Board of Trustees - Regular Meeting

Good evening everybody. I would like to call the August 14th board of trustees of Indian Head Park meeting to order. Could we please have a roll call please for the evening? Trusty Ayanako here. Trusty Sana here. Trusty Yak here. Trusty Donnersburgger here. Trusty Seta. Trusty Gazis here. President Amy Joe Wittenberg here. Can we please stand for the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

I'd like to just spend a couple minutes uh discussing a couple items. Planefield Road redesign update. The Cook County Department of Highways and Transportation hosted a public information openhouse number two on August 4th, 2025 from 5:30 to 7 at the Highlands Elementary School in Lraange. The meeting included a presentation reviewing the study background, public outreach, existing conditions, the proposed improvements, and next steps. As you may know, this project extends from the county line road all the way to East Avenue for Planefield Road. Over 110 members of the public attended the meeting. Municipal representatives from Cook County, City of Countryside, Village of Burr Ridge, Township of Lions, Village of Indian Head Park, and the Village of Lraange were present. Pleasant View Fire Protection District as well as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. If you go to the improvement plane improveplanefield.org website, you can see the video that they presented at the meeting. There were questions about that. Some people did not see the video that they produced about the project. So, it gives you all of the project information and summary is on the improve planefield.org. The Cook County Department of Transportation is still open and receiving comments for the Planefield Road project. Some people thought it was just comments at the meeting. So, if you have comments, they are going to be accepted through August 20th. You can either email them to improve planefield.org or you can mail them uh at the Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways, 69 West Washington, 24th floor, Chicago, Illinois to Sanjay Josie Jooshi, excuse me.

Just want to remind everybody that we have a congregate meal the um 28th at Village Hall. It's uh lunch and learn, train your brain if you're interested in joining us and training your brain. And it is full. So, we're happy to hear that. Maybe next time you have to uh email to register. It's the third Thursday of every month. Due to elevated levels of West Nile virus, adult mosquito control operations are planned for our village tonight south of I-55 in Indian Head Park. They will be spraying from the hours of 8:00 p.m. through midnight. So that will be this evening south of I-55. I'd like to take a moment to thank everybody. We had our third annual Indian Head Park National Night Out. want to thank the police department chief and all his crew, officer Rob Verber, Indian Head Park Public Works, the administration staff, our community volunteers, all of the business partners, our community nonprofit organizations, all of the law enforcement partners that came to participate, and all of the Touch a Truck participants. I'm sure I've missed some, but we really appreciate everybody's volunteer spirit and it was a wonderful evening and the weather actually was was great as well. So, thank you to all of our volunteers for that. Also, there's a short video that we just wanted to play this evening for just about a minute. Uh, we had some LT Lions Township TV students produce this. Michael Walsh did the uh the shooting and a video edited by Ethan Muer, both from the LTH class class of 2025.

Tonight is our third annual Indian Head Park National Night Out. We just really enjoy getting everybody together and having special events. We thank everybody for participating as well as Cook County and the state police for coming and helping us enjoy the night. I'm Officer Rob Verber with the Indian Head Park Police Department. I'm our community relations, crime prevention and elderly service officer. This is our third annual national night out. It's a great fantastic opportunity to get our village government as well as our police department, our business partners and the community. The most important part of that, our residents having that night out against crime.

So tonight we have a reptile show. We have a magician. We also have free ice cream and popcorn. Over here near the clubhouse, we also have a touch a truck display. So we have several people in town that have businesses in the logistics and trucking industry that are able to bring their trucks. So, National Out is kind of the icing on the cake of that collaboration between the village, our residents, and our business community, our DJ, our ice cream vendors, our taco truck, our jumpy house, and our fantastic vendors that are providing that. We want to have that that unity, that that comfortable feeling that permeates throughout our community. This Saturday we have a movie night in Blackhawk Park. We will also have a cookout with hot dogs, grilled hot dogs, sides, popcorn, and cotton candy and all sorts of other treats. The movie is going to be Wonka. So that will start at 7:00 and the movie will play at dusk. So, please um come out and enjoy. It's supposed to be a nice evening and enjoy uh the evening uh Saturday at 7 o'clock. Thank you. All right, moving along to our consent agenda. Can I have a motion for the consent agenda, please?

I'd like to uh uh take item A and B and uh discuss those separately. Would that come after the motion or before? Okay, after the motion. I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. All righty. Any questions on consent agenda items? Can we take his entertain your questions now? Is that good? Yeah. I'd like to change uh A and B to be separately discussed. Can we do start that now? Should we pull that out or just discuss them now? If he's asking if if the nature of the conversation is more appropriate for separate items, then if that's the request, then should be done. Separate items.

Okay. All righty. Any other questions on the other item in the consent agenda? Can we have a financial report please treasur financial report for the month ending July of 2025 cash on hand at June 30th 2025 was $3,556,15946. Our payments for July of 2025 were $625,35049. Our total revenues for July of 2025 were $230,27630. Our ending bank balance at July 31st, 2025 was $3,161,8527. [Music]

Thank you. Any questions on that hearing? None. Um, can we please Yes, I'd like to make I'd like to make a comment. Um, the uh minutes of the last meeting, our minutes seem to be getting longer and longer and uh not tonight because these appear to be really good minutes. Um, but I'm wondering if our attorney can advise us on how the minutes should be prepared, if we need to include this much in them, or can we do something much shorter? Madame President, at this time I think the minutes will ask to be pulled off separate consent agenda. So I I can address that that question when that item's on the Thank you.

So we're going to pull it off the consent agenda and move it on to the new to to new business and then we'll be able to talk about that. I think Trusty E has some other questions as well. So we Yes. You good? So, uh, seeing that we're going to remove A and B from the consent agenda, can we please approve item C that's on the consent consent agenda, please? Roll call vote. And the motion is the motion's We have to revise the motion though to include only item C. I think you've already done that.

Okay. Trusty Inako I. Trusty Seldana I. Trusty E. I. Trusty Danisburgger. Hi. Trusty Gazis. Hi. 5-0. The motion carries. Thank you. Um if we can if we would like to do the audit first before we entertain your two questions for A and B Charlie because the auditor is on waiting online to present a dollar item here. Okay. Is that okay? Sure. We're going to do the audit and then we'll Okay. Yeah.

So we'll go to new business, please. Um item A. Can I have a motion, please? I move to approve resolution 2025-23 which accepts the FY2024 audit report. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Okay, Anthony. Thank you, Christina and Anthony. Gavin, we have our audit team um one of our audit teams presenting this evening from um remotely. So, we are using a device up here on the table to do that and she is now on the screen from LNA. Thank you.

Can you hear us, Destiny? Can you hear us?

She's on the screen out there. Hello. Okay. Can you hear us? Yes. Okay. Can you hear me? Yep. Thank you. Great.

Hello everybody. Uh my name is Justine Poor. I am one of the audit managers at Lbach and Eman and I will be presenting the um required pieces of communication for the uh fiscal year ended 43024 audit. I want to start off by thanking the board for allowing me to present the uh this audit tonight especially remotely. So I appreciate all the efforts that went into getting this done. I also want to thank the uh staff that was involved during the process of the audit. We understand um the everybody has their own job responsibilities and having auditors on site is not the most pleasant experience. So we appreciate all the efforts that went into getting this audit done. The first piece I would like to uh talk about is the SAS 114 letter. The primary purpose of which is to convey or whether or not we had any difficulties or disagreements with management over the course of the audit. And I'm happy to report that no such difficulties or disagreements were encountered and that's exactly what can be found in the body of the letter. The next piece I would like to go over is the bound like thick bound report itself. I would like to point out uh a couple of pages. Um I will keep this brief and short but if anybody has any questions please feel free to stop me at any time. Um pages 1 through three talk about the independent auditor's report itself uh which describes the management's responsibility which is the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements. Um our responsibility as an audit firm is to generate an opinion on those financial statements and I am happy to report that we have issued an unmodified opinion which is the cleanest form of opinion and highest level of assurance that we can issue. Um in other words, the finan financial statements are free from material misstatement and

there's sound um uh sound internal control over financial reporting. Um next couple of pages is the management's discussion and analysis or we like to call it um MDNA. It's a great narrative summary of the whole bond report itself. We understand the financial statements are very uh difficult to comprehend because there's a lot of numbers thrown. So, this section breaks um things down into words, charts, and graphs. I highly encourage the board to read it uh at their own leisure. And then if you have any questions even after tonight, uh please feel free to reach out and we'll be happy to uh address those. Um pages 26 through 27. I will just keep give you a brief overview of the fund level income statement. First, governmental funds. Um, general fund had an operating income of about $398,000 with an ending fund balance of $2.2 million. Uh, motor fuel tax fund had an operative income of about $72,000 with an ending fund balance of approximately $800,000. capital improvement fund uh did have an op operating deficit of two about $247,000 with an ending fund balance of negative $849,000. Uh non- major funds, you can find the breakdown of them on page 78, but they overall had a positive ending fund balance of about $36,000. Um, page 32 talks about the proprietary fund or the water and sewer fund, uh, which had an operating income of about $37,000 with a positive ending fund balance of $3.68 million. Any questions on these numbers? None. Okay. Um

after that you'll find notes to the financial statements where you will see anything from investments that the village has um leases that the village has uh been into capital asset uh schedules long-term debt as well as IMRF and other defined mention uh pension benefit plan information. Um lastly in the required supplementary information or the RSI you will see uh the cont contribution tables budget to actuary u comparison um tables by fund as well. Any questions on the report as a whole or any particular questions on any of the numbers that um stick out?

