind and battery, reset battery, whatever that may be. Those are things that we'll look into as part of the uh the IRP based on your comments and feedbacks. And then also there was a small number of commenters who did uh support a natural gas approach and a resip um viewing them as a cost-effective hedge against rising capacity costs. Um, a lot of people did suggest a wait and see approach as well. So, I sent this out to you when I sent to the um the the IRP Q&A, but um I'm trying to address this from some some five guiding questions that are not

small questions, but get to some of the fundamental direction that we can take from here. Um, I want to say we don't need decisions tonight. Uh we really want you to have a robust extended conversation that you feel allows you all to understand what we're talking about fully, ask whatever questions you may have um and come to an informed decision based on both what you know, what staff is sharing, but also community input. Um so the intent there is um we'll have these discussions and um we would intend to continue to put them on a special committee of the holes kind of as we move forward after city council meetings uh to continue that um that discussion until we come to what we need for direction uh going forward. So before I jump into guiding questions, any initial questions from city council. All right. Okay.

Okay.

So I'll present these five questions and then we can kind of go in whatever order you feel is appropriate. Um this is your discussion and your conversation. Um so question one, how should the city's how should the final weigh the city's own energy policy priorities? you know, council adopted an energy policy back in September 2025 with four priorities: resiliency, sustainability, affordability, and adaptability. Um, as we discussed, um, we're going to be working on better aligning the IRP, especially on climate and sustainability considerations with portfolio portfolio evaluations. Um, some community stakeholders, Alderwoman Beck and others, have shared ideas about how we can do that. So, we're looking through those and thinking about how that information could be shared in a more uh digestible format. Um, we're also definitely going to be evaluating options against measures like emissions versus status quo emissions, um, climate policy considerations and others. And then we're also going to be grading everything back against the energy policy framework. Um, these options for council are just kind of some broad ideas to get you thinking about different directions we can take. It's not the only three options by any mean, and I don't want you to think about it that way. Um, so we can continue what we're doing and be grading those against the four four uh priority uh energy policy framework. Um, we can identify additional climate or policy criteria you would like to see evaluated such as what an emissions trajectory could look like or what's the pathway to siege of compliance. Um, and then we can add sustainability and resiliency as supplemental criteria along what we currently do. Guiding question two, does council want the final to model a broader range of clean portfolios? Um, opposition to the natural gas reciprocating engine was one of the strongest themes throughout the feedback. Um, and the resip, this was a point mentioned does represent a roughly 1% cost savings over status quo. The all source RFI, um, request for information will help us define our needs, capacity, energy, flexibility, resiliency, etc. Um

and it'll let vendors ultimately provide options that meet our needs. So we define our needs and then we see what meets those needs. Um this may also help identify hybrid technologies or new technologies that are um becoming more prevalent uh within the PJM market. And then staff also do plan to explore hybrid portfolios. We've had those conversations already with Brattle. Um and then we would want to know what are those priorities in a hybrid portfolio. are these are the resource types council wants specifically modeled or looked at and then you know confirming staff should explore hybrid models and portfolios um retain the current analysis scope or request additional specific modeling um on specific portfolios um to supplement what we've already done so far. Question three, how aggressively should council pursue demand side management programs in the near term? Um these are things like time of use, smart thermostats, EV managed charging. Um time of year, so time of use rates, smart thermostats and EV managed charging uh may be cost-effective options, but there's defin we need to do some additional research and modeling based on our specific scenario. Um implementation also requires a procuring additional software. um that's something that we would have to do in order to be able to implement a demand side program to be able to get hourly rates and and these sorts of measurements that we need to actually fill these uh programs. Um and then we're also working on applying for a grant through the state uh Illinois Finance Authority that's designed to help small utilities do transition planning under SEA. So we think we'll be able to put in a really good application and and hope for the best to help get some funding to help support those demand response transitions. So options for council prioritize and fasttrack demand response programs um potentially reducing the size or urg urgency of supply side additions um treat demand side programs as supplementary um pursue in parallel but don't uh delay any generation decisions or aggressively pursue software

platforms and billing systems needed to support um these demand side programs. Guiding question four, how should the final IRP address the Nima/Pac transition risk? When I mentioned PAC, that's Prairie State Energy Campus um downstate. Um PAC must have emissions by the late 2030s and and be emissions free by 2040s. Um NIMPA's bond obligations do run through 2041. That's the mortgage on the power plant that we own. Um under our contract, NPA, not Betavia, is responsible for replacement procurement energy. NA is responsible for providing the city 55 megawatts uh firm capacity around the clock. If PAC is not providing that, they go and procure that from the market and ultimately those costs are passed on to the city of Bavia and our rate payers. Um the current IRP does address general capacity needs once PAC has output. Um but it did not fully address the scenario at this time. Um options for council are to direct staff to identify specific triggers that may warrant uh actions or additional dis discussions or studies. um include a full replacement plan in the final IRP beyond just general capacity analysis included. Um or include transition scenarios but defer procurement decisions until certain triggers may be reached like a capacity announcement, closure dates, um anything like that? And then guiding question five, what should the scope of the all source RFI be? Um so staff will be preparing um an RFI and and we'll bring that back to you before we uh distribute it. um to identify market pricing and also available technologies. Um generally speaking in talking to Bradle and our consultants, they recommend setting criteria and then using that criteria to grade policies and let um the open market delivery considerations contracted versus ownership. Um those are all things you

can ask for and look for within an RFI process. um if we do an RFI, which we're intending to, um the public act states that we may include an RFI results within our proposal. Um and if we choose not to, we have to explain why not. Um there my intent is to make those public. Um if the if it contains like market information, we may um look at that, but likely we're going to be able to make that public as part of the uh the IRP final discussion and and postings. Um and many utilities do issue an all all source RFI and they tend to adopt things like performance requirements, emissions reduction targets um or PJM capacity values. Um so options are issue an all source RFI to all technologies and simply let the market decide or uh present what's available and at what price. Issue an RFI focused exclusively on non-renewable re or non fossil fuel resources, renewable storage and demand side options only. Um, one question I have for you is where does city council view um, nuclear? Nuclear is likely to be extremely expensive and probably cost prohibitive, but nonetheless um, we'd like some guidance on how council views nuclear generally. Um, and then there's also an option of issuing a technology neutral RFI with defined per performance criteria. So things like emissions reduction, a siege of compliance pathway and cost caps. So to to wrap up this um the IRP is a planning document. It does not authorize construction of anything. Um the staff is seeking council's direction on five guiding questions so we can make sure that what we're working on and putting together and bringing back to you all reflects what you would like to see and the questions you have. All options remain on the table until city council decides otherwise. Um, the final IRP will incorporate both tonight's direction and the direction from city council, um, and additional analysis.

And then, like I said, throughout 2026, you can expect additional check-ins as we get to specific questions throughout the final IRP that warrant additional uh, back and forth with city council. Um, and then again, once we have that final IRP drafted, we'll go through a whole another public review process that we did already um, with this past one. um public engagement sessions, Q&A, uh council discussions, revisions, and whatnot. Um and then I also want to say to all of those who submitted feedback and have taken the time throughout this project, um the comments were really good and and we're able to do things based on those. Um so I just want to say thank you for all the comments that are um actionable and thoughtful and um the the level of expertise we have in our community some is um is awesome. So that's what I have. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have throughout this process and tonight. Um so does anybody on the council have any questions before we go to public comment? Fairbach.

Um you know just a quick question. Um I I feel like somewhat there's this big question around this whole thing that we're just not getting in in the selection process which is where is this thing going to go, right? I mean, the these these rice power plants, they're not small, right? Um, and I feel like the the location conversation, an easy part of this as well. Um, because I think it does play into what we select ultimately as well, right? How much space is available? I I know when it comes to the industrial sites that we have, we don't have a lot of industrial sites left, do we? I think we have like two left, right?

