Town Council - Regular Meeting

meeting for the normal town council for January 5th, 2026. Please call the role. Mayor Cous here. Mr. Preston, Mrs. Loren here. Mr. Buyers here. Mr. Roers here. Miss Smith here. Mr. McCarthy here. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

We have no uh public commenters at the beginning of the meeting. We do have uh two commenters at the uh end of the meeting. So we move to the omnibus agenda items that will be taken with a single vote unless a council member would like to pull an item for discussion. Items considered under omus are approval of the minutes of the regular council meeting of December 1st, 2025. Approval of the minutes of the special council meeting of December 8th, 2025. The report to receive and file town of normal expenditures for payment as of December 10th, 2025 and December 31st, 2025. A resolution authorizing the execution of an intergovernmental agreement with the city of Bloomington, Mlan County, and Ecology Action Center for solid waste management services. Please call the role.

Mrs. Loren, I Mr. [clears throat] Buyers, hi. Mr. Robers, I Miss Smith, I. Mr. McCarthy, hi. Mayor Cous, hi. Those items are approved. One item of general orders tonight is a resolution approving a site plan for the tabernacle at 1845 West Hubby Avenue. Move approval. Second. On this item, please call the RO. Mr. Buyers, I. Mr. Roers, I. Miss Smith, I. Mr. McCarthy, I. Mrs. Lauren, I. Mayor Cous.

I. That resolution is approved. Uh, two items of new business. The first of which is a motion to accept the proposed fiscal year 202526 to fiscal year 203031 community investment plan to the CIP. Thank you. We have a motion and a second.

Thank you, mayor and councel. Um Mr. Hune is coming up and getting things lined up to do a presentation. It's our annual presentation of the capital um investment that you'll see in the upcoming proposed budget. Um, we will be having our budget work session in a couple weeks. So, the time is now to explain what kind of capital projects you're going to see in the budget and all of our community investment um for current year as we finish up the current year and the five upcoming years. So, Mr. Hume, take it away.

Thank you, M. Ree. Um, as Ree mentioned, uh, this is our our fiveyear CIP budget from 256 to 3031. Uh the numbers I'm going to show you tonight have been programmed into the proposed budget that we'll be bringing to you on the 20th to discuss at at length. Uh this of course is just the capital project piece of that overall five-year spending plan. Uh the purpose of the CIP is to essentially account for and plan for major expenditures across the community. Um we we want to ensure that we're managing all the assets of the community appropriately and and providing quality of life for our residents. So you can see from this list here that the projects span a great deal of things from road and bridge work to street maintenance and waste collection u vehicles to public safety of course police and fire all the assets need to provide those services our parks and recreation our facilities maintenance these are aquatics our playgrounds our hack systems our roofs our floors of course our water and sewer infrastructure systems and we try to do this in a balanced and measured way uh and then provide some transparency to that and that's what this document and our CIP uh does in terms of that information as we review uh the projects and to select projects. There are several variables that we take into account. Uh there is some art and science in that to select what makes the most sense at the right time. There's [clears throat] a number of things that we look at. Of course, health and safety are primary. Uh what funding sources are available. We have master plan that give us guidance on to do certain things. Quality of life in terms of customer service for the residents. We look at infrastructure support. if we have equipment that's unique or special in terms of useful life or or life expectancy. Um we look at sustainability, prevented maintenance, restoration, potential savings for doing certain projects at certain times. Some projects have complexity to them in terms of require water and sewer, road work, all to kind of be coordinated. So the timing of that project might be over several years as that happens. And of course, federal state mandates guide

that. So all these things kind of coales what we finally decide as what's the most recommended plan for the five-year budget for all those projects for the council to consider. We divide up uh the projects there's multiple funding sources over several fiscal years. We divide them up over different spending types. Uh the on this slide you can see we have transportation that's our major spending type that we have. I'll spend some time on that tonight. Operating assets that's our vehicle and equipment we're purchasing all uh throughout the year. water and sewer systems, parks and facilities, and then storm water. This slide is is is really quite telling, and I'll spend a fair amount of time on this slide compared to the other ones. Um, to give you a sense of the CIP, it it's a it's a six-year window. So, the current year plus the five fiscal years we're looking at for the budget process. And that rolls forward every single year. So, we do six years now, move forward to six years next. One year drops off, one year comes on. our six-year plan last year, uh, just under $200 million of spending for that six-year window, the current year, plus the five years adopted budget. We revised it again every year. So, we move that six-year window forward one year. Year drops off, year comes on. Now, we're $188 million. A slight decrease in spending. Lots of reasons for that, and I'll kind of give you some some reasons for that. Now, if you look at transportation, you can see this CIP last year for transportation spend was 94.56 million. uh for the plan for this new six-year window, that year going forward, we're at 90 almost $100 million of spending. So, kind of what happened there, a few things. Um first of all, as you move forward that one fiscal year forward for that six-year plan, a lot of projects in that first year got completed and essentially fall off that five-year window or that six-year window. Some major spending that occurred last year that's no longer in that six-year window. uh a lot of in um intersection work for Landmark for College and Fort Jesse. We had the