On page 44 uh we're talking about two leases, the American Tower lease and uh Castle lease. Their payments are listed at 35 I'm rounding 3500 and 2400 total 5900 almost 6,000 a month that totals on an annual basis a little over $70,000 but yet the report is saying the village recognized 43,368 in lease revenue. Gavin, I think you addressed some of this with me and uh but I still don't understand the difference. Uh someone said it was interest. What what's what's the nature? Why why do we have the difference here? We we list uh payments of of 5932 a month total about a little over 70,000 but yet we're only saying lease revenue of 43,000. Um so the way Gazsby 87 um standard requires us to report leases going forward is um we have to split out the re lease revenue with the interest. Um I'll be happy to share our um calculators that we use to come up with the difference uh between the principal and the interest portion. So we only include the or disclose the principal portion of the revenue that was received for the year. I'd be happy to send that over to Gavin and then he can um forward that to you and if you have any further questions I'll be happy to answer them.

Well, and doesn't the two columns equal the number? Right. Principal plus interest equals the total trusty act. It it's an add the two numbers. Oh, the 44,434 and the 26. Yes, they're splitting it out between principal and interest. So she'll give you the ratio and then you can take a look at it.

And the And the interest comes from what? The in the interest is is comes from what? These aren't bonds. It's just the incremental borrowing bonds that we have that we use to u calculate the interest portion. We calculate the present value of like when the lease was implemented. calculate the present value of future receipts and then split split that between the principal and interest based on the frequency of the payments received. I think yeah

and the interest rates you use for that calculation are those that are printed above there the 4% and the 3%. I think it's showing you the the entire lease through 209 and it's trying to show you the interest and principle from that lease for the for the years now this year as well as the years that are coming. So it's the way that Gazsby has them create the report.

So those should add up 2025 should add up to what the total is. But doesn't uh the village receive the total of 5932 a month which is the sum of the uh 3513 and the 2419. Yes. So if we receive that and we don't have any debt, we're saying that uh accounting standards indicate that that has to be split out. That's what the accountant's saying. Yes. There's a rule in Gazsby. They're saying and they'll send that to you if you'd like to read it. That's what she said. Yeah. Okay. Is that okay with you? Sure.

Okay. So, could you please send that along to us, please, so Gavin can get that to the trustees? Yes, I will get that sent over and if again you want to like schedule a call with us, we'll be happy to discuss that um further. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Um last piece I want to go over is the management letter. Um the purpose of which is to convey uh any internal control recommendations that we have um best practices that we see in the industry or upcoming gas standards. Um no current uh recommendations but updates to the prior uh from prior audits. Uh fund balance policy. I just want them to all know that that's the separate document so you can follow along. Thanks.

Thank you. Um fund balance policy it was implemented so we always have it for two years. One year we issued the um comment. The other one if you look at the uh response at the bottom it says will not be repeated in the future. So it will come off next year. um fund over budget will also be removed. The only one u I would look into is the capital improvements fund which is um which has a deficit fund balance. Um and then capital asset records which Gavin and I have um chatted about that um uh we recommend doing um going through a a capital asset appraisal in the upcoming years um so that we can get the uh records um on the books. And then just a couple uh upcoming Gazsby standards um 100 through 103. Uh we'll work with the village over the next couple of years to implement whatever is applicable um to the village. Any questions on that or overall? No questions. All right. I don't think we have any questions here.

Thank you everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Jessine. Thank you. All righty. Hearing that there are no other questions, I think we need a roll call vote to accept the uh audit report. Correct. Clerk, you want a motion for that? Yes, I think we have a motion. We do. Oh, okay. Trusty Inako. I. Trusty Sana. I. Trusty E. I. Trusty Donnersburgger. Hi. Trusty Gazes. Hi. 5-0. Motion carries. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And I just want to let you know that we have already started the work on the FY2025 audit. Um and we will proceed with that and we're planning to have that to present to you um by uh December or January board meeting. Thank you. Seeing that trustee e um requested to have items B and C um discussed in new business, could we maybe go to item B, which is the approval of payables or excuse me, A and B, excuse me. Approval of regular meeting minutes. Um I'd like to talk about Do you want a motion or Can we have a motion, please, to to to discuss?

Yeah. Move move to approve. Move to approve uh regular meeting minutes of July 10th. Second. Second. Tony or Anthony, excuse me. So, we have a first and second on that. All righty. What would you like to discuss?

Like Eileen was starting to say, the uh the the minutes that we have in this book are 21 pages long. It's almost a verbatim listing of what we covered in our uh July meeting. Uh my sense is that many meetings ought to be summaries uh showing the decisions that uh the the village has made and and not a verbatim listing of uh all of the discussions. Uh we have that on video and if somebody wants to listen to all of the um uh discussion that took place then they can go and and listen to the uh video to do that. But I think that if we have a u a minute minutes uh you know 5 7 10 pages at the maximum that's certainly better than 21 pages and that's that's more than what I think that we should be doing for um for our minutes.

I have a comment. So you would like to have a summary of what happened in the meeting. So just a listing for example of title of the issue and what happened and quickly in the discussion and then the motion and how it went.

Uh certainly that but uh could be some slightly more discussion but 21 pages to me is uh again that's a verbatim listing of uh everything that we went through and I I think a shorter version of that can be developed. So, uh, Gavin, how many pages is the, uh, bills and invoices and, um, uh, revenue and expenditure report and, uh, all of the detail of that if you were to put it together,

he's counting them. Count count every single invoice and every single uh financial report that is possible that we will have to read or put in the agenda should it be put in the agenda. I'm sorry I'm missing what you're trying the point you're trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that you c you would not have so much complaint about how the lengthy of the uh minutes and then absolutely complain about not having any detail on the bills.

Oh my goodness. So you you didn't mean the the pages in the actual packet which would be about 30, but you meant individual depends on how many bills we're paying that. Why is it a problem that we have so much detail on the minutes?

I think it's a problem for us as a board. I've been on other boards and have been advised we should not have them this long and that's why I want to ask council what should we what's the norm? The open meetings act requires that public bodies keep written minutes of all the meetings. Um it provides that a verbatim record is only required for a closed meeting and that the minutes shall include but need not be limited to the date, time and place of the meeting, the members of the public body recorded is either present or absent and whether they were physically present and a summary of all the discussions on the matters post. That's the minimum standards. That's what's required by law. Nothing prevents this body or the minutes from being longer than that. Um, nothing prohibits them from being more detailed. Now, to your question, trustee, what do most public bodies do? Most public bodies would probably air on the side of keeping them shorter and briefer as opposed to providing the amount of detail that is in the last series of minutes that have come before this body. The question then is what is the balance and where does the village board want to be in terms of the depth and detail of the minutes? Is it preferable to have short summaries and have staff devoting the time to create those short summaries or is it more beneficial and more useful to the public to have longer narrative forms? That's a policy decision the board can make.

I have a question for staff actually. Uh thanks councel. Andre, you're in charge of putting these minutes together. when you go verbatim and I know we're b wasting paper and killing trees and whatever is from a time perspective what is having the the minutes verbatim versus you summarizing and uh creating those minutes what is the time difference from you for a given board meeting on average garden variety

so I'll I'll say that um in my 13 years of well 10 years I will say of doing uh minutes for meetings every single month in my career. Um, I got it down to to about twice as long as the meeting takes to do minutes. The way I'm doing them now, which is using the transcript and then uh basically chat GPT that I then go back and double check on, it takes me the exact same amount of time as the it takes in the meeting. So, it takes half the amount of time for me to do them this way. Um, I'll also say as I've been diving into the minutes recently for the fences, um, and Brandon here is also I've been subjecting poor Brandon here for that as well. Um, that these the the village board's historical minutes have gone from anywhere from 15 pages to depending on 48 pages.

