City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting of the Princeton City Council to order. Clear to call the roll.

Mayor Mabry.

Here.

Councilman Newland.

Here.

Somed. Here. McCall. Here. And Selecki.

Here. Which will be standing to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Now before we go on to public comment, we've got two special guests coming this evening. So we're going to discuss our, I guess that's what it's described as our lead water service pipes. And with Chamlin Associates is Ryan.

Hi everybody, I'm Brian Lane, Chairman of Associates.

I don't know where everybody stands on the information on lead service lines, so I'll just kind of give a brief overview and ask questions. Okay, so lead service lines, you have about 3,900, 320 of those being lead, 900 unknown. We basically, in like 2022, IEPA passed a law that's a service line notification replacement act. Basically, you have to notify the residents about it and replace the service lines. So they gave you until 2027 to fill out the notification or to do the notifications. and do an inventory, which you guys are up to date. You have that, you know, that's already done. And then from 2027 to like 2034, you have to replace these, those service lines. So you have to do that at a rate of 7% per year, which roughly in your case is, call it 100 lines per year. So you guys are eligible. So there are... grants, small grants or whatever, that really aren't funded to do this type of work, the best best is being an IPA loan. IPA will do principal forgiveness. They will also loan you money at 0%. For 30 years, if you're not a disadvantaged community, Princeton is a disadvantaged community, which allows them to do a 40-year loan term at 0%. I was talking to John before this. It sounds like you guys are doing a lot of pot-holing. The last numbers I had were 1,200 unknowns, and they've knocked it down to 900, which is significantly saving you a lot of money to knock that number down so you don't have to hire somebody else to come and do the work.

So is there any questions on that? How many are we obligated to replace? Has that number been determined yet? Like 900?

Well, okay, so yeah, you have 320 lead lines and 900 on mills. So as they pothole and knock that number down, it just keeps shrinking. So there's no definitive number yet.

So it's in the 1,200 units now, and then it could be less once we get it. Correct. Yep. And what does it cost to replace a lead line?

Anywhere... Ballpark number is about $7,000. Now, when you apply for an IEPA loan, you typically like to ask for more money than you're going to need. So, I mean, if you see loan numbers, they're going to be, I'll probably estimate around $10,000. At the end of the month, we have a project bidding into Pew. So I'll have card numbers. We did one in Cold City a couple years ago, but at the end of the month, we'll have more up to date.

From under $7,000 to $10,000 per unit. Correct.

So just, and I try to keep the council up to date on this, but we've done three rounds of the inventory. So basically three rounds of funding, $10,000 apiece, to go out and try to do the inventory of these lines. We're now at a phase where we know enough that we can start to apply for some of the funding, even though we're not totally done with the inventory. So we're getting ready to start that application process of applying for the funds. I think compared to most communities, we're kind of ahead of the game here. We want to stay ahead of the game while the money's there.

Yeah, so you guys are doing a good job by pot-holing and knocking down those unknowns. Now the next step is to comply with the 7% per year replacement that you have to do. So, again, roughly 100 lines per year. So... You could either fund it yourself, the typical funding routes, IEPA loan, fund it yourself, grants, but like I said, the grant, they're really not there, they're not funded, unfortunately. I know it's frustrating, but yeah, I've seen municipal bonds is another one, but typically the best bet you're going to have is an IEP. It's 0% for 40 years.

Just a question now. As far as, like you mentioned, $70,000 cost. If there was an individual, I would say the city has a total responsibility as far as replacing those. Is there anything that's going to be specific to the actual homeowner as far as any cost to them to replace these lines?

Not direct, no. I mean, if you guys have to, whatever, to raise rates to pay back the loan, then yes. Hector, I think...

Right now, the way the city has it is the homeowner owns the service line to the property, and then the city owns it, the customer owns it from the home to the property line, and then the city owns it from the property line to the waterway. So as of right now, the customer, if they wanted to replace it, there is a cost for them. If they want to replace their side, then the city would come in and replace our side at no cost. But moving forward, we're hoping to get grant funds and we're hoping that we can alleviate that situation and start making full replacements and not putting that on our customer.

So as far as like, let's say for the homeowner, from where the homeowner has a service to where the road or the attachment goes to the main line, how much would that cost for a homeowner?

