City Council - Special Meeting

eating to order with Wilmington City Council of August the 17th and we'd ask if you'd stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and remain standing for a moment of silence prayer reflection but

Councilmember Kearns here Councilmember Mosley here Councilmember Montney here Councilmember Dannenberger here Councilmember Strava here Councilmember Hendrick here Councilmember Ward here Councilmember Lee here Councilmember Scott here Mayor Brady here next we'll uh go to public comment clerk is there public comment this evening uh we have no one registered to speak in person we did receive one emailed public comment that was provided to council earlier today and that came from becky epping thank you next we'll move to the consent agenda and

The items are listed there on the consent agenda. Are there any members that wish to have any item appearing before you for the consent agenda removed? If not, is there a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve as presented.

Motion by Member Hendricks. Seconded by Member Ward. Member Scott. My apologies. Go ahead and take the vote, please. i think we could just do all in favor aye all opposed all right then there's no needs to announce thank you next we'll move to the uh regular agenda and under the regular agenda we'll have an update on the recent storm damage and the action uh on behalf of the city of bloomington and our city manager mr jurgens

Thank you very much, Mayor and Council. I've asked the City Forester, who's been wearing a couple of different hats lately, both with Parks and Public Works, to help us provide an update on this. If you can go ahead and load the presentation. We will tag team this a little bit. It has been a long last few days. The community has been hit pretty hard by a couple of different storms. Part of this item is the extension of two emergency declarations that the Mayor has signed. that we are proposing to be extended for another 30 days. But we wanted to give an update on the cleanup, kind of what our assessment of the damage is so far, and ask the community to continue to provide us help by sharing their damage. We've got links on our website that they can go and they can report. Residents can report damage that they've had from the two storms, and then businesses can also report damages. So with that, if you go to the next slide. Next slide. There you go. All right, so calls for service. The first storm that hit on 8-13 was really all over our community. We had over 500 calls for service. It was widespread. We had so many calls for service that they were not only going over to METCOM and METCOM, which is the dispatch center for both the town and the county, they were being overrun with calls as well. We had calls being answered as far away as Coles County to help during this. At one time, they had 49 calls in the queue to be returned or to be answered. And I will say that we did get back to everybody. We did get all of the calls answered and we got services everywhere they needed to go. But historically, we're not sure if we've ever had an incident with so many different calls before. And as you can see on the map up there, that's the calls for service during this event. And again, it's just widespread throughout the community. Next slide. Ask our again, Dave Lamb to talk a little bit about some of the tree damages and what we're seeing there.

sure thank you uh good evening city manager jurgens mayor brady council as you all know we had a historic storm event on 8 13 which was followed by a historic rain event on saturday a.m with isolated storm amounts almost up to seven inches uh early morning localized in bloomington so from a forestry on parks and recreation standpoint we did have 266 reported tree issues as of today 140 of those have been cleared by our crews Got 10 city trees on houses. Those have all been removed and five city trees on cars are all now removed at three city trees on fences. Our crews are working 12 hour shifts this whole week as able and have been working on basically nonstop since the storm started. This has been widespread damage throughout the community. It did not follow an exact path like the tornado did in April.

Next slide.

uh again yeah forestry crews working 12-hour shifts all week we did activate the ip illinois public works uh assistance program called ipw man and we have a crew from champaign coming over here tomorrow a full forestry crew to work with us the rest of the week so we're grateful to their contribution and that the city allowed us to activate that ipw man response next slide Sure. Public Works. We estimated as of 6 p.m. tonight, we have 300 loads of brush picked up since Thursday. So that's a lot. In retrospect, this is in four and a half days. There was 442 loads of brush total from the April 17th tornado. So as we were out driving around and assessing damage, the crews and all the The input we were getting is this is worse than the tornadoes. This is worse than the tornadoes, but we're starting to get some data that supports that. And this is one of those data points. As of now, all roadways are passable. Public work crews are also working 12 hour shifts all week and have been working nonstop since the event. And we did open the Citizens' Convenience Center yesterday and today, which it was normally closed. Stormwater infrastructure was at capacity on Saturday, but it was working as designed. Next slide.

Go to the next.

Oh, thanks. I'm sorry, Jeff. Thank you.

Yeah, so then we go to the flooding event on Saturday, 8-15. We had over 100 calls for service during that event. You can also see it's obviously not as many calls, but it's still pretty widespread. And then if you go to the next slide,

uh dave if you can talk about some of the issues we had there yeah sure this is out on 2100 east road uh it was in barely passable when we got out there but the water did recede quickly again the storm water infrastructure was at capacity but it was working at the as designed all the weirs we looked at the detention ponds were doing their job nothing broke the dams and uh so we were we were satisfied with that next slide Yep, all garbage and recycling routes will remain on schedule. If your garbage is supposed to be picked up today, it was. If it's supposed to be picked up tomorrow, it will be. We are waiving fees for storm-related garbage in bulk for the next two weeks, starting with today's pickup. So residents should not be getting tickets for the extra charge and things like that. We're waiving all those fees due to the storm.

And with that, again, we have the extension of two emergency declarations. We've been advised by IEMA to treat them as two separate events, even though the one kind of compounded the other. So just better safe than sorry. We are not, you know, there's no guarantee we're going to meet the threshold for getting assistance from the federal government. But what this may do is set us up to receive, be eligible for low interest loans and low barrier loans for residents who either have damage from the storms or businesses that have damage for the storms. It's still very early on in this event, so we're still in the process of getting information, but we wanted to start that process just in the event where we are able to get assistance for the residents of the community. We're happy to answer any questions.

I just wanted to add, Jeff, the storm response and level of service provided to the community could not be possible without the dedicated employees we have here at the city. Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Local 699, Interdepartmental Cooperations, Police, Fire, Water, Engineering Administration. So I wanted to throw that out there.

