City Council - Regular Meeting

The workshop session, and I would ask the clerk to please call roll.

Heap? Here. Henry? Lockman? Here. Oldenettle? Here. Pollack? Here. Ruben Decelis? Scott? Here. Sorrell? Here. Speed? Here. Thomas? Here. Mayor Ezzard?

Here.

Assistant City Attorney Veith? Here. You have a quorum.

Thank you. Let's just start off with a very nice ceremony here. I see the lovely family in the back. We have with us tonight our police department and Mr. Warren and his wife and daughter and some family. And I would ask that Chief Thompson, please, you have the floor to do a pinning, sir. Or his wife does, correctly.

Good evening. As I told you guys a couple weeks ago, I was going to be doing this, as we've had some good progression in the police department. Officer Warren, now Sergeant Warren, sorry, with your guys' obvious consent, has come to us about five years ago from Carlinville, where he was an officer for about four years. I believe he had family, or at least his wife's family, I know for sure was from up here. And he got up here, started doing a really good job. He's been part of our street crimes unit for quasi part-time street crimes unit. And when I met with the Fire and Police Commission, I told them that he had worked his tail off, had done a really good job, continued to improve. And I felt like this was a great step for him to get promoted to sergeant. They agreed, so that was kind of where we're at here. So I would like to have his wife step up here with him. You can bring the kids up here if you'd like. And then where are you guys taking pictures? This side? I'm going to get out of the way. I'll let you guys take pictures here. So go right ahead. You can stick it right through there if you'd like. So congratulations. Take everybody's hand and you guys are good. You can get out of here and be done.

very good thank you very much before we hear from jamie um real quick i had a a good phone call just wanted to tell the council it's not on the report but had a good conversation with uh pending liquor license she's going to ask crystal she's been to the council crystal webster doing some good things. Renovating inside, she's gonna come and ask for a liquor license. So we're working some things through that we had concerns with when she came last time, we're ironing those out. So just wanted to bring that to your attention. And also with this is the presentation of Benton Associates. But before I lead off with Jamie, Because we're going to kind of tie in. You're going to see where this is going. The city will receive another... 6.1 million dollars in lead service funds which is basically a 4.2 million dollar principle of forgiveness i call that a grant so we're we're we're hitting our strides it's from you know good decisions that the the council's made along with benton associates and we are hitting the grants in the tune of close to almost 80% of the funding. Yeah, the mandates stink, but these unfunded mandates are coming with some money too. And so far we've been able to capitalize. So we're putting ourselves in that position. So hats off to absolutely Jamie and his team at Benton Associates and also the city council and utility chairman Pollack for their efforts. So thank you. That's pretty good, right? Yeah. Now we're going to see where we are with phase one and talk about probably phase two and where this money is going to be applied, I believe. But, yeah, that's big-time news, guys. So thank you very much. Jamie, if I forgot anything to that, please feel free to add. And with that, I have Mr. Jamie Hedden. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, City Council. For those of you who haven't either had to sit through one of these utility updates yet, but it's new. So each year we try to come and talk about kind of what's going on in the utility system. Everything is sort of underground, out of sight, out of mind. And if you're in the utility world, you like it to be quiet and nobody knows you're around, so. That means things are going well. So this is the 2026 update, kind of let you know what's going on and what we got planned going forward here. So if you're new to the water system, we'll stay on the water side first. The city has two different source waters, wells and lake. The wells are down by Naples. There's two different styles of wells down there. The water is transmitted to the water treatment plant through a 30-inch concrete transmission main. There's also the two lake sources, which flow by gravity to the treatment plant. The treatment plant can treat either one of those sources together or separately, depending on if there's an issue with one and if a blend might make more sense as we go along here. So down at the wells, we're always kind of looking through source water development. Wells are kind of like a car. You have to change the oil every once in a while. Things get kind of clogged up, and you've got to keep them clean and keep the water flowing. So this is how the collector well and the gravel pack wells are sort of spaced out. The area in the yellow, that's city-owned property, so you do have control over the well field, which is an important piece you have. If you look kind of from the vertical side of the wells, the collector well has horizontal screens. It can take in a lot of water. It's kind of also called riverbank filtration sometimes, so you kind of get pre-filtering before the water heads to the plant. And then the one on the right would be called a gravel pack. It's just a vertical pipe that takes in water and moves it along. So I'm gonna let Rick come in, and Rick wants to talk about some of the activities that have been going on at the Rainy Well to keep it going.

Good evening, everybody.