Yeah. So, so I mean, so there's that part of this as well. Oh, I think we need to kind of just acknowledge reality and pull that into this. Uh, that's the only thing that kind of jumps jumps to mind. Uh, the other part was we did have an ask for a citizen advisory panel. I I know we have people who are really interested in this. Um, they do reach out a lot. I know se several of us have met with them individually. Um, I'm not sure maybe we need to call that out as as part of the discussion. I know we have that implied here with situations like this, but um, just just an FYI, we have that asked on the table as well. So to the question of location, the RFI would address um what are the considerations for where and what types of size you need, what connection to the grid um and other things. So that's something that is part of an RFI. Um but to specifically identify locations when um this is a plan. Um, what we would likely do if council did choose to move forward with any specific resource is to study that specific resource and do detailed modeling of that, look at procurement, look at where we would put it. Um, but that's certainly a conversation we can have. We're going to speak to the other ask about the task force um citizen advisory group whatever name you want to give it but as alder person fair spoke about we have several of us have met with individuals in the community who are really interested in having different perspectives come to the table um people that are in the industry people that might not be in the industry but different voices at the table to dissect this information and make it more palable to those of us on council. I I will go on record and say I am not an expert in this field. I've learned a lot these past two months, but that's 3 months. That's not that much compared to people who are experts in this field. Um

and so personally, I would feel more comfortable having people that know more about this and explaining this and what you do and in your presentations that you give us are very helpful. um I don't think it's bad to have more people look at it and give us even further information on it.

So we've met with a number of groups as well and had a number of conversations. Um this is a council decision about how you want to go about this. Um, one thing that I in our meetings with with the citizens, I did bring up that from my understanding, small groups is a part of how we got into the Prairie State mess. Um, and how council ultimately wound up doing committees as a whole and getting rid of smaller committees. Um, I obviously was not here for that. Um, but those are conversations that you can have as city council about how you want to go about this, whether you want to put together um, with the environmental commission or otherwise. Um, that's obviously your call.

That's my understanding. A commission is different than a task force. Um, however you would like to approach it is ultimately it it's council's decision about what they feel they need as part of this IRP process.

My understanding with the task force, they have a charter specific to this project that outlines, you know, the timeline of how long these discussions will take place. um identifies the objectives and they come back to council with some of us involved from what I've been told it can look like a few key staff members a few council members some resident rate payers and including individuals that are experts in those fields of energy engineering environmental um and those of us on council that have that background as well would be preferred Um, and these individuals would meet and depending on what the charter states and what we come up with as a council, then they could come back to us and and really get do the deep dive and and um lay out the important facts for us to understand. I don't know how council feels about that. I I'm supportive of this. I think it's important for us to be more informed. More information is good for me. So far,

I'm fine with uh getting more information and having, you know, public comment, public input, but I mean, this is what our job is. It's what city council's job is. We make the decisions. It's not them. So, I don't really think that as Max just alluded to, having these bunch of smaller committees um being formed for specific projects, especially one that doesn't really have a definitive start time or end time is not something that I think we should do. I have no problem with getting input from, you know, anybody who has expertise in this in the community and having them come to every meeting. That's what they're that's what we're here for. I mean, we have a lot of people here today that are probably going to want to talk and give us information. I don't see why we would have to have a task force created for this. I just I don't see it and I don't know. Then we have this situation where we have non-elected individuals who would be trying I mean who would be I don't know what their role would be exactly.

So I don't that's why I don't want a task force. They can everybody can come down to committee meetings and provide all the input and information they want. Can I just respond since you kind of asked a question? Um what I was understanding that it to be is not um giving us the recommendations but giving us more information for us to make that decision a better informed decision for council. We would we would make the decision which I believe that the that the community can give to us by simply emailing calling or just coming to meetings and giving their own presentations on what their views are.

Yeah. Um I mean this is a daunting task. This is a lot you're asking of us. Um, specifically on the idea of a commission or a task force, I think there is value in there. Uh, you know, we rely on commissions for, uh, active transportation. We rely on commissions for historic preservation. We rely on commissions for tree preservation. I think it makes sense for us to have sort of some sort of standing commission that's meeting forever that is thinking about our energy policy. We own a utility. We run a utility and that's a big task. We should have some people who kind of every month sit down and think about is our utility running the way it should. Um we own part of a coal power plant. We're digging dirt out of the ground and burning it. Um we're thinking of buying part of a nuclear plant. Not really thinking about it, but like conceptually thinking about it. We're thinking about some pretty heavy infrastructure. I think it makes sense and I think it's prudent to create um an additional mechanism to provide not only community input, special interest input, uh uh elected official input and um you know we do that all the time. So on that um regarding our four questions, I I assume we're going to circle back to each of those and have individual discussions. Okay. Um because that each one of these could be hours long and there's a lot of opinions that go into it. Um, the last comment I'll make is that process is as important as the technology, right? What we decide to put in here is important, but also how we get there and that we ensure that the people who have entrusted us with um with their their power and their electricity um have as much say in it. So, I think it's really important that we take this public comment component of it um pretty seriously and we really consider kind of what the community's gone out and and said to us on that

you finally open it up for the public. Sir, I I explained this at the beginning of the meeting that we were going to have a presentation from Max. We were going to discuss what we wanted to discuss. How close are you to being done? Because what I'm hearing is totally ineffective. What's happened in the last You can't speak unless you come up to the mic. Moving forward. Actually, you can't speak because it's not your meeting. Yes. Not public. When we are ready to take public comment, why was I invited? When the public 90 days, there'll be a moment. There will be a moment later. You submitted a moment later. We follow Robert's rules of order and you are out of order.

Okay. So there's no chance of us speaking for another we say to be here like 7 7:30 instead coming up by 9:00 and there's no chance of us world sir you got some we were here 3 and 1/2 hours last week so this is what happens in a public process and we will we will listen not much effective things have happened in the last 90 days that's what I'm hear

thank you um I fully support both a commission and the for the long run because yes, we do own a public utility that's worth quite a bit of money. Uh there's a lot of decisions that have to come up. I have a full-time job. I don't do this full-time. This is a big commitment uh to for me to and and it's it's a struggle to to stay on top of things. I'll be the first. This IRP, we should have an ad hoc committee. Again, following Robert's rules, we'd have standing committees, an ad hoc committee to address this specifically uh a committee of 14 trying to uh you know, it it's not feasible for us to have as uh uh as close in communication with the bridal group who's uh supposedly advising us and we're paying a lot of money for it. I think a commission or not a commission, an ad hoc task force, if you will, uh would be more uh better suited to have those more intimate conversations and communications with the Brow Group to produce the best possible IRP that our community deserves. So, I would fully support a um a a a commission for the long term, but also um an ad hoc committee uh task force uh for specifically for the IRP.

Um thank you. Um Max, if I'm understanding, this is the first IRP that we'll be having to put out, but in a couple years, we're going to be going through this exact same process again. Is that correct? State law requires municipal utilities to do an IRP every 5 years. So yes, we will do this at least in 5 years if not sooner if council directs us otherwise.

