City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the August 18th Naperville City Council meeting. Roll call.

Worley.

Here.

Gibson. Here. Holzhauer. Here. Jane. Here. Kelly.

Here. McBroom.

Here. Syed. Here. White. Here. Wilson.

Here. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Our first item is public forum. I'd like to remind everyone of the citizen participation rules in the city's municipal code for speaking at city council meetings. Speakers are asked to present their comments in a respectful and courteous manner. Speakers should stay on topic and be cognizant of their words. Personal attacks on council members, staff, other speakers, or members of the audience are not allowed. If inappropriate language or comments are expressed during this meeting, you will be asked immediately to stop commenting. Also, for audience members, there is no cheering and no jeering. Actions such as applauding, cheering, finger snapping, booing, or any other noises during or at the conclusion of any remarks made by any speaker are not allowed. If this occurs, you will be asked to stop immediately. If it continues to persist, I will recess the meeting until the audience abides by the rules in our city code. No speaker should ever feel intimidated by the crowd. Audience disruption is meant to intimidate those speaking, and I will not allow it in the chambers. Audience members with signs, the signs must not block any other audience member's view. Speakers are given three minutes to address the council. To help speakers stay within the three-minute time frame, we have a timer located on the sign dais to your right. It will give the visual cue when the three minutes are expiring. This helps speakers conclude their comments in a timely manner without being cut off. The timer will buzz when it hits zero and we will alert the speaker that their time is up. If a speaker's name is called and they are not in the room, we will move on to the next speaker and we will not go back. Speakers are encouraged to remain in council chambers until the conclusion of public forum in the event council members want to ask follow-up questions. Also, when your name is called, please come and have a seat in the first row. Mrs. Schatz, please call the first speakers.

There's one written comment that was posted to the website. We have 12 speakers. The first four speakers are Ted Bullard, Theresa Huss, Joe Huss, and Richard Starr.

If you heard your name called, please go ahead and proceed to the front row. And we'll start with Mr. Bullard.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city council members, Residents of Naperville, I'm Ted Billard, a Naperville resident and a volunteer for the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force. Regardless of the city's decision to end their affiliation with task forces, Ness' commitment to serve the community and the city remains steadfast. Our mission, to assist, inform, and advise Naperville residents, businesses, and the city On sustainability solutions and greenhouse gas, reductions remain unchanged. In short, we're not going anywhere. Despite false assertions from an in-town pro-IMEA mouthpiece, we've always been and will remain focused on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions from our existing buildings and from those we seek to develop. The energy we buy and the energy we generate and store in town, the natural resources we seek to preserve and to restore, sustainable transportation solutions such as EVs and safely bicycling and walking, waste reductions and waste recycling, our youth and their participation in local sustainability efforts. We commit ourselves to these actions because climate change is no longer merely a warning for the planet's remote regions and habitats. It is now an existential threat we are witnessing from our own backyards. Flood warnings in town and flooding in Indiana this week were due to unusually energetic and therefore violent storms. Wildfire smoke made breathing outdoors in Naperville hazardous this month. Fact, Illinois is now the leading nation in tornado touchdowns this year, and no one is even close. Obsolete and out of date, IMEA's claims of affordability, sustainability, and reliability ring hollow. Naperville needs to develop affordable solutions that deliver local resilience. Naperville needs to reduce our financial responsibility for emitting greenhouse gases. You'll hear more from Nest volunteers tonight and in the weeks to come. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Teresa Husk.

Good evening, I'm Theresa Huss. I'm here tonight as part of NEST's leadership team. We are concerned with the process of the city's recent decision to sever ties with task forces. NEST was created in 2019 after months of discussion and unanimous city council vote. But we and other task forces were disaffiliated by an internal memo with no agenda item, no public comment, and no resident input. And decisions that are made without transparency erode public trust, especially when they reverse actions that were originally made through an open and public process. That said, we want to be clear about one thing. Our mission at NEST has never been to speak for city government. We have always been a voice for sustainability and a voice for residents calling to protect the health, safety, and economic stability of our community today while ensuring that our children and our grandchildren inherit a livable future. And that's the very definition of sustainability. And right now, all those things are being threatened by climate change. Illinois, as Ted mentioned, led the nation in tornadoes. Two of the last three years were on track to be number one. And this dramatic surge occurs as climate change shifts our weather patterns and moves Tornado Alley directly eastward into Illinois. And these and other climate-driven disasters have caused our home insurance rates in Illinois to skyrocket by 68% since 2020. So these aren't distant problems. They're here now. And future generations are going to have even greater challenges if we don't start considering sustainability in all of our decisions. The community survey which Polko is presenting tonight reinforces why the work of NEST matters. Residents rated the natural environment as one of the most important facets of community livability, 85% calling it essential or very important. And when asked directly about sustainability, 73% of residents said it should be a high priority for the city. That's a clear message from our community. NEST is going to continue to support these priorities. The city may have changed our structure, but our mission, our commitment, and our presence in the community are exactly the same. We're going to continue to show up, we're going to continue to do the work, and we will continue to provide the science-based practical guidance that residents have asked for and that the survey confirms that they value. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speakers are Joe Huss, followed by Richard Stark, Rita Trionis, and Ashley Penick.

Thanks, Linda. So I'm Joe Huss. I'm a 27-year resident and a NEST volunteer. AND TONIGHT I'M GOING TO PROPOSE AN ACTION THAT REDUCES POLLUTION, THAT REDUCES ELECTRICITY COSTS, AND THAT IMPROVES LOCAL GRID RELIABILITY. IN 2025 YOU CAN SEE ON THE SCREEN THAT WE PAID $114 MILLION FOR ELECTRICITY AND THAT'S OUR LARGEST LINE ITEM EXPENSE. WE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO LOWER COSTS BY AS MUCH AS 10% UNDER OUR EXISTING CONTRACT. SO I'M PROPOSING THAT THE CITY DEVELOP A BUSINESS CASE FOR TWO METHODS TO REDUCE COSTS AND PRESENT IT TO THE COUNCIL. THE FIRST IS A 10 MEGAWATT BATTERY THAT WOULD PROVIDE SERVICES THAT WE WOULD SELL AND WOULD ALSO IMPROVE LOCAL GRID RELIABILITY. THE SECOND IS TO ENROLL IN PJM'S DEMAND RESPONSE PROGRAM WHICH PAYS CUSTOMERS FOR PARTICIPATING. TOGETHER THESE CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS. So battery storage is no longer a niche technology. This chart shows that U.S. battery capacity is averaging a 70% increase every single year for the past three years. And this growth shows how modern, low-cost, clean technology rapidly transforms the grid. THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY IS THE 10 MEGAWATT BATTERY. OUR ANALYSIS SHOWS IT WILL COST ROUGHLY $7 MILLION WITH A PAYBACK OF UNDER THREE YEARS. AND THAT ALIGNS WITH WHAT THE CITY MANAGER SAID TWO MEETINGS AGO. IT WOULD PROVIDE VALUE THROUGH SELLING GRID SERVICES AND IT WOULD REDUCE EMISSIONS BY LOWERING GAS PEAKER PLANT USAGE. THE SECOND IS TO ENROLL IN PJM'S DEMAND RESPONSE PROGRAM. UNDER THIS PROPOSAL, NAPERVILLE'S CURRENT USAGE WOULD ALREADY PRODUCE SAVINGS. WITH MORE SAVINGS POSSIBLE, THE CITY SHIFTS DEMAND VIA PROGRAMS LIKE A TIME OF USE CHARGE. SO THIS PROPOSAL SHOWS HOW MODERN TECHNOLOGIES CREATE A MORE RELIABLE LOCAL GRID, LOWER BILLS, AND LOWER EMISSIONS. AND MY REQUEST TONIGHT IS THAT YOU DIRECT STAFF TO DEVELOP A BUSINESS CASE and that the city provide that business case back to the council in three months and include expected savings, the expected cost, and the timeline. I know that affordability is a priority for this council, and these steps would turn those goals into tangible benefits for residents. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Richard Stark.

My name is Richard Stark, and I've been a Naperville resident for eight years. Along with my partner, Mike Milano, I am working with Doug Krieger and city staff to develop the September 28 workshop. For this short presentation right now, I'd like to walk through the five-step energy strategy development process that we use as our overall guide. You can see that on the screen here. On the left side is external diagnosis. where we identify and analyze major external risks and opportunities, specifically for trends that affect costs for energy, capacity, transmission, ancillary services, RECs, and reliability. This step answers the questions, what challenges must we solve, and what opportunities should we capture? Following this in step two, the guiding framework, we established the criteria used to select the optimal strategic path, and this includes an electricity vision statement and a decision framework. To clarify the difference between a vision and a mission, a mission statement explains what an organization does today and why it exists, while a vision statement describes the future the organization wants to create and long-term impact it aims to achieve. THE PROPOSED DECISION FRAMEWORK WHICH I SHOPPED WITH MOST OF YOU ALREADY EVALUATES OPTIONS ACROSS FOUR KEY PILLARS. THEY ARE AFFORDABILITY AND CONSISTENCY, RESILIENCE AND RELIABILITY, CARBON-FREE ENERGY AND VALUE ADDED SERVICES. AND WE'VE ADDED AN OVERALL CATEGORY FOR THE COMBINED VERSION OF FLEXIBILITY TO EVALUATE THE PROPOSED SOLUTIONS ABILITY TO ADAPT TO FUTURE CHALLENGES. The middle step, step three, defines the strategy components. We evaluate sourcing and demand management options to determine the best portfolio mix over time, formalizing the strategy into an integrated resource plan, or IRP. In step four, the internal diagnosis, we assess the electric utility's current operational capabilities, identifying organizational strengths, resource gaps, IN THE INVESTMENTS NEEDED TO EXECUTE THE STRATEGY. FINALLY IN STEP FIVE, THE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE, WE EVALUATE THE STRUCTURAL OPTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY, WHETHER TO RENEW WITH IMEA OR TO JOIN AN EXISTING ONE OR FORM A NEW JAA, OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY OR SELL THE ELECTRIC UTILITY. I WILL FOLLOW UP WITH A SEPARATE PRESENTATION LATER TONIGHT. outlining the proposed objectives and agenda for the September 28th workshop. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Rita Trayonas, followed by Ashley Penick, Bias Thakur, and Scott Lee.

And if you heard your name called, please move to the front row. Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Rita Trionis, and regarding the proposed Naperville Ridge annexation and development, I want to say thank you to every member of City Council, Mayor Worley, and City Manager Krieger. Thanks to all of you for making time in your busy schedules to have meetings and calls with me and many of my neighbors. Thank you for being responsive, asking questions, and listening to the many concerns we have. Getting involved with the civic process can be a daunting task. For me and many of my neighbors that I've talked to, this has been our first experience with it. Ultimately, we're all just normal people with jobs and families trying to do what's best for our neighborhoods, our city, and our broader community. The DuPage Water Commission property and proposed development is a unique set of circumstances for all of us. Very rarely do we see public land being sold for private development around here. And since we don't have many forests left, we don't see many heavily wooded areas proposed for development either. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the eastern border of Naperville or who haven't stopped by the neighborhood yet, I invite you to come and see it for yourself. It puts things in perspective in a way no diagram or satellite image can. After recent years of drought conditions, the summer has shown how powerful water is and how lush and vibrant our sensitive native wetlands can be. And many of the recent storms remind us how fragile nature can be. how long it takes for a tree to grow, and how unsettling it is when a tree that's been long standing is gone. We really need to protect as many trees as we can. We've been Tree City USA for 36 years, and hopefully many more. And people really care about our woods and wetlands. The petition against Naperville Ridge is at 2,700 signatures and continuing to climb. Regardless of who has this property or what someone wants to build on it, the issues are the same. Over 2,100 trees, multiple sensitive wetlands, endangered bats, threatened birds, this is the kind of property that deserves to be protected, not developed. We're not so desperate for housing that we need to permanently destroy the few woods and wetlands we have left. I hope the city of Naperville will continue to work with citizens and will continue caring about our natural resources. I doubt anyone will ever show up at city council and ask to bulldoze a neighborhood so they can make a forest. If we have an opportunity for conservation, if we have an opportunity for our government and representatives to work together for the greater good, I hope we take it. Thank you again for our previous and ongoing conversations, and thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Ashley Penick.

It changed a little bit about what I said. Hello, Naperville City Council, Ashley Penick here. Wayne's World, the movie, came out in 1992 and was about a cable access show featuring two wacky hosts, Wayne and Garth, based out of Aurora, Illinois. Imagine how excited my two younger brothers and I were when we found out we were moving to the town right next door to Aurora. Our friends couldn't wait to come visit us. When I was in high school, I was fortunate to be a volunteer costume guide at Neighbor Settlement for the Martin Mitchell Mansion, which gave me an appreciation for this town's rich history, which I still love to learn about today. When I move, Here, Naperville Community Television, now most commonly known as NCTV, was a public access television station. In 1998, it started offering a class teaching people how to light the studio for production, use the camera, et cetera. I never took the class, but if I had known about it back then, I might have taken it. When I was a teenager, I remember watching the show put out by Adopt. a little furry cats and dogs available for adoption. We adopted our first puppy from a local farm. Channel 17 is also where I learned about June's, pardon me if I'm announcing her name wrong, S-I-N-D-T. She was among one of the founding volunteers who started Neighbor Settlement in 1969. She also started the Farmer's Market at Fifth Avenue Station, both of which are loved by many. The class itself was 10 sessions and gave students the opportunity to make 10-minute production videos. There was even a guy who interviewed bands at Ribfest on Channel 17. Naperville NCTV started as a PEG channel, a public educational governmental access channel. The purpose of them was to have types of channels, public access channels, open to the general public for community programming. Educational access channels reserved for schools, colleges, and universities with time allotted by the franchising authority or cable operator. Governmental access channels used by local governments for official programs like these city council meetings. Neighborhood community television gave the citizens the opportunity to produce their own shows. I know times have changed and PEG funds have dried up. BUT CAN ANYONE FROM THE CITY OF NAPERVILLE COME IN AND PRODUCE A SHOW NOW? IS IT ACCESSIBLE TO EVERY CITIZEN OF THIS CITY? I'M JUST WONDERING. THANKS.

GOOD EVENING MAYOR AND NAPERVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS. I WOULD LIKE TO START OFF BY THANKING THE COUNCIL FOR LISTENING TO THE PERSPECTIVES OF ME AND MANY OTHERS ON THE FUTURE OF OUR GREAT CITY. MY NAME IS VYASTHAKAR AND I'M A SOPHOMORE AT NAPERVILLE NORTH HIGH SCHOOL AND I'M HERE TO SPEAK ABOUT THE IMEA. Since 2007, Naperville has entered into a contract that not only threatens our ability to reach net zero emissions by 2050, but also does injustice to the future of Naperville, us. The Illinois Municipal Electric Agency, or the IMEA, has supplied Naperville with energy for the past 15 years, with 80% of that energy being coal-based. While many argue that coal-based energy is superior to that of solar or wind, the facts speak for themselves. The combustion of coal required to create this coal-based energy results in severe health consequences due to the... toxic air pollution that it causes. Not only that, but according to a study by the US Energy Information Administration, coal emits roughly 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour compared to the solar wind being considered carbon neutral, or essentially zero pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour. And as is proven by extensive amounts of research, the more carbon dioxide present in our environment, the worse off our climate is. Additionally, solar is the cheapest form of energy on the planet, debunking the myth that coal is more affordable. Although some may believe that Naperville's environmental footprint has no real impact on climate change as a whole, much of the IMEA's energy, which fuels Naperville, comes from the Prairie State Power Plant. After just 14 years of operation, this plant has produced over 23 million cubic yards of coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, which contains a toxic mix of heavy metals and radioactive elements. This plant is not only the largest polluter in Naperville, but also one of the largest in all of the United States. I urge council members to not consider any contract extension with the IMEA or any other provider that relies on outdated, dirty fossil fuels. Naperville prides itself on having a remarkable nature, starring our award-winning Riverwalk, the Greeny Valley Forest Preserve, the Knocknalls Nature Center, and much more. But how can we boast our nature when the energy we provide our city with destroys the Earth's environment? Thank you all, and I hope you have a great rest of your night.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Scott Lee.

Hello, everyone. Good evening. So my name is Scott. I've been a resident of Naperville for about 30 years, et cetera. During this public comment, I'd like to say a few words about the in-progress Naperville Ridge development plan. Firstly, I'd like to thank the mayor, members of the city council, and the city manager for taking the time to meet with both myself and other members of the community in the last few months. Me and my wife both work full-time jobs, and we have small kids, so can totally appreciate everyone having a fairly full schedule. I read very carefully through everyone's public profiles, and almost every member had a section about why environmental sustainability was important to them. For this reason, I expect you officials to share and commiserate with the greater community about some of the issues we see with the proposed Naperville Ridge development plan. In the initial development plan that was submitted to the City and Planning and Zoning Committee, we believe that the wetland study was insufficient. There were significant areas, specifically in the southwest quadrant, that were not tested. The other areas in the parcel that were tested almost all found presence of verified wetlands. It's a little bit hard to describe verbally. I didn't know we could have a presentation. Perhaps I will include one next time. But certainly for council members who were interested and have met with us, we've distributed pictures of the land and the study that was done. In truth, the study was very lacking and we've struggled to get a straight answer on why this is considered sufficient to determine no wetlands when large swathes of the area wasn't even tested. In short, the initial analysis is severely overlooking and underestimating the amount of wetlands in this parcel. Secondly, I want to say that while some of the most local parties here are physically closest to the parcel, I think this is an important issue for the greater Naperville community. My wife started an online petition that has now garnered over 2,700 signatures from the community. showing that this is not just about myself and some other nosy neighbors who care, but valid concern from the greater community. I am certain that if this topic was on the agenda today, we would see a commiserate amount of people before you in person. As another prominent member of the community stated in a recent issue of the Naperville Sun publication, I quote, This is not a not in my backyard issue. This is not in our backyard issue. So we're pursuing your support. to vote no for this annexation proposal. Members of this community will not stop paying attention, will not stop caring, and will not stop voicing our concerns, and will not stop exercising our rights until this is settled and we have a no vote on annexation. Lastly, I want to extend an invitation to anyone here to come visit the parcel so you can see for yourself about what we're talking about. Thank you again for your time and the opportunity to bring an issue that resonates with the community before you. Thank you.

Next speaker.

The next speakers are John Doyle, followed by Bill Simon, Chris Montavich, and Judith McGowan.

John Doyle, Naperville resident. Thank you. You know, the reason I started looking into the finances of the electric utility is because I wanted to see how much it would actually cost for a recovery rider. for the same low-income discount program that ComEd is legally required to offer to its customers. Here's the formula ComEd is using. I know it may look intimidating to some, but it's really just plugging in 12 variables and doing some pretty straightforward math. When you plug in our numbers, you learn that all it would cost to provide affordable electricity for everybody in Naperville is $3.20 a month. That's it, 10.5 cents a day. And that's assuming we had 100% participation of all 10,000 households that will qualify for this program. This is the cost of affordability. The problem is, now that I've seen the history of bad rate design and poor financial management, I no longer feel that it's reasonable to ask for $3.20 a month, knowing that our rates still have so far declined. This is what I'm talking about when I say bad rate design. Why are we okay with rates that, according to our consultant, under-recovered costs by over 20% for residential customers? We paid this consultant $100,000 to tell us this. And when we asked the staff about it, we were told the gap is real and that we're anticipating additional rate increases to close the gap. I very much agree, except for we don't only have to close the gap, we have to make up for the gap for the past five years. So our recovery will not be done in 2030. We also asked, why are we OK with suboptimal operating incomes and significantly reduced cash balances compared to the consultant's recommendation? And when we asked this, again, staff said it's OK, because any shortfalls could be covered with the full backing of the entire city government. Well, if using the backing of the entire city government is an option, then I have another proposal. So I want you to give us a low-income program that's at least as good as ComEd's program is. Personally, I think eligibility should be based on AMI or maybe even MIT's living wage data, not federal poverty level. But at this point, I'll take anything you guys will give me. Sometime next year, move $7 million from the full backing of the city over to the electric fund. That should be enough to cover the full cost of 100% participation for the first year of this program. Problem is, we're not going to have anywhere close to 100% participation. So this $7 million is going to last several years for this program. And when the year finally comes that is projected to run out, you can then choose how you want to replenish it. We can either have a rate tariff like ComEd does, or maybe you'll see there's an appetite just to keep funding it out of the general fund. Or you can just get rid of the program. But you should at least try. Either way, this is how you solve affordability. Five votes and policy. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Next speaker is Bill Simon.

I'll go ahead and start so we don't hold up the process. Good evening. I'm Bill Simon. I'm here with Naperville Preservation, Inc. And I have some really great economic statistics for you. I will read them out while the slides are up. Thank you very much. So 116,000 new jobs, $6.8 billion in investment.

A little closer to the microphone, sir. Oh, sorry.