See if I can get through without stumbling too much. If I do, Mark, help me out. That's the Rainy Well building. It sits right on the banks of the Illinois River. And that there's just a survey of the pipes. We have three wells. going down into the rainy well and different elevations. And this other one on the side here, that's the lateral showing the laterals going out that collect the water for the rainy well on the bottom there. And they're anywhere from 190 to 210 feet long. Okay, now this first picture on this side, that's the electrical and the timers and everything. I call it the brains of the rainy well. That's where all the power and commands come from. It's from there. The middle picture is the stairway down to the basement. It's pretty tricky at times. It's not very big steps. And the other motor, that's the three pumps. And those are still the original motors from 1955. So they've serviced us real well. The first two big ones, there's 300 horsepower motors. And they'll pump 2,500 to 2,700 gallon a minute. little guy there that's a pump three that pumps it's 150 horse and he'll pump about 1500 gallon a minute these are just pictures of what well piping and stuff that's before the painting and after the painting that's just some more before and after shots okay this here's what i'm always talking about the laterals and the column pipes and the pumps and bowls and stuff. This first picture up here, the top pictures, there's the column pipe. That's what gets the holes and the leaks in them. That's before they're cleaned and painted. And the pump, the middle picture, the bowl looks like different sized bowls there. That's what actually pushes the water back to Jacksonville. The more bowls you have on there, the bigger pumps, the more water you get. And the shafts, those are stainless steel shafts, and you see all the corrosion on them, and I got them. That's what gets in and closes the screens up and our pipes and everything. That's what makes it do the cleaning of the laterals. And the bottom, that white bowl, that's the bottom bowls there, that's off of pump one or two, so you just got like six bowls versus three on the top one. And then the shafts are cleaning after the fact. So anyway, they're back on their trailer, and those spider-looking things end up there, the top picture, that's the bearings. When I talk about a bearing goes out, it wobbles, lets that stainless steel shaft start knocking and throws everything out of Keltner. And you can't have that, because that'll ruin your motor and everything. So they take all them out during the cleaning process. Maroosh would place them with new bearings every time. Okay, these are your lateral. This is lateral number three. And it gets 190 foot long. Your bottom picture here, so that's the end of it, the plug. And as you come back towards the well itself, you see it just keeps getting dirtier. As the velocity of the water changes, it comes back and stuff settles out more. But that's to build up the iron and stuff that's in that jar. And I don't know why, but further out it gets cleaner as it comes back in the rain, it just builds up more. I think it's something to do with the velocity. And that's a lateral three after the fact. They usually TV camera before they clean them and after they clean them so we can see the results. As you see, that looks brand new. That's all stainless steel screening too. This was put in in 2008. This is just a kind of timeline and the rainy and the costs involved. It went in in 55. New laterals were developed in 93. I couldn't find the prices for those. Mechanical cleaning in 99. 2004, mechanical maintenance. 2008, there's all new laterals and that's, I've been here two years when Jack done all that. as a million 421 that we just did a minor cleaning chemicals and 16 and 21 or did a complete cleaning that was 826,000 and 25 we just did another one. That was 980 998. So you see it keeps going up every time we clean it in this space about every four years it needs to be clean. And usually not there. The rainy level gets down about 60 foot. That's the time we have to clean it. Don't suck your pumps and everything. So I think that's it. Yeah. Good. Any questions? That's kind of why we're going to test wells and new gravel packs. Because you can clean a gravel pack well for about 50,000. And they do it in two days. It's just rainy. It goes out of commission for three to four months. and we can't come bring them up any higher because we're out of the aquifer on the marina. So we're trying to get ahead of the ball game and have plenty of water for everybody.

Thanks, Rick.

Anything else?

