City Council Meeting - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the City of Joliet council meeting here on Monday, March 16 at 04:30PM. Because of a number of changes, the invocation will be presented by myself. Myself. The meeting will be presided over by our mayor, Terry Darcy. Heavenly father, as we gather together, we thank you for your endless goodness to us.

Thank you for all the skills and the talents you have given us and for everyone who is part of this beloved team. We pray that you will provide us with great wisdom and insight as we discuss our work plans and make the decisions about our future today. We open our hearts to you now and invite you, the Holy Spirit, to present us with guidance. Thank you, Lord.

We'll begin with roll call. Mayor Darcy? Here. Councilman Cardenas? Here. Councilman Clement? Here.

Councilman Hug? Here. Councilwoman Navarro?

Here.

Councilman Moreno? Here. Councilman Mudrin? Here. Councilman Quoman is absent. She did let me know due to inclement weather that she is unable to attend the meeting. Councilman Reardon? Here. Next is the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as written?

So move. Second.

It's been motion and seconded to approve. Councilman Cardenas.

Aye.

Councilman Clement. Here. Councilman Hogg.

Aye. Here. Aye.

Councilwoman Navarro. Aye. Councilman Moreno.

Aye.

Councilman Madryn. Aye. Councilman Reardon. Aye. Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried. Next is citizens to be heard on agenda items. If you are here to speak on the proposed data center, the public hearing on this item is at 05:30. So you can speak on that item during that time.

Is there anyone who would like to speak on an agenda item other than the proposed data center? Okay. Seeing none. Next is mayor pro tem. Is there a motion to appoint councilwoman Quillman to serve as mayor Pro Tem for the term 04/01/2026 through 06/30/2026.

So moved.

Second. It's been motioned and seconded to approve.

Clement.

Aye. Councilman Hug.

Aye.

Councilman Navarro.

Aye. Councilman Moreno. Aye. Councilman Mugren.

Aye. Councilman Meriden. Aye. Councilman Carganus.

Aye.

Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion Motion carried. Next, our council committee reports. First, we have communication technology and information systems. Our

committee met on March 4 in the Executive Conference Room at 08:30. We only had three agenda items to vote on. One of them is a contract to center for Internet security. CrowdStrike, Obviously, it is for our security renewal. It's $65,142.

The second was a reward to of contract to Oona Solutions for Oona procurement in the amount of, sorry, me see this, 26,500. This is a solution improves efficiency by digitalizing our entire sourcing lifestyle or life cycle and reducing manual tasks. And our last item was award of contract to Cities Digital Inc for the Laserfiche document management system. Annual renewal in the amount of 70,000. We've been using laser fish for quite a while now and we're just doing a renewal for our document management. Anything else?

Thank you.

Okay. And that's our report.

Thank you.

Finance. Finance commit committee met here today at 03:30 on the committee is Councilwoman Sherry Reardon, Councilman Larry Hug, and myself. We've had just a few items. The main ordinance amendment to chapter two, article two, the city manager's authority for succession and hiring temporary appointments. This proposed amendment would allow the city manager to hire replacement employees prior to the last day of the departing employee.

The overlap period may not exceed six months and funding must be available. In addition, the amendment authorizes the city manager to appoint temporary workers for a period not exceeding six months with any twelve month window of a temporary operational

needs.

This amendment allows the outgoing person to help train the new hiree. Monthly financial statements. After two months we

have

a small surplus. Sewer and water funds are on budget. Parking fund is almost $12,000 higher than funded for. The public library quarter report this would be December through February. The library had over 57,000 visitors for that quarter, 30,000 in the downtown, 26,000 at Black Road that checked out 81,115 items.

Additionally, 10,400 people attended four ninety different programs with 91% of the programs being for

youths. Sherry?

That's very good.

That was everything.

That that'd be my report.

Thank you.

In public service.

The public service committee met today at 04:00, just a little over a half hour ago, here in the Executive Session Council Room. To my right, on the committee and in attendance was councilwoman Rairdon, councilman Mudrin, and myself, councilman Hug. We had three items under contract. One was our ongoing '23 2023 to 2027 contract to take care of they have a landscaping company taking care of the landscaping on all of our sewer and water properties. And we looked at that contract and found it to be in order for about 140,000.

Then there's also the purchase of some, flow meters for sewage, the sewage, system. These are portable flow meters that are used throughout the system to diagnose problems. And, some of them have aged out, not working anymore. If you consider what they're used for, you would understand why they have a certain lifespan. That was for about 50,000.

Then we looked at a professional services agreement for 104,000 with Thailand engineering to oversee the improvements being made as related to the city square project on the the engineering requirements, I should say, on the building modifications for the parking deck. Under pay estimates, we had one. It was with Austin Tyler. It was a net deduction of the original amount estimated of of 571,600 thousand with the final payment closing out the project, which was the Emerald Lawns water main improvements project for $614,195.92. We looked at a drive through permit for Culbers out on, Shale 1301 Shale Road, Found that to be in order and moved it forward with committee recommendation to approve.

And under ordinance resolutions, we had two low interest loans that we looked at. These are Illinois state loans and loans for the water main replacement project as well as for the lead water services line replacement. And they are coming in, I believe, was 2.4%. So they're relatively low interest for these projects. As well as a memorandum of understanding between the city of Joliet and deconstruction and the state of Illinois for the Cast Street Bridge product to to use some of our land that's owned right adjacent to it as a staging area for construction.

That's all I had. All of the items except one were sent forward with unanimous approval. Recommendation for the council approval. The one item, which was the the new. Well, that I take that back. All of the items were set forward within an analyst approval. Did I miss anything? I almost you know what? I almost combined finance with my report. Yes. You guys caught that.

We were we already made it.

We're all on the same committee. All three of us are on finance and public service. So I almost twisted them. So did I miss anything, though?

I just want one question. Sure.

Wasn't the lead service line a zero interest loan? Yes. So

Thank you. Yes. You're right. The the other one was 2.4%.

Yeah.

I wish I can get a mortgage for zero interest. Okay. With that said, mayor, that would be the report. Thank you.

I show no other reports. Under consent agenda, approval of minutes. It is recommended the minutes of the pre council meeting 03/02/2026 and the council meeting 03/03/2026 stand approved as recorded. Invoices to be paid. It is recommended this report be approved.

Council memo number 161Dash26, award of contract extension for the twenty twenty three, twenty twenty seven, landscape maintenance services, utilities program to Romero Guzman Landscaping in the amount of $140,366.78. Council memo number 162Dash26, purchase of ISCO flow metering equipment from Gasvoda and Associates Incorporated in the amount of $49,995. Council memo number 163Dash26, award of contract to Center for Internet Security CIS for CrowdStrike Endpoint Security Solution annual renewal in the amount of $65,142. Council memo number 164Dash26, award of contract to Euna Solutions for Euna procurement annual renewal in the amount of $26,500. Council memo number 165Dash26, award of contract to cities digital digital incorporated for laser fish document management system annual renewal in the amount of $75,050.

It is recommended council memos 161Dash26 through 165Dash26 be approved. Is there a motion to approve all said consent agenda items?

So moved. Second.

It's been motioned and seconded to approve. Councilman Hug.

Aye.

Councilwoman Navarra. Aye. Councilman Moreno.

Aye.

Councilman Mudrin. Aye. Councilman Reardon. Aye. Councilman Cardenas. Aye. Councilman Clement.

Aye.

Mayor Darcy.

Aye.

Motion carried. Under agenda items. Council memo number one sixty seven dash twenty six, professional services agreement for the phase three engineering services for the Joliet City Square, Ottawa Street parking deck building modifications to TY Lin in an amount not to exceed $104,088. Is recommended council memo number 167Dash26 be approved.

So moved.

Second.

Any comments or questions? Thank you.

It's been motioned seconded to approve. Councilwoman Navarro. Aye. Councilman Moreno. Aye. Councilman Mudran. Aye. Councilman Reardon. Aye. Council McCartiness. Aye. Councilman Clement. Aye. Councilman Hug.

Aye.

Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried. Council memo number 168Dash26. Approval of change order number one for the Emerald Vaughans water main improvements project to Austin Tyler Construction Incorporated for a deduction in the amount of $571,601.18 and pay estimate number six and final in the amount of $614,195.92. It is recommended council member 168Dash26 be approved.

Motion approved. Second.

Any comments or questions? Thank you.

It's been motion and seconded to approve. Councilman Moreno.

Abstain.

Councilman Mudrin. Aye. Councilman Meridian. Aye. Council McCartinus. Aye. Council McClement.

Aye.

Councilman Hug. Aye.

Councilman Navarro.

Aye. Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried. Under licenses and permit applications. Council member number 170Dash26. Application for a drive thru permit for a Culver's restaurant at 1301 Shale Road. Is there a motion to approve the issuance of said drive thru permit?

So moved. Second.

Any comments, questions?

I have a question. Is this Councilman Hug's district? Whose district is this?

I think is that the Rock Run? Is it yeah.

Rock Run.

It's Rock Run. Okay. Alright. Thank Oh, yeah? There you go.

And then we took care of you.

We made sure

we all the I for dotted

and the t for crossed.

Thank you. I appreciate that, councilman Hogg. Okay. That's all.

Thank you. Thank you.

It's been motioned seconded to approve. Councilman Mudrin? Aye. Councilman Rairdon? Aye. Councilman Cardenas?

Aye.

Councilman Clement? Aye. Councilman Hug? Aye. Councilman Navarro. Aye. Councilman Moreno.

Aye.

Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried. Under ordinances, council member 01/2026. Ordinance amending chapter two, article two, city manager, authority for succession hiring, and temporary appointments. It is recommended that ordinance be adopted.

