City Council - Regular Meeting

ahead and call the meeting of Lington City Council [clears throat and cough] to order for Monday, February 23rd. And as soon as we get the confirmation that we're up live. Okay. Thank you. Then we uh go ahead and call the meeting to order and ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for a moment of We'll go ahead with the roll call for attendance.

Council member Karns here. Council member Mosley here. Council member Dannenburgger here. Council member Strazza here. Council member Hendris here. Council member Ward here. Council member Lee here. Council member Scott here and Mayor Brady here. Also, we will need a motion and a second to allow member uh Sheila Matney to uh attend by means remotely uh as she is on business travel. So, if I could have a motion to accept her, I'll make a motion.

Second by member Lee and seconded by member um Dannenburgger. Good early. Where'd he go? All right. Welcome. Take a vote real quick and vote. Council member Karns, yes. Council member Mosley, yes. Council member Danburger, yes. Council member Strazza, yes. Council member Hendrickx, yes. Council member Ward, I. Council member Lee, yes. Council member Scott, yes. Thank you. No. Nice to announce. Thank you. Is me able to hear us? I can indeed. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, I believe we have um recognition and appointments at this time. Um believe we have in the audience uh Ricardo Herardo and Ricardo, if you'd stand. Ricardo is going to be a new member of the uh public safety and community uh relations board. So, Ricardo, thank you very much for your service. And I think coming later in the agenda might also be uh Mr. Kylie, who is going to be on the building board of appeals. Mr. Kylie, thank you very much. And we have one more, but I don't believe that Mr. Tomkins is here this evening that he'll be on the zoning board, MLink County, I'm sorry, MLink County Regional Planning Board. Thank you very much. Um, onwards to public comment. We received no emailed public comment. Um, however, we have three people to speak. We'll start with Greg Cous after you read your statement.

Okay. Thank you. Public comments an opportunity for speakers to provide their views and feedback to the city council. It's also an opportunity for the city council to listen and hear diverse points of view. To maximize the impact of public comment and show respect for the expression of all views. Speakers should maintain stability and focus on city issues. Speakers must identify themselves for the record, but are not required to give their address. Each speaker is given the floor for three minutes and the council does not respond or engage in debate. our first first speaker.

Good evening, Cous. My name is Greg Cous. Uh address withheld, I guess. I don't know. 305 Woodland Avenue. I'm a Bloomingtonian lifelong. I am here to address uh the uh regular agenda item a signage issue. And uh I'm what I'd like to say is thank you very much for getting it dealt with so quickly. There were issues about signage sizes that did not reflect the particular styles of historic interpretive signs that both the Illinois State Historical Society and the Looking for Lincoln Coalition erect in our community. The Illinois State Historical Society at this point has about 11 signs, I believe, 11 interpretive signs of of which about four would not fit this ordinance. looking for Lincoln has at least um three. The um question becomes um it would have been good. But I learned about this over the weekend and it there's been a lot of scrambling on the part of three organizations to try to figure out what's going on and it would be appreciative if uh such proposals are made that do affect uh statewide organizations who do create uh attractions within our community and help educate our community that we could get a little more of a heads up. But again, thank you. You were responsive and rapidly responsive and that is much appreciated by the state historical society by looking for Lincoln and also by the MLAN County Historical Society who work with both groups. Thank you. [snorts] Thank you, Mr. Cuz

Next up we have um Alyssa Bonik.

All right. And seeing that they're not here, uh, we will move on to our last speaker, which is Barb Stewart. I used to do this every now and then, but it was a little bit easier.

Yeah. But it's nice to be back. You're doing fine. The Honorable Barbara Stewart. Thank you, Barbara. Go right ahead.

I understand I have three minutes. Okay. Mayor Brady. Brady. He's an old friend. He used to help me with bills, council members, and fellow citizens. I'm Barbara Finley Stewart representing the ethics committee of Bloomington Normal and asking you to adopt a code of ethics. In spite of being so old, I'm 97. I'm speaker because 40 years ago, I wrote the MLAN County Board's ethics code. Usually ethics codes are the angry response to someone's highly improper action. Obviously tonight is not the case. We are asking only because ethics codes make sense. Ethics is a must for self-government. Because the word ethics means trustworthiness. And when trust dies, democracy dies. That's why I proposed the ethics code for county board. Not because of someone's offense, but because trust helps prevent offenses. Well, no county had a bottle code I could copy then, not even the state. I had to go all the way to Multma County, Oregon. And then my first try failed only two yes votes. So I took the code to the downstate counties meeting and their excitement over it inspired me to try again. After five years, three

tries, the yeses for the code became actually unanimous. MLAN County still uses it. The reason for those no votes mainly they thought ethics codes were laws and that meant lawsuits. They were wrong. Ethics codes are statements of intent only. Intent to follow high standards of conduct. Standards that build trust. Signing and posting your ethics code publicly will tell people what your intent is and increased trust. And do you realize that our great founding documents do not have one word about any intent to conduct any office honorably. So we urge to to strengthen our part of this great experiment and self-ruule by adopting an ethics code because trust matters. Thank you.

Thank you very much Barbara. Thank you. [cough and clears throat] There's no further there's no further public comment. very much. Next, we'll go ahead and move to the uh regular consent agenda for tonight's meeting. Um, are there members of the uh council who have an item within the consent agenda they'd like to see removed for further discussion? Yeah, I I'd like to remove seven E.

Member Karns E. Okay. others? If not, we'll go ahead and take a vote. Then I need a a motion for those items that have not been asked to be removed temporarily. I motion to approve the consent except for 7E. Uh by member Strazza, seconded by member Dannenburgger, seconded by Dannenburgger. Okay. If you'd go ahead and take the vote, please

the item passes. No names to announce. Thank you. We'll go back then to item 7E and member Karns.

Yes, thank you. So 7E is related to the professional services agreement to develop a new sign code. And I just had a quick question about um just kind of understanding why we need it because there have been comments made that normal has updated theirs and I I read through you know kind of like the purview of what's going to be happening and so maybe just kind of elaborate on why it's necessary and it's not like a copy paste situation that we can look at other municipalities and take theirs. So, our sign code was originally adopted.

Sorry, can you for the record go, planning manager?

Um, our sign codes were adopted in 1979. We've mostly removed sections since then as we've had case law come forward on what is constitutional, particularly related to content. Um, so we have a pretty darn old sign code right now. Um, Town of Normal adopted a new sign code in 2001. So, they were starting 30 years ahead of or 20 years ahead of us to start with. They've done a couple minor amendments since then. In 2012, they addressed some non-conformance issues. In 2022, they addressed temporary signs, but that mostly had to do with administrative headaches. Um so even their code at this point is not entirely of a forward constitutional that it's just how sign codes are behaving across the world as as different case law comes forward. Um we one of the reasons that staff really prefers the contract that we selected was because it heavily focuses on public participation and visual preference of our community. They want to ask what we want to see, not just what is the legal allowance. Um, and while Normal is our our sister city, they're not us. We have different preferences. And that's reflected in everything from our architecture to how our zoning codes have changed over time. So for us, we don't feel that just adopting something from normal would be sufficient. Even if we could copy paste, they're not where we want to be either in terms of the constitutionality.