Okay. So the way I look at is this is going to be an ongoing thing and kind of along the lines of what um older person Malone mentioned. I think you know for us to have a commission that will act as an adviser to us very similar to our active transportation. Um, I think that's going to be effective because these are people that can come in and out and they can provide what their recommendations are as we go through different aspects of this. Um, so I think that's something that, you know, as a council we could really take a look at. Um, you know, I the email that Alder person Barza sent, um, you know, she definitely had some concerns about that and I think that in the where we're at as far as the discussion to put together a task force for where we're at, um, I think the commission is going to be more suited because this is something we're going to need moving forward to support our utility

paper. I would also add to that um I feel like a commission could be useful for the identity next studies as well with infrastructure and with um rate studies and like that because that is going to be a very continual process. Would they even be possibly useful for the other utilities like make it a broad utility commission so that they would have more of a regular scope of things because there will be a bit of a lull between this process and the next IRP a few years down the line. So widening that a little bit to cover different aspects of our utility which is a fairly significant um like investment as many have said having an inside track as well being able to work more directly with staff provides a lot of benefits and um we've had a lot of success with our existing commission so there's certainly an opening for it I think although it is another meeting for

I just feel like that starting a task force it's going to slow things out so as we kind of put in the commission to kind of work forward with these different aspects aspects that come through on that. It is a lot of information but you know it's it it's reading that we have to do we got elected for that. I was also going to note a commission could be useful for informing the public of these things being an arm of that as well much as the bike commission environmental commissions have taken on that role so they could kind of offload a little work as well perhaps else I think now we'll take some public comment so if you can come up one at a time all we need is your name and then for the record and then uh give us your statement Carlton Woody, 1156 Pine Street, right here in Betavia. Uh, first of all, if I read correctly, over there, Prairie State is good until 2045. Nobody's going to shut it down before then, unless the

legislate as where where are we sitting today? Unless somebody changes something. Today we're under contract to purchase power from there till 2042, I believe. And by CJ, it's 2045. It has to be carbon neutral. Yes. And it has to have emissions in 2038. 2038 it has to cut them in half. And so that's the period 2038 to 2041. That represents a risk specifically. That's the biggest risk so far.

Okay. I'm from pre- NIMPA days. So part there was a lot of discussion back then and one of it was we borrowed a lot of money. I think three little bonds of 75 million each. Where where are we now uh at now? How much do we owe? And is this going to be part of the discussion how we're going to pay those bonds back or am I missing something here? Those bonds are paid through your your electric rates that you pay. So right now the rates that you pay includes both electric costs, transmission costs, infrastructure costs, and the bond costs. And so bond payments are part of our NIPA contract. And those bond payments, our mortgage on the power plant runs through 2041. After 2041, we are not making bond payments. We're

That's 2021. 2041. 2041. Yes. That's when the bonds end. part of the discussion how we're going to pay off the bonds or whatever this new initiative will be. Right? If we have to pay for both, pardon me, if we have to pay for both, then that will be a problem. If we're still paying for power from Prairie State, it'll go on just like it is today.

Okay. Um, and I've heard about various ideas about a commission and how to approach this. I guess I should stay. Um, the mayor has pointed this out before. We're a strong council and a weak mayor. Sorry, mayor. A weak mayor form of government. The other thing is my understanding not to offend anybody administration's job is to answer questions to the council, give the council information and um not exactly to try to direct the council. I say I'm not this seems like a a slam like trying to take some of the authority away from the council. This is yours. Of course, you know that maybe I'm speaking to the prayer to the choir. The other thing, if you have a commission now, I'm going to stick my nose in it. This is so big I can't even reach that high because it's going to be long-term. Whatever's decided, the residents of Battavia might have to live with for 25 years, whatever's decided. And plus, every one of us has an electric bill that we have to pay, which is going to affect us. So, I'm where I'm headed with this. My last year working on my economics degree, we talked a lot about public choice. Representative government is terrific almost in all cases, but in this case, this is so big. I think when you get through deciding what the options are, I think it needs to go to referendum to all the residents in Betavia. Give them this is what we think the options are and this is our rationale plus and minus behind them. I

think this is too big for a council vote. I think public choice the decision should be in the hands of the citizens or behavior whatever you come up with and I want to piggyback I know I'm speaking too much here but it's a moving target as they say in a bureaucratic world there's a lot of moving parts a lot of balls in the air a lot of technology changing changing changing it's going to be a challenge to come up with the the right answer but I'll just repeat whatever options you come up with, I would like to see a referendum on this and let the citizens decide because we're the ones going to have to pay the bill. Whoever power failures or whatever. Thank you. Hey, who's next? Good evening. I can't see over the monitor. Um, I don't have prepared marks, but I wanted to just address a couple of things um that we were talking about tonight. Um, I think it's important for you to understand um the statute under which this IRP is purportedly being um in compliance with. I know that it has been mentioned multiple times uh that we are following the newly passed statute even though this process began before compliance was

required and the statute of course um allows more time than what you're currently under or the time frame that you're currently under um isn't applicable uh under the statute. But we've been hearing a lot about the process that the statute requires, but very little about what the substance of the statute requires. And I think it's important to re review that substance um because it says that a utilities IRP is to include information about that utility's current portfolio, which is our Prairie State portfolio. and all resources reasonably available and reasonably likely to be available during the next 5 years taking into account both supply side and demand side electric power resources and cost and benefits. It's a very broad statute. It's a very broad language that is used within that statute. And what I have a problem with um in the presentation tonight is that staff is asking you very specific questions. They're asking you what types of hybrid portfolios you want to include in the statute. I I don't know if any of you even know what kind of hybrid portfolios there are out there. That is not your job in my opinion. They're asking you what types of demand side programs you want to prior prioritize and fasttrack or even

consider. That's not your job. You you are this statute the way it is set up is broad enough where Brattle is supposed to be providing to you options that you then will consider which are more appropriate for our particular situation. And I know several of us brought to your attention an IRP that was done for Orlando. Um, and I know that the Brattle group can do something very similar. They should be looking at all resources reasonably available or likely to be available and all types of demand side and supply side electric power resources. It's your responsibility to make sure that Brattle follows your policy and that that policy said that you were going to look for resources and programs that were going to prioritize resiliency, sustainability, affordability, and adaptability. That's what you need to make sure Brattle does. That's basically the type of guidance that you need to tell them to include in the revised IRP. And I think you have to look at the draft that was done and its shortcomings and its I dare I say deficiencies

are because they did not follow that policy in its entirety. They looked at affordability and they looked at reliability and that was it. But as we had pointed out, the Orlando IRP and what we are kind of looking for for here is for Brad to give to you a multitude uh uh several, you know, five to seven, maybe even eight types of portfolios to look at. And they're all weighted by how resilient, how sustainable, how affordable, and how resilient those p those portfolios are. And then you make a choice as to which one you are going to pursue or which one you plan to pu pursue within the next five years or so. So I I think that staff is trying to micromanage this situation. Um I know Mr. sofa, you mentioned how you were concerned about a task force being an unelected um party and giving advice, but that's what we have here with staff. And I think I'm very concerned that staff too is getting and looking at this in too broad a terms by working to better align climate and sustainability considerations with portfolio evaluation. What expertise does your staff have to do that? You hired Brattle

to do that. Staff plans to explore hybrid portfolios in the final. No, you hired Brattle to do that, not staff. So, you have to set some parameters here. This is a very complicated topic. It is far more complicated than anything else that comes before this city council. And what we are asking for as citizens is for you to establish a task force, not a commission. You do not have a time to set up a commission. And you don't have time for that commission to give you advice that you may not follow. Um, you need a task force comprised of a relatively small group of people, eight or so, maybe 10 at the very most. That includes staff and the professional expertise that they bring to the table. That includes a couple of your members and that includes concerned, knowledgeable um citizens and rateayers who can look at this IRP, look at what kinds of assumptions has it made in its draft, how is it conforming or not conforming to the statute, and what kinds of gaps does the revised draft that it's going to be producing, what are those gaps and how should