Savannah Green fall off in terms of the project uh the project was completed. Um those are kind of the major decrease that were in that six-year plan that moved forward. Some increases of course underpass had a cost increase. So that that bumped up our cost for that six-year window. We have a new item on on the pro on the C or on the CIP this year is the Lynon pedestrian bridge that's on there for this uh this fiscal year. And then road work for the most part which is also a big part of the spending area did come up a little bit over that six-year plan. So on the desk side of sales on the transportation spend what f what comes off that's completed what comes on. Um we're we're up a bit in terms of spending. Other section that's our operating assets our vehicle and equipment stuff. Um that's down 4.56 uh million. I wouldn't glean from that a decrease in spending. Uh that's a those are our ambulances and fire trucks and uh waste vehicles, police cars. They're up and down depending when when their use for life is due. I know last year that in that six-year window with year one being completed, there was a lot of purchases for public works in terms of big waste trucks. That's no longer in that six-year window yet. It'll probably begin later on as useful life continues, but for now that's kind of an up and down spend. And I wouldn't say it's it's a pullback of spending. It's essentially a timing of when those useful life for those assets come due. However, water is a little different story. U there is some timing with water in terms of the major projects were completed in in the year that dropped off that six-year window. Uh but we do have a bit of an issue with water in terms of capital planning. We have actually pulled back a bit on capital spending for the next five years in in water. That's a result of um inflationary costs for operating, inflationary costs for for capital. uh we have a 2% rate increase planned in the in the program of the budget for that. To begin, it's not going to be enough to to satisfy those capital needs. So, we are pulling back a bit in this five-year budget. However, we will be talking about that a lot more on the 20th and also as part of the budget

process going forward. Same with sewer. Uh sewer spend is actually up a little bit in that six-year window. However, that's mostly sewer lining. Um sewer, we have some significant projects for sewer. We have not put in the five-year budget yet. mostly forest man stuff that needs to be programmed for the next five years. It's not in the budget this year for the five-year plan. We do need to eventually work it in there. So, as part of that process for budgeting, a 2% rate increase is not going to be enough to satisfy those project needs, too. And we'll come back in 20 on the 20 to talk more about that in more detail and then do more planning for next fiscal year, how to deal with those capital projects in terms of a rate discussion. Facilities down by $8 million. Uh very similar situation, more of a timing issue. Several big projects got completed in that six-year window from year one. We had a a VG of energy a price ver energy manager program that completed. Uh the uh police department locker room got completed, the fire stations being completed. So all those projects eventually were completed in year one. Uh so a lot of good stuff got done last year that's kind of fallen off that six-year window. So again, we're not pulling back on spending per se. Just big projects fell out of that six-year window that were just completed this last fiscal year. Parks uh pretty pretty stable in terms of spending in the six-year window plan looks looks [clears throat] fine. There are other needs for parks that we're looking at, but for the most part, we're we're fairly stable in that six years plan. And the storm water, the same thing. Um pretty stable spending from from our six-year plan last year to six year plan this year. The remaining slides uh just kind of break it out by different uh spending category. Transportation you can see is the largest one that we've discussed. Uh the uptown connector the underpass is is sizable at 36 million. Uh street resurfacing 35.5 million over the six year period. Again slightly up over the