I the Kelly Feifer I'll just point out that our code is its own code. So it's an advertising sign code. It's its own chapter. Traditionally, they're in a zoning ordinance. Normals is in a zoning ordinance. So part of this initiative is to move it into the zoning ordinance um where it is easier to deal with as well. Thank you for the clarification and I appreciate uh your comments and so I I just wanted to get that clarification. So I move approval of this item.

I'll second motion by member uh Karn, seconded by member Hendricks. Um we go ahead and take the vote. John was question. No. Okay. The item passed. No needs to announce. Did you get Sheila Mne? Member Mottney. Yes, she is able to vote remotely. So, she's voting from there. Yep. She's on. Great. Thank you. But we will want to check for her feedback at any point. So, it's a good call. Thank you.

Great. Next, we'll move to the regular agenda of tonight's meeting. Uh, under 8A is reconsideration and action on an ordinance amending the Bloomington City Code Chapter 3 with text amendments, modifications, and additions to the advertising sign code. Uh, and our city manager, Mr. Jurgens, will introduce.

Thank you, Mayor. This came as a request um uh several months ago uh with a citizen that came forward that wanted to add a historic sign uh to public property. We did not really have a process for that. And so thanks to legal and our planners and the u development services department. They worked together to develop a set of codes to address that. I appreciate uh uh Mr. Cous coming forward and making sure that there were no unintended consequences to this. So, we have quickly addressed that as well. And with that, I'm going to have uh Alyssa Peton give us a quick overview of this.

Sure. Um the ordinances before you today are related to amendments in chapter 3, which is our advertising sign code, and then also chapter 44, which is our zoning code. Um they create a process for review and approval of signage on public property and city right of way. These don't apply to private property. They don't apply to ID do right ofway like like a Washington street or even a museum property. Um the importance of this is not about the existing great signage we have with really great partners uh like like the museum like Illinois State Historical Society. This is about level playing field so anyone can come in and propose something and we know how to move it forward and how to potentially approve it. Um there the reason that this has a chapter 44 component is because of the historic related pieces. We've all been through all the conversations of the last 5 years and the federal government and know that we want to represent history across the board but in real terms. Um we have a great certificate of appropriateness process that exists for our historic structures already. Um, so vetting historic related signage through our HPC who already knows how this works. Um, just seemed to make sense. That's the only change to 44 is that that process and allowing that commission that you appoint to have some feedback and make sure it's really what everyone wants to see. members.

If not, can I just really quickly Oh, I was going to ask for the record that um we did circulate today an updated um ordinance. Um it's what Greg Goose was referring to and so the presented original um proposed square footage of sign total square footage was 12 and um it was circulated today to make that 16. So that is what you had before you, but just for the record and to be transparent, wanted to point out those changes. Any other follow-up questions to the questions nobody had in the beginning? Okay. Um, member Mney. No questions here. Thank you. It was very clear. Okay. Thank you.

My pleasure. Go ahead and take the electronic vote, please. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Seconded by member Strazen. Motion was made by member Hendrickx.

I can just take it. How would you like to vote, Council Member Hendricks, since you were the motioner? Yes. All right. The item passes. No names to announce. Thank you. Next, we will go ahead and have a believe presentation and discussion of the fiscal year 2027 budget uh preview as requested by our city manager and finance department. So, at this point, uh Mr. Jurgens,

thank you again, Mayor and Council. Uh tonight we're excited to kick off the uh officially kick off our our budget season and we do that by starting with a preview of the budget. This is just the first in a long series of steps and a long series of meetings uh that will go on for over a month where we talk about the budget, we fine-tune and and we get it ready for uh council uh consideration and approval. Next slide. Scott Wthman and I are going to tag team this presentation a little and I'm going to ask Scott to just give a little bit of an overview as to the preparation that goes into even this preview of the budget.

Thank you, city manager Jurgens. Um without uh boring the council and community, it it is a very extensive uh process. Uh literally takes five to six months to um fold the budget together and get it adopted. Starts in September uh with uh a request from the departments. You can see an excerpt from the email uh uh down there in the first bullet that kind of sets the tone. Um we respect um the the expertise of our managers around the city, but we want to re reinforce that tone that we need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We request from them a set of data. It's quite extensive um that's due to us to the finance department by Thanksgiving. It includes our operating budgets, equipment uh requests, capital projects. Um, if you've ever looked at our budget books and the 700 plus pages of documentation in there, you can see how much information we are asking of them. Finance compiles all the information and we set the meetings up. We have meetings uh between administration and the departments. We review all the material line item requests. We look at the details within those line items. We look at variances. As an example, uh there was there's a protective equipment line for PD. It went up significantly. Finance was going to request that they lower that. uh but digging into it, we we found out that their protective vests are expiring and by law we're required to uh replace those. So we added that that uh amount back in. That's the kind of detail we review and then we balance and then um we have uh the meetings u result in the second bullet there. We had $2 million in cuts from the departmental requests. We had 34 FTE requests. It's not all general fund. It was across the board. Uh we approved two 10. and the city manager will be speaking to those. We review every piece of equipment with the fleet manager and the department that's requesting the piece of equipment, asking about the the age, the service needs, etc. having the fleet manager make the case for the needs for that equipment. It's a very rigorous line item review and it sets up

and gets us to this point that we are here tonight to present the budget to you.

Next slide. Uh and this information is all on our website. We have a we've created a banner for the FY27 budget and this presentation is on there and we'll add additional documents as as we go through this process throughout the next uh over the next month. Uh so the overall budget uh last year as as I think everybody probably remembers we were in a deficit situation. Uh so we held the budget really as as tight and as low as as we could. Uh the proposed FY27 budget comparably is up uh a little over 8% from the FY26 approved, but when you look at the revisions that were made to the FY26 budget, it's not even increasing a percent. We're holding it at about 71% for our proposal. The capital projects is really what's going to drive this and is going to be the story we believe of this budget year. We have uh in in capital projects an increase a proposed increase of 81.81 million. Um and that's a 38% increase. And we'll talk about why in a second, but it's it's related to the water uh capital projects that we've known about for the last several years and that we've been planning for. So the total budget, if you're looking at what was approved in FY26, it's up about 16.6%. Uh but if you're looking at the revised, it's up about 6.8%. Next slide. So why the large increase? Um the the uh elephant in the room is the budget or is the budget. It's it's also the water projects. So uh we have $81.9 million a historic amount in planned water capital projects for FY27. And these are not projects that oh it'd be nice to do this or you know we want to build a new water plant you know or something like that. These are projects that are mandated by the federal government, by the state government that we have to do. We knew we had to do these projects and so we've

