Council - Regular Meeting

The Cicero Town Council meeting is now in session.

If you could please rise for the speaking of the national anthem. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation, under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing, Ms. Garrett.

You bow to me. Thank you, Father. Father, you are so blessed when we have you thank for all of our blessings. You're so good to us. Father, thank you for loving us and forgiving us even when we don't deserve it. Be with the council, help them make good decisions for the town of Cicero, and thank you for their leadership and their willingness to serve. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be seated. Ms. Gary, please take roll.

I will. Joseph Cox. Present. Eric Hayden. Present. Dennis Johnson.

Present. Jacob Everett.

Present. Emily Pearson. Present.

We have a quorum of five members present. Moving along, does anybody have any additions to the agenda?

Are you adding the pre-ordnance or resolution?

So under old business, I'm adding resolution 5-19-2026-01, which is the RDC and use of TIF funds. Ordinance number 5-19-2026-02, which is the parking spots. And ordinance 5-19-2026-03, which is the weight limit on trucks through town. Thank you. You've got other stuff under legal we don't need to put on the agenda, correct? Right. Anything else? Parking spot was 02. Parking spot was 02. Yep, and that's an ordinance, whereas 01 was a resolution. Any other amendments? If not, I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. So moved. Dennis Johnson. Second. Emily Pearson. Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. We have an agenda. Moving along to the approval of the prior minutes dated May 6, 2026. Has everybody had an opportunity to review those? Questions, revisions needed, or are we good to go?

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from May 6th. I'll second Dennis Johnson.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Minutes are approved. So we're not doing the staff meeting tonight? No.

I just got done today.

Did you? Okay. All right, moving along the approval of the claims dated 5-19-2026. Everybody had an opportunity to review those.

Rhonda had a question on CC depository. What is that?

Credit card. It's where people pay their water utility bills or planning through the credit card. It's an in and out.

Thank you.

I bet.

Any other questions on the claims?

I make a motion we pay our bills.

Motion to have a second?

Second, Dennis Johnson.

Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Go ahead and get them paid, Miranda. Thank you. Moving on to council committee reports. I have nothing under EDC. Mr. Freeman, you back there?

Good evening, council. I have nothing new to bring to you other than obviously we start our construction job on March 25th. Awesome. Awesome, thank you.

Thank you. Moving along, legal counsel report, Mr. Colt.

The only thing I have at this time is the agreement which I sent out to the council at the end of last week related to Ms. Carlisle and the agreement between her and the town were resulting from the injury she suffered about two years ago.

Okay. You just need us to vote to approve the settlement? Yeah.

I make a motion we approve the settlement.

I have a motion. I have a second. I have a second. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. Get them paid. Thank you. Moving along, Cicero-Jackson Township Plan Commission Report, Mr. Zawadzki.

Good evening, Council. I have nothing to report.

Thank you. Mr. Strong, do you have anything to add?

No, sir. Thank you.

Do you have anything under special projects? No, sir. Thank you. Awesome. Moving along to Town Engineering Report. Mr. Bryant is on vacation this evening, so I will read these into the minutes. Should I read them in? Or you can just put them. It's fine. Or I can what?

Just have her attach them. It's fine.

Okay. I mean, there's nothing real exciting. Reynolds continues construction. Final work on the oxidation ditch and the clarifiers continue. A planned system startup this week. other miscellaneous pipework, electrical work, and punch list work to continue to be completed. 2026 CCMG, East Jackson Street project, looking to begin that, or I'm sorry, in early June and completed by the 4th of July. And as Mr. Freeman just updated us on the Morris Landing drainage project. That's all. And that's targeted to be finished in June as well? Correct.

Gary.

All right. Just a reminder, we do need to get back to Mr. Bryant in early June on the 2027 CCMG grant application. Does anybody have any questions on that? All right. We have a pay application for Reynolds tonight, don't we? Pay application 22.

We approved it last time. It's in this, but you approved it.

I went here.

You just need to sign it.

We approved 22.

You did.