Absolutely. And our crews have been out there working extremely hard, and it's going to be an extremely difficult cleanup going forward. We do anticipate it'll take several weeks to clean up all of the debris. We're still working to get some of those larger trees cut up and moved. So this is going to be a long period of recovery. We're asking the residents to have a little bit of grace, but also let us know if there is something that we've missed. and we are going to take extra efforts to get around and get the bulk as well, because we know a lot of basements were flooded. So we want people to get those out of the homes, onto the curb, so we can get that picked up as well.

Thank you. And before we go, or I ask for a motion for the continued resolution, comments from members? Member Mosley?

No, it was on by accident. Thank you. I just want to thank everybody for their work, but no questions.

Are there other members that wish to express a comment before I ask for a motion and a second?

I just want to thank Dave for stepping up. I know you've worn many different hats this past couple of weeks. and for your crew. So how many departments are involved in the cleanup? And then when you say our tree, can you kind of clarify what you mean by our tree versus? Sure. Because there were just, Ward 8 got hit pretty hard and there are just tree looms everywhere. So how do you differentiate what's our tree and what's not? And is there any way to help? people that I guess the damage result wasn't, you know, the city's tree, but So I guess just help me understand better where that line is.

Sure thing. So thank you for your comments. And the main brush in tree work removal off the streets is responsibility of Parks and Public Works collectively. The foresters work out of the Parks and Recreation Department, Public Works does the pickup. A lot of departments are involved in that though. Fire, you know, does the power lines, police blocks the roads for us. A lot of different moving parts there and the superintendents all coordinate that together really well. If the tree is in the city right away, it belongs to the city. If it's on private property, it belongs to the property owner. If a tree on private property falls into the city right away, we clear to the right away line. A lot of times in areas that have sidewalks, that is the sidewalk is the differential, but in areas that don't have sidewalks, it can vary between 10 and 12 feet. i would suggest residents use the mclean county gis application on their computers they lay down a property line and you can pretty much figure it out but if one's real close we can make a determination for the residents so they can email those in and we can determine if it's a city or a public city or a private tree thank you other members with comments

Just, I have a couple other comments, but just to tag on to what was just, you were just saying, even if somebody's private tree falls on their property, they can still haul brush to the curb and the city will take it absolutely yeah okay that's what I thought but I just wanted to clarify that I know my primary comment is just to say thank you to you and your your team the the all of the groups that you mentioned um for the the amazing hard work they not only have done but continue to do um i i have to acknowledge that um friday morning is trash pickup day in my neighborhood and on thursday night when the when you know the storm cleared my husband i kind of looked at each other and said nah they're not gonna what's the point of even pulling it to the curb and you know the trash and it was even recycling week and but just well let's just pull it to the curb and on my way to work on Friday morning I almost had to pull over I was so gobsmacked that that um here comes the recycling truck picking up and so I just want to really affirm you guys for for

just keeping it going appreciate that in the midst of all of that keeping it going so thank you thank you and the union workforce takes the extreme amount of pride in making sure there's no disruptions in the current service level when a storm event occurs so thank you for noticing that council member ward and i believe approval thank you we're gonna we got another comment first and then we'll come back back and then i just want to um just again add on to what she said i i just

am in awe of the response and it's not only us affirming that but it's the people that we represent affirming that i've heard so many comments about the number of city vehicles that people are seeing up and down their streets over these last few days and the personal sacrifices that you all have made too it's just been it's just been terrific thank you thank you councilmember martini i'll certainly pass that along to the team other members with comments

If not, Mr. Juergens has a couple follow-up comments, and then we'll pass for your vote.

Yes, thanks for indulging me. Just a couple of things I failed to mention. One of the many things I like to lose sleep over is the idea of sewage backups in homes. And when you have a rain event like this, it is front and center for everybody on city staff. We have not had reports of that with this. And certainly one of the things that has helped with that is the 26 million dollars that this council has invested in rehabs and separations and different projects like that. So, you know, again, that does seem to be helping. And Dave and I were at a location on Saturday where there was some significant flooding in a house and in the yards, all of it underwater. And they said in 21, this was all sewage as well. This time it's just water. So we are seeing some success from those efforts and just want to recognize that. And then to all of those people who recognize Dave, I again really appreciate his efforts. We were we were going around on Saturday and we would stop and talk to people that look like they maybe needed help or were trying to figure things out. And I turn around and Dave is on his knees helping some residents get a generator started. And that's that's just the kind of guy he is. And and we have so many city staff like that. They're so dedicated to this community. And I truly think the council would have been proud of seeing those employees out there over the last several days.

Thank you. And along those lines, I know we all agree the deep, deep appreciation from all the city staff. We also have to say thank you to our partners in the utilities. Absolutely. The power teams that have been out there working side by side and all since this. So thank you to all. And I believe Member Ward had a motion. Is there a second? Second. That's right. Member Montney.

And if you call a quick roll call vote. Council Member Kearns. Yes. Council Member Mosley. Yes. Council Member Montney. Yes. Council Member Dannenberger.

Yes.

Council Member Straza. Yes. Council Member Hendricks.

Aye.

Council Member Ward. Aye. Council Member Lee.

Yes.

Council Member Scott. Yes. The item passes. No nays to announce.

Thank you. Next we'll move on the next item on the consent agenda is a presentation on the pavement programs for the five-year plan of 2028-2032. And at this time, Mr. Juergens.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mayor. Again, should have also given kudos to our city engineer who has been a played a huge role as it has our entire engineering department in the sewer separation projects and the work that's been done but they also obviously do a lot for our streets and we thought it was time to give the council and the community an update on what our five-year plan is looking like with regard to that so with that I will turn it over to director Karch