previous six years. Uh you can see their list of street specific street work and then maintenance for culvert and bridge sidewalk ADA and so forth. operating assets. Again, these things are expensive to purchase and maintain. Uh the lion share of the spending for equipments and vehicle is public works and police and fire. Over the next five or six years, we'll spend $20 million on all the assets, equipment, the same thing, about 7.5. Those are all supporting public works and police and fire for the most part. And then of course, our IT is also paid out of that for servers and structure and so forth. Water distribution. uh lion shares water man replacement again we we're doing a lot of water man replacement now we have we had to cut back a little bit in the five-year budget and we'll discuss that more as part of the budget process on the 20th the other category that 2.1 million that's a big category for other uh but it's mostly that's that relates to the uh upgrade for the meter reading systems and then the replacements of those going out and then a well well maintenance and fire it replacement Um sewer collection again pretty stable. Sewer lining projects 10.6 million or 10.5 I'm sorry 10.6 million. Um utility improvements uh 3.5. So you can see we're spending a fair amount of money in there, but we do have some other projects that we need that are that are significant dollars that are not programmed yet in the budget that we'll need to eventually deal with in the out years. parks and facilities. Now, we combine these. Obviously, the large the large piece there is the fire station. That's a current year expense. It's it's wrapping up as you as you're well aware for the current fiscal year. Um, in terms of there's playgrounds, there's shelters, there's sidewalks, there's ADA replacements, there's parking deck maintenance, there's HVAC and ADA stuff, and there's power management projects. All kind of part of the parks and wreck

and facilities management budget. And again, parks is pretty stable. facilities is down, but that's mostly a timing issue between big expenses coming off in year one. Maybe the fire station is so worth storm water drainage very similar to last year. Spending is pretty consistent in in terms of our five-year budget plan also for that fund. Any questions so far? I'm going to kind of move to our interactive tool that talks about specific projects. That's kind of a quick overview, but I want to give the council a sense of where the dollars are at, what some of the changes were between last year's plan and this year's plan.

Okay, good. So, with that, we will switch over to the interactive tool that we're quite proud of, of course, to share and to show. So, to get to this tool, it's it's it it uh go to the town's website, you get to the the uh open door open data portal here, or you can scroll down from government and go to open port data. They're also there. There's multiple ways to get to it and you're quite familiar with this. We've used this for a number of years. Uh we feel it's it's a nice transparent uh piece of interactive software that essentially takes all the data in terms of the number of projects, the total spend, the funding source, the spending type, and the fiscal year and consolidates all to kind of interactive tool. A very busy page to look at. I'll kind of break it down for you. I know you're familiar with our in the past, but this first part you can see 365 projects planned for that six-year window at $188 million in total value. This there's a little map here of the graphic of the town. The shaded areas represent the actual projects. Um gray is is for transportation, blue is for water, green is for parks and wreck and so forth. So to kind of give you a sense of this, uh you can click on any one of these elements to see what's going on. So example, if you want to see what this spent is going to be for next fiscal year, fiscal year in 27. $61.3 million is spent next fiscal year and all the capital projects, 80 projects in total. And it just shows kind of where the funding sources are coming from. Capital fund, general fund, reward, reserve, water fuel, tax, roadway, and so forth. Click that off. If you want, if you're just interested in facilities alone, you can hit facilities and that will give you a to for to so total project for facilities for that six-year window $8.3 million, 25 distinct projects. You can kind of scroll down here and hit kind of look at some what these are. We try to give a location for where the project is. So here, if you click on

that, it'll put what the project is. That's the College Avenue parking deck buildout. to to increase space and parking for the college deck. You can see you can scroll down here to see the cost and get a sense of the the description and then of course a contact name for that to to talk with Mr. Mr. Clinch. Here again some more information. There's a a project for PD emergency generating replacement. Scroll a little further. Also some power management there in city hall. Some HVAC and so forth. You can kind of click on these different uh visual cues and pick up what the project is. You can also do a search here for it if you know what it is. Click off that. Look at Let's get down to parks here. Again, parks are green probably for grass maybe. So, park projects again just to give you a sense of what's going out in some of those areas. Let me pull this out a little bit. There's a big one up there. That's the park and stroke uh sidewalk restoration. that's planned for 27 next fiscal year. Uh, of course, we also do a lot of playground replacement here. That's probably there's Anderson Park East playground replacement, $275,000. So, again, you can click on here and see your neighborhood, see your timing. If you want to see what's going to happen next fiscal year, click on that. That's parks fiscal year. Almost half million dollars going to be spent in about five projects. So, again, very interactive uh in our opinion, very useful for people to to to uh interact with and navigate. Do one more here. Transportation. That's of course our big one. Let me see here. Pull that off. So there's that $99.3 million transportation cost. You can see the funding sources on the bottom of the page there. Motor fuel tax, roadway fund, of course, roadway fund is going to be where we spend a lot of our money on the streets and streets uh and resurfacing. Same with motor fuel tax. And then of course the big project there is underpass 2. Again, transportation

project funded from the underpass fund. Again, it's it's great. So, you can click on these things as you want to. If you want to see something spent next year, same kind of thing. $40 million of spending next year and so forth. Look at a couple of these real quick just to give you a sense of that. Of course, West College is is is under completion here. Again, more information there to be available look at. Uh this one here is some uptown lighting study that's going to happen next year. That's probably that's a covert there. The ever culvert and the new project there is uh len street pedestrian bridge. So again it's it's it's a really useful tool. This all ties into our proposed budget. We reconcile it to our general assistant information and as we prepare the budget for the for the 20th and the proposed budget, this information is is all been programmed in. That's kind of a quick overview. Hopefully it's helpful in terms of information. happy to address any specific questions on projects. Uh although we might need to have the directors of those areas kind of come down and give you more detail if you want to talk about more of it.

