City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to convene the meeting of the Darien City Council for July 20th, 2026. Please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Elzak? Gustafson? Here. Kenny? Here. Leganski? Here. Chower? Here. Stampinato? Here. Sullivan? Here. Six present and one absent.

We have a quorum. It brings us to questions, comments, and announcements of a general nature. We put this on our agenda several years ago to allow people to address the City Council on an item that may not be on this agenda. Now, tonight we have a full room of people. I would assume there's probably people who want to talk about different issues. So what I'd first like to ask is how many people are here tonight who want to address the City Council regarding the flooding that took place on July 4th? Please raise your hand. Okay. We're going to hear from those people first.

Okay.

And how many of you plan on addressing the City Council? Could you raise your hand? No, no, with the flooding, regarding the flooding. Okay. A few. All right. Okay. Let's begin. If somebody would like to come to the microphone regarding it, we just need your name.

Joe, do you want to remind us of the three minutes?

We have a limit of three minutes per person. Yes, sir.

I'm familiar. Hi, my name is Joe Wycheck. I live in the South Grove area. flooding, not new flooding. It's flooding that has recurred many years. I've lived in the area about 26 years, and it has occurred, I won't say every year, but it has been increasingly occurring. It occurred this year, June 24th, and as we know, July 4th. And municipal services tried to address this flooding, and it's approximately at the intersection of Stewart and Aylesworth Drive. Municipal Services tried to address this issue, the remedy to flooding of intersection, by building a trench between two of my neighbor's houses that extends from the sidewalk to a backyard swale area. That was about 2023, if I remember correctly. So, to let you know, the trench did nothing to remedy the street flooding. However, it created a new problem. It increased the flow of water to the backyard swale area, and the flood water height reached a level where it inundated the electrical distribution nodes that have the transformers and other components in there, shielding out those components, causing power outages. Consequently, now we got the water coming in, no electricity, Some pumps don't work. Backup systems might only work for a limited amount of time. Not everyone has a generator. You got to hope that it's going to work when it starts. So I contacted ComEd about this, and they are going to try to, I'm trying to keep this brief, they're going to try to either relocate or raise the height of the one node that I'm familiar with that actually exploded. When they're going to get to it, I don't know. But that addresses the electrical outage problem. But it does nothing for the flooding problem. And that's what I want municipal services or the city of Darien, whoever wants to take authority over that, to do it. Something has to be done because none of us residents want to get nervous about what's going to happen whenever we're going to have a storm. And they're getting increasingly more severe or extreme. once in a hundred year floods now it's a couple times a year so we need to have that address so thank you very much Joe Joe did your house get water or means your house get water I'm just curious I didn't talk to you my backyard did get water but my house did not I do not have a basement thank you dad all right thanks thanks Joe okay thank you anyone else regarding the flooding please come forward just state your name

7618 Gale Avenue. We unfortunately did get water. A lot of us on the street here are here due to that. We all have basements. It seemed like there was some water coming in off of Cass Avenue. The catch basins all overflowed causing a rush to the back of our houses. So I think my main question would be how is the city prioritizing improvement funds to upgrade our local drainage system and preventing property flooding during heavy rains?

Thanks for your question. And as a matter of fact, your location want on this topographical survey that I'm presenting tonight for city council to authorize on the expenditure. Gale Avenue, 7618, you're in one of the addresses as well as others. What that will do is that will determine where, how high the water was first of all. What's the maximum amount of water that it could possibly take on What type of rain event was this and how to mitigate it? That's the real question. I don't know. It's not a simple answer. We've got statistics, which I'll present in a report later if you want to stick around. But I know I visited you, and I understand that. And yes, we'll stay in contact with you as well.

Yeah, and I guess for the board, is there going to be any funds available from the city on relief for property damage that possibly wasn't covered under insurance? That's a big question that I think a lot of us have here.

What we're doing is we're currently looking at the county. possibly the state for assistance with it. Nothing's been guaranteed. We're dealing with an issue with sanitary sewers that people had backup through the sanitary sewers, which are in DuPage County. And right now, a lot of those homes did not have overhead sewers. So the water was coming in through the toilets and through the sinks and things like that. And we're looking at the cost to install overhead sewers in those homes, and the county has a program right now where they will give people $5,000 reimbursement, but it's about a $12,000 plumbing job to have it done. So we're looking. Today I wrote our three District 3 representatives, and I asked them to consider planning going to the county using their authority as District 3 reps to increase that $5,000 to maybe $10,000 to see what might be done. When we have an idea of what the county is going to do, then we're going to sit down and talk about what we might be able to do.

Okay.

Dan.

Mayor, just to expound on that, you're exactly right. In conjunction with that, one of the things that we're looking at is with FEMA is what The mayor was referring to besides DuPage County to see if there's any opportunities to have this declared as a disaster zone. Now, it was very localized. Many times with FEMA, you have to meet certain criteria, whether that criteria means that it has to be a certain section in the millions, not thousands, but it has to be in the millions. And there's a per capita rate as well. So those are questions that need to be answered. And again, this was very, very localized. I can't repeat that enough. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. Anyone else regarding water?

So my name is and I have a house in Gale Avenue. And you may or may not remember, the last meeting, I think the June 20th or something, I came. And exactly I raised that issue. Obviously Dan told me it's a problem with me, my back work, landscaping is not right, or something happened. But within two weeks, the disaster happened, all of the people, their basement flooded, Appliance is destroyed.

Mr. Tupac, if I could interrupt. I do have you on here, the entire, actually several homes, including yours. And what I did say last time, this still stands as it refers to less rain events or less significant rain events than we had July 4th, okay? So there is a little bit of a grading concern that you do have on your property.

That's fine, yeah.

But we will be surveying.

I agree, but my portion is, I don't have the slide. So, Cache is north-south, Gale is just east of Cache parallel, then Linden, and then Brookhaven. If you look at that, if you just go there, you'll see Cache is high, Plainfield is high, Brookhaven is high, and 79th, I'm not sure, still high. So normal situation when that water comes, it goes no problem. When the heavier water comes, just what happened the July 4th, last year, exactly July 25th, exactly the same scenario, heavy fog comes within an hour. They're nowhere, and I see that their drainage system is a 12 inches radius, like this size pipe. And rain, when it's coming, it's almost like a Niagara Falls. Heavy rain, heavy water. My first speaker told, at that time, when the heavy rain come, backyard, everywhere is water. Basically, home is an island, and nothing can be done. Where the basement, their glass doors, so pressure is broken down. It's flooded, everything. And it is happening exactly, I'm telling you, that July 25th, 2095. It was in the news. And this is again July 4th is happening. So my question is that that particular area, I don't know the other area, is very low. When the water comes, all water comes, and 12 inches pipe is nothing. And in fact, many of the houses, which is above the ground, the back of sewer is coming to the bathroom and flooding that, even like a high level of the floor. So my concern is, I'm not saying that blaming anybody, it is happening, first speaker told, used to be like two, three years or three years later, but this is frequently happening. Even in a single year, it's happening couple of times. And my question is that, I'm asking everybody, we have to concern about this, look at this and how to fix it. Because it is not like a single event, because the climate change or whatever the reason, it is frequently coming. And it will be again problem. So we have to address that issue. I'm requesting the council and the city just carefully and not that late, as quick as possible. Because it will happen again. And destroyed, basement destroyed, appliances destroyed, people live, they have a problem, the carpet, a lot of people affected. I'm just what I'm telling you. And exactly I came this, two weeks ago I came here. Same issue. And I mentioned to Dan, I mentioned to Ryan about this, but only single voice. What can be done? It probably looks like I have the only problem, the rest of them is fine. But that happens. So my request, please, consider our request and try to fix it as quick as possible.

Thank you. Anyone else regarding water?

I think I know you. I know you. 7722. Six feet of water. Everything is gone. 18 inches of water on my fence. Break. Window, flood, everything. I lost everything. Thank you for sump pump or the supply. I pumping till two o'clock in the morning. You know, what we can do? I living over there since 1998. I protecting, I have sump pumps, two sump pumps, two battery backup sump pumps, you know, and still can protect this. I have $70,000 damage. What I have to do? Insurance going to pay me for window. Broken window. What? $200? $300? I have a question. Do we have, when is the line, some kind of booster pump pulling water from the sewer line? No. It's nothing there? Nothing helping? No. So then it's bad design to pump, to pipe. It's not... You can, if it's whatever it is, you have to always 150, 200% oversize of the regular line.

Again, with all due respect, you're getting into hydraulics now and where the water goes and where it stops and starts. So again, this study, you're on the study too, like I said. We're going to provide answers. I don't have any answers for you right now. I can tell you putting in a bigger pipe is not the answer.

Then you have to do some kind of booster pump, whatever is helping sucking this, like sump pump.

Once again, we can't do that either by DuPage County stormwater ordinance. You're going into engineering, hydraulics. What sounds basic is now what's allowed.

So what is my option? Sell house and go somewhere else?

We'll get back to you after the study.

I don't know what can I say, man. You know, it's just, it's hard. Two weeks, non-stop working. I'm tired. mentally, physically exhausted. Can you do something about this, please? You measured, you went over there, you see my house. I drying everything out so I can throw in a dumpster. All, everything. What can I do? Who give me answer, please?

Well, we will give you an answer. I can assure you of that. I don't know what the answer will be. It might even be a buyout of certain homes. It might be open land area after a while. It might be something else. It might be a modified storm surge. I don't know. Because that's the low point of that block. Those two blocks. I can't tell you that.

Anyone else want to talk about water? I just got a couple things to say.

Just to satisfy people in having some sort of survey done. They got problems. We all got problems here. The answer is not enough, the one you're given. Even to say that we're going to have a survey done, you've got surveys that are sitting on the shelves somewhere that are the same surveys you're going to be taking now. And what? They take out a farm? They put asphalt there and they're wondering why the ground ain't percolating? We have problems.

When I say survey, I want to make sure we're perfectly clear. These are engineering surveys to determine the amount of water that was recorded based on the marks. Those calculations will be put into what the design. How long is that going to take? How long is that going to take? Yeah. Probably about a month and a half. Oh, Jesus.

Really? So you just blew that guy off. I'm just asking you something's gotta be done quick because just for myself and the people on my block, we had, 100-year rains in two weeks. I'm getting pretty old, I guess. So COMET says, we're going to do something. And we talked to a couple people. Joe, he's been the lightning rod for this whole thing. And they said, well, next year we'll probably. Well, next year, oh, we need something done quickly. We need you people to put the fire underneath COMET because that's what we would call eminent danger. Comment we can work with. That's a simple solution. There's some problems back there. The thing blew up twice. I was away on vacation, and I came back to a flooded basement. Okay, I'm not the only one with problems here. But this is a crock. And that trapeze that you guys made in the back over there, where you carved out something, and then it went directly into a berm, and it sat there, the water sat there, and it's supposed to go into a storm. and then go underneath the berm and then into the retention wall. None of it went into the retention pipe. So that thing ain't working. I don't know who's engineering all of this stuff, but I was a project manager.

I can tell you that the system we put in was never designed to take away the flooding off the roadway. It was designed basically to help eliminate some of it in the footage. So instead of three foot, it went down to a foot and a half. But you're opening up to an area that has a bunch of comment transformers. The water was still going there. The amount of water that fell this time, there wasn't anything. that we could have done about the one two weeks before that. Again, that one I won't argue. But I will, again, this is the first time. And again, not to be argumentative, we will call ComEd and we'll reach out to ComEd. If you want to, I'll give you my card. You can call me in the morning. I have no problem coming out there with the ComEd external affairs director and addressing the issue. That's dangerous. That's understood.

I mean, not just water. I'm talking dangerous. That poor guy was using six foot of water in his basement.

And then you're going to offer up an overhead sewer project? That's not accurate. Want to give me a call tomorrow? I'm more than happy to discuss it.

Yeah, I'm Mike Heatherly. I live on Grand Street behind Brookhaven Shopping Center. And the water's higher than, I lived there 44 years. It never was any higher than it was on 4th of July. And it got, none of the houses have basements to my knowledge in that subdivision. It got to like six feet away from the garage doors. What was interesting, seven o'clock I drove into Brookhaven Shopping Center, which is a three foot drop off from the back of my lot to the alley behind it. They didn't have any water damage. I guess the jewel got nailed, but I was just wondering, with that construction going on at Cass Avenue and I-55, was there any obstructions to the storm sewer systems underneath that with what's going on? Because my brother lives in Romeoville and was headed west on I-55 about the same time, and it was flooded under the bridge there. And then I went and looked at the office park that's on Plainfield here on the north side, and it had that lagoon or water retention basin behind there, kind of off 77th Street. That was like six or seven feet deep of water the next morning. So just some observations, but it never – that's the worst rain we ever had, and it was coming back up through the storm sewer system probably 20 minutes after the rain had stopped. So something was backflowing. I just was wondering – If the Brookhaven Shopping Center is on a different storm sewer system than the Brookhaven Shub Division. Because I thought that would have been nailed like the Jewel was, but it wasn't.

Jewel parking lot is designed to act as a retention area until the storm sewers can drain it. I was just curious. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but many of our streets are designed to hold water. And then I talked to a number of people who, one guy showed me pictures of two rafters going down the street with their paddles. And he said an hour after the storm was over, the water was gone.

Yeah, it receded by probably 10 to 5. But, you know, then I thought.

And I know people don't, I know it's an inconvenience to look and see a couple feet of water moving up your driveway. I realize that. But the streets are designed to hold it. And with the amount of rain, you know, when you had six inches of rain and two and a half inches in an hour, you're going to have some conditions like that.

I think it was 2.4 inches in one hour. I think it was six inches all day or something like that.

Six inches all day. I've heard possibly eight.

I was just curious if there was anything going on with the construction on I-55 that might have blocked some of the stormwater flow off.

I don't know. I was just curious. Is it Mike? Huh? Is your name Mike? Yeah. Yeah, I think I sent you an email earlier. I'm not sure if you had an opportunity to see it yet. Yeah, I answered all your questions. All right. Okay. Okay.

Do you have another gentleman you want to come forward? Yeah. Can we let this gentleman, he's been in the back. HE GETS UP EVERY TIME AND SOMEBODY BEATS HIM TO THE MICROPHONE.