Thank you City Manager Juergens, Mayor, and City Council. Tonight, we just would like to introduce to you the concept of a five-year pavement treatment plan. Currently, as a city, we put forth one year at a time street resurfacing plan. What we're wanting to do is start doing this five years at a time. The benefits to that, it allows us to plan. It allows us to be transparent with our citizens. Our current pavement program is broader than a single resurfacing contract. The asphalt, you might have to look over here, some of this is very small, but the overall asphalt and concrete budget, it includes a lot of different things with it, including street resurfacing, sidewalk improvements, two pavement preservation contracts, and maintenance contracts. Our planning is though is only as good as the funding levels behind it. So the funding sources for asphalt and concrete budget are the home rule sales tax and local motor fuel tax. This year, the asphalt and concrete budget, you can see on the right, FY27 is $10 million. Starting in FY28, the current five-year council approved capital improvement plan anticipates an ongoing budget of $9 million per year, but the construction costs typically increase at about 5% per year. This council-approved five-year plan, though, allows us to proactively plan for future infrastructure improvements. So how do we do street selection? We do street selection using a nationally recognized objective pavement condition system. It is a 1 to 10 rating scale. And we update it about every two years. So we really do keep it up to date. It actually is available on the city's website. We really try to be as transparent as we can be with that. We put that rating that you see up on the screen. If you look up on the screen, green is good, red is bad, yellow is bad. It's right in the middle. We've got a varying range of 1-10. That gives you an idea of color coding. That's one of the reasons we like this system. It's very simple and easy to follow. What we try to do is we put that system into a decision optimized technology software, which allows us to then put forth a plan utilizing a worst first technology system. So for example, local streets, more small roads in front of most houses, When they're rated in the three to four range, then they're looking at for resurfacing. When we have minor collectors and arterials, we're looking more in the four to five range. We want to take better care of our larger streets. You can see us giving a lot of attention to those. Those are initial candidates for us to look at resurfacing. So why look at a five year? Why not just stick with the current one year at a time? The big reason is time. We need time to design appropriately. We need time to coordinate with other departments and we need time to communicate with citizens. A resurfacing project involves a whole lot more than just putting a piece of asphalt on this pavement. Before construction, our engineering staff, we need time to be able to assess the manholes and inlets. We need to televise the sewer underneath. The last thing we want to do is put asphalt down and then come back and dig it up within the next year because we didn't look at the sewers. We need time to be able to address those kinds of needs. We also have to look at the ramps, the sidewalk ramps. Anytime you do resurfacing, you have to look at those ramps and assess them to meet ADA guidelines. Now, we can then incorporate those into our contract documents. So when we don't have enough time, we have to do that out in the field. That can cause delays. It can increase costs. It causes issues for us in the field. Having that longer five-year window also helps other departments. Let's talk about the Water Department. The Water Department, as you know, is doing a lead line service replacement program all across the city. If we coordinate with them in a five year time frame, they can get ahead of it. They can do all of the lead service line repairs needed so that we come after the fact and resurface. A coordinated effort makes for clean pavement and a much better coordinated effort. Citizens are like, wow, that makes sense. You all are thinking ahead of time. Well done. You look at your sewers, your water. It's the best way for us to plan. Our Parks Department. It hits all departments. Trees, trees matter. We are Tree City USA. When we know ahead of time where we're going, we can assess what kind of trees do we need to look at? How can we protect those trees and make sure we maintain them as best we can? Public works. Public works, they can look at street sign replacement. They can look at making sure their efforts to maintain pavements or rightfully their resources are rightfully directed in the correct place. Addressing known problems together, it reduces that emergency last second work, which costs a lot of money, and it prevents us from cutting into new pavement. Finally, this approach improves our relationships with your constituents, our residents, because it happens so often people will call in, my road is not in good shape. And all we can do is tell them whether it's on the next year resurfacing contract or not. How much better of a communication transparent tool if you can say, well, you're actually in this five year plan, you're here, you're in the out years. it really helps our citizens to better understand, oh, I see where I'm at in the queue. I see what's going to be coming. It helps them to plan appropriately as well. So with that, I'll give one example. Council Member Dannenberger just this week We had a resident in his ward that had sent something in and I'd sent something to him saying, well, on Monday night, we're going to be talking about this. Your constituent is in the five-year plan. So after today, we plan on responding back to that resident, assuming you all are positive about this effort and letting them know here's when you're in the future plan. I guarantee you they're going to like that answer a lot better than, eh, it's not next year's plan, sorry. So communication and transparency really matter. I wanted to give you one specific example of how it matters. On the left is how we would deal with an ADA ramp in FY23. So in fiscal year 23, basically you can see this generic thing that says, we need to do this ramp, but there's no details. A contractor's pricing will reflect that. they're going to give us higher pricing. On the right, you can see in the current contract, the row has a lot more detail. We give slope, we give distance, we give all of the information that a contractor needs. We get better pricing because we give them less unknowns. It helps overall when we have the time to plan. And so next, just I want to show you kind of what we're talking about. So this is the type of information that would be on our website. Currently, the yellow is the current year that we're doing. We can see on there Hershey Road, Eastland. St. Joseph, Four Seasons, all of those are currently being resurfaced right now. We also have high pressure slurry going over in the southwest part of this community. And so what we're talking about doing is in the future, we'd show FY28. So next year's what we're looking at. So we're looking in census tract 59, the more vibrant purple in the core part of town. And we're looking on the northeast quadrant for high pressure slurry. We can let people know. And then we can look in the next year, FY29, we would show in the green we show more of the northwest quadrant we'd be looking at more resurfacing we'd be looking at high pressure slurry on the northeast side and then what we're looking to do is in the three out years lump those together so it gives us some flexibility we know the next two years but we want to have some flexibility in those out years that allows us specificity but also some flexibility we think that might be the best way for us to find a balance so In summary, we are wanting to do this five-year treatment plan to allow for design the work better, coordinate with our other departments, use taxpayer funds more effectively, and transparently give our residents clearer information about what's to come. So with that, allow for any questions, but just a thank you, Mayor and City Council, for your continued investment in the Bloomington's infrastructure. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you. And are there questions by members? Member Montague.

Yeah, I thank you very much for this update. I think it makes a lot of sense to lay out a five-year runway for this. I'm interested, you know, since you've been looking at the data, obviously, and, you know, you're familiar with the percentage of streets rated fair or below today, with the five-year plan that you have drafted, what's the overall needle going to move to from what percentage we are at fair or below today, and what percentage will we be at fair or below in the five years that this plan goes through?