Miss Smith, go ahead. Hi, thank you. Um I I navigated through that portal last night and was looking for some specific projects and one in particular um Eric Sorenson had made the announcement about getting some funding for our Vernon um road project where we're looking at uh improving the road and improving the safety and improving the flow of traffic on the road. And at this time it is just the study that's included in this capital budget. Correct. That is correct.

That is correct. You can see Thank you, Mr. You can actually see it on the map that happens to be on the screen at the moment. That blue section there that shows the study. Oh, I'm sorry. Uh this transportation. Oops. Nope. Sorry. I was looking. There you go. I think it's further down. Or maybe since it's a study, it's showing out of Mr. Auto's office. It might be in Mr. Auto's office. Correct. But but that is all that we are budgeting for in the next fiscal year is the study.

So until and unless we we get some additional funding for that, we won't actually begin work on that project or or allocate time and dollars to it. Correct. Well, we will allocate time and dollars to the study, but the actual construction bid documents and things like that won't be until we have a finalized grant agreement with the federal agency that's funding it. Um, and so that will be a ways down the road. And we also want to make sure we have enough money to cover the project. And um in your introductory slides, you were talking about um the transportation costs um and uh the the dollars are pretty high, but with increased cost, are we getting the same number of lane miles paved or because of increasing cost, are we having to scale back on what we can actually accomplish with our capital budget? Mr. Otto, it sounds like more of a public works related question in terms of what we are planning lane mileage in terms of the budget in comparison.

Yeah, the lane mileage really depends on the type of facility we're looking at upgrading. So, a arterial that happens to have four lanes will cost much more per lane mile if um we do a thicker overlay to accommodate for truck traffic, things like that. So in general costs go up every year. Um so but lane mileage doesn't necessarily indicate the cost per lane mile varies significantly based on the type of facilities we do. Um and then I I was noticing through the dashboard that there's sequential replacement of equipment. We seem to be buying a lot of vehicles um every year and um we're saving for those in a vehicle reserve. Correct.

Correct. So, we're paying those out of dollars that we've set aside to be able to provide for that. Um now, in respect to the the new fire station on RAB and Shepard, um will they be getting new vehicles? No. No. The only vehicles that will be replaced in the fire department in this proposed CIP are things that are already scheduled for replacement. Just because they're relocating into new station 2 doesn't mean we're replacing all of their apparatus. The apparatus gets replaced when the it's end of useful life.

And and just as a point of information, what what would the price tag be on one ambulance, one fire truck, and one ladder truck? Uh, a ladder truck is 2.5 million, a fire engine is 1 million, and an ambulance is 400,000. Okay.

And and I just wanted to point out your other comment about there being a lot of vehicles um in the replacement schedule, and that is the case year after year. We have a public works has a lot of fleet vehicles, a lot of curb collection vehicles, um waste, dump trucks, things for street maintenance and snow clearing and picking up trash and leaves and everything. Um parks and wreck public works also have a lot of pickup trucks. Um police department has a significant number of squad cars. So we are a fullervice agency with a lot of vehicles, a lot of fleet vehicles. Well, and I do notice when they when you come before us with um the budget to purchase those items, we're getting good wear out of them because they're um the the life expectancy. They're wellmaintained. So, I I was just surprised at the number of vehicles that we had to account for in the budget. Um let me just check because I had asked about as I was exploring it. And when we're talking about the College Avenue parking buildout, that is just what is currently being used for storage is going to be improved so that we can have more parking spaces there.

That is what we're budgeting for. Yes. I think we estimate an additional it can accommodate maybe an additional 40 or so more spaces. And um the one I didn't recognize and if you wouldn't mind clarifying for the record, the Northwest Infrastructure Polygon project. What is that? Um Mr.