Um, generally the the longer ones were prior to the plan commission becoming the plan commission and a lot of the planning and zoning went to that. However, um I just want to point out that there is a there is a variation that in the history of it, they actually longer longer ago, they tended to be more verbatim. In the last 20 to some odd years, they became kind of what I'll say is standard 10 12 15 pages. um that you'll see a lot of times. Um and like I said, now because of the ability of technology to pull the transcript and then write the transcripts that it is just that is much faster for me to do it this way, it'll be much faster for any staff members to do it this way.

Can you edit out uh and looking at at that does it allow you to edit out uh a lot of the verbiage that uh now is in the minutes that we're looking at today?

So, I did edit those minutes considerably. Um, namely when I look at the minutes, I'm trying to provide a coherent uh I don't want to say narrative because that's not correct, but it's very a very easy easy to follow narrative. So, for example, if you look at the the fence discussion from the last meeting, um there was a lot of back and forth. You don't see that in the current minutes. You see uh you see most of it being, you know, in in three or four sections that that follows very linear path. So, yes, I can go back and edit those out, but then I'm spending time going back and editing things out, and then I'm making decisions on what should be included and not included in the minutes.

So, can I just So, Andre, if this works for you, and I and I think it does, council, can I ask a question? As trustees, are we allowed to take the minutes and then input them into chatbt for them to summarize it for us? Absolutely.

Yeah. Any member of the public who's got that document and is able to upload it would be able to do So Charlie, actually this is a very simple can help either one of you with this. We leave Andreas alone. Let him continue to do and be proficient at what he's doing and efficient. If you want them shorter, you could just enter these in chat GBT and ask for to actually just bullet point it out for you. It'll give you the exact highlights you're looking for. And if it's still not enough detail, you can ask it for more detail and it'll pull more detail from his notes. It takes about 3 seconds to do and I'd be more than happy to sit with either one of you. But I think in terms let's let Andreas do what he does best. More detail that it works for him because it sounds like for you to go back through and make decisions on what should be included and what shouldn't be included takes more time and guess, right?

Yes. Because I have to go back and and so that costs more labor time where he could be using his time more efficiently elsewhere. We can throw this into chat GBT. I mean, un for this is what I do because I don't to read all of it, but it'll break it all down for you. It'll give you in bullet points and exactly what you're looking for, and it takes absolute seconds to do. I can even do it and send it to you. Well, and would and would we make that the official minutes of of the board?

No, we can't do that. This would just be to make it easier for you to you to read through. So, the official minutes still come from Andre's. he does what he does, but for him to change him to the way you wanted it to do, it's gonna make it's going to take him longer and he's not going to be able to do other things that the village needs him to do. So, I could show the board how you could just take his notes and put it in chatbt and exact ask what you wanted to do and it'll give you the breakdown versus having him spend more time every week uh post meeting. But before we go into the detail, I I mean, I don't think we should make him to do both. Yeah, that's

I I have another question of I I just want to get to the heart of the matter. Does this council do the minutes become an official document? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so the more we put in the minutes, the more we're responsible for, right? I mean the more we're well with respect to the types of things that you'd be responsible for you also have to keep in mind a global perspective that the meeting is being streamed the meeting is being recorded.

So while it becomes the official record as far as the minutes any suggestion as far as did something happen or not happen can be proved up in a variety of different ways other than just the minutes. So, if we're afraid that we're locking ourselves into a position by being more detailed than is necessary in the minutes, I don't know that that necessarily creates the concern that it might. And I'm I'm not doubting what Andre does isn't totally correct. But when you put minutes together that are as long as this, I have to be assured that you're go going through them and making sure that there's nothing out of place because

again, I guess you're making the the argument for leaving the minutes as they are verbatim. The minutes are the minutes. And how many times have we gone through and read the minutes that aren't the minutes and then this was wrong or this was incorrect and this was that. If the minutes are the minutes, it's being streamed. We're all here. The minutes are the minutes. Why are we creating more work? Let's just have the minutes be the minutes. In my opinion, yeah, I think the minutes should be shorter, though. So, I understand what you're saying in terms of an abbreviation, but I I don't agree that that we would have that. Why? Why should they be shorter? I've never said argument. We all have to spend the time to review. No, you don't. You're at the meeting. The minutes are the minutes. It's being streamed. Calm down, guys.

I don't need to calm down. I guess I'm wondering why we're talking about this. The minutes are the minutes. We want to take time from Andre's to create shorter minutes that aren't the minutes. Why can't the minutes be the minutes? This meeting is being streamed. You're at every meeting, Charlie. Charlie, did you hear what he said? For him to make them shorter, he now has to do guess work on should this be left in, should it be taken out. So now the meetings aren't the minutes because now he's actually he's taking he's guessing on what should what shouldn't be. So now we're

some sometimes minutes can be as as uh brief as here's uh uh here's a motion that was uh put forward and here's the vote on it. Okay without any without any discussion on that use technology to make it as short as you want and just leave him alone and let him keep doing but then they wouldn't be the minutes is not 100% accurate. The transcript is 100% accurate. When judge when when Judge Donnersburgger was in court, right, their shorthand for court reporters. I mean, I've sat on three other boards and I've never seen minutes this long. Now, maybe the diff let me finish.

Maybe the difference is here that we're streaming it and that we have it on video and so there are other ways to find out whatever happened at the meetings. But I think the reason we kept it short before was to make sure that the official document, I don't know how to put it in legal terms, but we had to protect ourselves. Well, as the council just pointed out, anybody can get it any other way. And if this is the easiest way for you to do it, fine. It just seems like a hell of a lot of work. So, so you just actually verbatim whatever was said here is transcribed and that's what's in the minutes.

Yes. I I go to the I was actually trying this it right now, but it doesn't actually work until the meeting's over. I go to YouTube. I get the autogenerated transcript, which isn't 100% accurate. I put it into chat GPT as a prompt. It cleans it up. However, then I have to review it, which then I do review it. And sometimes it, you know, it attributes things to different people who I know weren't there. So, I'll listen to the meeting as it goes along as I'm reading along with it. And then those are the minutes that get kic that get kicked out. And then I review it, Gavin reviews it. I send it all to you within we try to send it to you within a week so that you can all review it. And then, like I said, if there's anything that needs to be changed, if there's things like I've caught things that that haven't been accurate before, I'm like, that's not correct. Gavin's caught things before that haven't been correct on it, but these are but because the transcript and then with with the with the AI ability to clean it up and because it has a memory function in the AI, it it's very kind of scary for me because when I put the YouTube link in there, it can actually reference the YouTube link and sometimes it picks out like I've had it before pick out your like you started speaking and there was no reference to you before and it was very eerie for me.

So it is it is very accurate. Did you read in the paper, I think it was today, yesterday, within the last few days, there was an attorney, gosh, I'm trying to remember, who was fired from something, a job or something court because she submitted a brief that quoted.

Did you hear about that, Council? She submitted a brief that was quoted didn't exist. She had gotten it from AI. I have a friend who is a doctorate in um something uh I don't remember exactly it's some very science and um he uses LLM's chat GBT other AIS for these types of things and he said it something unique happened to him last week where chat GPT hallucinated an uh an article that he he read himself that he wrote himself it didn't exist so that is a concern that we have however the way I'm using the way I'm using chat GPT is very constrained in the fact that I'm just having it clean it up now this is not a verbatim transcript. If I wanted it to be a verbatim transcript, it would actually make my life a little bit easier, but I I refine the prompt. So, it is it is f and I do go back and I look at it and I can about read about as fast the meeting goes and I can check to see when they do things and sometimes I pause it.

I I I guess I don't see why we don't use the verbatim and then, you know, we're at the meeting. Why not why not just have the minutes be the minutes? So, the reason because that leaves nothing to interpretation. Truly,

the reason I would say is not to use the verbatim is because um there's there's a lot of times we do things things like ums and we we stutter and we do that, but there's also there are times where there's a lot of cross talk. Um and like at the last meeting when you and Trusty Donnersburgger was was were talking about the fences, uh Trusty Donnersburgger came up with, you know, when you were discussing it, there was three points of concern she had. You you know, we responded to the three points. If you look at the meeting minutes in here, I basically had condensed trustes Donnerburgger's three points into one paragraph, your responses into one paragraph, and then Gavin and I when we were answering things into another paragraph or a half or something like that. It makes it clearer, cons more clear, more concise to read, easier to follow along, more linear in nature. So, it's not verbatim, but it's actually provides a a bit of a clearer picture of what goes on with it.

