Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. At this time I'll call to order the regular schedule of regularly regularly scheduled board meeting for the village in Lotheian January 28th 2026 at 7 p.m. Roll call please clerk. Trusty Burbat here. Trusty Cwley here. Trusty Hilly here. Trustee Jed here. Trusty Johnson here. Trusty Killy here. Mayor Laroo here. Thank you sir. Uh for tonight's moment of silence, I'd like it to be for our Why can't I get through this stuff?

Our dear friend, uh Nick, who uh lost his battle with cancer a little months ago. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Sorry.

All right. At this time, I'll open for public comment. Is there any public comment tonight? No. Just came and say I just came and say I just came to say hi. And I was playing a phone tag with one of the trustees. I wanted to get together with her. Okay. Of course. Thank you. That's all.

Dave. All right. Then I will close for the public comment. Move on to tonight's consent agenda. Number one, approval of the economic incentive agreement by and between the village of Malthian and Barlines restaurant. Number two, approval of the December 2025 administration department monthly report. Number three, approval of December 2025 building department monthly report. Number four, approval of the December 2025 fire department monthly report. Number, did I say four or five? Approval of the December 2025 police department monthly report. Number six, approval of the December 2025 public works department monthly report. Number seven, approval of the November 2025 treasures monthly report. Number eight, approval of the December 2025 treasures monthly report. Number nine, approval of the January 14th, 2026 board meeting minutes. And number 10, approval of the list of bills is any item any trustee would like off of tonight's consent agenda.

Hearing no dension, I'm looking for a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda as read. I'll make a motion. I'll second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Clerk. Trusty Crowley. I. Trusty Johnson. I. Trusty Bervette. I. Trusty Hilly. Hi. Trusty Jed. I. Trusty Killery. I. Motion carries. Thank you, sir. Trusty business. Trusty Johnson. Uh, thank you, Mayor. I have nothing tonight. Thank you. Trusty Bant. I have nothing tonight. Did you sneak something in me? I did. Um, interesting.

I've had that. I'd like to make a motion to approve payment to Calat City Plumbing Incorporated for $1,97.95 for work completed for project number 24 R0655.04 04 second commercial property and multi water meter replacement program. I'll second. Any discussion? Uh engineer play that number seems low. No small invoice. Okay. How many meters? Um would you have the way they did it was they built

one half of December right before Christmas. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other discussion? Call each. Trusty Verbat. Hi. Trusty Cwley. Hi. Trusty Hilly. I. Trusty Jed. I. Trustee Johnson. I. Trusty Kley. Hi. Motion carries. I'm assuming that's no further business. I think I'm done. Does anyone else have anything for Trusty Burbank? All right, Trusty Hilly. Um, nothing. Thank you, sir. Trusty Jack. Thank you, mayor. Nothing tonight. Thank you, ma'am. Trusty Hilly. Nothing tonight. Thank you, sir. Trusty Pro. Thank you, sir. Just a couple. Just a couple things.

I think you trustee.

Um, thank you, sir. Just a couple things this evening. Um, first, just a couple announcements about upcoming events. As everyone knows, we've been working with the Lakota group on our downtown streetscaping plan and we've been working with CAP on a grant that we received to do a traffic safety study. Um, I know sometimes it, you know, we talk about both and they kind of get mixed up, but I just want to be clear. Um, the Lakota group is who we contracted, they're an architect company that we contracted to come up with a plan for us to redevelop our downtown area and make it more marketable. In doing that, one of their roles is to make suggestions for making the the street safer and hoping to slow down traffic so that we can utilize the parking that we have on both sides of the street. In connection with that, CAP is doing our traffic state safety study throughout the entire village and at the end we will come up with a plan. they will come up with a plan for us, an engineering plan on things that we can do to reduce speed, reduce serious traffic accidents and things like that throughout the village. If anybody's interested in taking a look at it, there's a good example on uh uh Flossmore's website. They did one for Flossmore a couple years ago. It's a pretty in-depth study and it gives a lot of suggestions. Um we currently have two surveys going around, one for each. One is the Lakota survey to be able to give your opinions on what you would like to see in our downtown area and the other one is the CAP traffic safety study. Um there will be a second follow-up study as well and a survey where you can provide as much information as you want about your own personal block observations and things like that so that everybody can get their input so when this study becomes available through their engineering firm it it'll take into account all that information. So, I strongly suggest if you have any