Expensive oil changes, aren't they? Yeah. As Rick was mentioning, so right now the city does have proposals to do test wells down in the well area. So those five red dots are the areas that are going to have test holes, and you do that to explore which is going to be the best location for the well. That should be complete in fall of 2026. They did start to do that, but it's a little bit wet, so they had to back out and try it again. So it's been a long time need down at the wells to have standby power. It's kind of a difficult location to have a standby generator just with the environment down there. but we've always had it on the list as far as in the budget and trying to figure out the best way to do that. Also really trying to be project ready on everything, looking for funding opportunities, working with Phil and others here at the city and one of the other grant specialists that helps the city out. There's a FEMA grant that we've been applied for. Total project cost for this generator is about four million and the FEMA grant hopefully we'll be able to pay about three million of that leaving only about about a million of it on the city side so i think that's in pretty good shape maybe we might know phil still here maybe later this fall early next year i would anticipate if we'd be able to move forward with that probably not construction until 2028 but if lead time on generators are still three years who knows either way we're getting closer though so that's good that's going to solve a big need that's been out there for a while Just kind of give you an example. When you're talking about generators and well fields, everything has to be elevated, so it seems very expensive, but you have to get a few feet above the floodplain. So if it does flood, we can still run the well, we can still run the backup power. This is a diesel generator here. Down there, it's going to be a natural gas. If possible, it's nice not to have the diesel fuel above your aquifer. There is a large natural gas pipeline down there as an option, so considering that. Okay, we'll get into the distribution system. A lot of water main projects going on. Kind of walk through some of those real quick. Myrtle Street water main replacement was completed in April of 2026, about $250,000. But a lot of these water main replacements are either taking care of small diameter mains, lack of fire flow, leaking. A lot of these pipes, too, like Rick was saying, 1955 for the well is actually new compared to some of our pipes, considering the water system started in the late 1800s. And some of those pipes are over 100 years old, still operating today. So that project is about 1,300 feet and it's complete. Diamond and Richards, they restored a key bore beneath Town Brook to restore some of that hydraulic capacity. And then also, again, replacing some of those small one-inch and two-inch undersized pipes for about $400,000. A project that's going to be coming around the corner, Veterans Park Rehabilitation. This is the one and a half million gallon tank in Veterans Park there. Originally constructed in 1954, about the same time as the transmission main. The last time it was fully rehabbed was around 2003, when I say fully. In this case, it was fully blasted, you know, containment, complete coatings in and out. So the mindset is that those coatings have about a 20 to 25 year useful life. And if you can kind of keep up on those and not lose them, you can have a chance to do sort of a mid-range rehab, maybe overcoat, clean that, instead of having to do a full blast, full containment, which really does cost a lot. The tank's not doing too bad overall. That upper left picture is a picture of the inside of the wet area. Most people don't get to see that very often. And really, it's doing pretty well, except for on the welds and those types of places. In the upper right, this tank does serve as a hub for local area artists. If you ever want to show your wares down there, there's plenty of opportunity for you. And that's been a tradition over the years. A lot of those dark spots, really, it's just mold and mildew and stuff. But then you have some coatings that we really don't want to let go further than we're talking about. So this will probably be bid this fall with construction through 2027, just a little bit over a million dollars for this rehab. As we're talking about our total finished water storage for the system, you know, when this tank was rehabbed in the early 2000s, in the same time frame, we kind of had to put the Massey View tank in because once you take one out of service for a project like this, it's out for months. Three months all the way to six, maybe nine sometimes or more. So overall, the tanks operate together, kind of daisy chain on how they pump, but they kind of take care of the storage for the system, but been kind of having some problems on the east side as far as flow, pressure, the industrial nature of that side of things definitely has had a need. Also the new fire flow requirements that facilities are having to have you know ones that we would want to locate Here in Jacksonville need to be able to be able to have these flows and we also have contractual requirements that are currently in place So we kind of have to think about so there's been a need for additional storage over on the east side to kind of buffer that demand and allow the water plant to kind of stay pretty consistent and then be able to serve those folks out there and So a couple years ago, council authorized the design of a new tank out there to be project ready. Again, trying to be shovel ready with permits ready to go. Just been trying to find a home for it also been trying to keep ready for possible high quality grants or funding so in this case Economic Development Administration does have a grant that we think is going to fit really well It's going to potentially fund 80% of the project and then also here on the state level Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has a program that will help supplement the city's share of that, which could potentially be a 90% grant, 10% local share, which would be really, really good if that can happen. So working through that grant application right now, hope to have that in on behalf of the city hopefully in August. If not, maybe in the September timeframe. There may be some action items that we'll have to be discussing here in the next few weeks, kind of developing some of those still, and then we'll bring those to the council and discuss as necessary. Okay, the mayor mentioned positive news on funding for lead service lines, so that's great. This has been a very difficult thing for water systems across the country. Imagine we're responsible for our parts of the system and now all of a sudden the city's responsible for everybody else's parts of the system too. And kind of what I'm talking about is typically the part that the city owns and maintains is in the blue. You have your water main, you have your service pipe up to the valve. And from the valve in, that's been the customers. So they could have installed wood, plastic, who knows, over the last 100 years. And all of a sudden, they said, well, you know what? Cities, municipalities, you're not going anywhere. You now have to be responsible for that as well. If we step back and say, well, as a public health standpoint, getting rid of these lead services is something that we can all get together and figure out. And that's really what's been going on over the last five, six, seven years, is trying to develop plan for that and there is a rule that requires that so Rick's department with bailing leading the way on lead service inventory they've been trying to identify how many of these services the city has around 4,000 plus or minus right now out of about 7,800 customers. So a pretty considerable amount and not uncommon for a lot of older communities. But for the past four or five years, we've been trying to get the inventory squared away and understanding really where we're supposed to be on these services and then start replacing by 2027. So when this started, this was, just to give you an example, a map of about 20 different material combinations that they were trying to keep track of, and really helped to understand which one of these are lead, which one's real, which one's not. And over time, they've kind of, weeded out some of these and figured out where the lead services are mostly, and those are in the green. Also through this process, the Water Department has been actively utilizing IEPA pothole grants for this. They're up to 280,000 of that. And so Rowland Construction and some others have been trying to pothole all these, can identify exactly what the service is, and know which ones we have to replace. So the original implementation plan was going to happen in a 10-phase project. Originally, it was about 15, 17 years that the government allowed you to do that. Then the next administration said, no, that's going to be too easy. Let's make it 10. So that's where the 10 phases came from. So that was the original phasing and now we're kind of in this phasing mode. So this is the areas of town. The reason why we have five identified and then six through 10 is sort of down the road is because EPA wants to see your first five and where those are gonna go. That also gave us an opportunity to figure out which ones we're gonna score the highest on funding as well. So again, originally about 280 services per year, few million dollars per phase, now it's looking like 10 years, about 400 services, plus or minus. But it kind of depends on funding. And that's where you've gotten ahead of schedule, which is going to give you a little bit of flexibility on how you attack these phases. And if there's a year where funding's a little flat, you might be able to kind of sit on the bench for a little bit, because you're going to be ahead of the game. So you're making some tough but good decisions there. So the first two phases, the first phase right now is in construction, about 250 services. Phase two, which is the funding that the mayor announced earlier, could be anywhere from 400 to 650 services, depending on how bids come in. And then the rest is an estimate at this point. If anybody wants to go along with the guys while they're replacing these services, they're earning every single one of them, no doubt. So phase one was $2 million complete grant, no loan involved with that. Phase two, which will be next year, at least 400, maybe even up to 650, 4.2 in grant and 1.8 in a 0% loan over 30 years. And funding after that, similar, but stay tuned for next year. So let's move from the clean water side to the wastewater side. Wastewater treatment plant has four simple steps. First of all, get the grid out, that's the head works we've been talking about. Step two, primary clarification, let more of the solids settle out and then all the magic happens in the aeration in the biological stage. Put the air to it, let all the bugs do their thing, and then we get clean water out of it for final clarification, then off to the creek we go. It's a little more detailed than that, but it's really only four steps. So the new headworks has been under construction for the last year and a half or so. We now do have grit removal at the headworks and that's very important as we move into phosphorus removal here in the next few years. Gotta get all that junk out at first so the bugs can do their thing downstream. We gotta keep those little guys happy. But really a lot of improvements in terms of safety and just wastewater treatment that didn't have before and a dedicated dump station and just a lot of things that kind of remedied in this first phase. So it was about $17 million and about two and a half million of that was principal forgiveness and that's from Illinois EPA as well. So this is the first phase in a multi-phase project. I know everybody's just chomping at the bit to see what that stuff is, right? Solids, we'll call it. So phase two is in design right now, look to be in construction 28, 29, operational by 29 and that phase two is about $25 million. Another bunch of key features here, standby generators, kind of a theme of the night. Getting into some of the sludge digestion and processing, that's what you're seeing on this belt here. So Rick and his guys can take care of it, land apply, go wherever they need to. And controls, the controls are from the 80s, maybe even before. A lot of new things we can take advantage of on process once we get the controls cleaned up. And then phase three is going to get into that phosphorus removal. I'm gonna try to go biological as much as possible, use as little chemical as we can, but that's gonna be operational probably fall of 2034, and that's right ahead of the regulatory deadline of 2035. This is a 10-year regulatory deadline that's in your discharge permit. So that last phase is about 15 million, and I'll wrap up the improvements for this anyways. One more quick one. So a lot of the sewer that gets to the plant from a geographical standpoint, the whole south side of town, plus our customers to the south, end up through one 30-inch main, and that's that 30-inch north trunk sewer. It's been around for a while and it does a big job. It actually takes two-thirds of the plant flow though, so a lot of, pretty important one there. There is a grant opportunity. It's due August 27th. The area that this pipeline is in does qualify and this pipeline's in fairly rough shape. The picture on the left when you see where it looks like ribs, that's actually rebar. We're not supposed to see that. It's supposed to be covered up with a little bit of concrete on that pipe. And then some of the manholes, the picture on the right, they're just really getting to the point where they're starting to wash out and fail. If we can get ahead of this stuff where we can rehab these structures and maintain some of that integrity and not spend as much money, that's the goal. Complete replacement's the one that costs a ton of money. So the grant at the end of August is for one and a half million, construction only. I think you can get a couple thousand feet of that 30 inch line and then a few of those manholes rehabbed in the process. And they're hoping to announce those by October this year. There might be an election in November, I'm not sure. Okay, thanks for hanging in there with me. Tom gave me advice before I got up here. Anybody have any questions?