OKAY. MY NAME IS PAUL KUKIC. I'M AT 7702 GALE AVENUE, GROUND ZERO, MY HOUSE IS AT. ACTUALLY, THERE ARE THREE OTHER HOUSES. ONE OF THEM, A GENTLEMAN TALKED HERE AT TAP, AND HIS HOUSE THERE IS PART OF THAT GROUND ZERO. I HAVE MITIGATED WHAT I CAN ON MY OWN. my own pocket, made sure that the swells between my house and the house south of me, that are ditches as well. But I also made sure that three of the two back gutters and the one on the north side of the house was going out to the street. Even with all that, the rain coming off of Cass Avenue, which is, by the way, it's 10 feet higher than it was over 30 years ago when somebody in the county or in his town went along with it. built it up 10 feet more than it should, and water was coming right down, broke through a window, which never would get water at all, no matter what the rainstorm was. Even that 18-inch we had several years ago broke through the glass, and two inches of water came into the basement. One other window, it came through a little smaller one that seeped through it, but that one even filled, which, you know, That never really filled up that much. So there is something wrong. When you've got water coming down Plainfield and you're coming off of Cass, it comes right down the street and our street gets it. I told the neighbors, I will not pay for waterfront property because that's what it looked like. We were standing in the middle of the street. There were people that had huge trucks that could get through it. Some people had the smaller compact cars. I told them, don't do it. You could get stuck. And they didn't. They decided not to do it. They couldn't get through. It was that much water. It had never been that high, even during that 18-incher when we had the gully approach of drainage and stuff. And I did what I could to mitigate any possibilities. And I was really proud of myself about it. And we still got freaking water in the basement. So I don't want to be talking about hydraulics or anything like that. It took us over a week to dry it out. I didn't get anything in insurance because they'd only cover for cell pump failure or for, like, the sewage backup. But then my neighbor across the street, she's got one in her front yard, and it was almost as good as that fountain we have over on Cass and Plainfield. No, Plainfield, yeah. It looks just like that. It's just fountain all over. All that crap is going all the way down to the street to the new lakefront property.

Is that the sanitary sewer?

Yeah. And it's not been the first time it's happened and such there. But this is probably one of the worst ones.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Who's next? I think

Excuse me. My name is Kyle Taylor. I reside at 8562 Hillsworth Drive. I don't have a whole lot to add. It's already been added, but everybody loves to whip a dead horse, so I want to get my strokes in on you guys. I appreciate you said that there's some surveys being done with some of the flooding that's going on. And you had remarked that some of this flooding was localized. Speaking for myself, and there's for sure a few neighbors here who live on Aylesworth Drive with me, we showed up to Woodridge City Hall years ago when they were looking to develop that open field behind us, specifically because a concern was, where's the water that currently goes there going to go? I appreciate that was Woodridge's property to do with as they please, not your guys. They decided they didn't care what us residents who were already living there had to say and they were going to go through with their developments and us be damned. So unfortunately, here you folks find yourself because Woodridge, you know, didn't want to really come to any solution to that. You say surveys were done. I'm sure Woodridge did surveys about like the water displacement in that area, you know, before it was developed. Maybe in that land, anytime there's like a light shower within 10 miles, I have like at least eight, six to eight inches of standing water in my backyard as it grades way and comes up on that berm. If a survey was done in my backyard, you guys are ninjas. Nobody, to my knowledge, came and saw that prior to development. I already have a lot of standing water in my backyard for several days. So not only am I not surprised that when I lost power, I took several inches of water in my home. I'm standing up here with a very unfortunate, I told you so, So with that being said, I feel like it's not specifically your guys' problem because, like I said, it was Woodridge that kind of just railroaded us over. But, you know, you guys are elected officials. You have to work with, you know, the county and surrounding neighborhoods. You know, you guys voluntarily do this. You want to do this. This is the first time you guys have ever seen me at one of these meetings. That should tell you something. I'm not happy. These people aren't happy. There's several people more who I know they weren't going to get home and work in time to make it tonight are not happy. A message wanted to get sent that a lot of us feel that you guys are on the clock about this issue. We tried to say something. It didn't get listened to. It didn't get addressed. We didn't want this. And now we're getting stuck with this and we're getting told that I understand surveys take time. I work in an engineering adjacent field, but there's a lot of, well, why is anybody surprised? Because we're not.

I talked to the city administrator, Woodruff City Administrator, last Wednesday, and he indicated to me that they cut back on the number of townhomes They were going to build on that property from 220 to 100. To me, that still seems like a lot. I don't know what conditions they've set up to keep water from coming into your area over there, but I'm sure that's something that they would look at. If you want to have me find out from them what their plan is, I can do that.

I would strongly suggest if I have continued time to speak, you take, and I know there are other areas that took water, but specifically down Aylsworth Drive, that berm, To the west of Aylsworth Drive and everybody's backyard, most backyards do slope away and take standing water, a lot of standing water. And ever since that development has gone up, it has gotten progressively worse. This is the first time I've ever taken standing water, and I appreciate this is a once-in-a-hundred-year whatever, but boy, oh, boy, is that conveniently coincidental with this development going up that I have now officially flooded. I'm sorry, is that due to sump pump failure or just a natural? It is both due to sump pump failure, yes, but also, like I said, the water table rises remarkably now in my backyard. It came in through your patio door, your window? So it did not get as far as my patio door as windows, but the standing water with the way my backyard grades away from my property and it comes down to the berm, there's a low-lying valley between my house and the berm where before it would get muddy. Now it is many, many inches within my fence line. So that tells me that water table is rising significantly more than... It has previously been, and not just with the rainstorm events of July 4th. I mean, we get decent water. I don't need to lose power. That water table is up. We need a storm drain line running north to south on the west side of Aylesworth. I guarantee you everybody who lives on the west side of Aylesworth, it takes them a week to dry out every time we take more than an inch of rain.

Part of the concern might be, if you know the history of Farmingdale, where you live, that was built under DuPage County.

Okay.

It was incorporated into the city of Durian. I don't have the dates here. Some of it may be pre-stormwater existing. So, in other words, 1980s stormwater ordinance came into effect, and municipalities, DuPage County, state... started to basically put restrictions on how much water could be released from a subdivision. The rules back then, or after 1980, were you need to have storage for 100-year rain events. Was that done? Under what we know, based on the annexation, the answer is yes. So DuPage County built it. Woodridge, on the other hand, behind there, the entire properties, We'd have to take a look at it, ask them for a stormwater report on when it was built, but we did do that several years ago, and the outcome was that they had designed it per the 100-year rain event. So again, my goal is to make sure that when water infiltrates a home, like we heard residents earlier, that we find out how it got there and why.

Is the defining metrics of a 100-year rain event sent by DuPage County, or is that sent by individual municipalities?

NOAA.

NOAA. NOAA. Yes. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks. You got a question? No, like, Galesworth backs up to, like, the new townhome development, which is obviously Woodridge, which is off of Woodward. And that's still under construction, right? I mean, that's not completely built.

It's almost done. It's almost.

That's been going on for like what, two years?

We can double check with the community development department there. And the concern is when it leaves, I believe it's Lamar Road. That water travels to Lamar Road and it travels through some wetlands. Is there a bottleneck there? We looked into that question several years ago and we were told there was nothing wrong there, we can't increase the downstream flow. So again, we could reinvestigate it, take a look at it, see where the water goes to. But I can't tell you that if there's nothing clogged, more than likely nothing will change there.

And you said you were told by Woodridge or the county. I don't remember. I know you were talking to both.

That was Woodridge. I know we looked at what our engineers and it was concluded that it was built in accordance with Some of it, it all depends on when the dates were, when and where were built within the requirements of that time. And this gentleman speaking of Aylsworth, yeah, there's probably detention issues or retention issues that would not be adequate for today's standards.

Is there anyone else who wants to talk about the flooding? Please come forward.

I just want to know how you know if your area is on the survey, on the Schedule 2B survey.

It's on the agenda for this evening. Again, we're concentrating on homes. that literally took water in, not from sump pump failures and not from sanitary backups, strictly storm water that has inundated basements through window wells, patio doors, garages, in the hole. So it's my understanding at AL's work that no one took on water with the exception of sub-pump failure.

We're at 71st and Ward Drive.

Oh, I'm sorry.

So I just want to know, is our area going to be surveyed? Because Holly Park was totally flooded. You couldn't access our street from 71st for the second house in.

No, it is not on the survey, number one. Okay. If you want to call me tomorrow.

It's 71st and Worth. You and I have been out there. Correct. That's the street that's got the poor pitch on it.

Right, and we have a plan. It's going to have to come back into budget. You're probably looking at about $150,000 to a $200,000 venture, and it has to go, has to be relieved into the park district, the Holly Park, which, again, it'll help. On a rain event like this, more than likely, you'll see the same situation over the less intense rain events. Yes, we have to put a new line into Howley Park right by the playground to the east of the playground. And that is on a docket to be estimated very soon here.

You stated earlier that you've got this funding for the topographic for the areas that were gravely impacted on July 4th. Later on, though, if there's any money left, we can come back out and hit these other areas that were hit, yes?

That's correct, but if their home wasn't impacted,

Oh, no, we flooded. We were out of town, and my kid couldn't get to the house quickly, and so it was just flooding until he could get there to address it.

Why don't you give me a call tomorrow? I'll give you one of my cards.

I just want to know if there's drone footage of it all.

It doesn't help me. I've seen some of the drone footage. I mean, yes, it was Lake Holly. I understand that. Okay. Give me a call now.

Anyone else for drawing water, flooding? Please come forward.

Good evening. My name is Josh Kukek. I live at 7702 Gale Avenue. You actually heard from my dad a couple speakers ago. While I echo his comments and his sentiment about this, I have lived in this community for my whole life. Over 30 years I've been here and this has been the worst flooding. If our street probably went through another 30 minutes of rain, probably could have took a kayak down there and just went right along with all the sewage that was coming up from my neighbor's house at 7701 with all the sanitary products that were coming up from that as well. But my question for you all, which is a bit rhetorical right now for you to ponder upon, what will you all do for us as your constituents? What will you do when you go talk to DuPage County? Because surely we pay enough taxes that something more can be done. For instance, our subdivision, where Gale Avenue is, we all know that's farmland, we all know that's marshland, and yet you still allowed DuPage County to build up Cass Avenue and build up Plainfield so it just goes right into that beautiful marshland that we now call our homes. But my other question for you guys to consider is, as a town, what are you going to do in the future when this happens again, besides putting out a couple dumpsters for all of us to load up all of our damaged goods and belongings into? Because I'm not sure if you guys all loaded up your vehicles to dump them off at the two dumpster points, but you've got to do better than two dumpsters. Come on. That is shameful, and you know it is. And on top of it, think about some of our senior citizens in our community. Are they able to even bring up all the stuff from their basements that was damaged and carry it over? Maybe they might be able to ask one of their neighbors, out of the goodness of their heart, maybe they could help them. But something more has to be done in the future. And you have time right now to think about it. But who knows, maybe that next one might be coming tonight because it's supposed to rain again. But something to consider and ponder upon. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Arturo Zelenikas, 8552 Aylsworth Drive. A lot of the neighbors here explained pretty much everything. I'm not going to add too much. On a bright note, the community is amazing. Neighbors helped out as much as possible. My neighbor helped out. Other neighbors helped out. We borrowed electricity from over across the street from another neighbor. So the community is amazing. So that's the first thing. Second, I think we kind of, everybody said already everything, the concerns. You really should be looking into first failure. It's common. That's the first thing. If I would have had electricity, I would have not had six, seven inches of flooded basement. I can tell you that. Right? That's first. Two weeks before that, we had another major outage. Now, I've been in this house for 16, 17 years. I had comet outages a blip, a minute, maybe two. Now, since that whole housing project across the site on the Woodridge site happened, I have hours and multiple, multiple times over the year instead of maybe once of a blip. So this really should be looked into, why it's happening. Again, down the road where all that water collects, it's a major disaster. It's not the first time. And whatever has been done, clearly it's not working. Again, that's been brought up. You have to understand, it's insane view and damage when you have across your basement. It's not something pleasant. Not over every year or every second you're happening. It's not something we all want to deal with this. Comet, highest priority. We have to have electricity. We just have to have it. I don't care what they do, how they do it, what measures you guys need to do. Whether it's related to the weather side, it doesn't matter. It has to be fixed. It has to be fixed. Okay? We can deal with the sample. We can put the second one in. You name it. But electricity has to be there. It has to be there. Okay? It's a trickling effect. It's a catch-22, right? What fails first? Electricity is gone. Everything is gone. All our defenses are gone. focus on the highest priorities, okay? And then of course the research, this can be done in parallel, but comment, seriously. This is happening all the time, okay? You can probably go look for the records, how often we lose electricity, you're going to see. And you can go back 10 years, you're gonna see how bad it was. how it is right now, versus before. So, just set your priorities straight. We're all frustrated, I know, but again, community is awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Igor, you'll be tomorrow morning.

You hear me now?

Good evening, sir. I live exactly on the 86442. You guys put the trench over there, but I think it's not enough. And what happens if you have 15 minutes of rain? And so then store is like, start back up over there. So you have to coordinate with the, my backyard falls in a wood ridge. So you have to coordinate with the wood ridge and the DuPage County to make some wider, like a trench or something over there in the back side. And the woodward, when he stand west, over there, back up first, and they start backing up on the elsewhere drive. And I got a picture of like, the flood coming. It's the back side. And that corner one is very low. If you take my card and just forward me that video, that'd be great, okay? Sure, I will. Okay, you just check those here. See this thing up here? Yeah, yeah. And the camera, those box, they need to raise about three, four feet. With the 24th June flowers, they sometimes survive. And after 4th of July, in July, we have about 14 hours of power outrage. And after three, four hours of some time, they died. So the Karmel transformer, we already called, but nobody, nobody hearing us. So you have to call or take care of the Karmel to raise the transformer.

Understood?

And if you quarry it with a good rig in the county, for that standing water, either construction, you can make some kind of bigger gutter over there.

Thank you.

Anyone else? I'd like to... I'd like to let you know, and this is not going to make people feel any better, but this has been a topic that has consumed our staff time for over a week. We've talked about, we've gone out to people's homes, we've seen their homes, some of the more serious situations. We've had friends and neighbors who took water on. The city is not unsympathetic to what's going on. Believe me, I have seepage in my basement. Seepage wasn't bad. I almost feel like I was lucky only to have seepage. But there are a lot of people who are very impacted by this storm. The city is not unsympathetic to your needs. That's why I wrote our district three representatives today. I indicated to them, specific issues with the sanitary sewers. A lot of these homes that had sanitary sewer backup do not have overhead pumps, overhead sewers. We're looking to them for financial assistance for those people. Beyond that, We're gonna discuss what we might be able to do to assist our residents. I just want you to know that you're not talking, your words are not falling on deaf ears. We're definitely listening to what you say. We're definitely listening to your concern. I feel your anger. I feel your frustration, and we will try to do something about it. I want you to know that. Nobody up here is going to sit back and say, well, it wasn't my house. I don't care. Every one of these people here, as your elected representatives, cares about what happened on July 4th. I don't even know if some of them got water themselves. We will try to be as informative as possible. We're gonna wait to see what the county tells us in terms of how they respond to my email. If I have to call our state senators, our state representatives, I will do that on your behalf. I just want you to know that we are sympathetic to what's going on. And again, we talked about it today. We talked about it last week. Every day we've talked about what we can do, how we can handle it. Alderman Leganski has been in City Hall three or four times over the last week talking about issues. We've been out to people's homes. We've visited homes. Mr. Godbeck has gone out. Mr. Leganski has gone out. I've gone out. Dan is willing to go out to other people's homes to take a look. We will try to work something out. I want you to know that. Again, I understand your frustration. I understand your anger and your disappointment. And we will do what we can. And I mean that sincerely. We will do what we can. Mary?