So moved.

Second. Any comments or questions?

I would really, mayor, if I can get a second to speak. I'd really like to I'm unhappy with the fact that we're doing any business tonight beyond the data center, and I have not had a chance to even look at this. All of our time, energy, and attention has been focused on the data center. I would really like to table it until the data center's out of the way, and we

have We do have a personal

then my vote will be no. Thank you.

No. I was just gonna say that Allison could present to you right now if you'd like, or we can take it off the agenda. Whatever.

I would like it it personally, I would like it taken off the agenda. We can revisit this again in two weeks. It's not a big deal. The data center is a big deal right now.

Postpone. Are you making a motion to table?

I am making a motion

Accept to table. Table

is not the correct motion, so Tad will advise us what it is.

Yeah. It it's postponed. It's a debatable motion. Needs a first and second, but the technical motion is to postpone. So are you making a motion to postpone?

Yeah. I'd like to make a motion to postpone it. There's nothing that's gonna happen over the next two weeks that's gonna be life or death here, and this data center has taken up all of our time and energy. Okay. So let's get this out of the way and give us a chance to really think about what's being proposed here.

Do want

to vote

on the second?

So

there's a been a motion motion and and second second to to postpone postpone this

item?

Yes. Who's the motion? So, Susanna made

the motion.

Yep. Larry second. So, now vote.

Right.

Right. Councilwoman Rairdon. Aye. Councilman Carganus. Aye. Councilman Clement. Aye. Councilman Hug.

Aye. Councilman Navarro. Aye. Councilman Moreno.

Aye. Councilman Madrin.

This was discussed at finance and I vote no.

Mayor Darcy.

Aye.

Thank you.

Motion carried.

Mayor. I'm gonna

ask you.

Question of council. Yeah. Todd. Not today. We have, you know, obviously a huge agenda item on here. At the next meeting, can you give us a presentation of the exact difference between a motion at table and motion at the pump? I think there's some confusion

over that.

Is that Sure. So Not today. I I wanna move forward,

you know.

It wouldn't take long, but I can say. So laying on the table is a temporary motion. We're postpone as you're moving it off the agenda. Agenda. Laying Laying on on the the table, you can pick it up at any time. So that would include later in this meeting. That's the difference between laid on the table and postpone. Okay. So

Okay. Thank

you, ma'am. Thank you.

Thank you.

Under resolutions, council memo number one seventy four dash twenty six, Resolution authorizing a memorandum of understanding between the city of Joliet and deconstruction incorporated for temporary use of city owned property for iDot's Cass Street Bridge project. It is recommended that resolution be adopted.

So moved. Second.

Comments or questions? Thank you.

It's been motion and seconded to approve. Councilman Cardenas?

Aye.

Councilman Clement?

Aye.

Councilman Hug?

Aye.

Councilman Navarro?

Aye. Councilman Moreno. Aye. Councilman Mudran.

Aye.

Councilman Verdin. Aye. Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried.

Council memo number 175Dash26. Resolution accepting Illinois Environmental Protection Agency low interest loan L176077 for the 2026 water main replacement program. It is recommended that resolution be adapted. So moved.

Second. Any comments or questions?

Yes. Just because and I thank councilman Rairdon for clarifying it. This is the 2.4% interest loan. The next one that will entertain is the 0%. Thank you.

I think this one says zero on the

Am I doing this backwards? Yeah.

The lead fires.

Right. The the service line replacement used to be forgivable, but it's not anymore. We pay the low interest. Correct?

It's 2.16.

One. 2.16.

Okay. For this first one.

Which I I took the long way around but

we cleared

it. Thank you. Alright.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Thank you.

It's been motion and seconded to approve. Councilman Clement. Aye. Councilman Hub.

Aye. Councilman Navarro. Councilman Moreno.

Aye.

Councilman Mudran. Aye. Councilman Rairdon. Aye. Councilman Cardenas.

Aye.

Mayor Darcy. Aye. Motion carried. Council memo number 176Dash26. Resolution accepting Illinois Environmental Protection Agency low interest loan L176080 for the 2026 lead water service line replacement program. It is recommended said resolution be adopted.

So moved. Second. Any

comments or questions? Thank you.

It's a motion and seconded to approve. Councilman Hug? Aye. Councilwoman Abarro? Aye. Councilman Moreno? Aye. Councilman Mudrin?

Aye.

Councilwoman Rudin? Aye. Councilman Cardenas? Aye. Councilman Clement? Aye. Mayor Darcy? Aye. Motion carried.

Okay.

The public hearing will start at 05:30. So

Yeah. We we noticed it for 05:30, so we have to wait until 05:30 to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to sign up to speak and etcetera. So we'll break for a half hour.

We need

a vote to go to recess or

no? You do need

a vote.

Okay. A motion to recess.

I'll make

a motion. There's no discussion. A motion to go to recess until 05:30 when the hearing will start.

Yes. I second that.

See. Any

comments or questions? Is it an honor

Can we get some seats for these people?

There are seats downstairs. So there's overflow downstairs. So if you would like to

Sit down.

Sit, there are extra seats downstairs. If you're fine standing you're welcome to stand but there is overflow. Okay. All in favor?

Aye. Okay.

We'll we'll be back back at 05:30 to start the public hearing.

There's still seating downstairs too. Okay.

Okay. Under public hearings, we have council memo number 178Dash26 public hearing for a resolution to approve an annexation agreement for the annexation of approximately 795 acres surrounding South Rowell Road and Bernhard Road A Dash 4 Dash 25. This is a public hearing, so comments will be in order. Go ahead.

Thank you. We understand there's a great deal of interest in this project. So I'd like to get just a second to ex briefly explain how the hearing will proceed. After the applicant's presentation, we will open the public comment period. Everyone who has signed in to speak will be called up and given four minutes so that to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard.

Please direct all comments to the council as a whole and not to staff, the applicant, or other audience members. If you are a property owner within the zoning notice boundary, you may request a reasonable amount of extra time for questions. After public comment, the applicant will have an opportunity to respond to those questions. Throughout the hearing, we ask everyone to maintain decorum. Keep remarks respectful, avoid interrupting others, and please refrain from applause or other reactions so that all participants can be heard in an orderly setting. Thank you.

Okay. To start, representatives for Hillwood development will provide a brief presentation regarding this item.

Did we officially reopen the hearing? Because we recess, so we just have to make sure.

Oh, yes.

Don't have to be a motion to come back.

Okay. Yes.

Make a motion. Second.

Yes, we do need a

motion to come back into session.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye. Okay.

We are back in session.

Good evening, mister mayor, members of the council. My name is David Silverman. I'm an attorney with the Joliet Law Firm of Mahoney, Silverman, and Cross. I'm here tonight before you representing the developer of this project, Hillwood and Powerhouse joint venture. We're here to present to you on the Joliet Technology Center. It kinda has a good ring, doesn't it, to bring some technology to Joliet?

No. We did this last time. We're

here tonight to ask for your favorable vote on five issues. First, an annexation agreement between the developers and the city of Joliet, which will set out the terms of how this property gets developed and the incentives that will be paid to Joliet. The next is the annexation of the property. The next rezoning to the I 1 Light Industrial District. A planned unit development, a preliminary planned unit development.

We'll be back later for final development if this gets approved tonight. And a preliminary subdivision approval. Your plan commission, after many hours of testimony, has recommended to the council that the zoning and the plan unit development and and the annexation be approved. They didn't weigh in on the annexation agreement as that was not before them. This project has been here with the city for many, many months.

We're originally on the agenda for the September planning and zoning Commission, at which time the city said let's put a pause on this project, let's slow it down a little bit, and let's make sure that all the questions are heard and the answers are provided. So what we've done from the developer side is we've listened to those questions. We've listened to the questions that have been brought in public comment before this body, the questions that were brought in public comment before the Planning Commission, the questions presented at the Planning Commission in the public hearing, and also the rather large open house that we did out at Joliet Junior College. So we hope we can answer all those questions here for you tonight. We have assembled a group of experts and folks from the companies that are involved, Powerhouse and Hillwood, to answer all your questions and all the questions that have been presented to the public or by the public to the Planning Commission and this body.

At the conclusion, we hope that you will agree with the staff recommendation to approve it, agree with the Planning Commission recommendation, and that a data center is an appropriate use on this property located on the Southeast Side of town. So I'd like to first introduce to you Don Schoenheiter. Don is with the Hillwood Group. Don and Powerhouse, if approved, will Don Don's company, Hillwood and Powerhouse, if approved, will be your partners in this project. And we want you to get to know them and learn learn a little bit about their experience. So, Don, if you could say a few words, please.

Thanks, David.

Good

evening, mister mayor, member of the city council, city staff. I'm Don Schoenhider with Hillwood. Hillwood is a private investment development firm. We're based in Dallas. We were started in 1988 by Ross Pro Senior. Ross Senior has passed away a few years ago, but the company is still run by Ross Jr. And the spirit and the cooperativeness that Ross Sr. Would have liked. Our background as a company is really in diverse types of various types of real estate. We've done over 4,000 multi tenant units, multi family units.

We've developed mixed use and office complexes. We're known around the country and around the world for building industrial buildings. And we've done over a 110 residential communities in The US. The one thing we haven't really done to a great extent is data centers. And so what we've done for Joliet and for this particular project is to call and partner with what we believe to be the top flight, the best data center developer in the country. So, at this point in time, I'd like to introduce Liz Nicholson, who is a partner with Powerhouse Data Centers, and she'll tell you a little bit about our partner, Powerhouse.

Thank you, Dawn, for the introduction. Good evening, Mayor Darcy and members of City Council. We appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening. Powerhouse is a fully owned and operated platform of American real estate partners, a company with over twenty years history in the development realm. We're an integrated data center developer that has grown to about 180 professionals in recent years.