I had a quick question. Yeah, sure. I think you mentioned that you were, and maybe you're not able to say it yet, but the east side, a new water plant somewhere or a new water tower? Tank, yeah. Where would that be at?

In the kind of the AC Humco area, we've been kind of between Reynolds and all those different locations out there trying to find the sweet spot between making sure we can give the benefit of the whole area that we need, but also nearby the existing water mains so we can minimize the water main work. And that general area kinda does that job. It also takes care of helping the clients to the south, but then growth on the other side of the interstate in the future as well, should there be some. Any other questions? Okay, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, Jamie. Very informative. Appreciate that. Yeah, make sure Ricky gets that back, Mark. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Rick. I didn't know Rick was going to do that tonight. That was impressive, Mr. Heron. Very good job. Okay, city attorney's report tonight.

Thank you. So I have two items this evening. The first is the amendment to the waste haulers contract with GFL Environmental. And I believe that if there are questions that our Madam Clerk will be able to address those. And the second, then, is the approval of the collective bargaining agreement. And Ms. Cheryl Cooper can answer any questions on that. Thank you.

is there any would you like to go i can explain thank you so there were a few things in our gfl contract that we felt needed to be tightened up so we met with scott reeves our local representative from gfl and eric shangra he's our district representative and they are both here tonight if you have questions one of the things is we removed some wording about the the spring cleanup. Basically, we just took all the timeframes out of that. We're just gonna do one cleanup in the spring, probably keeping it to June, the first week of June, like we've been doing, correct? Yeah, okay. Okay, so we just kind of cleaned that up, that they will provide a free curbside bulky item spring cleanup annually. The second item is, everybody noticed on their bill that they were charged five, charge an extra fee for going over, the diesel rate going over 550 per month. We noticed that we were actually charged for all three months, whereas it only went over one month. So in order to correct that, the last quarterly statement of 2026, you will have a credit on your bill of $7.80, and that's to make up the difference between the two. And in conjunction with that, We also noticed that the basic rate, there was a calculation error in that and we were being overcharged this whole year. So in order to rectify that, what we did was we took the difference which was 36 cents off of the 2027 bill, quarterly bill. So it took it from 2217 down to 2181. And from then on, we'll just do the 4% on top of that. A couple of other language changes has to do with that 550 surcharge. Basically, we noted in the contract that they will use the Midwest PADD2 gasoline and diesel prices to base this off of, the 550 per gallon. And if it does go over that, they may increase its monthly disposal rate for that month by 10%. So we just wanted to clean all that up in the contract. If you have any questions, you know, you can check with me or you can talk to Scott or Eric if either one of you have anything to add. If I missed anything or...