Okay, cool. Good to go there. Moving along to old business. We'll start with Resolution 5-19-2026-01. That's an RDC resolution, and it relates to the use of TIP funds for land acquisition related to infrastructure. I'll make a motion to approve.

House second.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Could go there. Moving along to Ordinance 5-19-2026-02, which relates to adding 20-minute parking spots downtown. Everybody had a chance to look that over? I know we've discussed it on multiple occasions.

I'll make a motion to approve the parking resolution 05-1926-02. Motion or a second?

I'll second.

Motion or second? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay.

I forgot to vote. I'm an aye. Sorry.

You're an aye.

I forgot to verbalize that. I'm good.

So we got four yes and a nay. Moving along to 5-19-2026-03, which relates to weight restrictions of trucks traveling through downtown.

Capping it at 11,000 pounds unless it's

for use within town. Yep. Any questions on that? Now I'll entertain a motion to approve.

So Aaron, just for the record, once this is approved, it takes effect immediately.

We have to publish a notice of adoption in the paper because it has a penalty provision. Okay. 30 days from the date of that notice, we can begin writing tickets.

Okay. And Mr. Cooper, have you thought about signs?

Well, yes, when we pass.

Not yet. If it passes.

Oh, yes, yes.

Okay. All right. And we can put the signs up before it takes effect. You just can't write a ticket, you know, typically in those circumstances. The police issue just a warning. Try to raise awareness that this is coming into effect. And we would just post those signs at every major entrance to the town. Right. Particularly, I mean, our main concern for Stringtown and Jackson. But it applies on all of our little streets.

You ready for this, Mr. Redmiller? Chief? Okay.

I'll make a motion to approve. What's the number again? 0519202603. 03.

One second, Dennis Johnson.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Good to go there.

Moving along to new business.

Lateral hires. Disgusted staff. Basically, to summarize for the police, they keep their seniority to an extent.

And he has a policy to adopt, a new policy, though, because it's not in his policy. The wordage. Wait, we need to vote on it tonight. So yeah, tonight we're not voting.

So does that make, so I'm a staff meeting, does that make it consistent across departments essentially? Fire and police? Yes. Okay. Fire and police.

I wasn't there either, so.

Yeah, it's just, Jeff, you want to explain it real quick? Basically, it's up to five years seniority.

Yeah, so our program before was just salary. Only we could hire a start-up that had five years. Now we're asking that if we did hire somebody in five years, they'd get the five-year salary, but they'd also get vacation time of a five-year officer. That's really the only thing we added was vacation person time, basically.

For lateral transfer zone.

For lateral transfer zone. If somebody's already been to police academy and certified officer. All brand new hires start off at the very bottom, zero. Right. All that. Yeah.

So is there a document we need to approve or we just need? I don't think we have the appendix through.

I asked you to send me what you had and I would create it. Okay.

So we just need to approve. We can approve the language tonight though, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'll entertain a motion to approve the language allowing for the revision to the lateral transfer policy.

So moved. Emily Peterson. Second. Dennis Johnson.

Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you, Jeff. Moving along to the causeway lights. Terry, you have anything to say? We just need to vote on the- Yes. Okay, the vendor tonight? Exactly.

Okay. Mr. Cooper, can I ask you some questions on it? Yes. And I know I missed the staff meeting, so I'm sorry if you guys already covered all this. Do we feel like the original installation was done properly, or what's our position on that?

We don't know. So we were originally told that there were some issues with aluminum wire and crimp connections that wasn't code. When we tried to pin this contractor down and be more specific about it, he kind of backed away from that.

This is a contractor that did the installation?

The contractor that did the work on it and gave the proposal. Assessed it.

So they assessed it, not the original?

No, not the original. I know that Dennis had brought up that maybe when you pick this contractor, whichever contractor that you want to move forward with, that we do an addendum to their proposal for them to document if they find anything that was not code. when the installation was done. I know that we, two years ago, we had problems with it and we found crimp connections inside the metal conduit. Now, we re-pulled from pole to pole new wire and removed those crimp connections thinking who in their right mind would put crimp connections in a conduit. We didn't document anything other than we seen it. We throw it away and pulled a piece of wire. I don't know whether when the contractor that we picked tonight goes back into it and starts pulling all the wire, if he'll find the same thing.