And in house we have a deep expertise across the investment entitlement, power procurement, design and construction, leasing and asset management. I realize that's a long list of things to tell you, but I think the key point is we're with the project for its full life cycle, and we believe that that continuity is very important to deliver nice projects. Since launching Powerhouse, initially focused in the Northern Virginia area, we have expanded into about 10 markets in The United States with close to 140 data centers in planning and construction stages. POWERHOUSE is a responsible development partner with a disciplined and transparent development model. We're coordinating each phase of development directly with utilities and when a tenant is in place.

This slide depicts a few of our projects throughout the country, and I think our history as a Class A office developer sets us apart in that we focus on the campus design holistically, that includes intentional and well designed landscaping that is well maintained at all times, and quality architecture. We desire to build projects that will be a good neighbor in the community. With that, I will transition to Pat on our team who can talk a little bit about our site selection process. Thank you.

Thanks, ladies. Mayor and council, thank you for this evening and listening to our presentation. What I wanna talk about is why this property. To to have a campus like this that is harmonious with surroundings, you need a fairly large property so you can have very reasonable buffering, screening from public view. We organize all of our campuses into mini campuses to break down the mass of the property, and I think if you've seen the plans, we have four separate six building campuses with very generous setbacks.

All the buildings are organized in clusters where the generator yards are between the buildings and away from public view. This property also has transmission lines already on the property. We do not need to extend transmission lines off property to get here. This property is flat. There is not much land development work to be done, which will lessen the amount of early activities for construction. And we we will start focusing on the street views for all the buildings once we get into the next phase of this project. We're gonna be proud of this project. We hope that you'll give us a chance to show you what this thing can be. Thank you very much. I'd like to introduce Andrew with Langan Engineering.

He's our site designer for the property.

Hi. I'm Andrew Yutan. I work at Langan Engineering. We're downtown. I've been a civil engineer working in the Chicago area for over twenty years now. I've done plumbing projects in Joliet. I've been working on Rock Run Crossings for a little over ten years now, and I also recently was the engineer of record on the Joliet Casino. The Hollywood Casino at Rock Run collections. Sorry. Generally, this site is located on the Southeast side of town.

We kinda wanted to go through some of the existing and proposed conditions. So the overall site is just under 800 acres, and right now it's completely agricultural based. The pink magenta line is currently the boundaries of the property. And shown here is the full build out of the data center campus. The northwest corner labeled Lot 3 is going to be dedicated to CommEd for their switching station in their Winston Warner management area.

The rest of the site will be four groupings, a total of 24 data centers consisting of the campus. Each of the groupings is designed to operate independently of each other, so they all have their own six buildings on a on a grouping, their own swimwater management, and their own substation. And then around the outside, the team is proposing to rebuild Rowell Road to the three lane typical section for the city of Joliet. The same for Ridge Road from Schweitzer all the way down to Millsdale Road. We're extending Millsdale Road from our west property line where it currently ends all the way to where Ridge Road currently is.

So all of that is being paid for by the developer and dedicated to the city of Joliet. Within these right of ways will be berms, and then outside of the right of ways will be or I'm sorry. Outside of

the right of ways will

be berms that will be used for screening, typical with the city of Juliet standards. They'll have native plantings of varying heights to help screen the data centers from public roads. And then along the north property line where there are neighboring sites, we're proposing berms there as well. Same idea. Native plantings of Aragon Heights that are green or at least have leaves all year round, so they're screening all year round.

I'd like to mention that the site was reviewed and cleared by the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office and the IDNR EcoCAT system for compliance with no engineered species found on-site. Additionally, the consulting team did a wetland review. They walked the site. They did a desktop review and found that there are no existing wetlands within the 800 acre site. As mentioned previously, the on-site storm stormwater management system within each grouping operates independently of the other systems.

The existing site today has essentially no storm water management. It's agricultural land, row crops, where water whenever rains, the water sheet flows off as fast as it can to get off-site, carrying with it fertilizers, sediments, other types of erosion into the roadside ditches of Rowell Road and Ridge Road. What we're proposing to do is contain it on-site, have natural plantings in the ponds, filter through the water, recharge the groundwater on-site. And all these things will comply with the Will County and City Of Joliet ordinances. On-site lighting also will be designed for Starkscott compliance, and the City of Joliet requirements for half a foot candle at the property lines, except where we have driveways for safety concerns.

All of the lights themselves will have shields to block any outward lighting. It will be pointed straight down and within the campus itself.

Here is just a zoom

in version of an individual grouping. The data centers, the top four, kind of located back to back to each other to help protect screening from the outside viewpoints. There's also a secondary access point for all of the all of the data center groupings themselves. So each one has access to a public road for at least one public road, as well as the substation has two access points as well for that operator of the substation. We also noticed that the fence line that goes around the exterior of the 6th Data Center Building Campus, and outside of that will be naturalized plantings, metal mixes that will encourage wildlife to come back, pollinators, kind of put it back to the way it was before the agricultural use was brought onto the site.

From a utility perspective, we are proposing water main extensions at the developer's cost on Rowell Road, Millsdale Road, and Brick Road, as well

as sanitary sewer extensions.

This helps with redundancy in the area. Whenever there's a water main break, there's more backup. Whenever there's a sanitary sewer that gets clogged, there's other options. These are all part of the dedication of the 100 foot right of ways and the three foot or three lane roadway sections that are all being dedicated to the city of Joliet. Thanks for your time. I'd like to introduce John McCann from ComEd to speak next.

Thank you, Andrew, and good evening, mayor and city council. My name is John McCann. I'm the economic development manager at ComEd. Our job, quite honestly, is to attract new projects in our service territory that create jobs and drive capital investment. But tonight, I'm here to talk to you from a reliability standpoint.

So ComEd serves more than 4,000,000 customers across Northern Illinois. Since embarking on our grid modernization efforts in 2012, KOMED customers have seen continuous improvement in grid reliable right reliability performance. Today, KOMED customers enjoy best in class reliability with fewer and shorter customer outages at any point in our company's history. Our system reliability has improved by more than 57% and helped customers avoid more than 25,000,000 outages. Our grid performance resulted in ComEd being recognized by PA Consulting in 2023 and 2025 as the number one utility in the nation, and in 2024 as the number one utility in the Midwest.

We remain committed to delivering reliable electric service, and we're extremely proud of the positive impact and benefits it has for our customers. The Joliet Technology Center will be served from Combat's three forty five k d system. We will not have a direct impact on residential or smaller commercial customers, which are served from Combat's smaller or local distribution systems. The three forty five k v system is a network that allows electricity to flow from multiple generation sources to where the power is needed most, following the route with the least resistance. ComEd's three forty five kV system is designed to incorporate intentional redundancy, meaning there are multiple routes to available to power to allow power to flow into any given area.

If a particular route is congested, damaged, or down for maintenance, power will flow through the network around the impacted facilities to reach the load. To use the roadway analogy, if there's an accident or too much traffic on one route, other routes are available. The planning process for evaluating large load connections such as this project is a multi step process that includes the electrical design to provide requested service while taking into consideration the customer's location, ultimate load request, and their load ramp schedule. Using this information, our team translates the electrical design into computer models for power flow analysis and develops three forty five kV system upgrades to mitigate any planning criteria violations that may result. This process ensures the continued safe and reliable operation of our three forty five kV network.

In addition, PJM, which is the thirteenth state regional transmission organization that Combat is a part of, also reviews all new electricity demands through their m three supplemental process to ensure the increased demand will not cause any problems on the broader PJM system. ComEd presented the Joliet Technology Center in the PJM stakeholder process last last month as a supplemental project in the customer service category. PJM and their stakeholders did not express any concerns or have any feedback about the project or its reliability during these meetings. I'd like to now turn it back to the Hilbert team where I believe Mark Prude is gonna speak. Thank you.

Shakes. Out. Can you

just let us have the meeting, please? Let us have the meeting, please.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Mark Pruitt. You're I'm the principal of the Power Bureau. I'm an energy markets consultant retained by Hillwood to comment on the project and review its impact on reliability issues as well as consumer costs. As was just addressed directly by ComEd, this project in its design has gone through engineering review to ensure reliability not only to the data center itself but also to ensure continued reliability to all the surrounding areas.

ComEd and PJM are obligated by law. ComEd are obligated under state statute under regulation under the Illinois Commerce Commission. PJM under the governance of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to prioritize system security, safety and reliability. So their system is designed to ensure reliability after necessary upgrades have been accomplished and the data center begins full operation. Question has come up in terms of where does the power come from.

ComEd does not own power plants. The power plants are owned by independent power producers. There are approximately 1,400 power producers, power plants that are connected to the PJM transmission network. As John mentioned there are many roads where power can travel and it's PJM's opportunity and obligation to ensure that that capacity is delivered to each and every consumer served in the PJM footprint. Next question then comes up is, Okay, well is 1,400 enough power plants?

Well that's a great question. Over time supply and demand changes. We have new energy users and we have some power plants that retire that are eventually replaced by new power plants. The capacity that's available in the PJM footprint today according to PJM and their studies and their obligations under federal law is that there is more than enough capacity to serve this and all existing customers in Northern Illinois. Additionally we do note that about 342,000 megawatts of maximum facility output are awaiting connection to PJM grid which is about a tripling of the current level of capacity.

So there's a lot of interest in not only data centers in the PJM footprint but also in building new power plants to serve those data centers. Question came up also about price and you know I used to be a regulator in Illinois and you know prices go up and down and that's unpopular. But the reality is that when we take a look at the power price for residential customers today in March and compare it against the inflation adjusted price in what do we have there? 2012, we're 22% below where we were in 2012. So I understand that people appreciate that prices have gone up recently.