anything else thank you thank you thank you eric thank you scott appreciate it very much appreciate the ongoing relationships uh and thanks for the city-wide it i saw the what was the early number that was the biggest or it was it was really big wasn't it okay okay excellent well we appreciate it okay committee reports tonight uh parks and lakes alderman largehold oh yeah i'm sorry uh the uh local 477. um Cheryl and I can, it's pretty standard, it's the laborers. It's our park workers, you know, it's our, help me Cheryl, I mean, it's our guys that are out there in this stuff in the heat today, so, and ladies. Yeah, we had good discussion. It was ongoing for months, like you know, and we finally reached a deal with them. Yep. Any questions for Cheryl or me? Seeing none, thank you very much. And now we'll go to committee reports. And Parks and Lakes Alderman Large Oldenettle.

Thank you. So everyone received an email with just a little bit more of a description about what the OSLAD grant is and what can be funded. Many of you sent in suggestions or ideas. And since that time I've had the opportunity to speak with both Brian Hutchison, who will be helping us this year with the Oslaut Grant, and Adam, who's our park superintendent, and he's here as well. And one of the things that we feel could really benefit the community as a whole would be, and many of you mentioned this, would be the Nichols Park replacement and upgrade of the playground equipment at Nichols Park. It's my understanding, and Brian, you can come up here and tell us otherwise, that when you have a plan in place, that's a pretty big portion of the points that you can get for the grant. So the fact of some of these other great ideas that you all suggested, we probably wouldn't score as high as we will be able to if we decide just to replace and upgrade Nichols Park playground equipment. And I also had talked with Brian a bit earlier because there was a couple that also had mentioned about upgrading or improving the restrooms at Nichols Park as well. And so the question was, and you were going to do some research, I don't mean to put you on the spot, if we upgrade the, if we have enough money to also upgrade the bathroom in that area, would it have to be ADA compliant? That was the first question.

Everything constructed with OZLED has to be ADA compliant.

So then the next question that I had was, if we move forward with the playground equipment, then we also have to make the playground ADA accessible?

It's not quite as clear on that. You do get more points if the entire complex is ADA compliant. But for playgrounds, I think that if you make the space ADA compliant and have some components of playground equipment that are geared towards people with disabilities that you're satisfying the requirement. It's kind of interesting that if you only are providing things for people with disabilities, that's not allowed with Auslan. So it needs to be all encompassing. It is looked upon more favorably if it's a more diverse application. That can be kind of tough here because it's just a playground. And when they talk about diversity, they don't mean different types of equipment, that's just considered the playground. But I think the restroom would be beneficial in that way. If we could tie in that, there's a little nature area walk over there, we could tie some of that stuff into it too, to make it a more attractive application.

So last year we applied for the pickleball courts. You all remember we weren't able to get that put together. But we feel like this would be a really strong application for us this year. And in talking with Adam, and Adam you too speak up, that we are, this is a project that we're going to have to replace eventually. So this is money we're going to have to spend. And if you've been out there you can see that a lot of the playground equipment needs to be upgraded it needs to be improved we'd like for Nichols Park to be and we've always said this that we'd like for Nichols Park to be more of a destination park and we need something to kind of pull people families out there we want to make sure that they have restrooms that they can use and we've already got the water fountain we've Nichols Park's been around for a long time A lot of memories have been made there. So while there's many other great ideas and it kind of got me excited to hear all the things that you all had brought to the table, I think with the comprehensive plan that the city's working on and the visions that Adam has for many of our other recreation spaces, that we should try to include all of these into a plan. And just as Jamie mentioned earlier about the water, if we're more shovel ready, then we'll be more likely to tap into some grants that come forward. So I'd like to have a parks and lakes committee in the near future for maybe we can start to work with Adam with his vision and some of the comments that are coming in for the comprehensive plan to see how we can incorporate some of your great ideas. of course, open to discussion, thoughts, and ideas. Adam, of course, we want you to weigh in as well.

There's a lot of foot traffic at Nichols Park. I mean, we've done the big upgrades to the pool, the roller hockey out there, the golf is So as Brian was talking with the nature area, So if we could do it as a grant opportunity and pick up a couple of the other services or options with the bathroom possibly being remodeled and something else, then that is something to go for in the grant. But it's a big part. It gets a lot of use. We get a lot of good traffic out there.

Lori, do you know how much is available with the Oswald grant?

It's up to $600,000. You can use it for 50% of the project cost.

And when is the application due?