Brattle be told to address those? And as um Miss Lman mentioned, we are not asking for this task force to make recommendations to you. We are asking that this task force do the sorting for you. Take that burden off your your shoulders at looking at this technical information and confi compiling some factual information in a manner that will give all of you the same playbook. Instead of one person seeing this and another person seeing that and this one worried about that and this another one worried about another thing, you'll have the you know some basic facts, basic problems, bas basic um information about what what the future I what the future final draft should look like and then you can make some direction and um make some decision and give brattle some direction on where they are supposed to go with this whole process. That's what we're looking for. And I think that that can be done in fairly short order within the you know 2 3 four five month time frame that you know all this is going to be done. It would be an ad hoc type of task force for this purpose only. And then if you think that you need a commission to deal with the utility in the future, great. Maybe that that point in time

then you can make that kind of a decision to do that. But I think you need to have a common set of understandings about this IRP and the direction it's going in. Um I think it the the way the draft was written has some deficiencies because it was very narrowly crafted. It was designed to address one question and one question only and that was how are we going to reduce the risks of buying power on the peak market and that's again not what the statute says. Now, if you don't want to follow the statute, technically you don't have to, but then you're going to have to do another IRP in within the time frame of the statute. Um, so keep in mind that this statute is broad. You are to look at all resources reasonably available or likely to be available and take into consideration both supply side and demand side programs. So please I I urgently ask that you consider this task force and set one up in a timely and reasonable manner. Thank you. Ken, can

I ask a question? Um, Max, is the RFI supposed to address some of these concerns that were brought up by M Russo where we are framing those options that will then be presented to us?

It can um the RFI could look at things like emissions, how different portfolios um emissions compare, um timelines. Those are that's kind of what I attempted to address with you can set criteria that you would like to see addressed and answered as part of an RFI. And to address another point, when I say staff, I mean staff working with Brattle in case if that's not clear, we are working with them. We're not like doing the analysis ourselves. So when I say staff, we'll we're going to go back to Brattle work with them based on the feedback you provide. Um, and then to address some of the the comments about where the IRP may have fell short. That was evident through public comment both from what residents provided, some of the private meetings we've had, one-on- ons, and otherwise. Um, we've been provided the OrlandoP. Um, we have reviewed that. We are intending to model that more as part of the final IRP because feedback on it was very good about it being a good way to present the information. Um, and so that is an intent an intent to better model it off of what that showed.

So as things are presented to us, you know, we're recognizing where there's deficiencies where we can definitely build that up before the final IRP, you know, lessons learned moving forward type of thing. We definitely acknowledge that there's room to improve. Um, that that's evident within how we responded, some of the things that um, I've attempted to share that we have already committed to doing as part of the final. Um and to the extent that council has additional direction, we we will follow that direction entirely.

Yeah. Just give it a quick I mean so obviously there's um dissatisfaction with the the deliverable we got from the rattle group. Um the deliverable has been given to the public. Public has come back and said this is deficient. I mean it happens all the time. Um usually what we do is we go back to the vendor and say hey you know what here's the commentary we got in your deliverable. How do we remediate this? Is this something we need to pay you extra for? Are you going to take it as part of your original fee? Then then then we take and tie it back to the original so so what I hate to part of this feels like the majority of people who read the deliverable feels a poor deliverable and now they're basically offering to do the work themselves where part of me is like hey some of this stuff should Braille have done this originally and can we at least try to put it back on them to take some of the heat off of this and you know cuz they're not cheap but we were getting along fair amount of cash. Well, that's kind of where I felt Max was going earlier with some of the questions that were there and going back and basing the deliverables or different deliverables as accordance with what we adopted as an energy policy already, you know, and that it I don't know if that wasn't clearly stated enough in their original scope of work or what, but that to me was the biggest thing when it came back with kind of a one source answer about how we hedge your bet. I I didn't like that at all. I want handful of them because I think that's one of the things I was here during Prairie State, so I know how we ended up in tunnel vision and that can never happen again. And because this is an IRP that's really statemandated, but we saw the value in it and wanted to start this early so we could figure out how we can best position ourselves to be able to be flexible to change the plan when necessary or when required. Those are two different things. and be able to

realize that we have to take whatever is available to us whether it's from the public whether it's an ad hoc committee a commission whatever gets decided in the future that we have to be able to have that information presented to us so the 14 of us who get elected every two years to represent the people in Battavia that's how the process works and that's you know yes this is probably the biggest decision we'll have till we get to fighting over water in the next decade cuz that's going to be the big fight. Um this reality right now is we are under a time constraint to do this. I think we take all of the information that we've gotten from the public. what we've just gone over here tonight. We put that back into, you know, the brattle mixer staff, however we want to describe it, and we move forward to the next meeting with the input we have and try to put things out there that make sense to what we've talked about, what we've heard from the public, what we've heard from, you know, industry experts, from concerned citizens, from rateayers, from my wife. All that stuff has to be included into this so that we can make what we hope is the best decision. You know, I was back in the other room when we made a lot of closed door decisions to get to the point where we went into Prairie State. And looking back on it, there needed to be more information. And I think that we've learned that already getting to this point trying to get out of Prairie State. All the things that have happened, you know, in the last decade or decade and a half have changed radically. I see this changing radically again in the next five or 10 years. There are going to be things that happen that we have no idea how that's going to

affect us. Every election, federal, state, will affect this. So, you know, we have to be ready and we have to listen and find out and and get as much information as we can before we make a decision. And I think that's something, you know, when we first laid this out, when we first heard about the legislation coming out of the state to require an IRP, we're like, okay, there's three meetings, there's five meetings, there's 10 meetings, we're done. And I don't think, at least in my mind, that any of us up here thought that that was going to be all of it. We never do that that way in Battavia. We try to have as much public comment, as much integration as we can to get things done. I mean, in the time I've been on the council, we've had more commissions, more committees, other things that have helped the council make decisions. And when we do take all that information and try to disseminate to everybody and then get a good decision, it usually works out the best. So, I'm all for that. I just don't know the way history has been to set up, you know, a a commission that's going to take a lot more than we have time for. You know, an ad hoc committee can do what the public is doing for us right now by getting us information, by giving their opinions, by finding studies, by sharing all that information so that we can make a good decision. you know, and I'm not afraid of us slowing this process down. I mean, in a couple of meetings that I had publicly with other, you know, people that are concerned about this, that's to me is not a fear that I have. We need to figure out what's the right thing to put into this plan. So that way we don't have to do it in 2 years. We don't have to do it in 3 years. We can wait the 5

years to have to do it again unless technology or legislation changes. Then we might be doing it in a year, two, five, I don't know. Anderson, just one quick question. We say time constraints. What is the statute require us to actually submit this? Like what is that? I know we're trying to do it ahead of that, but it's comes into I think it says you have to have one. It's either the start of 27 or the end of 27. I can double check as to what that is, but it's you have to have an IRP, I think, completed in 27. I'll double check in that and get back to you.

I'm 27. I don't have the statute in front of me. I know that it goes in as effective law I believe June or July this year is when it goes into effect. And then from that point, that starts the clock for everybody else that hasn't started like we did, which knowing what I know of the process already, I can't imagine what other cities are going to have to do that have to deal with this or other entities that have to deal with this. I think it'd be important to know if it's early January or end of of 27 or end of 27. That's that's a long time for us to have some more discussions. So, we're trying to figure that out now. Is there anybody else in the public that would like to come up and address us on up?

Hi. Um Karen Brooker. I'm on Thoria Road. Um I I'll try to be brief. One of my concerns with the preliminary IRP was that it it seemed to already be um relying on what could be potentially outdated assumptions. Um right now our situation is really fluid. It's fluid at the state and federal level with policy. It's fluid with pricing. Um, I think that having an ad hoc task force that involves well-informed and and specialized citizens can really help be that source of good information that maybe we can't get from Brad because it's proprietary. Um, and also because it would be kind of, you know, available on an ongoing basis and not just periodically through a report. That's all I wanted to say. That's while he's walking up. I looked it up. It's January 1st, 2027.