Absolutely. But those were quite a bit lower than where we have been historically. It's not to say that prices don't matter. That's not the point. The point is that prices have been higher than they are today and that in the market PJM has applied a cost cap that runs through 2030 that will serve to minimize continued increase in capacity cost which has been the source of the recent increase in prices in the ComEd service territory.

Second, the state of Illinois recently passed the Clean and Reliable Grid Act that will bring 3,000 megawatts of battery storage into Illinois by 2030. And then we have the Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard which is funded at north of $600,000,000 a year to support the deployment of solar and wind assets in Illinois. Those are all new assets of capacity that are going to be serving not only Illinois but also PJM and it's in that context where even though there is increased demand by this and other projects there's also increased supply to moderate prices. Additionally, over the thirty years of operation of this plant, the operator of the plant will be paying into the state's renewable portfolio standard into the billions of dollars. Dollars 1,800,000,000.0 will be paid into support for all the incentives that go to support rooftop wind, rooftop solar and then utility scale wind and solar in the state.

That equates to based on the Illinois Power Agency's average cost for incentives, it's going to incentivize over a gigawatt of new generating capacity in Illinois. So this is money that's going to be paid by this data center over time and it will go to supporting new capacity. Secondly, as a separate part of the tariff this data center will also be paying again over a billion dollars in its thirty years towards energy efficiency programs that benefit consumers all throughout the ComEd service territory. This is sufficient to provide the incentives necessary for over 800,000 heat pumps in residential households based on the current level of incentive that's used by Commonwealth Edison. So that will make reduced demand over time within the ComEd service territory.

And then lastly as required under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act the data center will also be paying into the Energy Transition Fund about $310,000,000 which will go to supporting pre apprenticeship trainings in the work programs that are administered by the state's Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Substantial amount of training is going to be necessary to bring about the technical experts and assistants to be able to deploy the renewable energy, batteries and other technologies in this state. So in terms of are consumers protected? Well they're protected in a few layers here. The first is the transmission security agreement between the developer and ComEd guarantees that consumers, regular ComEd consumers, will not bear any cost responsibility for the hardware that's necessary to connect that new set of substations to the ComEd transmission lines.

It's an agreement, it's approved by FERC, it's a federal document. There will be no subsidization of transmission interconnection costs. Secondly there will be no ongoing subsidization of the cost to deliver electricity to this site. Under state law the Utility Act requires the Illinois Commerce Commission to establish rates that are directly related to the cost of service provided to customers. That's why cost for customer service for a residential customer is very different than the cost service for a very large customer.

They are rates that are based on the cost to serve. Again, state law requires that so that there is not cross subsidization. Electricity supply, going out and securing the supply capacity in transmission that will serve this asset is going to be the responsibility of the operator. There's going to be a contract, possibly multiple contracts, to secure that electricity and capacity for this asset which will have nothing to do with the contracts that secure prices for residential and small commercial customers. Those are handled separately through the Illinois Power Agency.

That's where I used to work. And then on sustainability we just touched on the sustainability elements where there's substantial investments in sustainability that would result from this project. So we have conclusions regarding reliability, cost and sustainability and then just as an aside the demand for capacity in Northern Illinois is high and you have an opportunity to entertain that opportunity here in Joliet. If it doesn't get built here, it will be built elsewhere. That's just

we're out there. We're out

there. Which case

Please everyone keep their comments down. The person speaking gets to speak.

If it's built elsewhere in Northern Illinois, you'll have the same cost impacts if it was built right here. So the question is whether or not you take the local development or not. So I'm sorry to be

They'll find it too. They'll find it too.

They'll find you too. I'll be out there

I appreciate your time and your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you.

Been some question about water usage, and we'll let our water consultant from Cisco make comments.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Todd Sworniak. I'm a mechanical technical manager with Cisco Hennessey Group. We're a consulting engineering firm. My career for the last twenty years is designing data center cooling systems around the country, every client type, every system type. For what it's worth, I'm fairly local, I'm about 15 miles from the project site. I'm going to try to be fairly quick, but also try to be fairly clear. The system we're proposing is a closed loop system. I know there is still some confusion on what that means. Once the water is in the pipe, it stays in the pipe.

These systems have been around since 1922 when Willis Carrier invented the chiller. They have been used in data centers continuously since data centers were invented. I don't know what time stamp you wanna put on that since the advent of the computer. This is not new technology and there's nothing fundamentally different about it at a data center other than the fact that they're big and there's extra equipment for redundancy's sake, which also improves efficiency. You know, the reason for choosing the system type, frankly, is the need, right?

We recognize there is not an ability of the site to support an evaporative system. So, the system is filled, it stays full. The water is blood in the system, if it leaks, it is bleeding out, and that is a fundamental problem. This system type allows us to accommodate any current and any foreseeable future server technology, So the air cooled servers of today and let's say yesterday as well as the liquid cooled servers that are fast emerging, not just for AI. That is becoming the norm for your standard cloud storage.

Basically, every data center application is projected to be at least partially liquid cooled within the next two years. So there's no evaporation. As a result, there's no slowdown. I know that's still a point of confusion. Blowdown by definition, as water evaporates, all the other stuff in the water stays behind, eventually you end up with a too high of a ratio of stuff to water, you have to purge it and bring in new water.

That does not happen with this system. Additionally, the equipment we're selecting, not just lip service, I mean it saves money in the long run, we will be choosing equipment of high efficiency compressors for the cooling, with high efficiency particularly, the ability to save energy as it gets cooler outside, low noise, variable speed fans for the heat rejection, etcetera. Again, these, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of closed loop chill water systems operating around the world for the last century. One time fill is required per building. The pipe gets rinsed out.

It gets filled. Chemical gets added to prevent biological growth and corrosion. And there's nothing magic about this building type compared to any other building type. Once filled, you know, that water stays in. Other than maintenance activities, we have lots and lots of valves to minimize the amount of water that would ever have to be drained to remove or service a piece of equipment.

I know there have also been some questions on discrepancies of timeline. You know, that system, the lease will be fifteen, twenty years. It's not signed yet, but that would be the frequency of any significant drain down would be essentially the end of life of that tenant. So very few and far between. And for context, you know, each six pack of buildings, the systems will contain about as much water as one Olympic swimming pool.

So, four of those spread out over the course of five years is anticipated construction completion schedule for the 24 buildings. You can see, you know, in 2024, when we were first considering this project, we we were looking at direct evaporative cooling systems, those are have been and are still somewhat popular with, like, the hyper scale companies, they're very efficient, but they do use an awful lot of water. We have rethought that, we have looked at the site and the site constraints and what it means to be a good neighbor or a good steward, and we have decided to rethink that and go with the closed loop system. Our daily water use on average over the course of the year, we're now projecting for all 24 buildings not to exceed a 150,000 gallons. We put some other context up there just for comparison sake, I know may or may not be relevant.

But by way of comparison, if this was single family homes, the water usage would be substantially more, nearly an order of magnitude greater. We're also a little over half of what the assumed water consumption for this site was under the light industrial zoning, and our understanding is that is the water capacity that was considered in the water study for the existing water supply in the aquifer, so we are reducing from what the planned demand for this site would have been. Filling of these systems, again, will be spread out over roughly five years. That activity will be coordinated with the Department of Public Utilities to ensure the rate at which that fill is taking place and the timing of that is not disruptive to the city's water utility capacity. This has been reviewed with the city and the current infrastructure, and again, we are below the planned the anticipated water usage rate of this site.

Hopefully, answers some questions and provides some clarity. From there, I believe we're gonna wanna discuss noise next.

Mayor, can we ask questions before? Is that okay?

We can. Okay. We'll wait

till So, wanna get my head around this cooling system. Yes. It's basically a mixture of water and chemicals. Yes. Not unlike my car.

Way less chemical than your car.

Right. But same concept.

Yeah. So car is fifty fifty antifreeze water. This is 99 water and 1%, again, biocides corrosion inhibitors, just stuff to keep the inside of the system clean.

And that stays in that cooling system just like my car's cooling system. It stays there until we drain it out. Correct. And replace it. And you said that drain down you referred to it as? Drain down would happen at the end of a lease,

for instance.

That that would be

the soonest somebody would typically entertain taking any sick because that that's a total facility shutdown if if that is done. So that's typically when somebody would vacate. Yeah.

And what happens when you do remove it from the system? Where does it go? Where do you take it?

Building by building, again, this is no different from any other chilled water system anywhere. I've never encountered instance where anything in that water was objectionable to the sanitary utility. That water data can be provided for analysis prior to discharge. I assume that would be something the city is within their rights to review. And if there's an objection, it can be disposed of. It can be trucked off if needed. But it's it's essentially water. So and I

do believe, you know, in talking in doing my research, talking to staff, that is exactly what the city is gonna do when it comes to disposing of this. They're gonna have it tested before it's allowed to be put into the system. And if it if it can't be put in the system, it gets trucked off.

Yes. And that there's when the initial fill takes place, it's a little bit of a chemistry set. So you put in the amount of chemical you think it needs. It's tested. Initially it's tested more frequently and after about six months that typically gets pulled back to quarterly. There's a chemical treatment vendor assigned to the site, they take samples back, check the chemistry if they need to tweak, add a couple gallons, you know, here and there of chemical, they do that. But there's regular testing reports that would be available throughout the life of the building that could be provided easily.

And on a project this size, I'm just trying to get my head around this, if this was a traditional or, you know, in my research, I'm seeing referred to as legacy data centers, when most of them early on were using evaporative, if you use water, it could be that would be like five for a project this size would be up 5,000,000 gallons of water a day or or more. Right?