End of the month, August 31st.

In August.

So not a lot of time.

Not really. Do we have any estimation of cost? I don't, yeah. It's kind of premature for that.

And unfortunately, with the council not meeting again for another, was it two weeks or three weeks, it wouldn't give Hutchison much time to put that grant together. but I know where you're going and I think that absolutely I mean it's something the community has wanted but we're not sure based upon the scoring system that we're going to be able to put it together again this year to get funding so I think for new facilities it's important to have it in the plan I have a parks plan in the comprehensive plan it's something that most grant applications want to see it's not as big of a deal you can get partial credit

for something like rehabbing playground equipment or something like that. But for a new facility, I think it's important that that gets incorporated into the comprehensive plan or the parks plan or however the city's gonna put all that together so that we can point at that and say, yeah, it is part of the city's plan.

I have a question. What is the approximate age of the equipment that we have out there now?

I played on some of it when I was growing up. I'm almost 50.

Well, I don't know how old you are, but my kids out there, I'm not disputing that. I'm just wondering, what is the lifespan of it?

Getting towards the end of the lifespan, some of the platforms are starting to show this. Okay. Yeah, I used to take my kids out there. Okay.

And are we talking about if we were to do this, if we reply for it and get it, would it be a plan to replace all of that plus all the – because I will tell you right now I have a special needs grandson, and the biggest problem we have out there is not the playground equipment. It's the ground. It's the material that is on the ground that is supposed to protect everybody from getting skinned knees. He has the hardest time with that. So would it be replacing that as well?

You can replace the surface with the, I don't know what it's called. Like the rubber. The rubber, yeah. That would be part of that. And then including adding accessible paths from parking up to the playground area.

Thank you. That's where a lot of the costs come into recreation and playgrounds is the

yeah the reason I was asking is the one that say it community has that rubber surface and he has very little problems there yeah with the better swings absolutely absolutely

much more with the smaller space. There's a lot of single unit freestanding

Well, maybe even removing the spring things that propel children off. I mean, we don't need to be doing that. So I mean, yeah, compressing it, but making the surface better and more accessible is a big thing, really. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

So that's kind of the direction that I've heard from many of you that you wanted to kind of go. The pickleball thing, of course, was on the table, but it's not in the plan, and we don't feel like we're going to score very high on it. So that's the reality.

A lot of the feedback online when the city applied for pickleball last year, a lot of the feedback negative towards the pickleball was, why don't we fix pickleball? the playground equipment, and there was people posting pictures of it, and so I think there would be public support for it, which is a piece of that application, too. So I think it's something that's needed, and I think it would be supported by the community if the city decides to go in that direction.

Good, yeah, yeah. Everybody on board, good, for the most part? Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Lori. Any public comment at this time? Public comment? Yeah. Hi. Step on up, ma'am.

thanks could you please oh i'm sorry can you just state your name for the record absolutely good evening my name is kim still i don't normally do this i'm 60 years old retired and i did not want to get involved in all this public uh until about two months or so ago when i found out data centers were coming to sangamon county and i don't know where the city falls in line in this but i've been going to the commissioner's meetings i'm very concerned I'm a farm family from Brown County, but I've been here 29 years. I worked at the prison, retired from the prison. I had a spiel, but basically what I want to do here is bring the concern of our land. our water, our electric, the noise pollution, the light pollution, Waverly, we need to support Waverly, because I do know for a fact by talking to the co-ops, I'm with North Morgan Co-op, I live out north of town, Woodland Lakes, by talking with the North Morgan and the Apple Creek. I do know that OSIRIS-1 has approached Waverly with the possibility of purchasing water through them. But like I say, it's a source. It's a water source. We need to do some research and that's what we're trying to tell the councilmen or the commissioners. We need to do research now before one comes to our county and we get one to later find out what the effect is gonna have on us, our health, the livestock, our wildlife, the future generation. You can't make more land. And I'm doing my best to try to tell my friends over in Brown County, because I have farm property. We're going on four generations of farm property. Just please do some research and look into it. And one other thing, because I know that these data centers collect our information. And I know that I, for one, I'm not too happy about all that data that they have to keep on us. conversations, our text messages, our photos. But now, by going around the counties, for all of a sudden the last few weeks I've been seeing these surveillance cameras up, the flock cameras. My concern is that if it's being used for license plate readers and tracking an Amber Alert or an elderly a case where they have dementia and they're out driving around, or even sex trafficking and of that sort. I'm for it, but I'm not for the rights being taken away from me for my right to the privacy and to travel without being documented, or possibly be brought in and say, Hey, Kim, you've been seen driving down, I don't know, Walnut Street five times every day for five days in a row. What are you doing? You know, something come up missing and maybe we think that you've done it. So I just want to bring that to the attention to make you aware. And there is one other thing. I am working with a group of individuals, a great group of people. We're called the Morgan County Accountability for Data Center Development, and we're getting a petition. We need 885 registered voters to put this on the ballot in November, which states, should there be restrictions imposed on the construction and operation of data centers in Morgan County Illinois. Personally I'd like to use the word ban because right now we haven't done our research and we need to do that but anyway it's the best that we can do and we're working on it and hopefully I can we can pursue and get more individual signatures on that. Anyway, I do thank you for your time. Yeah, I'm a little nervous. It's been a while since I've gotten up and done a big speech. It's probably back in IC when I was with the Gamma Delta girls. So anyway, it's been a while. But anyway, thank you. I appreciate your time. And yeah, Kim Still, I live out north of town, Woodland Lakes. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Kim. You did a good job. Any other public comment? Okay, we will adjourn and please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. and I would ask the clerk to please call roll.