What is the first need to be done implemented? That's what it says. And and every 5 years thereafter on or before January 1 all. Yes. Blah blah blah.

Okay. Pat McVey on Maple Avenue. Um, I don't want to I'm not here to beat you up. Um, I'm here to uh at least tell you more about me and what my experience has been. When you're in really serious issues that you feel like the weight of the world is on you, it's better to have a little bit more humor in the process than all the seriousness. It makes you think better. And after 35 years of being an engineering consultant working in biomed engineering, which is a very serious subject when it comes to what the Food and Drug Administration want and what hospitals need, I find that uh it's easier if you can keep it light. Um so therefore when I talk to people it becomes more of a education uh rather than a lecture and I'm not here to lecture you. What I want to do is be able to provide information. And I've tried to do that. Um, I sent uh an email out with an attachment of my latest missive which had a long title. Um, it was called software plus advanced power meters plus deers equals derms with an arrow pointing to which means uh going to a utility VPP. Now there's an example of utility speak. I think it really demonstrates

how these subjects can get very complex very quickly and uh therefore it's incumbent on people like me to at least try to break it down into something manageable that you can make decisions on. And I think a an advisory committee or commission or a task force or whatever you call it needs to have the ability to simplify and to make things easier for you as uh a city council to make some decisions. So, let's just make it easier on ourselves and and stop worrying too much. I think it can be worked out. That's really what I'm talking about. And just I want to point out some things that um there was a link to uh from Energy Central that had a one-page uh document called direct commission comparison guide launches a VPP versus building a new power plant. That's essentially what they were comparing. a virtual power plant versus a a new power plant. And they referenced the Brattle group which they state in the Brattle group stated that a traditional PL power plant is more than 60 to 40 to 60% more expensive than a virtual power plant. Well, that's pretty straightforward. And I think that um you know we have to get to that kind of

statement if we want to at least make a decision. If Bradle could do that for in this in that report they provided to another utility why can't they do it for us? So um that's all I have to really say. Thank you. real quick. Do you know what a virtual power plant is? Because I didn't. Would you like to explain what a virtual power plant is?

Virtual notes as as simple as I can make it. A virtual power plant is a an accumulation or a group of uh distributed energy resources. Now that's only one step, but a a uh distributed energy resource can either be behind the meter or in front of the meter. That's another little thing that is different from other uh things that you run into. So, uh, all it means is it could be a battery. It could be your solar, uh, system that you have on top of your roof in your house, it could be a hot water heater that runs on a heat pump. So, these are um, behind the meter units, in front of the meter unit. It could be a um a a set of batteries, a battery pack or a large communitybased solar. So that's the kind of thing that I that is really what we're talking about here. And it makes it easier for using a little computer and uh a power meter made by Itron. you use it on meters on your houses right now. If you can put this all together, you have a system that can draw on power that each and everyone of these houses potentially could have in the city of of Betavia. That's what it means.

Yeah. At peak times you would actually pull from different sources a nonentralized power plant. So it would require the demand side.

And one thing I'll I'll address on that is um that kind of gets to some of the softwares that I do allege or allude to within um the presentation and within the IRP is that we so like you mentioned we do use those those meters that are able to read remotely and whatnot. We've also put in a software system called Tanalyst that allows us to kind of start that out. Um, but to get to that point that you're discussing and that and those demand response programs, um, we know we need to procure some new software. And so that was some of the stuff that, you know, I I alluded to a grant that we're going to be applying for to help us try to plan demand side response programs because that will help us identify what we need to get in place, what we would need to put in to do all those programs that there's pretty strong demand for both um, amongst council but also the community as a whole.

Yeah. I mean it there there's a lot to it but on the other hand you can break it down into small pieces and it makes it easier to understand. And the one thing that's attractive about deers is it it attracts the community to participate and there are incentives because they get payments associated with the resources that they have. If you can just draw on them and draw them in, I think it really helps them to understand and to participate.

Absolutely. And one of the things that um would likely be included as part of that study is how we get the community involved. You can stand up a demand response program, but if people aren't participating, it's not going to be useful and it's not going to meet the results that you expect it to get. So that's what we would do as part of this, you know, next step if if if council chooses to really aggressively pursue demand response would be how do we make that all happen? How do we get the community involved and whatnot as well? Well, I'd like to participate. That's what why I'm standing up here. So, thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Is there anybody else come on up? Where can I get these slides? They're on They're online on the city on the city website. Uh to whom do I address my questions and what's the time horizon for you? Repeat your name into the microphone, please. Sorry, Tim Lions. Tim Lions. Thank you. So, when is the horizon for 30 days, 2 days, and to whom should I address my questions? If you have questions, you can reach out to me and I'll get a response. My name is Max Weiss. Okay. Um I can get you your email address. Yeah. Reach out. We'll get an answer. I don't need an FYI request or anything like that.

No, not at all. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. That was short. We like those. Okay. So, is there anybody else that would like to speak? I guess we need to make some not real decisions but direction to go for what'll be the next meeting in this process.

Uh yeah. Um so the uh back to the uh having a task force prime example that we just saw here. I learned something new. Uh thanks for bringing that up Bob. uh this is too much for 14 people to discuss and and learn about new things on the spot. a task force could be working with staff and the brattle group to to get this kind of information and package it and bring it to us then not for us to look at well what you know I'm I'm looking at their their executive summary and I recall that we were uh in our policy we were uh sustainability was very important the environment was very important to us and it just got ignored it's not in And in the executive summary anyway, they they basically tell us that the natural gas prices are going up and and they are they're going to, you know, with this war going on, you're going to see some real increases. Uh imagine if we just took their advice right off the bat where we would have found ourselves if we did it real quick. Uh but to but the solution is well the gas prices are going to go up and it's going to get more expensive for fossil fuels, but you can protect your problem you have is your your uh capacity. you don't have a problem with the load because it's been steady since 2018 by your capacity and we we we know this and their solution is to go rely on fossil fuels or rely on gas. Wait a second, how much did we pay Brad brattle for that? There's other things out there which we just heard. In order to get that, we need to have a task group that can get together um and focus and work with staff uh and the brattle group to get us those uh those possibilities that can be so we don't end up like what happened with one. So I think it's you know a a you know committee of 14 trying to distill all this doesn't make sense. a small group,

six, eight people, uh, I think can be much more effective, can be, uh, get get what we're paying for from the brattle group because quite frankly, I wasn't impressed at all with the what they brought back to us and and it didn't it did not incorporate what our policy is and the and so here we are. The question, should we stick with our policy or should we should we change that to meet what what Bradle's talking about? Doesn't make sense to me. So I think we need a commission or not I understand long-term I agree Dustin a long-term commission but on all utilities is something we should look at but for right now for this IRP we got 8 months uh 9 months to to have this done. Um a a task force makes sense for that and that can that I think will be the best way forward to produce the most options for us to review. Ultimately, decisions are going to be made by this council. The task force, they they don't have the ability to make decisions. We have that. We're elected to do that and that's our job to do that, but I want to do it being most most informed as I can and I think a task force can do that. So, I move we have a task force.