Thank you, Miss Ree. Uh that project is a project that's funded uh 80% uh it's a approximately a $650,000 study that will look at infrastructure in the northwest normal area everywhere. If you look at Rivian Motorway um just to the west of there and north and west of the Rivian motorway plant all the way across uh the interstate exit at Newton all the way through uh north of Love's truck stop. So, we want to look at infrastructure in that area, what it would take to make that area developable and what uh could look like in terms of capital planning for the future, not only for a full buildout, but what it would look like to make in incremental improvements to allow development in those areas.

And I could add that that project was also a recipient of a congressional directed spending request a number of years ago in support of that study through Senator Durban, I believe. One other thing I just wanted to highlight with this capital budget when we voted on the property tax in December, part of our action was to rebate um the interest expense on the debt because under the law we could cover that with property taxes. We choose choose not to do that. So, we're covering debt service on the outstanding bonds with our existing revenue sources and these capital budgets also have to compete for those dollars out of our existing budgets. And I just wanted to I'm I'm pleased that we're shooting for 188 million, but we're operating within constraints.

Um, Miss Smith, if I could make one clarification, what council did is they um you agreed to abate both principal and interest, not just interest. So, principal and interest payments for the bonds were abated through the property tax. Okay. Thank you. Others,

um, if I could just make one comment, I don't want to interrupt any council, but I did want to supplement Mr. Hun's comments way back in one of his earlier slides where it showed all of the categories of the C community investment plan. Um he highlighted that some of our enterprise funds will be a subject of further conversation during the budget process and even thereafter I'm certain um because sewer fund while it looks pretty good there are very sizable expensive force main projects that are going to need our attention and we're talking multiple millions of dollars for each of those projects like tens of millions potentially Those are very expensive projects. Um that's going to require a long range plan for that and a funding model. The water distribution and the in the investment of the water fund to continue our very robust capital investments that we've been doing in recent years. We would like to talk to council about what it would take to continue on that path. But for now, we are presenting a plan and a budget that stays within our current um funding model.

M. Thank you. I've got a couple of topics. Um first on roads, can you go back [clears throat] to that transportation slide with the blue bars in your in your PowerPoint? Oh,

that one there. Second one down. Thank you. So that's 355 million for street resurfacing. Um what's all in for um our road work? Is it that 35 plus another 10 that's street specific? Um I'm trying to get at how are we keeping up with um what has been a threshold to keep up with the pacer study. Right. I default to Mr. Roto and Allen. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Hume. The road work encompasses several things, not just street resurfacing, but uh what you see there is specific street work, bridges, uh we consider sidewalks, our transportation project as well, uh ADA ADA ramps, um pavement preservation studies and evaluations are all part of maintaining a robust system that we have that includes our traffic signals that are an integral part of our transportation system. So really all those um are part of our um roadway network within the rightway areas in general. Um so I think we are actually awaiting we have uh

our new paser study coming out here in the next several months. We hope um probably the next three to four uh we hope to have a a study and some results. We actually uh council approved and we drove the streets in November right before Thanksgiving and right after Thanksgiving. So, um that data is with the consultant and we're actively uh awaiting uh some information from them in terms of where we're at and that data will help us understand what what progress we've made and how we're doing and be able to evaluate funding levels going forward. So, we're getting data and you said when roughly I in the next I would say four to six months somewhere in there. Yes. Um and that data will be shared publicly. Absolutely.

Wonderful. Um so if I just kind of do a spitball of a of an addition here, it's upwards of $60 million in allin of that surfacing, street work, bridge repair. So maybe in the in the range of uh eight to 10 million a year. Yes. Ballpark. I'm not asking you to commit. Yeah. I I don't have that number in front of me, but Okay. I I think it would be available. It's available on the interactive website because you can pick each year, but then um you know, we we do street resurfacing through multiple funds. So motor fuel tax and roadway fun.

Yeah. I just like to try to get at the whole number because I think what I saw is prepacer for the first study we were kind of sometimes in the five six million a year and we weren't keeping up and so I think we've shown better progress when we've reached you know seven eight and north of eight million uh a year all in on on maintaining and I think that's where the pacer 1.0 wanted us to be as I recall so that's why I asked that question. Okay. Uh, another topic if I may. O2. Um, just a a I hear your concern about water and and sewer. Um, obviously today may not be the right time to talk about this, but what I think I heard you say is that we don't have enough money in either of those enterprise funds to properly fund what we need to do from a capital. And so we're kind of hitting the brakes a little bit. Um and probably will this will need um a rate increase for both enterprise funds. Is that a accurate takeaway?

Yes. Okay. Um the last one um has to do with facilities. Um I see where you re um noted new fire station. Is that the um East Side Fire Station or is there anything in this six-year window that's beginning to take a look at um the third and final component of our 10-year-old study um for relocating station 3? Right now, this budget hasn't got anything for that yet.