Just, I think, a couple people tapped into it about... you know, obviously insurance and, um, you know, the dollars associated with this. I mean, there's, there's the emotional and the physical, um, destruction, but then to not have the money to even clean out your house. And if your insurance isn't helping, you know, is us being able to assist them in tapping into, uh, you know, the FEMA funds or County funds or some type of, um, emergency disaster funds. I mean, I think that's really critical right now. And, um, that's something that needs to happen, I think, fairly quickly for people.

And we're considering all of those.

Right, right. So hopefully, I don't know if there's, I mean, obviously, we have our direct connect that we send out weekly, but Is there, are you recommending to people in the audience and who are listening who have been impacted, or is someone at City Hall a key point person besides Dan keeping track of addresses and residents? Should people call and report that they've been impacted so that we have a way of communicating back to them when we have that information? Is there somebody they should call?

Yes, we already put that information out a couple times back on Direct Connection. There's a couple different numbers that we have either. It depends how technical the questions are.

Yeah, I saw the contact and the resources, which was great. I'm just thinking from like a, you know, I know it's different if it's flooding versus sanitary sewer, which is the county. And I've shared that on social media. I just want to make sure like we at City Hall are tracking the names and addresses of all the homes. so that we can reply back to them directly.

For stormwater-related issues, yes, we've been replying back to every single individual. As far as the sanitary goes, it depends on the situation. We refer them over to DuPage County. We may not have all their vital information. But we are referring them over to, again, the sanitary district. And I believe Sean is out of town this week. So I'll be touching base with him. I know that they've been doing a great job following up with residents. And he was out here. Matter of fact, I notified Sean of the event on July 4th. He had several people in town that evening.

So, I mean, I have a pretty good idea on what happened in my ward. I'm hearing a lot from a lot of other areas, of course. So do we have, like, do we have, like, it broken down now by area, what areas were hit the hardest and for what reasons? Do we at least have that, like, plotted somewhere to know, like, okay, it's Gale, it's this, it's Glenn by me. Do we have that right now to kind of have a picture, I would hope, by now of how did this city come out of this in terms of by area and for what reason?

There's two different factors we're looking at. Number one is from a stormwater perspective. We have the information. It has not been all compiled to one, two, three, or one which subdivision was the worst from a sanitary district. We're not going to compile that. We're going to leave that back to DuPage County. So the answer is yes, we will, especially the stormwater system. And again, hence the report that's being up for review tonight to move forward.

Anyone on the council have anything to add?

Well, I mean, I had a few things I was going to bring up in, like, the communication part of communications. Should I just save it for that or just bring them up now because they're storm-related? I mean, what do you think is better? Bring it up now, Jason. Bring it up now since it's storm-related? Okay. And then they can hear. Right, so... I mean, typically, as everybody knows, I mean, we do a part of receiving of communications, and I'm sure a lot of us here have gotten communications of people and residents and neighbors who aren't here to speak, but, of course, they've been contacting us as well. And I think it's important to people, everyone know that, you know, we're constantly looking at stormwater projects in this city. So it's not something that we don't look at when problems come up. A couple of communications I've gotten... was from Sue Cleghorn, 613 Honey Locust. regarding flooding on Farmingdale and Honey Locust, which is where a lot of water runs through my ward to get into a big retention pond area. We actually had a fire rescue there of a couple cars that got trapped there where they had to literally go and rescue people from a car, which has happened twice in the last two years on Portsmouth and now on Farmingdale. And I know she copied you as well on that one. I've also been in communication with Jolanta. I'm probably going to really mess up her last name, Akash Laskaiti, regarding water on Whittington Court. Dan, I know you've received that email as well. Her concern is the retention area. that's been overflowing the retention area at Pinewood Park, flooding into Portsmouth, and then, of course, flooding into Whittington Court as well. I've also had multiple conversations with a lot of residents that the mayor came out as well and Dan on Glen Drive, I should say Glen Lane, where they had sanitary sewer backup. where, unfortunately, a couple residents had put in the check valves in front of the homes to the tune of like, you know, $8,000 that did not work. They still had. And that's something I'm learning now that's been going on for quite a while there, to the point where one resident actually has some sandbags in their house just to put around the sewer to keep it from overflowing into their house. You know, I wish they would have said something sooner, but they've been putting up with that for a fairly long time beyond just last July flood and this July flood. So I had multiple sanitary sewer backups Unfortunately, one got to a point where it actually even came up through a kitchen sink. So there's problems definitely throughout the city. And you feel sad, especially for some new residents that have only lived in Darien for 13 months, and they've already experienced two sanitary backups in their home. You know, I feel for them because I have kids the same age that, you know, they're supposed to be building for their future, not trying to rebuild their homes every year and a half because of these floods. So I have been in contact with the mayor and Dan, and we're looking at what we can do because the biggest problem I had really in my ward was these sanitary sewer backups. So that's something that we definitely need to look at. And, you know, Mayor, I appreciate the concern you're taking forward. You know, I'm retired now, but for 30 years, I always had a boss that said, if you have a problem and you don't say anything, it's your problem, but if you bring it to us, it's our problem. And now I think we know it's our problem. And now that we're bringing it up to the county and other areas, now they know that it's their problem as well. So, yeah, problems with electricity, luckily – I fought that in my ward for the longest time, power outages. I mean, before I was even on this council, you guys know I came here all the time with, you know, but until we know there's constantly problems, you kind of think it's business as usual. I mean, how would I know that someone that I know pretty well has had six major flooding events from sanitary sewer backup in the last 33 years? I mean, I would have, I mean, that's not acceptable. I think people just get kind of used to it. And thankfully we didn't lose power this time, which would have been even a bigger disaster. So I wanted to share those communications now, since we're really talking quite a bit about the, the issues that we've had citywide. So that's all I have to say. Thank you.

I guess what we're saying is you're not all alone. This is our issue. I give you credit for coming forward tonight and sharing what you communicated to us in such a good way. I mean, I know a lot of you are frustrated, angry, and I appreciate the way you presented it. I just want you to know the city is looking to do something about it. And we're going to explore a lot of possibilities. And we're not going to leave you alone in terms of dealing with it. I can promise you that. Anyone else want to talk about flooding? Okay. We have another topic. And I believe We have a gentleman who wants to address us, so please come forward.

Mayor and Council, I'm Jeff Sturgeon. Thank you for letting me speak tonight. Congratulations on your retirement.

Thank you.

And your address, sir? 1017 Willow Lane in Darien. Thank you. I'm asking you not to accept misleading assurances about automated license plate readers from Flock and the other people that have sold you these systems. The issue is not whether public safety matters. It does. The issue is whether the system is truly narrow, controlled, and protected against abuse. The record shows that it isn't. We've already seen local control fail. In Mountain View, California, a nationwide sharing setting was enabled without the department's knowledge allowing outside agencies to access local data. The city later suspended the program. We have seen unauthorized government access here in Illinois. A state audit found that federal officials access plate reader data in violation of state law. Flock allows sharing whether or not you have agreed to it. That is exactly the kind of mission creep communities are told will not happen. we have seen misuse by police themselves. In Milwaukee, officers used flock data to track people for personal reasons, including people they knew in their private lives. National reporting has found many similar cases across the country involving stalking and improper searches by police and government officials. We've seen vendor overreach. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city terminated its contract after cameras were reportedly installed without the city's awareness, even after elected officials had paused the program. We also know that vendor personnel access sensitive live camera feeds in places involving children. including schools, playgrounds, swimming pool, a Jewish community center, and a children's gymnastic area during the demonstrations. That should alarm every person in this room. The problem is not just what our city promises to do, it's that these systems are built to connect, share, and expand, and once that happens, local residents lose meaningful control over where their location data goes. And this is not just a privacy issue, it's also an expensive and unwanted solution in search of a problem. If there was never a demonstrated need for this system in the first place, then the city should not spend public money building a mass location database it cannot fully control. Normal police work, targeted investigations, witness interviews, and warrants can solve crimes while still respecting the constitutional rights of the public. Legally, the more accurate standard is this. The Supreme Court has recognized strong Fourth Amendment protection for sensitive digital location data, and ALPR databases can reveal the same kind of intimate movement patterns. The council should require a judge-signed warrant before anyone accesses historical ALPR data. So my ask is simple. Remove the cameras or adopt the following guardrails in full. Those protections should include very short retention, up to seven days, no outside sharing without a warrant for a felony recognized under state or local law, limit uses to felony investigations, annual public reporting and audit logs, and a warrant signed by a judge before access to historical ALPR data. If this technology is truly safe, necessary, and accountable, it should be able to survive those rules. If it cannot, I don't think it belongs in our city very much.

My name is Richard Finley. I'm a relatively new resident, 8507 Hemlock Lane. And tonight I want to talk, I'd like to lodge a formal complaint about the city's ongoing use of flock safety license plate reader cameras. These cameras are already in place, 10 of them, if I'm correct, are a key entry and exit points across Darien. They're already capturing data on every vehicle that enters or leaves our community. My complaint is that this program was adopted and continues to operate without adequate oversight and that the vendor behind it has been proven by a state audit to have violated Illinois law. In 2023, Illinois passed a law prohibiting the sharing of automated license plate reader data for immigration or abortion enforcement. In August 25, our Secretary of State audited the operations, and we already know how that story ends, thanks to Mr. Sturgeon. Forest Park Police Department was caught improperly sharing data the month after that audit came through. A news investigation by 404 Media found that over 4,000 federal immigration enforcement lookups were run through flock systems using search terms like ICE, ERO, deportee, and immigration. The University of Washington Center for Human Rights reported that Border Patrol access networks of police departments that never authorized federal searches, a backdoor into local data that nobody agreed to open. Our police department published a community bulletin calling concerns about this system inaccurate and misleading, but the state audit already mentioned is not a flyer. It's not a rumor. It's a finding by an officer of our state that the law was broken. Meanwhile, Flock's own standard contract grants the company a worldwide perpetual royalty-free right and license to disclose agency data for investigative purposes. In April of this year, The Guardian reported that Flock quietly removed language from its terms of service that previously assured that customer data I'm sorry, that previously assured customers that the company does not own or sell their data. Again, this was removed. So the company weakened its own privacy commitments after the audit, not strengthened them. Evanston terminated their flock contract. Oak Park terminated theirs. More than 30 municipalities across the country have deactivated or canceled flocks since early 2025, thanks to revelations like these. My asks are specific. Audit flocks access logs to confirm no unauthorized federal or third-party searches occurred using Darien's data. Have the city attorney review the contract for the data disclosure clause and assess our legal exposure. And if compliance cannot be verified, terminate this contract. We were told these cameras are for recovering stolen vehicles and finding missing persons. That is a worthy goal. But the vendor we chose to accomplish it has been caught violating the trust of every community that signed this contract with them, including communities in our own state. That makes this a Darien problem, and I ask the council to treat it with urgency. Thank you.

Please come forward if you want to. Please come forward.

Hello, everyone. How are you? I'm Michael. I live in Downers Grove, literally just like a mile from here. And I'm here to tell you that flock cameras are probably the worst idea ever to exist on this planet Earth. As we heard, these cameras, they have no protection against abuses. We even heard rumors that a lot of police officers were doing things that are very suspicious, using these flock cameras for their own personal ends. And these cameras put our neighbors in danger because Flock is known to give data to ICE. And we all know ICE has been treating our neighbors, spoiler alert, not exactly friendly neighborhood Spider-Man way. So, yes. And I even heard, and Flock is not even that good of a system in the first place. In California, where my family is from, Los Angeles, they had to deactivate their systems because the system couldn't tell the difference between a car blogger and an actual stolen car. So the system actively ruins lives, gives data to ICE and other malicious agencies, And it's very open to abuse. And as multiple people in this meeting said, they can go anywhere, any group. So removing, cancel. Guardrails are not enough. If you ask me, we need to get rid of these cameras completely. We already know it can be done. Oak Park, Edmonton, they canceled their contracts for similar reasons. for abuses against the public and our constitutional rights. I know you want to keep your community safe, and as do I. I want to grow up in a world where everyone lives in peace, prosperity, and just general to general safety, but this is not the way to do it. Putting your trust in the faulty system that's known to backfire on your citizens and gives its data to ICE and others is not the way to go about it. If you really want to solve solutions, just talk to your neighbors. have, as you said, warrants and witness works just fine. Putting your system at known fault, putting your faith in a knowingly inaccurate system is just not the way to go about it. That'll be all I have to say. Thank you very much.

Anyone else wants to address us regarding fly cameras?

Hello. My name is Eric Anderson. I've lived in this community for the better part of 35 years. I've attended Gower West and Hizzo South and still currently live here. And the vast majority of my family and about the majority of my friends are either some form of immigrant or part of the LGBT community. Two groups who are the federal administration is currently very hostile to. And FLOC, the way it works, as you might know, it creates large, long-term databases where you can maintain the location data of people to very detailed amounts. And given the current environment, I have to fear for my friends and family and just oppose any continued working with FLOC cameras. Thank you.