So if you heard me say before, thank you for the question. So if you heard me say before, this next five years, we're looking at $9 million a year is what we anticipate in the asphalt and concrete budget. If out of that, because you can see the pie chart, I pulled it up purposefully. So you can see if out of that $9 million, we allow for $5 million with resurfacing, that's what we're planning for. If we maintain a five-year James Rattling Leafs, $5 million a year allotted for our resurfacing and account for increase in overall construction costs, we will maintain the needle. James Rattling Leafs, So the meat needle won't move forward we kind of we've tried to look at what would it take to move the needle forward over a 10 year plan. James Rattling Leafs, And we've looked at that and with administration we're thankful but, but the current plan we have with maintain the system we have.

So we're not gaining ground. It's just a more logical customer centric view as to how we're portraying the approach. So it seems like I remember in one of your last updates, we were at around 50% rated fair below. So what we would be doing at our current spending rate is essentially just

maintaining 50 percent is that they rotate yes in general the system so what we look at is an overall rating so if you recall that that one to ten pacer scale we're at about a six six point one six point two which is around the good mark that means you're going to have some streets that are poor some streets that are better and brand new but the average overall is about six to move that needle forward, we would need about $3 million more annually for resurfacing to be able to in a 10-year timeframe to really move that needle forward.

So, I mean, I think if you would include the overall PASER rating at aggregate in our updates, I think that would be great because, you know, just in looking at the forms over my tenure here on the council, I think, you know, that number has, you know,

been up and down from about four and a half to six and a half it's it's been around the 5.96 mark for for a while but we actually include that and i can resend it through the city manager we can resend that out to you as an elected our annual street and sidewalk ratings that we do it's an extensive data set it actually is in there council member montney

that's great i mean i i've looked at it on individual roads but i haven't seen a trending at aggregate so if if that is in there where you're showing the average rating year over year over year then i've just missed it we can get that to you that shouldn't be a problem thank you thanks yeah hi thank you for the presentation and uh

I realize this is in regards to resurfacing, but I have a question regarding storm inlets or sewer inlets. You know, there are some that are in bad shape. How is how will those be handled as you're doing the resurfacing? Because I know when you resurfaced Oakland, those inlets were repaired before the surfacing. So just curious. I know that the John Potter, storm and let's honor on a different budget than the roads and things like that, but yeah if you could just speak to that i'd appreciate it.

Don Nottoli, Council member Lee you're throwing me a softball so thank you for that I appreciate it so so no, this is the reason why we want to plan appropriately, because what we do is we actually literally go out to every sewer mantle every inlet. open grates, look inside what needs to be repaired so that when we go out to bid, we tell the contractor this inlet needs this type of work and the next inlet needs a different type of work. And that allows and minimizes changes in the field. So when we do resurfacing, we don't just look at asphalt. We look at everything under the ground that we can possibly see, including the water department, credit to the water department. We plan this in cooperation with them, plan this in cooperation with Public Works as well.

Thank you.

Any other more?

Yeah, thank you for this. And I'm super supportive of the idea of a five-year plan. I feel like you've made your case in that regard, and I really like that. I do have one request. I appreciate what you were touching on just now and previously in terms of reasons why a particular street, which from a pavement perspective might be in worse shape than another street might wait because you've got to do stuff underneath that um that the other street that might not be as bad off from a pavement perspective right and i get that and i just i i hope that as you're putting forward the plan you could be really clear about that as you're making particular you know putting out particular maps you know if one street is red and another is kind of yellow but the yellow one's going first to explain why right if it's because there is a a sewer issue or a storm water issue let's let's be upfront about that and i think that would be really helpful for people to know

Very much appreciate the comment. And a good example of that would be lead service lines. You'll notice in recent years we've been doing a lot of work on arterial roads, the major roads on the east side or the southwest side, trying to work around the interior core. Why is that? because now the federal mandate came out and the water department has been putting together their lead service program and so we know man we can't hold off on the core part for much longer we knew we need to start giving that love but we needed to not go in and do the work and then tear it all up so that's why next year you're going to start seeing a lot of work in census tract 59 you're going to start seeing a lot more work in the core part of town so to your point It was a coordinated effort. And there were times where we had to also lump streets together. One of the other things that makes a difference is if you put the streets together from a mobilization perspective, we save money. We get better costs for each of the work that we do. So it makes more sense when we lump and group them together where possible.

Other members? Never mind.

Just a couple of follow-up questions since the inlet issue was brought into the conversation. So what is our current inventory of the backlog of inlets that are waiting to be repaired?

And that would be a public works question. I apologize. I do not have the answer.

We've got that number. We're putting the final touches on the deferred maintenance report. So we should have that soon.

HAB-Juliette Boone, That that's that's great to know I just seeing one of the roads that you're going to be getting to in a couple of years, it looks like on this list, I know there's a barricade there at. HAB-Juliette Boone, Carl drive and Wellington way that I think it's been there for a few years, so I know that it's a you know challenging problem and requires a lot of resources, but I just didn't want to lose sight of it, since it was connected in queue to the road. The second question I have is following up too on these less traveled streets though that have more severe damage to them or that are lower ratings. What is the capacity of the paper machine that we've invested in and how might that paper machine be redirected to get at some of these streets that perhaps may not be contracted out but still need attention?

Yeah, I can answer that. So that is still our intent. Obviously, I think, as everybody knows, the prices for repaving streets and doing the street work is going up and up and up, meaning that we're spending more and we're getting less, basically. We have talked to the public and the council before. We see one potential way to get in there is to do some of the work ourselves. So we did add a paver crew of four. It's kind of this pilot project that we're doing now. We will be evaluating how much grinding and paving they're able to get completed. We should have some better numbers soon. We may need to look at renting or getting a larger grinder. That's one of the things that we'll look at as part of this, but we will have some of that data soon and see whether or not that's been effective and whether or not we need to make changes to that program. I can also, based on a previous draft of the report, of the deferred maintenance report can share that we have a little over 10,100 public inlets with approximately 110 requiring repair annually. So about 1% of the total inlets and that costs between about half a million and a million dollars annually. But again, we're putting the fine tuning on that report. We currently have a backlog at least of when this was initially drafted of about 159 inlet repairs.