So, is it safe to say that that's beyond our six-year window? I'm not sure if I'd say that, but I think for now we've identified the spending for the that reconstruction and it's not including the current a third station yet that reconfigure. Yeah, there's funds in the fund balance. We just don't show them being spent for land acquisition or construction at this point, right? There's funds in the fund balance. We have a fire station construction fund.

And where does that hit? Is that a uh in in the capital? It's it's in a it's in the fire station capital fund. As Miss Re said, we have a fund balance there that we've res reserved for that future fire station, but it has not been programmed any expenses against it yet. Okay. How much is in that reserve? 3 million. So, a little under three. Okay. Um will we do any data study prior to and and and budget for data study prior to that station three? We will review data. Of course, we don't need to budget for that. We have people on staff that collect and review the data.

I think that's all I have. Thank you. Further on this, we have a motion to accept the proposed CIP plan. Please call a Mr. Rober. I Miss Smith. I Mr. McCarthy. Hi, Mrs. Loren. I Mr. Buyers. I Mayor Cous. I That motion is approved. Um, we have a motion to approve appointments to the Bloomington Normal Saiakawa Sister Cities Committee. Approval. Second. Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. Would you read that?

I'd be happy to, Mayor. Um the mayor is recommending um to the Bloomington normal asaiakawa sister cities committee Mr. Boris Escalona Berbetta. Uh he's worked in higher education for over 20 years uh including um more than four years dedicated to international education. He holds a bachelor of arts and Asian studies and a masterers of science in sustainable tourism and hospitality. uh he's currently pursuing a doctoral degree uh in education uh focusing on intercultural competence and transformation uh transformational tourism. Mr. Burbetta uh previously previously served as an education abroad adviser uh at the University of Virginia where he assisted students in selecting international programs. Uh he's studied abroad in Japan, China uh and Ireland. Uh Mr. Rebetta now aims to serve the community through the Sister Cities Committee. He's eager to contribute and learn from a field he is deeply passionate about. Mr. Berbetta will be filling a vacant seat on the Asaiakawa Sister City Committee. [clears throat]

Please call the RO. Miss Smith I. Mr. McCarthy I. Mrs. Lauren I. Mr. Buyers. Hi. Mr. Roers. I. Mayor Cous.

I. That appointment is approved. We have uh two public commenters tonight um [clears throat] to uh speak at the end of the meeting here. Um just to go over the rules very briefly. I think you may know them already, but uh we ask that you state your name for the record and your testimony and you have three minutes of time to present. And our first speaker is John Grez. [clears throat] John Gruin. Uh, I had the privilege of working for Normal Fire Department for 26 and a half years, retiring as an assistant chief in 2014. And I'm here to speak in opposition to the closing of the fire station on East College Avenue. Um, I recently read some public comments from the council and feel there's some education that needs to happen. Uh, there's been a four to six minute response time bandied about in the public comments. There is no 4 to6 response standard. The NFPA 1710 specifies the first engine on scene in four minutes. If you close the station on College Avenue, you're going to have difficulty meeting that standard a majority of the time. The NFPA standard requires that first engine, four minutes on scene 90% of the time. Those numbers are predicated on a single family, two-story, 2,000 square foot house with no basement and no exposures. I think you would agree that the vast majority of houses in this community exceed those parameters. It calls for the second engine 6 minutes after the alarm and a full complement of 16 firefighters on scene in eight

minutes. You're not going to meet that standard if you close that station on East College Avenue. Um there's some been been some discussion about automatic aid, mutual aid. There's a difference between those two. Uh we do have some mutual aid agreements with the city of Bloomington that requires the incident commander to get on the radio and ask for them. There is no automatic response. Uh that request has to go to MetCom. Metcom then has to call Bloomington's dispatch center. They have to go through their CAD processing and get those units dispatched. Out of Bloomington's firehouses, there's two of them that are geographically located do to do us any good in rapid response. The station on North Le Street, the station on East Empire. Those are also two of their busiest stations while they're running upwards of 14,000 runs a year. So, they may or may not be available to us. To my knowledge, there is no automatic aid. The city of Bloomington requires an intergovernmental agreement that to my knowledge doesn't exist. automatic aid would slightly reduce that time because anytime that location came in, the dispatcher would know to automatically send those resources. So, while Bloomington Fire Department is certainly a valuable resource to us, they're not going to help improve those initial response times. You're talking about closing a firehouse where 41% of the population of that district is classified as vulnerable or at high risk for fire. 41%. So to me, it defies common sense for to say we're going to close a firehouse and drastically increase the distance between our firehouses, but that's not going to impact our response times. So

2006, I believe it was, NFD responded to just over 4,000 responses. Last year it was up over 8,000 with the same number of firefighters that were turning those calls in 2006. Several weeks ago on a Monday, a routine day, normal fire department called in ambulances from outside the town six times in 24 hours. Mr. Greing, you've exceeded your time. Could you wrap up your comments?