been planning for these projects. This uh the council approved a rate increase uh several years ago to help get us to this stage and it is now all coming to fruition. So the rate increases that the residents have been paying will pay for this uh these water capital investments and we'll talk about them more as we go through the presentation. Next slide. But for the large water capital projects that we need to do, our uh budget would actually be going down by three and a half% over last year. But again, with those large water projects, there there is an increase. Next slide. Want to take a second just to talk about um and this is going to be a theme throughout this presentation. We are really trying to put the focus of the budget to where the public is going to see it. And so we we try to hold very tight those supporting departments. And when I talk about supporting departments, I'm talking about administration, finance, legal, human resources, IT, and city clerk. Those departments, which none of the operations would be possible but for those departments, but those departments alone only constitute about 4.2% of the entire citywide budget. Next slide. And with those departments, their budget is only proposed to go in uh up.37%. So a very nominal increase for those departments as compared to FY26. Next slide. Just some of the main points that we'll talk about tonight. You're going to see a large focus on infrastructure, not just water, but also roads. We are proposing an increase of 25% and what we spend in asphalt on concrete as well as proposing adding a new crew and public works uh so that we can operate the paver uh full-time and get a lot more use out of that for a a total investment of $16.6 million. We are going to be proposing for the first time a million

dollars roughly in neighborhood revitalization programming. We've already talked about the water. We talked about the fact um that our our supporting departments, we're holding them very very low, but our overall citywide increase for salaries is going up uh proposed to go up just 2.6%. And we'll talk about how we're doing that, but a a very low increase in the overall total salaries. And then we'll talk about the importance of public safety and over half of the general fund being targeted toward police and fire. Next slide. So, we've also tied this budget to the four priorities that the council recently adopted. Infrastructure, public safety, housing, and economic vitality. Next slide. Mentioned just a second ago that uh streets is is a primary focus of this budget along with sidewalks. But we're in we're proposing to increase the asphalt and concrete 25% from 8 million to 10 million. uh the streetwide maintenance budget. Uh we were are proposing to increase it 750,000 so we can add a crew for public works, a crew of four in addition to the asphalt that they will need to pay uh to buy so that they can operate the paver as the season allows. Um I like to say, you know, we're going to be doing that 247 and our public works director was the first one to say, well, we can't actually operate it 24/7. And I get that. But anytime the weather allows and we can get asphalt, we want that PA out there paving the streets. And that picture up there on the right hand side is an actual picture of our PA and our crews and that can kind of show the type of work that they're able to do with this. The other picture up there on the left hand side is a map and and we'll be rolling this out in the near future as well. And all of the diamonds represent the different areas of the city where we're we're going to be able to operate this PA and that we're planning to really do a a wide tackle of street

projects in FY27. Next slide. Another strategic priority, water. We talked about the $81.9 million in water capital projects. Um this includes things like Locust Colton phase 8. It includes uh census track 59, which is the leadline replacement. Um and again, over $8 million in that, $60 million in systemwide improvements with the uh water mane replacements. Again, all of this or a great majority of this mandated by the federal government, the state government, but also we're talking about 100redyear plus old infrastructure in many cases. So, not only are we upgrading our infrastructure, this is also going to help us with our our water loss of 30%. That will indirectly impact uh water conservation efforts at the two lakes. So, a lot of a lot of money going into water programming. And I would just mention on that last one, we we've talked about an ariation project for Lake Evergreen. Uh this is $6.9 million. We're looking if if we can get a grant for this and and we're hopeful we can from the IEPA this year, we would move forward with that project. If we can't get that grant, then we would push that to a future year as we continue to try and get money uh to make our money go even further. Next slide. Public safety, obviously another big priority of the council and the community. Um again, I'll reiterate that we have a total spend there of almost $74 million. uh an increase there plus another 2.4 million in uh capital projects. And I would say those capital projects are are nothing fancy. They are not, you know, creating a Taj Mahal of of fire and police. They're for things like a roof replacement at station 3. They're for a generator. They're so that our parking deck is not falling down and hurting cars or people or or other equipment. They're for security

upgrades, necessary pieces of of equipment and capital that we need to spend money on. Next slide. Uh this is another one that we we're really excited about. So over the course of the years, we have done some what we would maybe call neighborhood revitalization, but we've always relied on the federal grants and the C CDBG funding. We have not had a city program that really focuses and get gets our foot in the door to help revitalize our neighborhoods. And we've heard this council talk a lot about this. So, in this budget, we're proposing nearly $900,000 in programming. And with with this, there would be very specific results. Uh we know that there are about 21 homes that need to be demoed that are not rehabable, that are not salvage salvageable. This budget would include $250,000 so we could actually go out and start uh acquiring and demoing these properties. With this budget, we think we could get about half of those done, about 12 this year. Uh the remaining u homes uh over 140, 160 somewhere in that category um that are don't need to be demoed but need to be rehabed so that they can be habitable again. And there's uh money in this uh budget so that we could start to get that. We're not going to fix all of this in one budget year or maybe even a couple of budget years, but we believe we could start to see real progress. And this is not something the city has embarked upon before, but we see this as a real important piece to the puzzle of improving our housing stock within the city. Next slide. Economic vitality. The last of the strategic plans. A lot of different uh uh components up here to the budget. A couple that I will highlight. One is uh there is some software components to this to help our economic development people uh be able to get information to people that want to develop within the

community. Uh we are already working to revitalize our economic development website to make it more friendly uh to really help sell the community and and and spotlight things. We are because we've seen a lot of success with our economic development, we are having to spend more in rebates and incentives and that's actually a good thing. That means that the projects that we're doing are working. It's generating incentives and we're therefore having to pay those back. So, that is a positive thing. We are also looking at updating our subdivision code next year. Again, uh we have had a lot of complaints and a lot of concerns with the subdivision code that is old and has not been updated in years. And so, we would uh strategically put some money toward that. The other thing that I would highlight on here is uh we would uh propose money to add a multidisciplinary inspector within the development services department. This will help us get ahead of inspections, be able to more timely do them so that we can keep the economic development activity going. Next slide. Wanted uh you know this is something we always get asked about. I think it's obviously a very legitimate question. What's the employee headcount? Are we exploding with employees? Do we have too many employees? Where are we with that? I think as everybody knows over the last couple of years we've embarked on a attrition program where we have cut a number of FTE positions and what we are proposing now to do in this first you know budget since our our attrition is to uh strategically add back 11 positions. We'd cut one so it it'd be a net of 10. But the positions that we have cut over the last couple of years they have been in the support mostly in the supporting departments. So finance for example they've lost three employees. HR has lost several employees. Um there a lot of these supporting departments have lost employees. We are not saying we want to add those employees back. We are saying