Thank you very much.

If I could add to that as well, the benefit of a five-year plan is that we can also coordinate with Public Works. If we know what streets we're looking to do from a larger resurfacing perspective and streets are not on that list that are in very much need of repair, we coordinate that effort with other departments and then it can get done and people can see sometimes some great responsiveness because we are able as a city to be more flexible.

Member Damp, you had your light on earlier.

Chris Wanner, I did, and I want to thank you Jim for this presentation, obviously, the example you gave earlier with the briarwood nor bloom neighborhood. Chris Wanner, is a prime example where this would be a huge benefit to be able to go to them and say hey. Chris Wanner, We haven't forgotten about you you're on this, this such and such year of the five year plan so yeah so for communication transparency be great the one follow up, I have with that particular neighborhood. Would this, in developing this five-year plan, do you guys think maybe about coordinating with Town of Normal? Because that Briarwood, Dawes, Norbloom area is where Bloomington kind of hands the baton off to Normal. So they often say, well, look, Normal's got their streets done two years ago, three years ago, and six years before that, and they have all this data that they've all lived there forever. Is there a move maybe that we can make toward maybe coordinating with the Town of Normal to say, hey, we're doing this five-year plan. In two years, we're coming to Briarwood, Norbloom, and Dawes. Can we coordinate with you to do the second half of the neighborhood so we're all over there at the same time and maybe save some money?

We can absolutely reach out and let them know about the plan. Good idea. Member Kearns?

Yes. I just wanted to add quickly, mainly about the communication that it takes to the residents of These areas that are being worked on, because I know that there have been a handful of projects in my word near my word, so I get people reaching out to me and. I really applaud all the tools and efforts and ways in which that the city tries to make this information available, I know, helps me. When i'm talking to people, and I can direct them to where I pull up the dashboard and I try to get some information or send them links so that's been really, really helpful and then I also just. I want to add that I know it can be difficult once we're working with contractors that are not our employees, and so I know that there can be lots of balls in the air of communication to try to make sure that things get communicated. Just keep doing what you're doing I know it's not it's not going to be perfect it can be perfect, but I know that you know they're just been things that have been communicated to me where it sounds like you know communication drops or. People have experiences with contractors that that they didn't love and so just you know. I always try to smooth it over because I know that the city staff are doing all that they can and are and care about what's going on and just the disruptions that are happening in our community because I know it's um you know the emails that I'm getting for the work that is happening on Mercer right now like I know that's super disruptive for those people who live there and so I know that they've been getting good feedback you know like they can reach out to people and so I really like all those efforts and just continue to do those because I know that they're We have to be aggressive about it because some contractors don't live in this community and maybe they're not treating it like their own neighborhoods. But ending on a good note, we're doing good and I really appreciate everyone's efforts.

Thank you. Seeing no other comments from members, thank you very much. Don Nottoli, Director Karchin don't go anywhere, because I think that you're up next to give a report on construction and Mr jurgens may have some opening comments regarding.

Don Nottoli, Yes, with so much construction going on all throughout the Community, we thought it would be a good opportunity for director cars to provide an update again over $100 million I think going on right now. you know, probably you're getting approached and saying, do we have to do everything at once? And then people are responding back to that. You know, that's all people, you know, want are the infrastructure improved. So we are making, you know, some significant investments in the community. You are seeing a lot of work out there. It's not just us. It's also the state. It's also Binward. A lot of different activity going on, but we thought that it was a good opportunity for Director Karch to give an overall update. Thank you, City Manager.

I appreciate that. One of the main messages that I just want to get across to you is the absolute scale of the work happening right now. In the 26 years that I've been an engineer here at the City of Bloomington, I have never seen the amount of work that we're doing currently underway. between IDOT, Binward, and the city, just as the city manager mentioned. This is staggering. The major projects that I'm going to highlight tonight represent over $125 million in transportation, utility, bridge, street, and sidewalk investment across the city. And we're not simply replacing pavement. These projects improve safety. They replace aging infrastructure, reduce flooding even. We've talked about the flooding that we've had. This is helping with flooding, increase mobility, and support economic development. And we've also been improving the way we communicate this work. As council member Kerns pointed out, thank you for highlighting the infrastructure projects dashboard. That was a nice little softball. That's what we'll be using to talk about our time together here. What you see up on the screen is publicly available. This is the infrastructure projects dashboard. It has been used more than 18,000 times. So the word has gotten out and we've only heard positive feedback from folks about the transparency. This is a transparency tool for citizens. So rather than pull a detail slide out for everything, I actually wanted to use the tool that residents use to be able to walk you through some of our major projects. And then we'll focus tonight on that. So starting off, I'm just going to jump over to the downtown streetscape project. and give you some updates on that. So in our downtown, this is a over $13 million job that we've got. Let's see here. I'm actually going to have to pull out my glasses.

I'm getting old for this one. So give me a look at that.

Okay. So with our downtown, This is a $13 million project that we've got. We've got the 600 block and the 500 block done. You've seen it. It's beautiful and wonderful. The 400 block, we're looking to have done here in the next few weeks. The 400 block is closed right now. The 300 block is closed to traffic only, only because the intersection of Maine and Monroe is shut down so they can do the work in that intersection. So within the next few weeks, weather dependent, the weather has not been kind, we will be doing resurfacing and finishing it up. If you get a chance, please go visit. The sidewalks look great with those down and we did not get the same level of complaints of flooding that we did in the 400 block that caused so many issues. That has been significantly improved. So just a big thanks to that. What you're going to see after the next few weeks, though, is construction is going to stop until the spring. that's great that allows us time to finish all of the vaults in the 300 block and then allows us to actually do investigation to make sure we're not missing any vaults part of the issues we had in the 400 block were unknown vaults that have caused us a lot of issues we're going to see us going through and actually drilling cores all along the front of these places we don't want that to happen again i don't want that to happen again so in the 300 block we're going to go all along there and make sure we try to minimize any unknowns that we've got But in the spring, we'll start work back up again, and then we will finish that here this next construction season.