As long as we're covered legally, I'm fine. And and I'll make I'll make one more point on this and and this is what I I don't know and I'm not going to ask council on this tonight is but what I know for the meeting minutes is that I have to keep meeting minute we have to keep meeting minutes forever. You can never destroy them. They must exist forever and ever and ever and ever. I do not know if that includes video cuz right now our videos are hosted on YouTube. They are not hosted on our own server if I'm if I if I remember correctly. So if for some reason YouTube decides to not like us anymore, we would lose all that videos. We actually lost one one meeting of the shed and fence committee because it was on Vimeo and we got rid of Vimeo and it it it no longer exists. Um I actually found recently and stored somewhere uh the Vimeo password and login. So I'm trying to get back to that. But uh so that that's the concern that I have. Whereas this is these are these meeting minutes are they're in a document file but at the end of the year we print them out we put them in a big old binder and they exist until you know a hundred years from now until until we all do no longer care about them.

My concern is that as a government entity there seem to be a lot more important priorities. Not that the minute the minutes are not seems like we're complicating the process. Yes. Clear out thems. more clear. To me, the tape would be the tape. The minutes would be the minutes for anyone to interpret it however they would want rather than Andreas or who was ever sitting in that chair in 10 years interprets it, clears it up, puts his spin on it, attributes this to that, and the other thing. In my opinion, I think that's your time that is could be spent doing many other things and Gavin's time. I didn't realize you were reviewing them and you're reviewing them. Sounds like it takes a lot more than a couple hours. And keeping that in mind, I'm going to be quiet right now.

Thank you, clerk, for your um explanation of the process because I don't think there was a possibly a detailed understanding of what a transcript file is from YouTube and how we use that in a language uh model. So, we're using these these tools and other municipalities are using these tools. We are not unique in using these tools for creating minutes. So if you go and see the trustees at Burr Ridge or Lraange or Countryside, they are also using LLMs to create their minutes. So we are not going out in on some island ourselves. We are trying to do best practices. We have told the staff we want to be as operationally as efficient as we can and that's what we're doing. and we learn about these things from talking to other people about best practices. So if we have to tweak it right now, I think we should give Andre the respect of what he would like to do moving forward. And that's what you just said, Jim. I understand your point. Um, but I think let's go with what we've been doing. If there's something that you feel strongly about, let's do what you did tonight. You brought it up to our attention and we had the discussion. So I think there's a better understanding of the process. We're going to move along the way that we just discussed with clerk and then we'll move forward with that. And if there's something that needs to change, if you would all like to understand how to use these LLMs, we will have a class on it and show you. It is extremely helpful. So we can talk about that at a different time. So does that work for you, clerk?

It does. as I was going to offer. If you want to see the process, feel free to ask. I'll I'll come in. You can come in. I'll show you how to do it, how I do it, and you can see how the process goes with it and how we clean everything up. So, we'll need to do a roll call vote on the exception, the acceptance of these minutes. So, can we please have a roll call vote for the acceptance of these minutes? And then we'll move on to item B. So, please clerk, vote, please. Trusty, I. Trusty Sana, I. Trusty A. No. Trusty Donnersburgger. Hi. Trusty Gases. Hi.

All righty. Moving on to the other item that Trusty A wanted to discuss. Um I think we have a Did we have a motion to approve the uh Can I have a motion? Move to approve payables for the period ending July 31st. Can I have a second, please? Second. Okay. Thank you, Trusty E and Trustee Gazis. Discussion. Trustee EC on the approval.

A couple things. uh in uh uh previous uh uh times uh we had the opportunity to look at invoices uh if we asked for them and as a previous signer and I've signed checks for a couple years uh we would get a chance to look at the invoices and that would uh make a difference to us. If you look at page 51 of 87, you'll see under Thomas Engineering, there's three amounts there. That was uh 8625 and that was included in the July 11th uh request for checks. And we discussed this last time, so this is kind of old news, but they had staff had put in uh a ch uh uh an invoice for 221,000 for Chicago Paving, and it shouldn't have been to Thomas Engineering. And what we're getting in the way of information does not allow us to uh make those kind of determinations as to whether uh they are correct or not. As it turns out, this would have been a relatively minor item because they would have uh been able to uh place it and we moved it to uh we moved the check to Chicago paving and we had a separate check for that. But by not having the opportunity to have invoices, this is something that we miss the opportunity to see on various items and uh I requested that and I have not gotten uh the invoices that I requested or the opportunity to.

So what did we discuss them? What did we discuss last meeting when you brought that to our attention? What did we discuss? I don't recall. What did what's what's your recollection on that? We discussed that we are moving to a new system. Yeah. The check the check invoice register you saw was from the old system. Yep.

We s we told you and the entire board that we are moving to a new system that is going to streamline the approvals of how we approve invoices in the village. It it actually isn't because uh unless you're ignoring something and you're ignoring something by doing this in the way that you're talking about it because we would not catch the kind of item that I just brought to your attention for uh being able to to clear that. So all we're getting is we're just getting Charlie here's who we should pay and this is Charlie I'm going through the process that you told me you didn't remember from two months ago. Got it.

Can I can I interject here please? I think that Charlie um with all due respect I think you've got two hats on here. One is head of the finance committee and indeed it's probably your responsibility to make sure that all the invoices are correct and whatnot. As a board from what uh Gavin helped me understand today when we see these we are confident we can be confident uh that they approvals have already been made i.e. you know, with the finance board and the other safeguards we put in place. So, it seems to me it's not the board's place to look at that. We can question what a specific, you know, I had a couple of questions about, well, what is this? But I have to and my fiduciary duty is to make sure that these are correct and if they come to us, council, I'm leaning on you today. Um, what I've been told is if we approve these, I'm approving them with the knowledge that they have been looked at and verified and are true and accurate.

You are you are and that fulfills my fiduciary duty. You are relying on the representation of staff that presumably you have trust in, okay, and have participated in the appointment of and review of their performance.

And Charlie, what you're interested in is in your role as finance director. With all due respect, we have a process that we have delineated. Our village staff has delineated the process the last meeting. The last meeting and in the finance committee on two separate occasions we delineated a new process to the finance committee that talked about how we're using the new system to be able to approve our staff approve in BSNA. Our department heads will approve an invoice in BSNA. Then we have a village administrator and we have an accounting director of finance that will also look at the invoice and approve it to go on to the next stage in the process. If you are seeing the invoice report in your board packet, the new board packet, the new report, the invoice would not get to the invoice report if it had not passed the approval of our department heads, our village administrator, our finance director. So, we are paying a half a million dollars this village to provide oversight and professional management. And that's the tool we are using to have them approve the invoices that they are telling you in the invoice report what the invoices are. So what you're telling me is that all of the time and money we have spent on oversight for our professionals. Now you are questioning that they're not going to catch these things but that you will.

They didn't catch it before. That's because it was a different bill was in the invoice. I would actually like to address approved by management and it was in the list. I will let me address that that one specific payment going through and talk about how our new system will actually prevent from that from happening. Thank you. The bills list includes everything that you need, everything that is on the invoice. So that would be the vendor name, the invoice number, the amount, a brief description of what the payment is for, and the account code that is being charged to the general ledger account code.

It's right here. I just want to make sure this is very clear so we can see this in two months or in a month again and understand this is the new report. The report you referenced was from the old accounting system. And what what's on the new report that was not on the old report? anything. So way they they approve the invoices is different.

Let me get back to what I was explaining. So the everything that comes from the invoice is on that bill's list. When Joanna, who is our accountant, is entering everything from the invoice into the BSNA system, she would know that the vendor name on that, for example, with that payment. So, let me take a step back. Thomas Engineering sent us an invoice that included the payment to Chicago Paving Incorporated. So, that payment, everything that was approved by staff and approved by the uh by myself and then brought to the board uh and to cut a check was for Chicago land paving. she saw that that that that payment was included in an invoice from Thomas and put the check to Thomas. Thomas would have forwarded that check to to Chicago uh Land Paving. But with this new system, she would have entered the vendor name as Chicago Land Paving because that's that's who it was for. An example on tonight's bill's list that was questioned was the payment for Strand. When Strand submits a payment, they're also another engineering firm. when they submit an invoice, it includes for Wolf Road phase one specifically, it will include payments that go to RM Chen. It impro uh RM Chin uh another engineering firm I can't remember the name of, but it there are several organizations that are subcontractors for uh u Strand. It's just like that with with Chicago Land Paving relationship with Thomas Engineering. they are a subcontractor who excuse me the board approved to do the work for our road program. That check would have been caught at that point. Um the or that payment would have been caught at

that point. The everything on to to your uh question that you had Eileen about fiduciary responsibility. Everything that is on that bill's list is is enough information to meet your fiduciary obligation. the um and and then I repeated in my email to you today uh what the process that we had talked about uh previously with those meeting weeks and those non-meating weeks. Um and you know you could look at a payment and and question any payment that's on the bill's list based on the information that's there. get back to myself and or the finance director, Brandy Assil, and we'll be able to to respond to those questions. And I I did that with with a few questions that we had for tonight. And what we will do is send all of the information to all of the board in case you also have the same question.