I'm Ori Wilde, formerly a Darien resident, now Lyle, lifelong resident of DuPage. I'm here because I'm concerned about seeing these ALPRs all across the suburbs. I'm here to speak against their use in Darien. Despite the wide implementation of ALPRs by law enforcement agencies and the pervasiveness of uninvited text surveillance in our public and private lives, the record behind the use of license plate readers remains legally gray. And citizen concerns about data privacy remain as valid as ever. Oak Park and Evanston, as mentioned, recalled their ALPR use due to concerns about their use in federal immigration operations in contravention of Illinois law. Wrongful, violent arrests due to inaccurate information and the stalking and targeting of private citizens are other examples of harmful and illegal misuses of ALPR technologies. Just last month, the police chief in McHenry County was arrested for using the flock database there to track the movements. That was X's new boyfriend, among other lawful citizens doing lawful things. The right to privacy is reflected by the Fourth Amendment. The third-party doctrine further defines the idea of a reasonable expectation of privacy in cases of third-party use. Thus, the use of these flock-owned devices, which persistently and constantly track drivers' movements, fall under the third-party doctrine, thereby removing a reasonable expectation of privacy while on the roadways. Why should a corporate entity own citizen data that is ostensibly collected and stored by publicly funded police departments? does such a sensitive database require a warrant as for cell phone records? I'm aware that a system like this could be helpful in solving select crimes, but constant mass surveillance produces a security state, not a perfect state of security. Before surveilling technology is deployed, a compelling public need must be presented. How are police departments measuring demonstrable success versus the risks to civil liberty and potential threats to constitutional law? Mass surveillance technologies are vulnerable to mass abuse and security risks. Does it serve the community to have their location data stored on a nationwide server instead of on a local one? Is 30 days a reasonable timeframe to store information about the location of innocent citizens? Is this data indiscriminately collected, or are there different data storage methods for hot-listed information? Why does FLOC's latest terms and conditions include a perpetual quote-unquote license to use a citizenry's data even after that municipality has long ended their FLOC contract? At what point does a citizen void their reasonable expectation of privacy? Are we all to accept that we live constantly surveilled, or do we speak up about our concerns and fears and stop it now? Given the lack of protections available and questions about the collection and storage of public data, these devices cannot be set to meet a standard of trust for public use. I ask that the benefits versus the risks of ALPRs be re-evaluated by members of local law enforcement and by city government. Thank you, guys.

I live on Worth Drive. I just have questions. How many flock cameras do we have now? Are we planning on getting more? And how long is the current contract for? And are we planning on renewing? So I guess those four questions.

Chief Thomas? There's currently 10. We're looking at another six. And what was the other two questions?

How long is the contract for, for the existing 10 that we have?

A year.

One year, and then one more year for the next six. And so we're planning on renewing. Correct. Have we seen a benefit of having these?

Yes, we've recovered a number of stolen cars, missing people, suicidal people.

How many missing people have we found? How many missing people has Darien personally found from having? How many?

One I know off the top of my head. One suicide I know off the top of my head. About 14 cars.

And how much do we pay yearly to have this surveillance of us at all times?

I think it's close to $200,000.

Holy shit, we could use that for our sewer system. Yeah. Do we get to vote on getting six more or the contract renewal of our $200,000 in tax expenditure?

That's a decision the city council will make. They'll go through various points of discussion, and then it eventually comes to the city council.

When will we know about that?

If you go to the city website, we do publish our agenda.

Yeah, that's how I'm here today. So everybody doesn't get this newsletter emailed to them. My 90-year-old neighbors, I'm sure, don't get to see it.

Do you get the Darien Direct Connect?

Yeah, I have that. But I'm guessing, like, half of the retired people on our block don't have email and don't receive information this way. So I'm just curious, like, how is everybody going to know when this contract is up and if we get to vote? THAT OUR MONEY IS SPENT TOWARDS THIS?

WE DO THE BEST WE CAN TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO EVERYBODY.

THE EASIEST ONE IS THE BUDGET GETS PASSED MAY 1ST. APRIL, THE FIRST MONTH OF APRIL. IT GOES INTO EFFECT MAY 1ST, BUT THE VOTE IS ENABLED.

OKAY, SO THE NEXT SIX CAMERAS HAVE ALREADY BEEN APPROVED.

OKAY, SO OUR FIRST OPPORTUNITY IS... CONTRACT DEGOTIATIONS AND THOSE TYPE OF THINGS. be discussed during the budget process and then voted at the April meeting. I think it's the first Monday in April.

So we all come back in April to talk how we don't want to spend our money on plot cameras, how we wanted to solve our plumbing problems and sewer problems.

Can I just ask you just a quick question? So what constituted the decision to buy six more? What in the data that you've been collecting has constituted the decision to buy six additional?

Continued investigative needs for recovery of stolen cars and evidence and missing persons and the like.

So we've had one missing person, right, and 14 stolen cars, which is commendable. Yeah. But six more cameras.

I think we've had the system since for about a year or so.

I'M SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I SAID WE DIDN'T HAVE HIGH CRIME BEFORE.

the plot cameras. So we're making an investment in something that's kind of unnecessary, is my point.

Darian has always had one of the lowest crime rates in DuPage County. The plot cameras have actually assisted in helping us keep it low.

So our police force couldn't have done it without him? No. I don't believe that.

If that was your missing person, would you want to make sure they got found?

I mean, nobody wanted their basement to flood. But he doesn't say they would have been caught otherwise. Like, nobody would want a loved one to go missing. Nobody wants their car stolen. Nobody wants anything bad to happen in life. But it happens.

So we pray. And yet, the campus system is faulty. You know that.

Right. But we don't give away all of our rights in our privacy. Like, we don't want to do that. We don't want government following us everywhere, everything we do in life. Nobody wants that. You wouldn't want a flat camera in your house. Why do we want it on the streets? Like, we didn't say yes to that when we purchased these houses years and years ago. Like, we didn't say yes to this.

I think the chief said, anybody... Since these were approved, everybody is welcome to our city budget meetings that do start in February. I'm sorry, that talks about about $25 million of different things the city does. And you could hear everything the council talks about in three or four meetings and a couple after that and weighs in on everything and has all of these discussions. that there's questions here. Dan will introduce stormwater projects that have, I'm sure, gone into the multi-million dollars of things based on different reviews and things the chief has brought forward. The chief and the officers, different types of technology that they see is very helpful to keep dairy in a safe community as it is. But really, that Everybody does appreciate your comments, but to have a really good dialogue, I would suggest the budget's time is really the best time because you could hear the discussions of all the items and all the purchases and services the city talks about.

It's one meeting where every item on the budget is discussed.

No, I said about, I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'm the chairperson of the Administrative Finance Committee, and we do workshops. So there's a series of workshops. The budget document is published before those workshops even start, and that happens in February. Prior to any of that, we have goal setting in the fall where we talk about items that would be introduced to the budget. But at any given time, today, tomorrow, next week, sitting up here are your elected officials. You are represented by a ward. You live in a ward. I'm Ward 5. I'm not your alderwoman or alderperson. But you vote for us to represent you. So you speak to us, and we speak on your behalf. So you can have that dialogue long before that with your alderperson. And then you can come to meetings. But our budget is not, we have a final vote, but there's lots of hours and conversations and preparation that go into that starting in February with the final conclusion being a vote of it at the beginning of April. So those schedules are all published.

Line by line of every item.

We go through and it's an open meeting in this. It's televised, but it's open to the public and everything's put on the website, which The full budget is on there with backup, and you are welcome to come to the meetings. And there is time during that meeting, it's set up a little differently than this, that you can ask questions.

Does the community get to choose what goes up for debate to be put into the budget? We are the ones that vote on it.

So if you have something you would like to see in the budget, sewers, better this, better that, then you should bring that forth to your alder person to then present it to the city council. But it's the seven elected officials, we're missing one tonight, who vote on WHAT GOES INTO THE BUDGET AND WHAT GETS FUNDED.

OKAY, SO NOW YOU JUST SAID FEBRUARY. THAT'S WHEN THE AGENDA... SO EVERYBODY SHOULD TELL THEM BY FEBRUARY.

ACTUALLY, THE PROCESS STARTS. THERE'S WORKSHOPS THAT START.

SO WE SHOULD TELL HIM BY FEBRUARY.

ACTUALLY, OUR GOAL SETTING IS USUALLY... YOU CAN TELL ME ANY TIME SOMETHING COMES TO MIND. THAT'S WHAT I SAID. WE'RE HERE FOR YOU.

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE DON'T MISS IT.

OUR GOAL SETTING SESSIONS START OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER. YOU CAN ATTEND OUR GOAL SETTING. YOU CAN LISTEN TO US DISCUSS new items, current programs, things that might be new to the city, you can attend those meetings. There's a time where people in the audience could speak out and say, could you discuss this? We're having an issue with this. That's late October, early November. Mr. Vanna and I start working on the budget considering all the items, probably late October, early November, after goal setting. There's a lot of opportunities for the public to come forward. We have a police committee. Mr. Kenney chairs that. Items that we're going to purchase get approved by that committee. They come forward to the city council. The administrative finance committee, they discuss expenditures. Those expenditures, if they're approved, come to the city council. So there's different committees that will talk about these things. And the public, they're open to the public all the time.

But our budget year starts May 1st, so.

I think most people in this room don't know this information.

Well, we put.

You probably have to seek it out. Sure, it's probably available online. But everybody here is in scouring the internet to find out how the things work.

Our website has everything out. I want to correct you on something. We publish a newsletter three times a year. We published a whole newsletter on the budget process, and that goes to every home in Darien.

Okay. I haven't read it, so I apologize.

Yes, unfortunately, they've been very transparent about the installation of four cameras. Very, very transparent. But this is not an issue of budget for us. This is an issue of a constitutional right that's been taken away from us.

Sir, if you're going to talk, you've got to come to the microphone. I appreciate it.

Unfortunately, we're put into a situation where tens of thousands of people are being passively surveilled in the hopes that hypothetically one or two people might find themselves back being made whole. And I can appreciate the validity of the desire there. I really can. But ultimately, what we're attempting to argue as citizens is the mechanism by which this city is attempting to catch these folks or help these folks is a faulty system. It's a system built in order to harvest aggregate data across multiple sectors. Now, Darien and its flock cameras are contributing to the national web work of flock cameras. We are ultimately building profiles on Americans based on where you're driving. And you can learn a heck of a lot about a person based on where they're driving. You can learn their... You can learn about the protests they've attended. You can learn about their political affiliations. You can learn about their medical practitioner needs. You can learn about who they're spending their nights with. There's an awful lot of private information that even members on this council, I imagine, would like to think that in this country, that's what makes this country uniquely fantastic, is that we have a reasonable expectation to privacy against our government. Flock is a loophole at best. Now we have allowed a private mass surveillance system under the guise of a contract with a private organization to take off the government's plate surveilling all of us and ultimately now instead of the government in an Orwellian fashion collecting it they're just buying it in the age-old practice of capitalism and here we are at the last stages of it and And we are ultimately sacrificing way too much for way too little by relying on flock. Thank you.

Anyone else?

If you would like to get together, I made a Facebook page, DeFlock Darien. DeFlock as in sheep.

We did not come up with a speech prepared. The only reason why I wanted to mention this was we were driving a few weeks ago. My kid asked me what they were Did a little bit of research, kind of explained, we're still in the process of explaining internet safety. We're in an age where everything you text, everything you look up online, theoretically it's not private anymore. And driving no longer is either. He wanted to come up because he thought this was kind of a cool idea. Because when we were talking about it, he didn't feel comfortable with it. You know what, I shouldn't put words in your mouth. Did you want to talk?

Yeah. My name is Max Minette. I'm here today to talk about flock cameras. I don't think they're a good idea for our community because we could just put like a letter out on the news or we could call Chicago News and we could ask, hey, look out for this license plate. And then that's how we can catch them that way. do really like people watching your privacy and reading your license plates and watching cameras. Like, we need a warrant for them to watch the cameras. I don't feel comfortable with random people watching our camera, like, watching cameras and looking at us and spying on our license plates. And I think Flock is a faulty camera system because it also can track facial recognition. Which makes me feel kind of uncomfortable because when I'm driving in the car, I don't know where the flat cameras are. I know what they look like, but do we really need them?

Not a conspiracy theorist. I get the idea where it can't help law enforcement. I'm not mad at law enforcement for wanting them. I just think overall the idea is a little bit potentially overreaching. It's kind of gross. There are municipalities getting rid of them. There's a state that's talking about abolishing them. I'm not mad at you guys for putting them in. It makes sense for law enforcement. I don't like it as an overall concept. I just think it's a bit of an overreach. I think you guys, it would be a good idea to consider maybe being one of the pioneers and maybe taking the system out. Yeah, just wanted to say our piece. Thank you.

Anyone else? Under his report tonight, Chief Thomas has a police report. It gives an accounting of Statistics and data. Part of this report tonight included a brief synopsis of our use of the flock cameras. And rather than wait till we get to that item on the agenda, can I ask you, Greg, to basically talk a little bit about how we use flock cameras to overcome some of the misperceptions?

Sure. The other report's available on applying as well, if you want to look at that itself. I'm aware of a number of the issues that you have brought up, and I look at that. The letter that you provided, we appreciate that. We are in compliance with all the laws within the state of Illinois, 625, ILCS, 5-2-130, any kind of changes or judicial orders regarding the cameras. It talks about the motor vehicle reports that wanted people that were captured, child sexual abuse situation where the person fled to Rockford, suicidal individual, and other things that are reasons for the camera system, how the data is retained, and the like. I had a check before I came in. regarding some of the questions regarding ice usage. Ice does not use our system. FBI, U.S. Postal Service, and National Park Service, which was odd for me to see, but there are a lot of national parks around, and so ice does not use the system. We do the audits as... REQUIRED AND MAKE SURE THAT THEY'RE UP TO DATE. LIKE ANYTHING, IT CAN BE ABUSED, AND THAT'S INAPPROPRIATE, AND WE WOULD TAKE ANY KIND OF ACTION AGAINST SOMEBODY THAT WAS MISUSING THE PRODUCT.

WE HAVE EVIDENCE THAT FLOCK IS SHARING WITH ICE. HE'S TALKING RIGHT NOW?

The public had time to speak.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Now it's time for us to speak, and we respect everybody as they talked, and I would ask for the same. The chief's giving us a synopsis.

I'm pretty well done, so if you have more to say, then I'll listen to all those different kinds of comments. I'm big on the Constitution and making sure that we abide by all those things. And as information changes, definitely we'll help that.

I think you have to have faith and confidence in the Darien Police, their leadership, to utilize the system in a correct way. Everything that I've seen, all the reports Chief Thomas has submitted, reading through the documentation myself, I can assure you that we utilize the system only for what it's intended for, and that is to fight crime, lower the crime rate, and keep our communities safer. I realize there's a concern out there with regard to constitutional rights. People feel they're being monitored. Believe me, I don't think... You won't find any of that happening here in Darien. The chief can assure me of that as mayor.