we think we can strategically deploy employees where they are needed on the front lines and to better serve the public. So, for example, uh the the inspector we just talked about in development services, the four FTEEs in public works for street maintenance so that they can be operating the PA and when it's too cold and they're not, you know, able to do the asphalt, they will be doing other work to help us get ahead on our infrastructure needs. There's two additions in fire. Again, pursuant to the last union contract with the staffing changes, we need to add two and fire. Um there are some uh strategic placements in engineering and uh one in in community enhancement. And some of these I would also say are currently um uh uh seasonal employees, meaning it's not a that much of an impact to the city. They're already seasonals, but it's going to make more sense for us to make them actual FTE positions. And again, I would point out the total salary increase, even with adding 11 FTEEs, even with adding the um uh the uh um union increases that we saw over the last year and agreed to and allowing for some uh salary uh increases for classified because we were able to cut the um uh overtime. Thank you, Scott. because we were we've been able to cut overtime and make some other strategic adjustments, we're able to hold that salary line increase to only 2.6% and that's citywide. If you just narrow it down to the general fund, it's 2.3%. So, we're able to really narrow that increase down. Next slide. Just uh take a second on a couple of the major cost drivers. You know, why can't we hold the budget flat or even reduce it even further beyond the water? Well, the water is is again kind of the major cost driver in the background, but we're

also seeing other things. Our utilities are increasing uh by nearly $800,000. Our health insurance increase exceeds $2.2 million. Um and I I think represents over 11% of an increase from year-over-year. And we've been seeing that increase steadily. And then when you just take inflation and and I think everybody's been experienced in seeing inflation uh but on a three even if you just take a $300 million budget finance is calculated at a bare minimum we think the inflation number is 6.25 million. So there there are a lot of things that are are driving these costs that we're we're having to deal with. We are trying to figure out how we can hold the line on insurance, what we can do different with health insurance. But these are all things that are are driving up our budget. We're also in this uh in the proposed budget trying to catch up on some equipment purchases and and we'll talk a little bit more about this in a second, but we have in there uh an increase in equipment purchases. Last year when we were were working on a deficit, we really held a lot of equipment. Um when you do that, you you kind of roll the dice because you don't know if it's going to get even more expensive. You don't know what's going to break down. So, we're going to take an opportunity in this budget and try and catch up on some of those equipment. And as Scott mentioned, we go through every single piece of equipment, not just with the departments, but with the fleet manager. And we have very, very boring conversations about what's wrong with them, whether or not we can hold them, and those types of things. And so, that's where we landed on that. Next slide. Just again, real quick on the capital projects. Um, at the next council meeting, we'll have all the directors that have capital projects. They will explain to the council and answer any questions you have on uh what's to come from these and what they're proposing. You can see, however, that in addition to water. We've got some big sewer

projects we need to do and some big storm water sewer projects we need to do. Next slide. the council adopted a policy when we kept the grocery tax, excuse me, to um to to make sure that money went to infrastructure. We think that check that box is checked pretty handily. Uh we've got $4.5 million going from the general fund of street maintenance. We've got the additional crew. We've got uh some money going to help us get to that $10 million from the general fund. And then we've got a log a list of other infrastructure projects that each department will be proposing to do. Next slide. Just a couple more quick points. Um finance. You know, we had talked a lot about uh when we um kept the grocery tax and and and when we added to the property or when we kept the grocery tax when we added to the property tax levy for fire, police, and parks, we had talked about potentially having the opportunity to also find money to try and issue a bond in this upcoming fiscal year so that we could do the public works campus and some other major projects that we need to do. finance recommended that we not do that in FY27, that we take a wait andsee approach, make sure the revenues all come in as projected and admin, we we agree with that. So that is why you're not seeing a bond in this uh proposed budget uh for those types of projects. Instead, we are putting that money that would otherwise go to a bond toward one-time projects in this budget. Um, like the uh work that we know is going to be need to be done for the uh parking projects in downtown uh some of the equipment purchases and some of the other one-time things. So, uh hopefully the revenues do come in as

projected and if they do, then we can rearrange and in the future adjust uh for a a potential bond. Next slide. And with that, I'm going to stop and let Chris or let Scott Chris Chris Tarland, our budget manager, is also here. But, uh, at this time, I'm gonna stop and let Scott talk a little bit about some of the other, um, information that we provide. We provide a lot of information about the budget, and he's just going to walk through some of the other charts that are available for for review and highlight a couple things on there. Scott,

thank you. City Manager Jurgens. what would be a budget review without going through a bunch of boring financial exhibits. So Jeff got to do the highlights. So my turn to go through the exhibits. Next slide, please. So you're going to see some recurring um exhibits that we've we've done the last several years. This is a budget growth review uh that we created I mean three or four years ago. The intent behind this is really to check to kind of whittle down and show the growth in government. Um so from um my perspective, you know, we start with a total citywide budget. That's a line across the top. But then a capital project can vary significantly from year to year. For example, you know, we have that large increase uh for this this current or the coming fiscal year for water. So that can vary from year to year. A couple years ago, we had the library project and the O'Neal pool project. So backing that out, backing out some uh non well strategic additions, that's like the the county mental health payment. So as revenues go up for home roll sales tax, uh that expense goes up as and then other non-recurring items like contribution to reserve. So this exhibit shows from an annualized uh growth basis since 2018 we've had about a 3.39% net growth. If you if you take into account the full uh capital expenditure uh budgets as well that's a 7.3%. So that that will remain high next year. We're going to have another high year for water. But that that line item that total growth will then come down in future years as the water capital projects. Uh we're kind of we're kind of peing those over the over these two years and then bringing them down. One uh point I wanted to make um with the the water uh rate increases that were adopted a couple of years ago. Uh there were um annual increases adopted for the sewer, storm and solid waste funds. It's a CPI based on WS. That's water, sewer, and trash activity. that's been averaging about 4% over the last three or four years. So you can see 4% compared to our 3.39% annualized growth

and those funds amount to about um 39 to 40% of our total citywide budget. Next slide please. So the citywide budget uh how are we financially structured? We're structured by fund. Uh we have 28 funds. This is uh the proposed budget by fund the gross expenditures by fund. So just highlighting a couple general fund that's that's one that's really not self-explanatory that's why we spend a lot of time on it that houses public safety parks administration economic development street maintenance etc. Uh that's nearly 40% of the entire $370 million budget. Um but rolling down this exhibit um just there's a lot of different ways you can slice and dice our budget. Um but if we just look at capital improvements fund the capital improvement asphalt and concrete water sewer storm and solid waste really the funds that have a direct very direct impact on the community aside from uh public safety those add up to 100 almost $163 million that's 44% of the budget. So between um the general fund and those and th those infrastructure direct that's nearly 80 84% of the entire budget. Next slide please. Uh major tax revenues. This is an exhibit we go over every month. It's one uh structured a little differently. Just jumping to the end. We are seeing a significant increase in in tax revenues. been talking about those over the last nine or eight eight or nine months related to online sales tax. Uh some of that increase is based on changes we expect to see next year. Uh we have some visibility on the increases for this current year uh that that started in April. We won't have visibility on those new those additional increases until April. So $15.3 million increase. Jeff was referencing that finance had recommended that we hold on doing any additional bonding related public works campus or fire stations etc until we