So, didn't we agree last meeting that we were all going to be looking at these and all proving them on the board?

Yes. And and to that point, you know, to Trusty X's point, we are going to make um all of the invoices available for you to review. They will be in BSNA. Um and we are working towards a a process where all as many payments as possible will be in electronic form. So there won't be any paper invoices. We will have all of those in the BSNA system. Um you will we will provide you with uh uh access to view invoices. You can dig down as as much as you like. Um and you can send us any questions you have or any concerns you have. Good. That's good. Let's I'm fine now.

What about and ETF? It will be in there. No, I know. But there's not going to be an invoice. Well, we'll have electronic invoices because we need to be able to show that we paid it because we got a bill. But I just want that to be understood. Okay. So there's going to be a and ETF that will be now we have several that we're not going to have paper invoices for. So we've also had discussions about AC and ETF where you didn't see it and then you questioned it. So we are going to digital payments for those vendors and we will still have it recently. Okay. So we we that was in a an earlier time.

Correct. But I just want to make sure because we have questions about what we just discussed two months ago. I want to make sure everybody understands we are now all looking this as a board because we have a fiduciary responsibility to all approve it, not just to have two people approving it. And it's to to your point too, Eileen, it's not the finance committee that's looking at this. It's the board's responsibility. Oh, yeah. It's the board. It's not the finance committee. They're doing budgeting. They're doing best practices regarding our village and the process in which we create budgeting and financial planning and how we are managing our processes. The board's responsibility is to provide the oversight that you were speaking about. Eileen,

one last question. So now I'm confused because I mean if it's our fiduciary duty to take a good look at that and oversight, I would expect more information. What I'm looking at are the overall costs that we're approving and where it's going to. And if I have questions, is it going to this contractor or, you know, that electric company? If I have questions about that, I can ask. But I'm relying upon, as council, I think just advised us, I'm relying upon the due diligence that staff has already done. Correct.

I do a couple of more points. I it is highly unusual for a board to get to the level of reviewing individual invoices. That is not uh typical practice. It's not uh it's very unusual and this is based on on my experience in 25 plus years of local government. It's based on on experience Andre brings to the table. Um our finance director and and the finance team from Lauderback Amen has not seen it uh commonly. um BSNA putting it in um our our consultant who's working directly with us um has done uh transition implementations with 21 other clients never seen uh any requests for the board to have access but we're going to provide that access electronically through BSNA we'll train you all on how to access it but we're not going to uh we're going to send out the bills list as we talked about previously we're going to uh uh poll the the board or you're going to vote on it at the board meeting. And we're going to uh send the checks and and all of this is designed to to create a more efficient system and get our payments to our vendors on time and in a timely manner, which which is very important. So,

one last question. Who whose name is on the checks? The signatures are the village president and the village treasurer which is myself and Amy Joe Whittenberg. Thank you. I'm okay now. And does everybody understand that we're going to a different check process as well? Right. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, are there any other questions before we have a vote, a roll call vote from our clerk? I just want to say the minutes of this meeting. All righty. Hearing none, can we please have a roll call vote, please, for the uh financial report? Trusty Ayanako, I. Trusty Zeldana, I. Trusty E. Hi, Trusty Donnersburgger.

Hi, Trusty Gazis. Hi. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Now, let's move on to item B of new business. Can I have a motion, please? Move to approve resolution 2025-24 which adopts the parks and facilities use policy. Second Gavin.

So this came out of I I got a rash of requests to use the park the gazebo um here at Blackhawk Park and I felt like um I I didn't know what we had done in the past. I looked into it and it was kind of uh seemed random. So, I wanted to have a policy that I can look to when somebody makes a request like that and say, "Okay, here's our pol. Yes, this is allowed. Here's our policy. I'll make sure that there is no no events interfering with this." I just I'm a person who likes to have a policy. So, um this is is my recommended policy. Can I make a comment?

Yes. Once we approve this, can it be put on the website for everybody to see and promoted on the social media so people know that this is now the policy? Absolutely. Thank you. Any questions on the policy that's before you?

Hearing none. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Trusty. I trusty Sana. Hi, Trusty Ak. I trusty Donnersburgger. Hi, Trusty Gazes. Hi. Follow-up question. This says no alcohol. Is that right? Unless the board approves a a liquor license for come back special for that. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item C. Please, can we have a motion? Please move approval of resolution 2025-25 which adopts a memorial trees and benches policy. Second. Second.

Basically, it's the same thing as before. So, I'll keep it short for the minutes. And um I wanted to have a policy so that I have something to lean on when somebody makes a request. I I had gotten a couple of requests uh for can I put a tree in the park, can I put a bench in the park? And as you know, there there have been other issues involving benches recently. So, um this is a policy that will uh standardize our program for uh memorial benches and trees and our our intern who I'll introduce more fully in a little while um has started to put together uh some documentation of uh what our standard bench is going to uh be and how our standard plaque will be uh set up. So, we'll be putting out to your point, Trustee Salana, we'll be putting out a lot of public information about this program.

Thank you. Hey, Gavin, my only question when you say standardized, that means one type of bench, one type of plaque, that's it. Thank you. Yes. Is there an application process?

There will be an application process. Yes. and our our public works staff will work with the the person to make sure that the bench or the tree is is properly placed in an appropriate place. Um and and those things this will be a donation to the village for for this purpose. So the proper the tree the bench will be the villages tree and the villages bench um and we will be responsible for the upkeep of those. Will we be installing them? Yes. Any other questions on this policy?

Hearing none, can we please have a roll call vote?

Trusty Ayanako. I. Trusty Sana. I. Trusty Gazis. Hi. Trusty Egg. Hi. Trusty Donnersburgger. My apologies. I was reading something at the same time. All righty. Moving right along to item D. Please, can we have a motion? Move to approve resolution 2025-26, adopting board meeting rules. I second. Thank you, Trustee Sana and Trustee. Why are these necessary?

Why is what necessary? Pardon me. board rules. So the thinking here was and we discussed this at the committee and the whole meeting um the thinking was if if we ever want to uh particularly with the public comment uh section uh guidelines. If we ever want to uh if the board ever wants to put boundaries around discussion at uh in during the public hearing or a public meeting um you have to have published some rules around that. Um so it started with the public comment policy and then I think I feel like one of the very first meetings that I came to board rules were discussed um in 2023 when I started here two years ago. Um, I feel like that was uh, well, I know that that was something that the board had had discussed and wanted some rules, but um, it took me a couple years to get around to proposing some.

U, I I had a comment before when we were first uh, reviewing these and um, so I'm going to make a motion to amend these to include where the says debate members must be recognized before speaking. Remember I said by the chair same four remarks must be confined to the matter on the well no that's not it I'm sorry no member shall speak more than twice on the same question without permission from the chair those were the comments I made before it has to be clarified because otherwise anyone can give it himself or herself permission to continue speaking I I have a question so to be recognized that by the chair what do we do madame chair and then

nobody sees me Sorry, Madam Chair. I want to talk. Yeah. I mean, we're a small group. I mean, I'm that's fine with me, but we're a small group and informal and we get things done. So, yeah, but there's it's to maintain the quorum. We have good quum. Will the boards accept that as a friendly amendment? We can make that amendment. Yeah. Thank you, G. My only question on this. Does the um public have to disclose what their comment is going to be or their question is going to be prior? I don't believe so. No. Is there a time limit? Three minutes.

Three minutes. Yeah. I didn't know if they had a sign in. I didn't know if part of the signin was to list the question. They may or may not have doesn't say. We've discussed this and I think the clerk has an answer. three minutes. So, so they don't they don't have to sign in, nor do they have to um

put in the topic. The reason that we put topic there is because if someone wishes to speak on a topic, if you noticed on the order of business, public comments near the end, if there is some if there is something that they wish to speak on earlier, um if they do put that in there and you know, I look at it and I recognize it, it would it could be up to the um the the chair of running the meeting, the president or whoever is running the meeting to ask if they want public comment on that on that topic. So, that's why we put that in there. But under um we can ask for their name and nothing else. We can't even infer like a lot of a lot of places people want to ask for like oh where do you live? What's your address? We can't ask for that. We can't infer that. We can't make an idea of that like oh well it might be helpful. We can't do any of that because it would as the pack coun as the pack has said who does all this it has a freezing effect on public doctrine. So,

so just as a comment clarification,

the the public uh will have a chance to speak as long as it's germanine to something that has been discussed or will be discussed that day. But when the public comes up, in my experience, they get used to saying, "I'm here to speak about this item." And usually people just do it on their own. And if they start speaking without saying why they're here and it turns that is absolutely not gerine to that day's agenda the chair now has an opportunity to say I'm sorry but you know we this is not an item we discussed today if the person gets belligerent etc. There's rules for that and they can be asked to stop speaking and remove themselves. So that's the advantage of this that we don't have to ask them upfront, what are you here for? If they are here speaking about why the birds fly, we they're just wasting our time and we asked them to move along unless we're discussing birds that day. I was I was going to say um just kind of to the to dovetail on that um I have seen in the past uh where there is two sections of public comment but one section of public comment just says you know public comment on items on the agenda and then the other one has been public comment which is basically just whatever they the public feels like coming and talk about whether it be birds or airplanes or whatever. They get their three minutes to talk about whether they think the grass is the wrong color or something and then we you nod and move along. Yeah.

