Board - Regular Meeting

Good. Good evening everyone. At this time, I'll call to order the regularly scheduled board meeting for the village of Lotheian Wednesday, fe February 25th, 2026 at 7 p.m. Roll call, please. Deputy clerk Harris. Trusty Burbat here. Trusty Crowley here. Trusty Hilly here. Trusty Dread here. Trusty Johnson here. Trusty Killy here. Mayor Laroo here. You have a quorum. Thank you, ma'am. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. remain standing for a moment for fallen veterans. 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.

Thank you. At this time, I'll open the floor to public comment. Is there any public comment tonight? See there's no public comment. I'll close the floor of public comment and move on to tonight's consent agenda. On tonight's consent agenda, number one, approval of resolution number 26-0225- which is a resolution approving an economic incentive agreement between the village of Lotheian and the Bartellini Restaurant, Inc. Number two, approval of hiring the selected candidate for the police administration administrative assistant clerk 2 position. Number three, approval to spend $600 on a streetcaping and traffic safety study openhouse on March 2nd, 2026. Number four, approval of the January 2026 administration department monthly report. Number five, approval of the January 2026 building department monthly reports. Number six, approval of the January 20 26 fire department monthly report. Number seven, approval of the January 2026 Police Department monthly report. Number eight, approval of the January 2026 public works department monthly report. Number nine, approval of the January 2026 treasures monthly report. Number 10, approval of the February 4th, 2026 committee meeting minutes. Number 11, approval of the February 4th, 2026 close session meeting minutes. Number 12, approval of the February 11th, 2026 board meeting minutes. 13. Number 14, approval of the February 18th, 2026 meeting minutes. And number 15, approval of the list of bills. Is there any item any trustee like offer tonight's consent agenda?

Hearing no dension, I'm looking for a motion to approve today's consent agenda as read. I'll make the motion. I'll second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Deputy clerk. Trusty Johnson. I. Trusty Crowley. Hi. Trusty Burbat. Hi. Trusty Hilly. Hi. Trusty Jed. I. Trusty Killy. I. Motion carries. Thank you, ma'am. Moving on to trusty business. Trusty Johnson. Thank you, mayor. I have nothing tonight. Thank you, ma'am. Trusty Burbach. I also have nothing tonight. Thank you, sir. Trustee Billy. Nothing tonight, sir. Thank you, sir. Trusty Chad. Nothing tonight, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Trustee Kley. As I have nothing either. Thank you, sir. Trustee Crowley.

Just one thing you see, sir. Um, I would just like to remind everybody that Monday is our open house for our LO Lakota streetscaping um and for our uh traffic safety study. It will be held at the police department. So, we'd love to have a great turnout and get a lot of people to give their input to see how they would like our streets to be safe, become safer, and how they would like our downtown area to look. And that's all I have this evening, sir.

Thank you, ma'am. Moving on to department heads, Chief Rita. Uh, just one thing tonight, mayor. Um, I just want to take a minute. Uh, I got another great email from a resident. Um, last Saturday evening, February 21st, around 8:00 p.m., our crew responded to a critical cardiac arrest call near 143rd in Kedville. 60-year-old man had suddenly gone into full arrest. Thanks to our rapid arrival, immediate CPR, defibrillation, advanced life support, and seamless teamwork by our personnel, particularly the members of Gold Shift on duty that night. This gentleman was successfully resuscitated on scene and transported to the hospital in critical but stable condition. I'm proud to report that he continues to make very promising recovery and the family has reached out with profound gratitude for the life-saving care we provided. Um, this outcome is a direct result of our department's ongoing training and high performance CPR, quick response times, and professionalism of all of our firefighters and paramedics involved. It reminds us of why we do what we do. Protect lives, serve our community with excellence every single day. So, to the Gold Shift crew and all our personnel, your actions not only saved a life, but also reinforced the trust of our residents placed in us. This kind of outstanding work makes Nolothian safer and stronger. So, I want to thank Gold Shift and uh newly promoted engineer Golden was running the shift that night.

Thank you, Chief. We continue to be very proud of your department and thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you. Taking over the new chief. I know there's a lot uh a lot of learning curve there. Um the loud boom and the smoke out of the second floor apartment over at the Keystone that we do last night. Yeah. Uh guy throwing uh quarter sticks out of his window in one of the apartments. Don't do that. Good advice. Good advice. Thank you. I saw the call and I'm like all right. I didn't hear anything. Everyone was returning to station like there must be nothing. So yes. Thank you, Chief. Uh, Chief Delaney. Yes, sir. Just a couple things tonight.

Um, first, uh, Officer Miller and K9 Leo got invited to the, uh, judges annual conference in Lombard. Um, they went there today and they took pictures with a lot of the Supreme Court justices and interacted and they were more than happy to have the dog there interact. I'll uh, post some of the pictures on Facebook tomorrow. Uh second thing is we had uh collaborated with the schools all the time about um doing certain things with the kids. Um we came up with uh Central Park to adopt a classroom for kindergarten, first grade and second grade. Um myself, Officer Bid, Officer Neimoth, Officer Albator, Officer Lacapruia are all going to adopt a classroom, which means we're going to go there at least once a month and read to the kids and interact with the kids uh starting in March. Awesome.

I love it. It's all for kids. It's my favorite favorite part of the job, sir. I can't compete with a fire department story. I thought that loud boom might have been the remote hitting the floor, but at least with the quarter stick. Sorry, sir. That's all I have. Thank you, Chief. Uh, superintendent. Sir, uh, nothing this evening, sir. Thank you. Uh, I see that uh Popeye's is getting close. Uh, yes. Yes, sir. Actually, we're scheduled uh fire officer, prevention officer Walker and myself are going there tomorrow for what hopefully will be successful finals.