Um yeah, first off, echo everything um Alderman Malay just shared there. I think both short-term um a task force with the express mission statement. I think a mission statement is really important. Mission statement to educate council on the important points in the IRP, right? That way their job is education. They'll put together packets. They'll come give us presentations. They'll like give us homework basically. Like that's what I'd like from a from a task force. And then a commission makes a lot of sense. I don't want to spend too much more time on both of those points. I think we've talked about it. Um, one thing I'm looking for from Brad is I want a menu. I want a menu that I can select from. And I um I think Tony just spoke on this a little bit too. I didn't really get a menu. And I think that fell out from the fact that they focused primarily on um on reliability and affordability and kind of dropped off sustainability and adaptability. Uh I recall I was going back through my notes from September when we adopted those four. I think we're pretty intentional in not weighting them so that we could then have the debate and the fight about which one we want to weigh at each time. But so when you drop two of them off, you're automatically waiting those other two more favorably. And that's not the the spirit of our plan. Um and I think we're hearing loud and clear from the community. The only people who bothered to tell us anything were the pe were folks who wanted that in. And that tells me a lot. That tells me that that's what's going to motivate people is making sure we're hitting all four of our items. One way to do that, it would be kind of nice if if we get a menu of options from Bradle, which is their specialty, and I they're very good at that, and so I know they can do it. Um, if they could put some sort of metric in there, like this is a uh five stars on affordability, but one star on sustainability and two stars on reliable, whatever, right? So that way I have some metrics specific to our policy that allow me to to make those decisions. Um and last thing and now we're kind of getting into the questions which I think are good questions and important questions to look at but it's

got to include demand side. I think um aggressively pursuing demand side solutions um is sort of a I'm going to use heavy quotes here but cheap quick right and heavy quotes cheap and quick um sort of ways to to make some small impacts towards our goal. And um I I think we need to pretty heavily be looking at those options. It opens up virtual power plants, but that may be hund, you know, who knows how far down the line, but also just gives relief to our relief to our citizens today, right? If they can save some bucks by um having uh supply um terms of scaven where you pay less when energy is cheaper, right? Time of use,

time of use rates. If we can have time use rates, great. That's going to save people cash. It's also going to help our environment. It's also going to add to reliability. It's going to hit A B C D. Bam. So, I think that demand side stuff is pretty important here. Um, I am excited to go into each question though. I know we're we're pushing the uh the Lehman rule here, but has it been invoked yet? Fair.

Yeah. Um, I'll keep it quick. Um, so we paid Bradle Group $385,000 based on what I'm looking at here. that the team was making was building between 710 an hour and 375 an hour. Um, you know, given those rates, given that amount, it's very normal to go back and say, "Thank you for your first proposal. Here are the changes you need to make, right?" And I feel like that hasn't happened here. And now Susan and crew and the public's doing it doing it for us. Right? So, I I say we just, you know, and this used to be my jam. I mean, this is what I did for years and years. Uh, you you we just go back and just say, "Hey, look, here are the changes we we need you to make." and just let them make them and and we don't have to. I I know we're all about to willing to go on a journey of discovery around electricity and everything, but but we're paying these folks enough. They're the experts and and and they build very generously, right? So, so um so I think it's okay to go back and say, you know, thank you. This is version one. Here's what need in version two. And and and then it's on them

and much more on the four points of our policy. Yeah. that that has to be incorporated in that and that there have to be options and and not just the cheapest or the most reliable, but again something that shows weighted choices that we would have. Lansancy.

Yeah, I I'll just uh throw my two cents in is I'm I'm an all the above guy. I mean, I I couldn't agree with Jim more. I couldn't agree with these guys more. Um you know, I I think long term we probably need a commission. I mean, having our own utility is a big deal. There's a lot of overhead there. There's a lot I mean, everything. It's a It's just a big deal in general uh that most towns don't have to worry about. You know, now that I'm thinking about it, kind of surprised we don't have one already, but probably good idea long term. And then absolutely uh a task force to help um in the short term, you know, if we need it, depending on how it comes back, like what Jim's saying. I mean, we have a lot of input so far from everybody. And I I really appreciate everyone coming down and putting your two cents in. But again, yeah, let's let's take it back and say, "Hey guys, you know, cuz I I'm no expert in this stuff." And and you know, I got to say though, I I was of the same opinion. I was a little lackluster. Like, wait a minute, what are we paying you for? Like could have had a lot of people put this thing together, you know? Um straight up AI could have done that, you know? So, um, you know, I'm doing I'm doing full scopes of work out of out of Grock now. So, like this, you know, I'm just saying that, uh, you could have probably put that together via via Grock. But, um, you know, uh, yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Leman,

um, I agree. I think a task force for this particular situation makes a lot of sense. This is a really unique and important topic for us. I mean, we own our own utility and so I think our is going to look a lot different than a lot of other um communities in Illinois even. And we have a unique um weight and responsibility to do it correctly. And I um thank everybody sitting in this room and everybody who is participating in in this conversation. I think we're all on the same page. We want to stay away from forever contracts. We learned our lesson with Prairie State. We know how vulnerable um our electric utility can be and how technologies change. Um, so I think we're all on the same page to be flexible and adaptable and um to avoid anything that locks us into um a future that we can't get out of. So, um I'm I'm not concerned that this task force will be a repeat of what happened at Prairie with the Prairie State discussion. Um and um I think yeah I I support and I I I look at these people in this room and I know that um their motives are good, you know, and when they when they challenge stuff here, sometimes that can be hard and hard maybe for staff to hear, but that challenge is important because it helps us think better and think clearer and Um, so I I think we just need to keep that in mind and um just continue working forward and moving in a good direction with this.

Thanks, Alan. Um, I think this process is working the way it's supposed to be. You know, we set out onto a new direction that we were given no guidelines for and we're learning from it. So, we put something out that nobody's really happy with. So now we're giving the feedback and kind of go along with gyms. Let's send it back to bridle and see what they have. If they come back and fail us again, then maybe at that point, you know, we do consider doing the task force. But I think that this process is working exactly the way it was designed because there's nobody else in Illinois right at this point that are probably at the point that we are at. There's no guideline. I asked when I met with the group, I said, "What where's our where's our where's our guide book?" and there was none. And so we're learning from that. And so we shouldn't beat ourselves up because maybe we got something lackluster. Okay, it wasn't great. People aren't happy with it. Let's send it back with the feedback and say, "Give us something more." You know, give us options. Give us the playbook. You know, show us what the money that we're paying to you is. And I think then at that point, we can move, you know, move forward seeing what the next round comes. I think we give them that opportunity because they are consultant and we give them that feedback. I think if we don't give them that feedback and give them that chance and we just go immediately to a task force, it's going to look bad on us as older people for future contractors cuz they're going to say, "You only get one chance with this with this group." Just as a point of clarification, um kind of going off of that, um this being a draft IRP, the there is the expectation that revisions would be made in the original contract, right?

Absolutely. An additional ask, this is part of the contract.

Yeah. And that's why we've tried to have these discussions so we can give that pointed specific feedback to say make these changes. Whether that's sharing the OrlandoP and saying model it off like take this as an example, model it off of this and how you communicate it or um here's examples we've seen elsewhere. Use that. Um so that's the intent is to take all the public comment, all the comments from you all, the meetings and the discussions we have and say here's all the feedback. You need to address all of this within your IRP and what you're drafting for us. Um, and we expect all those things to be addressed and that's why we've got all this feedback. He put out the preliminary. We've collected a ton of feedback that's all going to go back to bridal and say we need to address this. There's comments about this didn't align close enough with our climate policy. Loud and clear. There was, you know, 40 something 50 comments on that. Same with things like all all these things are loud and clear will be shared with them and expected that those will be modified. Y um

go ahead.