So, Andre, you mentioned that you thought in my experience, we've always asked people that come up to name an address so they are of the community, but you're saying that we should not do that. That's not required. Not required or we shouldn't do it. That's that's illegal, right? I've heard we shouldn't be doing We shouldn't just to clarify because even even the planning and zoning commission I think uh the difference between asking and requiring.

So if there's a box that says would you like to provide information on what you're going to speak about they're at liberty to fill that in or not. So as long as it's permissive, as long as there's an understanding that you can supply the information if you need to, but if you choose not to, you don't. That's fine. one of the other communities I represent. The rules provide that if you don't want to provide your name to be called on, put describe an article of clothing you're wearing so that the chair knows who to pick when the time's up. So, council would for that theoretically you could have public comments if we're not asking them who they are. We're not supposed to or if they're in the community. Buridge could just pack this house and just have public comments about Indian Park and we could do the same in theory. Not that anybody would do that, but

please don't. It's an interesting way to spend a Thursday evening, but um and the minutes will show that but that's one of the other things that other communities might do is cap the total amount of public comment time to 30 minutes, for example. and that will generally discourage filibusters and encourage people to share their time and use it more effectively.

Um, another rule I've seen before too is is they ask you not to repeat something someone else has already said. If you don't like a warehouse because you think it's going to be too noisy, you know, they don't want 15 people coming up and saying that the chair has said before and plan commissions, you know, is anybody else here going to come complain about how noisy it is? and 15 people raise their hand, they say, "Okay, well, we we'd ask you not to come up, we just note that there's 15 of you that have that that's their objection." Yeah. I mean, even just allowing when when members of the public hear that their concerns have been heard and understood, even if they don't have to voice them personally, that sometimes surprises.

So, did I hear there's two edits there? Eileen had an edit, I believe, that I did. No. About madam. Oh, just Christina. Okay. I thought it was about being recognized to speak. I'll just lean over. Okay. Send up a by by the chair for five I and 53. Do you have that? Okay. If we all agree on that edit, can we please have a mot call um vote with I like that. Thank you. Is that roll calls? I like that. Oh, is that what

I don't think it says no more. Well, no. No more roll calls unless it's required. Okay. Or requested. Or requested. So, I like that. So, can we have a roll call vote with the anticipated rules yet? So, we anticipated edit that Christina Trustee Salana is suggesting, please. This is just on the edit. Approve as amended. No, approve as amended. Right. Well, I I think I think the board adopted I think you asked whether or not the board would accept as a friendly amendment. Yes, I did. So, I think at this point that amendment is already engrossed. So, as amended, all righty. So, we're going to approve as amended. Could we have a roll call vote, please?

Trusty Inaco, I. Trusty Sana, I. Trusty E. I. Trusty Donnersburgger. Hi. Trusty Gases. Hi. Great. Thank you. Could we please move on to item E? I have a motion. Move to approve resolution 2025-2727 the Oslad Saka Jaguya Park um project whatever I second now it is my pleasure to introduce Brandon Fleer our new administrative intern from Northern Illinois University Master of Public Administration program

welcome

hello everyone Brandon's in his second week with the village and he's already jumped in feet first, head first, I'm not sure which. Uh, but he's got a lot of energy and enthusiasm. He's working on several projects already. Uh, Brandon's background, real quick, he got prior experience from South Rock Island Township and the city of Molen where he worked on community outreach reach, senior programming, and research initiatives focused on social isolation. his early uh contributions here have already proved invaluable. So I we've got two years worth of that and I'm looking forward to it. Uh one project he's involved in is uh in taking a big role in is our application for the OLAD grant program and that's the open space land acquisition and development grant which is administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Um and the way this grant works, it's a matching uh program and it will support in our case specifically uh a redesign and redevelopment of uh Saka Jia Park and uh which we see as a a good opportunity to uh enhance our parks here in the community while maximizing outside funding and minimizing local tax impact. Uh Brandon's going to speak to you a bit about this uh in more detail and talk a little bit about the meeting that we had last night, the public the first of two public meetings on this project.

Uh hello everyone. So yeah, kind of what uh Gavin was saying is we had a meeting last night with um with residents and the guy that we're consulting with from Planners um Resources Inc. Planning Resources Inc. uh his name is Daryl and he came up with a um 3D um I don't know how I would say a rendering of what the park would look like. And the reason we're working with them is um to submit this Ocelid grant, there's a lot of things that we need to have such as we need to make sure the park has um accessibility for a lot of people. um we need to make sure that it is um meeting other INDR requirements. And so working with Darl from Planning Resources, Inc., their company has a 96 rate 96% rate of success when working with local governments um for this grant. Um so what we're trying to do tonight is um get a formal resolution of authorization um as per required in the OLED um application. What this means is we're committing to provide sufficient local matching funding. Um as Gavin mentioned the OLED grant does 50/50 and so the total budget of this project would be 600,000. Um with the OLED they would put in 300,000 if we get it all and we would do the rest. Um one of the other requirements for this is we need to have commitment to completing the project within two years. Um that two years starts after we sign the contract which wouldn't happen until April according to Daryl or he estimates April is when the final contract would be signed.

Um yeah. Are there any questions for Gavin? Uh, so we would put the 300,000 in our budget coming in. Yes. Okay. And we do have enough funds in our capital uh capital uh improvement um fund for that. U I have a question. Do I have to amend my motion? Because it wasn't actually clarified. What is it that we're approving? Uh we should move to approve resolution 202527 authorizing the village president to execute the Oslet grant program resolution for authorization. Second that. I think the pending motion is is okay with the clarification.

Thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Well, just in case because I see Thank you. Yeah, I say that. Thank you. Did you have a question? Any Did anybody have a question on the OLED project or the process? Just a question on the completion. So it's two years from the day we signed the agreement. Yeah. And was there a buffer based on if we can't get materials, weather, or anything like that? Yes. So there do you want to um I believe it is a one-year um buffer period extension. Okay. So if if something happens right now, we couldn't get materials to finish the project. There's an extension. That two years isn't a hard um a hard uh number.

Yes. But we would have to let um the Illinois Department of uh Natural Resources let them know within 45 days of signing the contract. Okay. And I will also say that um if something changes, our our financial position changes, if we totally change direction, we can withdraw from from this program. The penalty is we can't apply again for an OLED grant for two more years. Any other questions about the OLED process or the park?

One thing I did want to mention is we will be having another public meeting uh September 4th for the second uh meeting with this that is required. Great. Can we please have a roll call vote for this clerk? Trusty Ayanako I. Trusty Seldon. I. Trusty Eck. I. Trusty Donnersburgger. I. Trusty Gazes. Hi. Great. Thank you. Can I please have a motion for item F, please?

Okay. Okay. I move to approve ordinance 2025-13 setting the date, time, and location for the public hearing on the proposed Triangle Area Business Development District. I'll second that. Thank you, Trustee Sana and Trustee E. Gavin. I'd like to hand us off to our community development specialist director. Hi.

Thank you. Uh so this is to establish the public hearing um at the September 11th meeting for the business development district. Um this is only only referencing the bill business development district and you're not asking and you're not it's not asking you to approve anything now. It's just asking you to set the meeting. Um similar to the OSLAD grant, we have to have two public notices out not public hearings but public notices out in the in the papers. um in a certain time frame. So, uh, the other important thing is that we want to have this at the September 11th meeting because if because at the September 11th meeting, if you have the public hearing and then the vote and then the board does vote to approve it, we have to get it to the Illinois Department of Revenue um by October 1st because when we get the because this is a sales tax, so we get to them by October 1st, then it starts getting collected on January 1st and then it'll get its first collection on April 1st. Um, so that's the important time frame. If we miss that time frame, collection doesn't start till July 1st. Um, so once again, this is about this is setting the public hearing for the business district. It's not establishing anything at the moment. I'll take any questions.