concerns about either about our downtown area or about our streetscaping, I'm sorry, about our traffic safety throughout the village, I strongly suggest taking um a few minutes to take the survey. I was informed by a trustee who happens to sit just to the left of me that it took him five minutes to complete the survey and he his words were if he can do it in five, everybody else can do it in two. So, um I won't mention any names, but um I just I I really hope everybody takes the survey. Our our turnout was not what we expected in the surveys. It's really important because we want everybody's input when we develop these plans and we allocate funds and look for grants. We want to make sure that everybody, you know, has a chance to give their input. So, please, now is your chance to give your input. Um second, um in connection with that, um we have tenatively set a date to have a meeting in this room. Uh actually it's not going to be in this room. It's going to be at the police department on March 2nd. Sorry, chief. I forgot to tell you of that, too. Um we will have that meeting at the new police station because the one day that all of the different groups could make it was March 2nd and I believe that's a moves court date. So we have court here. So, we will be doing it at the new police station. So, we'd love to have all the department heads and everybody else, board, whoever can make it. Um, it's going to be an open house where both Lakota and CAP will be here. They will both give information. They will both provide feedback. They will have some preliminary information on what they're planning to do going forward on both of those projects. And it's just a good, you know, not a lot. You don't have to be there for two hours, but you can come in, you can talk, you can hear what's going on. So, um, I'll have flyers out by next week on that. Do do you have a time on it, Trusty? Uh,

it's probably going to be around 5:30, 6 o'clock. I don't have I don't have the flyer yet. We were just finishing that, but I wanted to get it out as soon as possible so people would know, but I'll make sure I send it to the board as well. Um, also, I just want to remind people that the deadline for uh signing up for the community policing and safety committee is February 27th. We had a great time last year. Um, we only have a limited amount of space, so we would really like anybody who's interested to sign up as soon as possible so we can plan accordingly. Um, second, I would just like to just say a quick thank you. Um I'm probably going to miss somebody, but um you know the last um six months or so, eight months, whatever it's been, um we've you know, really been doing a push with our economic development and everybody on this board and everybody sitting in front of us has been just I I can't tell you how remarkable everybody's been. Everybody here that's in this building does something for economic development. Trusty Killerly, I'm driving him a little crazy these days. He's right now working on four abandonment projects with the land bank. Trusty Jed and I are on a daily call pretty much discussing the the permit coordinating permits with you know Superintendent Smart Surf the police department the fire department public works Ty I don't think is I think he has me on do not disturb anymore I don't think he wants to answer my calls David Pleta I mean just amazing our front office finance I mean every person every trustee the mayor we're having meetings I mean I'm pretty much taken over the the conference room at the police department. The mayor and I are there more times a week than we'd like to be, I'm sure, or than they'd like us there, but um you know, the clerk has been involved in all these meetings. All you know, Trusty Burbad, my sidekick, he's also on economic development with

me um the other day when it was 25 below zero. um he came and picked me up and we did an audit of the whole village to make sure we had every commercial property that we needed to be talking to owners and things like that about there's a lot of movement. I know we don't talk about it every single week. Um you know, we don't want to say something and then the next week it change. Um the mayor talked a few weeks ago about um the old emporium liquors. We call it the white elephant. Um I think we're pretty close to having a decision whether it'll come out of the floodway pretty soon. Um, and that's all thanks to our village engineer. He's just been amazing and he really does a good job of putting up with all of us asking a million questions about things we don't know. So, thank you. Um, but that's going to be huge. We already have two people potentially that have said, you know, said they have they're interested in purchasing that property and redeveloping it. Um, so hopefully that moves forward quickly if we get it out of the floodway. I just wanted to say thank you because without every person that comes to these meetings every week, this wouldn't be possible because every single person has invested time in in handling economic development and being a part of it and bringing suggestions and we're just, you know, I don't even know what to say except thank you because I know I couldn't do it without every single person here. That's all I had to say.

Thank you, ma'am. And conference room or office? I think it's whatever it was your office. It depends on if the stick is on the door. Sir,

just to add to your point, I was asked um a while back, do I believe Melothian is um in progress or decline? I'm not sure exactly how the the question was, but is is Melothian up going up or going down? And I've said it before and I'll say it again. I I I'm very impressed with the amount of work that this board puts in, these departments put in, the employees, staff. I mean, we're we're definitely on the move and Trusty Killy, your your work with the land bank, um, incredible. Keep it up. Um, not one person can do it all. So, it takes all of us to get this done. So, you're going to see some things coming up in the next unfortunately patience. Have patience, but uh, things take a long time. You'll agree with me, things take a long time. So, um, it's coming. I'm just saying it's coming. you you're going to start seeing it and I I think we're starting to see a little bit already, but moving forward it's going to be on the way up. So, thank you all for everything you do. Um, moving on the department, uh, Chief Rita,

thank you, sir. Good evening. Um, just a couple things. With the recent cold weather, uh, we've responded to multiple fires in the past week. Um, I want to thank our firefighters and of course, um, our police officers for their excellent support and neighboring Ottawa departments mutual aid for coming in and um, always helping us with the essential assistance that we need. Um, also on behalf of Professional Firefighters, um, I want to say thank you to the mayor and the village board again for approving their most recent collective bargaining agreement. the end of this contract uh will mark 40 years and over 13 contracts with the village since 1988. So, we're proud of that. They're proud of that and um we like the way everything's going and our relationship moving forward. Um they also wanted me to pass along their appreciation everyone who helped donate, organize, and attend um their annual music bingo last Saturday at Durbans. Um thank you all for your support and all your donations. So, it was greatly appreciated. Um, and then the last thing I have is I'm currently working with police and fire commission to finalize an advertisements for our next entry level firefighter exam. Um, targeting availability to fill two vacancies still hopefully by midFebruary. Um, and thank you all for your continued support.