Yes. Lots of different ways to cool these buildings. As they've grown to scale, your traditional open cooling tower systems that evaporate water all year, those have really fallen out of favor. The direct evaporative cooling that's been very popular, you literally just bring outside air in and when it's too hot outside you bring it through a sponge to cool it off and the air evaporates into the air stream. Those systems only use water when it hits about 80 degrees outside but the rate at which they use water when they're on is significant. So, again, you know, this 5,000,000 gallons a day peak, something like 8,000,000,000 gallons a year would be the consumption for that system type for a project this size, which is why we looked at that number and said there's no way.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, may may

I I? Sure.

So, you mentioned our city staff, and I have had conversations with Allison, who is our director of public utilities. And is she over

there? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, there she is. You please explain one more time? I I know I read it in our proposal, but about what would happen when this water is taken out if by some chance there was something that needed to be treated or just the permissions to do that?

Yes. So per the annexation agreement, the only wastewater that's allowed to be discharged is domestic waste. And domestic waste is what you put down the sink or the toilet at home. And so that's similar to what they will have at the data center with bathrooms and other weight, domestic waste. It does require that anything that is non domestic would have to be permitted by the city and we do this through our pretreatment process which is governed by our pretreatment ordinance.

We industrial wastewater from many different industries and each one has a different wastewater characteristic that we request samples of and with that information we assess what the right course of action is whether that wastewater would need to be pretreated at the facility before it enters the sanitary sewer system whether there would be a surcharge charge and then we would do that treatment at the city's wastewater treatment plant or if we just wouldn't be able to accept it at all, which case then it would be trucked off-site. At their expense. At their expense.

Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah. I I should have touched, know, we we believe we've overestimated. Again, there's no regular water consumption for cooling other than the initial fills. So it's it's toilets and sinks. It's an over assumption of an acre of building for sprinkler coverage. It's normal maintenance activities, and it's a little bit of humidification in the winter just to mitigate static electricity. All, again, fairly common, benign stuff for most building types.

Any other questions?

Yeah. I have a question. We don't so I'm a truck driver. Right? So for example, in diesel. Right? Let's say if you're driving a truck, sometimes you have a diesel spill. I know water is nothing compared to diesel, completely different, but I'm a use the analogy. If there's a I know you said it could be a the only way you can lose the water from the closed loop system is if there's a spill or something happens, you know, god forbid. Right? You never know what could happen. It's just I'm hoping neither you or someone from the team can answer the question of if there is a spill, is there something in place where it can contain the water? I know construction, they use even for dirt. Can't think of the name. They just put something around the

Like the swales or Yeah.

They, yeah, they put it around it just to contain the the issue so it doesn't go into our drain system or the sewer system, I should say, or a storm.

Yeah. So

if you if you take

a 100,000 gallons and spread it out over the building footprint, it's like that deep. Right? Okay. There are equipment curves around mechanical rooms, things like that. There are also floor drains, it depends on where the leak happens.

There's instrumentation. Again, these great care is taken to detect that and prevent that. So there's instrumentation should the pressure in the system start to decrease decrease, which would be indicative of a leak. There's an alarm generated essentially immediately that will give you a pretty good indication of where to start looking for that leak. And again, there's there's valves provided out the wazoo to be able to isolate very small parts of the system and service them, repair them as needed so that you don't need to extend the impact of the outage and therefore the the amount of water that's that's drained.

So fully welded piping systems with flanges, they're pressure tested before they go into service. At that point, the only way anything is going wrong is if I I don't even know. Somebody drives a forklift through them and we don't have forklifts in these buildings.

So Thank you. Yeah. I

have a question.

Since we're on water, I I might as well get my questions out of the way about water. So the agreement references a cap of a 150,000 gallons of water per day for the data center campus. Is that an initial estimate, and does that cap account for all 24 potential data center agreements with the development? Then I have another part to that. Additionally, the agreement appears to allow Hood to return to the city, not this council, to request additional water allocation. Given the scale of this project and the public concern around the off of aquifer, why would any increase in water allocation not be required to come back to this council for approval in a public meeting? Whoever wants to answer that.

Yeah. Not me.

So the agreement that can the control to approve that is completely at the city's discretion. It does not read that they can guarantee to to get that. The authority of who has the ability to do that would would lie with the the city manager. So as as I interpret the agreement, but it's more of a legal question as to who would who would approve that based on the statement and the agreement.

It is that is all 24 buildings, so that is end of state right starting in 2028 through 2033 as the buildings are coming online. You know, we don't hit those numbers until the the twenty thirty two, twenty thirty three timeline.

Well, I'm not happy with that answer. So, I'm now, gonna ask you one more about water. The agreement also allows usage to spike up to 300,000 gallons per day during high use periods, and the stated consequence for exceeding that cap is paying three times the water rate for every gallon over the limit. Considering the concerns about the aquifer depletion and long term water availability for these Joliet residents, does the administration believe that simply charging three times the rate is a sufficient deterrent, or is that effectively just the cost of doing business? Again, whoever wants to answer that. So there is the way this

is being designed is there is limitations in the pipe itself that there it cannot exceed, you know, grossly that amount. So they would also, if they exceeded that amount, be in breach of the contract. So if and that being the case, you know, we always have the right to reserve to turn off the water in that case.

So how will the city ensure that protecting our long term water supply for residents remains a priority if these caps can be exceeded with only a financial penalty? Another thing I wanna say about that is water is a very precious commodity. We are draining from the aquifer. We're draining the aquifer, and we're not hooked up to Lake Michigan at the earliest convenience, 2030. That's another, I don't know, four years from now.

And so I wanna know how this is all gonna happen, and I would really like to know this prior to a vote. The thing is if we had a public dashboard, maybe it would be so much easier for the public to have some trust in what's going on there.

Yeah. I mean,

the only other comparison for context, know, your typical firefighting event is a quarter million gallons of water that the city has to be able to accommodate anywhere at any time. Right? So there's understood. There's there's there's capacity on a rate basis, on an instantaneous flow rate basis, well beyond what we're asking for in the aggregate averaged over the year, which is sort of what matters to aquifers, right? Again, we're we're significantly lower than what was assumed for the site when that water study was completed. So

I can just say from the administration's Allison

and her

team have done extensive review of all this and have signed off. So I don't know what else you wanna hear from her on that.

Post it.

I would actually rather not hear anything more from her. You're the city manager. You're running the city. So I'd like you to answer some of the questions. We all hired you. I would like to see you answer some of these questions and show that have proficiency in what we hired you to do. Thank you.

I'm gonna take a I'm gonna take a stab at that. We have a very, very qualified team of department heads, and they have given us extremely a lot of work to give us the information that we're sharing, and we have worked hard to get to these specifics for everyone. So I would tell you as the mayor, I'd love to know it all, but I have to rely on our experts to be able to give me the full answer on a lot of this stuff. And I I believe that this project will not be up and running fully till after 2030 in full capacity, if I'm not mistaken. So it's if it goes through. So just like

Everyone will have their time to speak. Everyone I believe signed up for public comment. So you will have your time to speak. If we could just get through the presentation and comments that would be wonderful. Everyone will have their time to speak. So if we could just please keep the the comments and to a min to to a minimum, everyone will have their time to speak. Thank you.

Ma'am, to follow-up on council woman Aguirre's question. Allison, so if they go above what we have is that they can't have more when when they're audited per annum. They can't have more than a 150,000 gallons average per day, and no day can peak above 300,000. If that happens, the first step, if I understand the the development agreement, would be a fine of three times the the the rate. But the question and I'm not sure if if we got the answer.

If they continue to thumb their nose, not that you guys would, but we have to explore every eventuality, eventuality, not just for what's good for for the company, but for the residents. If they just say, we're gonna do it because, as she said, it's the cost of doing business. Ultimately, the worst penalty we can assess on them, if I understand it, you're correct, is shutting them down until they come into compliance, turning their water off. Am I correct?

Yes. So our metering technology sends data points to us every six minutes. So every six minutes, we'll be aware of how much water is going into the facility through the meter. And so using that data, we can then make those calculations to determine if they have exceeded the amount that's in the contract and then take action accordingly, which ultimately could lead to termination of water service.

Okay. The other question I had for the water engineer. There you are. Does this project have currently any plans in its design or plans in the future to drill into local wells to get more water than what the city is providing? No. Okay. You're on the record. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, mayor. Good evening, council. My name is Joe Oresco. I'm a principal with Ascendec. We are acoustical consultants. So, hopefully, I can answer a few questions about sound here. To start, the state of Illinois has a pollution control board that sets sound level limits. They are based on use, land use, and they divide them into three classifications. Class a is generally considered for residential, class b would be commercial, and class c would generally industrial or agricultural. This site and most of the surrounding sites are class c.

There are some class a's as as this image indicates. So there would be limits for the sound at those class a receivers for both daytime and nighttime hours. This chart here gives a kind of an override overview of what the the actual limits would feel like or sound like. You can see we're in the in this green zone, which is generally considered quiet. During the nighttime, that would be for cooling equipment.

And, for the daytime levels, which would really be for generator testing. A little bit louder, but still like a dishwasher or slightly above the dishwasher in the next room, generally speaking. So what we have is cooling equipment that generates sound. The cooling equipment usually is located on a roof. It can be screened.

Well, it will be visually screened, but it can be screened for acoustics as well. There's, you know, good good equipment selection starts with getting something that's already acceptable for the site, but if there's other options that need to be done, they can be added. The other type of equipment that generates sound generally out of the data center would be the emergency generators. Those would be tested typically once a month. They'd be exercised and for a short period of time.