I would like to piggyback on Max and just let you guys know that we meet with them every other week typically. Um our next meeting we had to shift, so we'll be meeting with them Monday afternoon. It's typically an hour meeting. Um while this was out, we continued to move on. So we're working on our cost of service. There are lots of back and forth. Um, as well as Max, it's Steve, Laura, myself, Peggy, we're all involved in this. Um, we have had a little bit of a scope change at one point because I think we started this process prior to all the legislation being passed to get our a leg up. So, everything wasn't formalized. So that was I think the only scope change that we had within this um process right now. But we do go back and give them comments. We question things. We share all the feedback that we get from you guys. I know Max is constantly giving them all this information that has gone out. So if you guys ever have questions, do not hesitate to reach out and ask us. Um we are in constant communication with them throughout this process. So yeah, um I think the um the the task force would not be any replacement for coming up with different plans. It would be working with staff and and council and the brattle group to to I think it would create more transparency. I think it can, you know, instead of everything having to filter through few people, we can have a a commission that's not a commission, a task force that can be working with. So, we got nine months left and we got some, you know, bring those that are uh everyone that's that those that are passionate about this together so we can get to the the best

possible IRP plan or IRP. Um, so I think uh it it's not a replacement uh for for what the the contract we have with Bradle. Of course not. That you know, we're paying a lot of money for that. It's about bringing bringing more ideas to the table and more perspectives instead of yes we've been going through a process but this is a very complicated thing and this that that process that we're using is very cumbersome and takes a long time. We don't have a lot of time right now.

Yeah. Um, so I would I highly recommend uh and and believe that the best way forward is to put a commission together. Um, so we're not spinning our wheels like I feel we're doing a bit of, you know, we got how long have we had this report now and we're just at this point and really not making any real decisions cuz we really don't have stuff on the table that we can make decisions about, not the stuff that we thought we were going to get. So, I think uh bringing our constituents that are passionate about this into being part of the actual process with Bradle is is going to uh serve us best and be more transparent.

And it's worth noting um it's been discussed part of this task force might include a few of us as well. So we would get more direct feedback from that process to be able to share with other members of council and you know just kind of help self-regulate a little bit as well just among our own selves.

Um so really quick so I'm looking at the S so here um okay so they said they're 80 they would be 80% done by now right and so now we're in March and from for March and April what's left according to the S. W is going to be prepare the IRP study report. So maybe we just next time we talk to Brad I'll just get hey when is version two when is the updated report getting delivered with our feedback just I mean let's just treat it like you if you're building a house

right and I was going to say one month Max has got direction from what happened here tonight um and what we've talked about questions that we want answered things that we want added to it the um application of our energy policy that we adopted the four tenants in that that that has to be part of whatever is suggested moving forward, whatever type of, you know, handful of choices that we'll have, not just one. Um, that that has to be part of it. And my thought is in that interim, if we really desire to have a task force to finish the rest of this, then we decide how that's set up. How many members from council, who from staff, who from the public? Because I don't think that's something we're going to decide in the next 14 minutes.

And what the scope of that is,

right? And we have to design, we have to state a scope to it. If we don't do that, I think we'd be better off just taking input from residents. If that means we have to have a couple more cow meetings, I don't know if you'll like it, but I'd say yes. Because if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right. I I don't want to limit that. And if we can't come to an agreement on what the actual scope would be for the task force, I I just want the information from them. And you know, I think we've all said tonight, I haven't heard anybody say they were happy with Bradle's first draft. And you know, the things that we've identified tonight need to be part of a revision and need to be something that's included in the scope of work that we've given them because that's what we want. And that's what we're going to need to base, you know, a useful IRP off of.

I agree getting a the a task force together in in 14 minutes isn't going to happen. Uh, however, we have a cow meeting next week and I would uh I instead of waiting to see and then creating it, I think we should the ball should be, you know, we should start that process of creating that task force. Maybe we don't need it in the end, but at least we're not finding ourselves two months down the road. Yeah, I guess we need a task force. Let's start the the process, determine what the mission is. Uh so we can start selecting who's going to be on that task force, the makeup and the the charge u for an ad hoc committee. So, uh I would like to see that on the next uh on Tuesday the 24th council uh committee and the whole meeting if someone will join me on that. I would join on that. You have an idea, Max, what's already on there?

Um I don't at this time. I can certainly look. Um we did add earlier the housing discussion as well. Um so now we we've got those two on there as well. Um I I do want to ask about what the direction to staff is here um for going back to Brattle um and all of that. You know, we can certainly request those revisions that you've made rather clear. Um express some of that displeasure you have with the product you were given. um and looking for some direction on on what you want to see us share with Brad and and we'll obviously send them this discussion as well so they can Yeah, I was just going to say

Yeah. No, we'll we'll send but you know being really clear kind of wrapping things up. Um what is that direction?

Yeah, that's what I kept waiting for us to go back to the five questions. So I mean to give my feedback I'll kick us off on the five questions. I'd like to see resiliency, sustainability, affordability, adaptability, and feasibility because they can design anything they want, but if it's not physically feasible for the city of Bavia, who cares? Um, we're not going to be the best solar plant in the world with our weather compared to Orlando. And I only pick on Orlando because they've come up 10 other times tonight. Um, do we want a broader range of clean portfolios? Yes. Give us our board that we're looking for. or we want that menu. Uh how aggressively should we pursue demand side management? Yes. Things like virtual power plant, we can't do without that. Things like charging your electric car in the middle of the night instead of when peak air conditioning is in the afternoon. You can't do it without time of use.

Um so I definitely think we should do that. Uh how should we address the NPA uh too many acronyms PC transition risk? I'll leave that up to other people that are uh more knowledgeable and and the scope is too generic of an answer. So, I'll I'll give time back.

Yeah. I mean, I you you took my shtick. I was going to do the same thing. Just quickly bullet point each one, but you know, uh question number one, how should the final RIP address the energy policy? I think we got to hit all four. If we're not hitting all four, it's a failure. Um, the overarching point I want to make, Max alluded to this. Um, it was brought up, I believe, Mr. Russo brought it up as well. Everywhere it says staff in these questions, I would like it to read Brattle. I want to make that clear. I want Brattle to answer these questions. I want them to tell me what a clean portfolio looks like. I want them to tell me what uh our priorities look like. Not cuz I don't love staff. You guys are great. But because Brattle is literally the experts. All right. So, number one, I want it's got to hit all four. So, that would be a on your list there. Uh, question two. Who does the broader range of clean portfolio? Yes, I want a broader range of clean portfolio. My approach, my intent uh is to have a menu. I want a menu and I want that menu to be mostly clean because we have the straight of horm being mined because um our uh oil producers are going to sell to Europe who has a shortage instead of to me even if it's a halfway across the world, right? That reduces our exposure to international conflict. um if we're if we have a broader clean portfolio and sometimes maybe it doesn't make sense. I don't know but put it on my put it on my plate. Uh how aggressively should we do demand side? I think I said this before. I think demand side is key. Demand side is absolutely vital. We have to be pretty aggressive on ban demand side. Um especially short-term while we're waiting for gen, you know, Gen 3 nuclear to come online. We can still get smart thermostats in. Uh we can do that. Um should it uh address the NPA? Um, item C seems the most important to me. We have to be super proactive, I think, with a prairie state shutting down. Um, we need to have several off-ramps ready to go, bad offramps and good off-ramps. We need ideal scenarios and bad scenarios because we really don't know what the

coal scenario is going to look like. We have these shut off timelines, but they could be moved. They could disappear. They could be there. We need we need to know what that looks like. um even if there's a lot of uncertainty in there. Uncertainty is okay when we're talking about options for Prairie State because it's such a big part of our portfolio. We should know kind of what everything goes. And then um what should the scope of the all resource RFI be? Um I I'm going to be honest, I kind of don't understand that question. Um and that's where I think like uh a a commission, not the task force. I think task force is great for short-term and I I'm all pro task force. Uh and a job of the task force could be how does a commission get set up and what does a commission do? That could be another job we can give these folks. Um but that's the sort of question that I I envision a commission answering for us. Like okay, we've got our plan in place. Here's generally what we're aiming for. Now, how do we get there? And that's what a commission can tell us what to do. And that's what I believe an RFP is or RFI, I'm sorry, RFI is. Um, so that would be something I would um punt. Done. Does that give you direction, Max, from me, from one person?