But other people can search the data from out of town. I think the issue that we're hearing is not necessarily distrust of the Darien Police Department. is distrust of ALPR vendors, and in particular, FLOC. And I'm not sure if that's due to Darien using FLOC as a vendor or FLOC as a vendor that has come under scrutiny. Regardless, they're under scrutiny, so that requires another continuum.

just did you arrive late I did but I only have a minute and I have to get back to play with my seven-year-old why don't you I wasn't gonna even come tonight but I think that three things have to be said The first thing is I trust these people. They make Darien a nice place to live. Some people consider that a slogan, but I consider it a promise, and I trust them, all of them. If you want to know about things they can do to make you guys feel better, They can audit the network annually. They can publish those audit logs so you guys can see them. They can track false hit rates so that if there is data that's leaking that leads to false arrests, you'll know about it and you can see it. They could assure you that they're only going to keep that data for 30 days. They could have a cyber policy that... tracks this sort of thing, and if there's any sort of data breaches, it can be audited in real time and forensically tracked so that if there are bad actors in the system, they can be rooted out and essentially stopped at the source. And the most important thing they could do is track the contract exit rights. So if there are problems with the system and they want to switch vendors, you maintain that ability to exit the contract in a timely manner. So the most important thing I'm hearing is the data. As long as they're assuring you that they're only keeping this data for 30 days, there shouldn't be much of an issue in terms of aggregated data. In terms of hacking the system, if they have a cyber policy enforced that monitors their cyber environments so there are no bad actors in the system, hacking the system will be a concern that a lot of people shouldn't worry about. And the main thing is that if they're auditing the logs and it leads to false arrests, those things should be publicly available so everyone can sort of track them. And in my mind, you know, Look, I've listened to everything that was said tonight, but the main issue for me is that I trust these folks. And I don't think that, like, you look at the flock data and are there pros, are there cons? There obviously are. But the main thing is that Illinois, as it stands, has very strict flock laws. And I would encourage everyone here to actually look at the Illinois flock restrictions. This would be a very different discussion if we were in a jurisdiction like Illinois. Texas or Florida, for example. But Illinois, in Illinois, what FLOC can and can't do is very different. So I would encourage the police officer here to consider publishing those logs, making sure you have a reputable cyber vendor. And if you guys are doing those things, you should be fine. Thank you.

That closes our discussion on the flock cameras. We're going to continue with the remainder of our agenda at this point. I appreciate all the comments tonight, whether it deal with the flooding or it deals with the flock cameras. I appreciate you coming out. It's always good to have the public come to us and share with us their ideas on what's going on. I do appreciate that. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. We have the approval of the minutes. I ask for a motion to approve the June 1st, 2026 and the June 15th, 2026. No. Okay. June 1st, 2026 minutes. I need a motion to approve. Moved by Alderman Schauer. Seconded by Alderman Stappanato. Any questions or comments? All in favor? No. I'm sorry. No. I'm going.

For all.

THROUGH ME OFF TONIGHT. THIS IS FOR CITY COUNCIL ONE, RIGHT?

YEAH.

YES.

SHOWER. AYE. STAMPINATO. AYE. GUSTOFSEN. AYE. KENNY.

AYE.

MCGINSKY. AYE. SULLIVAN. AYE. SIX AYES AND ONE ABSENT.

THOSE MINUTES HAVE BEEN APPROVED. NOW I NEED A MOTION TO APPROVE THE JUNE 15, 2026 CITY COUNCIL MINUTES. MOVED BY ALDERMAN SHOWER, SECONDED BY ALDERMAN SULLIVAN. QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

If none, the roll. Shower. Aye. Sullivan. Aye. Gustafson. Aye. Kenney. I'm staying. Leganski. I'm staying. Stompanato. Aye. I have four ayes, one absent, and two abstentions.

Minutes have been approved. Takes us to receiving of communications. This is an opportunity for aldermen to share any communication they might have received from a resident since our last meeting. Alderman Sullivan.

Thank you. I'm just going to do a broad, obviously we spent a lot of time tonight and more time needs to be spent talking about the devastating flooding and water that came in to Darien on June 4th and prior to that too. I live in Terra Hill, which is one of the newer communities and I was out of town like many people were because it was the holiday weekend and us out of town were like feared what we were going to come home to. But neighbors reported like, you know, it was like a river, like flooding like no one had ever seen who have been in the community for 30, 35 years. So it impacted every part of Darien, newer parts, older parts. Carriage Green's golf course was completely underwater. So people have reached out to us. We're connecting them with city services, connecting them with the right resources. So let your older people know. help you along in this process, get you the resources, make sure they know if you've been flooded so that you can be in touch with potential aid down the road. But that's what we're elected for, is to be your voices. Continuing dialogue happens on South Frontage Road at Cass. Obviously, the construction on the Cass Bridge over I-55, which Kind of came to a standstill. Activity has resumed. We saw workers there today, but our friends in Darien over at the condo development and townhomes there at Falling Waters and South Cass and Frontage Road continue to express concern about the need for a light. We're continuing to have our dialogue and put pressure on DuPage County and Illinois Department of Transportation to address this. But I have to stress it is going to have to be a collaborative effort. Darien, it's outside of our bandwidth to do it because it is a county road and it is a state road. But we are putting pressure on, expressing safety concerns. And we keep hearing from people. We keep connecting with our state legislators, our county representatives, hoping to get some traction on that. And additionally, hoping that that project over I-55 and Cass Avenue, we've got people doing U-turns. We've got lane closures. It's scary. It's safety. I pull out on that roadway multiple times a day, and people are whipping around doing U-turns. I've seen a lot of Deerian police presence there on the median. monitoring the traffic flow. So reach out if your concerns continue. But I just wanted to bring that up.

Anyone else?

I had two residents. I had Marie Siagla Becker on Worth Home Flooded Base. They had some of the sewage come up. and they had a resident, we had to get her out of the house because power went out, elderly, no air conditioning, no power. So those are the only two that I got. One was sanitary sewer coming up on one, and one was just power being out.

Anyone else? I had one resident on Beller Drive that I talked to Dan about that had... Their sewer in their backyard backed up and backed up towards the house, but it slowly got resolved. Mary?

Just one last thing. I was out of town, but on Saturday night when the rain, you know, kind of slowed down, I just want to give a shout out to Dan Godbeck, who is a Darien resident, but our city administrator, Brian Vanna, who does not live nearby necessarily, they were driving around to all the various communities and They even put me on speakerphone so that I could speak to some residents in my ward that were directly impacted. So I'm very grateful for their service and being boots on the ground. So many residents sent me videos. And capturing what's happening in real time with videos and photos is important. But when you have the people that are going to help us find the solutions, literally driving around and seeing it firsthand, I think that really made a huge help. So thank you, gentlemen.

anyone else, any other communication. It takes us to the mayor's report. I'd like to mention, and a lot of the public doesn't know this, but the city of Darien operates a summer internship program. We have students from Hinsdale South High School and Downers Grove South High School, juniors who are going into their senior year. We put them through a six-week program here at the city. They spend a week with Mr. Vanna, on administration. They spent a week with Mr. Gondek on municipal services. They spent a week with Mr. Murphy about ordinances and permitting. They spent a week with me. During the week with me, they got to interview business people to find out the relationship between business and city of Darien. They also had an opportunity to interview Senator Curran, Nicole LaHa, Representative LaHa, Representative Marty Deuter, county board member Lucy Chang-Evans, as well as Alderman Sullivan, Alderman Kenney, and Alderman Stompanato. They've finished their six-week program just last week. On August 3rd, they're going to be presenting a capstone project, which means they picked up an issue that they feel they can discuss with the council. They want to present a solution if they saw it as a problem. I'm very proud of this program. This is the second year we've run this program, and There's a saying that says if you want democracy to continue, you have to get young people involved, and we're working to get young people involved. So I'm very proud of that program. The other thing I wanted to mention was, I'm going to reiterate this. I have a very good working relationship with Lucy Evans, with Kerry Galassi, and Brian Krajewski. Those are our three District 3 representatives at the county board level. I have also been appointed recently to a committee by Deb Conroy. So I have a good working relationship with the county board chair. I am not hesitant to contact them. and asked them for assistance. And today I sent them an email and told them we need some help in Darien. We need them to look at this issue that we had with the sanitary sewer backups. And hopefully we'll get some resolution by that, through that communication. And so that's my mayor's report. City Clerk report.

NO REPORT TO SEE ME HERE.

CITY ADMINISTRATOR'S REPORT.

ONE ITEM, MAYOR, THANK YOU. DAN, IF YOU COULD PLEASE, DAN, IF YOU COULD PASS ON TO YOUR, EVERYBODY IN PUBLIC WORKS, WHENEVER THERE'S SOMETHING LIKE THE FLOODS ON THE FOURTH, WHETHER IT'S A TORNADO A COUPLE YEARS AGO AND A RESIDENT WHO'S A SENIOR WASN'T ABLE TO PULL HER BIG BRANCH OUT TO THE FRONT AND THE CALVARY COMES IN. And again, from the residents, we all heard nothing but thanks to the Public Works employees. So again, if you could pass it on to all of them, please.

I did piggyback on that real quickly. It was 5.15 on a Friday afternoon. Most people from City Hall were gone. I was sitting at my desk, and the phone rang. And it was a woman on the phone, an elderly woman, who said that we had a windstorm. And she said, a large branch broke off my tree, and it's laying in the parkway and into the street. She says, could you come and move that branch? And I said, well, I don't think I could do something like that by myself, but I'll call Public Works. At 5.15 in the evening, I called Christopher Thron, who heads our municipal services. Chris says, Mr. Marquez, he was home. He says, I'll get somebody out there to move that branch. I called this woman back a few minutes later, and I said, somebody's coming out from Public Works. And she goes, oh, don't worry about it, Mr. Mayor. She said, I had a very nice police officer from the city of Darien come by, and he moved the branch. She says, and I can't believe that on a Friday afternoon at almost 530, I had the mayor, the Public Works, and the police department all helping me out. And I think that speaks to the quality of the people that you're dealing with. So thanks for letting me tell my story. All right. We move to department head, information and questions. Our police department monthly report. Chief Thomas.

Part of it's already been covered, but I do want to go over the e-bike portion of the monthly report. And so a lot of municipalities were all making their own decisions on... DIFFERENT REQUIREMENTS FOR THE BIKE, WHETHER IT COULD RIDE ON A TRAIL, A SHARED TRAIL, ROADWAY, BIKE LANE, SIDEWALK, AND THE LIKE. AND SO YOU'D BE IN ONE COMMUNITY AND BE OKAY. YOU CAN RIDE THEIR DISTANCE OVER TO THE NEXT COMMUNITY AND THEN YOU COULD BE IN VIOLATION OF AN AWARENESS VIOLATION. SO THE STATE TOOK THAT UP AS AN ISSUE. DID WHAT THEY COULD TO CORRECT THAT. SO EFFECTIVE JULY 1 OF THIS YEAR, THERE'S ALL THOSE COLLECTIVE THINGS THAT'S GONE INTO ONE DOCUMENT. SO IN THE PAST, FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU WERE TO RIDE AN E-SCOOTER, YOU HAD TO BE 18 YEARS OR OLDER. TO RIDE AN E-BIKE, YOU HAD TO BE AT LEAST 16 YEARS OF AGE. THE STATE DIDN'T HAVE A LOT OF REQUIREMENTS OR RESTRICTIONS ON WHERE A lot of local municipalities did, so the state did put in a number of restrictions on where you can ride. It did lower the e-bike, sorry, e-scooter to 16. Anything over that e-bike that travels faster than 28 miles an hour or 750 miles VOLTS IS NOW NO MORE CONSIDERED BICYCLE, AND CRUDS IS NOT A BICYCLE. IT'S NOW, DEPENDING ON SIZE AND THOSE TYPE OF THINGS, BE IT MOTORCYCLE, MOTORIZED MOPED, THOSE TYPE OF THINGS. SO NOW IT REQUIRES A STATE LICENSE, STATE REGISTRATION, A LICENSE TO DRIVE IT, INSURANCE, AND THE LIKE. SO THERE WAS A NUMBER OF CHANGES THAT WERE MADE. CAN'T RIDE AN E-BIKE ON A PUBLIC SIDEWALK. THAT'S AN OUT OF STATE LAW. E-BIKES, E-SCOOTERS ARE PERMITTED ON STREETS AND THEN BIKE LANES. LIKE I SAID, THE MAXIMUM SPEED IS 28 MILES AN HOUR. YOU HAVE TO BE AT LEAST 16 YEARS OF AGE. They also took up the toys, those little things that run on batteries, and where they can be ridden and can't go over 10 miles an hour. You can ride those, because those are for 8-, 9-, 10-year-old kids, and you don't want those individuals on the street, so you can ride those on sidewalks. So, again, back to the... WE'VE MADE THOSE DIRECT CONNECT NOTIFICATIONS, TWITTER NOTIFICATIONS, DIRECT MONTHLY REPORT, AND THOSE TYPE OF THINGS. IT'S AVAILABLE AT DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. OUR SRO HAS VISITED, I THINK, ALL THE SCHOOLS AND TALKED TO THE SCHOOLS AND ALSO SENT FLYERS IN THE whatever the school sends out. So hopefully parents have got that information. And there is a parental responsibility portion to it. So if parents are allowing stuff, that's not good. Oh, and I have to give a shout out for Dan, which drives me crazy. We did have flooding next door at the police department and so we made some decisions about what should be in the lower level, what should be in the upper level. So Dan sent his crew, I think six over and moved a bunch of stuff out of the basement and lower level. Critical operations like the sergeant's office and like and less critical operations. training room and some other stuff. So we made that happen and Dan came over, Dan's personnel came over and made that work. So I appreciate that as well. Thanks, Craig.

Any questions for Craig?

Mary?

I just want to stress again to the audience and to folks listening how imperative it is that parents respect this new law and like, you know, we adopted e-bike, e-scooter policy over a year ago, but now it's a statewide mandate and it's so imperative that the parents cooperate, do not buy the vehicles, the devices for their children. It's against the law. There is repercussions. And most of all, it's about safety. And already this summer, we've seen in the news, thankfully not in Darien, but still lives lost because of improper usage of the e-bikes. And it has a trickle effect. The driver is forever changed, the loss of life, the families. So please follow the letter of the law. Please educate your children on the proper use, the proper device use, what you can do, where you can ride it. And please wear a helmet. I know it's not the law, but protect that. You can fix a broken arm, but you can't fix a broken head.

Anything else for Chief Thomas? Mr. Gombach.