actually see those revenues materialize. Uh one thing I want to kind of keep uh in mind is the home rule sales tax line. You can see that's $38 million. That's our largest category. Um 10% of total home sales tax goes to towards the county mental health payment. um that's uh been talked about a lot lately. Also 10% goes to asphalt and concrete. So of that you know 38 million $7.6 million goes to other funds or other other activity. One is a direct expenditure in the general fund. Next slide please. So we're going to go through the income statements for the citywide and the general fund and the general fund by function to highlight the general fund uh again the components of it since it's not self-explanatory that name. Uh just I'll just highlight uh one item on this on this line. Again, these um presentations are available online for people to review. We'll have the detailed books, the proposed budget books. We'll save this to the end. Um but those will be online by March 9th for the proposed budget. So if the community is interested in really digging into our budget, they can see it that way. Charges for services, it's $106.8 million total. That's up 10.8 million year-over-year from a budgetary standpoint. You can see in the notes section that uh 8 million of that is related to the the last water rate increase. Again, using those rate increases to leverage uh the water infrastructure u projects uh doing those uh now versus waiting. So, borrowing and using those uh um those rate those those funds from those rate increases to help leverage uh that activity. Next slide, please. Uh citywide expenditures. Um Jeff uh indicated our salaries being held at 2.6%. 6%. Uh so I wanted to highlight that. And then also there we've had a contractuals category on our income statements forever essentially. It it always gets a lot of questions because it's a very large category. It includes

a lot of different activities. So for this presentation we decided to split that out. I won't go through in each and every one of these lines but um you know you can we split out between insurance claims architectural and engineering which that line item is is definitely directly impacted by the capital expenditure expenditure uh line you see down a few we have capital expenditures budget of 114 million. So the arts and arts and entertainment architectural and engineering u that's the design component of that repairs and maintenance that's a significant portion at 17 million disposal I I we listed that separately because that includes the demolitions for the neighborhood revitalization and then this other category it's a large category but it includes everything from 600,000 for hiring someone for lake maintenance algae um remediation at the lakes uh to revitalization programs for um the neighborhood revitalization etc. And then I already mentioned capital expenditures going up $33 million. Uh most of that driven by the water fund. Next slide, please. Okay. General fund revenues. Just just to highlight uh the taxes, the $14 million that that is pretty much directly related to the major tax revenues. Um before we go into the expenditures, I'll just I'll just kind of run down the use of the 14 million. Uh we entered FY26 with a $5 million deficit. Um we we we address that by pushing out equipment and um finding a bunch of other cuts. So right away 5 million off the 14 million. Then inflation of three to$4 million on $130 million budget. Then as the city manager mentioned, we're adding the PA crew initiatives for housing. That's 750,000. Between the two of those, that's 1.5 million. Health insurance is going up 1.5 million for the general fund. Um, and then we're doing the capital expenditure sort of catchup from FY26 for equipment. These things aren't

listed here. Um, but that's another $2.5 million. So, that's really where that $14 million is going. 5 million big part fill the deficit that we had going into the year and then inflation and then some of those initiatives. Next slide, please. Uh, general fund expenditures. Again, just highlighting the fact that we split out the contractuals. Not the exact same categories being highlighted here. Uh in the general fund, uh we support all the we the general fund supports all the bank audit credit card fees and the billing platform related to some of the enterprise funds. So, wanted to highlight that specifically. You know, that's 1.2 million. And then the disposal line, you can see that's where the neighborhood revitalization is really captured. Jeff had mentioned going back up to the top, 2.3% increase in the salary line. And then jumping back down. Sorry to bounce all over the place. Capital expenditures, you can see for 2026, this is just equipment. Um, we held it really, this is low for the general funding averages 5 million. Um, we're going 5.7 million this year. So, we're doing a catchup, taking into account those revenues with a kind of a one-time commitment, make sure they're coming in, but taking that opportunity to catch up on equipment. And then the last line I'll highlight is other intergovernmental expense. Um, $1.2 $2 million increase, $750,000 for the mental health payment to the county related to the increase in home rule and then about a $400,000 increase for public safety pensions. Next slide, please. A general fund by function. Uh, quickly, the general fund as as the name kind of highlights doesn't really explain what it does. General fund. So, um, this exhibit we created a few years ago to show what expenditures, what services, what activities are paid for by the general fund. Wanted to highlight the big one, public safety. Um, this is not including capital projects. So, $74 million of the $148 million is for public safety. 50% of of the budget when you look at it that way for for the general fund. When you add in the

capital projects, which is part of the $4.1 million down on the capital improvement fund transfer line, it's well over 50% of the entire budget. And then again, kind of taking that infrastructure look that we took for the citywide. If you if you look at engineering, which engineering supports all the capital projects across all funds in the city, public works, admin street maintenance, snow and ice really is an infrastructure, but we that's the way we're showing it, so I'm going to include it in here. Give me some grace on that one. Asphalt and concrete of 300,000 and $4.1 million for a transfer of the capital improvement fund. Altogether, that adds up to 17.2 million. If you add in public safety, 74 million. So $91 million of the $148 million is for public safety. and really direct service infrastructure related items. Next slide, please. I'll kick it back to city manager.

Thank you, Scott. So, just to recap, um this is a balanced budget. Uh there's not new revenues to pay for this. This is this is all of us living within our means. Um but it is a historic budget and it is historic because of the water projects and we we have to do those water projects. I don't think that comes as a surprise to anybody, but when you finally see the actual dollars associated with it, they are big and um so I appreciate the staff that has gone into planning that and preparing for that. It's taken a lot and and and really do appreciate that. Again, we think it's a positive that we're able to hold the salaries to just 2.6% increase. Um, we think it's a positive that we are are going to really invest more money in our roads and our sidewalks and really try and get even more ahead of what we're doing with that infrastructure. Uh, continuing to prioritize public safety uh, with our police department, our fire department. And then finally, again, a lot of excitement over the concept of of really starting to get in and revitalize our neighborhoods. Next slide. Uh, again, this is just the start. So, this is just the preview. Uh, we will put this information. Uh, it's already on our website. Uh, today is the preview. Uh, on March 9th, we will have all of the directors here with Capital Projects to explain those projects, answer any questions you have, and and learn more about it as as you want to. We will then have a public hearing on March 23rd. And then if the council is ready, you know, there there can be changes to this, but if everything goes as planned, then potentially you could adopt it on April 13th, but but you know, clearly we look to have this adopted before our fiscal year begins May 1. Um, so, um, the other thing I would add is in addition, um, I think Scott, correct, correct me if I'm if I'm wrong, but I think before the