Okay. Um, I'd conclude with putting this in a real world perspective. Several weeks ago, uh, a gentleman left an exercise facility, had a significant cardiac event, crashed his car inside of an apartment building. College Avenue was on the scene in two minutes. Got him out of the car, resuscitated him, he had a full recovery. Had that station been closed that day, there would not have been a recovery. Oh, I the expansion of the constitution, trails, the street resurfacing, um, all the other quality of life things we talk about, all worthwhile goals. Mr. We have to take care of health and safety first. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Josh Witkowski. Thank you, Mayor Cuz, ladies and gentlemen of the council. My name is Josh Wakowski. I'm with XLN services. I represent Modern Mobility, a company that is now in their fifth year trying to bring micromobility options to the city of Normal. So, with that said, let's talk escooters. Uh, Mayor Cous in March of 2025 stated at an open forum, quote, "We have not banned e- scooters in normal." At an August 4th council meeting, Brian Day states, "E- scooters are not allowed anywhere in the community unless the community, municipality specifically, allows for their use. We haven't done so, and officially e- scooters are illegal in the town of Normal." Now, obviously, this is confusing. We have the mayor saying they're not banned, former council saying that they are illegal. It's very difficult to bring a business into this confusing environment when leadership and legal don't seem to agree. To make it worse, would surprise council to know that the mayor is actually slightly more right than Mr. Day, albeit in a completely confusing manner. Under current Illinois vehicle code, as we sit today in the town of Normal, e- scooters are treated as a vehicle of the first division. essentially treats them like cars. They may operate on roadways, must have a licensed operator, headlamp, tail lamp, insurance, registration, all the fun stuff that comes with that. Now, obviously, this is not a tenable position to take. Imagine having your police department pull over a child on a powered Razor scooter and cite them for

improper registration and usage. However, the facts remain. Under current law, all equipment and rules of the road that apply to the first division vehicles apply to e- scooters of any size unless the municipality drafts an ordinance that adopts the opt-in provisions of 625 ILCS 511518 along with the ability to regulate e- scooters contained within that section of Illinois vehicle code. That section of code was created by legislation that had been pursued by both the town of normal and modern mobility. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond either party's control, namely a pending Illinois Supreme Court case dealing with liability caused the town of Normal to withdraw support for the legislation even though it contained a majority of the requests made by this town's representation at the time. The good news is that pending case was decided in a manner that overwhelmingly favors municipalities on the issues of liability. So, I am here today to ask the town of Normal to come back to the table and to continue the work by following the lead of numerous other municipalities in Illinois that have adopted 625 ILCS 511518 and created viable rules for the use of escooters in their towns, clearing up confusion for the residents, businesses, and public institutions therein. By drafting an ordinance pursuant to this code, the town of Normal can continue to lead on issues of mobility and sustainability in Illinois. Thank you for your time.

Before taking a motion for a journal, concerns or comments.

Um just a couple of items. uh leaf collection in the fall was interrupted by a snowstorm and um the there is a an announcement going out to clarify that leaf collection will will occur um at least this week and next. Um and so if you have questions about that, do contact the public works department as they'll be doing that. And the other major announcement sore registration is this Thursday for their spring activities. Um it opens online at 7 a.m. this Thursday morning. Uh there's some of them are very popular. It's possible that your child or a dependent adult may not be able to get everything they want, but I do urge you to spread the word so that they can have access to recreational activities that are adapted to their needs and abilities.

Thanks, thank you. Uh we had a compelling speaker here um retired assistant chief Gersing um and um I want I thought it was maybe appropriate u between that and a few recent emails that we just got I think within the last 24 or 48 hours from concerned residents who have been here before um with public comment on the same issue. Will we be having a work session or a sharing of the internal data um as has been requested through emails and and other public commenters? I would say nothing's been scheduled yet. The majority of the council would like a work session.

In an email, you indicated that you had pulled some of the council members and you had not gotten any support. Do you feel like you will get four people? Uh you could equally pull them. I have. When will we have an answer at a poll? I'll get back to you on that.