We can't hear you. $1.8 billion in tax receipts for communities. So I'm getting you thinking, what am I talking about? I'm talking about historic preservation. These are figures from a Rutgers study, and it was publicized by the National Park Service from 2024. So those figures, 116,000 new jobs, $6.8 million in rehabilitation investment, billion, and $1.8 billion in tax receipts. So how are we doing in Naperville? Now, we all know, we all love the historic downtown. It's a wonderful place. But how do we do when we compare ourselves to comparable cities and towns? So in Naperville preservation, we have done a historic preservation plan. AND THERE ARE FOUR MAIN AREAS OF COMPARISON THAT WE'RE HIGHLIGHTING HERE THIS EVENING. FIRST A CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC AND THAT IS LANDMARKING WITHOUT THE OWNER'S CONSENT. IN OUR STUDY WE FOUND THAT 18 OF 30 COMMUNITIES DO NOT REQUIRE OWNER'S CONSENT TO LANDMARK A PROPERTY. SO WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? property owner do not always have the interest in preserving properties and communities, these historic assets that communities have. Number two, number of landmarks by city. Now, we have six in our city, six wonderful local landmarks. But we are actually one of the lowest in our study. So if you look on this graph here, that first tick mark is 50 landmarks. And you can see that there are several that are around 75 landmarks per municipality. Then we have a few that are outliers that are really doing a great job. Well, this is important because landmarks are important because they show the city's commitment and the community's commitment to historic preservation. Number three, number of historic districts. We have one very wonderful historic district, but when you look at the comparison with these top 12 cities, we don't even show up on here. So you can see seven, six, five, four, four, three. And this is also important because this shows that the city supports historic preservation, or the municipality supports HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND IS MORE LIKELY TO SUPPORT PROPERTY OWNERS. AND FINALLY INCENTIVES AND WE ARE VERY MINIMAL IN THIS AREA AS WELL. THE SPEAKER'S TIME IS UP.

THANK YOU. NEXT SPEAKER.

THE NEXT SPEAKER IS CHRIS MONOVICH FOLLOWED BY JUDITH MCGOAN.

HELLO, MR. MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE. MY NAME IS CHRIS MONOVICH. I MOVED HERE 28 YEARS AGO WITH MY WIFE KIM, AND WE KNOW THAT YOU REPRESENT THE STORDS OF OUR COMMUNITY. WE VERY MUCH APPRECIATE THAT. WE WERE BROUGHT HERE BY THE ALLURE OF THE TOP SCHOOLS IN THE STATE, OFTENTIMES TOPS IN THE NATION, NUMBER ONE PLACE TO RAISE YOUR KIDS, ALL THE GREAT OUTDOORS that Naperville has to offer. It was mentioned earlier, the Riverwalk, which brought San Antonio and being able to be outdoors to our doorstep, being outdoors at our numerous ball fields, at our parks, whether it's Will, DuPage, or City of Naperville. All these things brought us here. And it really worked great place to raise children For those of you that still have children in 203 204 by my two sons at the time were four months old and 28 now they have four graduate degrees between them and they're happily employed so Naperville works This past summer did not work. It's more apparent than ever that that climate crisis, not climate change, not just global warming, climate crisis is upon us. The world is on fire. We felt that very definitely from the fires in Ontario, the fires in Minnesota. And it wasn't just the fires of a few years ago where it smelled like a campfire outside and there's a little bit of gray. This was biblical, wasn't it? I mean, we're talking about yellow skies, blotted out suns, and it smelled like the whole community was vaping. It was toxic. It's bad stuff. We couldn't get outdoors for days. This is our new normal. All we have left is mitigation. This is here to stay, this climate. This brings me to why I'm here today. After 37 years with a major corporation, 90,000 employees, where I received world-class training on leadership, management, project management, I'M RETIRING NEXT WEEK. AND I'VE BEEN PREPARING MYSELF OF WHERE DO I WANT TO PUT MY ENERGY. IT WAS WITH THE SISTER CITIES COMMISSION A FEW YEARS AGO UNDER MAYOR PRADLE AND UNDER MAYOR CHIRICO. And I look proudly to the people of NEST, and that's where I'm going to spend my time because what do they do? They advise this community. They make your jobs easier by breaking down the hard data and hand delivering it to you so that you can make the decisions. It's always been an advisory and nothing more. I'm going to throw the rest of my life into this because there's never been a more pressing issue than the one that's at our doorsteps right now. But despite differences of opinion, we can all agree Naperville is great for so many reasons, but also because of our outdoors. Whether it's because we're coaches, we want to be outdoors with our kids. I coached baseball. I coached soccer. Whether they're Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, I was an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 597. All these things tell us that we want to be outdoors, and we need to vote against IMEA contract extension. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Members of the Council, we've hit the 30-minute mark. TIME RESTRICTION. WE HAVE ONE SPEAKER LEFT. I'D LIKE TO ASK FOR A MOTION TO GET THROUGH THE LAST SPEAKER. IS THERE A MOTION? COUNCILMAN KELLY? SO MOVED. IS THERE A SECOND? SECOND. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SIGN AYE. OPPOSED? OKAY. CALL THE NEXT SPEAKER.

THE FINAL SPEAKER IS JUDITH McGOWAN.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Judith Heather McGowan, and I am a Naperville resident of 34 years. As Council receives the last of the electric utility options presentations tonight and moves ahead with its September workshop, I wanted to provide my input as a resident and vested property owner and rate payer. I, along with an ever-growing and aware contingent of fellow Napervillians, advocate resumption of negotiations with IMEA, both for contract extension and renewal. The decision in February to pause negotiations was unfortunate, but the pause and the review workshops have yielded a benefit that all should agree on, an exponential increase in resident engagement on the issue and the future of Naperville's electrical utility and supply. I've learned a lot since becoming engaged on this issue, and the decision and the path is clear. IMEA is the way. And it's that simple. I'm finding so many of my fellow residents feel the same way, and most have no idea of the radical changes that could have quietly been executed by activists that most of Naperville residents don't agree with. What's concerning to me, however, and I say this with the utmost respect, is that there's a lot of people in this town who feel like city council isn't open to even listening to them, and they're not feeling heard. It seems like council is beholden to activists who operate in mis- and disinformation. Here is my ask. Stay true to the NEU mission statement to provide reliable, quality, responsive, and cost-effective services for its customers in support of the health, welfare, and growth of the city. Yeah, and don't go changing that mission statement to suit the whims and the feelings of activists whose objectives were encountered to the NEU and the city's mission statements and the best interests of Naperville as a whole. Please know that a growing number of residents are seeing through the alarmism and the gaslighting, and it's apparent to me that opponents of the IMEA status quo present one-sided and inaccurate information, be it the source of Naperville's power, the viability of wind and solar, and the latest litigation risk associated with IMEA. Would someone at the dais please ask for the qualifications of the proponents of such legal risk assessments? As a lawyer, I'd kind of be interested to know more on the background of that one. My summer power bill and solid electric service make me grateful that IMEA provides Naperville with reliable, quality, and economically sound power that drives our lives and our livelihoods, including that huge contingent of residents who work from home, including myself. Let's keep it that way. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any more speakers?

No.

All right, our next item up is the council public forum. As a reminder, per the code, council members have three minutes to speak during public forum and can speak up to two times. I'd like to start by thanking our city team members, everything from the public works, police, fire, electric department, and all the other departments for their continued work on the storm last week. all the storms that we had over the summer between these meetings. As a reminder, the citywide brush collection started yesterday, and that's for loose branches and larger tree debris. Root Industries is one of our service providers. They're also collecting bagged and bundled brush without stickers. You don't have to put a sticker on your brush bag, and that's for two weeks. So that's this week and next week. And as a reminder, a cleanup of this scale, it will take time. And I ask for residents to have patience as we continue to clean up from the most recent storms and what we might even be getting a little later on tonight.

Councilman Holzhauer. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to raise a, I thought, pretty significant resident concern to the council, which did not go to all nine, but I think it's worth the council and the public hearing about. This is from a resident who was asked to host an event by a group called Puppy Yoga Club. And this is a resident who's a business owner that owns a studio. But essentially, when she did research into the organization, she found that this is a group that in a lot of ways appears to be evading the puppy mill ordinance by getting commercially sourced dogs bringing them in for what are purported to be yoga classes. And the particular organization that she cited has been docked numerous times for animal abuse violations and also for just not paying licensing fees, taxes, things like that in other cities, just all kinds of negatives. about the specific organization. According to this resident, this is a group that's been meeting in Naperville on an almost weekly basis. So I was hoping maybe Mr. Krieger could comment on ways the city could look into it if you would need legislation from us to address it. Like what could we do to make sure this doesn't happen in Naperville? Mr. Krieger?

THANK YOU, MR. MAYOR, AND THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION. YOU HAD BROUGHT THIS TO OUR ATTENTION I THINK ORIGINALLY LIKE THREE MONTHS AGO, AND OUR ANIMAL CONTROL DIVISION WITHIN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT WENT OUT, DID KIND OF AN INITIAL INVESTIGATION FOR FURTHER WORK, IF THERE WERE LIKE A SHOW OF HANDS BY COUNCIL, WE COULD SEND IT BACK TO ANIMAL CONTROL FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION.

Oh, may I follow up, Mr. Mayor?

Go ahead, sir.

So a concern I have is if our current ordinance doesn't really cover the organization, but they're getting around the ordinance, do we need to amend the ordinance?

GO AHEAD. YOU KNOW, IF BASED ON WHAT THEY'RE DOING, WE WILL ALSO LOOK AT OTHER COMMUNITIES TO SEE WHAT, SEE IF WE CAN LOCATE SOMEONE ELSE WHO HAS PUT SOMETHING IN PLACE THAT CAN BE ENFORCEABLE BASED ON THEIR CURRENT OPERATION.

OKAY. THANK YOU, THEN. WHAT I'LL PLAN TO DO IN NEW BUSINESS IS ASK FOR STAFF TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS ON HOW WE COULD ADDRESS THIS ISSUE. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

THANK YOU.

Thank you. I emphasize as well the storm damage. A lot of folks are taking vacation. I know I've been on vacation, come back, and I've seen a lot of the storm damage. And I'd just like to commend our public works folks for getting out there and really doing a great job taking care of this. I'd like to also tell the public to make sure if you have downed tree limbs, I still see them out there, MAKE SURE YOU COME UP ON THE NET AND LET FOLKS KNOW, LET THE CITY KNOW THAT YOU HAVE THESE ISSUES AND WE'LL GET SOMEONE OUT THERE. THERE'S A BACKLOG, I'M SURE THERE IS, BUT DON'T JUST ASSUME IT WON'T HAPPEN. SO PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE ADDRESSING THAT. A COUPLE OF OTHER THINGS. I WASN'T AT THE COUNCIL MEETING. I HAD PHONED IN BACK IN JULY. And I just wanted to commend the volunteers that are part of NEST. You guys have really done a great job. STUFF THROWN AT YOU ALL THE TIME, PEOPLE GIVING YOU A HARD TIME. I REALLY APPRECIATE THE WORK. A LOT OF DEDICATION, A LOT OF TIME SPENT EDUCATING COUNCIL MEMBERS AND THE PUBLIC AS FAR AS THINGS THAT ARE GOING ON IN OUR COMMUNITY FROM A SUSTAINABILITY STANDPOINT. AND SOMETIMES I JUST THINK WE MAY TAKE THAT FOR GRANTED. I JUST WANT TO LET YOU KNOW PERSONALLY, I APPRECIATE IT AND I'M SURE MANY MEMBERS HERE ON THE COUNCIL DO AS WELL. AND FINALLY, I'D LIKE TO ADDRESS MR. HUSSE'S COMMENTS WITH THE BATTERY AND HAVING STAFF COME BACK AND GIVE US A BUSINESS CASE. DURING NEW BUSINESS, I WOULD LIKE TO BRING THAT UP. I THINK THERE'S A LOT OF POSITIVES THERE THAT I JUST THINK WE WOULD BE FOOLISH TO IGNORE. AND I'D LIKE TO SEE STAFF COME BACK, LET US KNOW, YOU KNOW, MAYBE IF YOU CAN DO IT, HE SAID 90 DAYS, IF YOU CAN DO IT SOONER THAN THAT, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. I KNOW IT'S A LOT ON THE PLATE. CITY MANAGER SHAKING HIS HEAD. But I think there's a great opportunity for us to really reduce costs here for our energy without even having, and we're discussing IMEA and contract extensions and all that. Even under our current form, I think we have an opportunity here to reduce costs for residents. So we'll be bringing that up in new business, asking for hands in the air. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilman McBroom.

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, a lot of comments about IMEA. And I just wanted to just make something clear. There is no IMEA offer on the table right now. So it's been withdrawn. So a lot of the talk about don't resign or do resign. I think Mrs. McGowan, Judith had it correct, encouraging us to try to renegotiate if they'd be willing. So that's kind of where the status is. And tonight we're getting presented the fourth option. And I think at some point we need to, you know, maybe kind of play along with IMEAs that ship a sale. And we need to look at one of those four options. And, you know, there happens to be more urgency on some of those options than there would be on, in my view, with the IMEA decision. As far as Mr. Huss, I'm not going to drag you all the way back up here, but you can just nod. Your suggestion, I'm assuming you think this is something we could do with our current arrangement with IMEA, is that? That's correct.

Okay.

All right.

So, you know, I'm always about looking at ways to save money. So if you think there's something there and look at it, I'd probably support that. The other thing was... Mr. Simon, you've been here a few times. I've talked to Joe McElroy about historic preservation. It's almost like the energy discussion. Show me a way to do this that doesn't cost us money. I think we're all on board with I want to preserve old historic buildings. Can we do it? First of all, staff, we don't have any kind of robust incentive program, do we?

DIRECTOR OR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR LAFF?

THAT'S CORRECT. WE DO NOT HAVE A HISTORIC PRESERVATION INCENTIVE PROGRAM.

ANYWAY, I WILL TALK TO YOU. I'M HAPPY TO HAVE THAT DISCUSSION. I'M VERY SENSITIVE ON THIS TOPIC OF PROPERTY RIGHTS. I DON'T LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT FORCED LANDMARKING. I understand you guys are proposing adding a staff figure here. So those are all things I would have to really get over that hurdle. But in general, I'd like to explore it. So thanks.

All right, our next item is the consent agenda. May I have a motion to use the omnibus method to approve the consent agenda? Councilman White. I move to use the omnibus method to approve the consent agenda. Councilman Kelly. Second Kelly. All those in favor, sign aye. Opposed? Motion passes 9-0. May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda removing I-10 and I-23? Councilman White.

I move to approve the consent agenda removing items I-10 and I-23. Councilman Kelly. Second Kelly.

Mrs. SCHATZ, PLEASE READ THE CONSENT AGENDA REMOVING I-10 AND I-23.

THERE IS A POSITION OF SUPPORT POSTED ON THE WEBSITE FOR ITEM I-25. APPROVAL OF THE JULY CASH DISBURSEMENTS FOR A TOTAL OF $52,872,545.70. APPROVAL OF THE REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES OF JULY 21, 2026. APPROVAL OF THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING SCHEDULE FOR SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, AND NOVEMBER 2026. RECEIVING THE YEAR-TO-DATE INVESTMENT AND CASH BALANCE REPORT THROUGH JUNE 30, 2026. RECEIVING THE YEAR-TO-DATE BUDGET REPORT THROUGH JULY 31, 2026. APPROVAL OF THE APPOINTMENTS OF MARK STECHNICK TO THE FINANCIAL ADVISORY BOARD, TIANA KEY TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND FAIR HOUSING COMMISSION, MARIA WESTERHOLD TO THE PUBLIC UTILITY ADVISORY BOARD, AND ELIZABETH SPENCER TO THE RIVERWALK COMMISSION. APPROVAL OF THE AWARD OF OPTION YEAR ONE TO THE CONTRACT FOR SPECIALTY WINTER OPERATION SERVICES, SIDEWALKS AND PARKING LOTS TO BEVERLY SNOW AND ICE FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $465,000. APPROVAL OF THE AWARD OF OPTION YEAR ONE TO THE CONTRACT FOR CARTAGE SERVICES TO BIO AG INCORPORATED AND INTERNATIONAL HAULING AND EXCAVATING FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $280,000. APPROVAL OF THE AWARD OF THE SOLE SOURCE PROCUREMENT FOR NAVALINE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT TO CENTRAL SQUARE TECHNOLOGIES FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $159,135.86 FOR A ONE-YEAR TERM. APPROVAL OF THE AWARD OF CHANGE WORD NUMBER ONE TO THE CONTRACT FOR OGDEN AVENUE AND WASHINGTON STREET WATER MAIN IMPROVEMENTS TO SCANLAND EXCAVATING AND CONCRETE FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $343,347.75 AND AN ADDITIONAL 238 DAYS. APPROVAL OF THE AWARD OF CHANGE WORD NUMBER ONE TO THE CONTRACT FOR SPX FLOW US LLC SPX FLOW PARTS AND SERVICE TO MILLS WINDFIELD ENGINEERING FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $50,000. ACCEPTING THE RECORD OF EMERGENCY PROCUREMENT FOR ROADWAY SALT TO MIDWEST SALT LLC FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $454,000. waiving the applicable provisions of the Naperville Procurement Code to establish pricing for the 2026-2027 winter season and awarding the RFQ for roadway snow removal to certain contractors for an amount not to exceed $468,780 for the period from October 1, 2026 through April 30, 2027. ACCEPTING THE PUBLIC STREET AND WATER MAIN IMPROVEMENTS AT HIDDEN CREEK SUBDIVISION AND BLOCK 59 AND AUTHORIZING THE CITY CLERK TO REDUCE THE CORRESPONDING PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT SURETY. PASSING THE ORDINANCE APPROVING A MAJOR CHANGE THAT CONDITIONAL USE TO GRANT A VARIANCE FOR OFFENSE FOR THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 1800 SOUTH WASHINGTON STREET. RECEIVING THE STAFF REPORT FOR 115 AURORA AVENUE AND 405 SOUTH MAIN STREET, JOHN GREEN COMMERCIAL AND APPROVING THE ASSOCIATED ORDINANCES, APPROVING PRELIMINARY FINAL PLAT OF AURORA AVENUE PROFESSIONAL BUILDING SUBDIVISION, AUTHORIZING THE APPLICATION OF PARKING FEE AND LIEU PROVISIONS, REZONING CERTAIN PROPERTY LOCATED AT 115 AURORA AVENUE AND 405 SOUTH MAIN STREET TO TU TRANSITIONAL USE DISTRICT, AND APPROVING HEIGHT BUILDING DESIGN AND PARKING SETBACK VARIANCES. WAVING THE FIRST READING AND PASSING THE ORDINANCE AMENDING SECTION 3-3-11 OF THE NAPERVILLE MUNICIPAL CODE BY INCREASING THE CAP ON LATE-NIGHT PERMIT IN DOWNTOWN TO 23. WAVING THE FIRST READING AND PASSING THE ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING TWO-WAY STOP CONTROL AT THE INTERSECTION OF ROSENWEED AND HAWKWEED DRIVE. WAVING THE FIRST READING AND PASSING THE ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING A NO PARKING STOPPING OR STANDING ZONE ON HILLSIDE ROAD. WAVING THE FIRST READING AND PASSING THE ORDINANCE AMENDING TITLE 11 CHAPTER 2 ARTICLE B OF THE NAPERVILLE MUNICIPAL CODE TO ESTABLISH NEW DAILY STATELY FEE PARKING SPACES AT 333 CENTER STREET. PASSING THE ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING TEMPORARY TRAFFIC CONTROL AND ISSUING SPECIAL EVENT AND AMPLIFIER PERMITS FOR THE 2026 WATER STREET LONG TABLE DINNER SCHEDULED ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2026. ADOPTING THE RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING EXECUTION OF THE ILLINOIS PUBLIC WORKS MUTUAL AID NETWORK AGREEMENT AND THE ILLINOIS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT MUTUAL AID SYSTEM AGREEMENT. AND ADOPTING THE RESOLUTION APPROVING THE AMENDED INTER-GOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT AND MEMBRANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE CITY OF NAPERVILLE AND THE NAPERVILLE COMMUNITY UNIT SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS.

WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND TO APPROVE THE CONSENT AGENDA MINUS I-10 AND I-23. ROLL CALL.

MORLEY.

YES. GIBSON.

AYE. HOLZAUER.

AYE. JAYNE.

AYE. KELLY.

AYE. MCBROOM. AYE. ZAYED. AYE. WHITE. AYE. WILSON. AYE. MOTION PASSES 9-0. I-10.

ITEM I-10 IS A RECOMMENDATION TO APPROVE THE AWARD OF THE COOPERATIVE PROCUREMENT FOR 2026 FACILITIES ROOF REPAIRS TO GARLAND DBS FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $136,355. Councilwoman Gibson.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I PULLED THIS ITEM BECAUSE I HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT HOW THE FUNDS, THE COSTS ARE BEING ALLOCATED ACROSS THE DIFFERENT FUNDS. IT'S ROOFING FOR THREE DIFFERENT FACILITIES, ONE FOR ELECTRIC, ONE FOR WATER, AND ONE FOR THE VAN BUUREN PARKING DECK. I NOTICED THE BULK OF THE COSTS ARE BEING ALLOCATED TO THE CAPITAL PROJECTS FUND, WITH SOME BEING PICKED UP BY WATER UTILITY AND ELECTRIC UTILITY. WONDERING, I KNOW WE HAVE A DEDICATED PARKING DECK FUND THAT COVERS MAINTENANCE AND NEW CONSTRUCTION. I'M WONDERING IF THERE WAS A REASON THAT THESE COSTS WEREN'T ALLOCATED TO THAT FUND.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Excellent question. Simply, the reason is simply from past precedent. We have been funding that basically through general fund sources, even though we have reviewed that this time around, and it would be eligible for downtown parking fund funding.