Heap. Yes. Henry. Lockman. Here. Oldenettle. Here. Pollack. Here. Ruben Decelis. Scott. Here. Sorrell. Here. Speed. Here. Thomas. Here. Mayor Ezzard. Here. City Attorney Veith.

Here.

You have a quorum.

Thank you. Okay, is there a reading of the minutes this evening?

Make a motion to approve is circulated.

Alderman Scott, seconded by Alderman Lockman. All those in favor of approving the minutes, please respond by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Petitions? Presentation of petitions?

No petitions and no communications.

And is there claims?

Yes.

There is no claims. Sorry, no. Wow, there's nothing. Okay. So, Tom, city attorney's report.

Thank you. So the first, of course, is be it resolved that amendment number three to the Waste Haulers Contract between the City of Jacksonville and the GFL Environmental Inc. is hereby approved.

Is there a motion? Alderman Lars Oldmiddle, seconded by Alderman Scott. Discussion? Seeing none, I would ask the clerk to please call roll.

Heap? Yes. Lockman? Yes. Oldenittle? Yes. Pollock? Yes. Scott? Yes. Sorrell?

Yes.

Speed? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Motion carries.

And then we have be it resolved that the collective bargaining agreement between the city and local number 477 covering the period January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2030 is hereby approved.

Is there a motion this evening? Alderman Heap, seconded by Alderman Rob Thomas. Any discussion on that? It was really good negotiations. Hats off to Cheryl and her assistant. Hey, thank you, Eric and Scott. And her assistant, Eric, and everyone that helped out. Dan, everyone. The other side was great to work with. Thank you. What do we got? There's no other discussion. We'll call the vote. I'd ask the clerk to please call roll.

Heap? Yes. Lockman? Yes. Oldenettle? Yes. Pollack? Yes. Scott?

Yes.

Sorrell? Yes. Speed? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Motion carries.

Any more public comment at this time? No? Okay, consent agenda items tonight. Finance, IT, and personnel. Alderman Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We have one item. It's the City Treasurer's Report for June 30th, 2026. And everyone received those in their packets. And if you have questions, reach out. Thank you. And utility, Alderman Pollack.

We have one item tonight, and it's resolution authorizing payments from the Water Works and Sewage Projects Fund for services rendered improvement projects, an ISO move.

Is there a second? Alderman, large elemental? You've heard the items under the, the two items under the consent agenda tonight. Is there any you wish to pull for further discussion? Seeing none on those two items, I would ask the clerk to please call roll. I'll have to make a note not to have two items next time. Let's just put it on the committee.

Thank you. Committee reports tonight. Planning and Public Works. Alderman Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We have one item. It's the second reading of an ordinance amending the Jacksonville zoning map for property located at 469 South Clay Avenue from R4 to B1. And I so move.

Is there a second? Alderman Thomas?

It is ordained that the property located at 469 South Clay Avenue be changed, the zoning be changed from R4 to B1.

Discussion? Seeing none, I would ask the clerk to please call roll.

Heap? Yes. Lockman? Yes. Oldenittle? Yes. Pollack? Yes. Scott?

Abstain.

Sorrell? Yes. Speed? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Motion carries.

Thank you. Any old business this evening? Old business we need to chat about. Any new business?

uh two things i just um first just want to give kudos to gfl i felt like when we brought the things to their attention they were very responsive and so i think as you said earlier a good relationship and they sometimes get a bad rap but i feel like they they stepped up once they noticed what had happened so i just wanted to say that and the other thing i briefly want to talk about if it's all right with you mayor is regarding some of the facts that i found out regarding the annexation from our last meeting yeah is that okay yeah so at the last meeting um it one of the things that was said was if we annex it in that we'd have to take over the bridge and brian's here as my backup uh um but what if what i was what i learned is that the city of jacksonville already owns we're already responsible for the bridge so that would not be additional for us. And it's about 1,140 feet of additional roadway that we would be taking on linear And if in fact it's true that, and the assessor is out of the office right now, but he'll be back tomorrow. He's been gone for about a week, I believe. If it's true that it's $8,000 that would be generated, the city of Jacksonville, if annexed in over 40 years, would acquire $320,000. And this is a very high number. So from two different individuals who have serviced the road, one gave us a rough estimate of around $5,000, while someone else said $8,500. So let's just round it up for all the additional work that might have to be done regarding patching and cleaning the dishes. Let's round it up to $10,000. So $10,000 every five years is, what we would have to put in to resurface the roadway. And the number that was thrown at the last council meeting was $25,000. So that is not a true number. So it's closer to five to 8,000. Let's just round it up to 10. So if we did $10,000 over the 40 years, it'd be $40,000 because you'd only have to do it every five years. So the city would take in 320,000 additional tax revenue, if those numbers are true, less the $40,000 in potential expenses. So the city would gain $280,000 in additional tax revenue, which would help us eliminate the tax burden that is being passed on to the taxpayers, because we'd be taking in more money. So all the taxing bodies would still be the taxing bodies. We would just be added to that taxing body. In addition, the other thing that I learned is if we, and this is something that I'm sure will be discussed, and I feel like it's a little unfair that the solar company's not here, but what I was also told, that is if we annex the parcel into the city, and the city generates the $320,000, which I haven't confirmed yet with the assessor's office, that they no longer will be giving the $100,000 to an entity or entities within the city of Jacksonville. That's off the table. So those are the things that I found out since the last meeting. And I don't think it's necessarily a deal breaker for what we're wanting to do moving forward. I just wanted to give everyone on the council just a little bit more information about kind of what came up last week at the meeting with the conversation with the annexation. and Brian is here. I had a bunch of questions, and bless his heart, he was very helpful to me. I also talked with Matt Koltis, too, with the county, and I just had questions about would we have to maintain the whole road or half the road, and there's actually already code or what a municipal code or so there's some rule through its IL if you want to take a note ILCS huh state statue thank you in place that takes care of all those questions that we that I had and that some of those that came up last week so thank you state statue yeah Brian's here Brian's here so Brian come on up and tell us anything else you might know