That's all. Thank you, sir. It was actually a pleasure to sit down with the the union and hash things out and amicably and positively and absolutely nicely. Yeah. Not fighting and so yeah great we appreciate it too.

Thank you sir. Chief Delaney.

Yes sir. Just a few things. Um the stats from this or from calendar year 2025, uh calls for service, we had 26,881. Uh we issued 3,234 traffic citations, 4,33 parking citations, 1220 local ordinance tickets, made 690 arrests. Um 144 cases were assigned to the investigative unit. um of that they had a successful closure rate of 71%. Uh successful closure rate could either mean an arrest that the case was unfounded or that they identified the suspect but the uh person refused to prosecute. Um so kudos to them for that. Um clerk's applications are being closed down on Monday. Over 90 so far. Um, so we'll probably pick the top five or six most qualified people to interview and obviously we'll keep the other ones on file for a year or so and we'll send everybody a thank you for applying. But that's tremendous amount. I'm overwhelmed with the amount that I have to review uh to pick those candidates. Um, and then uh just for the record, we love having you down at the police department anytime you like to come down. What about me?

Okay. Uh chief, did we uh did we how did how did our response go for the police officers examine? Uh we had over a 100 applicants apply. I know um they already have completed the written test. Um they're doing the oral interviews in a few weeks at RPD. I'm not sure how many have advanced so far to that. That's a huge increase from recent years. Before we were maybe getting 15 people to apply and maybe find five people on the final list. So yeah, it's a uh people are recognizing that the both unit is doing good things and they want to come work for us. So it's impressive. So when you say traffic citations, does that include speeding and blowing stop signs? It does, sir.

How many did you say? Uh of those we had 4,033. 4,033 citations. Okay. For those of you out there that think our police department is not doing enough and the the parking tickets, which can include seat belts and things of that nature, um I'm sorry, 3,234 traffic citations. The parking tickets was 4,33. So, the points made a lot of tickets were Please slow down and please stop and stop sign please. We don't want to have to write tickets. Thank you, sir. Uh Superintendent Surf. Uh nothing for this evening, sir.

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. I just like to remind all our residents that uh the 2-in snow ordinance is still in effect. Um we've been predicted 2 in of snow or more. Please park your car in the driveway. If you leave it out in the street, you can get a ticket. Makes snow plowing really tricky. So, I just want to remind all our residents that. Thank you, sir. Can you explain the science of road salt and temperatures?

Road salt and temperatures. Just plain road salt will only work down to temperatures of about 15 degrees. Anything lower than that, you need addit additives added to the salt, which we do add, but it needs traffic. It needs uh heat. It needs sunlight. Anything to get that temperature up a little bit, but as of right now, we're only good down to about 10°. Anything below 10° and it's salt's just not going to work. So, it' be a total waste of village dollars to drop salt. Yeah, we try we do our best, but in that situation, uh, snowplowing is the best the best method. Thank you.

Uh, thank you, mayor. Just one quick update. Uh, the contractor on the village demolition project finished up at the beginning of last week. Um, they sent me an invoice today. The board will see that come through. um it is holding 5% retainage on the contract so that way we can get them back out and uh wrap up a punch list and make sure that nothing comes up. And then I wasn't going to say this, but after Trustee Crowley's comments about uh taking that property out of the floodway, I'm comfortable saying this publicly at this point. Um I think it's a very high likelihood that we'll be able to take those properties out OF THE IN THEIR entire like 100%.

We haven't it hasn't been submitted to FEMA yet. I'm going to call it 99. Wow.

Wow. And I think the benefit to that that we haven't really talked about is that um it appears that we may be able to um offer some uh of the businesses that are owned in that area to be able to participate in this at a reduced cost which would help them get their properties out of the freeway as well. Um and I think that's going to be huge for that area especially you know the um up you know the upcoming buildings that people are putting money into and things like that. It'll also give them, you know, with our CRS, it'll also give them a heightened ceiling. They won't have to worry about coming close to uh, you know, the figures that you have to figure out with FEMA for that. They'll be able to do more maintenance and put more improvements into it, which is huge, huge win for us.

No flood insurance. No flood insurance, too. Marketable. Developable. Those were the words I was looking for. So, they just weren't coming out. Developable. That's it. That's all I have to say. Thank you, sir. Uh, Deputy Clerk Harris, nothing this evening. Thank you, ma'am. Uh, Director Redmond, nothing tonight, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Attorney Gustavado, no report. Thank you, sir. I have nothing tonight. Clerk, I also have nothing tonight, sir. Thank you, sir. And seeing there's no further business come the board, I'm looking for a motion to adjourn. I'll make the motion. I'll second. All in favor? All