All right, it's already hour right here, July 4th. Let's recap. I'm going to be brief. I'm just going to give some highlights, and then we'll go from there for any potential questions. Obviously, on July 4th, the city of Deerion experienced an extreme rainfall event that produced anywhere from 6 to 8 inches of rain, depending where you're at. In one report, it was 2.4 inches of rainfall. 3.4 inches of rain that fell within a one-hour period. There's another report that's basically close to four inches within an hour. Again, it was limited to, I would say, 63rd Street up to Lamar Road, or actually a little further into the south, probably a little more than I-55 and Willowbrook up to right around Route 83. We were the rain barrel, if you want to say, of this event. The storm was the final and most intense round of a multi-day storm, which was from July 2nd to July 4th. The ground was already saturated, a lot of runoff, which reduced infiltration, resulting in widespread flash flooding. The rainfall intensity overwhelmed portions of the city's storm source system, which we've all heard and experienced, roadside ditches, detention facilities, as well as natural overland flow routes. Flooding, of course, resulted in significant street ponding, flooded vehicles, overland yard flooding, Basement flooding through window wells, seepage and or foundation openings, sanitary sewer backups in some areas served by DuPage County Sanitary System occurred as well. The areas that were most impacted from a drone view were Holly Park and Birchwood Park. Whereas we've got no reports from Holmes, with the exception of one that we're currently still trying to get a hold of, in respect to home, water that entered the actual home through a front door, back door, patio door, window well, so on and so forth. Obviously, a lot of the older neighborhoods with limited stormwater infrastructure were prone to this. And when I say limited Stormwater structure, I'm referring to retention and or detention ponds. Keep in mind that prior to the 80s, detention was very limited for requirements or the type of requirements. Places such as Brookhaven, Henswood, do not have the capacity to store 100-year rain events. I'll get into that in a moment. The city, yes, we provided LRS, the city provided LRS to come in with dumpsters. We had, I believe, and Brian, correct me if I'm wrong, we had three dumpsters at the city hall. They were basically transferred out every We put that on the website, and I believe we had 3, 6, 9, 12 dumpsters here at the City Hall, Brian. I might be a little bit off.

As soon as they would fill, they would rotate. I don't remember, Dan, if it was 16 or 20, but it was since I think the day after, like the 5th or 6th, all the way up until...

Yeah, exactly. We had additional dumpsters at Public Works as well. So those were basically changed on a daily basis after the announcements came out. What did Public Works do? We initiated inspections, evaluations of the city-owned stormwater infrastructure, including streets, storm sewers, and detention facilities. Keep in mind that The perception was that the inlets were clogged. They were not clogged. The system could not take anymore. And in some cases, you would see water that was so high that the pressure of the upstream water, downstream water caused additional surging from the downstream inlets. Residents, what do we do for notifications? We put out something on Direct Connect immediately, which said, City of Darien, please contact us if you have issues involving city streets and stormwater infrastructure. And we also advised residents, if they had sewer backups, who to call to DuPage County. Let's discuss a 100-year storm. What does a 100-year storm mean? It's basically a statistical probability, not a storm that occurs once every 100 years. Again, just to reiterate, it represents a rainfall event having a 1% chance of occurring or being exceeded in a given year. Storm frequency is based on geographical location, duration of rainfall, and the rainfall depth. Now, just to put it in perspective, 100-year rain events can equate to hours. One hour equals about 2.5 inches of water within an hour. Two hours is 3.15. We go all the way up to 24 hours, which I believe occurred back in the 1980s, where it was over 24 hours. If not longer, we're at 8.57 inches. inches in a 24-hour period or plus, and that basically identifies, defines what a 100-year rainfall event was. The closest rain gauge that we have in Darien that the USGS recognizes is close to Nantucket and Portsmouth. So the one-hour rainfall intensity did occur there. Although, some say that it did not meet it. It had to have met it. Because there's other reports that basically say we exceeded that. And I'll get to that one in a minute. Again, keep in mind that the soils around the town were already saturated from July, call it from the July 2nd storm events. The tension ponds were already exercised, if you want to say. Downstream, being the Des Plaines River, if you were to go over Kelsag over Route 83, you could see how... how the water was actually flowing through there and how close it was to the upright bridges. I-55, basically if you were to take I-55 and draw a line from Portsmouth across I-55, that was inundated. There was no questions asked. The water just could not get downstream far enough. What's a 500-year rain event? Believe it or not, DuPage County and other FEMA agencies, for example, are looking at 500-year rain events. A five-hour-a-year rain event for a one-hour fall is 4.71 to 5.28 inches. So did we have a 500-year rain event on July 4th? The jury's still out. There has been no significant information one way or the other. So if this rainfall for a 500-year rain event was for three hours, it'd be equating to approximately 5.0 inches. Now keep in mind, while I did say that the total amount of rain was 6 to 8 inches per That was for that period of July 2nd through the 4th. So very difficult to attain this information, especially when it was not countywide, regionwide. So again, this brings us back to the actual topographical survey for tonight. Let me go back for one second here. There was a storm cell near Darien-Woodridge border, which produced about 4.9 inches of rainfall in just over one hour. So that would capture Aylesworth, Beller. Again, our concern was how many homes were impacted. The ComEd issues, I sympathize with those people, just like the whole city council does. That's an issue for ComEd, and that's a conversation that I already had engaged our external affairs director with. So we'll be dealing with that tomorrow. A 500-year rate is a 0.2% annual chance. So obviously we're not playing the lotto with this, but it's very slim. Did it happen? Personally, my opinion is yes. In parts of Darien, it did happen. Basically, the rain gauges, we're looking to find a better rain gauge. Everyone's rain gauge, our rain gauge was overflowing. Why was it overflow? Well, was it that rain event? Was it the rain event from the day before? So on and so forth. Holiday weekend, nobody's emptying the rain cages, to be perfectly honest from that perspective. So what are we doing from here? Besides, we have gathered information and we put it into a Dropbox format. And the city council does not have, we do not have the availability of putting all this up on the server because of the limits of the actual files. Anyone, meaning residents as well, are more than welcome to come and view these. We would provide you also with a... Flash drive, again, I'm not technically savvy with flash drive, so I'm going to caution myself as I'm saying that. But if anybody wants to come in and view it, I'd be more than happy to have you come in and view any of the significant rain events that we have captured. I'm still looking for the drone shot that I believe was somewhere out there. So if any resident has a drone shot that captured Holiday Park and Birchwood, Very interesting to say the least. Very interesting. So please get that to me if you haven't. Again, where are we going from here? Categorizing. and we're implementing, which is up for city council review this evening and approval, was for the engineering survey. The engineering survey basically includes up to five locations. Those five locations are critical locations because it's never happened before. Obviously, we heard about Gale, Linden. We know the circumstances. There's what we call a sag point, what will happen. If this occurrence becomes validity, is there an opportunity for a buyout? Yes. Again, that's a long way from here. We're working with Juul. Juul was designed as a detention facility, in which case... That water overflow onto Darien Lane affected a number of properties there as well. Never happened before. And when I say affected, I'm looking at afoot. to four feet of water on some of the homes on Darien Lane. We'll compound that also with Seminole Drive. Seminole Drive goes towards McDonald's. McDonald's couldn't take any more downstream either. And downstreams are regulated. Downstreams are regulated by DuPage County Stormwater Ordinance, which allows one subdivision not to flood another subdivision for these types of events. What does it do to take store? What does it do to make storage? For Juul, for example, off the cuff, it will be an underground storage facility, and that will be probably a partnership. All these are partnerships. Businesses, DuPage County, as well as the city, and the other location is... Here, for example, we have now flooded probably four times in the course of the last four or five years. Of those four or five years, we've made some significant changes. We've worked with DuPage County on trying to get additional inlets. The problem here is that this is a sad point as well. The elevation of this building is too low. What's it going to take to fix it? Probably underground detention if the capacity is here for it in the city hall parking lot. So that's another underground facility that we could possibly look at. These are big dollars, very big dollars. The other thing I know we were talking with Mayor Marquez and Administrator Vanna this afternoon. We're looking preliminarily, we're looking at to see if there's an opportunity to reach out to FEMA to see if this could be what's referred to as a localized program. uh catastrophic events will it qualify as i stated earlier a lot of the fema um the actual awards for it if it gets issued by if the declaration is made by the governor uh many times some of the requirements are they have to be in the millions not the thousands nobody cares about the thousand dollars it seems like they got to be in the millions did we reach that million whether it's locally or jurisdictionally, I don't know. Don't know that answer. If we could base it on locally, I would say at the end of the day, yes, we're probably close to a million. Again, I can't prove that up, and I don't know what other requirements will be for FEMA, but that's something that we'll take a look at. Unfortunately, insurance agents, excuse me, insurance companies, I heard time and time again, if the water overtops your window well, you're not covered. Again, I'm not an insurance broker, so I don't know what all the parameters are, but I'm sure everybody's saying, what do I have insurance for? And especially with people that are not within floodplains. These residents that we have on record right now are not in a floodplain. So that means that they were never designed to flood. They did. So now we're working on part B. First part A, part B, and part C is the budgets. So that's all I have this evening. If there's any questions, I think I've covered quite a bit here.

Thank you, Mayor. So, Dan, I know, well, first of all, I do want to say, Dan, during this time, you and your staff have been amazing for me. Multiple visits to residents. evaluations of their homes to see what they can do better. I encourage everybody to take advantage of that to see if there's things that can be done, at least within their home, that can maybe mitigate some of these problems. So you've been great about that. I mean, even on the 4th of July, I called Dan. I'm like, Dan, I'm getting calls from people with sewer backup. He's like, call this number. I got it out to the people. They called the county. And I have to give the county a little bit of credit. I mean, we're going to beat them up when we can, but they came that night to a lot of homes on the 4th of July. So I think we've got their ear. We have to just keep the pressure on. So regards to that, Dan, I mean, I know we're looking at possible monies in terms of the sanitary sewer. But even with the sanitary sewers, what can we continue to do to ask them – you know, where is all this stormwater coming from in terms of getting into the sanitary sewers? There are two separate systems in theory. And so why is all this stormwater entering storm sewers? And I'll tell you, if people are illegally pumping sump pump water into their overhead sewers and doing that, I mean, that could be happening. I mean, people could be doing things illegally out there that we don't know about either. But I think with the types of water we're dealing with, there's got to be major cracks, breaches, something in these sanitary sewer lines that the water is able to get in. Because in the homes that I did look at, it's amazing how diluted they were, which tells you there's a lot of stormwater getting in these sanitary sewers. So, I mean, how do we keep working with them to evaluate our city and say, you know, where can we put liners and what can we do to keep improving these sewer lines to stop the water from coming in?

And that's a good point. And the point is that, first of all, there's two separate sewer systems in the city. And most municipalities adjacent to us are typically stormwater and sanitary sewers. They're supposed to be independent of each other. There are towns that have what's referred to as combined sewers. We do not have combined sewers. The sanitary, by today's standards, sanitary sewers and manholes, by today's standards, are more sealed than they ever were during the early 60s, 50s. And in fact, the pipe that they used back in the 50s, 60s was basically what they called butt pipe. and butt pipe was an orange type of pipe that just basically joined together. And there's still residents in Darien that have that. Those residents also have problems sometimes with back up, but getting away from that portion of it. Are the older manholes, do they need to be maybe re-lined? Do pipes need to be relined? County has been doing a lot of that. What their program is exactly, I could not tell you that. I'm sure that they have a study. So we're going to take a look at it. We're going to have some discussions with the county in respect to, you know, what is the maintenance system? And, you know, give information out to the residents. A lot of homes that were built, let's say, in the 60s, 70s, Did you need an overhead sanitary sewer? Probably not. But due to all over the years of the building, things reach capacity. Now, is the capacity limited on the sanitary lines? I don't know that. And I won't even attempt to answer that question. But the overhead sewer program basically allows, to put it in simple terms, your main pipe is here at the streets. and your house is currently at the same level with the sanitary sewer. The sanitary sewer backs up, and water wants to go somewhere. It's going to go to a space that does not have any water. What is that? Your basement. When you install an overhead sewer, you change the elevation up to here where the main is here. That force of water cannot come back because there's what they call a check valve. It's not your typical check valve as a sub pump, but the same principle that it operates under. Like I said, like the mayor and Jerry have mentioned this evening, DuPage County has that program. So we'll be looking at, you know, seeing if there's opportunity for cost participation. So hope that answers that, Jerry.

Well, like I said, I hope they can continue to evaluate their lines and say, you know, because, you know, if five people put in the overhead storm sewer and somebody does it, it's just going to happen again because the water's got to go somewhere. Now there's less homes to seek that water's level. And so, I mean, I think the county needs to continue to, you know, like we do with our, you know, we dig ditches. We keep doing things to improve our sewers. They need to keep doing things on their end as well to... So, I mean, whatever pressure we can continue to put on them, we need to do.

And I could say, you know, for example, Marion Hills, before we did all the actual ditches in that area, I think a lot of us remember parts of the roadways and holes that were just getting inundated, and we provided more storage through the ditches that were put in place. So, and all the other... AREAS FOR OVERTOPPING, THEY WORKED. THEY WORKED. UNFORTUNATELY, THEY WERE DEEPER IN SOME CASES THAN EVER THOUGHT OF, BUT THEY DID WORK. A LIMITED AMOUNT.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS FOR DAN? OKAY. MOVE ON TO OUR TREASURY REPORT. WE HAVE TWO WARRANTS TONIGHT, WARRANT 262705.

Mike. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This evening, I'm requesting council's approval of warrant number 262705 in the amount of $1,987,988.91 and payroll for the period under June 25th in the amount of $350,767.28 for a total to be approved of $2,338,756.19. Motion to approve. Alderman Schauer, seconded by Alderman Stantonato.

Questions or comments regarding the warrant? On the roll.

Schauer? Aye. Stampinato? Aye. Sullivan? Aye. Gustafson? Aye. Kenney? Aye. Liganski? Aye. Six ayes and one absent.

That warrant's been approved. Requesting council's approval of warrant number 262706 in the amount of $783,927.90 from listed funds. Payroll for the period end of July 9th in the amount of $349,840.17. Total will be approved of $1,133,768.07. Motion to approve.

Alderman Sullivan, seconded by Alderman Leganski. Again, questions or comments? You can end the roll.

Sullivan? Aye. Leganski? Aye. Gustafson?

Aye.

Stampinato? Aye. Kenney?

Aye.

Schauer? Aye. Six ayes and one absent.

That warrant has been approved. Takes us to standing committee reports. Do any of the chairpeople have reports they'd like to get tonight?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. This evening, the police committee approved the minutes for the May 15th meeting that we've sent to the clerk's office. It was May 18th, I'm sorry. And our next meeting is scheduled for August 17th, 2026, across the street in the police training room, pending agenda items. Thank you. Alderman Salvo.

Thank you, Mayor. The next Admin Finance Committee meeting will be on Monday, August 3rd at 6 p.m. in the City Hall Conference Room.

Thank you. And I hear. The Municipal Services Committee will meet on Monday, July 27th at 6 p.m. Thank you.

Takes us to questions and comments agenda-related. These are the items that are on the agenda. I think we've had a lot of discussion about them. Does anybody want to make a comment about anything that's on this agenda? If not, we move to...

I apologize.

I would like to speak to the agenda. You asked if there was anybody who wanted to speak to items on the agenda. Did I mishear that?

Yeah, items that are currently on the agenda.