And then, otherwise, they would only run during a full power outage. So, we generally design those to meet the daytime limits. The other thing to note about sound is that, again, we have to meet at those class a receivers, but, you know, the sound will detainuate the the more distance there is. So further sides will be even quiet than what we would need to meet at the closest location. I think that sums up my parts. I'll hand it over to

I have

a question for him, mayor. I have a question about noise. Sure. Noise pool. This is from our own staff report. We got this today, maybe.

I would like to just defend the staff. We have had all these things

It is my time, not your time.

I understand that. Not gonna let you insult my staff. These people work their tails off.

Bravo. I'm happy for them. I'm asking a question about noise.

Please proceed, but be kind to the people that work so hard for

you every day. A question about noise. Go ahead. I'm going to. I'm going to. Our own quality of life study, actually, says that noise pollution is the number one impact on the quality of life For everyone in proximity, it could be audible from 3,000 feet up to two miles from the point of source. So this is actually the biggest complaint with the quality of life. So that means two miles to the East, two miles to the West, two miles to the North, two miles to the South. So I'm wondering how exactly are you gonna mitigate up to two miles of noise. That's what I'm wondering.

Sound so again, we're we're we're looking at the closest locations first to make sure that they would meet the limits. Sound beyond those lines would go would be quieter as we go. Audibility, actually, is a lot more tricky than what you've what you've described it as, which is there's ambient sound already, and the further you go, the lower the levels from the facility would be, and then you would

have to compare that

to what the ambient sound would be to to say whether it's audible or not. Sound like light is it's a wave. So it attenuates naturally with distance due to friction and air absorption and other things, but is a theoretical point where you, you know, it still goes two miles, but whether you can hear it at two miles is not so simple as to just say that because he traveled two miles that it's audible at two miles.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Rory Fansler Split with Kimberly Horn. I lead the traffic team, transportation planning, and traffic operations team for our Chicago offices. Kimley Horn prepared a traffic impact study for the subject development pursuant to local standards. It complies with those city requirements as well as Will County and IHOP.

The purpose of the traffic impact study is to evaluate existing traffic conditions at key intersections in the vicinity of the site, as well as future traffic conditions, both with and without the proposed development. For purposes of future traffic conditions, we recognize there are changes that happened, the traffic impacts that are projected to happen in the area. The traffic impact study does take that into consideration. It includes both an ambient traffic growth projection based on data from our MPO, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, as well as site specific traffic estimates for development activity happening to the West. And then for purposes of the site, the proposed development trips are estimated using data provided by the industry standard Institute of Transportation Engineers, trip generation manual, otherwise referred to as ITE trip generation manual.

Of note is that was recently updated, new manual issued in the fall, which includes a much more robust data set for this particular land use. So that collects data at existing facilities and provides an average in an eighty fifth percentile, as well as daily traffic volumes that's used to inform our projections for the site.

On the screen before you,

the table shows the estimated trip generation. For purposes of a traffic impact study, we evaluate the peak hour conditions. That's the time of day when the highest volume of traffic is on the area roadway network, meaning the highest potential period of impact. For purposes of this conversation, we did compare that to potential land use alternatives, a warehouse use and a single family residential use. The graph also shows how it's evident in the table, but it's also evident in the graph that the proposed data center use is a relatively low trip generator.

By comparison, a warehouse or residential development of similar density would generate significantly more traffic, thereby significantly more impacts to the area roadway network. The other unique condition about this type of use from a traffic standpoint is it is not a truck trip generator once it's operational. Yes. There will be trucks during construction, and I'll touch on that in a moment. But under operational conditions, the truck traffic is no different than any office use excepting delivery from UPS, FedEx, that type.

But this is not similar to the warehouses that are currently on 53. This is not transporting goods. This is not a high volume truck trip generation. So based on the traffic impact study with the planned improvements, both those proposed by the subject development as well as those planned in the area by others, the area roadway network would provide would support the proposed development. This exhibit just quickly highlights a couple of improvements.

The proposed development would extend Millsdale Road east to Ridge Road. It currently terminates just east of 53. Rowell Road would be improved to city standards. It's currently a rural cross section. And then the other thing I'll note is there are two area planned by others at Schweitzer and 53.

IDOTs recently completed a corridor study to evaluate improvements at a key intersections along the corridor. Turn lane improvements would be provided at that intersection. And then as a part development activity to the west, there are plans to modify Millsdale Road so that it's a cul de sac and limiting to local traffic only West Of 53. So, again, with those plan improvements, the proposed roadway network would or the roadway network would support the proposed development. Construction traffic, should the development move forward, a construction traffic analysis would be completed.

The traffic impact study evaluates operational conditions. Construction traffic analysis, we need to have more information to complete that analysis. It would evaluate construction traffic volumes at different phases of development. It would evaluate site access at different phases of development, truck haul routes, but the premise of a construction traffic analysis is the same. Any impacts that are generated by the proposed development under construction traffic conditions would be mitigated at the cost of the development subject to city review and approval. And with that, I'll turn it over to economic impact.

Anybody have any traffic questions?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Real quick. Do you mind going back to the slide where it showed there's, three slides before that where that one. Nope. To the right.

This one.

That one, please. Thank you. So the developer is gonna do road improvement improvements from Switzer Road no. Where it connects from Ridge Road to Bernard Road?

Millsdale Road would be extended east to Ridge Road. Bernard Road, thank you. That would be vacated public. It's currently public right away. That would be vacated.

Okay. Thank you. I will say that that is a huge improvement for that area. I actually drive that quite often during work or and I see a lot of people at number one, they they speed down there. And number two, the you have school buses that stop sometimes. And there's, three houses on Switzer Road. So that being done by the developer, it's something good that will happen to that area. So I I can attest to that.

Thank you. Thank you, boss.

Thank you. We will finish this quickly. The staff asked us for I'm right there with you. Staff asked us for a very detailed economic impact study. We did that.

I I know the city did the same and we made certain assumptions and I think many of you have seen these numbers where the anticipation is that over the thirty year life of the term, this project will generate over $2,000,000,000 in annual tax revenue. You can see how it's broken out. We looked in our study analysis, looked at various impacts, local expenditures, jobs, other secondary benefits. You can see the jobs during construction for not just Joliet but for Will County in Illinois, jobs during operations. Again, we've talked about the idea of around 8,500 construction jobs, perhaps as many as 10,000, and over 700 full time jobs, almost all those being 6 figure jobs.

A little bit about earnings and a little bit about total impact during construction. So again, very meaningful. I know the city ran the same analysis and came up with something very, very similar.

May I?

Thank you very much.

Question.

Yes, sir. So

I've seen the estimate from 700, now it's 1,700. Now the 1,700 is even peripheral.

Total. Correct.

Right. But 700 would be the site.

In in the in the buildings that you're looking at there.

And are these going to be through temp agencies or temp jobs?

No. They'd be full time jobs employed by the tenant.

Thank you.

Mayor? Yeah. Beth, understand I that we hired an outside attorney as well to review all this. Could they give a summary on where we're at with our study?

Sure. David Reifman, if you could approach the

or you can stay there. That's fine.

That's good.

Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is David Reifman. I'm an attorney of Croak, Fairchild, Duarte and Barris in Chicago. I've been working in real estate area for about forty years. I have been representing the city on the document on the annexation agreement. I'll give a very brief overview really just from the perspective of the issues that you're talking about, but I've been involved in dozens and dozens of annexations and annexation agreements, and this is very protective of the city's interest. And just a couple quick highlights. Developer is required to provide all private and public infrastructure at its sole cost. So there is no public subsidy.

There's no public cost to that. That includes all the sanitary sewer improvements, all the storm water improvements, roadway improvements that we just described. There will be many of these improvements are maintained privately. So therefore, the developer will be be required to establish a property owners association that will take care of the private improvements. And if they fail to do so, the city can step in and impose a special service area to make sure that, again, there is no cost to the city or the taxpayers.

The the agreement covers design and operational controls such as the noise that was just discussed, generators, screening, photometric plans, lighting, so forth. The developer, everything being submitted now is preliminary. So it's preliminary engineering, preliminary PUD. The developer will have to submit final engineering plans, which meet all requirements of the city, and they must prepare and submit an emergency services plan regarding power supply, fire suppression, hazardous materials, and so forth. They are required to indemnify the city for any breach or for provisions for the breach in the agreement.

There are other key obligations such as entering into a project labor agreement, which I believe is done, acknowledging the applicability of the city's electric utility tax. There's a covenant by the developer not to challenge this agreement later. In other words, if they agree to all this, they can't then sue the city to say we don't agree with it. And it covers various issues regarding the dedication of public improvements. As importantly, memorializes the developers obligation to contribute $100,000,000 to the city throughout the course of the development including $20,000,000 upon the closing of the property which the developers obligated to do within a year.

And if they want extensions, they have to make payments on that initial 20,000,000 to create that extension. They can extend once for 10,000,000 and again, six months for 10,000,000 and then an additional 6 months for a maximum of two years. Those are the highlights of the agreement. I'm happy to answer any questions about it. But in my view, the city is really protected, has rights to enforce the agreement, has rights to go to court on the agreement if the developer breaches and all of the obligations that you've heard here and the requirements of the developer are memorialized both in this and in the plan unit development ordinance.

Mayor? Yeah. If I I'm sorry. I didn't catch his

David.

David. So the 20 you know, they have a year up two year under the agreement to close on purchasing and starting the project. And at that point, when they close, they have to give us 20,000,000. They can extend it another year by by paying the full 20,000,000, 10,000,000 every six months. So they have to, you know, purchase and start to print their their their development within two years in that case scenario?

They have to close on the land within two years at the outside date, and they have to have paid us, the city, 20,000,000 to get to that full 2 years. Yes.