Okay. Thanks. So I'm open to how you want to WORD THE MOTION, BUT TO ME, YOU KNOW, IT'S NOT JUST AN ISSUE OF FUND ACCOUNTING, BUT ALSO OUR CAPITAL DOLLARS ARE MEANT TO BE SPENT ON CAPITAL PROJECTS ACROSS THE WHOLE CITY. SO IF AS POLICY WE SET UP THIS FUND THAT SPECIFICALLY COLLECTS MONEY FROM THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE TAX, FOOD AND BEVERAGE TAX, AND THEN IT'S SPECIFICALLY SET ASIDE FOR GARAGE MAINTENANCE, and construction. I think it's an equity issue. So I'd like to ask staff if we could reevaluate to see if those funds are more perfectly should be coming in from the downtown parking garage fund. And then also to look into whether either previous or ongoing maintenance, what funds that's coming from and whether they'd be more appropriate to be coming from this designated fund.

Mr. KRIEGER? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO OFFER UP A MOTION?

HOWEVER YOU THINK IT'S APPROPRIATE TO WORD.

ALL RIGHT. HOW ABOUT APPROVE THE AWARD OF COOPERATIVE PROCUREMENT 26-212 FACILITIES ROOF REPAIR TO GARLAND DBS INC. FOR AN AMOUNT OF $136,355 AND FUNDING THE BAND BEER AND PARKING DECK REPAIRS THROUGH THE DOWNTOWN PARKING FUND.

I'M COMFORTABLE WITH THAT. I BELIEVE THE POLICY IS TYPICALLY TWO-THIRDS PARKING FUND MAINTENANCE AND THEN A THIRD CAPITAL PROJECTS FUND.

YES, IF IT'S FUNDED FROM THE DOWNTOWN SSA. THIS IS A SEPARATE FUND AND IT WOULD BE ELIGIBLE FOR ALL OF THE COSTS.

OKAY. I'M UP TO DEFER TO STAFF TO WHAT THE TYPICAL ALIGNED WITH OUR POLICY IS. BUT IT SEEMS LIKE THIS IS AN APPROPRIATE PLACE TO BE PAYING FOR THAT.

STAFF WOULD CONCUR WITH THIS RECOMMENDED FUNDING SOURCE. THANK YOU.

THEN I'M COMFORTABLE WITH THE MOTION.

ARE YOU MAKING THE MOTION?

YES. MOTION AS STATED BY CITY MANAGER CRAIGER.

SECOND. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ANY DISCUSSION? THANK YOU, MAYOR.

FIRST OF ALL, VERY GOOD CATCH BY MY COLLEAGUE. I WAS A LITTLE SURPRISED THAT THE DOWNTOWN PARKING FUND WAS SEEN AS AN OPTION FOR FUNDING. IT STRIKES ME THAT IF WE HAVE A PARKING GARAGE CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE FUND THAT IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR PARKING GARAGE I MEAN MAINTENANCE UNLESS WE WERE TO SAY OTHERWISE. SO ONE OF THE QUESTIONS I HAVE IS GOING BACK IN TIME, HOW MANY OTHER TIMES HAS A DIFFERENT POT OF MONEY BEEN USED TO FUND THE DOWNTOWN PARKING MAINTENANCE? MR. KRIEGER?

IT WILL TAKE US A LITTLE BIT OF TIME TO PULL THAT TOGETHER. Um, but, uh, um, we can pull together kind of like a five year history. Yeah. Um, and we can, uh, circulate that to council.

Yeah, that'd be great. And kind of where I'm going with that would be, you know, let's say I'm going to make up a number, but let's say there was a million dollars of maintenance in the garage from prior years. I think an accurate accounting is that's, that's the fund that should have come from. Like, I think we've got to be tighter with our accounting than, than just picking randomly.

So thank you, mayor. Any further discussion? We have a motion and a second. Roll call.

Gibson? Aye. Holzhauer? Aye. Jane? Aye. Kelly?

Aye.

McBroom? Aye. Syed? Aye. White? Aye. Wilson? Aye.

Worley? Yes. Motion passes 9-0. I-23.

ITEM I-23 IS A RECOMMENDATION TO WAIVE THE FIRST READING AND PASS THE ORDINANCE AMENDING SECTIONS 3-3 AND 3-6 OF THE NAPERVILLE MUNICIPAL CODE TO PROHIBIT THE RETAIL SALE OF CREDIM. THERE ARE FOUR STATEMENTS OF OPPOSITION AND SIX WRITTEN COMMENTS THAT WERE POSTED TO THE WEBSITE, AND WE HAVE EIGHT SPEAKERS ON THIS ITEM.

GO AHEAD AND CALL THE FIRST SPEAKERS.

THE FIRST FOUR SPEAKERS ARE CARLIN JUBARUK, KELLY DOUGLAS, ARI BERNSTEIN, AND MICHAEL FASANO.

So if you heard your name called, go ahead and proceed to the front row. The same rules apply from public forum where you're given three minutes to speak. The timer will be in operation located on the side dais.

The first speaker, Colin Jubarek.

Hello, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. My name is Colin Zubarek, a public policy advisor for the American Kratom Association. We're a consumer advocacy organization nonprofit. We do not sell any products. I do not make sales or anything.

We are just a consumer advocacy organization.

So I come here today to express my opposition to Ordinance 26-0984. In your ordinance, you mentioned FDA warnings about kratom and the alleged negative effects while ignoring the FDA's own words. On July 29th, 2025 announcement, the FDA issued its intention to ask the DEA to schedule 7-OH while intending in their letter to not mention natural kratom leaf whatsoever, that they do not want to target natural kratom leaf. Its intention was realized in July 1st of this year when the DEA announced its scheduling request for 7-OH in synthetic Kratom products, also reaffirming the FDA's notice that it is not targeting natural Kratom products. This is important for multiple reasons. One, if this product was causing opioid-like effects, deaths, damage, respiratory failure, I do not see a reality in which the DEA would intentionally carve out a provision for natural kratom products. This is again reaffirmed with other safety standards, such as the NIH new investigational drug application published June 1st of this year. In that application process, they start testing with human test subjects, mitragynine, the primary alkaloid within Kratom, natural Kratom products. What's important about the IND is that the NIH cannot begin this process without showing that mitragynine would cause undue harm on human test subjects. Respiratory failure, death, opioid effects is undue harm. They had to show a burden of proof that it would not cause. Going forward and further with the FDA, published last year was the FDA's single ascending dose finding study in which they had test subjects have a single ascending dose study with up to 12 grams of kratom, natural kratom, healthy humans. In these tests, it found no adverse effects, no dangerous adverse effects, with only in the very late stages, eight grams and up, showing slight nausea, which is to be expected from taking a bitter substance in such high dosage in such a small amount of time. In all these studies, it showed that kratom, natural kratom, did not produce any sort of undue harm, danger to the patients, to the tests, to just regular consumers. Natural kratom leaf products do not produce any highs. They do not produce any danger.

The speaker's time is up.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Kelly Douglas, followed by Ari Bernstein.

Hi, everybody. I'm Kelly Douglas. I would like to speak in support of the proposed ban on the retail sale of Kratom in Naperville. As both a member of the Liquor Commission and a resident in the community, having attended Steeple Run and then Madison in Naperville North, I believe one of our most important responsibilities is to protect the public health and safety of our community, particularly when we see an emerging problem and trend. And we have the opportunity to act before it becomes a larger one. For me, this issue is also personal. I have watched a close friend with young children privately struggle here in Naperville with the Kratom addiction. And I've seen firsthand how something can be marketed as harmless or natural product can lead to a real dependency. And this concern goes well beyond my own personal experience. As outlined in the proposed ordinance, Kratom contains compounds that can produce opioid-like effects and carry the potential for addiction. The ordinance also notes that FDA warnings involve seizures, liver damage, and potential of overdose and deaths. This should concern all of us. I also am particularly concerned about how these products are being marketed to our community. There's a prominent sign, a huge sign, of Feel Free right on the corner of Hillside and Washington next to both Highlands Elementary School and Naperville Central High School, where I personally have a 15-year-old, and many people in the community have children there as well. Regardless of how our product is characterized, large-scale marketing of a Kratom-related product in such close proximity to our schools raises serious concerns about exposure, normalization, and the messages we're sending to our youth. Our young people are especially vulnerable to the marketing that makes dangerous products appear mainstream, harmless, or wellness-oriented. We should be asking whether this is the kind of product we want, prominently promoted steps away from our children. We should not wait until more families in Naperville experience the consequences firsthand before deciding that action is warranted. The ordinance before us is clear. And I believe that it is the right approach. Napril has always taken pride in being proactive when it comes to the safety and well-being of our community. And we have an opportunity to act now before something more tragic happens.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Ari Bernstein, followed by Michael Fasano and Jim.

Hi, my name is Ari. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. And I work at Mill Street Behavioral Health, which is associated with Edward Hospital. I've worked there for the last five years. And during that time, I've treated hundreds of patients myself. And as a clinical supervisor, I've supervised the treatment of thousands of patients for substance use disorder. And I've treated patients for cocaine use, alcohol use, opioid use, heroin use, cannabis use, and alcohol use. And over the last five years, I've grown to learn how to treat Kratom use disorder. And I don't see any difference between Kratom and Kratom products as I do from the rest of the substances that I mentioned previously. I have to develop relapse prevention plans, address financial harm, harm to families, all from Kratom use. I treat, as part of my team with Kratom, Nurses and doctors, I prescribe the same drugs I use for opioid use disorder. People who come in with Kratom use disorder are prescribed naloxone as an overdose reversal drug and buprenorphine to help with withdrawals. And so I firsthand experienced a lot of harm done by Kratom and Kratom use, and I am in support of this ordinance. Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Michael Fasano.

Hello. My name is Michael Fasano. I'm 40 years old. I've been consuming natural tea kratom for over 15 years on and off, mostly for chronic insomnia. Also, it helps with my joint pains. And at very low doses, it helps with focus. I never had abuse problems with it. I've never had health problems. I'm a productive member of society. But I want to state the big issue over the past couple years, which I am really disgusted with myself. So I just want to show you something. This is natural tea kratom. This is the ground up powder. This is what I consume. Several vendors and shops in other villages sell just this. They do have COAs, if you can ask for them. And they're 21 and older. But unfortunately, I noticed there are a lot of gas stations and smoke shops that are selling products like this and calling them kratom. And they're selling liquid shots and all this other potent stuff. And they simply just do not care. This one says perks. And I could see why a young person, a youth person, would be attracted to something like this and this is getting people addicted and they're and they constantly have to increase the dose all the time and when they go into rehab centers or detox centers unfortunately though sometimes they'll say 708 sometimes they'll say kratom so it kind of gets mixed up in it there's a lot of conflation and there's all there seems to be an issue with differentiating what is what. These pills, liquid shots, any of the gummy stuff, that potent concentrated stuff, that is not traditional kratom. This is traditional leaf kratom. And the next thing I want to add, too, is on the topic of regulation. I understand there's a burden of other villages may feel like, that they need to bring it to their own personal lab to test it and stuff, and I sympathize with that, but the lab testing burden falls on the responsible vendors that are doing it right, that are unfortunately getting penalized because of the bad actors. So this is from a vendor that I bought online, and there's actually a QR barcode, and my phone's dead right now. When you scan it, it will take you to... Certificate of Analysis Reports. This literally shows you the tiny amounts of trace, like 0.00009 It doesn't even have an effect on your brain. And it shows you the levels of the naturally occurring alkaloids. It also shows you it doesn't have any contaminants, yeast, and mold. It tells you everything. And it shows you the company name on there. It gives you a number. You could call the number to confirm and verify the legitimacy of it. And here's another one. I don't have this product with me. But this, it shows you the product, the lot number, and everything. So I really would go for the route of regulation instead of prohibition. Thank you for letting me speak. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Jim, followed by Dr. Heidi Sikora, Hila Webster, and Ashley Ware.

Good evening. My name is Jim Surick. My children attend Naperville schools, and I spoke before this council about Kratom in 2019. I'm not against regulation. In fact, I supported the council's regulation in 2019. What I think is important today is that the Council distinguishes traditional kratom from newer, higher potency, synthetic 70H products. They're not the same thing. They should not automatically be treated the same. Back in July, the Liquor Commission heard extensive testimony supporting this proposal, but did not hear a comparable testimony from those with a different perspective. Multiple speakers all on one side. Tonight, the perspective only gets three minutes. I'd ask the council to weigh that imbalance before taking final action and to consider whether anyone has evaluated how the 2019 framework has actually performed. Please do not rush to broadband in ordinance, which may push people towards unregulated products. And it also, well, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Dr. Heidi Sikora.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Thank you so much for allowing me to testify tonight. My name is Dr. Heidi Sikora. I'm a doctor of nursing practice, a retired nurse practitioner, and health care executive. I volunteer as the chief scientific officer for the International Plant and Herbal Alliance. But I'm here speaking on my own behalf tonight. And so I want to let you know a little bit about my story. I live with multiple rare genetic disorders, including a Chiari malformation, which means that part of my brain is below the opening in my skull and puts pressure on my spinal cord. In addition, I have a tethered spinal cord, Ehlers-Danlos, hypermobility, hereditary alpha-tryptosemia, and a few more. So I have lived in pain that is severe and constant. I tried every pharmaceutical option known and unfortunately they didn't work and some caused serious adverse events. That made them unsafe for me to continue. Even after brain surgery, I was only able to tolerate opioids for just a few days. Seven years ago, I tried natural kratom leaf. It doesn't eliminate my pain, but it reduces it to a manageable level so that I can exercise and stretch and maintain my health. It does not cause sedation or impairment. It actually improves function without any kind of intoxication. But my own experience isn't why I'm here. It's what compels me to speak publicly was seeing the difference that it made for others, especially a disabled Gulf War veteran friend. On a family trip, he was miserable on his prescribed opioids. I suggested he try natural kratom leaf. The improvement was remarkable. He had enough pain relief to function without sedation. At the end of the day, his young son looked up at me and said, thank you for giving us our daddy back. I understand your concerns about unregulated smoke shop products. The problem is real, and it's exactly why regulation, not prohibition, is needed. As previously discussed, the DEA has already distinguished between synthetic products and natural leaf kratom. They couldn't be more different than night and day. The DEA explicitly said they are not taking action against natural kratom leaf, and that's mostly because of the concern of unintended consequences by actually removing those products. Every product carries risks when misused. That's exactly why standards, testing, and clear labeling matter. A Kratom consumer protection ordinance ensures consumers know what they're taking, how much is appropriate, and what limits exist. Prohibition doesn't prevent misuse. Regulation does. Removing natural Kratom from the market doesn't protect the public. It eliminates the safe, regulated products. And I must ask, why is natural Kratom being held to a higher standard than alcohol? Thank you so much for your time.

The next speaker is Isla Webster, followed by Ashley Ware.

Good evening. My name is Isla Webster and I ask you to vote no on the proposal to ban natural leaf kratom. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about my experience with kratom. I have been living with pain for many of my 93 years. Most recently, I had a fall which resulted in a double fracture of my left wrist. When I returned home from the ER, I was able to take Kratom and my pain went from a 9 or 10 to a tolerable 4 or 5 within 45 minutes. I cannot take anti-inflammatories. due to GI bleeding from Motrin. I have lipedema in my lower body, which is very painful. I am prone to epicondylitis in both elbows and bursitis in both shoulders. I have a stress fracture in my spine at C5 and a bulging disc at L5. I have taken Kratom occasionally for a few years with no side effects. My blood work is perfect and my heart is well. Natural Kratom leaf does not suppress my breathing. When I need it, it allows me to continue my daily exercise program, walk 5,000 to 6,000 steps every day, and I tap dance. I am the youngest in the line of 10 children. My older siblings lived well into their 80s, 90s, and 100. My only living sister is 96. Genetics predict that I could also live to 100 or beyond, and so I am doing everything I can to live a healthy, joyful life. I implore you, please do not natural leaf kratom. Thank you so much for listening to my experience with natural leaf kratom.

Thank you. Next speaker.

You're welcome. Final speaker is Ashley Ware.

Hi there. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak tonight. I am just here really to share my story and my experience very briefly. Again, I got addicted to Feel Free. It has kratom and kava in it and a very little amount of 7-OH, which I found out at the last Liquor Commission meeting. And I... found Feel Free on a health and wellness podcast, thinking it was something that was actually going to give me health benefits. And I'm a mom of four. I was tired of drinking wine every night and waking up hungover. So I thought I had learned everything about the product from the founder, who claimed he was sober for 20 years. And I ended up, two years later, April 15, 2025, in a detox unit at Edwards. I was having horrible heart palpitations. I was having panic attacks. It made my insides so, so sick. My skin was turning a green color. I was throwing up all the time. I was taking the amount that was suggested for about a little over a year and a half. And then as my body got more addicted to the feel free, I drank more, and within like three to four months, I was fully addicted and extremely sick. I thought I was going to die, so I checked into Edwards, and they treated me like a heroin addict, and that completely freaked me out. I'm typically really healthy. My blood work came out completely fine, and they basically said I was okay, but the withdrawals were completely insane, and I wouldn't wish those on anybody. I'm really here to talk to the people that see this feel free and think it's a natural herbal supplement that gives you energy. The marketing is just really confusing. It doesn't seem accurate. And the billboards in Naperville are getting bigger and bigger. And if I'm going into detox and they're treating me like a heroin addict, why are we putting big billboards in our community with the feel free? To me, you might as well put up Heroin and cocaine or opioids, I don't see the difference if if people are getting treated like that. The withdrawals, again, were just horrific. And I just worry about the kids, the parents who are getting on this by accident, the kids who are bringing this home to their parents. A lot of them don't have the receptors, the brain receptors of addiction, but they're getting hooked on it still. So thank you.

Thank you. Any more speakers? All right. I'd like to direct question to Chief Aries with regard to your experience from the law enforcement side here in Naperville. And Chief Pugnitis, if you have anything to weigh in on as well. But we'll start with you, Chief, regarding this particular issue.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What I can tell you is if you look at the data, I would classify this more as a public health and consumer safety issue than I would a crime issue. And our data plays out that way. What I would draw attention to from the police perspective and where it lines up with the public health perspective is in the last four months, we've had four overdoses, one fatal that the coroner did attribute to Kratom usage. THREE OTHERS, AND THEN WE HAD ANOTHER MENTAL HEALTH RELATED CALL WHERE SOMEONE WAS TAKING CRATEM. SO WE ARE SEEING A CALL. SO AGAIN, NOT NECESSARILY CRIMINAL. WE'VE HAD SOME THEFT CASES WHERE CRATEM IS BEING STOLEN FROM THESE SHOPS. BUT AGAIN, THIS IS MORE A HEALTH CONCERN AND COMMUNITY SAFETY CONCERN FROM WHAT WE'RE SEEING AND I THINK OUR PARTNERS NEXT DOOR ARE SEEING AS WELL.

COULD YOU COMMENT AS FAR AS THE TREND THIS YEAR VERSUS IN THE PAST? YES.

AND I HAD SOME DATA PULLED UP EARLIER. THE LAST TWO YEARS, THE INCIDENTS WE'VE HAD WHERE WE'VE SEEN CREDIM COMING UP, WHETHER IT'S AGAIN FROM THE PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVE OR THE THEFTS, ARE OUTWEIGHING THE LAST, IN TEN YEARS, THE LAST TWO YEARS ARE MUCH HIGHER BY THEMSELVES THAN THE LAST EIGHT PRIOR TO THAT. IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE ASKING THERE?

IT DOES. YEP. THANK YOU. AND THEN CHIEF PUCNITUS, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING?

Sure, Mayor Mark. Puck Knight is Fire Chief. You know, on the fire side, we see a lot of overdoses. We see a lot of substance abuses for various types. The kratom doesn't necessarily rise to any top of the list. We haven't been alerted by our people that we have seen a high call volume from kratom itself. But we do see overdoses of a variety of types. I WOULDN'T SAY THAT CREDIM SPECIFICALLY IS A, IS, HAS GONE UP IN ANY TYPE OF TRENDS THAT WE'VE SEEN. NOW, I'M NOT SAYING THAT'S NOT A PROBLEM, BUT FROM A RESPONSE ASPECT, WE HAVE NOT SEEN A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN ANY OF THAT.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMAN JAYNE.

Thank you, Mayor. First, I just want to thank all the speakers today who came up and shared their stories. I know they're personal and not easy to share in public, but I do appreciate that you're willing to come up and share those stories. I had a couple of questions, one for Chief as a follow-up. And another one for Mr. Bernstein, if he wouldn't mind coming up. I'll start with Chief, if that's okay. Chief, for the incidents that have occurred recently, do we know, there seems to be this distinction, at least right now, between the synthetic forms of kratom and its natural forms. Do we know of the cases that... that came to your attention, what the source of that overdose may have been, the natural form or a synthetic form?