When that project was done, would that contractor have had to post insurance or a bond or anything?

Yeah, it's required by state statute. They were slightly different because this would have been a while ago, but they still had to have that statute and buy contracts at the time, I would think.

So were they sub? I don't remember. Were they a sub of the main project?

I would guess they were a sub, but I don't know that.

If they did things that were not compliant with code at that time, I mean, I feel like we would have recourse.

It depends. You would have to look. One is the passage of time. You have so much time to make a claim. Secondly, you'd have to demonstrate who was responsible for what it was. Third, you'd have to see what the provisions of the contract are because if the contract They spell out whether or not you can go after legal fees. Because if you can't recover legal fees, you may well wind up behind in the game. And it spells out some of those other things, like warranty claims. And so you would want to look at that. So if we were going to wade into that, we'd want to go back through that.

Do you think we could even find... bond and insurance from that long ago for that contractor my understanding is keith believes he's got the files and i would i would guess the town has kept all that too we're required to keep all those records miss hunger i'm open to what the group wants to do i just it seems from the outside looking in that some things were not done properly and by the original contractor and that's very frustrating to sit here and have to spend more money but i don't know what options we have in front of us so open to the group's input i believe the feedback i got from keith was that there may have been but without any certainty

We may just end up spending a bunch of money trying to figure it out.

I understand. Especially if we were talking about a larger sum of money, it changes the calculus. I'm worried with what we're spending, not that $40,000 isn't a lot of money, but it doesn't take much in investigation to suddenly outstrip what we could try to recover. Mm-hmm.

So this is a little different than what I'm used to because it's under the threshold, so we don't have to go low bidder, correct?

No, you still have to go low bidder. You still go low bidder?

Okay. It doesn't have to be sealed. It doesn't have to be sealed. I got you. And you had expressed you had worked with Omni before anyway, and they are the low bidder in the amount of $37,000 even. Correct. So you're comfortable with moving forward with that?

I am. I'll make a motion to move forward with Omni Electric for the Causeway Light rewiring.

Can I ask a question? I assume that's not the contractor that did the original install? No. I don't know if this sounds like this may have been your idea. Is it fair to ask these guys as they pull things apart to document anything they find that is out of code? I'm not sure we're going to be able to do anything with it, but I would like to know.

Do you want to spend money on it if they ask?

Yeah. Are they going to charge us to document stuff as they pull wires out?

That I don't know. I know that I'll have somebody on site, too, as they're pulling the wire.

Was that your concept, Dennis?

Yeah, it would be nice to know if there was just... If you've already caught one or two situations where aluminum wiring and the crimping... We're not going to have any proof of that, but you've got witness to it. I would just like to know because... If we're not going to do anything with it, and it doesn't cost us anything to verify it, I want to go that path. If there's a cost to it, I'd like to know it before we do it.

Okay. I'll share that with them. Okay.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? A second, Dennis Johnson.

Motion and second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Do you vote?

I'm an aye. Begrudgingly, I'm an aye.

all right he's an eye he is 5-0 thank you to omni electric okay moving on thank you terry moving along um under new business skid steer so the people that aren't here jimmy presented and he's brought about before the need for a new skid steer we use the the current machine daily and it is getting very very much up in age and became a situation where we didn't have it we would be in a world of hurt $60,000 was the amount, correct, Jim? $70,000. $70,000? Yeah. And Rhonda, we figured out where the funding would come from.

He's taken $25,000 from his budget and another $5,000. I think we got like $28,000 to take the food and beverage. To take the food and beverage.

Is that acceptable, Aaron, to hold for food and beverage for park equipment?

I would have to think about that because food and beverage can only be used on certain expenses.

Infrastructure and parks.

I think the park would fall, but what I'm trying to think about is normally you're talking about capital projects. I'm not sure if an asset like a vehicle like that would fall by. Half of what?

Capital project. My capital projects are over $5,000.

Are you okay to postpone until the first meeting of June?