Well, you're going to probably be in the $5,000 range. It all depends on how far back the house is set, what's in the yard, what you need to dig up. I mean, you're looking at somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 probably for a homeowner to replace their site. Rough estimate.

Yeah, I guess that's if you're doing it on your own, like today, if you wanted to go replace your last service line. Yeah.

Because that's what I'm asking, because I know that there's probably individual homeowners that... they hear the leg right away, and they want to replace it, even though it's really not harmful unless you actually disturb it. Correct.

And we've had some already that they went ahead and replaced their side, and we've come in and replaced ours, and it's a done deal.

But if you were to get IPA funds, they kind of expect you to do the full line, the city, for you guys to do the full line, instead of leaving... Partial replacements, it comes with a whole other set of hassle and it's not, it would not be a good idea to only replace a part of the line. So if you were to get the IEPA funds, it's recommended to replace the whole, into the customer's house.

On these bills, when would you estimate, in Princeton the last time, what would you use? $50? So in the 80s is when they said you should probably stop using it, but they didn't ban it until later in the 80s.

Just from my experience, Don, I think the city of Princeton probably quit using it in the 40s and 50s. Okay. In the 60s, we're starting to see copper in the system for those homes that we're building. That's somewhat encouraging. Yeah, I would say right now that our life service total is lower than I was expecting before we started this project. So you're finding copper? What are you finding? We're finding copper in the homes that were built in the 60s. Okay. Okay.

That's a good thing. I mean, it all depends locally on the contractors that we're building.

As we go through the process, do we have to show compliance somehow? Do we have to record or so on?

Yeah, I have to record annually. My service line database annually to the EPA. And then everyone that has a lead service or has an unknown service, I have to send a letter to them every year and notify them of what they have or what we don't know what they have. So my plan also this year, I haven't set those notifications out. I'm going to do that this fall. But I'm also, with that notification, I also want to send another pamphlet that would help the homeowner on the unknown services, help them identify the service by going down in the basement and seeing what they have so they can help us get the unknown services knocked out and get us in a better position.

Is the unknown service... Like, just because we haven't checked it yet? Correct.

Yeah, it's just we don't have a record of it.

Yeah.

Any additional comments or questions? And Brian, did you have any more thoughts? I did not. I mean, I... Teresa, I don't know if Dave or anything mentioned the ESA to do that next step. I don't know if you guys are interested in that or if you... we're thinking on it and then I can come back and answer more questions. To do the PPR to apply for the IEP loan, I didn't know if you guys were set in a row or anything.

Well, we'll talk about it. Okay. We'll get there. Perfect.

Yeah.

Caroline, did you have a question?

The question I have, is there a third part to this where, okay, you've got from the street to the owners and then what about the house? Does it mean pipes have to be done in the house?

Mostly the lead services were on the outside line going into the home. There is a situation where lead solder was used. That's not as big of a threat, for lack of a better word.

Lead was a good thing.

Yeah.

So it's mostly the service line outside on the ground. I have a story. My father always had lead paint and we could add it to make our paint dirt. Yeah.

So it's nice that we're doing this in-house. I know I see they, I've had a couple of homeowners ask me, you know, they see the pothole, so we've got that wonderful vector truck that the council then invested in, probably announced it five years ago, and that vector truck, then John's crew goes out and they suck down, straight down, so it's what I call non-invasive, and they don't worry about doing any real quote digging, it's still excavating, and I see you're filling those holes with sand. So it's just kind of like out there fishing, looking for lead. Council had good questions. We appreciate that. So Ryan, we're good. Awesome. Thank you guys. If you want to sneak out of here, go for it. Now we're going to go ahead and go to our audit review. And so we have Matt Schuller from Whipley. And so Matt, please jump in there.