Said we had to have two public hearings, public notices. So we had we had to post in the paper twice. So, if you pro approve this tonight, um the first notice we will send it to uh the paper tomorrow and it'll be published on August 22nd and the second notice will be published on August 29th. And those are notices of a public hearing that will take place on September 11th at the board meeting. Is there any time limit on how quick you can put those two notices? Is that allow enough time? There is and it it is within the the the time frame. I think it's what 15 days and 30 days 30 days and 15 days before the hearing.

Yeah. There's a certain time frame of it. Um did you mean like how fast we can get them in the paper? No. Well, so if you're going to put the first notice out tomorrow, is is it enough time notice for seven or 10 days later? Is that I mean for both notices, does it matter? That's this is Yeah. a consultant who does this for a living, okay, tells us this the time frame works for me. I did have a question about outreach to the business owners, meaning the owners of the parcels. So, is there normally some kind of a process that they sort of understand what's going on?

Um, it it depends. Um, it's not required, uh, but it tends to be good practice and we have been we have been reaching out informally. um you know in the triangle this is only a sales and sales and retails retail one. So any service industries over there aren't getting this extra tax because Illinois doesn't tax services. Um so you're really looking at five or six businesses out there. So Wolf's head. Okay. Um Oak Pantry which is kind of the biggest one. Uh Guy Blando. So it's just those in that area. Yeah. And and not all of them. It's just that area.

It is anybody in that area that is currently that is currently subject to the se the the retail tax. So it's like I said those like about those five businesses. So does the consultant think that we should do a formal letter to them to be we we well make sure they know what's going on. We haven't spoken to them before. Um, in my previous experience, we can send a formal letter, but a lot of times it's these informal relationships uh that that go on with these types of things. Um, I've already spoken to Ari about it. Um, I went in to get pizza one time and she was relatively free, so I, you know, spoke to her.

I just want to make sure they sort of I don't know what Eileen thinks in the in the economic development committee, but I think that we need to be sensitive that, you know, they sometimes feel like they don't know what's going on. And I think we need to maybe sometimes overcommunicate. So, and we're meeting way we're meeting next Tuesday and uh the members of the committee have relationships already with the businesses up there. So, why don't we talk about it at the meeting on Tuesday and we can plan to reach out. I think that's what's the harm in again going with uh Mayor Amy Joe's. I mean, what's the what's the harm with kind of officially notifying them that this is happening

because again, they'll come back. I mean, people, we didn't know what's going on. What are you taxing? What are you putting this on? I mean, even if it's a Chad GPT, just 30 second. And then how does it how does it appear on the actual register receipt? So, does it say local tax? Does it say what does it actually say? Like in Burr Ridge, they have a business development district. I haven't looked at my eating receipt, but does it say anything? I don't believe so. I've not ever seen that like because you don't just add it in. Yeah, it just go like when when you go to, you know, Walgreens or something, do you see all the different taxes that it doesn't break out the county and it doesn't break all these things out? It just says here's the total tax on it. Okay,

which is good because half the time people don't look at what the actual full tax is. Okay, thank you for that. And then Eileen, you'll let um you'll let Andre and Gavin know what the the committee wants to do as far as outreach and all of that. Yeah, we'll we'll talk about you guys will work together. Just so I I believe Trusty Donnersburgger said we'll talk about it on on the Tuesday EDC meeting. So Okay, perfect. There. Thank you. All righty. Any other questions on this item F? Hearing none, can we please have a roll call vote? Trusty Ayanako. Hi. Trusty Sana. Hi. Trusty Ek. Hi. Trusty Donnesburgger. Hi.

Trusty Gaz. Hi. Moving on to public comments. Do we have any public comments this evening? There is. Yeah. No. No. I'm Amy and I'm wearing a tan shirt. I won't give you my address though. Um, question on

what you guys talked about here about like only speaking to what's on the agenda. I've been to a lot of meetings where people come here to bring up issues that might not be on the agenda. So, are those all going to be we can't do that now? Can I can I speak to that? So it just gives gives the chair the opportunity to stop someone from talking about something that is absolutely inappropriate. Okay. And so it's it's it's the call of the chair. Okay.

If if what you're speaking about is gerine to businesses of the Indian head park. So basically then Christina the way I'm reading it is you would expect a member of the audience to come up and say I would like to address this issue and then the chair can determine whether or not I would be no or they could just start and if it's fine then we just go ahead and unless they go on for you know unless something gets in inappropriate then we'll okay I wanted to clarify that because and I'm guilty of coming to the board meetings and bringing up issues so just wanted to make sure I was still able to do that. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. Any other public comments?

Hi, U. My name's Kenneth Miller and I'm very happy to hear that the board enjoys having policies because it seems to be um a highlight with uh what the board does. And I'd like to bring to the board's attention um a policy with aggressive animals, especially dogs. Um I spoke I had an incident last Sunday where I was charged uh by uh an aggressive pitbull. The pitbull I was walking by uh in Arcatia on the sidewalk and this pitbull charged me. The owner seemed to have difficulty having control over the dog. The dog did not attack me, but he lunged at me and I really feared for my life. He scared me to death. Um, I filed a report uh at the police department with community relations officer and I was really um shocked to hear that there really is no policy with aggressive animals. The officer told me that since I wasn't bitten or mauled or touched by the dog, there really wasn't much that he could do. I suggested that at least contact the owner and give them a warning that they have to have control over the animal uh and they have to be responsible. He was very reluctant to do that. He was telling me that uh the police don't weaponize the public and he was very apprehensive and he didn't seem to be overly cooperative with my suggestion.

And then uh we he did issue a report. I have a copy. Uh and in the report he said he did speak to the owner and the owner gave an excuse that the um the leash or the retractable leash didn't function properly and they were made aware of it. So what I'm requesting from the board is to establish some kind of policy where if these events happen with me and other people uh especially if we're not physically attacked that community relations can contact the owner and just put them on warning or just give them a warning notice. He also indicated that if he did that that he would the owner might feel embarrassed because the neighbors would see this. And I think that was really an inappropriate response. So I'm requesting to the board that we establish a policy uh to at least inform the owners and put them uh on a warning notice if this should happen. And I think it's very reasonable because I think we should be proactive in protecting the public and um I think the board should address it and put the policy on the website. If I can assist in any way or working with community relations, I'd be happy to. But I don't know if that's my position to do that. So, I'm asking the board to consider that and to look seriously at this matter uh and see if we can resolve it uh in a proactive way and more in an educational way.

Well, thank you.

Okay, good. My second um request is to get an update on the Wolf Road project between Planefield Road and Joliet Road. I know there's there's discussion uh but I don't don't know if there's any final outcome with the uh what the county is planning to do if they're going to widen the road in that area if they're going to put sidewalks in. Has there been any final uh or what's the latest update? So there's a website um wolfroadstudy.com that you could should definitely go to and you can see that there has been um a lot of conversations. In fact I not I didn't do it tonight but every other month I've done an update on Wolf Road. So we did make a determination and we did pick a baseline alternative for Wolf Road and it's all on the website the wolfroadstudy.com. It has all of the maps. It has all of the current information on what is going on with the Wolf Road project is from Planefield to 72nd Street. So, it's actually all the way down to 72nd. So, all of the information is there if you need any assistance when you do go to the website. Um, you can email the study team at info@wolfroadstudy.com or you can contact one of us and we will answer any questions that you have.

Great. Thank you. So, there's a volume of presentations. There's videos of all the meetings that we've had. The December 11th meeting was very insightful. Um, but you can see all of that online. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? Did we receive any on email? Andre. Okay. Thank you. All right. Now we'll move to reports. Trustees. Trusty Gazis, do you have a report? planning zoning did meet and we are off and running on the fence discussion Eileen

uh economic development is meeting Tuesday and um I have to say that the members of that committee are so I mean they're thrilled that we're moving forward with the uh redevelopment plan and fingers crossed it'll all come to fruition because they've worked very very hard on it. I'd like to give them credit for what they've done. Uh heritage committee, we're going to meet I'm meeting with Gavin tomorrow to look at the space over there to get some ideas of uh what might be done with it. And uh you Thank you, Amy, for sending me all those ideas. They're terrific uh in terms of themes for the area. So, we're not going to meet until after we hear back from who's the contractor.

He'll be meeting with us tomorrow. Yeah. Okay. When we hear his ideas, then we'll be getting back together. Thank you, Trusty E. Uh, yes. The finance committee is going to start working on the budget. Our meeting was going to is going to be Monday, September 29th at 4:15. The public is uh welcome to join us. Thank you. Christina, no report. Anthony, no report. Great. Department heads, chief. Sorry. I think I surprised you.

