City Council - Regular Meeting

and I hope you stay around for all of the hour and a half or two hour meeting we have in store for you this evening. With that being said, I would ask the clerk to please call roll. Cook here. Key here. Henry here. Lachman here. Olden Pollock here. Ruben Delis here. Scott here. Speed here. Williams. Mayor Ezard here. City attorney Beard here. You have a corner.

Thank you. Item number one is a joint. We have our fire department and our police department and some I believe the fire department is getting sworn in this evening. And I is the police department getting sworn or pinned? Pinned. Okay. So, we'll let uh Chief Summers, you have the floor first. Good evening. There we go. Both are also sons of retired Jacksonville police officers and one is the grandson to a retired Jacksonville firefighter. Alex and Kaden, would you gentlemen please come up? Stand right here, gentlemen. Alex here successfully completed his basic firefighter training earlier this year and is currently in the is currently in the middle of his PMED training. Kaden just successfully completed his paramedic training and will begin his fire academy in early February. We're really glad to have these two young men as fellow public servants and members of our department and I believe they are living up to their family's names. Angela will swear these two men in.

I do solemnly swear domly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of Illinois and the Constitution of the State of Illinois and that as a member of the Jacksonville Fire Department and that as a member of the Jacksonville Fire Department my fundamental duty is to serve the people. My fundamental duty is to serve the people that I swear to protect that I swear to protect to safeguard and preserve life to safeguard and preserve life health and property health and property against fire and other perils

against fire and other perils. I will never allow my personal feelings I will never allow my personal feelings nor danger to self nor danger to self to deter me from my responsib as a firefighter to deter you to my responsibilities as a firefighter. I recognize the badge of my office. I recognize my office as a symbol of public faith and trust. as a symbol of public faith and trust. I will accept and honor I will accept and honor the ethics of the fire service. the ethics of the fire service. I accept the selfimposed accept the selfimposed and self enforced obligation

obligation as my responsibility as my responsibility and make these promises promises solemnly freely freely and upon my honor and upon my honor Thank you. There you go. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a good night.

Okay, Chief Thompson, I would say mine be a little quicker, but with seven, eight of them. I'm not sure I will be. Um, so over the last year, we've done a lot of training, a lot of new hiring, um, as I've talked about in the past. So, we fell behind on making sure that everybody got brought up here and introduced to the council. So, because of that, that's why we have so many of them. First I would like to have Sam Stanberry,

Oscar Espinosa,

Blake Brat Ross Hudson Hunter Parks is not here. Lucas Hill and we have two others, Carter Hayes and Jared Lake, that are both unavailable to make it here. So, these are our new officers on the street and good job. Congratulations.

Thank you. Did you over there? Okay, I didn't mean to clear the room,

but um looks like we did. Item number two under my report is to discuss the intergovernmental agreement with the West Central Joint Emergency Telephone System Board. And I would ask Mr. Marti to step up and explain. Bill.

Sure. Thank you. So, this is uh as 18 months ago, we had decided to build a new radio system uh for the city, the county, and everywhere else. The backup when we got the system built out would be one of the backup systems would be the city of Jacksonville Fire Department that we that the ETSB would take over ownership. The system buildout's taken a little bit longer than we anticipated. If anybody's done any projects lately, they probably understand how that goes. Um, the system had a component that failed. Um, we were going to put old parts into an old system. Um, it didn't make good sense. made more sense to take that $20,000 that that was going to go towards it and the ETSB take ownership of the system and we upgrade it to something that is reasonable to be a backup system. So, what this does, this agreement just formalizes that discussion. It came a little bit earlier than we thought it would be because we're not the system's not built up, but the essentially the city's still going to maintain ownership of the license. It's just going to be the responsibility of the ETSB to maintain the equipment and they're going to put in all new equipment. Um, so it's really serving the same purpose for everybody. It's just documenting that process formally because this system is going to last a lot longer than any of us are going to be here. So that way when somebody looks back and says, "Oh, why' we do this?" Well, this is what we did. So that's all I have. Answer any questions? Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Phil. Okay. Item number three is to discuss the rise grant housing project. And I think the council is pretty versed. We've been doing this for over how many years? Brian, actually Brian, step on up because not I don't want to full disclosure myself, but I'm on some medication from the gout and I'm not on I'm on six cylinders tonight, not eight. So, Brian, would you like to explain again with the council?