Thank you guys, everybody. I'm Matt Schuller, partner with Whipley. I'm going to go over the results of the audit. Very similar type of presentation as we did last year. So if you have questions during it, feel free to stop me. I can try to answer what I can. Thanks for setting up this presentation. I love this screen. First thing is just to report on your guys' audited financial statements. We do issue a clean, unmodified opinion on those. That's the passing grade. Second bullet, opinion date is in early August. We rewind a few years ago. We were past Christmas doing this audit, so we've got the necessary deadlines for the state, which is great. As part of the audit, we also have to do a report on your government auditing standards because you received some state and federal money. This reports any internal control findings and just general compliance findings. We did have one segregation of duties issues with the library. That's been a repeat, very, very small department there, obviously. And then you did exceed your expenditures compared to your budget. So we did know that. Last thing, last opinion that we give is the TIF opinion, just to make sure you're following the rules and requirements there. Happy to report we had a clean opinion there as well. Just a few things to note within the audit. We do have to look to make sure your deposits are insured and collateralized. Happy to report everything is insured and collateralized. That just means in the event that there's ever a bank failure, you want to make sure your deposits are secured. Net pension liability, there's going to be a few slides in the very end. I'm going to go over the IMRF, police, and fire. Happy to report the liability actually declined to $5.5 million when you look at all of them together. It was $15.7 million last year. Really, the big thing was very, very strong investment returns. You had $17.1 million. of investment return compared to 9.6 million last year, so it's roughly a 16% rate of return on your investment. Those are invested in the stock market, so there could be some fluctuation there, but see, the positive side, it's done well for the city. Overall, there's nearly 110 million of investments to pay those pension assets, or pay those pension liabilities, I'm sorry. You do have some long-term debt, but you're going to get some more long-term debt. You did pay down about $2.1 million this year. $1.9 million is due next year. You also have a post-employment benefit liability that's because of insurance for health care insurance for retirees. That liability did increase slightly from $6.3 million to $6.9 million. So this kind of just compares numbers, you know, year over year. I like this just to kind of step back from all the details of the numbers. So 25 to 26, you can see intergovernmental revenues last year were at 64%. This year was at 61%. Property taxes may surprise you only at 10%. So your intergovernmental revenues are really those, those monies you get from the state for sales tax, income tax, replacement taxes, all of those. So Lion's share of how you guys fund the city is through intergovernmental revenues. I will tell you this excludes your water, sewer, electric. As far as the expenditures, we're getting just those governmental funds, so excluding Water, sewer, electric. Public safety, not surprising. Largest chunk, nearly, nearly a half, 40% of your expenditures. And then public works, solar, street, and stuff being the next one.

Those charts are almost identical on both of those slides. They are, yes.

So as far as just some statistics on the water sewer electric, I tried to give you guys maybe a little bit more information on top line is your revenues, then it's operating cash flows, and then net income. Net income can get a little tough to really understand because there's some depreciation in there. There's all these IMRF pension liabilities. I think really the thing to focus in on are really your revenues and your operating cash flows. From a revenues perspective, in 25, that was $16.3 million. Now it's $17.6. So it was like a 7.6% increase in your revenues. Now to kind of go over some of the Pension funding, so we look at it from 21 through 26 with each year kind of shown there incrementally. You see you're at 105, nearly 106% fully funded. It's actually sitting as an asset, which is great. You've got as high as $114,022. Those do coincide if you look back at some really, really good stock market returns. Next is the police pension plan. That is at the highest it's been from 2021. It's up to 79%, which is great. That's a really solid number. Highest it's been in the last five years. The fire is a little less than that, but it's still funded at 67%. Again, the highest that it's been over this timeframe too. So really good things to report. I think that is it. Is there any questions or anything that you want me to maybe go over? If you had a chance to look over the audit report or anything? Or questions on the presentation?

Just to, he mentioned the over-expense, let me say this the right way, over-expending what was budgeted. So, we looked a little bit deeper into this. It's obviously the fire department project that started sooner because of the cost of steel, doing the lock that in. engine number eight, engine number one. And some of the overlap was staffing, because I think it was on wages was one of them. And then we incurred some significant expenses for economic development this last year that weren't anticipated. So add all those up together, it can definitely take you over what we planned for. But in the end, it all worked well, except for the engines. We're still working on that project, but everything else came out fine.

Sounds like it's all good news. It is good. I told the mayor when he sat down, I said, I'm going to report on some good news this time. So it is really good information to share.

We're consistent in the revenues and consistent in the expenditures. We'll think about this.

I'm happy to see that our investments, our revenue is being generated through sound investments. Correct. And that our pensions are in good shape as well.