And Jim, as you pull up the next location, just a reminder to the council and the community that 75% of the streetscape project is underground infrastructure. And again, we're talking about century-old infrastructure that needed to be replaced, in many cases mandated to be replaced. And so great, great progress happening there.

This is, now we've got up on the screen, the fiscal year 27 resurfacing program. And what I'd like to highlight for you is for one, it's taking care of a lot of arterial collector roads. It's dealing with Four Seasons. Four Seasons has already resurfaced. Eastland, east of Veterans Parkway is completed. We have St. Joe, this major OSF work that they're doing We're coordinating and cooperating with them, and it's some great improvements for them. West of Eastland Drive, west of Veterans on Eastland, we're going to be having done in the next few weeks as well. We've been coordinating with them on some water service work, so kudos to DSD on our coordination with that. Hershey Road will also be happening from Empire North. up to Jumer Drive and that will complete a lot of that Hershey corridor. It's going to look great and it's going to bump right up to what the work that IDOT is doing along Hershey from Empire. And so one of the things I just want to highlight for you though is that this is the first time in a long time that I can remember all of the resurfacing has been done and completed in the same construction season. And a lot of that, again, is thanks to you all allowing us to bid the work early, even before we get the budget passed so that we can get early on in the docket with the contractors so they know what's coming. We can forecast all of this kind of thing all ties together and allows us to get this work done in a timely fashion. Next, we'll jump over to Fox Creek Road. We've talked to you about this project before, so I'll just give you a brief update. You know this is an over $18 million project, long needed. Two lanes of traffic in each direction will be happening. But the big topic is the railroad. The railroad still has continued to be a little bit of a struggle for us. We're still having a tough time, but Stark has been getting all the work done on the north side. They've got all the pavement expanded on the north side, a lot of the curb and gutter if you drive out there. They're actually going to be flipping over to the south side and starting to do work as well. We're hoping that we can get all the approval from the railroad so that over the winter, we can actually start doing some of those pilings that we need to for the bridge work. We're still on schedule though. So Stark has been able to keep us on schedule by doing work all around that. So kudos to them for that effort. We'll then switch over to Hamilton Road, Bunda Commerce, phase two. You can see on the left, I'm scrolling down the project. I could even do a search if I wanted to. If you get the chance to go out here, go out to Commerce and Hamilton Road, right at that intersection, if you can see my cursor. Look to the southwest, and it's amazing. It's beautiful. The road has asphalt on it, curb and gutter. All the inlets are done. You're going to think, why can't I drive on this road? This looks like a perfectly drivable road. The railroad isn't done with their work yet. So they still have the safety crossing work that they're out there right now. So we wanted to get that done. Once they're done, we also have Ameren and Nycore out there doing work. We're going to within the next, we don't wanna over promise and under deliver, but within the next month or so, we should be able to start getting pavement onto that new road. So as soon as the railroad gets done with their work, we can then probably turn that over and then people can start using some of that new road. More work will need to be done next year though. So this will go until the fall of next year, but again, major work being done. Next, we'll highlight Locust Colton. Councilmember Kearns, you pointed that out as well. Right now, work is being done on Mercer. Mercer is shut down actively. All the water work is done. If you see the hi-ho out there, the big scoop that's working, that's the stormwater they're putting in right now. So they're doing stormwater so that Mercer, we're hoping, can be done and opened even by the end of this construction season. We'll still have some of the work on the side streets to do, both water and storm, but we're hoping to get quite a bit of that done. So that will be really great work. One of the ways I want to try to show you here project type up on the top, these are filters you can use. If I click external, that means that hits IDOT projects. So now on the left side, you can see all the different IDOT projects that are ongoing. And so whenever I go over here to the Empire from Maine to Tawanda, that's a project that just got bid and we're going to be going, that will be going until 2028. We've got Tawanda to Carnahan, which is underway right now. That's a $24 million project. And so all of this is going to be major IDOT improvement work. Over on the west side, we've got this currently underway as well. And so IDOT is doing a lot of work in town. I'd just like to stop for a second and acknowledge how much work they're doing. And for a lot of decades at the city, we got so many complaints saying the roads are, this is a bad road. And we're like, it's an IDOT road. And so they are coming in in mass and doing a lot of this work and it's making a massive difference. So Mayor Brady met with the district engineer and really pushed some of those efforts. Thank you, Mayor. And so we really do appreciate a lot of the elected support over the years trying to push this work forward. So that has made a great difference, this five-year plan. So we really do appreciate that effort. I will highlight for you Business 51. There's a couple of projects that are gonna be coming up that you're gonna wonder about. Locust here from Main Street up to Tawanda, that is going to be starting next year, as well as Morrissey. There's two different sections of Morrissey that they're looking to start in 2028. The last one I'd like to highlight is Business 51. That's looking to be done in two different phases. Starting in January, they're looking to bid that work. So again, that's a $50 million project of reconstruction north of Olive up to Division, and south of Olive, we're looking at resurfacing. Hopefully you can tell this is more than a mouthful. There's a lot of work going on. I don't wanna take up more of your time, but we could go on and on. I really would encourage you to take a look at this website. We've got a lot of information out there. We've tried to just touch the highlights to show you and give you a sample of the kind of work. Thank you to the elected for continuing to support the effort that we do with our planning, our effort, our infrastructure. Many of you ran on that topic and you're really showing it. So it is very much appreciated from a staff perspective.

questions you have we take them now thank you and with that are there questions or comments by members member hendrix yeah thank you very much for this i could you just show us or talk to us a little bit about you know it is a lot of money that's being invested but staff is also really good about going out and and seeking out grants um and we don't bear the whole brunt of that total cost so could you just speak a little bit maybe to uh how we are being smart with taxpayer dollars and making sure that it's not all just from the city of bloomington i love that yes that would be great um there are what you can see on this as well on the right side you can see different funding where's the money coming from right so you can see to your point council member hendricks