Okay. Health department. Uh, he's going to make a uh courtesy visit there. uh contractor requested that just to make sure that they have everything in place prior prior to setting up for actual operations. Yes. Excellent. Looking forward to it. Love that chicken from Thank you, sir. Superintendent Swanson.

Uh yes, sir. Just one thing. Just want to remind our residents that Kellyman City Plumbing has started back up with the leadline replacement program. Uh this is their first week back. I think they have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 45 that are ready to go and for them to work. So, if you're interested in signing up for the program, it's still going on. Uh, please call public works or visit our website uh for more questions or more or you could call Kelly Med City Plumbing themselves at 7088680074 and that's extension 618. And that's it.

Is that a good I got to take Sandy. I'm sorry. Is that a good number good amount of people that signed up this time or No, you're not happy for for the Well, we want more, but it's for what it is, I I'm happy with it at least to get them going. Okay. So, excellent, Ty. What percentage have we probably around 38 30 40%. Uh, are we talking the whole village or just this one? Just about the phase one.

Probably like 40%. I I haven't calculated that in a while. Um so yeah, 30 is probably a good number, at least reasonable. So we still have a little bit of work to do. Yes. Yes. Projectwise, we're at about 65 and we're trying to get it done as quickly as possible this year before phase two starts. Can you compare that to other towns? how we're doing as far as other towns that are doing lead service line replacement. The number of people that are

um I mean I I would say we're probably middle of the pack in terms of resident responsiveness. I've heard of some horror stories for sure in other places. um with us starting from a place that um in terms of numbers is not a super substantial percentage of the village. You know, we were thinking we had something in the range of 800 to a,000. Um I would say so far we're doing pretty well.

Okay. Um, we I mean 2027 is when mandated replacements start and that's when you're mandated to do 10% of what you have within the village at that time. So getting a bunch of these knocked out on the front end with money that we got for free from UPA is just going to make the process a lot easier um once we get into that mandated replacement territory. Um, okay. So, I I feel pretty good about where we are right now. It's free. Yes, it's free.

And it it helps you. It protects you. I don't know what else we can do to promote this lead in your line. Water line is not good. So, we're offering for free. We're getting ready to send out the next newsletter. If you get me a flyer, I'll put it in there, too. Kelly Met is an excellent contractor, too. I had it done. very very responsive, very transparent, and everything worked super well. Um, there's nothing to be afraid of there. Again, well, when I say free, I mean, somebody's paying for it, but not you. Uh, thank you, Chief Delaney. That's something

one last thing. Um, we had our annual department meeting today where I announced the officer of the year and runners up. Um, so probably at the next board meeting we'll do that presentation. Thank you. You have something to make sure.

Uh, I was going to add one thing on the lead project. Um, we've been doing an outreach campaign of calling people directly the last few weeks to talk to him about status and I've felt good about the response that we've gotten. But one of the comments that we've gotten from a lot of different people is that they feel like that they're kind of in the dark since there's been like gaps of start and stop. And um so what I'm going to do is I'm going to give out my direct line phone number to anybody who has a question about what's going on, what the status of your home is, um to further reiterate that you want to participate. So the number is 815412209. Once again, 815412209. If I don't answer the phone, leave a message and tell me your address and I'll get back to you as quick as I can. That's all.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. I have nothing to say. Director Redmond, nothing's attorney. Um the Illinois legislature actually introduced there were four bills introduced um to address the mass requester voyas that have gone out to many municipalities. Um and so hopefully there'll be some progress on some of that so that municipalities and other public bodies have some recourse for some of those requests. Excellent. Thank you. Um there was supposed to be a new business owner tonight. He didn't show up. Uh I think he took over the um appliance store over here on 147th. But uh want to thank him to come to the village and

reliable. Reliable. Yeah.

Also I was asked um once again to bring up our Melothian Historic Museum. Uh they get very few visitors. They're open every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Uh open for four hours. Uh Marcia Gman, her team has made that such a beautiful place. Uh I can't recommend enough people go visit it. Bring your kids. Uh we're going to look into some other avenues uh to to bring more traffic there. Maybe we'll do u field trips and and things like that from the school. But it's just an amazing place and I can't speak highly enough about it. So please go show up. um if if we can't get in traffic, I mean, there's no reason to have a team of people there every Saturday for 4 hours if no one shows up. So, um we're working on that. So, um I guess that's all the flaw. I talk about the flaw a week from Saturday.

That's it. Okay. We're going to have float. Yeah. Our standard setup. Standard setup. The rain holds off 11:00 supposed to be in the mid50s. We're going to hear early park. Going to hear thunder struck six or seven times. Of course, if you are going to get there early, get a good spot. Bring a chair. 151st in Central to almost 159. That's usually pretty packed the crowd. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think last year's estimate was 8,000 people or something like that. Wow. It was crazy. Got candy. Yes, we got candy. And you got beads and Sure. Other stuff. Okay. Other stuff. Festive stuff. Okay. speakers are working. We're all good. Working.

Excellent. Uh, anything from the clerk's office? Nothing this evening. Nothing. Okay. All right. Well, see there's no further business for the board. I'm looking for a motion to adjurnn. I'll make the motion. I'll second. All in favor? I. All oppose. Meeting adjourn. Thank you.