That's a reference. And when do we have to be fully funded on police and fire? What's the mandate?

That 30... I'm going to check. And with that, when we do the actuarials on those, that's where we're funding those at the full amount that they're suggesting. 2040. 2040.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you.

And again, we give you the same opportunity. Matt, if you want to speak out here, go for it.

Thank you, Matt.

Now we're going to go on to public comment. Is there anyone here for public comment this evening? You can speak for up to three minutes, and you can speak at the beginning of the meeting as well as at the end. All you have to do is just come up and state your name. Anyone here for public comment? Ken?

Can't perish. I first draw attention to another error written into July 6th minutes. We read, the council reiterated they are not required to respond to public comments. This needs corrected to say Mr. McCall stated the council is not required to respond to public comments. And I would like to again remind the persons who report the minutes that they need to report them accurately. Mr. McCall, on July 20, I gave you a copy of the United States Constitution, a settlement of the United States Constitution, and a copy of many of the Princeton City Ordinances, all of which you, I believe, probably had never read, but swore to support. You then skipped the next meeting on August 3rd. I would like to ask, since July 20, did you read up and study the documents you swore to support?

Okay, that's fine.

A couple of meetings ago, I had done a study on the 2023, 24, and 25 meetings and how long they were and how much the commissioners were paid per hour. And it averaged out to 2023, $410.49 per hour. 2024, $430.72 per hour. 2025, $325.80 per hour. The three-year average was $389 an hour. As I said, according to the 2020 census, the median income, this is the average. Many people are far below this. For a Princeton household, it is $51,844, and you divide that by a typical work year and work hours, it's $25.92 per hour. The median income for a Princeton family is $66,743. When you divide that out, it's $33.23 an hour. The commissioners are paid 15 times the amount of the median income for a Princeton household and 11.7 times the amount of median income for a Princeton family. Each of you commissioners are paid $6,000 per year for being on this council. Mr. Newman, at the end of this, your third term, you will have been paid $72,000. Mr. McCall and Mr. Gomez, at the end of this, your second term, you will both have been paid $48,000. Mr. Selecki, at the end of this, your first term, you will have been paid $24,000. Mayor Mabry, as commissioner for two years, you were paid $48,000. As mayor, you are paid $12,000 per year. At the end of this, your first term as mayor, you would have been paid $48,000. For being mayor, thus in your three total terms, you would have been paid $96,000. All of this totals $288,000 to this board. In contrast, the Princeton Park District commissioners are paid nothing. At the July 6th meeting, in response to my complaints about the performance of the...

Your time is up. Take and come back at the end of the meeting and discuss some more. Sure. Very good. Thank you. Is there anyone else for a public comment this evening? Very good. Now we're going to approval of the minutes, please.

I move that we approve the minutes from our regular council meeting on August 17th, 2026. Second.

We have a motion and a second for those minutes. Is there any questions or comments from the council concerning that? Seeing none, third call the roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez.

Aye.

McCall. Aye. Zaleski. Aye. And Mary Magritte.

Aye. Now on to the invoices with City Clerk Janet Henning.

In the Department of Accounts and Finances, we have $181,285.28. Department of Streets and Public Improvement, $97,065.57. Department of Public Safety, $643,727.10. And the Department of Public Property and Utilities, $277,322.00. with a grand total of $1,199,399.95. Mayor and council members present have confirmed the reviews of all the invoices and are now submitting.

I move that we approve the invoices as presented. Second.

We have a motion and a second on these invoices. Are there any questions, comments, or concerns about these invoices? Seeing none, third call rules.

Council Member Newman.

Aye.

Gomez.

Aye.

McCall.

Aye.

Selesky.

Aye.

And Mayor Mayfrey.

Aye.

Next on the agenda we have Ordinance O-26-017, authorizing the sale of personal property no longer necessary or useful to the City of Princeton. This is the second and final reading.

I move that we approve Ordinance O-26-017.

Second. motion second and that is that incinerating device that we're working on trying to find a home for very good um no questions or comments from the council they're called roll next on the agenda we have resolution r-26-023

Requesting temporary closure of Illinois Route 26 from Peru Street to Central Avenue on Saturday, October 17, 2026 for a Halloween parade.

I move that we approve Resolution 26-023.