That's correct, yes.

If you'd like to come forward, that's fine.

Perfect, thank you, appreciate that. Hello again. To begin, Mr. Mayor and members of this council, I would like to formally request that item 16F, the urban SDK subscription, be pulled from the consent agenda for separate council discussion.

Item, what item?

16F, in your consent agenda, you folks are discussing the Urban SDK subscription, another AI-driven surveillance mechanism. I'll continue with my remarks. I'm back now because there's a second surveillance item on tonight's agenda, and I think that demands the same level of scrutiny. Item 16F is a one-year, roughly $25,000 subscription to a company called Urban SDK. It's a traffic intelligence platform requested by the police department. On the surface, it sounds practical. Speed data, traffic volume, identifying problem intersections. But here's what's underneath the surface. Urban SDK doesn't install cameras or sensors. They're sourcing their data from aggregated connected vehicle telemetry, all the new cars that are basically driving cell phones, all that data, harvesting that, harvesting our location data from our cell phone providers. So essentially, we're paying for them to sell our data back to us, and moreover, our analytics back to us. on that on its face regardless of whether or not you agree with my policy beliefs or my privacy beliefs that's ridiculous we should own our own data and we should be able to handle our own analysis moreover whether it's collected by flock purchased by urban sdk or the same by any other similar vendor location data is not just where you drove we had this conversation along the lines of flock as well credible research has repeatedly demonstrated that phone and gps location data can be used to infer deeply personal information. With enough data points, companies like these can predict a person's religion, sexual orientation, health conditions, political affiliations, and personal relationships with disturbing accuracy. So when we say traffic data, we're not talking about a speedometer reading. We're talking about a behavioral profile of every person who moves through this city, this council included, I lost my place. Built without their knowledge or consent, owned by a private company in Florida. Now, this is exceptionally important. Section 13.1 of this contract specifies that the agreement is governed by Florida law with venue in Jacksonville, Florida. If Darian discovers that Urban SDK misused our data or shared it in violation of Illinois privacy law, we would have to litigate in a Florida courtroom under Florida statutes. Who wants anything to do with Florida? And then there's the data clause. Section 8.4 of the contract grants Urban SDK the right to copy, reproduce, store, distribute, publish, export, adapt, edit, and translate customer data. It further states that the data derived from the service may be used by Urban SDK for any lawful purpose both during and following the term. It sounds eerily similar to the business practices of Flock. That means if Darian cancels this contract, Urban SDK keeps the right to our data. I'd also implore you to explore the sole source justification in your procurement. The document asserting that Urban SDK is the only vendor who can provide the service was written by Micah Dickman, Urban SDK's vice president of procurement and revenue. That's the company's own sales executive certifying that his employer has no competition. That's not procurement. That's a press release. So my asks are this. Please pull this item from the consent agenda to discuss it publicly. Direct the city attorney to review the data licensing clause and the Florida governing law provision before this comes to a vote. And overall, do not let AI-driven surveillance technology companies like Flock, Urban SDK, and their competitors infect our community and eliminate our right to privacy. Thank you for the additional time. I really appreciate it.

Is there any interest in the city council's part to move 16F to new business? Sure, why not? Sure, why not? Okay, fine. You want to move it to new business?

Let's do it. We'll be transparent.

Okay. So that'll become now E?

It'll become, yeah, it'll become E, new business, under new business. Okay. It moves us to the consent agenda. Please bear with me. I have to read every one of these items. Item A, a motion granting a waiver of the $50 a day fee for the temporary liquor license for the Darien Women's Club for the 2026 Darien Fest on August 7th, 8th, and 9th. Item B, a motion granting a waiver of the $50 a day fee for the Class J temporary liquor license for the Darien Women's Club for the October celebration on October 3rd. Item C, Motion granted a waiver of the $50 a day fee for the temporary liquor license for the Darien Lions Club for the 2026 Darien Fest on October 7th, 8th, and 9th. Item D. Motion granted a waiver of the $50 a day fee for the Class J temporary liquor license for the Darien Lions Club for the October Fest celebration on October 3rd, 2026. Item E. a motion approving a contract between Windy City Amusements Incorporated and the City of Darien to provide amusement rides for a fall weekend carnival at Chestnut Court Shopping Center from September 25th to September 27th. Item F, an ordinance amending Chapter 10, bicycles, low-speed electric bicycles, and personal mobility devices of Title IX traffic regulations of the City of Derry and City Code. That was E. No, that was F. Now that you're on G. Okay, item G. A motion to approve an intergovernmental agreement, IGA, between the City of Darien and the Indian Prairie Public Library, adding IPPL as a listed entity to the City of Darien's membership in the IPBC cooperative. That was G. Now you're on H. Item H, a motion authorizing for the purchase of stackable trench box with sheeting panels for multiple depths for excavation from Lee Jensen Sales Incorporated for $48,326.00. Item I, a motion authorizing the mayor to extend a contract with Rags Electric Incorporated per the proposed unit prices for the 2026 Streetlight Maintenance Program through April 30th, 2027. Item J, A motion accepting a proposal from Suburban Laboratories Incorporated for the 2026-2027 Bacteriological and Chemical Radiological LT2 Water Sampling Program in an amount not to exceed $11,760. And item... K. K. A motion authorizing the purchase of one new white 2027 Ford F550 4x4 XL from Sutton Ford Incorporated for the amount of $129,726. Motion to approve. Alden Schauer. Seconded by Alden Mastampinato. End the roll.

Schauer. Aye. Stampinato. Aye. Sullivan. Aye. Leganski. Aye. Kenney. Aye. Gustafson. Aye. Six ayes and one absent.

The consent agenda has been approved under new business. Item A, a motion authorizing the services of Christopher B. Burke Engineering for topographical survey and cataloging services for property inundated impacted businesses. pricing amount not to exceed $20,000. Item B. Do one at a time. One at a time. Oh, that's right. This is new, John. Yes. Motion to approve. Alderman Sullivan, second by Alderman Schauer in discussion.

So I had asked Dan about this last week and he was explaining before the agenda came out. And obviously hearing from many of the rest, I mean, I think every resident that's listed on here was here tonight. We heard from them. It's just, you know, obviously this needs to get done immediately. But if there's other areas you said that you'll, you know, especially based on reports tonight and more communications from RESIDENTS, IF SOMETHING OF THIS SURVEY NATURE WOULD BE USEFUL, I THINK WE NEED TO GET ON IT IMMEDIATELY AS WELL FOR OTHER SPOTS, IF YOU THINK THAT WOULD HELP IN ADDRESSING THE WATER CONCERNS ELSEWHERE.

AND WHILE I WOULD AGREE WITH 100%, I HAVE NOT IDENTIFIED ANYTHING ADDITIONAL. THERE MAY, CAN I SAY MAY, BE SOME ADDITIONAL ITEMS FROM THIS EVENING'S MEETING. LIKE THE ALESWORTH AREA THAT'S NOT IN THIS. RIGHT. SO, YOU KNOW, WILL IT COST 5,000 more, potentially. So, you know, I'll go back to the city administrator and, you know, explain it, and we could do a follow-up for an effort of fact expenditure if we need it, back to the city council if that's...

I think it is an alternative if the city, instead of having to come back another meeting, city council could add a contingency to this, Dan, and let Dan, you know, use his judgment.

For at least if there's money left here to do it, but either way.

Well, I'm saying if this money runs out. I've got one location there.

So we'd need to amend this motion?

Yeah, I mean, just to decide how much additional contingency. I think you should put another 15 grand in there. to the council. Up to 35, yeah.

Now you're looking for 35,000? You want to amend it, Ted?

That's fine. That's more than plenty. I mean, yeah.

We're talking a 15 grand contingency.

That's fine. And of course, everything is based on hourly basis. We will see the reports. You will see the hours. You will see the field time.

And that way then there's no hold up. It keeps flowing. I mean, flowing is a bad word. We've identified them.

You've got the funds. Just continue. And Dan will keep the council updated as we run through once he's identified. And if he comes in with another area, we'll just update the council that we've added an area. Dan, you'll just keep everybody updated.

Let me restate it. A motion authorizing the services of Christian B. Burke Engineering. for topographical survey and cataloging services for properties inundated impacted by the July 4, 2026 flood event for contract unit pricing in the amount of $20,000 and a contingency fee of $15,000. Perfect.

Motion to approve, then?

Motion to approve. Second? Alderman Schauer?

Who was the first? Me.

Further discussion?

OKAY, NOW WE'RE DOING THE AMENDMENT FIRST WITH THE 15,000 CONTINGENCY, CORRECT? RIGHT. YES. OKAY, SULLIVAN? AYE. SHOWER? AYE. STAMPANADO? AYE. KENNY? AYE. GUSTOFSEN? AYE. LEGANSKI? AYE. SIX AYES AND ONE ABSENT.

NO, WE NEED TO VOTE ON THE ORIGINAL.

OKAY, SULLIVAN? AYE. SHOWER? AYE. GUSTOFSEN? AYE. STAMPANADO? AYE. LEGANSKI? AYE. KENNY? AYE. SIX AYES AND ONE ABSENT.

ITEM A HAS BEEN APPROVED. ITEM B, AN ORDINANCE APPROVING OF A FINAL PLATS OF SUBDIVISION AND GRANTING FINAL SITE PLAN APPROVAL FOR PREVIOUSLY APPROVED 16-UNIT CONDOMINIUM DEVELOPMENT AT 1225 PLAINFIELD ROAD, PZC 26-12, DERRIAN CROSSING, LLC, 1225 Plainfield Road. Motion to approve. Alderman Schauer, seconded by Alderman Stompanato. End discussion. Alderman Laganski. Thank you, Mayor.

Taking so long. I was a no the first time on this because of, I think it's just, it was too much in the property, so I'm going to be a no again tonight. Just to be consistent.

What seems to be the holdup on this property, too?

Yeah, that's a good question.

The holdup?

Yeah. It was engineering until the city staff had engineering fully addressed. It was not coming back to city council. And, you know, we're trying to get the... Easements from Wildwood and Frank Modell had to provide a piece of easement. Again, all these easements benefit Stormwall is the bottom line. So that was really the extent of it. And there was a lot of work that the developer had to do for engineering, including structural calculations.

Just to make sure everybody's clear what the vote is tonight, really, the vote is that it's in substantial compliance with what the council already approved. So it's not approving the project. The council is voting to approve what they see tonight is in substantial compliance with the preliminary that was approved.

And the protocols are in place. For example, the letter of credit, the letter from Christopher Burke Engineering. So it's just a final protocol that says, okay, this is what was approved. Originally, we're finally at the table with a final document. So regardless of, well, respect to Alderman Lugansky's comments regarding the no vote before, he's been just, again, consistent with a former protocol. So that's basically the gist of it.

I'm going to ask you a question. It's now a 500-pound gorilla that wasn't there before. How is putting more buildings in an area right now where people are talking about stormwater and flooding and stuff? I'm not sure if the question came out the last time around, but is this in a good spot? You're talking about the stormwater features with the easement stuff. Are we certain that nothing else around that is going to flood?

The answer is yes, and the answer is yes because that water right now, for that piece of property is not contained for a significant rain event. I'm going to refer to a 100-year storm event. All that water for a 100-year storm event before it goes downstream needs to be captured within that property, the developments. Once that water is captured, or even during when it's captured. So it might be captured through a 12-inch pipe going into this detention vault. It gets released through, for simplicity's sake, a 3-inch pipe downstream. The overflow routes are the same. So the answer again to your question is yes, it will reduce impact to the adjacent neighbors. That's funny to know. Mary?

So you talked about easements with Frank Modell, Modell Funeral Home, and then residents in the adjoining neighborhood. So all that's been signed off on? Yes. And has there been any more communication or concerns by those property owners about the development?

We have one resident that asked some questions today. Those were responded to. So I'm not even sure if they're here to see. Oh, hi, Jackie. How are you? So yes, they are here. So if they have any questions, I believe that we have addressed them all.

Is that correct? Have they been addressed?

Hi. Hi. Hi. Jackie Price, 7731 Lester Lane. We brought up this to the committee previously that we're concerned about the parking that is available. All these residents are required in many ways to park in their garages because they can't park in front of their garages. The front of their garages are the driveway for everybody to get to their garages. There are only seven spaces plus a handicapped space for 16 condo units. And there is no other place for any guests to park besides those seven spaces. And then the next place would be Lester Lane, which is our private road. And that's our largest concern at this point. There are others. We're concerned about all the delivery services pulling on Lester Lane. They still don't know if the county is going to put a pork chop on their entry and exiting of the driveway into the property. So we don't know how that might impact us getting in and out of Lester Lane. Or if they do put a pork chop there, if people are just going to do a Huey right at the opening of Lester Lane to try and get back into the condo development. Those are our major concerns, we're always concerned about the water. But Dan just said that's not going to be a problem.

Yes. As far as, you know, just those general comments, general comments in regards to the pork chops, Jackie is referring to what's referred to us as a write-in, a write-out. or it's going to be full access, meaning westbound and eastbound traffic will have the opportunity to turn either way. That's a county roadway. We do not have jurisdiction over it. In the event, if this development is approved, then signage, no signage, traffic or something to traffic or you have no no traffic beyond this point lester you know something to lester lane residents only so that's something that we could be installed as far as u-turns a typical u-turn i don't know what the laws are on a specific intersection in that respect not a traffic light but at an intersection We could always have DuPage County put up no U-turns allowed. So that to me is a minor concern. As far as parking goes, again, I can let Brian speak to this. My understanding is, and I'm convinced that it's met the actual parking requirements of the city code, first of all, and this was what was originally approved, if I'm not mistaken, or they increased the parking since?

I think there's one extra space. Originally last year there were eight guest parking spaces. There are no guest parking spaces required in our code for multifamily dwellings, only a two-stall-per-unit count. And so they're providing, I believe, nine based on the count provided by the developer in their final plan.

I would say that the problem with that is when you talk about where people are going to park in a multi-dwelling unit, typically there's parking spaces allowed for their cars. This condo development doesn't have much storage for any individual unit provided in the building itself. And so you would anticipate that people might use their garages for some of that storage, which might make their garages less accessible for them to automatically be parking in. So I know it's not required. You told me that. I understand that. I still think it's going to be a problem. And I think we're going to have the problem on our street.

Well, that part, again, the no parking on the street, I know the developer also owns part of the, you know, and I'm not going to get into the logistics or the argument. We look at the city code. We look at the engineering. And a lot of the items that you speak of have been approved, and it's been actually the build, the garages were moved out for the city council's suggestion. So it isn't. What we refer to in our world is substantial compliance. I understand that. We don't have the availability to say, hey, developer, you've got to put in 10 more spaces because we think. that you're going to need. But at the same time, Jackie, you know me for a long time, and we'll make things work out. If there's approval, we'll make things work out on Lester Lane for sure, including the landscape plan, which I told you that's still coming or being revised.