Yeah, I do know the coroner's report used the word mitragynine. but did have kratom in parentheses in the report from the coroner in the police report for that overdose. And that is referenced in another one of my cases. So to get specifically into the labs on what those substances were would be difficult. Yeah.

Thank you. And Mr. Bernstein, thank you so much for coming. I couldn't decipher whether the many of, if you could comment on your experience in treating those patients and that distinction that I asked Chief about, whether through your experience and observations, if you found a trend between the natural form or a synthetic form.

Oh, yeah. So, I would say a majority of the patients who are coming to treatment are using the synthetic form of Kratom. It's been a long standing history that people with opioid use disorder have in the substance use disorder community and like more of the severe substance use disorder community, Kratom is often taken by people with opioid use disorder as it's kind of like a straddling the fence between something that helps their withdrawal or an intoxicant at higher doses. My concern is primarily the synthetic, for sure. And at the same time, it's difficult for me to... I think, endorsed the sale of leaf at tobacco shops. And our big problem with synthetic kratom is that once it's tested, we're seeing not a good capacity for what's being marketed as what's actually in the product. And being able to distinguish what's a pure leaf versus what's that product in a tobacco shop seems very difficult to regulate. And that's my concern. But to answer your question, it's the synthetic that we're seeing that people are going back three times a day to smoke in tobacco shops to spend $30, $40, $50 each time, up to $150 to $200 a day that I'm treating in my day program and we're having to do detox at the hospital for.

Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Councilman Holzar. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with Councilwoman Jane's comments that anyone who came up and shared their personal story, whether it's about pain relief or addiction, that is a lot of bravery. Thank you for making it out here. I was particularly moved by, actually, let me just start with, I did some research regarding this issue. A colleague brought some stuff to my attention. I called our state rep because I know that Illinois is looking at a band right now, got some perspective there, and frankly talked to some people that just have personal experience with it, just to kind of pull as many opinions as I could. Something that I really resonated with was actually Ms. Ware's comments when she was speaking earlier. You know, my first job out of law school was I was a prosecutor for four years in the Air Force Jag Corps. Right after that, I was a defense counsel for two years. And so the time in our history was like 2007 to 2014. And if you know your history with drugs, that's the time when people were starting to ask questions about what were then. legal sort of gray areas. Like, hey, do we notice that there's some doctors that are prescribing an awful lot of Percocet or Oxycontin or whatever? It's kind of a gray area. Let's just let it slide for a while. Or, hey, you know, there's these, like, new gray area drugs out there which can be helpful for some people. Spice was one of them. Bath salts, very famous case. You know, I actually heard about bath salts before people knew they were bad. I heard about them in the debate context of maybe we should let these things slide for a little while. I have represented on the defense side many clients who have stories like yours, Ashley, young people. Benny can attest to this. He was in the military. A lot of these people still are struggling with addiction in the year 2026. I feel like if I could go back in time, my plea to the policymaking community would have been let's slow down a little bit. Let's learn and, frankly, be a little more restrictive about AND I THINK PARTICULARLY THE FACT PATTERN YOU HAVE HERE WHERE IT'S LIKE TOBACCO SHOPS THAT ARE SELLING THINGS THAT IT'S REALLY HARD TO JUDGE THE PURITY ON. THE FDA DOESN'T EVEN REGULATE THIS. I JUST, IT REMINDS ME AN AWFUL LOT OF THE STUFF THAT I SAW 20 YEARS AGO AND I'M GOING TO VOTE TO APPROVE THE STAFF RECOMMENDATION. THANK YOU, MAYOR. COUNCILMAN SYED.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. THANK YOU TO ALL THE SPEAKERS WHO CAME AND SPOKE TODAY. And I see a person, a good friend, as well as a person who has been working with the community for many, many years on substance use prevention. And Matt, who is sitting here in the audience, who works with the youth. With your permission, Mayor, I wanted to have Matt on the mic. Just wanted to speak to him. Because he has been working on substance, you know, for many years from 360 Youth Services. Matt, sorry to put you on the spot, but I know that you have been working on this topic. So I just wanted to hear from you, Matt, practically, because you have been working in this area and in the city for many years. So what are your thoughts on this?

Good evening, everyone. It's good to be here tonight. So when we talk about this particular issue, 360 Youth Services, we really focus on the youth subject matter. So we did present at the Liquor Commission meeting. And one of the areas that we focused on is that there's a lot of advertising that specifically goes to youth, whether it's the packaging, the colors, things that are brightly advertised to try to attract youth to that. And the fact that when things are sold over the counter, it can also change the perception of risk that's perceived by youth. And so I can just speak anecdotally, and things that we hear very often from youth is that what they see on social media from influencers, there's been a lot of support of these products in the past. And that is something that can be very alluring to youth, something that they see a lot of. And when you see those repeated messages, like any form of advertising, it can cause some curiosity and bring people out to have an interest in it. So we see a lot of that on the social media front. in terms of that appeal to students. We don't have hard data. This is not something that's asked about on the Illinois Youth Survey in any of those capacities, so I don't have any data that I can share specifically about that. But there are concerns specifically for youth in the way that people perceive it in the reception. It's just not as well known as some of the other substances that have been talked about, cannabis, alcohol, and NICOTINE-BASED PRODUCTS WHICH HAVE A MUCH LONGER HISTORY OF MUCH MORE PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGING AROUND THOSE PIECES. CRADIM DOES NOT HAVE THAT SAME TYPE OF HISTORY ESPECIALLY FOR OUR YOUTH.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, MATT. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

NEW SPEAKER COUNCILMAN WHITE.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. I'M GOING TO SUPPORT THE BAN AS IS PRESENTED BY STAFF THAT'S IN THE AGENDA. Because quite frankly, our top responsibility as counsel, men and women up here, is public safety. We talk about fire and police all the time. But when it comes to public health as well, this falls right in line with that for me. So I will support that. However, I do understand the pain PHYSICAL PAIN THAT A LOT OF THE SPEAKERS WHO CAME UP HERE TO TALK TO US ARE EXPERIENCING. SO I DEFINITELY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT AND THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORIES WITH EVERYONE. BUT I DON'T KNOW IF DR. BERNSTEIN, IS HE STILL HERE? MR. BERNSTEIN? I'M SORRY, CAN YOU COME BACK? WE'RE GOING TO MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR STEPS IN TODAY.

I'm also a licensed political social worker. I'm not a doctor.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. THIS IS NOT A DRUG. IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DESCRIBED BY A PHYSICIAN BECAUSE, MY UNDERSTANDING, IT'S NOT FDA APPROVED. I MAY BE WRONG, BUT THAT'S MY GENERAL UNDERSTANDING. BUT I GUESS WHAT I'M GETTING AT, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT, SAY, FOR EXAMPLE, A COUPLE OF THE SPEAKERS GOT UP HERE TO DISCUSS SOME OF THE REASONS THEY USE THE SUBSTANCE. IS THIS SOMETHING THAT BETWEEN A PHYSICIAN OR SOMEONE WHO MAY HAVE I don't know, better understanding of what this is all about and have a conversation with a patient and maybe give recommendations, not a prescription, but maybe advice. Is that something that you would see as valuable or not?

I wouldn't feel comfortable speaking on the – like a prescriber consulting with a patient about using Pure Relief Kratom to address pain. Okay. I work with... We have an... a doctor who specializes in addiction medicine in my program, which is a pretty specific type of intervention. And I also have a nurse practitioner who's been working in the Endeavor Edward Hospital community for the last 10 years who share my concerns about kratom. But yeah, I wouldn't be able to speak about the treatment of Pureleaf 2. FOR PAINT. THANK YOU FOR ASKING.

THANK YOU. COUNCILWOMAN GIBSON.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. BASED ON THE PUBLIC INPUT WE'VE RECEIVED TONIGHT AND THE EMAILS WE'VE GOTTEN FROM COMMUNITY MEMBERS OVER THE LAST WEEK AND A HALF, I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD BE WAVING THE FIRST READING. MY PREFERENCE WOULD BE TO MAKE THIS A FIRST READING AND BRING IT BACK AT OUR NEXT MEETING. I THINK WE'VE HEARD PRETTY CONSISTENTLY FROM THE COMMUNITY THAT THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SYNTHETIC CRATEM and natural leaf kratom, and these highly concentrated products that are often marketed to adolescents. I think the natural leaf kratom and its very real purposes for pain management is also something we should consider, including as a public health concern. Chronic pain is a very real issue for many members of our community, and I want to make sure we are very intentional if we are banning at least local access to a product that is legal. I do think it was interesting. Mr. Zubarek mentioned the DEA specifically carved out and made a difference between, or designated the difference between synthetic and natural leaf. So I think that's something that is worth us EVALUATING MORE AND GIVING THE COMMUNITY MORE TIME TO FOLLOW OUR NORMAL PROCESS OF A FIRST READING, SECOND READING. MY PREFERENCE, IF THE MAJORITY OF MY COLLEAGUES AGREE, WOULD BE TO HAVE STAFF COME BACK AT THE NEXT MEETING, MAYBE WITH AN OPTION ONE, AN OPTION TWO, EITHER A TOTAL BAN OR A BAN ON SYNTHETIC VERSUS NATURAL RELIEF, RECOGNIZING THAT THERE WOULD NEED TO BE SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE, LIKE CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY, and ways that we could regulate the difference between natural leaf and synthetic. I do have a question, though, about something that's come up multiple times, the marketing of this, particular billboards in town. If we were to ban kratom, either in entirety or just synthetic, would companies still be able to publicly market? Is there anything we could do about the public marketing OF PRODUCTS THAT AREN'T ALLOWED TO BE SOLD IN OUR CITY.

MR. CITY ATTORNEY?

SORRY.

I'D HAVE TO RESEARCH THAT. MR. KREGER. THANKS, MAYOR. I'LL TAKE A SHOT AT THAT ONE. BILLBOARDS ARE CONSIDERED TO BE OFF-PREMISE SIGNAGE AND THEREFORE REQUIRE COUNCIL APPROVAL IF THEY ARE ON INCORPORATED LAND. AND I'M LOOKING AT YOU, ALLISON, TO SEE IF YOU'RE NODDING OR SHAKING YOUR HEAD.

and if they're new, so that does not apply to existing billboards.

I don't know. Did I answer your question? Maybe if it's something staff could look into, if we do end up banning either synthetic or all Kratom products, if there's something we could do about continued marketing of banned products in our town. Thank you.

Councilman Kelly.

Thank you, Mayor. I just have a few questions. I don't know who on staff might be able to answer it, if anybody, but two specific questions. One, we've heard about the difference between synthetic and natural, and I'm just curious, do we have any concept for one of, in general, how much is being sold in the city? How many stores are selling it? what volume, do we have any idea? And then do we have any idea of the, between the two, synthetic versus natural, is it 90%, 10%, 50, 50, just very rough ballpark. And if you don't know, that's okay, but I'm curious if you know, or if there's a way to find out, maybe there's not, but.

I can briefly answer, and that is Kratom does not require a tobacco license. So while we have regulation for tobacco, where we have a number fixed of tobacco retailers in the community. Kratom does not require any sort of licensure to sell.

So really no way to track it?

Correct.

Okay. AND THEN A QUESTION ABOUT I THINK COUNCILMAN HOLZHAUER AND ONE OF THE SPEAKERS MAYBE BROUGHT UP POTENTIAL FEDERAL AND OR MAYBE FORTHCOMING STATE REGULATION. I'M JUST CURIOUS IF STAFF KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT WHERE THAT, I KNOW THE WRITE-UP TALKED ABOUT A FEW MUNICIPALITIES, WINECA, PLAINFIELD, I THINK HAVE BANNED IT ENTIRELY. DO WE KNOW THE STATUS OF ANY POTENTIAL STATE OR FEDERAL REGULATION ON EITHER SYNTHETIC AND OR NATURAL?

MR. CITY ATTORNEY?

NO, I DON'T. I KNOW THAT THEY'RE BEING CONSIDERED AND THINGS ARE DISCUSSED. THERE'S BILLS THAT ARE PENDING, BUT I DON'T KNOW THE LIKELIHOOD OR THE SPEED AT WHICH ANY REGULATIONS ARE EXPECTED.

NOTHING IMMINENT THAT YOU'RE AWARE OF?

I MEAN, I'VE HEARD THAT AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL IN PARTICULAR, THE SYNTHETIC IS GETTING A LOT OF ATTENTION. I THINK THERE'S SOME FOCUS ON THERE. IT'S ALSO AT THE STATE LEVEL, BUT I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING IMMINENT.

OKAY.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMAN WILSON.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I guess having heard about the distinction, or I guess having heard more about the distinction here between the synthetic and I guess you could say natural, I'd be in favor of what Councilwoman Gibson would be proposing here as far as doing this being a first reading and then a second reading, I guess, just as part of gathering more information. YOU KNOW, I'D LIKE TO SAY GETTING MORE INFORMATION IS BETTER. BUT THAT'S SORT OF WHERE I'D BE AT AS FAR AS MAKING A DECISION TODAY. THANK YOU. GOOD NIGHT.

COUNCILMAN MCBRIDE.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. YOU SAID A LOT OF THINGS I WANTED TO SAY. I'M NOT GOING TO REPEAT EVERYTHING. I didn't know what Creighton was a week ago. I did a deep AI dive on it, and a lot of you speakers have confirmed the things that I've learned and this distinction. And yeah, I'm hesitant to ban an entire product when APPARENTLY PEOPLE BELIEVE IT'S SAFE, AND I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. BUT SO I, YOU KNOW, I GUESS LONG STORY SHORT, I'M SUPPORTING WHAT COUNCILMAN GIBSON IS SUGGESTING, FIRST READING, AND JUST GATHERING SOME MORE INFORMATION ON IT, MAKING A DECISION AT A FUTURE MEETING.

QUESTION FOR YOU AGAIN, CHIEF. WITH REGARD TO THE ENFORCEMENT OF AN ORDINANCE, IF IT WERE PASSED, A SYNTHETIC VERSUS A NATURAL LEAF CREATUM ORDINANCE. HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE THAT WITH THE POLICE DEPARTMENT?

I THINK SOME OF OUR SPEAKERS HELPED US WITH THAT TONIGHT SAYING IT'S HARD TO DISTINGUISH WHAT YOU'RE GETTING FROM PRODUCTS. SO PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, I WOULD HAVE TO TALK TO THE LABS THAT WE SEND THE NARCOTICS WE SEIZE AND SEE HOW THEY WOULD HANDLE SOMETHING LIKE THAT. IT WOULD HAVE TO BE TESTED IN A LAB TO DETERMINE THAT. AND THEN IT WOULD BE IS IT CRIMINAL BECAUSE THE LAB IS NOT JUST GOING TO TEST SOMETHING THAT'S NOT CRIMINAL TO DETERMINE DERIVATIVES. I WOULD HAVE TO DO MORE RESEARCH ON THAT BECAUSE FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD, IF WE DID GO WITH ONE TYPE OF BAN, WE WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO WALK INTO A STORE AND IT'S NOT GOING TO BE MARKETED A CERTAIN WAY. I THINK ONE OF THE SPEAKERS HAD MENTIONED SOME HAVE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF THE OH-7 OR 7-OH IN IT VERSUS THIS. WE DON'T KNOW THE COMPOSITION. SO I COULDN'T GIVE YOU A GOOD, HONEST ANSWER UNTIL I STARTED CALLING CRIME LABS AND SAYING HOW CAN OR WOULD WE HANDLE THIS, SOMETHING THAT, TO EVERYBODY'S POINT, IS NOT ILLEGAL IN THE STATE OR FEDERAL YET. I DON'T KNOW THAT THAT HELPED, BUT I DON'T KNOW THAT I HAVE A GOOD ANSWER FOR YOU AT THIS POINT WHERE WE COULD GET THAT DONE.

I THINK THAT HELPS, AND I THINK IT SUMMARIZES SOME OF THE THINGS THAT WE HEARD TONIGHT IN THAT WHILE IN SOME CASES THERE MIGHT BE LEAF THAT'S BEING SOLD WITH A CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY FROM A MANUFACTURER SOMEWHERE, WE DON'T REALLY KNOW IF THAT'S AUTHENTIC OR NOT. IT'S A MANUFACTURER'S STATEMENT, AND THEY MAY OR MAY NOT BE IN THIS COUNTRY TO EVEN provide some sort of true testing that would be recognized by agencies here in the United States. Councilman Kelly.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION SORT OF TO THAT POINT. AGAIN, BACK TO SOME OF THE OTHER MUNICIPALITIES IN NORTHERN ILLINOIS WHO HAVE TAKEN SOME ACTION. ROCKFORD, SEEMS LIKE THEY HAVE A PARTIAL BAN. AND THEN THE OTHERS, WINECA, PLAINFIELD, AND ONE OTHER, I THINK, HAVE A TOTAL BAN. IF WE'RE GOING TO BRING IT BACK FOR A SECOND READING, I'D BE CURIOUS IF SOMEBODY EITHER LEGAL OR POLICE CAN REACH OUT TO THOSE MUNICIPALITIES AND ASK HOW THEY HAVE HANDLED IT, IF THEY'VE HAD ANY ENFORCEMENT ACTION AT ALL, AND IF SO, HOW THEY HANDLE TESTING. have a health department, right, as a city. I don't know if those municipalities do or not, but I'd just be curious how they're handling it, how we might be able to handle it. You know, I'm certainly open to some kind of regulation. You know, the stories are compelling, but I just want to be thoughtful about how we do it and make sure that we do something we can actually follow through on. I KNOW I HAD NEVER HEARD OF IT UNTIL BEFORE IT CAME TO US LAST TIME IN 2019. I THINK IT WAS JUST ME AND COUNCILMAN WHITE AND WE WERE ALL JUST NOT SURE WHAT TO DO WITH IT BECAUSE WE DIDN'T HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE AS COUNCIL PEOPLE OR AS A CITY STAFF REALLY TO KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT IT, LET ALONE HOW TO REGULATE IT. SO I DO THINK A SECOND READING MAKES SENSE AND THE MORE KNOWLEDGE YOU CAN BRING US THAT MAYBE OTHER MUNICIPALITIES HAVE ALREADY DONE THE HOMEWORK ON, THE BETTER.

I'd just like to clarify, make sure the council and everyone's on the same page. The proposed regulation is to control the local retail sale of Kratom. It doesn't touch on possession. If there are responsible users, they will still be able to likely access that, whether it's online or outside the municipal limits, and have that in Naperville and use it responsibly. This ordinance is really targeted at the stores within Naperville that are marketing and selling Kratom. And I would just kind of echo what the chief said from a prosecutorial perspective. We'd have to look into it. And thank you for the suggestion, Councilman. But the idea that there's no FDA requirements, that this is an unregulated substance, makes it very difficult for the police to determine whether something they have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to take something off the shelf. Because the labels aren't necessarily accurate. There's no standard at which they're holding it to. And then the labs and how they're going to test it. I think that's why the Liquor Commission had recommended a broadband in order to compass everything versus trying to parse between synthetics. AND THE NATURAL PRODUCTS.

COUNCILMAN HOLZAR. YEAH, THANK YOU, MAYOR. SO I'LL SPLIT THIS INTO A PROCEDURAL COMMENT AND THEN JUST A FOLLOW-UP TO WHAT MR. DESANTO AND CHIEF BERRY SAID. FROM A PROCEDURAL PERSPECTIVE, I DON'T THINK IT'S REALLY A GOOD LOOK IF WE HAVE, LIKE, A SPLIT COUNCIL WITH MAYBE A BARE MAJORITY PASSES A CREATIVE BAN HERE TONIGHT, BUT A LOT OF PEOPLE WANTED A SECOND READING. or whatever that breaks out as. So I would support a second reading, just like Councilwoman Gibson said, from a procedural standpoint, I think it's a better look. Having said that, I mean, and also kind of having lived it, I can tell you from a prosecutorial legal perspective, from a police perspective, it is just impossible for them to enforce, I think, a ban on just the synthetic form. And also from a storekeeper perspective, that's really unfair. That's an unregulated product. It says that it's pure leaf on it, and then it turns out it's spiked with who knows what. Is the store owner like prosecuted for violating a law? Do we just let it slide because they didn't know? I mean, it's like we literally know the packages aren't trustworthy. I think it puts the store owners in a super unfair position. And I think we have precedent on it. So my intent would be at a second reading to still vote for what we're seeing right now, but to support a second reading. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, well, I hope if we have a second reading, council will take action. I think having one. dead person in our community whose autopsy report indicates kratom as a cause of death is pretty significant. And having four additional overdoses, as the chief described in recent time, should wake us up and have us take action as the communities around us have taken complete and total bans on this product for all age groups. WITH THAT, COUNCILMAN WHITE MAY HAVE A MOTION TO HOLD THE FIRST READING AND TABLE FOR FINAL ACTION TO BE TAKEN AT THE SEPTEMBER 1ST MEETING.

I'LL JUST STILL MOVE, STILL MOVE WHITE.

COUNCILMAN KELLY? SECOND, KELLY. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ROLL CALL. HOLSHAUER?

AYE. JANE? AYE. Kelly? Aye. McBroom? Aye. Syed? Aye. White? Aye. Wilson? Aye. Worley?

