City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'll call our roundtable council meeting to order at 6 p.m. here and now. Roll call, please. Alder versus Silas. Present. Steeves. Present. Rizak.

Ingen.

Ingen. Present. Finch. Present. McGill.

Present.

Castro. Smith.

Present.

All right.

We have no remote electronic attendance, so we'll move to our pledge of allegiance, please. We have public comment this evening. There's an email comment. Is there anyone in the public?

Thank you. Hello, everyone.

My address is 5318-27 Moline, Illinois. If you wish to contact me, I hope to review the issue of block surveillance and spying capabilities. The current aerial drone cameras can read a vehicle's life display up to 2,000 feet away. It would be feasible to assume in the future facial recognition would be possible. I, myself, am not comfortable relying on a drone to be compliant with the Correct Lake Brother rules. Mr. Galt told us that Walton does not have aerial drones, I believe. However, that doesn't mean technology will not be shared with various police departments within the Ponce area, which Bettendorf currently has. This includes sheriff or aerial drones and state police drone programs. I know these issues aren't repetitive, but I feel this is an important matter, as many other communities in the country have expressed. But when my great-kids interrupt me and ask, but Grandpa, what did you do to try and stop it? I won't have to hang down my head and cry like Tom Dooley. Thank you, Tom. Thank you very much. Are there questions on the agenda? I'm just going to take a second to allow Mr. Mathias to introduce one of our interns, our many interns from this summer.

Yes, please. And so we have the privilege of going out there back in April to really meet with a number of the design professionals. And this is Milena Almedica, who is one of the grad students out there in the urban planning program. So she'll be working with us full-time this summer virtually. She gets to come here. She's got $2,000 for travel, so then it was all provided by the university. So she's here this week. Do you want to say anything about some of the things, I guess, that you're excited about?

Yeah, just tell them a little.

Like kind of what drives you?

Yeah, for sure. So thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be working in Maine. And I got to meet Ayer and Grace. I was just so excited about the project that you were doing and the energy you had. So my background, I'm originally from New Jersey. My family's from the Caribbean, so we really care about building community and connecting and taking care of those people around us. And so I got into urban planning really kind of in a roundabout way. I went to community development mediation, thinking about how to bring people together to have clear discussion about what we're doing in our communities. And then I was like, okay, urban planning is a way to be more clear about what we're building our communities and how we can make sure we have access to high quality supply. And yeah, so I'm just really excited to be here working in community, working and investing in people and making their vision, their vision come true. So thank you so much. I look forward to meeting all of you.

Thank you. We're just really excited that you stayed with us.

Thank you. All right, so we can move to our roundtable discussion topics for the night. The first one is Quad Cities Open Network information session. Ms. Bailey. Welcome. Hi.

Can I stand here?

Yeah, that works.

They'll have to forgive me if I don't understand how to use the clicker. So today, I just want to talk to you a little bit about Quad Cities Open Network. I know I've spoken in front of this council before, but we thought this would be a good opportunity to just learn more about FlexiCity Network and what we provide of value to our community. So in particular, today we're talking about improved social differential health utilizing collaborative case management, which I know the city of New Orleans knows well. And as we just heard, it's a huge initiative for this city, so we're appreciative of that. So we talk about the statement of the problem, right? So we always talk about that at the beginning. And so we know that when our health and human service partners face persons to begin with, we're facing people in fight, flight, freeze, or pawn. So often health and human service agencies are trying to seek quick outcomes through trying to do transactional bill-to-debt outcomes through traditional relationships. And we know that over time, that simply isn't sustainable. We know that in order to affect somebody's life effectively and efficiently, that means that they need to have a trusted relationship with the person that they're interacting with, and that also requires sustainable resources in the community to make sure that those services are available for those when they need it, which then requires a strong collaborative social infrastructure. So we know that we can improve health and safety early childhood outcomes, housing, all of those social determinants. We are really focused on building a social infrastructure that supports collaborative case management. So here I am. I'll start when we talk relationship. And that means that the persons that we are interfacing with, it is important that we not only learn what they're experiencing, the issue that they're experiencing, but also a little bit about them. So again, Cecilia Daly, Executive Director of the Quad Cities Open Network. I hold an MBA in finance from the great Quad Cities right here. And the Quad Cities is where I graduated from. I am a experienced in community services and systems negotiation policy and advocacy. I was one of the first In this area, to work with the ACA when that was being implemented, making sure that persons got connected to health insurance when that was available. I also have experience in strategic alliance, early childhood youth mentorship and service navigation. Youth is at the core of what I do. I am a person of lived experience, so I grew up very poor. I'm a black woman um and so i am no stranger to vulnerability um and it's why i chose to get into what i do watching things at a micro level on a macro level of how social systems work encouraged me um to do the work that i do on a personal note i just retired as a dance teacher um after 32 years my kids better tell you that i'm a great cook uh as well as a painter um and i also serve and the Rock Island County is a court appointed special advocate for children. So I've worked with this circuit board in ensuring that foster children are at work in my experience. Now I'd like to ask you a question. Can you tell me more? If I can go around the room, can you tell me why, if you'd rather travel to the

like this is i have to be ready with this answer a lot is i would try simply because i like we are that's where our vision is right that all of our work is building upon the past to fulfill our potential and for me that i want to see okay anyone else

It's hard to follow that up. That was fine. Raise your hands if you agree with the bear.