So two things. One is that you did mention where the landscaping is still intended to go in. We do have concern that it might be sitting right on the water main. The water line that serves all, we have a community well on this block. So the water line runs straight down south.

It's pretty close to the roadway, so we wouldn't be, the water, the existing water line, the two-inch existing water, I think it's two-inch, right? Oh, whatever. It's immaterial. Two-inch water line, let's say. It's towards the edge of the road, so those trees will be planted back, I should say, two to four feet, depending on where it comes out at with the mouth of the intersection. So more than likely be five foot back. And again, that's just simple logistics and developer I'm sure would be more than happy to come out there and say, hey, you know, we're going to improve this area with grass slash trees, arborvitaes, which would be a minimal of six to eight foot tall is the standard.

Just one last point of business. When we left the last city council meeting, there was a lot of discussion about having more parking around the entrance to the building. And I think the packet was uploaded today, yesterday. So this was the first time we got to look at it. And the parking is actually now at least 100. I would say, I don't know. I'm looking at the map. 150 feet away from any of the doors. So that seems like the parking got worse for any visitor.

Well, just to address that, the discussion from the minutes of that council meeting on May 5th were to move the garages closer to the building, which the developer did. What was moved further away were the guest parking spaces. Thank you. Yeah.

And then just going back to Lester Lane, because I've, you know, when this first came about prior to us, you know, meeting and even planning and zoning, you know, I had been down that street before, but I went down it again because clearly with it being a dead end, any traffic that goes down has to turn around basically in someone's driveway. I mean, there's no, like, little roundabout at the end. So I just think it's really important for the residents on Lester Lane is even, like, during construction, not, like, waiting until, like, it's move-in ready, that, you know, signage is clearly put in place that no one should be going down that street unless it's residence use only, whether it's, you know, construction traffic or even, you know, eventually Amazon trucks. I just think we need to protect the interests of the residents on that block that they don't get extra traffic.

And I would agree 100%. That to me is a call on logistics. And before the developer gets any billing occupancy, you know, those are things that we will put in place. And if there's a problem, we'll identify it during, I hate to say it, during the construction. But yeah, the developer will have a, No construction traffic beyond this point. There'll be limited landscape equipment, obviously, for the Lester Lane area. So that's something to be expected. We have a gentleman in the audience who's got a question.

May I just ask, that condo building, would the water drain to the east towards Cass Avenue, or does it drain west? South. So it goes direct south, it won't go to the Cass Avenue? No.

FURTHER DISCUSSION? DO WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND? WE WILL.

SCHAUER? AYE. STAMPANADO? AYE. SULLIVAN? AYE. GUSTOFSEN? AYE. KENNY? AYE. LEGANSKI? NO. I HAVE FIVE AYES, ONE NAY, AND ONE ABSENT.

THE ORDINANCE, THE ITEM HAS BEEN APPROVED. ITEM C? an ordinance approving a final plan of subdivision for the former TGI Friday's lot located at 2201 75th Street into two lots to accommodate the approved Dutch Brothers Coffeehouse and Andy's Frozen Custard Development, PZC 2613, RCG Darien PM LLC, 2201 75th Street. Motion to approve. Alderman Sullivan, Alderman Schauer, in discussion. What's taking so long? Get this thing going, getting this torn down.

They have all their plans approved and they're ready to... City Council plans again. That's why we put it on new business. They got their plans approved, the first submittal. So it's just a matter of... FORMAL LEGAL APPROVAL FOR THE SUBDIVISION.

NO DISCUSSION. THE ROLL.

SULLIVAN. AYE. SHOWER. AYE. GUSTOFSEN. AYE. KENNY. AYE. LIGANSKI. AYE. STAMPANADO. AYE. FIVE AYES AND ONE ABSENT.

IT'S BEEN APPROVED. ITEM D, AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING THE USE OF GROUNDWATER As a potable water supply, by the installation or use of potable water supply wells or by any other method within a certain area in the City of Darien, Illinois, amending Title 6C, Water Division, Chapter 5, Regulation of Potable Water Supply Wells in a Designated Area of the City of Darien, RE402, West Plainfield Road. Motion to approve. All in favor? Second by Alderman Leganski. Discussion? If none, the roll.

Schauer. Aye. Leganski. Aye. Gustafson. Aye. Sullivan. Aye. Kenney. Aye. Stampinato. Aye. Five ayes and one absent.

Item E. A motion to approve a one-year...

I'm sorry, six ayes, one absent. I'm sorry. You said five.

I did. I said it incorrectly. I wrote five also. Thank you. You're welcome.

A motion to approve a one-year subscription to Urban SDK Traffic Intelligence Platform in an amount not to exceed $24,750 using consulting professional services budgeted funds. Motion to approve. Thank you. Compliments not been added. Seconded by Alderman Kenney. End discussion.

Mr. Mayor, we've had a trial run with this very small portion of the city. Deputy Chief Jump has been spearheading this. We've had this item at our police committee meeting tonight. We didn't have any public comment. No residents showed up for that. We talked to the chief about this. One of the questions we did ask is were they able to, if a person calls up and says, there's speeding on my block between these two streets, in the old days they would have the police come out and they would radar, send manpower there. MUNICIPAL SERVICES, DAN'S PEOPLE PUT UP, YOU KNOW, STUFF TO A COST WHICH IS FAR GREATER THAN $24,000. OVER THE COURSE OF YEARS, FAR GREATER THAN $24,000. THE ONE QUESTION I ASKED IN THE MEETING TODAY, YOU KNOW, JUST DOUBLE CHECK ON IT, IS THEY'RE LOOKING FOR TRAFFIC GOES WITH THE SPEED WITHIN THE 85 PERCENTILE OF THE FORMULA FOR SPEED. If it doesn't make those if it meets those numbers, then they can then they can say, yes, we can at 11 o'clock in the morning. These numbers are are are say the 90 percentile, whatever the number is. But there's no there's no direct identification of who that person is. The fact that it's. You know, we heard from Drew Kelly here this evening. Now, Drew Kelly is, you know, is that somebody who's just he's just, you know, the city council, you know, I'll call him friend because Drew Kelly has also been in this room, you know, and he's always held us to the fire for things. If Andrew Kelly tonight fought on that because he trusts us and he trusts our city council and he trusts our city with it, and I trust us and Trump, one thing I also know is that everybody's worried about this thing. We've got these things. sitting here.

If you really have... That's where they're getting it from.

Right. Well, then, listen, guys, if you're really that concerned about it, we'll call AT&T up, we'll start putting coin-operated phones on the corners again, and you can just get rid of your cell phones. But in the meantime, I'm voting for this because I don't see anything bad with this technology.

Thank you, Mayor. I mean, I feel like so many meetings, especially like we've had people come in with 69th Street and the speeding, and we've done mitigations, and even in my ward on Oldfield, and there's forever people wondering about speed, and then you get the study, but was it done long enough? But I guess just to go back to, we spent a lot of our evening hearing from the audience about the license plate readers, but this is obviously a completely different item. This, you know, and I read it, but just I just want to be reinforced that from Police Chief Thomas that this is by no means capturing whose car, what car, what kind of car, the person in the car. It's just strictly counting the vehicle.

Correct. It's using GPS data in order to make that capture. It's not capturing like a license plate or anything like that. So that statement is correct.

So like hypothetically, a car is going like three times over the speed limit. There's no way to track down who that person was and give them a ticket. after the fact because you don't know who that car was. You just know a car went by doing a high speed. Correct.

Okay.

So what's the value of the data if it's not an enforcement mechanism?

The car out the next day. What happens is that last meeting we had a demonstration of how it works. So it will be proactive and it will say it's speeding. In fact, that wasn't it. We'll also, if somebody calls in and talks to one of the aldermen about speeding on 67th Street, we can then put in some parameters of, you know, four weeks prior to the date and that date and look at the full UCC speeding in there. And if you look at the last page of the month report, you'll see, I think currently there's probably eight, nine, ten locations just people will call in that has feeding in their neighborhood. Sometimes it's real, sometimes it's just perception, sometimes it's one vehicle, and then all of a sudden it happens every day, all day. And so that's the purpose of doing that, is to reduce that problem. Oh, and Penny is right. In the past, we would get that notice. Dan's personnel would go out and put those pneumatic counters on the road to see if they were working. So now, and then we would try to send out personnel to run radar or do some type of enforcement.

And I just think back to, like, my South Frontage Road situation where we've done traffic studies. So this is not just about speeding. It's about traffic volume, too. And the county's done it because that's the biggest concern right now by these residents because you've got Argonne there. You've got Waterfall Glen. And so we're usually just capturing little blips in time where something like this, I feel like, could give us a much greater picture of what's going on in that area. particular area, and there's other areas too, but.

I'm sorry, Chief, one question I know you might have mentioned, I'm sorry. The difference between the two, too, is the FLOC program, you have an agreement, you have authority, they put cameras out. Here, this is, they have this data regardless of us. Yeah, they have it. The council agreeing to this has no difference in them getting the data. We're not making it easier for them to get the data or anything. I just wanted to make sure I understood that.

Chief Thomas, could you explain consulting professional services budgeted funds so people understand where the money is coming from, what that is?

THERE'S A LINE ITEM IN THE BUDGET FOR CONSULTING AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, AND THERE'S A NUMBER OF THOSE DIFFERENT ONES WITH DUPECOM, OUR 911 CENTER, YOUTH SERVICES, AND A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT ONES.

OKAY. BECAUSE IT'S A DIFFERENT TERMINOLOGY, I WANTED THE PUBLIC TO UNDERSTAND THAT. YES, MA'AM.

SO WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL results and solutions after the study happens are we going to be like downtown chicago that puts in like speed cameras and stuff and neighborhoods and just sends out tickets like if we're going to do a study like we're looking for an end result and what's what's on the table that is the potential outcome yeah from this study it's a good question the um uh speed

OTHER THAN CHICAGO VICE STATUTES, SO WE WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PUT THEM UP EVEN IF WE WANTED TO, AND WE DON'T WANT TO. THE, WHAT WAS THE SECOND PART OF THAT? OH, THERE'S ANY NUMBER OF THINGS. SO WE CAN LOOK AT ANY KIND OF TRAFFIC CALMING PROCESS, WHETHER IT'S A YIELD SIGN, STOP SIGN, As simple as allowing parking on the streets because then it narrows the width of the street. There's a number of different ways of taking that. A lot of conversations in the police department is problem solving and not enforcement. So going out and writing a ticket doesn't necessarily solve the problem, problem solving. So just real basic. Came from Aurora and And officers went out there and enforced this, not fixing the problem. So an officer went out there and left and it was right turn westbound to northbound Orchard Road. And the stop bar for through traffic was here. The stop bar for we moved it back about an hour and a half, so actions dropped to like four. Tremendous stuff, so you have to have that data in order to start making decisions on speed charts.

Speed bumps?

Sure, that's a speed bump, speed humps, and speed tables. There's a number of different ones. Again, those are all options. They have their drawbacks with plowing during the winter and all different types of things. The height of them, we had some in the war, again, the ambulance couldn't get down because every time the back end stepped up in order to get the patient in, we dragged across it so we had different things to check. There are good, a lot of those things are good, but they have to be in the right sort.

I truly understand that these things do offer the benefits that you're suggesting. I genuinely believe they do in a way that other technology today has not been able to achieve. However, what I am suggesting is this is a Faustian bargain in which the city of Darien is selling its data insights to a private entity that will own them forever that is based in a municipality in a jurisdiction that is not our own. So, I genuinely...

and what they can do with it.

I appreciate that. Thank you. If I may, I'd like to submit my... I'll email you my remarks.

Yes, we do. Let's take a roll.

Okay, Stampinato. Aye. Kenney. Aye. Gustafson.

Aye.

Sullivan. Aye. Liganski. Aye. Schauer. Aye. Six ayes and one absent.

Aye. It's been approved. Takes a stick. Number 18, questions, comments, and announcements of a general nature. Does anybody in the audience have anything of a general nature that they want to share? Yes, ma'am.

third, maybe fourth meeting. It is so hard to hear you guys back here. So hard. Mary, you speak loud and clear. Very easy to hear you. Mr. Gombach, super easy to hear you. Everyone else, I'm in the second row and it's hard to hear you. I feel like there has to be better microphones and speakers.

We've ordered speakers to be delivered and set up, yes.

Perfect, because we cannot hear you, which is why I come up and I'm yelling because I assume no one can hear me back there because all I hear is you guys talking.

We have a consultant. I'm going to go home tonight. My wife's going to tell me I didn't hear a word you said.

We have a consultant who does that type of work for us, and I will follow up tomorrow to see if the speakers are in order, if they're in.

Speakers are definitely not on.

No, they're not in. I don't see them. They'll be speakers like that, but additional.

Oh, okay, because those ones aren't doing anything.

Actually, the way it's set up, this thing right here is the speaker, and if you go past the first row... It becomes harder to hear.

Yeah. I bet most of the people in the back don't hear anything that anybody's saying.

Appreciate the information. This could be the speaker's head up, though. Wow. Good point. Anybody on the council have anything? I'd like to announce that a week from Friday, well, actually two weeks from Friday is the Darien Fest. Darien Fest is August 7th, 8th, and 9th. This year it's being held in front of Hinsdale South High School, closing off Clarendon Hills Road from Elm to 75th Street. It's going to be one of our largest Darien Fests that we've ever held. It'll be a 250th anniversary celebration theme. We have the Hinsdale South Band that will be participating. A lot of vendors. We have over 10 food vendors. We'll have a business expo. So mark your calendar for Friday night, Saturday night, or Sunday night, August 7th, 8th, and 9th. That's Woodridge and Downers Grove, and they told me they're saving them for next year to make them even better.

Labor Day.

We don't participate in that.

No. And I have a cousin that lives near there. We can see him from his backyard, and he doesn't want me to come anymore because Darian's not contributing for how many years now? I'm not allowed there.

I get bugged by the mayor of Woodridge and the mayor of Downers Grove every year to put in our... A couple years ago, it cost $8,000 for three minutes of fireworks. That's a lot of money.

That concert, the second Darien Summer Concert is on Thursday, July 30th, which is a week from this Thursday, starting at 6 p.m. The music starts at 6.30 at Carriage Greens in the North Parking Lot. So please come out and enjoy. First concert was a huge success, beautiful weather, and a great atmosphere.

Was it well attended?

Very well attended.

Good. Anything else?

Motion to adjourn. Alderman Schauer? Seconded by Alderman Leganski. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you, folks.