March 9th meeting, you should also have your budget books put together, and those will also be online, and they contain hundreds and hundreds of pages of additional information. You know, should the public or the council want to continue to dive through information, we try to be as transparent as possible through this process um, so that you can digest this. There's a lot we're throwing at everybody. Uh but this is uh this is just the start and want to reiterate that. So with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

And with that, thank you uh to both gentlemen for the presentation and we will go to questions or comments from members of the council. member Mosley. Yeah, I have a question and e [clears throat] and one of you both of you guys first um great job to both of you guys on there and the work that you guys are doing. Um I know this is a challenge, right? Um especially putting this forward. Um you mentioned like the infrastructure budget and then you kind of mentioned the grocery tax um adjustment that we made and that allocation towards infrastructure and you talked about early on that I believe there was about 16 million that's going to be allocated for infrastructure. Does that three to four million of grocery tax go into that? So is it really about 13 or to to 12?

So all of the so 16.6 million is planned for uh infrastructure for the streets, right? And so this that that three and a half million helps to cover all of that. It all comes out of the G that would otherwise that would all come out of the general fund. Um and we would have to find that money. Is that Scott anything to add to that? Well, the 16 million includes the 10 million for asphalt and concrete. Oh.

Right. So, so the grocery tax we're the the which is deposited in the general fund. We're sending $300,000 to asphalt and concrete, but we're adding the the PA crew. We're sending $4 million to the capital improvement fund where we're addressing the the deck at the police department and various other high impact infrastructure kinds of items. So, you know, we're viewing and Jeff, I think believes listed that on that slide that the grocery tax is going towards the capital improvement fund infrastructure as well. So, uh we're doing what's the total capital improvement fund? Um I've got it. We're sending 4.1 million though to the capital improvement fund. I know that.

So, that more than covers the grocery tax. Okay. Okay. And the street maintenance. And street maintenance

which comes out of the general fund. Yeah. And and then the other question I have and you might not have the answer right now even if we just need to come back in a couple weeks is is regarding the bond um because I know when we talk about putting off equipment um and we made the adjustment this year or next year for 26 that's moved forward um when we think about equipment and things like that when we push that back do we take into consideration right that there's going to be some labor and cost increase from equipment as well as I Think about the Morris, I keep calling it the Boris, the PW structure. Um, right, the longer we push that off, right? Is our cost eventually going to increase, especially when we're trying to work off of balance budget, right? What type of forecasting are we going to do towards that, right? Since we're not going to pursue the bond this year, because it's likely going to be more than what we forecast in the future.

It's it's a balancing act. That question was actually raised literally this morning.

Um it comes up when we discuss equipment. Um you know that's the service costs versus delaying and and and it's part of the balancing the budget process. Um with the public works campus and so and you know we're going to be do if the budget's approved we're going to be doing a bond for the water and and sewer and storm. There's going to be some components related to the enterprise fund infrastructure that we have to support with borrowing. um the public works and the like fire, police, you know, any of those other campus buildouts um would be funded from the the general fund and to kind of like ensure that we have the revenues available and and while we and I'm speaking for the city manager, I wanted to address you know these other initiatives related to housing and development, economic development. It just seemed prudent given that cost will go up seem prudent to make sure that the revenues are going to be there to support the bond. If they don't come in and we do a bond, then we're going to be looking at cutting

other long answer. The only other thing I would add to that is we're still in the planning phases. So, we don't have a a design or a bid that we can pull off the shelf that we're ready, you know, to to get going on that. So, I think it kind of matches up. I you know I agree and there's staff concern prices are only going up but we're also not at a stage yet we're we're ready to go out and and do construction yet on those projects. Yeah, I think we will be in a year.

And the only other thing and I appreciate your answer there. Um because that was the only thing that I was thinking about right as to I don't want to say oh we're going to just raise continue to raise the budget but we do want to be able to anticipate and kind of have a plan that we're going to forecast and when we take these actions.

Yeah. And and you know, I think our hope and I think I I speak for Scott is, you know, obviously, you know, we're going to have to deal with inflationary things, but you know, we don't want to continue to see a a dramatically increased budget. So, you know, with the water projects, we know what those are going to be. We're going to have another high budget next year, but um you know, our hope is to obviously, you know, spend resources as frugally as possible and to keep the budget as low as possible. So, um, it's it's, you know, we'll have projects that we have to do, but it shouldn't go to the overall operations just continuing to to grow and grow and grow and grow.

And then the last point that I'll make and stop taking all the time is, you know, Scott's area is near and dear to my heart, HR. Just want to make sure that as we're looking at our budget on a regular basis, you know, we look at cuts and where we can cut from those admin or those support departments that we don't lose focus on the fact that we need talent, right? And we want to be able to attract talent. Um, and the more that we continue to cut in those areas, right, we want to make be able to make sure that we retain the good talent and then be an attraction for other areas, other people as well to come to our community. And and if I could just say to that the the the pool in those departments are very small compared to all the other departments and so we have done a lot of cuts there and I you know it would not be my recommendation to do further cuts there unless we identify something specific. If we were going to do additional staff cuts, um, we would need to look at a much broader spectrum of our employee pool. And, you know, I I that would require, I think, a greater discussion by the council as to whether you want to get into those or not.

Yeah. And I'm not encouraging that right now. Scott. Yes. Thank you. Um, I'm looking forward to the meeting in March where we can ask some more questions about about department to department heads. I got some interesting things I'm excited about, but I do have one general question that you kind of hit on just now, but want to give you another opportunity to say it again. Can you go to your first slide, your first exhibit? Is that possible? The one with the first one with with bunch of numbers. First one with a bunch of numbers. The growth. Yeah, that's right.

Slide 21. While that's getting set up, I'll just say it it's clear from, you know, from 2014. Yeah, there we go. From 2018 to 2027, that looks scary. Um, but you can talk, can you talk a little bit about um where we expect to be in 28, 29, 30? So, we're not say an exponential growth and we're going to go to 200 million for for capital projects in in three years. [laughter]

Well, um, what I will say is for every with every budget, we do four out years as well. So, we and Chris could probably bring up the total capital projects for 2028. He's already brought those together. I know there's another significant water year for 2028 and then it tails down. So, um, that's been the plan from from when the water rates were first adopted to increase those to kind of have that front-loaded large capital, you know, attention placed on on that infrastructure. So, it it won't that that that line should not continue to skyrocket or however you want to say it, you know, hockey stick or whatever. It's really what's driving that is water. um you know whether or not we have other blips along the way replacing another pool um holiday pool or something like that but it's not going to you know drive costs like that um the public works campus you know if that comes forward next year along with water we're going to have another very significant year so it's kind of a hard question to answer that's why I try to boil it down to look more emphasis on the net operating budget line versus the gross

understood question yeah Next, member Lee. Yeah.