Yes. Gibson? Aye. Motion passes 9-0. It'll be coming back at our September 1st meeting for the final vote. Item J1.

ITEM J1 HAS ONE POSITION OF SUPPORT THAT WAS POSTED TO THE WEBSITE. IT IS TO RECEIVE THE STAFF REPORT AND CONDUCT THE PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER THE ANNEXATION AGREEMENT AND RELATED ORDINANCES FOR THE PROPERTY LOCATED AT 26 WEST 021 PARKSIDE ROAD.

PUBLIC HEARING FOR 26W021 PARKSIDE ROAD IS NOW OPEN. ANYONE WHO WISHES TO SPEAK MAY COME FORWARD. SEEING NO ONE, COUNCILMAN WHITE MAY HAVE A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING.

I MOVE TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING.

COUNCILMAN KELLY? SECOND, KELLY. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SIGN AYE. OPPOSED? PUBLIC HEARING IS NOW CLOSED. J-2.

ITEM J-2 IS A RECOMMENDATION TO PASS THE ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING THE EXECUTION OF THE ANNEXATION AGREEMENT FOR 26 WEST 21 PARKSIDE ROAD.

COUNCILMAN WHITE MAY HAVE A MOTION.

Mayor, I move to pass an ordinance authorizing the execution of the annexation agreement for 26W021 Parkside Road.

Councilman Kelly? Second. Kelly? We have a motion and a second on J2. Roll call.

Jane? Aye. Kelly?

Aye.

McBroom?

Aye.

Saeed? Aye. White?

Aye. Wilson?

Aye. Worley? Yes. Gibson?

Aye. Holzhauer? Aye.

Motion passes 9-0. J3?

Item J3 is a recommendation to pass the ordinance annexing 26 West 21 Parkside Road.

Councilman White. I move to pass the ordinance annexing 26W021 Parkside Road.

Councilman Kelly. Second, Kelly. A motion and second on J3. Roll call. Kelly. Aye. McBroom.

Aye. Syed. Aye. White. Aye. Wilson. Aye. Worley.

Yes. Gibson.

Aye. Holzhauer. Aye. Jane.

Aye.

Motion passes. 9-0, J4.

Item J4 is a recommendation to pass the ordinance rezoning 26 West 21 Parkside Road to R1A upon annexation.

Councilman White. I move to pass the ordinance rezoning 26W021 Parkside Road to R1A upon annexation.

Second, Kelly. Second, Kelly.

We have a motion and a second on J4. Roll call.

McBroom.

Aye. Sayed? Aye.

White? Aye. Wilson? Aye. Worley?

Yes.

Gibson? Aye. Holzhauer? Aye. Jane? Aye. Kelly?

Aye. Motion passes 9-0. I think we're going to take a seven-minute break since we've been going since 6.30 tonight. Oh, I'm sorry. We have J5. I'm sorry. Roll call. I got ahead of myself. I'm checking too many boxes here. I'm already thinking about the break. Councilman White, we have a motion on J5.

I move the pass to ordinance approving the preliminary final plat of subdivision for 26W021 Parkside Road. Councilman Kelly.

Second, Kelly.

Motion and second on J5.

Roll call.

Syed. Aye. White? Aye. Wilson? Aye. Worley? Yes. Gibson? Aye. Holzhauer? Aye. Jane? Aye. Kelly?

Aye. McBroom? Aye. Motion passes 9-0. We will be back at 8.56.

IS RECOMMENDATION TO RECEIVE A STAFF REPORT FOR 2160 CITY GATE LANE. ALSO ONE POSITION OF SUPPORT HAS BEEN POSTED TO THE WEBSITE FOR THIS ITEM.

COUNCILMAN WHITE MAY HAVE A MOTION ON AN L1.

I MOVE TO RECEIVE THE STAFF REPORT FOR 2160 CITY GATE LANE.

COUNCILMAN KELLY. SECOND KELLY. WE HAVE A MOTION AND SECOND ON L1. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SIGN AYE. OPPOSED. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES.

MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES.

I move to pass the ordinance approving a major change to the city gate center planet unit development, a final plan unit development plat with certain deviations, a conditional use for multifamily dwelling units, and an OAA for city gate two.

Councilman Kelly? Second, Kelly. Councilman, what was our discussion?

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to give a shout out to the law firm of Roscoe and Whitaker sitting in the audience there. I had reached out to them to follow up because a majority of council members at a meeting several months ago had floated the idea of including names, street names in new developments that celebrated sort of diverse leaders in our community, in our history. And, you know, specifically with regard to this project, they looked, they couldn't find a street. There's no streets in this project. However, I was pleased to hear Mr. Rosanova say that they have several projects and streets identified in the future where they're looking to do this. So I just appreciate that, you know, they've remembered and they're listening to council guidance.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, we have a motion and second on L2, roll call. White.

Aye.

Wilson. Aye. Worley. Yes. Gibson.

Aye. Holzhauer. Aye.

Jane.

Aye. Kelly.

Aye. McBroom. Aye. Syed. Aye. Motion passes 9-0. L3.

Item L3 is a recommendation to pass the ordinance approving a plotted setback deviation from section 7-1-13 of the Naperville Municipal Code.

Councilman White, may I have a motion? I MOVE TO PASS THE ORDINANCE APPROVING A PLATTED SETBACK DEVIATION FROM SECTION 7-1-13 OF THE NAPERVILLE MUNICIPAL CODE FOR CITY GATE 2.

COUNCILMAN KELLY. SECOND, KELLY. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND ON L3. WE'LL CALL. WILSON.

AYE.

WORLEY.

YES. GIBSON.

AYE. HOLTSAUER. AYE. JANE. AYE. KELLY.

AYE. MCBROOM. AYE. SIAD. AYE. WHITE.

AYE.

MOTION PASSES 9-0. COUNCILMAN WHITE, M1.

I MOVE TO APPROVE THE AWARD OF OPTION YEAR NUMBER ONE TO CONTRACT 25-172, INSULATED CONDUCTORS TO THE OKINITE COMPANY FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $5,500,000. COUNCILMAN KELLY.

SECOND KELLY. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND ON M-1. ROLL CALL.

WHORLEY?

YES. GIBSON?

AYE. HOLSAUER? AYE. JANE? AYE. KELLY? AYE. MCBROOM? AYE. ZAYED? YES. WHITE?

AYE. WILSON? AYE. MOTION PASSES 9-0-0-1.

ITEM 01 IS A RECOMMENDATION TO RECEIVE THE 2026 NATIONAL COMMUNITY SURVEY PRESENTATION BY POLCO. WE HAVE TWO SPEAKERS, JOHN DOYLE AND MARILYN SCHWEITZER THAT WE WILL HEAR FIRST AND THEN NICK MASTRINARDI IS HERE FROM POLCO TO PROVIDE A PRESENTATION ON THE 2026 NATIONAL COMMUNITY SURVEY RESULTS.

John Doyle, Naperville resident. Thank you. I've been waiting for these results to come in to let you know how incredibly disappointed I was when I saw this question design when I was completing the survey myself. Here are some of my issues with this question. First, it's a double-barreled question trying to capture both importance and cost tolerance all at once. Avoiding this is survey design 101. Every other question captured a single signal, and when the survey wanted two signals on a single topic, it asked two separate questions, one for importance and one for quality. In addition to being double-barreled, it is for some reason the only topic that asks about cost at all. And I promise I'm not upset about you asking about cost, really. I think you just went about it in one of the worst and most unproductive ways possible. At best, all you've managed to do is reframe the discussion to what counts as minimal costs. It doesn't mean no cost, right? Because if it meant no cost, you would have said no costs. If I told you I was building a shed and I wanted to keep my costs minimal, does that mean I'm expecting a free shed? No, it doesn't. But by combining both cost and importance into one question, you've also thrown away any ability for us to track trends with the last survey about sustainability. So I have some questions for you. First, who wrote this question? And why wasn't our sustainability manager involved? Why wasn't the city council involved with improving custom questions? Was any feedback about this question provided by the vendor before the survey was started? Why is this the only question that asks about cost instead of quality?

Why wasn't cost a factor for any other topic, like safety?

What if I think safety is important, but only if the police budget stays minimal? Where's that question? Look, I'm not expecting to get an answer on the record from the vendor tonight either, but I sure would love to hear their take on this. Maybe someone from the council can follow up on them. And lastly, if nothing else, can we finally stop debating if sustainability belongs in our mission statement? Only one out of five said it is not a high priority. They are the activist minority here, not us. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Marilyn Schweitzer.

Good evening. My thanks to city council and city staff for conducting the survey and in particular for using a survey company that allows Naperville to be tracked against national benchmarks. As the survey reflects, Naperville has many fine qualities across each of its governmental entities, namely the school districts, park district, and the municipal government. This is a credit to the staff and elected officials across these forms of government, as well as to the community members who advocate, volunteer, and work to make Naperville as outstanding of a community as it is. But this does not mean we should congratulate ourselves and move on. Instead, as the survey results and staff notes, there are areas that warrant attention in the coming years. While Naperville has no ratings lower than the national benchmark, 18% of the trends in Naperville were downward compared with only 2% that were upward between 2023 and 2026. I believe this is significant, particularly as we continue to distance ourselves from the effects of the pandemic. It is also important to note that nationally 15% of the trends were downward compared with 8% that were upward between 2023 and 2026. In other words, while other communities also experienced more downward than upward trends, Naperville's imbalance was considerably greater. I looked forward to the staff and council taking these results to heart and recognizing that this survey is of residents rather than special interest groups or organizations. Given the downward trends in residents' feelings, welcome to participate, being treated fairly, and being treated with respect. I believe improving engagement with residents is key to reversing these downward trends, as well as maintaining or improving performance in other areas. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any more speakers besides the presenter?

No.

All right, Mr. Mastinardi.

Mayor, council, leadership, staff, manager, appreciate your time. Very nice to meet you. Excited to present to you the results of the National Community Survey for Naperville for this year. Before we dive into the results, just a couple of things to note on this opening slide. I am from Polka. I want to give credit to project manager from our team, Lily, who worked very closely with the team in questions, fielding, results, reporting. And then also I want to highlight a couple of brands here. We are from Polko National Research Center is our in-house think tank leading provider of surveys across the country for nearly 30 years and their flagship survey professionally developed certainly on the standardized questions. Appreciate the comments on the double barrel question. We'll come back to that as we get to that in there. But yeah, the National Community Survey has been again for 30 years. So it's really nice to be able to look at some of these benchmarks. I look forward to going into the results with you here tonight. It looks like we lost the visual, but it's coming up in a second. First thing to keep in mind here, we do have maintained the largest benchmarking data set. So you will see your results, not only time trend to your history, but also compared to communities across the country. You guys tonight are dealing with all kinds of very special topics that pop up. And this is a step back and let's take a look at resident assessment of quality life and satisfaction with public services and how that compares to other communities across the country and over time. This is not a representative benchmarking group. I do not have a representative sample of all cities in the United States. The cities that comprise this benchmark are self-selected the best, arguably the best performing cities across the country. These are the Palo Altos, the Scottsdales, the Asheville, North Carolinas. There's a lot in the Chicago area, but just keep that in mind as you're looking at yourselves compared to benchmark. This benchmark and comparison group are very high performing cities. So just please keep this in mind. You see some of them here. In the bottom left, there are, I think we just recently crested over 2,000 cities. The comparison group is 400 because we keep some recency in there. There's over 50 million resident opinions represented. So this is, again, over 30 years, a very robust comparative data set that you will be looking at. THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY SURVEY WORKS WITH TONS OF CITIES AND COUNTIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AS WE MENTIONED. NOT EVERY ORGANIZATION IS THE SAME, SO WE HAVE ORGANIZED OUR RESULTS INTO THESE TEN FACETS OF LIVABILITY WHICH KIND OF MAP THE DEPARTMENTS, BUT THESE ARE HOW WE'LL LOOK AT RESULTS ACCORDING TO THESE TEN DIFFERENT GROUPINGS. On methodology, it is a address-based random sample. We also do a general outreach to everybody in the community, even if they weren't selected to be part of the random representative probability-based random sample, has an opportunity to participate in the open participation, but we don't conflate those results. to preserve the integrity of your probability-based random sample. Invitations were sent to 5,000 randomly selected households. The results are plus or minus 4% margin of error, and the confidence level is 95%. So when you hear a number such as, let's say, a 90% satisfaction rating, you can feel confident to a 95% level that the true population mean is within that number plus or minus 4%. So if it's 90, it's between 86 and 94. You can feel with 95% confidence that the true population number is in that range. There were 760 completes. That's a 16% response rate. There was multiple language submitted. There's a cover letter from the mayor. And again, there was an open participation component with additional 213 responses in there. So I just only present these numbers and this methodology and this benchmark and comparison group so you can go forward with confidence and use these results to determine budgets and strategic planning and everything else that you guys do. So overview of the survey results, a nice picture of the building that we're in. First thing to notice on this slide is colored in the lighter green is these are higher than benchmark. And again, please keep in mind that that benchmarking group is very high performing cities. And then in dark green, this means much higher. This is more than 20 points above that benchmarking mean. So these are very high scores. I have a fortune of getting to present to a lot of communities, and these are among some of the best that I have ever seen. It's a very high performing community. So you can see on the right, these are the percentage of the residents to the survey after the appropriate demographic rewinding of the results that rate those particular areas excellent or good. So very high results, two with much higher. Please rate how important, if at all, Naperville community is to focus on the following areas. So the prior is about the resident assessment of quality. This slide is on the importance to the residents. So in green, you will see that these are all similar. That means the desires and the importance from your residents are on par with the desires and the importance of the other communities that are in the benchmarking set. What's important is to put these together to see how the quality compares to the areas that are important to the residents. And that's what we do on this following slide. And so for the most part, you can see, except for the very bottom row in almost every single area, For Naperville, the resident assessment of the quality of that category of public services is on par with or exceeds the importance level to them. And so that's great reason to celebrate. To highlight on the bottom, This is the importance was deemed 78% and the quality score was at a 63%. So if there's an area to pay a little bit of attention to, it's the residents importance compared to the quality satisfaction with the mobility services is one to keep an eye on. So again, happy to go into more detail on these, but just at a very high level, that's an area where the importance is a gap relative to the quality. HOW NAPERVILLE COMPARES TO NATIONAL BENCHMARKS. AGAIN, SO ABOUT 123 RATING CATEGORIES, ZERO WERE LOWER THAN THIS HIGH PERFORMING GROUP BENCHMARK AND 103 WERE HIGHER. VERY HIGH PERFORMANCE. AGAIN, SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE. LOOKING AT YOUR TIME TRENDS, SO SINCE 2023 ADMINISTRATION OF THE SURVEY, Three areas went up, while 22 went down. We will go into these results in more detail, and you'll see the specific categories. And this is our first year not only presenting benchmark results, but also benchmarking on trends. And so you'll see a lot of these categories. While you did go down, there are areas that most of the country was going down in some of these areas as well. So we'll show that. But this is a new area for us to report on, is some of these national trend benchmarks as well. OKAY. AND JUST ONE THING TO NOTE HERE, TRENDS ARE DENOTED STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT IF THE CHANGE IS GREATER THAN OR EQUAL TO A PLUS OR MINUS 5 PERCENTAGE POINT CHANGE. SO AGAIN, TREND BENCHMARKS, YEAH, HOW THE COMMUNITY IS NATIONWIDE MOVED ACROSS THE 113 ITEMS. SO THESE ARE THE NATIONAL TRENDS, 10 WERE UP, BUT ALSO IN THE NATION, 18 WERE DOWN. SO TAKE A LOOK AT THE AREAS OF THE GREATEST CHANGE FOR NAPERVILLE RELATIVE TO 2023. Overall respondent health was rated higher. Feeling safe from fire, flood, or natural disaster went up, and that's while there was no national trend change, and also an increase while nationally there was no trend. You guys experienced an increase in attracting people from diverse backgrounds. Just to read through and interpret the results on the left, these are the areas that you declined. You'll notice that four of these areas of decline were also experiencing declines nationwide. That's employment opportunities, economic development, utility billing, land use planning, and zoning. You had a decline. There were also declines nationally. But even so, the employment opportunities, that's a large decline, something to keep an eye on. In the other areas, three of those four, there was no change nationally, but there was a decrease here in Naperville. That's Naperville as a place to work. Sorry, affordable quality child care preschool, ease of travel by bicycle, bus or train service. But Naperville is a place to work. We did not have a national trend comparison on that. So hopefully these are helpful. Again, these are new, and we look forward to continuing to provide these in the future. All right, so key findings. This is community members give high ratings to Naperville as a place to live and raise children. So just to read through here, 96% rated as excellent or good. Naperville is a place to raise children. This is much higher, 97th percentile, again, out of that very high performing group. Again, higher with 95% rating as Naperville is a place to live. 90th percentile, Naperville recommended someone who asked as a place to live. 94% your neighborhood is a place to live in the overall image or reputation of Naperville, much higher, 98th percentile with a 93% rating score. And then your 90% to remain in Naperville for the next five years is similar to national benchmark and 87th percentile. So that's overall community quality. Key finding two, residents continue to feel very safe throughout the community. So this is their ratings of how safe or unsafe they feel in the neighborhood during the day, downtown commercial areas during the day. So all of these are similar to benchmark or higher in the safety from violent crime or safety from property crime. There was no change in those two higher, so higher before, and the national trend did go up in these areas. You did have an increase in your safety from fire, flood, or natural disaster, while nationally there was no change in that category. So something unique, positive was happening here in Naperville. Safety services in Naperville, you can see the breakdown here. Again, many of them were higher than the national benchmark in your safety. So these are strong scores. You did have a decrease in animal control, but again, you were coming from a very high area. And then there was a national trend in crime prevention that wasn't represented here. But again, all very high scores. All right, these are the sets of results of resident ratings on economy. So highly rated economy, affordability remains an area for improvement. And so again, you see a lot of green representing higher, and then you'll see these four categories of much higher, much higher ratings in overall economic health, vibrancy of downtown, shopping opportunities, and variety of business and service establishments. No change in your trend or nationally, and then you did go down, but so did the nation in economic development and employment opportunities. Affordability in Naperville, again, so you had similar, two similar, three higher, and one much higher in the availability of affordable quality mental health care. There was a decrease in availability of affordable quality food and a decrease in availability of affordable quality preschool. And those may be note worthy. There was no national trend occurring there. You did not have a change in your top category, which is the availability of affordable quality health care, while most of the nation did. All right, next category is going to be on transportation. So again, a lot of green, similar to benchmark, and you had a significantly higher than benchmark on your ease of walking. There was a decline, but you were much higher, while there was no decline in that category nationally. National trends decreased, but you remained stable in ease of travel by car. There was similar decreases nationally, but you remained stable also in ease of public parking and traffic flow on major streets. You did have a decline, while the nation did not, in ease of travel by bicycle and ease of travel by public transportation. Mobility services, so two declines here, snow removal and bus or train services. But again, the snow removal was similar, and your bus or train service was rated higher than the benchmarks. Okay, key finding five. This is Naperville's appearance and community design also received great marks. So you'll see three much higher than this benchmarking group in overall appearance, public places where people want to spend time, and well-planned commercial growth. There were declines in Naperville in preservation of historical cultural character. There was a decline in your wall plan commercial growth. But again, this one was starting at a very high point. And there was a decline in land use and planning. But in that category, there was also a national decline. You did remain stable, while nationally there was a decline in overall quality of new development. NAPERVILLE'S EDUCATION AND CULTURAL OFFERINGS ALSO WELL RECEIVED. SO AGAIN, VERY HIGH SCORES HERE THROUGHOUT WITH TWO MUCH HIGHER THAN BENCHMARK. WHEN I PRESENT THESE RESULTS, A COMMUNITY MAY HAVE ONE OR TWO IN THE MUCH HIGHER. THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE SO MANY IS NOTEWORTHY. THERE WAS A DECLINE IN OVERALL OPPORTUNITIES FOR EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND THE ARTS, BUT YOU WERE COMING FROM A MUCH HIGHER POSITION. um there so k-12 education also was highly rated above benchmarks and all were higher but that was much higher uh and so getting into the additional special topics uh i will go ahead and i'll wait till we get to the question these For the National Community Survey, if any of you took it or received it, we try to keep roughly 80% of that survey as standardized so you can get your time trends and your comparison to the national benchmarks. And then we do allow for some customization and questions for whatever may be a topic. And those questions may be similar to ones you've done in the past, so you can have your own unique trend lines on those. And so one custom question here was rate how safe or unsafe you feel in your neighborhood at night. And so these are very high scores, and there was a slight increase from 93% to 95%. And if you look at it, even within, there was a slight decline in somewhat safe, while there was an inflection in the very safe. So people are moving from, a couple people are moving from somewhat safe to very safe. These are very high scores, continuing in safety. In fact, going up slightly. Please rate how safe or unsafe you feel in downtown Naperville at night. Again, up from 83 to 86, a slight decline in the very safe to the somewhat safe, but again, extremely high scores in the feelings of safety in Naperville and downtown at night. Custom question on the environmental sustainability. I do acknowledge on this question the double barrel nature of it. AND I WANT TO GO BACK AND THERE MAY BE A JUSTIFICATION. I DON'T REMEMBER OFF HAND. I APPRECIATE THE COMMENT. WE DO HAVE A FANTASTIC TEAM, PH.D. SURVEY SCIENTISTS WHO REVIEW AND CREATE THESE QUESTIONS. THERE MAY BE SOMETIMES THERE IS ALSO A DESIRE TO KEEP EVERYTHING ON THE SURVEY RELATIVELY SHORT TO MINIMIZE FATIGUE. LET ME TAKE AS AN ACTION ITEM TO GO BACK AND LOOK AT THIS PARTICULAR QUESTION. EVEN WITH THAT, I THINK THERE'S INSIGHT TO BE GAINED HERE ABOUT, IN PARTICULAR, TO HAVE CONFIDENCE THAT ENVIRONMENTAL AND SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES ARE A HIGH PRIORITY IN THE COMMUNITY. SO I THINK WE CAN STILL LEAVE CONFIDENT THAT IT'S AN IMPORTANT AREA TO THE COMMUNITY, BUT AS FAR AS THE QUALITY IN THIS PARTICULAR CUSTOM QUESTION, LET ME GO BACK AND SEE IF I CAN COME UP WITH THE JUSTIFICATION FOR WHY WE MAY HAVE INTRODUCED A DOUBLE BARREL IN THAT COMPONENT OF THE QUESTION. And then please rate the ease of parking in downtown Naperville 6 and 10 rate. Downtown parking is excellent or good. You can see the particular score breakdown on the left-hand side there. And then sources of information effectiveness and community outreach was one of your custom questions. And you can see here for which modes of communication constitute a major source of information across the community. WITH THE DARK GREEN, THE LIGHTER GREEN IS A MINOR SOURCE, AND SO IT SEEMS THAT THE MAPER NOTIFY MASS NOTIFICATION IS A VERY EFFECTIVE SOURCE, AND SO FORTH, DECLINING DOWN, BUT THIS IS JUST FOR REFERENCE, THESE RESULTS, YOU HAVE THE SLIDE DECK, YOU HAVE RESULTS AND REPORT YOU CAN REFERENCE FOR LATER. THESE ARE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE DIFFERENT INFORMATION OUTREACH CHANNELS. So summary of findings. Naperville, very high praise as a place to live and raise children. Very safe, give public safety service good marks. Economy scored very well, though affordability remains an area to improve. Some of those economy declines are national declines. Mobility services scored well. The ratings for ease of travel varied by transportation mode. Appearance and community design were highly rated, despite modest declines in some planning measures, but they were coming from very high scores. And residents voiced strong support for educational and cultural offerings with the library topping the ratings. And just last thing to mention here. by the online conducting of the survey, both through the probability sample and the open participation sample on Polko. The way it works is you have access to the platform to continue to engage residents on topics or follow-up surveys as you'd like. At the point of creation of this slide deck, there were 1,475 residents who had created that. You can continue to engage and ask follow-up surveys with no additional cost. It's just continued utilization of the platform. I actually checked today. And that's crested over 1,500 because there's some follow-up surveys that are currently going on. So we see some communities. I think Rochester, Minnesota has like 6,000 people on there. It ends up being a good way to get input on topics as you'd like. So just keep that in mind. And then just as we introduced national trend benchmarks this year, WE HAVE BEGUN TO INTRODUCE INSIDE OF POLCO PLATFORM FOR THE STAFF TO USE AS THEY'D LIKE BENCHMARKS BUT NOT JUST ON RESIDENT SATISFACTION SURVEY RESULTS BUT BENCHMARKS AND OTHER OBJECTIVE QUANTITATIVE DATA. SO WE ARE NOW BRINGING IN CDC PUBLIC HEALTH DATA, FBI CRIME DATA. SO IF YOU WANT TO DO SIMILAR BENCHMARKING ANALYTICS NOT JUST ON YOUR SURVEY RESULTS, THOSE ARE THERE. OUR TEAM IS HAPPY TO WORK WITH YOUR STAFF ON THAT TO EXTEND SOME OF THE INSIGHTS THAT WE'VE TALKED ABOUT HERE. Hopefully this was helpful. Again, I know on a day-to-day basis you guys are navigating very important issues. We believe some of the most important metrics for a community are the residents' assessment of their quality of life, what's important to them, their satisfaction with public services. We take our job of helping to measure that very seriously. A lot of our team are former public servants, academics, data scientists, and survey scientists. So we put a lot of pride into our work because we know it impacts everyone. your plans and your operations. So it's an honor for us to have provided this to you. I'm happy to answer additional questions on it. And that concludes my presentation for the night. Last, I just again want to give credit to my colleague, Lily, who did the lion's share of the work in executing the project and the results. Thank you.