And what was the legal counsel you referred to that says anything in this agreement they can't challenge late?

So we put in a covenant here. So, you know, if you have an agreement and later you could come back and say, well, this part of the agreement was illegal or this part was unenforceable. You went too far. They've waived their right to challenge any term of this agreement. So never have to go to court over this agreement. They've conceded that. I just think it's a prudent provision to add to an agreement like this that they will never sue us under this agreement for the things they agreed to do.

Can they challenge that covenant? The covenant prohibits them from challenging

would look don't I mean, I don't think that would go very well. I suppose they could try, but And anything agreed to it. It's like saying I don't I I I'm not gonna pay what I agreed to pay. That doesn't go well for people who challenge that.

Does this also include challenging the assessed value?

No. It does not.

That that that would be a county thing?

They're they're they're able to act like normal property owners in the normal course of business and challenge their assessment. Their assessment will be set by the assessor accordance with market values. I think the the market study and the economic impact studies that have been done by the developer and by the city would show that the the property taxes generated from that assessment are considerable, and I think it's assuming a market rate assessment over time based on historical performance.

And we can't legally prohibit them from that right?

To challenge taxes, no. But you can probably intervene and say we think it should be higher. You would have the right to do that. There's no provisions about their there's nothing limiting them from going through the normal process of challenging the assessment of their property.

Thank you.

I have

a question for David.

Mhmm.

In the mutual assistant clause of the annexation agreement, that is page 17 section 18, that is the most recent alliteration of this agreement that came out, there is language indicating that if Hillwood uses reasonable efforts to acquire property or easements and that is unsuccessful, the city may step in and exercise eminent domain to obtain obtain the land. Can you explain why the city would agree to use its governmental power of eminent domain to acquire property on behalf of a private developer and under what circumstances the city would determine doing so serves a public purpose rather than primarily benefiting a private corporation?

So this is generally limited to rights of way and easements. So in the event that there's a need to do that and the entire project is going to be jeopardized by the existence of a right that is not accessible, the city may exercise eminent domain at the developer's cost. For a project of this size with 800 acres and the value that's involved, this is a valuable right to the city. It's with the Illinois law for a municipality to exercise that right. And if they do so, it'll be at the developer's 's expense.

I the I don't know if the developer has further knowledge as to whether this will ever really be necessary based on-site control. It may not be. But we have rights of way that need to be expanded for roadway improvements and so forth. So eminent domain is a process that compensates property owners for moments when a public body chooses or requires that a piece of private property be taken. This is not an extensive right that would go to massive amounts of private property. Property.

Are we legally obligated according to this agreement to do that without choice?

It says the city will assist the developer by exercising evidence of. So, yes, the city is agreeing that if that happens, it will assist the developer at the developer's cost.

I'm not with all due respect, because I know you spent a lot of time working on this, I do not like this agreement, and I do not like that clause. I am not in agreement with the city stepping in and telling residents what they can and cannot do with their own property. I'm sorry.

May I clarification, David? So we can't use the eminent domain just to get them more property to build more buildings. This has you're saying to do specifically the rights of way, whether it be sewer and water, streets

Yes. It says necessary off-site easements or rights of way after making all commercially reasonable efforts to do so.

So if they came to us and said, hey. We want another 10 acres for another building. That's their business, not ours.

Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? No. Thank you.

Okay. We are going to start with public comments at this time.

Are there any I didn't they were down the toilet.

Are there any

other I didn't know they wanna make

Questions from council right now?

We're not gonna vote yet. We're gonna

have public comment.

Yeah. We're gonna have

That's what we'll vote. Right?

Yes. Okay.

Right now is the right now is the time that we will have public comments. I'm going to call up speakers about seven to ten at a time. So if you can all line up here so we can go ahead and get the so we can go ahead and get the comments started. Okay. We will start with doc Gregory, Tom White, Mike Hansen, Mike Payone, Kip Klein, Andy Rico, Mike Mahoney.

If you could all please come and line up here in the middle, and we'll get started.

You ready? Alright.

Good evening. Mayor Darcy, nice to see you. Joliet City Council men and women, nice to see you. It's nice to be back in the Joliet Chambers. I can say that. As you know, my name's Doc Gregory. I'm president of Will Grundy Building Trades, also Pipefitter BA five ninety seven. I was born and raised in this city, Joliet. Went to Holy Family School on Larkin when Saint Francis was there. Graduated Joliet West 1982.

So I think he can figure out my age. That being said, I'm here today today tonight to speak on behalf. We have you around 25,000 members, the Will and Grundy building trades, men and women here in Joliet, Will, Grundy County, and a lot of communities directing us. The Joliet Technology Center will provide, as you heard, 8,600, 8,500 union jobs, construction jobs. These jobs mean a a very important aspect to our members, our men and women working.

Couple a few weeks ago, we were over at Joliet Junior College listening to questions and answers. I was fortunate enough to be with some of the Hillwood and Powerhouse people. They answered some questions. And I heard a lot, you know, our construction jobs don't matter. Well, I'm here to tell you tonight that our construction jobs do matter. There's probably a 100 construction guys with me that I work with day in and day out that we're our jobs matter. We're not temporary. We're here full time. When we work, we spend money. We go to Rialto. We see the shows. We go out to dinner. We go put our kids in day care. We need jobs. Okay?

The next guy you'll hear from, my cohort, we worked on a data center around the area that was lost to Wisconsin. And my local, I I had about 300 people, men and women, go to work in Wisconsin. Now, they got compensated, don't get me wrong, but they had to go live away from their families. So my point being is the Joliet Technology Center is a great project. Our men and women need to work here in Joliet, not in Wisconsin.

The only ones who got rich for the ones that worked in Wisconsin were the divorce lawyers in Joliet here. I don't want that to happen. So I don't know if everybody has been out to the lot with the proposed annexation. I've driven it countless times. There's some houses, three houses on Schweitzer. There's the houses that the landowners are selling. You also got the racetracks there. And I hear about the noise. You know, what happens every weekend at Route 66? I mean, that's good noise, so I like that noise.

You got the NAS CAR coming back. Thirty years ago, my father, he was an ironworker, called me, and I sat in this chamber when the Stephanus family sold all the land for the drag strip. You didn't have that many people against us. The data center is a great project. We are partnering up with Hillwood and Powerhouse for union jobs.

The the 2,100,000,000.0 or whatever you're saying for tax incentive for the city of Joliet, that's huge. That's huge for the city. There hasn't been this kind of project in the city, and I've been around. I was here when they took Louis Joliet Mall from Plainfield. Was here when Will County said no to the gambling boats, and mayor Schultz, god rest his soul, took the gambling boats in. I was here for a lot of this stuff, the racetracks. And I'm here to tell you today, on behalf of the members of men and women for the Will Grundy Village trades 25,000 and that live in Will And Grundy and Joliet here, we need these jobs, and we need you guys and girls to vote yes for Elwood Powerhouse. Thank you.

Tom White. Good

evening mayor and city council. My name is Tom White. I work for Three Rivers Construction Alliance, which is a labor management group out of Will And Grundy County. We also cover Kankakee and Iroquois. We represent four different contractor groups in any number of labor unions. A lot of them are here tonight like Doc said. There's well over 100 folks back there. All different walks, all different trades. Some are business agents representing their locals. Some are, you know, just union members here to support their locals. Some are hoping you'll vote yes so they can go to work on that job in the near future. I also want to take a quick minute and thank staff. I know stuff like this is tough. And and I know everybody here is gonna put up I mean, a whole bunch of different people saying different things. And I know you guys did your homework.

I've done mine. And there's gonna be people here that say you didn't. And that's fine. That's their right to come up and say that. I just wanna urge you to vote yes on this. A lot of people enjoy it, wanna work on these projects. And we hope we can do it in the near future. Thank you. Have a good night.

Thank you for turning back on my.

Mike Hanson.

Good evening, mayor, members of the city council. My name is Michael Hansen. I've been a resident of the city of Joliet for sixty two years. I was a practicing lawyer in Joliet for forty seven years, retiring three years ago. I am here to speak in favor of the approval of the annexation and development agreement for the data center.

As a taxpayer of the city Of Joliet and a private citizen, I deeply care about the long term health and future of our city. I have not been formally engaged by Hillwood or by Powerhouse Data Center. When I make remarks such as these, I tell everyone that I'm an old guy, but I do believe that I come here with wisdom, knowledge, and experience. I also say that I don't know computers, which is somewhat strange when talking about this project. Yeah.

Real

quick. But there's too much not much about the future here, and I'm and it and it's gonna be further away than I'm gonna be living. I will say, however, that this speech was not prepared or reviewed by AI, and it was written entirely by myself, and it was also written and prepared before the remarks you heard tonight by Hillwood. There are three important matters that I'd like the council mayor and council to consider. Number one, the actual annexation development agreement.

I commend city manager Beatty, her staff, and her attorneys for a thorough and comprehensive agreement. There are no financial incentives for the developer. The community benefits package is without precedent, and I believe it is commensurate with the type of project that is before you tonight. This new type of consideration is for development projects in Joliet. I would admonish the council.

However, if there were any other proposed city projects to be very careful and examine each project on its merits and the financial impacts on the city. The provisions of the agreement regarding water usage and electricity are fair and reasonable. You should rely on city staff for these matters. I can vouch for the city staff, having worked with and trusted them for their work for over twenty five years. The data center will secure and pay for their own electric costs.

Number two, what is most important for this type of project are the people who are behind the project. Hillwood is one of the nation's most trustworthy and recognizable real estate companies led by Ross Perot junior. I have known Don Schoenheidler for many years, and the former mayor of the village of Lake Forest is an individual of integrity and high character. The powerhouse data center is one of the nation's most preeminent data center developers. The staff, the mayor, the council must be and should be comfortable with these companies and their principles.