So, you're talking about [clears throat] projects. Um, what are you doing to like prioritize these projects? Um, obviously water is a high priority. Um, are we looking at um those items that we discussed in our goals? um like you know what are what are you kind of doing to prioritize and you know say which one's more important which one's takes priority over others. Yeah. And so Scott mentioned this a little bit. I'll let you talk a little bit about it as well Scott. So we we get the initial proposals from the departments and then uh we meet with the you know finance takes some time going through them. admin goes through them and then we meet with the departments and we help you know we prioritize from there and u we really look to see you know what what the budget's going to allow and and you know do a variety of analysis on it but Scott I'll let you answer a little bit more on that. Yeah, for the uh I'll answer it two ways, I guess. Um for the enterprise funds specifically, you know, we rely on the expertise of those directors, you know, like what is the most like for the water and sewer and storm, which projects do we have to address now? You know, is it is the clock ticking on an IEPA mandate, you know, kind of thing. So relying on their expertise, those funds have certain dollars available, allocating those dollars according to what the directors say we need to address first. The the general fund that uh funds or supports the capital improvement fund where we pay for parks and repair, other repairs and maintenance, um we have the directors prioritize, but for the most part like the the park like the deck at the PD, it's it's failing. So it's it becomes pretty obvious but we do have them prioritized and then we have discussions with administration and we we walk through those prioritizations. So

one's you know like one of those is like you know park like a new playground you well this playground has to be you know there's a problem with it it's it's it's falling apart this one would be nice you know and so there's certain trail arrangements that we have with the county that we have to do so certain things are required and that's where we start and then from there it's a prioritization within the departments the only other thing I would add is it all gets added into a spreadsheet and then there are actual rankings

that the departments give and we we go through there and just vigorously. It's it's kind of a vicious wheel of going through those and g narrowing it down to what what truly needs to be done and and and what you know what what might be a nice to have compared to a we've got to do this. We're mandated to do this or you know this is this is really going to bring quality of life and and this is something we think the community and the council would support. Sten.

Yes. Um, going back to uh, Council Member Scott's uh, slide on slide uh, 22 or whatever is budget growth review. Uh, just question about the when we look at the FY FY 2018 to now, how we've seen such a huge uh, jump. I know you kind of touched on a little bit. is that I know you can't go back in time and look at as a you know thinking that you were going to be upund and some million dollars more from FY18 to to uh 27. Um just curious was there at that time was the outlook of infrastructure and all that was like we're just going to you know I'm trying to understand why we we've jumped up so much other inflation and some other you know major issues that we had in our economy. Uh, can you give me a little bit more, lead me a little bit more on that one?

Yeah, I I hope I'm not going to be redundant here, but like if you look at the bottom, the the net operating budget line, you know, that's that's roughly an annualized increase of I'm just going to round it up to 4%. Yeah.

So, that's more just inflationary impact, you know, over time, um, wages. But you know as I mentioned when I was going through this slide some categories of expenses at least over the last few years have been hit harder than other categories. That's why uh when we adopted the water rate increases we we adopted plus I think it's more accurate to lock an increase with an associated expense to ensure the health of the fund. So that WST that water sewer trash CPI has been about 4%. when you when you look at that capital projects line when I first started working here I I had I had no idea that we'd be looking at a basically an infrastructure redo on the water system. Um so no I did not envision you know a growth from 25 million to 111 million you know in capital projects. Um as I replied to council member Scott's you know that will come down next year. There's there's still trailing a water man replacement, lead line replacement in the water budget, but you know, without having a library or a water distribution or a pool, um we typically wouldn't be seeing things of that nature. Now, see, I'm going to I'm going to be going back and forth though with myself because like if we do an East Street basin like a like we get grant funding or something like that, maybe we won't have to pay for it, but it's still going to show it in our expenditure budget like this and we're going to see another spike related to that because that's that's a very large expense, too. If we figure out how to uh support downtown streetscape, um you know, that's there's a a large number associated with that as well. So, I know I didn't really exam

Can I can I also just add some of it, you know, is is not foreseeable because a lot of the our mandates that came down that weren't there in in FY18. So, I don't know exactly when some of the water mandates came down after Flint, Michigan. Um, but you know, that drove, you know, those are driving a lot of the water requirements. And I think I just want to make sure with some of these of course increases besides the mandates we also have a very aging infrastructure that has been prioritized in a different way and maybe in the past that maybe none of us were here for that but it was like it over time it has gotten to a point to where we cannot put that down the list further down for some of this infrastructure and I think that's what the community has been asking for is what are we doing with especially roads but also the other infrastructure parts that make the city run and it's want to make sure that we don't forego more uh repairs or permanent fixes. I don't want to I think want to make sure we don't patch things just to make it temporarily work for another couple more years. Then we come back in a couple more years and say we need more money to uh fix something that should have been fixed a long time ago. Thanks,

Member Warren.

Thank you for this. It's been very helpful to see this and I would I don't expect you to be able to like magically pull this out of the air right this second, but I think it would be really helpful to be able to have a slide in a future presentation that would show um sort of emergency slash unexpected expenditures postbudget. So, since we approved the 26 budget, um things that we've added on, um for example, like the $120,000 that we spent at the last meeting, um things like that, it would be useful to me to be able to just visualize that. And I don't know if we could compare that over the next few years um or over the past few years. Um if that would be useful to others, it would be useful to me.

We we can certainly do that. We we do budget a kind of a a line item for unforeseen maintenance which captures a lot, but we can certainly the the revised budget for 26 ended up growing a lot compared to the adopted. I think a lot of that was the streetscape. Is that right? Yeah, we we did budget amendments for for the streetscape that was 10.3 million. Um but the unforeseen unexpected like with the church demolition. Yeah, that was a significant dollar amount and we've got a partial list because it seemed like there was a lot of things that happened during that period that I believe was around 400,000 just just for that. That's a significant surprise. But yeah,

maybe we can put that together. And I guess I I I'm curious to see then where those things come out of the next year's budget. If they are things that were if there are equipment, for example, that we're purchasing early that we wouldn't have had to purchase right now, but but we chose to purchase them right now. Where is it coming out of the future budget? Other members questions or comments? If not, I'm sorry. Ward, she I'm sorry. Member Mottney had to

That's correct. She logged off at 655. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else? Um, just a couple that I have. Um number one um which the great emphasis on water and the infrastructure side of water and what you've been both seen [clears throat] prior to this coming state federal mandates etc. the funding in which uh to address those needs from a financial side of things has been in part what the water rates and increase have been over the course of the last couple years. Am I correct? 100%.