Okay, we've got questions from the dais. Councilman Holzar, we'll start with you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Very briefly, would you mind flipping back to the slide that says sources of information?

This is just a suggestion, some minor suggestion, but for next time you do the survey, I think NCTV should be broken out as a separate category. Right now, government access TV is on the bottom. If I had to bet, I bet some residents JUST PICKED THAT, MEANING NCTV. THAT'S A SEPARATE CHANNEL HERE. IT'S FUNDED BY US. I WOULD JUST THROW THAT OUT. ONE OTHER COMMENT WOULD BE IF YOU COULD FLIP BACK TO THE SLIDE ON DOWNTOWN PARKING.

I THINK YOU HAD IT.

Yeah, perfect. So I look at those as pretty good ratings right now, the overall downtown parking situation. For me personally, I might rate it as a fair or a low fair. I don't know. And it's an area we're talking about in the very near future, investing potentially a very large amount of money. BUT I DID WANT TO POINT OUT THIS IS SOMETHING WHERE, YOU KNOW, SIX IN TEN RESIDENTS SAY THAT WE'RE EITHER EXCELLENT OR GOOD. MAYBE WE'LL INVEST MORE TO INCREASE THAT EXCELLENT OR GOOD. BUT IT BRINGS ME TO THE NEXT POINT, WHICH IS WOULD YOU MIND GOING TO THE WALKABILITY, BIKEABILITY, PUBLIC TRANSPORT SLIDE? AND AS YOU'RE FLIPPING THROUGH, I'M JUST SEEING, YOU KNOW, THEY'RE PERFECT. high, you know, high, high scores, right, in like the 70s, 80s, 90s for education, arts, beautification, all of these great things that Naperville prides itself in. It strikes me that, I mean, public transport is the last we can do about it as a city council. It strikes me that bicycle travel is one that we could Catch up to peer communities on you know whether it's overland park or carmel or some of these others in particular just focusing on the fact that it's so hard to get to downtown with a bicycle. So I just want to flag, you know if we're going to invest a lot of money in. let's say something that already has a fairly strong community belief that we're doing OK on, let's say like downtown parking, that we can also set aside some money to improve on this area of bikeability. I don't remember the slide. I don't want to spend the time. It's late. But there was also a slide that kind of talked about the ability to get places on foot. It wasn't just the ease of walking with somebody else. It's OK. BUT JUST KIND OF FOCUSING ON THOSE OTHER MODES OF TRANSPORT, ESPECIALLY BICYCLE ACCESSIBILITY. THANK YOU, MAYOR. THANK YOU. COUNCILMAN MIGUEL.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. APPRECIATE YOU BEING HERE LATE IN THE PRESENTATION. YOU KNOW, ECHO SOME OF THE COMMENTS THAT WERE SAID TONIGHT. SOME OF THESE SURVEYS, I MEAN, They're meant to be broad and just give us a general direction. But I think a lot of us. I'm going to give you some tips. You're the professional. So I do this on the golf course too. I give people tips. I'm not good at golf. But if there was a way, like on the sustainability question, what would you pay? Or it sounds like there's a lot of people that are dissatisfied with the affordability issue. If you are, which of these solutions would you support? Apartment development or high density, those kind of things. JUST SOME OF THOSE AREAS OF SOMEBODY WHO DOESN'T LIKE SOMETHING, WHAT WOULD THEY LIKE IF THERE'S A WAY TO IN THE FUTURE INCORPORATE THOSE KIND OF THINGS. I WAS ALSO SURPRISED BY THE PARKING. We just assume that everyone hates parking. But 6 in 10, excellent or good. But for those that aren't, you know, 40% are not happy or think it's fair or poor, you know, what are some solutions that you would accept, a parking garage or whatever that case may be? The one thing that jumped out to me, and I think you'll probably say this has to do with national trends and how people... ANSWER SURVEY, BUT 90% RATING FOR ECONOMIC HEALTH, PRETTY OUTSTANDING, BUT ALSO A 24% DECLINE IN EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN NAPERVILLE. WHAT SHOULD WE TAKE FROM THAT?

I DON'T KNOW THE PARTICULAR POLICY AND PROGRAM OPTIONS THAT ARE ON THE TABLE IN FRONT OF YOU. AGAIN, THIS IS AN AREA OF NATIONAL DECLINE. Yeah, I hear that from residents who are looking for economic, what's that?

It's a little conflicted, it seems to me, right? Like 90% healthy, the economy, but employment opportunities just went down in Naperville.

Yeah, it would depend. I don't want to opine on that because I'm not in your position and know the levers that are available to kind of help in that area. But yeah, I think the right thing to do is to recognize that there are a lot of people, there is a decline in that employment opportunity. Okay. Thank you.

Council McKinley. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation. It was very informative. And thank you for the reflection on the sustainability question. If you could follow up with city staff and if staff could get back to us just to close that loop, we would appreciate it, I think. And then I'll be another person on the downtown parking slide. I guess I'm just curious. I know not all downtowns are alike and maybe no downtowns are that much alike, but do you have any TREND DATA ON THAT TO COMPARE ANY BENCHMARK DATA, ANY COMPARISON FOR US TO KNOW HOW THIS FAIRS COMPARED TO OTHER SIMILAR MUNICIPALITIES?

UNFORTUNATELY NOT BECAUSE THIS IS A CUSTOM QUESTION AND IT'S JUST NOT ONE THAT GETS FIELDED AT THAT SAME LEVEL. SO I CAN GO BACK AND SEE IF THERE'S OTHERS WHO HAVE PUT SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THIS AND THEN SEE IF THERE'S SOME COMPARISONS FOR YOU.

OKAY. EVEN IF IT'S A SMALL DATA SET, IF THERE ARE ANY, I'D BE VERY CURIOUS IN SEEING THAT. And then not a question for the survey, but just for staff, I think I know the answer, but just for the public, to Councilman Holzhauer's point about the bicycle situation in the city, could staff give us a very quick update on when we're going to see the pedestrian and bicycle plan come back?

Director Loudon, you want to take that?

SURE. SO THE PLAN IS ACTUALLY GOING TO BE REVIEWED BY TAB IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, AND THEN IT WILL BE TO THE CITY COUNCIL BY THE END OF THE YEAR. SO IT'S CLOSE TO BEING WRAPPED UP.

ALL RIGHT. VERY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT. THANK YOU. COUNCILWOMAN GIBSON.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. AND THANK YOU FOR THIS PRESENTATION. NOT A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION, BUT ACTUALLY JUST A CALL OUT TO OUR PUBLIC SAFETY TEAMS. THESE NUMBERS ARE Phenomenal. And I think it speaks to how proactive both our police and fire department have been at meeting the changing needs of our community. You know, the CART program, MCIT, which is rolling out this year, you know, 98% safety, feeling safe in your neighborhood, downtown safety. Thank you for everything your teams are doing.

I'M GOING TO JUST ASK FOR A CLARIFICATION WITH REGARD TO THE DOWNTOWN PARKING GATE. THESE ARE NAPERVILLE RESIDENTS ONLY THAT ARE RESPONDING TO THIS. IS THERE ANY SORT OF CLARIFYING QUESTION THAT COULD BE INSERTED NEXT TIME TO ASK HOW OFTEN DO THEY ACTUALLY COME TO DOWNTOWN NAPERVILLE? WE HAD JUST SHY OF 10 MILLION VISITS TO DOWNTOWN NAPERVILLE LAST YEAR, WHICH IS NEARLY A RECORD FOR US. AND A LOT OF THOSE VISITS COME FROM OUTSIDE OF THE COMMUNITY, SO WE DON'T GET A TRUE reflection here of what those outside visitors think about our parking situation in the downtown, which I think is pretty relevant.

YEAH, THAT'S A GREAT COMMENT. THESE SURVEY RESULTS ARE FROM NAPERVILLE RESIDENTS AND IT'S TOUGH TO GET SENTIMENT FROM OUTSIDE OF NAPERVILLE BECAUSE THAT'S A MUCH LARGER SAMPLE TO MAIL TO. THERE COULD BE WAYS TO DO THAT. HAPPY TO THINK THROUGH THAT WITH YOU. BUT YEAH, THERE IS A BIAS AND THESE ARE THE RATINGS FROM THE RESIDENTS OF NAPERVILLE. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU.

I DON'T SEE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS UP HERE, MR. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR REPORT AND WE APPRECIATE YOU BEING HERE WITH US TONIGHT.

JUST ONE QUICK COMMENT ON THAT. I THINK IT WAS COUNCILMEMBER HOLZHAUER ON THE MOBILITY SCORES EVEN THOUGH ABOVE BENCHMARK IN THE 50S. I THINK IT'S CLEAR THAT NAPERVILLE SHOOTS FOR EXCELLENCE. SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ABOVE BENCHMARKS LOOKING TO INFLECT THAT I THINK IS A GREAT COMMENT ON THAT. AND THEN THERE'S SEVERAL QUESTIONS ON FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS AND ADDITIONAL CONTEXT JUST TO PUT IN IT IS A PRETTY LONG SURVEY BECAUSE WE'RE, YOU KNOW, A CITY DELIVERS A LOT OF PUBLIC SERVICES AND THEY ASK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE. AND SO I THINK SOME OF THESE ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS WE CAN PLAN TO WORK IN FOR THE FUTURE. BUT ALSO WANTED TO MENTION THAT PANEL IS OPEN TO YOU WITH THE 1500 RESIDENTS ON THERE. That's a great opportunity to say, how much would you be willing to pay for? And so our team is available to help with some of those, craft those additional follow-up questions. There's always this constraint about the number of things you'd like to ask and the limited time in there. And so this is not a missed opportunity. The platform is available for some of those follow-ups. It won't carry the same precision, but at least it's an opportunity. And happy to take these notes and work on it for the next time. And I will take that action item on the particular question that was asked. Thank you very much for your time. And again, I don't want to miss the point, but congratulations also on your scores.

Thank you. Safe travels home.

Thank you.

Item 02.

Item 02 is a recommendation to authorize the city manager to increase the 2026 personnel headcount to a higher three additional full-time staff members in the Transportation, Engineering, and Development Business Group. We have one speaker, Marilyn Schweitzer.

GOOD EVENING. I SUPPORT INCREASING STAFFING FOR THE TRANSPORTATION AND ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT BUSINESS GROUP. SINCE 2018, I HAVE FELT THAT THE DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN UNDERSTAFFED. I HAVE ADVOCATED FOR INCREASES WHERE WARRANTED. I realize that what the TED director has specifically requested in the staff notes for this agenda item may strictly come from an internal departmental perspective rather than addressing the concerns that I and other residents have raised. However, because the City Manager highlighted support for this request by the NDP in the City Council Q&A, I am concerned that this staffing request may be dedicated primarily to matters of economic development, relating particularly for the interests promoted by the NDP. Economic development is very important, but a broader perspective is needed to ensure that resident quality of life, traffic, neighborhood character, resident engagement, multimodal transportation, and other community priorities receive appropriate attention as well. I WOULD APPRECIATE HEARING FROM TED'S STAFF AND COUNCIL AS TO WHETHER, IF APPROVED, THIS REQUEST WILL BE USED PRIMARILY TO SUPPORT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ISSUES AS IDENTIFIED BY THE NDP OR WHETHER THE ADDITIONAL STAFFING WILL ALSO ADDRESS THE BROADER NEEDS AND PRIORITIES OF THE NAPERVILLE COMMUNITY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU. COUNCILMAN WHITE, WE HAVE A MOTION.

I MOVE TO AUTHORIZE THE CITY MANAGER TO INCREASE THE 2026 PERSONNEL HEAD COUNT TO HIRE THREE ADDITIONAL FULL-TIME STAFF MEMBERS IN THE TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT BUSINESS GROUP.

COUNCILMAN KELLY, IS THERE A SECOND? SECOND, KELLY. COUNCILMAN SYED, DID YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION? NO. OKAY. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND ON 02. ROLL CALL. GIBSON?

AYE. HOLZAUER? AYE. JANE? AYE. KELLY? AYE. MCBROOM? Aye. Saeed? Aye. White?

Aye.

Wilson? Aye. Worley?

Yes. Motion passes 9-0-0-3.

Item 03 is a recommendation to receive the electric utility presentation regarding the sale of the utility and concur with the proposed agenda for the September 28th strategy workshop. We have nine speakers signed up to speak before the presentation. The first three speakers are Teresa Huss, Joe Huss, and Bias the Curr.

Hi, Teresa Haas. I wanted to comment on slide 9, which addresses one of the criteria we've been evaluating for all of our energy options, carbon-free availability. I am concerned that it does not show the full picture. First, the chart compares IMEA to Illinois, PJM, and MISO. ComEd exclusively operates on the PJM grid, which covers 13 states. And because of the geographic distribution, which you can see here, they receive almost all of their electricity from the Northern Illinois portion of PJM. So the most accurate comparison would be between IMEA and Illinois. Now, the slide compared IMEA's projected 2027 numbers with Illinois' 2024 actuals. Actual numbers, I wanted to compare apples to apples. So this is the most recent actuals from last year, 2025. And you can see there isn't a huge difference in renewables. But our criterion is carbon-free energy. And this slide inexplicably completely left out nuclear power. So when you look on the right at all of the carbon-free criterion, IMEA is significantly behind. And then projecting forward for Illinois and IMEA in 2027, Again, they look similar in terms of renewables. But when you look at carbon-free, IMEA continues to be significantly behind and will continue to be. And why did we look at this? It was to reduce our carbon footprint. And so when comparing options, we really need to look at emissions, which I know Councilman Holzhauer brought up back in April. And we can't evaluate emissions without considering the two coal plants that make up most of IMEA's generation. Prairie states can operate for another two decades. Trimble County in Kentucky is not affected by CEJA, so it will operate indefinitely. And our own greenhouse gas inventory shows we're already producing twice the carbon dioxide of our neighbors. We asked IMEA for written commitments to reduce emissions. They would not agree. And even worse, our electricity payments helped fund their lobbying efforts in Springfield to increase pollution efforts. So before the upcoming energy workshop, and absolutely before we make any decisions, we need four things. to have a full picture of this criterion. First, we need to have accurate information with sources. We've been asking for this since the presentation started. We want to be all on the same benchmark starting from the same page. We need the full picture of carbon-free resources, which obviously include nuclear. We need to consider how CEJA and other changes in the energy landscape will affect each option. But most of all, we need to consider emissions. Because even among fossil fuel sources, there is a significant difference. If we don't consider emissions of our choices, we're not going to have the full picture. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Joe Haas.

It's a tough speaker to follow. I'm Joe Huss, and I'm the chair of the Nest energy team. And Nest is often asked to describe a viable alternative to IMEA. So tonight, we're presenting a flexible framework that combines four tools, professional market management, long-term clean energy contracts, battery storage, and a program that lets customers manage their electricity costs. Each of the four components uses proven technology that many companies already provide. This gives the city a diversified portfolio and significant flexibility. First, Naperville could competitively select an experienced power marketer to be its load-serving entity. THAT PROVIDER WOULD MANAGE PROCUREMENTS, SCHEDULING SETTLEMENTS AND PARTICIPATION IN THE ELECTRICITY MARKET. THAT WOULD GIVE THE CITY ACCESS TO SPECIALIZED CAPABILITIES ALREADY AVAILABLE IN THE MARKET SO WE WOULDN'T NEED TO HIRE STAFF. IT GIVES US AN OPTION TO GET COMPETITIVELY PRICED FIXED COST ELECTRICITY IF WE CHOOSE. Naperville could reduce its exposure to market prices through long-term contracts or ownership of carbon-free resources, including nuclear, wind, and solar generation. These contracts could provide the price stabilization function that's currently provided by IMEA's coal plants, but with a cleaner and potentially more diversified supply mix. Third, utility scale battery located in Naperville could manage periods when electricity costs are the highest. And then fourth, residents and businesses should have practical ways to lower their own electricity costs. These would include demand response programs, time of use rates, home batteries, and virtual power plants. Just one example is that giving folks an incentive to charge their electric vehicles during lower cost hours would save residents money and would save the city money. Together, these four components offer a diversified approach to affordable, reliable, and clean energy. Naperville could adjust the mix based on changes in technology, legislation, markets, and even community priorities. At the energy workshop, after developing a vision for our energy future, WE RECOMMEND CREATING A DECISION CRITERIA SO WE CAN EVALUATE ALTERNATIVES LIKE THE ONE THAT I JUST PROPOSED REASONABLY. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER NEXT SPEAKER.

NEW SPEAKER NEXT SPEAKER.

Richard Starr.