Second. Motion and second. Any questions concerning that from the Council? Seeing none, clear call to roll.

Councilmember Newman. Aye. Gomez.

Aye.

McCall. Aye. Zaleski. Aye. And Mayor Mayfrey.

Aye. Thank you, Janet. Appreciate that. Now on to our report from our Teresa Wittenauer, our city manager.

In your packet, you'll have the June 30th, 2026 financial report. At first glance, if you look at the revenue expenditures, we're roughly about 20% revenue expenditures at this point in time. Obviously, last month and the month before, we incurred some pretty expensive project, so you'll see that adjust a little bit more in the next report. Do you have it in front of you? You can go and point out the sales tax. That tends to be a topic of discussion. Sales tax still is kind of holding steady with where we are. Some months we're above the prior year. Some months we're a little shy of the prior year, but we're still holding that Early study, when I check those each month when the reports come in from the state, we're still trending slightly above the prior year, so that's good. I knew it would slow down a little bit, but as long as we keep going up, that's a good time. As well for the motel tax revenue, significantly some changes there from the prior year, so things are trending in the right direction on those. Call volume is always an interesting thing that we have here. Total incoming calls to Bucom, a little over 3,600 calls, 240 fire department calls, this is just for June, and 388 for police department total response calls. So that continues to be a concern for us with call volume for public safety. As Matt showed, it's your biggest expense. Any questions on the financial report? Just a reminder, we do have the candidate election packets available in City Hall. So the 2027 election, three seats are open. The mayor's position, four-year term, two council member positions, four-year terms each. Petitions may be circulated when we start August 25th, but will be required to be filed with the city clerk between November 16th and November 23rd. If you need any packets, feel free to stop in City Hall and grab a packet. November 23rd is the last day to file a petition. The office hours are 8.30 to 5 p.m. So the 23rd, that's your date. So any questions?

Teresa, thank you very much. I appreciate that. On the mayor's report, I'm going to go ahead and read a proclamation. And we have two guests with us this evening from the Daughters of the American Revolution. And they're going to speak in just a moment here. It's a summary. We're very fortunate. The Daughters of the American Revolution has been very, very active in And we've got that nice monument that was dedicated about a month and a half ago out here in front of our building. And so that's exciting. Very nice piece. It's just enough. It's well done, ladies. You did a good job on that. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation of Constitution Week. Whereas September 17th, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention. And whereas, it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate the occasion. Whereas, Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Now, therefore, I, Raymond Mabry, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor of the City of Princeton, do hereby proclaim the week of September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week, and ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals of the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guarding of our liberties, remembering that lost rights may never be regained. In witness thorough, I, Raymond Mabry, here unto, set my hand and cause the seal of the city of Princeton to be affixed this 8th day of September, the year of our Lord, 2026.

So ladies, if you would, if I could elaborate, we'd sure appreciate that.

Mayor Mabry, thank you very much. This month, on September 17 through the 23rd, we celebrate the 239th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. This is the binding document that held our country together since the document was conceived and designed in 1787, with ratification by nine states in 1788. Without it, we would not be celebrating the 250 years of these United States this year. The National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution was responsible for the annual designation of September 17-23 as Constitution Week. The DAR made its own resolution for Constitution Week, which was adopted in 1955. Members of the United States Congress received the DAR resolution in 1955 and discussed it in the Senate. The first resolution to observe Constitution Week was made on June 14, 1955, which is now Flag Day also. Following the passage of the resolution by both houses of Congress, President Eisenhower issued a proclamation on August 19, 1955, designating this week as Constitution Week. The Daughters of the American Revolution has three goals. It is historic preservation, education, and patriotism. This week hits all three of those goals. I hope you find time this week on the 17th through the 23rd to head to the Princeton Public Library to see the really nice display that is put together by the librarians and our Constitution chairman, Gail Little, who is unable to be with us tonight. Gail also makes sure that all the schools in Princeton have one of these beautiful Constitution Week posters. So every school gets one of these, and then hopefully they're very busy giving education on that. The signing of the Constitution was announced at 4 p.m. on September 17, 1787, with the pealing of bells in Philadelphia. You may also hear bells ringing in Princeton on the 17th, as Princeton DAR daughters head to their front porches with their bells and ring them for all their worth. And we would like to invite you, the people of Princeton, to, if you have a bell, Get out there under front porch with us and start ringing it to celebrate our enduring freedom that has been ensured by the United States Constitution. Thank you so much for letting us come and thank you for your proclamation.