Virginia? I've postponed it twice, but if I need to go another meeting, I will.

Can we approve a contingent on that funding being accessible for this reason?

Yes, if you want to do that and have me check, and as long as I can sign off on it, that'd be fine. Okay.

Did you all hear that? So basically, our motion will be contingent on the funding being available from the food and beverage. Otherwise, you're going to be making a lot of cupcakes to sell.

Can I clarify? I'm not sure what he's saying in percentages or how it can be paid for.

Food and beverage might be only for capital expense, but this isn't.

Okay.

He just needs to verify if you can use that funding.

Only for, I thought you threw out a percentage number there. How much are you paying for? I'll make a motion to approve the skid steer with those fundings in mind with the approval of Aaron's

use of food and beverage funds for the skid steer.

I'll second.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

All right.

We'll get you an answer quickly.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving along to miscellaneous, which I have nothing. So I guess one thing is I feel like I need to go back to Jackson Township. There have been lots of discussions of other options. Is there any interest to sit down with Jackson Township on a territory?

Not on my part.

I'm not interested. I'm not interested. Okay. I will let her know.

Okie dokie. Nothing else under miscellaneous? You sure you don't have anything else there? Comments by citizens? No blue slips? Jan? Jan, you know this process. Where's your blue slip?

I wasn't going to talk until I talked to you guys ahead of time, but I just want to state for the record that I am not in favor of making the bicycles walk across the causeway. The reason the causeway was approved and we got funding for it, was we had a bicyclist hit, turning into Morris Landing, and we wanted to get these kids off of the road and get them on, you know, so that they could cross the lake safely. At that time, the pool was there, and so we had a lot of traffic there. I really just want a speed limit. Whether you can enforce it or not, would like to see it stated when they pull on there that they're not to drive over 5 or 10 miles an hour.

So when you say bicycles, you mean non-electric bicycles?

Non-electric bicycles, as far as I'm concerned, can go across there. I've never had any real problems with those. It's the electric e-bikes that are just speeding across the causeway. Without any notification, they're coming up behind you. You can't hear them. I walk my dog, and I'm just afraid that he's... Well, I understand.

I just want to be as... You said bicycles. I wanted to make sure...

To me, bicycle is bicycle. E-bike, bicycle, tricycle, you know. I just hate to see, you know, I have a nine-year-old granddaughter that rides across there, and I hate to see her have to walk her bike across because that's a big pleasure for her to be able to ride her bike across there.

I thought we were just talking about motorized vehicles going across the causeway.

I thought I heard Aaron say earlier. that it was bicycles as well.

Yeah, we were just talking about bicycles, but we're talking about something. I am working with the chief on this, and we haven't really even drafted the order. If I told you, we weren't discussing this tonight.

I know.

Just so we could work.

But I felt the need, because even when I was here the first time, it was stated that you might just not allow any bicycles to be ridden across there.

I agree in this regard.

I'm just stating that for the record. This is how I feel about it. But I have one more question if I could, please. So if we have 20 minute parking space, so who's going to mark those cars and make sure they're ticketed if they don't move in 20 minutes?

The goal is not to ticket them. It's more to increase awareness and hope that people have courtesy to do so, so businesses like Sullivan's aren't having to park way down the street for somebody to run in and grab something. Then it's hours limited to peak business hours too, so at night they're open.

Okay. Well, I mean, we're not enforcing that.

No, so not enforceable is not. Jeff has the ability. He does, yeah. Chief and his staff have the ability to write a ticket for that.

Okay.

The goal is so they will have to monitor it. So we're not marking chalking tires or anything.

Okay.

But they will have to monitor it.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Any more comments? Yep.

A couple of questions. I just want to verify that you put agriculture in the exemptions for the weight limit? The agriculture is in there, yeah. All right. Second, I don't know how many kids are going to fall asleep inside. So you need to keep that in mind, too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, we are. We don't have a copy of the ordinance yet. There are actually fine schedules that are in the drafts of other community ordinances we're looking at. Absolutely. Anybody else? All right. If not, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Dennis Johnson.

Second, Edwin Pearson.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?