There are times we have grade crossing protection funds. There are other ones we've got with Airport and Cornelius that we have a $600,000 DECIO grant with. We've got over with, you can see here on the lower right, a DECIO grant that we had received. We also have the Lafayette, let's see where that is. We've also got the Lafayette Constitution Trail that we also have additional money for. what you're going to find if you scroll through here you're going to be able to see where we're getting these funds from and it gives you an idea the level of of how we are actually leveraging uh the ways in which we're using these funds so so full credit to the city manager he's been advocating strongly for that yeah and i would just also add that you know

In recent history, we've also started asking for federal assistance. So obviously our residents pay a lot in income tax. We're trying to get as much money, much of that back to the community as possible. We've been successful with some earmarks from Congressman LaHood, who has helped us with primarily Hamilton Bund of Commerce, but with some other projects as well. And then Congressman Sorenson as well, who has provided some funding. Uh, if the we're waiting on the current budget to finally get, uh, approved in Washington, it may be a while, but we have some earmarks in there as well. Uh, Senator Duckworth is supporting an earmark for some of the sewer work, and then we have some additional road work in there as well. So that is certainly, we are trying to get as much money that we're sending to Washington back here as possible.

And with that, are there other comments or questions from members?

I also really appreciate this presentation and your willingness to walk through the dashboard with us so that we kind of get oriented to that. I did have just one clarification. So the $206.3 million that you referred to, that does include the outside funding like IDOT and so forth, right?

Actually, the $206 million does not include the investment that IDOT is making.

Okay.

So that is just city funds. So that is actually not included. So, for example, Business 51 is a $50 million job. We're anticipating that's a million dollars of our funds. And so that $206 only includes a million dollars.

Yeah, I'm glad I clarified that.

It's a good clarification. There's a lot of funds in this community that's being expended. So this is over five years. You'll see up on the screen. It's a five-year kind of spread that we're trying to capture those.

Do you have a basic estimate for the IDOT funds off the top of your head?

Oh, I wish I were that good. It would be a guess if I were to do it. But I will put something together for the city manager to email out to you and to the group.

When you talk about the Route 51 Olive to Division, when you say it's to bid in January, unpack that. When does that actual digging start?

That's fair. the challenge with any capital there are many challenges we're hitting the cursory high level land acquisition a lot of times is a struggle for any project idoc continues to run into that buzzsaw the the business 51 project has been they've been looking to bid that now for over a year they continue to run in and they did the same thing with route 9. we run into the same thing fox creek was challenged hamilton road was a challenge with land acquisition They're saying currently January, that's the general public information they're sharing, but it may be longer. So the reality is if they bid it in January, if they bid it in January, right now they don't have all the land acquisition. The soonest the bucket would hit the ground would be spring of 2027. so when you can you unpack that a little bit I mean what what land are they trying to acquire yes so anytime you've got a road like that when you do reconstruction you have um well it's a deep well here I'll try to keep it topical you have right-of-way that is city-owned property adjacent to that you may need to acquire city-owned property or state-owned property for turning radii to accommodate semis that's the most typical on a major project But there's also easements, permanent easements, temporary easements. There's a variety of land acquisition that a capital project has to be able to get to be able to, and before they'll bid it, they rightfully have to have all of those things in place. Does that answer some of the question?

Are we talking about businesses, residents that are foot dragging? or just it's complicated to get all those people together or is it?

Yeah, sometimes it is all the above. We've seen businesses, we've seen residents, we've seen sometimes they want more money than it's appropriate to be able to give. Sometimes there's vacant landowners that it's hard to find and track them down. It's a variety of issues. That's why it is one of the challenging facets of capital improvements.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from members? Mayor Mrakas, Director, thank you, and I doubt I'm not mistaken operates on a five year budget, do they not. Mayor Mrakas, Have your plan, yes, they do there thanks, thank you again. Mayor Mrakas, Next, we will move to. Mayor Mrakas, Discussions from our city manager there's further discussions you'd like to bring forth and on to other.