Okay, Richard Stark again. I've been a resident of Naperville now for eight years, two hours, and 46 minutes. What I'm going to do now is the purpose of this presentation is to outline the proposed objectives and agenda for the September 28th workshop. Most of the material for this session was reviewed by Brian before his injury, and we incorporated his suggestions. And these include updates to the workshop objectives, the proposed decision framework, and an earlier draft of the initial vision statement. We'll begin with the same five-step process that I talked about before. And I've just circled the first step and part of the second step which represents what will be covered in the first workshop. And our proposed objectives for the first workshop are to build a shared understanding of the future electricity-related opportunities and threats that will affect Naperville, to approve an initial vision statement, and we can do that through hands in the air since it's an initial one, AND APPROVE AN INITIAL DECISION FRAMEWORK. AGAIN, HANDS IN THE AIR. THE INITIAL VISION STATEMENT AND DECISION FRAMEWORK WILL BE USED IN THE PROMPT, WHEN I SAY PROMPT, EITHER FOR AI OR FOR AN OUTSIDE CONSULTANT, WHENEVER WE USE THE GUIDELINES, THE PROMPT THAT MOST LIKELY DEVELOP THE HIGH VALUE SOURCING AND DEMAND OPTIONS. ULTIMATELY THE FINAL VISION AND DECISION FRAMEWORK WILL BE USED TO DETERMINE THE BEST COMBINATION OF THESE OPTIONS. NOW FOR THE PROPOSAL FOR THE WORKSHOP, HERE'S THE PROPOSED AGENDA. AFTER THE OPENING REMARKS WE'LL HAVE A MAJOR SECTION ON THE TRENDS AND IMPLICATIONS TO SUMMARIZE THE FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS AND DISCUSS THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT. AND OUR SOURCE MATERIAL FOR THIS INCLUDES ALL OF THE CONSULTANT PRESENTATIONS THAT WERE MADE TO PUAB AND TO CITY COUNCIL, PLUS A WIDE RANGE OF ASSESSMENTS, ANALYSES THAT WERE DONE BY OUR AI PLATFORMS, INCLUDING CHATGPT, GEMINI PRO3, AND ALSO COPILOT. FOLLOWING THAT WILL BE THE DISCUSSION ON THE INITIAL VISION STATEMENT. WE'LL DESCRIBE HOW THE VISION STATEMENT WILL BE USED. and then discuss and approve the initial vision statement. And note that the formal approval of the final vision statement would be at a later workshop. Then we move on to the initial decision framework, review, modify if necessary, and approve the initial decision framework. And then, assuming we have time, discuss the measurements and benchmarks for carbon-free energy affordability and reliability.

Thank you.

We'll conclude the workshop with a discussion of next steps.

Your time's up, sir. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

The next speakers are John Doyle, Tim Frito, followed by Larry Kolosh.

All right, John Doyle, third time's the charm, I guess, tonight. This is a pretty famous saying about statistics, and the presentation put together about selling our utility could be a case study in exactly this. The numbers that are going to be presented tonight may be technically true, but they're incredibly disingenuous at best. Let's start here. This chart is labeled average cost per kilowatt hour. And you'll notice that the blue line for Naperville never goes above the $0.16 mark, which is really interesting because we paid a consultant $100,000 to tell us how much it costs. And in 2025, our cost would have been $0.168, even though we were only charging customers $0.131. Is someone lying? Is someone wrong? No. We're just comparing two things. These numbers on the graph are technically true, and they're comparing ComEd's costs, which happen to match their rate, to Naperville's rates, which don't happen to match our costs. And that's not a fair comparison. Our utility has been masking and offsetting costs in ways that a regulated utility would not be able to get approved through the ICC, or would stand up to Musser from the Citizens Utility Board. Both of those bodies are made up of higher professionals with actual power and responsibility, unlike our politically appointed PUAB that only serves in an advisory capacity. Then there's this unlabeled and unsourced reliability chart. The first problem is our utility doesn't bother making any actual data about reliability public. They just publish these overall scores for the system and compare them to ComEd's. ComEd produces both personalized reliability reports directly for rate payers, as well as comprehensive and extensive system-wide data reports. This is required by state regulators. And when you read those reports, you can see that the differences between us and them are simply because 90% of our infrastructure is buried. Well, if ComEd took over, it's not like our lines would just crawl out of the ground. So this comparison is completely meaningless. And lastly, there's this slide pulled straight out of IMEA marketing materials. You know, IMEA was careful to label their data as wind, solar, and hydro as a way of avoiding the state's significant carbon-free nuclear generation. So when our staff changed the label to carbon-free, This slide actually went from being disingenuous to just being straight up incorrect. Illinois is currently 67% carbon-free, thanks to nuclear. Another and a more correct way to frame this exact same data is IMEA's mix is 80% coal, and Illinois' mix is 15%. Not only that, but IMEA's entire value proposition requires keeping Prairie State running in full tilt beyond 2045. Unlike ComEd, IMEA has a real vested financial interest that requires seizure to fail for them to succeed. AND YOU WANT TO PAINT THEM AS THE BAD GUYS. THE STAFF PUTTING THESE TOGETHER HAVE OBVIOUSLY WANT TO RENEW THE DEAL WITH IMEA AND AS A RESULT THESE PRESENTATIONS HAVE NOT BEEN NEUTRAL OR EVEN HELPFUL. I'D ASK THE COUNCIL THAT IN THE UPCOMING WORKSHOP PLEASE INCLUDE SOME GENUINELY INDEPENDENT EXPERTS. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. TIM FERRITO, NAPERVILLE RESIDENT, DIRECTOR OF AFFORDABLE NAPERVILLE. IN 2025, NAPERVILLE ELECTRIC UTILITY ISSUED A RFP FOR THE MDR OPTION IN THE PROPOSED IMEA CONTRACT AT THAT TIME. UNFORTUNATELY, THOSE RESULTS WERE NOT MADE PUBLIC. BELOW IS MY ATTEMPT TO SIMULATE THOSE RFP RESULTS. First, I want to talk about the price to compare. So as you can see in the table, I have IMEA price to compare is $50 per megawatt hour. How did I come up with that? I went through the 2025 invoices, and then I subtracted off transmission costs and bond costs to come up with a price to compare. This is going to give a preview of what takes place in 2035. Down below on the table, I have a base offer. These are from third party sources, external markets. They might be off by one or two, but I think they're pretty conservative. So in the first column, like I said, it's a base offer. But you have to correct these base offers for capacity cost and load following cost. I'm pretty sure Brian Groff went through this with you. I'm not going to go through them. What I would say about load following, it's more than just managing. It's a cost when you have to buy during peak moments and sell when demand is low. These are pretty standard in the market. If anything, I've been a little bit conservative here. And if you move over to the second to last column, when you correct for the capacity and load following, these are the prices compared to IMEA. As you can see, they are all well above IMEA's costs right now, especially wind and solar, with solar being the highest. Again, you've got to correct for capacity and load following. The last column, what I did was extrapolate The difference there to the, and use the total electric demand for Naperville to come up with those dollars. Down below is in the footnotes is all the variables I used. So if anyone wants to check my work, go for it. Last, last I want to talk about the Prairie State plant power cost. to operate Prairie State. There's been a lot of discussion about this. IMA says between $30 and $35 per megawatt hour. So what I did was, once again, went through all the invoices for 2025, came up with these costs, and what they do, they do identify which costs go against Prairie State. I also found that the Prairie State Power Generation for 2025, from there I could get the IMA's share. And I came up with $31 for my go-ahead hour. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Larry Kowalsch, followed by Ted Houlard.

Hello, I'm Larry Kowalsch. I'm an Aprilville resident of 30 years. And I have to thank our city manager, Doug Krieger, for filling in while Brian Groth is out. And it's unfortunate because Brian is quite a brilliant person. And I'm sorry to say, but I find some of the shortcomings in the slides that the others have presented and a few more. And hopefully, we can remedy this. We could get another expert in to help. I don't think we have somebody right now that can do the job. On slide number five, it was mentioned that the comparison of the rates doesn't match the current ComEd rates that you can find online in real time. And I think that's because perhaps it only assumes the default rates, where 70% of the participants use an alternate retail supplier. This is something we cannot do under IMEA right now. There's only one supplier. Slide number three, the reliability. You know, I agree. If command were to take over, they're not going to rip our lines out from underground and put them up on poles. I think the reliability will be maintained. Maybe there will be deterioration if the ongoing goes on poles, but I don't think they'll be doing that. I think they'll follow the current trend. Slide number nine, I agree. It looks like there's some kind of a greenwashing going on here. There's no way IMEA can beat out the ComEd for greenness. Slide number eight, Naperville gives up control over its future. I think that's not the case. If we were to turn over, yes, if we were to sign the contract with IMEA today, That would give up and we relinquish any control we have in the future. Whereas if we had an alternative supplier like ComEd, they'll be managed as a regulated utility under CCI that's monitored by the Citizens Utility Board. It's ongoing. IMEA is unregulated. The only thing we have are you, the council, to decide whether to sign the contract or not. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The final speaker is Ted Bullard.

Hi, I'm Ted. You've heard from me already this evening. And in consideration of the hour and the time, respect for your time, I'm going to decline to speak and send you an email instead. Thank you.

Any more speakers? All right, Mr. Krieger.

All right. Thank you, Mayor and Council. My guess is that in the interest of time, I am going to decline to speak. It's going to work for Ted, but probably not for me. So we will continue. Good evening. In April, we began a series of presentations to review our options for procuring energy in the future. We provide an overview of where we are in the process, key terminology, some of the important considerations associated with energy, and the key dates coming up THAT IMPACT OUR DECISION MAKING. LAST MONTH WE REVIEWED OPTION THREE, MARKET PARTICIPATION WITHOUT ASSET OWNERSHIP. TONIGHT WE'RE GOING TO FOCUS ON OPTION FOUR, SALE OF THE ELECTRIC UTILITY. AND AS WE DID LAST MONTH, WE'LL SUMMARIZE WITH OUR APPROVED COMPONENTS OF EVALUATION AND WE'LL LOOK AHEAD TO SEPTEMBER TO REVIEW THE AGENDA FOR THE WORKSHOP. BEFORE WE DIVE INTO THE COMPONENTS OF EVALUATION, WANT TO TAKE A LITTLE LOOK BACK. WE HAVE EXPLORED THIS OPTION IN THE PAST. In 2015 and 2016, we were asked by the city council to review all city assets. And as part of that exercise, one of those was the electric utility. And at that time, it just did not make financial sense for us. Mr. DeSanto and I were part of the team who held meetings with ComEd back in 2015 and 16. City Council back then was looking at all city assets, unneeded property, to see if it made sense to privatize. In the instance of the electric utility, back then book value was about $300 million. If you simply used book value, it would yield a potential payout of $6,000 for each electric customer. So that is why we pursued it. DUE TO THE CHALLENGING CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING OUR EXISTING CONTRACT WITH IMEA, COMBINED WITH SOME COMMED FAVORABLE ASSUMPTIONS, DID NOT RESULT IN COMMED PROVIDING AN OFFER PRICE. THE FULL REQUIREMENTS COMPONENT WAS PROBABLY THE BIGGEST STICKING POINT, AND FROM AN ASSUMPTION STANDPOINT, PRAIRIE STATE'S CAPACITY FACTOR AS WELL AS FUTURE CAPACITY PRICES IN HINDSIGHT WERE WOEFULLY UNDERESTIMATED. Next, let's take a look at the current landscape. First, we'll look at how our current rates compare to the rates from ComEd. Then we'll look at how our reliability measures up. And then we'll review our current assumptions based on what we know now. Looking at the rates from 2016 to 2026, you can see while there are periods where Naperville's rates were higher, overall there's been far greater stability in our pricing. FROM 2022 TO 2026, THE PRICING IN THE COMMED TERRITORY, WHICH IS PART OF PJM, HAS SEEN SIGNIFICANT INCREASES. AND MR. BURLARD DID ABSOLUTELY HAVE A POINT WHERE OUR COST OF SERVICE DID NOT MATCH OUR RATES. AND WE KNEW THAT. EVERY TIME A COST OF SERVICE OR RATE IS SET, IT IS GOING TO BE AN ESTIMATE. HOW THAT PLAYS OUT IS GOING TO REALLY DEPEND ON THE MARKET. SO THERE REALLY IS GOING TO BE A SINGLE MONTH OR YEAR WHERE YOUR RATES WILL EXACTLY MATCH YOUR COST OF SERVICE. HOWEVER, OVER THE LONG TERM, YOUR RATES HAVE TO MATCH YOUR COST OF SERVICE UNLESS THERE ARE DOLLARS TRANSFERRED INTO THE UTILITY OR OUT OF THE UTILITY. BECAUSE IF YOU'RE A LITTLE BIT SHORT, THE FOLLOWING YEARS YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO RECOVER MORE TO MAKE UP FOR THAT SHORTFALL. ALTHOUGH YOU CAN'T REALLY LOOK AT AN INDIVIDUAL PERIOD IN TIME AND SAY, HEY, WE KNOW THAT COST OF SERVICE MATCHES OUR RATES. IF YOU LOOK AT KIND OF LIKE THE OVERALL, WITHOUT THE ADDITION OR REMOVAL OF BASICALLY CASH, OVER THE LONG TERM, COST OF SERVICE WILL HAVE TO MATCH YOUR RATES. WE ALSO HAVE THIS BROKEN DOWN INTO KIND OF LIKE A MONTHLY COMPARISON. You can see on the Naperville side how we've enjoyed pretty stable pricing. Now the SADI index, we calculate it as best we can the same way that Commonwealth Edison does. Our reliability has certainly been more consistent. The fact that we're underground plays a big role in this. But the fact that we're underground doesn't mean that we should be penalized because it really just comes down to outage for our customers. It is a system-wide average, so these would be the average minutes out. Each individual customer will experience something different. Councilman Kelly and Mayor Worley this year would certainly be on the high end of the interruptibility index. To close the loop on updating our assumptions made, costs would increase and Naperville gives up all control on future rates and service levels that our residents have come to expect. And that's simply one of the things we like here is we like control. It's one of the complaints with IMEA that we don't really have enough control. If the utility is handed over to ComEd, your input goes Even further down and absent becoming a major shareholder, you're really not going to be able to influence rates. In terms of carbon free availability, yep, and I see this. They do have a point on this. This should be listed as renewable as opposed to carbon free. So that is our bet on this, on the labeling. but wanted to show you kind of like the steps that IMEA is making to increase their renewable components. All right, this graphic should look familiar. As we have for all previous options, we'll use a decision wheel to evaluate option four as well, beginning with general overview and timeline. As previously discussed, based on what we know now, sale of the electric utility would be driven by market forces. Given what's happened in the PJM market with capacity issues and fluctuations in clearing prices, we could expect rates to increase. And our reliability in service levels would significantly decrease if sold to ComEd. With this option, we also lose control over pricing as well as energy mix. And looking at the bottom on the timeline, we have our next regular rate study coming up, Q1 of next year, and then the following one in 2030. We can expect at least a five-year ramp up if there's interest in moving forward with this option. So what makes up that five years? Beginning in 2030, legal negotiations would begin. Sale of this size would begin with full assessment of our assets and the terms. 2032, WE'D NEED TO IRON OUT UNION STAFFING CAPITAL CONSIDERATIONS. AND THEN WE WOULD HAVE TO TRANSITION SYSTEMS. UTILITY BILLING, SCADA, WORK THROUGH AMI STANDARDIZATION. WE'VE ESTIMATED THAT APPROXIMATELY TWO YEARS. AND THEN IN 2035, COMMED WOULD OFFICIALLY BEGIN WHEN OUR CONTRACT WITH IMEA CONCLUDED. NEXT, WE'LL REVIEW THE KEY FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS AND LEVEL OF AUTONOMY WE HAVE IN OUR POWER SUPPLY CHOICES. First off, based on the market, costs would increase. We would lose control of setting the rates for our customers, and I believe that rates would be higher. We also lose control of the energy mix. We don't have any autonomy, and this would simply be driven by the market mix in the PJM market. IN TERMS OF FINANCIAL RISK, AFTER A SALE, THERE REALLY IS NONE BECAUSE IT IS OFF OF OUR BOOKS AND IT HAS BEEN PRIVATIZED SO IT WOULD ELIMINATE RISK. NEXT, WE'LL DISCUSS AN EXAMPLE COMMUNITY FEASIBILITY FOR NAPERVILLE AND CARBON-FREE AVAILABILITY. EXAMPLE COMMUNITIES ARE TOUGH. WE LOOKED FOR A COMMUNITY WHO HAD SOLD THEIR UTILITY TO COMMONWEALTH EDISON AND CAME UP WITH NOTHING. HOWEVER, ALL SURROUNDING SUBURBS OF NAPERVILLE ARE COMMON TERRITORY. DOWNERS GROVE, LYLE, PLAINFIELD, RURAL, ET CETERA. KIND OF THE CLOSEST COMPARISON WE COULD COME WOULD BE THE SALE OF THE WATER UTILITY THAT BOWLING BROOK DID TO ILLINOIS AMERICAN SEVERAL YEARS AGO. And at least with my discussions with the Bolingbroke staff, they regret that decision. Feasibility is also a bit of a challenge because ComEd is the only potential buyer in our area who can service us. So that really limits our competition. And in terms of carbon-free resource availability, we can't say for certain as it's going to be fully dependent on PJM market. FINALLY, WE'LL DISCUSS THE CADENCE OF COUNCIL DECISION MAKING AND SUMMARY. THIS REALLY IS A ONE-TIME DECISION THAT COUNCIL WOULD MAKE. ONCE THAT DECISION IS MADE, SEVERAL OTHER FACTORS ARE TO BE CONSIDERED, BUT THERE ARE NO ONGOING DECISIONS THAT COUNCIL WOULD NEED TO MAKE. IF WE SOLD THE ELECTRIC UTILITY TO COMM ED, WE WOULD NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR LEVELS OF RATES OR QUALITY OF SERVICE TO OUR RESIDENTS. NOW, LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT MONTH, WE ARE PLANNING OUR WORKSHOP THAT'S GOING TO TAKE PLACE ON SEPTEMBER 28. THE AGENDA IS AS FOLLOWS. WE WOULD BEGIN WITH A DISCUSSION OF VISION AND MISSION. BRIEFLY RECAP ALL OF THE OPTIONS PRESENTED OVER THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS. EVALUATE. WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO GET OUT OF IT WOULD BE TO KIND OF NARROW OUR FOCUS A LITTLE BIT. WE'RE NOT, I DON'T BELIEVE WE'RE IN A POSITION TO MAKE ANY FINAL DECISIONS, BUT THERE ARE SOME OPTIONS THAT I THINK WE COULD ELIMINATE. AND THEN ALSO KIND OF PROVIDE DIRECTION FOR STAFF AS WE MOVE FORWARD. SO WITH THAT, WANT TO THANK EVERYBODY FOR THEIR TIME TONIGHT. WOULD LIKE TO SEEK INPUT OR ANYTHING THAT COUNCIL THINKS IS IMPORTANT AND DEFINITELY WANTS COVERED IN THE WORKSHOP NEXT MONTH.

COUNCILMAN GIBSON.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. THANKS FOR THE PRESENTATION, CITY MANAGER KRIEGER. I MAY HAVE SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE WORKSHOP DEPENDING ON HOW THAT DISCUSSION GOES, BUT I WAS WONDERING IF WE COULD ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PRESENTATION FIRST BEFORE THAT ALL GETS JUMBLED. Selling the electric utility, is there a, is that an all or nothing? If we sell the electric utility, would then ComEd be responsible for the generation where we source our generation? Or is there an example where we could sell the electric utility and still determine where we're getting our energy supply from? So say like a,

Anything is possible. The scenario we've looked at would be that once it goes to ComEd, we don't have any more kind of say in the game. I imagine we could structure it so that we had some control. I don't know, and I think it's probably doubtful that ComEd would accept that just because they use the same mix as well as options for all of their customers. And we would be a relatively small fish in their pond.

But with other cities and customers of ComEd, individual households can contract their energy supplier. and make choices for their individual household.

They can, yep. Alternate retail energy suppliers is one of the options that ComEd has that we do not offer currently.

Right, okay. And just, this feels a bit like an outlier to the other presentations we've had because so much have just been solely energy supplier and this is, you know, the energy supplier and then also what happens here in Naperville. So I just want to, take a moment to call out reliability. And when we're talking about our undergrounding of lines, if at the energy supplier level, reliability, if there are issues, macro where the grid can't support enough energy, whether we have Naperville, our own electric agency, or with IMEA or ComEd, that's kind of irrelevant if there's grid level supply issues, correct?

For grid level supply, it would be completely irrelevant.

So I definitely recognize our underground, but it's something I hear a lot about stay with IMEA because we're not going to have enough energy. But either way, that's out of our hands. That's a grid-level decision.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Councilman Kelly.

Thank you, Mayor. One question and then a few comments. The question relates to the, I think, I just want to clarify, I think what I heard you say is there's a few reasons why the council did not decide to pursue a sale back in 2015, 2016, but that perhaps the most important one was the full requirements clause of the IMEA contract. IS THAT STILL THE CASE? I MEAN, WE'RE OBVIOUSLY STILL WITH IMEA. WE STILL HAVE FULL REQUIREMENTS. NATURE OF THE CONTRACT, IN YOUR VIEW, WOULD THAT STILL BE A SIGNIFICANT IMPEDIMENT TO PURSUING THIS OPTION, EVEN IF THE COUNCIL WANTED TO OTHERWISE?