No. And I think a lot of these themes are are similar to one another. And um, you know, I hear very strongly demand response programs, other things like that. Um, it's evident that we need to include more things in this IRP around the energy policy. Um that that's that's loud and clear. So we hear that and we're going to work in improving that for sure.

And last com I'm sorry, last comment while I still have the floor for a second. And I'm envisioning RFP like loads my plate up and then our task force takes the plate and divides it up into its bits. That's a vision I'm looking at. We can talk more about it when we have it on the committee. As we're thinking about what a task actually does, I see it as how high do we pile the plate and then how do we divide the plate out, not what the actual little carrots and and sticks or whatever are on the plate. So that that's my vision of a task force as we're thinking of them in relation to brattle. Okay. Oh, I thought you were first. Okay. Go ahead, Jen.

Honestly, I would see Brattle telling us what our plates are. And what I would see with those plates is how does that help us get to the net zero. Um that's one thing that I would love to see. Um especially with the technologies, you know, there's a lot of technologies out there, but in 5 years when we redo this, those technologies could change. And so I would love to see, you know, from the technology standpoint, what is currently available and how does that get us to meet these goals of Sie? um how does this plate you know what is the rate to get us down to the non-emissions so for me that's what I would see Bradle doing is is giving us that that menu of different plates and letting us know like how much is you know green how much is you know fossil fuel I see a diverse portfolio and what is that ratio is there one that is 70% of gas and then 30% % of natural um or of green energy, but then also how does that look to us meeting those goals. So that to me that's what I want to see is a graph showing that and then the percentage of the different you know I want my menu telling me you know the different categories show me the different plates and how that works. Oh, if I may, it's this this menu concept. A lot of you have mentioned that. What types of things do you want to see within that? We'll obviously give direction to Brattle to make it more like that. Um, and let them come up with what that menu is.

Yeah. A combination. a combination where it's heavy with the, you know, fossil fuels, low on the green or heavy on the green and low on the fossil fuels. Just diversity cuz that's the one thing that we know that we, you know, we talk about. We've got to have diversity with our energy just because of where we live. You know, that's something that's going to be important. And all this is going to play into that. One thing that might help with that is um understanding what the minimum viable option is for each source like with the resip engine. My understanding is that's kind of one big unit and you can't really reduce that down too much. That's what I understand so far. So understanding like how small these units can be as individual units would help

scalability as well. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean just in Yeah, in terms of Yeah, scalability. You're right. and the flexibility for them to change to something else. Yeah. You know, if needed. Um, one one other thing I wanted to ask slightly tangential to this. I know in October the state passed another utility bill that is hoping to advance more battery storage in the state. I don't know if any of that's been like fully fleshed out yet, but we'll be looking at that.

Yeah, it's something we're keeping an eye on because the the the preliminary IRP does include um modeling for batteries. Um, and batteries could be an option for the city in certain scenarios. They are profitable and work well for the city. Um, I'm keeping an eye on what programs may be coming out. I know the state did set as part of the Clean and Reliable Grid Act a goal of I think 3 GW of battery storage. Um,

yeah, they may be issuing grants and other options. Um, so we're going to keep an eye on those and should that be, you know, should there be a grant coming out to say, "Hey, we'll help you build a battery or something, we'll bring that back to you and give you an op like is this something we want to try to apply for? Do we need to do more research kind of what but that's where having a IRP and doing this process puts us in a better position if we know kind of what we're looking for and then we can act on it." Real quick, that we is that we staff or is that we staff bridle? sta in regards to the looking at the grants and the changing legislative landscape.

We so staff tend to monitor grants that are available. We have a grant writing consultant and we also tend to monitor the legislation. So those are things that staff do typically but we will work with them as appropriately to get information to get those expert consultings and whatnot. Um, should we, if a grant opportunity came out and there was a no, a notice of funding opportunity, we're likely going to reach out to our grant writing consultants, help us understand what are the requirements, what is um, the state or whoever is making the grant look for, and then we're going to work as staff with our consultants with you all to put a grant package together and try to get funding for whatever we're seeking to do. person. Um, I just wanted to say that I agree with a lot of the comments um, Bob and Kevin and Jen made um, and Dustin about having different diversity of portfolios available, different menu of options um, as much information as we can to help us analyze what's best and um, along with that I wanted to ask uh, Alder Malone no Malay um earlier did you put a motion on the Is there a motion? He I think he did, right?

Um I I did say that that I motion that we have a a task force at this point. I we're going to have it on the next committee. I'll withdraw that motion. Thanks for bringing that back up. But there wasn't a second on it. Okay. I was going to second. Okay. Okay. So, all right. So, no second on that then. Um but it's on the but on the agenda for next Tuesday. Yeah. The 24th. It'll be on there.

Okay. Well, just one last thing I'll say about that quick is how I envisioned the task force was to further analyze this information. So, I don't really see any drawbacks to that. Just having another group of people staff's already meeting with Bradley. Why not bring in more people that are, you know, extra set of ears and eyes that are listening and providing more analysis on this in addition to us? So, to me, I just think it's a win-win for everybody. That's a discussion we'll have next Tuesday. Yeah. Ju just to remind everybody, what are we paying Brattle Group? 385,000.

Okay. So, you know, a lot of what I've heard discussed tonight, I just scratched my head and I'm thinking these are the types of things they should be asking themselves based off of our direction we gave them as a city before based on just the four points that we mentioned. I like feasibility getting thrown in there. Highly like that actually. um you know and so really you know I think the task force yes should advise us on you know reinstating who's boss in this equation type of thing because they need to I mean it's it it truly is ridiculous for for the amount of money we paid reading through some of that you know there's not a lot of substance and then to have this come back and I feel bad for from a staff perspective hey okay so what do you guys want to do and you I won't go through the exercise I went through in my head, but equating it to what I do for a living and and equating that, it's like, huh? Like, no, no, no. You bring your product to us and and consult us based off of what you know our town is chasing from all these different, you know, avenues. So, um, you know, yeah, again, I I think we need to bring them back to the table, put it put it down, and then see what they come back with, and then we revisit from that point. But the the task force I think is important. But I think we just I mean I'm more eager to get back in bridal from an email perspective or a phone call or whatever and be like listen you need to watch that that council meeting last night because you know we had some robust discussion and whatnot. So

we'll make sure that VAV turns it around right away and so that it's available and then you can send that to Brattle so they can watch this. I I was planning on drafting something tomorrow morning. Yeah. No, it it is. We love you, Max. Okay, and we got like 13 seconds and uh we are done for the evening. I don't think we have any others. I don't think we have any more from staff. Nothing more from staff tonight. Max,

no. We'll we'll reach out to Brattle. Um we'll have a I emailed our our agenda people to make sure that we have this um on a discussion for the next cow. Um would we like to continue the the the five question discussion among other things um at a uh special cow following the city of the council or how do we want to proceed? Are we primarily we we'll email brattle back and get you know all this feedback and ask for revisions and an expedited timeline but then also um kind of some direction as well on how we want to address these I guess fundamental points as well. Do we wait till Yeah, I think we we discussed most of those five points tonight.

Yeah. Do they feel there's something missing based on their expertise? Okay. That they need that feedback from us. Understood. Do you feel like they need something more from us? No. I I think I can send them this discussion and amongst other things and I think they'll know what we're getting at. Yeah. Just delivery. That's all it says. Yeah. All right. If there are no other so moved motion to adjurnn second. All those in favor I Okay.