I think so. We've been hearing from fire union for a number of months about this. Um I I guess there's a couple things I want to say. I appreciate hearing um or seeing John Gruing. It's been a while since I've seen him. Have you spent my career with him when he was working for the fire department. Um negotiated multiple collective bargaining agreements with him and and you know was there when he retired. if if need be, we could bring other assistant chiefs forward who would tell you a different opinion. Um so let me just share a couple things with short of having a work session. Um council recalls a couple years ago um President Chad Pacy and fire union local 2442 coming to you um specifically wanting to meet with council members because they had a concern that there wasn't enough communication. The beautiful thing of that entire process from a few years ago is that fire administration sitting in the back of the room has um had more structured labor management meetings. So, let me give you a little quick background. I won't take up much of your time. January 3, 2025, there was a labor management meeting. Um no discussion on staffing levels, GIS, or keeping station 2 open. January 2020 January 21, 2025, we we began the collective bargaining process. Local 2442 and the town began collective bargaining um a a successor agreement. Article 17.3 of the agreement addresses staffing including how many people per engine various staffing issues. July 10, 2025, the town and the union ratified the collective baring agreement. Both the fire union local 2442 and their members agreed that staffing must have been acceptable because the language in

the contract was not negotiated to be changed nor was it changed. We all voluntarily agreed to the current staffing. So that was July 10. September 2025 local 2442 declares that an increased call volume equates to increased risk to citizens. Um they declared that they need more staff and more firet trucks and engines and even more stations. Um the cost of their proposal, which we've never talked about because we've talked about service level, but the cost of International Association fire proposal over hund00 million in 10 years. And there's only two revenue streams that could even generate enough money to pay for the outcome of their proposal. One is sales tax. We would need a um 70% increase in sales tax to pay for that or 134% increase in property tax. Nobody in this room would suggest that that is a reasonable outcome. Nobody. Not even the firefighters. We haven't talked about that because that's not on the table. What we've talked about is whether or not current station 2 should stay open as we heard from Mr. Grusing. And more importantly, does new station two result in a problem to solve? If we move to new station two per our plan, do we have a problem? The answer is no. You might be surprised to hear this, but since 2014 when Mr. Grin retired, we have done we have moved mountains to collect data, track data, implement technology, and review our data. We've collected emergency response data for years. We even report it in our annual report. Totally transparent. You can find it online. Nobody should be surprised know to know that we're collecting and evaluating data. The purpose is to improve operations. We do it townwide, organizationwide.

The assertion that we need to hire more firefighters and increase call because of increased call volumes and that um we're putting residents at risk if we move to C new station two um is a false narrative. To be clear, and I've shared this, I think with some council members when they've asked, MLAN County Area EMS, the system that controls our EMS program, has a policy that states, "Ambulance response to 911 calls are required to have an end route time less than six minutes. Ambulance response to their respective service areas are committed to an optimum response time of four to six minutes in their primary coverage area." That's one of many things that we review, including ISO, an independent review agency that that um evaluated our responses and ranked Normal Fire in 2019 at a 9.99 out of 10. So again, we we can tell I can tell council I can tell anybody how many times we're responding when and where. I can tell you how many times headquarters responded in 2024 and how many times they were out on a call. Um, same thing with station two, same thing with station three. But going back to it's not just data, it's about are we, you know, do we have a problem to solve? Will new station 2 put residents in danger? No, it won't. Um, we have done data modeling. We you could go online and look at GIS and do a data review. We have more comprehensive GIS systems that can evaluate that. And we don't just look at that. We also validate. So all of our data has been validated. And if we felt we had a problem to solve, we would look at all sorts of options. There's all sorts of options on

the spectrum. Rather than adding dozens of firefighters, adding equipment, building stations, we we can look at hotspots and we can put ambulances out of hotspots and be prepared if we needed to. Um, we have looked at traffic signal preeemption, which is something part of our our smart city plan. We're looking at that that keeps traffic moving and out of the way for emergency vehicles. We put AEDs in our squad cars. We've heard multiple times now, even in your minutes tonight, I noticed that the caller that that crashed the vehicle indicated that it was two blocks from station two and the police department was there first. So, there's all sorts of strategies that we can take to make sure that we're responding in appropriate amount of time. So, that just that just touches the the surface. Um but um you know to to say that four to six minutes is is not a standard is is unacceptable.

Motion for German. So moved. Second. Please call the role. Mr. McCarthy. I. Mrs. Loren. I. Mr. Buyers. Hi. Mr. Robers. Hi. Ms. Smith. I. Mayor Cous. Hi. We are ajourned. Thank you.