YOU KNOW, FOR THIS OPTION, THE IMPEDIMENT WOULD BE, THAT IMPEDIMENT WOULD BE COMPLETELY ELIMINATED BECAUSE WE WOULD NOT BE BOUND BY A FULL REQUIREMENTS CONTRACT OWNER WOULD HAVE TO ABIDE BY IT BECAUSE THEIR CONTRACT WOULD ONLY BEGIN, YOU KNOW, POST OUR IMEA CONTRACT. SO THAT PIECE WOULD GO AWAY.

THE SALE, IN OTHER WORDS, WOULDN'T TAKE EFFECT UNTIL 2035? YES. So just want to make that clear, and that makes sense. My thoughts, and we'll probably talk about it more at the workshop, but to me this is, I think it's good to discuss the entire range of options. We should know the full gamut. But to me, this is probably the least attractive of everything we've heard so far. And if the goal is to eliminate options at the workshop, this would probably be first on the chopping block for me. You mentioned the American water sale in Bolingbrook. I don't think that turned out well. You think about things like the parking meter sale in Chicago. Generally, it just seems to me that true public utilities should remain public and not be privatized if you don't have to. We might be an outlier, but I think we're lucky to be the outlier in the area. And to Councilman Gibson's point about reliability, certainly I think it's higher here as a result of having our own electric utility. And you beat me to the punch on the outages we've had this summer in the downtown overhead wire neighborhoods. It has been significant, and it's a problem. But I will say, as frustrating as it has been for a lot of people, I think... WE'VE GOTTEN THE LIGHTS BACK ON A LOT FASTER THAN NEIGHBORING COMMUNITIES WHO HAVE ALSO BEEN OUT IN THESE HISTORIC STORMS WHERE YOU HEAR ABOUT COMBAT OUTAGES FOR DAYS AND DAYS AND WE'RE OUT FOR TWO OR THREE HOURS, ONE TIME FOR 24 HOURS. even that was better, relatively speaking, than other communities. So I think we do an excellent job of deploying our employees very quickly and taking care of the problem. So I do hope in the budget we're going to look again at undergrounding and how that's progressing moving forward to try to become even better if we can on that point. But yeah, in general, I just don't see this being a very viable option for the city's best long-term future. Thank you.

Councilman Hoyt.

Thank you. You know, the one part of this that we really seem to be lacking, if we kind of go just off some base criteria that we were looking at, Mr. Stark, you know, gave us a pretty good example of what it could be. But even with that, his proposal or with the strategy, you know, flexibility was, you know, an underlying theme with all of the criteria. And it seemed like we would really lose all kind of flexibility under this particular.

Well, you know, we would lose control. ComEd does offer some different programs based on their size that just don't make sense for us to do that. But we do have, like we do have a demand response program that runs through IMEA. We do have a program with Loaves and Fishes to help the needy with their utility bills. They're just kind of different. Probably the biggest one that's different is really the state law that mandates that for a municipal utility, ELECTRIC THAT YOU SUPPLY TO ALL CUSTOMERS IN YOUR COMMUNITY, WHERE IN COMM ED, PEOPLE WILL STILL BE BILLED BY COMM ED, BUT THEY CAN ALSO SELECT A CONTRACT WITH AN ARES OR ALTERNATE RETAIL ELECTRIC SUPPLIER.

OKAY.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. COUNCILMAN MCBROME.

Thank you, Mr. Krieger. Just a quick one. When we talk about reliability and when we talk about the underground, obviously that is a factor. The minutes that we're down, is that also a factor of response time?

You know, it is. And, you know, we haven't been able to... PULL ANYTHING OTHER THAN ANECDOTAL DATA THAT SAYS, YOU KNOW, TO COUNCILMAN KELLY'S POINT, THAT OUR CREWS ARE AWESOME AND THEY'RE SUPER RESPONSIVE, AND I DON'T THINK THAT THIS CITY COUNCIL WOULD ACCEPT ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT. You know, ComEd and NIPSCO, you know, they talk about days for recovery. You know, days in this town, that's an unacceptable answer. And we will staff and provide service levels that you know, our customers certainly have come to expect that is much, much better than ComEd's performance.

That's why I assume, I mean, our power's out for 10 minutes, we start freaking out. So I think we're kind of spoiled, and that big value in owning the utility, right? But I agree, it's not an attractive option. I mean, the only thing, if we knew some kind of number that was associated with it, there's probably a number we'd all pause at, but We're not going to know that. Some of these other options that you presented, we would have to take action on them far before. It looks like 2030 is when we would enter into any kind of negotiation with the ComEd, and we're just not going to know that number. And it'd have to be a pretty high number because it's not a very attractive offer.

Well, frankly, we would not be in a strong negotiating position because there really isn't somebody waiting in the wings who could keep them honest. IT'S ALL I GOT. THANKS.

COUNCILMAN WILSON.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. YEAH, I KNOW MAYOR'S NOT HERE TO GO. HE NORMALLY GOES OVER THE OUTAGE TIMES AT THE PUAB MEETINGS. BUT, YEAH, AS YOU MENTIONED, IT'S MINUTES OUT. BUT, YEAH, I MEAN, TO OTHER PEOPLE'S POINT, I JUST REMEMBER OF AN ISSUE I think there was a transformer that was out in our neighborhood, if I remember correctly, maybe a year ago, where I had talked to folks. They had to hunt down which one it was, find out the issue. And then at that point, it was like two hours, and that was considered long. And it was mostly because they had to go through people's backyards and fences being locked and that sort of thing. And that was a long outage time for like 20 homes or something like that. And to others' points, we've heard of with the storms, longer outage times and folks in Indiana, for example, where it's been a week. So, I mean, you know, just from people that have spoken, this does sound like the least viable option or least desired, I should say. But, I mean, that being said, and this will probably be part of the workshop next month, FROM THE OTHER OPTIONS THAT WE'VE HEARD UP UNTIL NOW, JUST FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, IF WE'RE GOING TO VISIT ONE OF THOSE, IT JUST SOUNDS LIKE WE PROBABLY SHOULD GET MOVING SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. JUST MY, JUST BEING IN THE PUAB BOARD MEETINGS AND LISTENING TO THESE OPTIONS OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, IT'S NOT A MATTER OF DOING SOMETHING, IT'S JUST A MATTER OF HOW QUICKLY WE OUGHT TO MOVE. SO, YEAH. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

COUNCILMAN OLZAR.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. MR. KREGER, I WANTED TO GO TO A CONSTITUENT EMAIL THAT CAME IN OVER THE PAST WEEK, WHICH WE WENT OVER IN OUR TWO-BY-TWO. SO ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUENT EMAIL, IN COMM ED, the customers, the rate payers, have to cover the cost of their electricity service. Is that correct?

You know, I can't really speak for ComEd, but for them to be a continuing entity, that would absolutely have to be the case.

Right. And the email noted or asked, if I guess I asked, is it true that our rate payers are currently not paying the cost of their electricity service, the full cost of their electricity service.

And we believe that to be the case. Again, it's going to kind of vary month by month, but based on the last rate study, that would absolutely be correct.

Right. To the tune of, according to the email, $29 million of underpayments between 2021 and 2025 because... utility funds cash balance dropped from $38 million to $8.9 million in that four years, correct?

Yes, but there are other things that have impacted the cash balance. Probably the most significant was the change in our inventory philosophy. Pre-COVID, we could get transformers, you know, in six months or in a year, and our inventory levels there in 2000 were 5 million. BECAUSE OF THE DELAYS IN GETTING THE TRANSFORMERS, WE REALIZED THAT WE NEEDED TO STOCK UP MORE ON INVENTORY SO THAT WE WOULDN'T HAVE LONGER OUTAGES. AND I KNOW CURRENTLY WE ARE ABOVE 20 MILLION IN INVENTORY. SO, YOU KNOW, THE 5 TO 20 IS GOING TO BE A $15 MILLION REDUCTION IN CASH THAT WAS NOT ENVISIONED WHEN THEY DID THE RATE STUDY.

OKAY. SO IN THE DIALOGUE I HAD WITH YOU, I BELIEVE I ASKED FOR YOU TO RECALCULATE WHAT OUR RATE WOULD HAVE BEEN IF WE HAD ACTUALLY BEEN CHARGING THE COST OF SERVICE, AND HOW MANY CENTS PER KILOWATT HOUR WAS IT MORE?

YOU KNOW WHAT? I CALCULATED IT AS A PERCENTAGE, AND I THINK IT WAS LIKE 20, IT WAS EITHER 21 OR 22% HIGHER.

OKAY. SO I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE, LIKE, EVERYONE ON THE DIAS JUST HEARD THAT. ComEd is charging their cost of getting electricity. We're 21% lower? We're undercharging by, was it 21%?

Yeah, for like the month. Yeah, so if we matched our cost of service, we would be in a dead heat with ComEd for the month of May.

Okay, so I just want to say that again, right? So for how many years have we been hearing that Naperville's cost of service, that our costs are much lower. than ComEd, and we're actually finding out there's just a 21% subsidy going to our electric rates because we're not paying for the electricity that we're consuming. So I thought Mr. Doyle and other speakers made a really excellent point of no regulated utility, nobody that was regulated by CUB or any of these other entities would be able to account for their costs this way. I'm not... complaining about Naperville. It's not a Naperville utility problem, but we have we've been about to make a billion dollar decision and on a 21% error, you know, that's coming from an entity that's just not regulated like anyone else is. I think it's probably should be an objective of the city that our next source should be an entity that's regulated and reports its costs in a standard fashion that can be compared apples to apples to anyone else. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilman McBroom.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY. I'VE HEARD THIS OVER AND OVER AND I'VE SEEN THE E-MAIL THAT WAS REFERENCED AND I'M NOT SURE COUNCILMAN HOLZAUER IS BLAMING IMEA FOR THIS ERROR THAT HE BELIEVES EXISTED OR IF IT'S NEU BECAUSE IF I'M FOLLOWING THIS AROUND, THIS IS A CLAIM THAT NAPERVILLE, THROUGH OUR CASH RESERVES, WE'VE BEEN SUBSIDIZING. I just want to be clear what the claim is. Is the claim that Naperville Utility has been artificially subsidizing our rates to make them look cheaper than they are, or we're just incompetent and we don't know what we're doing? There's an error or we're deliberately, is that kind of? Is that a question to me? That's what I've been hearing.

There's a question about my claim.

You can clarify it? Yeah, I can claim.

Yeah.

And I'd like to hear from Director Kruger as well.

Okay, Councilman Halsar. Thank you, Mayor. I don't attribute any of this to malice. I just think when one group is accounting using generally accepted principles, and we're taking another set that's subsidized by 21%, then we can't make a billion-dollar decision based off of that, that we should have a baseline that's the same everywhere. That's all. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Krieger.

I WOULDN'T REFER TO IT AS AN ERROR. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY SIMPLE FOR US TO RECOVER THE FULL COST OF SERVICE WITH THE RATE CONSULTANT. WE'RE MAKING HEADWAY TOWARDS THAT. AND EACH YEAR THINGS CHANGE A LITTLE BIT. THEY CHANGE A LITTLE BIT BETWEEN RATE CLASSES. unexpected expenses. So, yeah, I mean, we fully anticipate with our next rate study that we will need to increase rates. But over the long term, over the history of the electric utility, because there are no additional dollars coming in or out, over the long term, our cost of service absolutely has to equal what our rates are, because that's our only source of revenue for it.

Mr. Krieger, over the course of the last decade plus, we've heard that the city uses less power. Is that accurate? It is. Yes, sir. And if you're selling less electrons and you still have the fixed cost of an electric utility, how do you charge for that?

That's a great point. And you had brought that up before. And so we just kind of put that TOGETHER. WITH THIS SLIDE, YOU WILL SEE THE BLUE IS ACTUALLY THE ELECTRICITY USED BY THE CITY AND THE RED LINE IS REALLY OUR INCREASE IN POPULATION. SO IT IS ABSOLUTELY A TRUE POINT THAT WHILE WE'VE CONTINUED TO GROW, INSTEAD OF OUR USAGE TRACKING, BECAUSE OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND OTHER MEASURES, OUR TOTAL AMOUNT OF KWH HAS DROPPED. WHICH INHERENTLY WILL CAUSE YOUR INDIRECT COSTS TO BE ALLOCATED AT A HIGHER RATE PER KILOWATT HOUR THAN IN THIS CASE WE HAD BACK IN, I THINK, 2018.

AND I KNOW IT'S GOING BACK A WHILE, BUT DID THE RATE STUDIES BACK THEN ANTICIPATE THIS DRAMATIC OF REDUCTION IN PURCHASED POWER?

They did not. Actually, we had two running where with both rate consultants, they overestimated the increase in power. I know one, they thought it would hold flat. And our usage wound up dropping about 2% each year. And then I think the most recent one, we were suggesting, I believe, or expecting a 1% decrease, and it was more significant than that. So those were two unexpected items.

So when you have the fixed costs of operating an electric utility, the linemen, all the fixed assets, I mean, everything you need to run an electric department, and then people are buying less of your product, you have to charge more. And there was a point in time where the electric consultants didn't catch that as far as the rate studies. And now we're in the catch up game. Is that?

That's fair statement. Correct. Okay.

Thank you. I don't see any other questions. Mr. Krieger, thank you for your presentation.

All right. Thank you.

OUR FINAL ITEM TONIGHT IS NEW BUSINESS. AS A REMINDER, NEW BUSINESS FOR ITEMS THIS COUNCIL IS ASKING STAFF TO BRING BACK ON A FUTURE AGENDA OR FOR MOTIONS TO RECONSIDER PAST CITY COUNCIL BOATS. DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY NEW BUSINESS? COUNCILWOMAN GIBSON.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I HAD A RESIDENT REACH OUT RECENTLY ABOUT NATIVE LANDSCAPING AND AN ISSUE THEY HAD WITH CODE ENFORCEMENT. Being called out, I talked to staff, and it seems like code enforcement has a lot of leeway when they're dealing with native plantings. But through this conversation, it also came out that our ordinance dates back to 1996. So I'm looking for support, hands in the air, to ask staff to take a look at our ordinance. In the last 30 years, there's been a lot of changes on how we address native landscaping. RECOGNIZE THE VALUE FOR POLLINATORS, STORM WATER MANAGEMENT, LOCAL ECOSYSTEMS, TO JUST SEE IF THERE'S ANYTHING, BEST PRACTICES, THAT WE SHOULD INCORPORATE IN OUR ORDINANCE.

I DON'T KNOW. SO THE COUNCILMAN'S LOOKING FOR HANDS IN OR SUPPORT THAT REQUEST. IS THERE A CLARIFICATION FROM COUNCILMAN MCBROME?

SO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT RESIDENTS WANTING TO PLANT NATIVE LANDSCAPING IN THEIR PROPERTY AND

Right, their own property. And I, you know, I recognize that the ordinance.

And they're not allowed to do that now?

Well, technically, the ordinance, I think, says over 8 or 18 inches, depending on grass and flowers. And like I said, it sounds like staff has been using discretion on these, but making sure our ordinance aligns with what we're doing out in the community. That's what we're looking for.

Does that answer your question? Okay. Now, Councilwoman Gibson is asking for support on this. Hands in the air to support her.

Okay, plenty of hands.

Councilman White.

Thank you, Mayor. I said during public comment to take a look at what Mr. Huss had presented. business options as far as battery usage or not. Should we buy the batteries or not? Give us a business case. So I think he said 90 days. Would that be appropriate? Mr. Krieger.

Mr. Krieger. It actually is a very timely request because the city received our battery energy storage system feasibility evaluation last Friday. It is several hundred pages and I haven't read it all. But yeah, within 90 days, I don't know if we'll have an up or down, but I think it would be good at that point in time to kind of present the results as well as kind of the kind of pros and cons because, you know, as we go through this, we learn more and more and the treatment is very kind of like different. if you are buying energy on the market yourself versus if you are purchasing through a joint action agency. But, yeah, we could get a report out in 90 days.

All right, great. And as part of that, if we can see, is there going to be any conflict with our current contract with IMEA if they would want, if they're going to try to get part of that?

We would, right now, under our current contract, that would be prohibited. So we would need to work with them, and we have had initial discussions with them regarding battery storage. So they've given us no indication that they would attempt to try to hold it up or anything. Excellent.

Okay.

That's my request, Mayor.

Mr. Krieger, just to clarify, do we need action for Councilman White's request, or is it already coming, or do you want some action?

You know what, if we could just kind of get a hands in the air on that, that would help us with our prioritization.

Hands in the air in support of Councilman White's request. Nine hands. Okay, Councilman Kelly.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. A VERY LOCAL REQUEST BUT SOMETHING I'VE TALKED TO CITY MANAGER AND CHIEF OF POLICE ABOUT IS TRAFFIC ISSUES RELATING TO THE OGDEN AND WASHINGTON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT THAT WENT ALL THROUGH LAST YEAR AND AGAIN GOING ALL THROUGH THIS YEAR AND THINKING AHEAD TO NEXT YEAR WHERE THERE WILL BE A NEW CONSTRUCTION PROJECT HAPPENING on Ogden between Washington and Mill that some people think is already underway but hasn't even started yet. That'll start fresh next year. And there's been a number of accidents on that stretch in between Mill and Washington. I'll say just anecdotally, the neighbors in that area think there's been well in the double digits both last summer and again this summer. I know yesterday there were two within about 10 minutes of each other right as school let out at Naperville North. And it's a difficult problem to solve for, I know, because Ogden's a state road there. The city doesn't control it. We can't just upend the traffic control plan that's in place. But people are, I'll say, borderline desperate for some relief, just to see if there's something that could be done. And maybe as a first step, I'm wondering if the police department could give us some type of a report of how many accidents there actually have been reported. And it may not capture everything. I think there's been some fender benders where the cops don't even get called. But I'm wondering if we could get some data on how many accidents there have been since that construction has been happening, and then circle back with whether it's TED or Public Works to determine if there's any changes to the current traffic pattern that might bring some relief. I don't know if that's something that can just be done if we need hands in the air, but I'm hoping we can have something looked at over there.

Sure. Mr. Krueger, do you think hands in the air would be supportive of the resolution?

I do, but let me just check with Chief Aries. Chief, you good with that? All right, we're on it.

Let the record indicate Aries put his thumb up. All right, hands in the air in support of Councilman Kelly's request? Seeing nine, okay, and one thumb. Councilman Holzer.

Thank you, Mayor. I was not the thumb. Going way, way back to the beginning of the meeting, just addressing the puppy yoga potential abuses there. I was hoping that I could get hands in the air for staff to come back to us with a report on, you know, what's going on, if there's anything in our ordinance that could be updated just to keep things ship shape.

Okay. Councilman looking for hands in the air to support further investigation of puppy yoga abuses potentially. Yeah. Okay. And possible abuse of animals or

Right. And whether our ordinance, our humane ordinance would need to potentially be, you know, updated in any way to address this new business.

Councilman Keller, are you looking to clarify?

Yes, if I could. JUST TO, I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER, BUT JUST IN TERMS OF THE QUESTION, MAYOR, YOU MENTIONED ABUSE, AND CERTAINLY IF THAT'S HAPPENING, WE WOULD WANT IT TO BE LOOKED AT, BUT I THINK WHAT THE HUMANE ORDINANCE WAS REALLY FOCUSED ON THAT WE PASSED A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO WAS THE COMMERCIAL SALES, SO WHETHER THERE'S ABUSE OR NOT, I WOULD HOPE THAT WHATEVER STAFF MIGHT LOOK AT HERE IS WHETHER OR NOT THERE'S SALES HAPPENING THAT MIGHT POTENTIALLY BE IN VIOLATION OF THE CURRENT ORDINANCE, OR IF THERE'S SOME REVISION TO THE ORDINANCE THAT MIGHT POTENTIALLY COVER THIS SITUATION IF THERE'S SALES OCCURRING THAT ARE NOT COVERED BY THE ORDINANCE.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. And I think my understanding is from internet traffic, there are sales going on, whether they're advertising or not, it's happening. But also these events are just really just not good for these puppies. They're being literally kept up all day. Some of these are five weeks old, you know, to be used for yoga. It's just not something that, frankly, I think should be in the Naperville brain.

So that's a good point, Councilman Kelly. It would be POTENTIALLY BEYOND THE HUMANE ORDINANCE THAT'S ON THE BOOKS AND MORE AS A POTENTIAL PARALLEL PATH, RIGHT? IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR?

I THINK PART OF IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE STAFF INVESTIGATION IS. MAYBE. SO TO MAYBE PUT A POINT ON THAT, IT WOULD BE JUST DIRECTING STAFF TO INVESTIGATE THE ISSUE, REPORT BACK TO US WITH SOME SUGGESTIONS ON WHAT THE APPROPRIATE PATH IS.

OKAY. HANDS IN THE AIR IN SUPPORT OF COUNCILMAN HELZER'S REQUEST. Nine hands. Any other further business? Is there a motion to adjourn?

Motion to adjourn.

Second, Kelly. All those in favor sign aye. Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you.