Let's give a round of applause.

Thank you, Nancy.

Thank you, too. Thank you. We're going to discuss a couple more things here under the mayor's report. I went to the closing of, and I think we can close this chapter now, 526 North Chestnut. We had the closing of that house on Friday, and that sold for $42,000. I had a chance to meet the Lopez family. It's a husband and wife. They've got some little kids that look like about two or three years old, and the Lopez family is excited about renovating that home. They said that their goal is to have that home renovated by Christmas. Oh, wow. And so, I didn't want to jinx that sale, but after the closing, I called the neighbors to the south that was very patient with us and left them a detailed message and encouraged them to meet the Lopez's when they come over there and start working on that home. So, we're going to hope that we're done with that chapter with 526 North Chestnut. That's our goal. So, with that said... It was in the MLS system. We want to thank Landmark Realty for their work on getting that sold. There was two other additional offers, but this was the highest offer. But just as importantly, these were the folks that had the track record that we felt would get the job done and not cause us more issues. So that's a critical part of it. The other thing is, it's just hard to believe that it's Homestead weekend. And it's like, first off, it feels like this is Monday, but it's Tuesday. And I know that the city's crews have been working really hard the past, actually, three, four months working on street departments, got a lot of new curb and sidewalk work around town. We're lucky to have some state of Illinois cooperation with some of our overlays, with our monies that we receive from the motor fuel tax. They're still doing some work on West Peru Street, but that's coming right along. So that's good. If you haven't had a chance to drive around town and see like at the Elm City or Elmont Cemetery, we've got an overlay on that that was desperately needed. So a lot of good things going on with these different departments. I saw the electric department getting corn stalks put up today. They look festive, so good for them. So anyway, we want you to enjoy the Homestead Festival. It's our chance to remind people what we really enjoy about Princeton, which is a small town of charm that we have. But also we have a lot of guests coming to town, people who will be family members and class reunions. And we want to welcome them and say thanks for coming home. And if you ever decide to come back to Princeton, we'd love to have you. So with that all said, enjoy the Homestead Festival. So looking forward to it. We're going to go on now to old business. Under old business, we have the e-bikes and the electric scooters. And we did receive, and Tom, can you give us a quick update on that with the governor?

That law takes effect January 1st.

Give you time then to decide what we can do with that, right? We can begin citing people. There you go. So one more time, that little scooter that we see that's got the two wheels and the person standing there at 12-year-old is zooming down the sidewalk. According to the law now, it's got to be 16 or older for that scooter with a helmet?

I'm not sure if helmets are included in there, but the age restrictions are what we're concerned about.

So that's 16 or older. So anybody... Man, it's just been a wild west out there this summer. And no one's allowed on sidewalks.

Correct.

Regular old bicycles plus all this other stuff is not allowed.

Correct.

Because I saw a guy today with one of these electric bikes, had to be doing 40 miles an hour, coming over the interstate on a sidewalk.

Okay, good. Yeah. Well, we appreciate that, Tom. Thank you. That's a great first on that. There'll be people out there with snow tires on. They're pretty creative. And some people are using it to go to work. God bless them for that. And they're out on the street. So some are doing it right. So now we're going to go to an old business. We discussed the 15 mile an hour speed limit for a parkway subdivision. And Council Member Newman brought up a good point. We want to just get a better feel of this before we go ahead and propose that that's something that's very acceptable to us. And I'm in favor of that. That's not a problem. So this evening, we have a representative from the Park Place Homeowners Association, Eric Taylor. And Eric, you just go ahead and come to the podium like you've seen other folks do. Just state your name.

I'm David Sainz. Keep it up for me.

You're good. Hi, Eric Taylor. I'm here in regards to the Park Police subdivision speed limit. There's been some commotion and requests to decrease it to 15 from 25 miles an hour due to the fact of that curves and lack of straight roadway. I mean, there's only a small straight roadway and then a curve creating blind spots and making it a little bit dangerous for kids, children, and bicyclists to go around the subdivision, which we do have a lot of outside residents in the community using that for exercise and whatnot. And due to recent people speeding there, it's been a little bit more of a problem. So I'm here on behalf of the Park Place Homeowners Association asking if you'd be interested in decreasing that speed limit to 15 miles per hour.