Oh, my God. So, for me, past is a school of darkness. Future is something that we can overcome for the past. So, when we... we have to look back fast. Without that, we cannot be in the future. Because if you only look fast, only we can think what we did, whether it was right or wrong, or what we should have done. On the basis of that, we can frame our future. And according to the I'll go. I'd go the past. Give me a chance to see how something worked, where something started compared to how it is now. And I think that's what it feels like for whatever to get to.

I'll go past just so I can ride the trolley in Moline. Okay. I want to run that trolley.

So I asked this question. I ask many questions that seem arbitrary. But when someone answers this question for me and they tell me why, it gives me insight into the way that they think about things and how they move forward. So I use this question as a precursor to talk about the collaborative relationship and the way that we manage and why it's so important to get to know who you're talking to so you can realize what's at stake for that person, how they think about the world, and then how you can potentially interface and solve the issue that they are facing. So what is the Quad Cities Open Network? The Quad Cities Open Network is a collaborative of collaboratives. And so we work in the Quad Cities area, the Quad Cities Metro, in the big six, as they were, although we do have some other counties that kind of filter in or that actually have partners who do work in those counties, and so we will serve those areas as well. But we work throughout the health and human service spectrum spectrum. And in particular, I've highlighted our major partners for the major work that we do. So on the health side of things, we are partners with Unity Health, Mercy One, Bureau of French Community Healthcare Transitions, and the Health Department. We do that when we look at the community health needs assessment, data that is utilized to help inform those decisions. Data comes from the Plexiglas Network to do that. We also sit on stakeholder meetings. And when we talk about our information referral system, as I will in just a few minutes, we work with those health partners to ensure that information and free referral is available, not only through the health system, but then can be translated to the health service agencies. We do work with cities, as it were. We'll talk a little bit about this. This council used that coupon was instrumental The partnership with the Davenport Library and the social worker, that is a QCon-originated idea between myself and the former library director. The social worker who now exists on a part-time basis in the East Moline Public Library that is also a coupon collaborative partnership. So that is us looking at a new pathway, a different pathway to get those . And so we were able to partner with our partner in transition to mental health in order to fulfill.

We also work with

nearly every school district in this area, particularly with our Supplemental Emergency Assistance Program. And so ensuring that families and kiddos get what they need. So again, we are a whole constellation. So we envision a disease-opening network at macro or mental level. So we do not consider ourselves It's not that we're not essential. We are essential to the health and human services, but we consider ourselves a part of the constellation that's required to make the health and human services work. So each partner has their own role and Quad Cities Open Network is the role of a macro or a meso entity that is intended to work essentially not-for-profit to not-for-profit. So we're not going to interface with the public on a regular basis. That's simply not our role. Our role instead is to be a great partner to our other not-for-profit service organizations to ensure that that we are able to see gaps in this community and then respond to initiatives. So our job is to build relationships for the not-for-profits in this area. So again, we are a backbone infrastructure. Again, not intended to do direct service work. We provide you with a free information and referral system. So that is the bread and butter of what we do. It means that any partner who wishes to participate in the Quad Cities Open Network is able to make and receive referrals through all their partner agencies through our system, again, free of charge. They also can adapt. We know that Family Resources, SALs, Community Services, they are building to use Quad Cities Open Network actually as their internal referral system. Again, free. of charge. It is a way for us to see what is happening in the community. People say, why? What is the benefit? The benefit is the gaps. When we can see at a community level what services are being requested and how those needs are being met, then we can inform decisions where resources should be allocated as well as initiatives that should be launched in the community. So that is the benefit that Quad Cities Open Network gets from providing that free information to those that are helping service partners. We also hold a flexible pool of dollars, so that is our Supplemental Emergency Assistance Program, SEAP, which has been in this community for 33 years, and now is under fiscal sponsorship. five cities open network that is something that was really important in our community that we did not want to see go away so we took that under our meaning and i'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about our the regional housing plan and why that's so critical but the reason why hucon board took the flexible school of dollars in again is at a macro level flexible dollars are only gaps in services people only request the flexible dollars when their resources are not available in the community So from a QCon perspective, when we hold the GAAP dollars, then we know what the GAAPs are. So data collection, research, and advocacy. That, again, sit on many different collaborative forces to do that work and then to share that work. But when we look at data collection and research, that then, again, is our guiding principle of how we should move forward in the community. I'm sure it comes by no surprise to you guys, is that housing and mental health is where we should focus our time. So again, we serve on collaborative of collaboratives. I sit on advisory committees and boards in the majority of the collaboratives that sit in the Black Cities. Again, as a steering committee member, a leader in the community, choosing how we board on informational plans throughout the health and human service sector. In particular, today we're going to talk about the housing item base. So again, our role is to provide a strong collaborative social infrastructure so we can improve social determinants of health. We work at the mezzo and macro level with the Flex Fund, and we consistently looking to build trust. So when we look at the information referral system as a whole, we know that, again, I said at the beginning, QCon cannot possibly solve the world's problems. No entity can. And the information and referral system can't possibly be managed by one entity either. So we hold the information referral system, but we implore and encourage champions in their sectors to facilitate the work that's being done at an information referral level in the area that they serve. So the system champions in this area are the All Our Kids Network. So every child holds the All Our Kids Network contract. And so if you are looking at information referral and it's happening through early childhood and you're like, wait a minute, DuPont does that. DuPont does do that, but it does it through every child. If you're looking through health systems, again, we're working with UnityPoint Health as a system champion there. As we're walking into the housing realm, we are searching to see if that will be the housing cluster or if that will be the new champion who is, who comes forth in the regional housing.