Sure. The rise grant, we started this, I think, at least two years ago. Um there was the first process of it that we went through and got the approval and the next uh portion of it was uh the application and the awarding of a $2 million grant for workforce housing. Um so we have the contract. It's ready to be signed. So it's time to move to the next step. Um and just to let you know that uh we knew this was coming, so we've been budgeting for it um knowing that we'd have to come up with a match. So we're expecting after approval to get the $2 million check. um with last year's budgeting because you know we got reimbursed for a lot of the stuff in a line ite line item budget for um some of the demolition that we did. So with last year's budgeting and this year's budgeting we'll have $500,000 to go toward that match. Um with the $2 million check that we'll be able to put into an account um that will uh bear some interest. Um so the less that interest um we'll need to come up with $382,000. um for this 2 point to match the $2.5 million that we have which is pretty awesome. Yes. Any questions on the RISE grant? So, tonight we're executing the uh agreement with the state completing it so we can get the $2 million. Any questions? Which one did you like better? His or mine? No, I'm joking. I'm joking.

Thanks, Brian. And go Steelers tonight, right?

Okay. Committee reports this evening, planning and public works. Alderman Scott, we've got one item. It's discussed assigning the lean for 300 Northeast Street and 500 Cwell Street to the Two Rivers Land Bank. Uh I believe both these have been demoed already. Just kidding. We're going to pull 300 off of there.

Yeah. Any questions on that? All right. Thank you. Very good. Uh, utility Alderman Pollock better.

Thank you. Okay, so you're probably all aware by now lead service line replacements. We've talked about these a time or two in the past and so um as we move forward with this um this tonight is uh we'll be requesting authorization to go out for bids for phase one project um which is the first of 10 potential phases of lead service line replacements for the city. Um this was uh the initial phase. You know there's mandates as far as the time frame when it has to be done that kind of thing. And so if we approve this tonight, we would uh advertise for bids later this week with a bid opening in March and then assuming a 60 to 90 day uh review period for EPA loan agreement, that kind of thing. That would put us in construction starting May, June, summertime. Um and up to a one-year construction period for this first phase. Um fortunately this this first phase the city was uh very uh proactive about uh their inventory and identifying lead service lines. Um and the funding was very favorable for this where they're able to get of the the total funding obligated is a little over $3.9 million for this phase one of which 2,465,000 is principal forgiveness or grant funds. So um and then the remaining uh portion a little over $1.5 million, but that's a 0% EPA loan. So, funding was very favorable for this. Um, and uh this will get rid of the first first portion uh for first percentage of lead service lines in the town. Um there's a a general project area outlined right now, but as the city continues to identify more of the lead service lines and locations, that boundary is subject to change potentially a little here and there total total quantity. So, if you approve this tonight, we go out to advertise for bids later this

this week and be ready to move forward with this initial phase. Anybody have any questions? Okay. Thank you, Adam. Any public comment at this time? Come on up, sir. Hello. Could you state your name for the record, sir? My name is Brandon Stone.

Uh, I watched the last city council meeting where the homeless no camping ordinance was brought up, talked about quite a bit. Unfortunately, I wasn't here then. I obviously that's an urgent problem in our town that I do think needs addressing. But I think because people are so desperate to resolve this quickly, it's leading towards going towards the no camping ordinance, which ultimately would criminalize homelessness in this town and would not resolve the issue that we're facing. I think if as a community we took a more humanitarian housing first approach like some cities like Rockford have taken with their built for zero program, they have actually reduced homelessness to effectively zero for their veteran population and chronic homelessness in that town. And I think that putting extra restrictions on the people who are already struggling is just going to put more resource use from our already overworked departments and social services when in fact if we offered which obviously we are offering the help already and there's going to be people who aren't going to take the help but for the people that will I think working on an individual basis with interdep departmental work like social services fire department, police department, anybody who interacts with these people on a normal basis because you guys did bring up like keeping track of them, kind of keeping a flowchart of like interactions with them throughout a day. And I think that's wonderful if used in a humanitarian way and not in a way that's keeping track of like fines or criminalizations because ultimately that's not going to reduce the amount of homeless people. It's just going to increase the amount of time that we're spending dealing with them in a like the police force especially, which nice that we got new police officers, but obviously we don't want to immediately throw them into a cycle of I pick them up, I take them, we let them out, we complain about it because we don't really know what to do. So, that's really all I had to say. I I just wanted

to say that there's alternative solutions that do work that have data backing them. And I think that as a community, if we opened our lens a little bit more to try to look at other solutions instead of debating like how to make a no camping ordinance work humanely, I think that would work out more humanely in the long run. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brandon. Any other public comment at this time? Seeing none, we need a I believe a motion to go into exec session.

That's for the purpose of discussing collective bargaining. Alderman Heap, second by Alderman Scott and we're going to clear the room. Sorry everyone got to clear the room, but you'll be able to come back in 5 to 10 minutes at most.