I think you pretty well covered it. The city already, when they annexed for Prairie Knolls, that Black's Lane from Morton and up to the bridge became the city. So this would be, if the city did it, it would be from the bridge up to the railroad tracks. Outside of that, I think you kind of covered everything that we had, unless anybody has any questions.

And I also found out that it's, just for our conversation for later, or whoever's conversation for later, it's road district number eight, Alexander, it's not the county, who has jurisdiction over the north section of Laxling, so.

Quick question, does that include the plowing and all that, that we'll have to go into that if we annex it?

I believe so, yeah.

So Lori's numbers include that?

I think with the roundup it would. I mean, you're talking about another 1,000 foot or so of plowing, so that's not.

We already own from Morton Avenue up to the bridge.

To the bridge, so you'd be plowing.

Actually, on the other side of the bridge. So we own the whole bridge, so we'd only be adding an extra 1,000 feet. So on to it.

There may be an agreement in place already with Les in the county on who does it all. Okay. I'm guessing we do some of it, our half, and they do the other, but maybe they've had an agreement, hey, we'll handle it since we're out here. I don't know that. It's just a quick question.

I do have a question. You said in there that if we were to annex that portion and receive the tax dollars for it, we would not get the $100,000. Correct.

That's kind of the trade-off. Correct. Good work, Lori.

I just wanted to get the facts out so we can make an informed decision. I assume it will be on the agenda maybe at the next meeting perhaps.

That one I don't know. I'm not putting it on. I mean, I think that company.

Well, I know they've asked me for some information as far as the RF stuff that I will give to him this week. So they've asked me for information that I have not gotten to him this week. as regards to WLDS and WJBO as far as KMZ and how much they need And then I was going to talk to Phil after this because I need some information from him. So I don't know if it would be put on there yet.

So, yeah, if they are ready and reach out and say they'd like this on the agenda for the August meeting, we'll put it on there. But I'm not calling them. It's their project.

Well, I think they're diligently working on it. And even Jack was on vacation this week and he called me a couple times. So he's still working on it behind the scenes, trying to do those extra steps that we asked. And to their benefit, everything we've asked, they've been so accommodating and done everything as far as the setbacks and acquiring the home and all the things. So I think when we brought up about the annexation, we kind of threw a ringer in things a little bit for them, and then the radio stations. But I still think if we move forward with it, $280,000 approximately would be a nice benefit for the city.

yeah this one's one of those tough ones where there's you see both sides but you know there were a lot of tough questions you know i know radio station has a lot of tough ones and can they get that will it affect it i know my opinion on that they're never going to get it okay you you'll never know that that's my opinion But if that stalls it, that stalls it. But I think we're doing everything we can as a council to, like the young lady out there still said, you know, we collect the information and we talk about it like this. We don't ram anything through and we will continue doing it that way with this council, I think. I think I've got everybody has my back on that, correct? this is I see both sides I've driven that road more the last two weeks and I've ever driven in my life and and I kind of visualize if I was a resident out there and I go through my processing but it's it's a hard question now me you know personally have other ways how I would do it if I was that company I mean if they wanted to come into our community they're gonna have to make a big splash okay and that's just my opinion. But I want to work the process out and see where it is, and then ultimately we have good choices of making good decisions at the end, and that's what we're all about. So I'll keep my mouth shut because we are almost done. So any more new business?

I do have one thing. I do want to say thank you to Alderman Oldenettle because with the GFL contract that she went over, she took – an inordinate amount of opinion, I'll put it that way, from the public, because it was very contentious, so I do thank her for her work on that. She's done very well, and I think she did very good for the people. I really do. Yep.

With that, would you like to make the adjournment motion? Oh, no, motion to adjourn.

Into executive session, please.

So any other new business? Okay.

I'd like to make a motion to adjourn into executive session.

Second. Second by Alderman Thomas, and that is to deal with pending...