Yeah. Almost entire entirely. Yeah. Okay. And then if we look at priorities for for what you've proposed tonight in the way of our infrastructure uh streets, sidewalks, which you addressed, but in particular public safety and I believe that it was almost 50% or maybe more of the operations budget and then an additional close to 3 million and capital related to our public safety, police and fire. Is that sound about right? 2.7 2.6 but yeah somewhere around close.

Okay. So, I know we'll all be uh developing more questions and when we meet again,

but the the um fact of of the the emphasis that's put on there um with the things that I hear and I'm sure my fellow council members hear of what people want um the cost and prioritizing that is comes associated with that. So, one area that caught my mind or caught my attention was IMRF an increased wise to the benefits um and Illinois municipal retirement fund being is that something to those employees that they are paying combination of the city paying split cost who's bearing the cost and what those increase are Scott can

I mean all employees I'll just say all classified It's four and a half percent, right? We contribute four and a half percent everyone contributes towards their pensions and then um there's a an employer side that IMRF calculates a rate every year and it it can vary and sometimes it varies significantly depending on their endofear calculation on um their funding percentage. Now, their funding percentage is really great compared to public safety pensions, you know, across the state and everything like that. But if if if they see trends, longer living, just like the public safety actuarial, um if the markets are up or down or something like that, they'll change our rate. And this year, our rate was was changed. It went up um went up. Do you know the percent, Chris? roughly I think it was 14 or 15% increase something like that in the rate that we're charged the city's charged excuse me

where where's this budget um equate to past budgets as far as priority of infrastructure dollars increasement increasing wise oh um I don't have the percentage but if we're including water in that it's going to be like way way uh far and above anything we've done in the past okay Yeah, just water I think it was 283%. And you know with the asphalt and concrete, you know, that's obviously increasing, but we can we can work to get an a a total picture of how much the infrastructure is increasing.

Thank you. Anyone else? Any other follow-ups? If not, thank you again to both of you for and and to your department for um the rolling out the new proposed budget. Um, next I believe we're going to go to uh the city managers discussion. If you have any [clears throat] ability left to I'm just keep talking tonight. Uh, it's actually going to be short.

If you could go go to the next slide. Um, so uh, every meeting I've tried to give a little bit of an update on the water conservation. So, I went to pull the latest drought map and I noticed the red is not it's getting further and further into McLean County. Um, and and so that is not a good thing for us. And we continue to uh call upon the community to conserve water uh to to you know really think about how you're using water and just do anything you can best practice uh to conserve water for us and it's going to help. We have been holding steady. So that means the community is they're engaging in this and they're are helping us with this. Right now the uh deficit at the combined lakes has held steady at 10.6 ft. Um and it was it's been that for a little over a week now. So um without a lot of rain contributing to it. So the community is helping. We're going to ask that you continue to help. And there's there's rain in the forecast, but as the mayor, you've said several times, you never know what mother nature's actually going to do. So, please continue to utilize water conservation efforts. Next slide. The only other thing I wanted to share tonight again, and I said this in the budget presentation, we have added a banner to our website uh for the FY27 budget. So you can go there uh just the tonight's presentation is on there and we will be adding documents as as we go along this process. Again tonight's the first step in the journey. We do the preview. We gave a lot of information. We ask you to digest it, think about your questions. We'll be back uh next week ready to to talk more about it to dive in deeper and to answer uh anything else that's that's come up or that you've got questions on. And that's all I have. Mayor,

thank you. Then we'll go to uh members. Uh member Karns, any comments? Member Mosley? No. Member Danner? Nothing.

Member Stra. Nope. Member Scott. Member Lee. Member Hendricks. Member Ward. Thank you for that. then I'll take all of your time and speak to just a couple things as briefly as I can because we're going be going into executive session here momentarily. Um but in in regards to all of us know we've had the last couple weekends very busy weekends and but we've had some really good celebrating local success when it comes to to businesses uh and grand opening. Uh just today I believe the Sharks, Fish, and Chicken um on East Washington Street opened. Um, a sure sign of spring is is Carl's ice cream is going to be opening on February 27th. So that gives us all ray of hope for spring. Um, the new weekend uh, there's a new weekend brunch option that's come with um, Goza Cafe, which is a breakfast popup located inside Fiesta on Veterans Parkway. And then the anniversary uh which I was able to attend early and member Strazza was able to attend as well uh for bandanas and the 16 years with Anthony and and his uh dedicated work and great great food there at Panas. Um, also we saw a couple more businesses open in Bloomington, grand openings through the chamber and uh we uh certainly collaborated with them and that was uh Scramblers and uh the picture of uh um Seville who is the manager there and then also Maine Society uh Salon and Spa which has um also um a new business that was located out in uh in Bloomington um in the former Brandt Center area. So, we were glad to be part of those events as well and welcome those individuals. I know it was a busy weekend for um all of us with uh fish fries and quantis

pancakes and bolathons with lifelong access uh um all reflective of many community events as well as the bison were back in play. Um, and I think the work that's been going on around and the parking availability is been a big big big help of comments that I've heard. So, with that, we we thank all those businesses who um invest in Bloomington, invest in this community, and we thank the community for um helping them through the business and patronizing them as well. Um, with that, I believe that we're going to now have to enter into executive session. And at this time, um, I'd ask for a motion to enter into executive session under, uh, section 2C of the 21 of the Fi of the Illinois Compiled Statutes to discuss, uh, various topics. We'd ask those individuals who are not part of that to please um, uh, exit and then we will be coming back out of executive session shortly. uh council will resume the open session meeting following the executive session. Um however, we anticipate uh we'll be adjourning shortly thereafter. So with that, we will uh need a motion to go into executive session.

I'll make that motion. Second by member Hendricks, seconded by member Strauss. Strazza. Right. Council member Karns. [clears throat] Yes. Council member Mosley. Yes. Council member Dannenburgger. Yes. Council member Strazza. Yes. Council member Hendris. I, Council Member Ward. I, Council Member Lee. Yes. Council member Scott. Yes. And just for the record, there'll be no further action taken after the meeting. Thanks.

Thank you. Then we'll go ahead here in a minute. Call to order um the executive session. Does anybody need a break before we go into executive session? Okay. And we will hold executive session for a moment. Okay.

the indication. All right. Next, we will go back into regular session for German. If I can have a motion to go back into regular session. I will move to go back in regular session. That would be member Scott and seconded by Dannenburgger. Member Dannenburgger. Thank you very much. Uh will there be a roll call or just everyone can agree on adjournment? Can we agree that that is also adjournment? I we can to our motion or signer. All in favor? I thank you very much. Have a good evening, ladies and gentlemen.