The number three item, location. I believe this location is as good as any location in the city of Joliet would desire for this type of project. So the bottom line, it comes down to the question of what is right for the city of Joliet. I asked the mayor and the council to show leadership. This project will attract favorable businesses and innovative companies who want to invest in the city of Joliet.

It will not adversely affect our quality of life in this city. This project is right for the city of Joliet. I recommend a vote in favor of the annexation and development agreement for the data center and the project in general. Thank you.

Andy Rico.

Thank

you. Mayor Darcy, city council, a pleasure to come before you. I wanna thank the city manager and your staff for everything you guys have done to review the project, study it, and make sure it is a good project for the city. And I commend you for defending your staff in that. My name is Andy Rico. I'm the business manager of the International Bell Hooker of Electrical Workers, Local one seventy six in Joliet. I serve on a board that reviews and evaluates applicants for our apprenticeship. And just in January and February alone, we had over 300 young men and women that came before us seeking employment opportunities in our apprenticeship program. And it's projects like these that will help create those opportunities. Those people, they were not looking for handouts.

You know, they're looking for opportunities. They're looking for a pathway to help them become better individuals and create a pathway where they could help better serve their community. Again, they're not looking for handouts. You know, myself, my partners with the Willingurney County Building Trades, my colleagues, we consider ourselves good community partners. We enjoy helping to invest in community.

One of one of the things that we, require our apprentices to do is to, have community service. And, you know, it's opportunities like these that will help us grow our apprenticeship and create job opportunities so we can give back to the community. These projects, they help strengthen the ability of of a strong community and give our members the opportunity to give back. You know, we sit in front of our members and, you know, I I've had members come to me, you know, with tears in their eyes, thanking for the opportunity that that's been given to them to help provide for their family and, you know, and give back to the community. If this project doesn't happen here, it'll go to a neighboring state.

Like Tom White said, we lost many projects to neighboring states, and they all sit on the same, you know, energy grid that we sit on. So those concerns, you know, they're they're gonna happen even if it's built in a different in a neighboring state. Good luck with the state's stockpile. So so the question is not whether the the large data center demand exists. It's where the Joliet and the community wants the benefit and have the investment and the opportunity that comes along with with hosting a project. If Joliet holds the project, Joliet gets the jobs, the investment, the economic activity, and local benefit. So respect respectfully ask the council to support the project and help move the the project forward in the city of Joliet. It's about opportunity, responsible growth, whether Joliet wants to be part of the future or watch it happening somewhere else around us. You.

A lot

more than

two miles

away from the state. I'll

say something. I'll say something. I'll I'll reiterate it. Everyone will have their chance to speak. So please, if we can get through these comments, everyone will have their chance to speak. Otherwise, we will have to start asking people to leave the room.

Thank you, madam clerk. Mayor Darcy and council members, I am Mike Mahoney. I'm the chief of staff for the Will County Executive. I too graduated from Holy Family on Larkin Avenue, I think a little different year than Doc Gregory. But I come before you today in support of this project.

This development is significant not only for the city of Joliet, but also for Will County and all its 710,000 residents. This investment of over $20,000,000,000 creating 24 new buildings covering 800 acres is unprecedented. The scale of this private investment is one of the largest in Illinois history and all without asking for any local incentives. This project brings together all the resources that make Will County and Joliet such a special place to do business. This area has the infrastructure, the transportation, the union workforce, and the strong leadership needed to deliver a project of this magnitude.

Residents from across the county, from Beecher to Bolingbrook, will see benefits in a project of this scale. Not only will county residents find work during construction and when the facility is open, they will also see a direct impact on their property taxes. The county estimates that this campus, when fully built out, will add between 5 and $6,000,000,000 in real estate market value to the entire county. To give you an idea of how massive that scale is, last year, the entire county's taxable market value of real estate was around a $100,000,000,000. So this one project alone will add five to 6% to the county's entire real estate valuation.

What this will mean for the county is over $5,000,000 in annual revenue that does not have to come from residential taxpayers. This will allow for important government services like the county sheriff, the health department, and our court systems to continue to operate with residents receiving the services they are entitled to with the quality they deserve. When you look at this project and location, it addresses the concerns that many residents have about a development of this scale. It is a location away from residential homes. It will generate revenue that won't come from homeowners, and the data center will also help limit the exponential growth we have seen in truck traffic in the area.

The area is already heavily industrialized, and unlike warehousing, warehousing, data centers require little truck traffic. I would like to end by thanking the Joliet City staff. The way you have navigated this project, making sure questions are answered, being exceedingly transparent, and doing community engagement has been excellent. You have set a model for how to handle such large scale projects, and it will be copied across the country, I am sure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Mike Paion. I'm the executive vice president of the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry. And I'm here tonight on behalf of our president, Jen Howard, our government affairs committee, as well as our chamber board of directors. Honorable mayor Darcy and city council members.

On behalf of the Joliet Region Chamber Of Commerce And Industry, I'm here to express our support for the proposed data center project currently working its way through the city's planning process. From an economic development standpoint, this project represents a strong opportunity for the community both in the near term and long term. During construction, the development is expected to generate a significant number of skilled construction, excuse me, and trade jobs creating immediate economic activity and supporting local contractors and suppliers. Beyond the construction phase, the data center will create permanent high wage positions across a range of functions. These jobs will offer competitive salaries and benefits and contribute to the growth of a stable modern workforce aligned with a growing technology sector.

The project will also provide a meaningful and reliable source of property tax revenue. Data centers typically represent substantial capital investment and long term occupancy, offering predictable revenue that can support essential city services, schools, and infrastructure. Additionally, the proposed data center represents a productive and responsible alternative to other potential uses of the site that may generate fewer jobs, lower wages, or less consistent tax revenue. Questions and concerns were thoughtfully reviewed, and the developer engaged in multiple discussions with us to ensure appropriate mitigation measures and safeguards were incorporated into the project. For these reasons, the chamber believes the proposed data center project aligns well with the city's economic development goals.

We appreciate your consideration, and you should and should you require any further information, you know where to contact us. Thank you.

Doctor Kip Klein, vice president at Lewis University, mayor Darcy, members of the council. As someone who has worked in higher education for more than twenty years, much of that time at Lewis University, I've spent my career thinking about how education prepares students for meaningful futures in their communities. The Joliet Technology Center represents more than a single development. It's the type of long term investment that helps position a community as a hub for technology, innovation, and economic growth. For institutions like Lewis University, the Joliet Technology Center will strengthen the connection between education and opportunity, helping ensure students can build meaningful careers right here in the area.

Investments of this scale, roughly 20,000,000,000 into local economy, help position Joliet as a place where innovative industries want to grow and invest. The project is expected to generate thousands of union construction jobs during development. That creates opportunities for students pursuing careers in the skilled trades, engineering, and construction management, all of which we offer degrees in at Lewis University. Once operational, the facility will support hundreds of permanent technical and operational jobs, many of which align with programs offered by local colleges and universities such as computer science, information technology, engineering, and other technical training programs connected to technology infrastructure. Developments like this can also create opportunities for partnerships between industry and higher education, including internships, workforce training programs, and pathways that help students move from classroom into the workforce.

The long term tax revenue generated by the project will also support local schools and educational resources strengthening the pipeline of talent across the region. Thank you.

Kelly Roeder Tanelli, Frederick Dahlmeier, Tracy Dahlmeier, Abby Valmer, Willie Sellers, Isabel Gloria, Hugh O'Hara. If you could all please line up in the middle, that'd be great.

Good

evening. I'm Kelly Roeder Tinelli and I'm here speaking on behalf of Joliet Junior College. Thank you city council and city team for everything that you've done in explaining this this project this evening and and being transparent for the process. And I just want to acknowledge the significant public dialogue surrounding the Joliet Technology Center. And we believe as the nation's first public community college and long standing regional workforce partner that this is a project that would bring both opportunity and engagement for our current residents, future residents, current students, and former students.

And we appreciate the thoughtful engagement from all of you that have participated in the review process. From the college's perspective, our primary role in conversations like this is to help ensure that local residents are prepared for emerging workforce opportunities and that new industries connect with strong regional pipeline talent. Rapid growth in digital infrastructure, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and data storage, has created increasing demand for skilled technicians and applied technology professionals, not just here but across the country. Should developments in this sector continue to expand within the region? Community colleges play an essential role in play an essential preparing the workforce needed to support them.

Potential career pathways that I'm talking about this evening include electrical and power systems technology, industrial maintenance and automation, HVAC, fiber optics and telecommunications, cybersecurity, and facilities management. These technical occupations align closely with JJC's mission and provide pathways to sustaining careers, not to short term, but sustaining careers for local residents. We also recognize that residents have raised important questions relating to infrastructure, including water resources, energy demand, and long term environmental stewardship. For more than a hundred and twenty years, JJC has worked alongside all of you, municipalities, employers, and community partners, to align education with regional workforce needs. As new industries emerge, the college remains committed to working collaboratively with local leaders, labor organizations, and employers to ensure that residents have access to the education and training needed to participate in this evolving economy.

We appreciate the thoughtful leadership of the city council and city team during this process and remain ready to support workforce development and educational initiatives that strengthen the long term economic vitality of the Joliet region. Thank you.

One point of order before I begin. I solemnly swear that I am telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth. I do wanna make it a point that no one else before me has been sworn in to do the same. I also wanna point out before I start my general spiel about oh, by the way, my name is Frederick Dahlmeier. I live at 1, 1703 Heritage Point Court, Plainfield, Illinois.