Do you think the majority of the residents in Park Place are in support of this?

We sent out a letter. I think that went out yesterday or today. I don't know if they're in support of it. I'm more concerned about the general residents of the entire town, to be honest with you.

I understand.

Even going through... What's the subdivision right over there? Green Cross. You know, going through there at 30 miles an hour seems fast to me. I tread at 20 miles an hour going through there with kids running around. So I could ask for the support of all the residents, but since they're city streets, I think it's more of a city problem, to be honest with you. But every resident has to be notified.

It's unbelievable. Because I know years ago we reduced from 30 to 25, and that wasn't very favorable to some people over there. For some reason, I understand the safety side. So going down from 25 to 15 could be... could cause some concern.

Sure, I understand that. I think the concern should be more with the children and people who are using this roadways and streets. I mean, I was going with my daughter and she fell in the middle of the sidewalk crossing the road there and someone was coming around the corner and had to stop quickly.

If the association supports it and encourages it, that's good enough for us, at least for me. Yes, sir. Council, we good on that then? Council? Okay.

Very good. That's simple enough. We'll go ahead and proceed with getting the ordinances put together.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it, Mayor. Thanks for coming. Absolutely.

Okay. Is there any new business before the council decision? Okay. Any additional public comment, please?

Mr. Cameron, the other day I was parked at a stop sign and there was a pretty big truck and I couldn't quite see. And as I began to proceed, an electric bicycle went through on the road and not the sidewalk and it ran the stop sign. And I wanted to ask, do electric bicycles currently have to abide by travel laws?

All bicycles are supposed to.

Okay. So that would be the same when we refine the ordinances of the laws, when the state does that. Good. At the July 6th meeting, in response to my complaints about the poor performance of this council, Mr. Mabry verbatim stated, this is a quote, this is actually two or three quotes run together. When we donate time to things we do, we don't expect to be compensated. I don't think none of us here are here for the money. It's for the betterment of the community. As I later responded, his statement that you don't expect to be compensated was false. And I believe it was designed to fool the public as if you are not compensated. Of course, you do expect to be compensated. You were paid $230.76 every two weeks, and as I later responded, if you didn't receive it, you would be inquiring where it was. So I would like to ask, since according to Mayor Mabry, none of you expect to be paid compensation, and you're paid so much money per hour, And $288,000 to this board total would have been a very large chunk of change. Would any of you like to return your money back to the city? I have a question. Do we not pay board members when they're absent? Do we take off money that they're paid? Okay. This board has missed a total of 41 and one-half meetings. That's significant. And if I don't have time tonight to finish this, I have a suggestion. My suggestion is that we do pay you. We pay you $1,000 a year. That gives you enough money to get here and for the time that you spend here, which is about $60 an hour. And let's use that extra $5,000 times four commissioners, $20,000 to give scholarships to 50 students, $400 scholarships to 50 students who are perhaps maybe just out of seventh grade and going into eighth grade, to go to camp to learn about civic government, history, economics, public speaking, all of the things that they need to do. Okay, and I'll continue with that later. I think that would be a great use of our monies, a better use of our monies. Thank you, Ken.

Is there anyone else who would like to speak to the council to see if they have any other public comments? Before we adjourn in just a moment here, I'll just explain, because some of you that are in the audience, we're going to go into executive session, and we're going to not be getting decisions per se, but we're going to be discussing. We've got some union negotiations going on, things like that that we're working on. And so that's what we do. We go into executive session. There's no mystery going on. We have sensitive items we have to discuss. And again, we won't be coming out and making any formal changes or actions. So with that said, if you would like to visit with your council members for a few minutes before we go back into executive session, feel free to come and talk to them. Okay, Jerry, you're good?

I move that we adjourn our regular meeting this evening and reconvene into executive session under Illinois statutes to discuss collective negotiating merit between the public body and our employees.

Motion second. Clerk call the roll.

Thank you for attending and enjoy the Homestead Festival.