Yeah, I was looking at the list. I'm about five away. I thought uh we're going to have the Labor Day I DOT traffic enforcement grant. Uh it's a voluntary, it's a sign up. Uh the state provides us funds to do these every year. It'll go from August 15th to September 2nd. At least 30% has to be for occupant restraint, which is seat belt. But then uh we can also do the phone you know the use of use use of cell phone and other things as well. So that'll be going for the next couple weeks starting tomorrow. Union negotiations. We uh contacted our uh our attorneys to start working on union negotiations because the contract ends in April. So I've been going through the contract a little bit. I'm going to meet with Gavin and other uh village members to go over this contract and see what we like and don't like, get the ball rolling. So hopefully we can get that resolved. Flock cameras. There was a discrepancy over who put the poll in. They were under the impression that we did and we've never put a poll in for any of our cameras. So we push told them put the poll in. They had a couple questions about placement which I thought was taken care of, but we're going to make sure that it's taken care of and done. Met with Motorola. Motorola is talking about incar and body worn cameras. The incar cameras and the body warn cameras are outdated and old and they're starting to fail. Uh, Commander Gardner has done a great job of keeping them up and running and we're talking with we're in negotiations with uh, Motorola now because they gave us a quote. It it' be a 5-year warranty. I but I have to trim it down and see what we what we really need. Uh there's also I met with uh members of Lexipole which does our our uh policy and procedure but they also provide help with grants. They gave me a guide to what to look for because some

some of this money might be recoverable but the grants aren't open yet. So there's certain things that I have to get done before it opens up so I can get the grant in as soon as it does. National Night Out was a huge success. It it really is. And Officer Verber does an excellent job. Tito spends a lot of time putting this together. The public works was great and the support from the village was great as well. It was a really nice event, well attended. And then I've got a grant for $6,500 just approved today for organized retail theft uh crime grant. So we got 5,000 for overtime and 1.5,000 so 1500 for tracking devices. So, I've uh tasked Corporal Cassin with finding some good devices to to put on these cars and different things so we can track them. We did have person of interest before staying at a hotel nearby and if we would have had these devices would have been very helpful. So, we received this today. We're very excited about it. This will be for the from the date of the grant till next year. So, we'll make sure 5,000 we can use that up pretty quick. So, we're going to have to determine when's the best time to use it, but get these devices on the on vehicles if we can as well. And that's my report.

Have a question. Monday evening on Juliet Road from uh Gilbert to Planefield uh that had been blocked off by countryside police and I'm just wondering if uh you can share anything as to what that was about.

Yeah, there was at uh Juliet Road. That was the uh was a violation of order protection. A Cook County Sheriff's police officer was assign was responded to that call when the subject showed up. When a officer showed up, there was a uh subject the offender was actively stabbing one of the victims and had already stabbed another one at which time the officer fired upon the offender and struck the offender. So it was all blocked off so they could do proper investigation. It was in Cook. Um, it was unincorporated Cook County. It was not in countryside. Oh, was it? No, it's right near the PD though. So, it's just the department believes nearby. Yeah.

Uh, Andre's.

Um, well, we've covered the business district uh tonight already uh briefly. Jim, thank you very much to uh bring up that we have also been starting to work on fences with the planning and zoning commission. We are also um you know in deep with the zoning code update review that is continuing to work go on um and the plan commission has seen that and was has been able to give feedback if if they so desired. We also have gotten the first draft of our building code updates um back to us. Uh we have sent those on to both Don Morris Architects, our building consultant, as well as Pleasant View uh Fire Protection District as you know it covers the fire code as well. Um so I'm waiting to hear back from either of them for uh comments they have on that um as well. Otherwise, we are uh let's see what else we're doing. We are kneedeep in BSNA changeovers. So, we've had plenty of training on that. Um and we are starting to do that with the permit system, the business licensing systems, all the community development systems in there. Um as well as the front counter and utility billing and and everything. Um my brain's a little bit mush from just, you know, 5 days of constant um training on it. Uh I will say that you will be seeing some changes to some processes for um both business licensing and uh building permits just because the way it was previously done. It doesn't exactly work in the new system. The new system is fantastic because we don't have it's not all divided. So, we have, you know, if there's someone that has a utility bill and I go to put them in for a new permit and I don't have their name, it automatically pops up for them in the utility because it's already has that record tied to that property. So, it's good. There's just some tweaks that

we're going to have to make on on processes, but that's nothing new. Um, it made it's already I've issued a couple permits um with it, and I've had to apologize because they had to wait extra time before we could do it, but I could tell you it it was much simpler. It's cut down basically half the paperwork we have to do with it. So that's great. That's great news. Thank you. When you say extra time, you mean minutes, right? Yes. I mean I mean minutes. Um no, I meant not very long, not days.

No, it is. Yeah, it is t it is taking a little bit. So we are we are working on that. We are continuing working on that. Um, like I said, it is uh BSNA has a great reporting system um out of it. So, it's going to for like Lions Township reports that we do currently, it's very manual um because we have to put that in the exact format they want us to because then they have to upload all of all the buildings for T building permits for Lions Township has to go to Cook County and it has to be in that exact format for Cook County system. Um and so and building reports and these types of things all are um uh the the reporting function is is basically two clicks and it's good versus you know exporting to Excel and and and playing around with it. So um as time goes on we'll get much better much faster about it. Uh but at this moment you know it's we're week two into a change over in the system on it. So, um, that's doing well. I believe that's everything I have. I was gone for a week. I I went on vacation. So,

good for you. Well, thank you. We're glad you're back. Thank you. Um, village attorney, no report and village treasurer and village administrator. Since you're both, we'll

No treasur. No treasures report today, but I will um let me give the public works director's report first. Joe couldn't be here tonight, but but he sent his regards and and some notes. Um the mechanical lift that the board approved um has been installed. Bobby Hernandez, one of our public works uh maintenance workers, has obtained his cert certification in lift safety, and he will be working with the police department and with uh the public works department's uh cars to put a maintenance schedule in place so that we're getting rolling on that. Um the pump house roof is scheduled to be done in September and we're looking forward to getting that done. That's really the last thing on the the building envelope for the pump house. Uh we are still working on the transition to uh how we chlorinate the water. Um the tree and landscape meeting is scheduled for August 20th and the items for discussion include the tree management plan with Thomas from Penhigh Solutions. uh presenting to them. We're also going to go over all the ordinance changes uh for the tree preservation ordinance uh with the committee and that'll be coming back hopefully for the September board meeting, excuse me. And there will be a tree planting program progress report. Storm sewer maintenance was performed in some trouble areas uh this past week uh via a jetting truck. feel. Oh, he told me to feel free to brag on how well our system worked during the recent heavy rainfalls with minimal complaints and no major issues. Uh despite the large amount of range rain, our system was back to normal by the end of the day. Uh we have performed generator maintenance on uh all the generator here at this building, the one at the pump

house, and the one at uh public works. And we're um we have also put in a new fancy flag pole at public works. There used to be a um mosquito pond right in front of uh public works uh rocks and water. It is now uh green and has a a new flag pole. So we we're proud of that and we wanted to show it off. Um and then uh there was some storm water sewer maintenance that was supposed to get done on Wednesday, but due to heavy rain in Ashbrook and but due to heavy rain Tuesday night, it got pushed back. They will be out to take care of that as soon as the water levels come down. That's the public works report.

All right. Now you can go on to your report. And I really I was going to give a BSNA report, but now you can read it in the minutes in Andreas's presentation. Um, but um I also wanted to let you know since it came up in discussion, I will be presenting at the Illinois Municipal League conference in September on the topic of small governments using artificial intelligence. So I'll be on a panel um I'm the one focused on small governments in case you didn't know that. But I'll be on a panel with Normal Illinois and they've got a a whole bunch more staff working with AI and a whole bunch of more resources in general, but uh we'll both be talking about that the use of artificial intelligence in local government. That's really all I had to report.

Hey Gavin, what was the title of that uh presentation called? Anything else that we missed from your side? You're good. Yes, ma'am. I think um we are at the time where I need a motion to go to close session, right? Is that what I need to do? I haven't done this in a while. Madam President, I think at this point it would be I think you'd want to entertain a motion to move into executive session pursuant to section 2C1 of the Open Meetings Act to discuss the appointment employment or compensation of any employee and then thereafter adjourn with no further public business to begin. That sounds great. Can I have a

Okay. I move to enter into executive session pursuant to 5 ILCS120/2C1 of the Illinois Open Meetings Act to discuss the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees of the village including the performance evaluation of the village administrator and then to adjourn thereafter with no further business and then to thereafter or accept a motion to adjourn thereafter with further no further business. I second. Great. Thank you, Trustee Sana and Trustee Ayanako. Thank you. Executive session clerk. Roll call. Trusty Inaco. I here. Trusty Seldana.

Hi. Trusty E. I. Trusty Donnersburgger. Hi. Trusty Gazes. Hi. Thank you.