Mayor Mrakas, Member initiatives full of my report, although the screens just went blank so we'll see we're getting back all right there you go. I really appreciate, just real quick, Director Karch and all of that work. As you said, more work going on than he's ever seen in his tenure with the city. And I will tell you, engineers are just not falling off trees right now. It is hard to find engineers, but we have some really good ones within the city. We're very fortunate and really appreciate. This is a lot of work on our engineering department. So we really appreciate their efforts through all of this. Just a couple of other quick updates for the community and the council. If you could go to the next slide. Jim talked a little bit, stole my thunder on the 400 block, but that is coming along nicely. All of the sidewalks are in. Both sides of the sidewalks are in. They put some gravel down today. We hope to see pavement within the next couple of weeks. So that is coming along very well. I'm seeing a lot more smiles as I meet with business owners on that block lately than I previously had. So everybody's ready to get that block done, and we've got light at the end of the tunnel if the weather cooperates. Next slide. Within the coming days, we'll be formally announcing that Freddy's will be coming to the community. It is going to be located next to the Dutch Brothers. It'll have another little building next to it as well. So just excited that we are going to get some more investment within the community. Next slide. Tomorrow we will be issuing a press release on the data center forum panel discussion. The city and the town are coming together to really host this. It will be August 26 at the BCPA from 5 PM to 8 PM. Again, tomorrow we will be releasing all of the people who have agreed to come and be part of the panel. We have the system set up for people to submit questions, so you can use this QR code. We'll be providing other ways for people to do that. This will be an opportunity for, again, we'll gather as many, all of the questions, and then we will have a moderator that will be uh working uh the forum as well and so we will try and get as many questions as we can answered we've tried to get a diverse panel so all different kinds of viewpoints all kinds of different backgrounds my guess is nobody's probably going to be happy with the panel and maybe that means we did okay but we really want to get all different types of viewpoints there represented again so we can get the questions of the council of the community answered and at least some more information on this then following up the the planning commission will be holding public hearings on the on the regulations that are to be drafted there will be two public hearings one in October 1st and the second one on November 5th this will be the opportunity for the public to come and provide their testimony and share their thoughts on any potentially new proposed data center regulations. Under the zoning law in Illinois, we have to go through this process of doing a public hearing before we make any amendments to our current zoning regulations. We have, as everybody's aware, we have some regulations in place right now on data centers, but we do not believe that they follow best practice. And so this is the process of making sure we have better regulations on the books. Next slide. The Mayor said this also, but also want to give a shout out to Ameren and Corn Belt. And I know that it was a long period without power for some. I know Deputy City Manager Sue McLaughlin, we asked in our staff meeting this morning, who was the last to get power? And I think it was Sue on Saturday night at 9 PM. And we know other people suffered even longer periods of time. I think we heard, Mayor, I think we heard yesterday, from Ameren that they were down to 10 customers last night that they were trying to get back online. We had hundreds of crews all throughout the state here working on these issues. It was not easy. It was very difficult with the type of damage we had, but we thank them. They were in constant communication with us, both Ameren and Corn Belt. and we really appreciate all their efforts. That being said, we realize people had a lot of damage from this. And so, as mentioned earlier, if people have spoiled food, we're not requiring additional stickers to be put on bags. get that out to the curb and we will get all of this picked up as quickly as we can but again it is going to take us a while to get through uh through all of this and through all the debris and through all the the garbage the flood damage everything else so we are on it we're working we've made a lot of progress a lot of great progress already but certainly this is going to take us a while to get through and again just want to say thanks to our public works crews who have done a great job getting out there and getting, you know, 300 loads in such a short time is unbelievable. Thank you to our police department and our fire department. They were out rescuing cars that were stranded in water, just responding to all of these different calls and did a great job. We were so fortunate to not have any serious injuries reported in either of these storms. And so again, just want to give my thanks to all the great city staff as well as the utility crews that were out there. Next slide. And finally, just keeping on the topic of the storms, we have added a landing page to our website where the community can go and get updates on the events and how to get what's happening with the cleanup and what they need to do to get things picked up. Also on the top of our website, you can see in the red area up there, this is where we are asking both the businesses and the residents to go and fill out these forms. They're not very detailed, but we need to know exactly, you know, what kind of damage you sustained. If you've got a potential dollar amount, you contribute to that. The reason we are asking for this information is because this is what will be used to determine if we are going to be eligible for any additional assistance from the federal government through these emergency declarations. So it's not the city being nosy. This is the information that will be used in furtherance of seeing if we can get any additional assistance again with with at least the goal of us being of the community being eligible for low interest low barrier loans through some of the damage that has been caused and that is all i have mayor thank you now members uh council if there's uh any information you'd like to share we will start with member scott

yeah sure just be really quickly um yes also adding my name to the thank you to to the city for for stepping up but also thank you to the citizens of bloomington walking around ward nine on on thursday night and saturday morning a lot of people coming out to help others take down down trees a lot of people my husband uh had a really good time with his chainsaw uh up and down jamestown road so thanks to the citizens

I just want to thank all the crews working overtime. Their trucks are out there. There's a lot of trucks out there. Special thanks to Sue for helping with a constituent who wrote in and I guess their sidewalk by their driveway had been out of commission for a while and Sue helped resolve that and

uh the public works people came out and got it resolved and sent an email saying thank you from that constituent so i just wanted to share that with you camera hendrix member board member straza yes uh again talking about the weather and all the crews are out um thanks again for the city and people being out there uh i walk ward five After all this had happened, and it was amazing how fast the city was out there. I think it was Jeff, is that correct? I was walking and the city saw a city truck and I stopped and they had these sheets of like responses and addresses of people that they like were going, they were verifying, making sure people are okay and knowing where they need to go next and reporting those all to uh to wherever it was going to get people out there to help uh clear debris and so i appreciate that but yes again there are lots of people neighbors it's amazing uh everyone came out chainsaws hand saws everything uh people that just said i was driving down there and i might even live in this neighborhood but i just felt like i could help so there were people just getting out of their vehicles and helping so it's great to see a community come together unfortunately for the disaster that we had, but it's great to see that everybody in this whole community was pitching in however they could.

Member Dannenberger, Member Montney.

Yes, I just wanted to let everyone know that on Friday, August 14th, there was a very short special meeting of the BHCC. The purpose of that meeting was to reelect their representative for the Funding Advisory Committee. And so that was done. After that stated reason, the staff also provided information that they would be focusing on the behavioral health public-facing website as a communication vehicle, and that they intend to update that website quarterly.

Thank you, Member Kearns. Thank you all, and echoing everyone's comments. I too want to say thank you at the particular time the storms were hitting. I was out of state, but I want to especially thank our city manager for keeping me up to date and on all the activities going on and all the departments, as everyone has said, we can't say thank you enough. Plenty of work lies ahead though. and we will stay focused on that for the citizens we all represent. So thank you to each and every one of you. It's amazing what can be done when no one cares who gets the credit. So with that being said, we are now going to enter into Executive Session. And at this time, the City Council will enter into Executive Session. Per sections 2C1, and personnel and 2C11 litigation of 5 ILCS 120. The City Council may also go into executive session as needed and allowed by law under 5 ILCS of the compiled statutes 120-2 for additional reasons. And I would at this time ask for a motion to enter into executive session.

So moved.

Motion by Member Kearns. Second.

I'll second.

By Member Hendricks. Can you take the vote, please? We'll call.

Councilmember Kerns? Yes. Councilmember Montney? Councilmember Dannenberger? Yes. Councilmember Straza? Yes. Councilmember Hendricks? Councilmember Ward? Aye. Councilmember Lee?

Yes.

Councilmember Scott? Yes.

And just for the record, with the exceptions that are the closed session, it is for both pending and probable litigation, as well as the performance of specific employees. thank you i was just about to get to that yeah and there'll be no further action taken after executive session ends take a minute break and then come back and just also is the video still running so we will just adjourn immediately there will no be no action taken so if if we want to stop the um the recording we can do that too so that you guys don't have to come back in thank you if there's any members that need a break for a minute before we

Enter into session. Now would be the time. Thank you.