So can I pause there? Sure. Just to continue to connect us with the council, what Cecilia is referring to, the new champion, it's the Fletch Report and things run through the Community Foundation that I sent out today. So QCon is is mentioned as already in place to do a lot of, I guess you were saying, the gap filling, and so that one of the recommendations is to use them more. But just keep that in mind, is that that's partly why I asked her to come today, because we have that report that's come out. They want to get moving on things, too, and we have to be a part of that regional conversation about research.

So again, as the mayor said, it's infrastructure building, really. We know that when we are looking at different levels or different organizations that are working at a micro level, information rate, borough, fund, one agency, I always say, in case management, never change. And that's a person needs assistance. and that they are going to seek that assistance or something to support them through that work. So the resources might shift, the resources might change, the way that we employ those resources might change, but those two things are consistent. And so if those two things are consistent, then what should also be consistent is the manner they are able to make and receive referrals. If we have one standard system that is used across the community then that never changes. Persons can access the system at any level, and that system is always streamlining the information, streamlining the referrals, and streamlining the data so we can move nimbly across changes. So again, we know that our community organizations, they tend to prefer An information array system that is closed looped. It looks like our IRS system is able to move very quickly. We know that our health partners, that's not the way that they roll. They prefer something that builds into their EHR. And so, again, as Mayor says, when we look at coupon and its availability to flex, needs to flex the system and it can be used more effectively and more efficiently. We're talking about a system that is already in place, has information and referral as a possibility that already uses data collection and already connects people to services, already connects people to a flex fund. But when we look at it broadly, we can do that same piece no matter what initiative we are looking to serve. and that ever changes. It's just flexed out for what the community needs at this time. And at this time, it is housing. So as we look at the regional plan as Mayor said, you know, this is not the first conversation that we've had on this topic. We have been trying for six years now to build an infrastructure across the community that employs neutral access points. So we're looking at not just social workers, but navigators, a way across the community so that people could look and seek services. Always the same all the time. And then those neutral access points could be pretty flipped. get them to a case manager that was needed um and so we we have been uber successful in moving in that direction as a big collaborative goal and trying to try to kind of solve all of the issues um what we have found more successful is to pick a packet um and to start there so again starting with the silo solutions program or the silo solutions project that was built out of the five-year cluster five years ago, then building upon the pledge report that's coming out, building upon the research, the housing research that Tupan already has done. What we are looking to do now in this span is to build out, build stronger, a Tupan that can respond more quickly and that can be accessible for more entry points. And again, in particular with strong household partners at this time. And really looking for a big dollar amount for flex funds so that we can, the goal is to, when we're looking at the funneling, it's particularly homeless services, we know that work is best done in the diversion side of things. So we first, before we can work on diverting, though, we need to get a handle on what's happening. And so the RICS Community Foundation is prepping to build out the infrastructure, utilizing the backbone of QCon to look at the urban piece, while simultaneously highlighting how to get persons off the street now. And then as we look at that sustainability, in 10 years, what does that look like? How do we get to a place where that system is a part of the natural system that doesn't have to go seek funding every year or every two years in funding? We all know that it's needed. How do we work together to make that happen? So again, we know that no wrong door approach improves outcomes. So we know that establishing neutral access points is the way to do it. We know that having a flexible fund is the way to determine where the gaps in services lie. There's our hope, right? In a grandiose world, we're hoping that what we see through these collaborative relationships, collaborative partnerships, building resources out, that eventually housing won't be the number one need. Instead, we will then shift the system to something else. But the system doesn't need to shift because the system is still doing the same thing it's been doing. It's just highlighting the need, again, for another partner or another set of partners to solve. If we're all staying in our lane and we are contributing collaboratively, then we can, in fact, make a difference together. So again, our work, what we typically see in the health and human service infrastructure is somebody sitting at the top in chaos, and they're trying to find a place to go and to see who is navigating that case, And the goal is to have mutual access points and to have collaborative case management so that that person sitting in the top who needs to access services can do so without staying in survival mode for too long. So it's allowing health and human services to do what they do best, which is work together to find resources, but again, pulling, frankly, the health and human services out of survival mode as well. So, final thoughts again, creating a multi-tiered system is possible. When you are flexible and put in the work to build trusted partnerships, and having an effective information control system is, in fact, foundational to ensuring . Two quotes, and we talk about past and future. It's funny how day to day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.

And again, the secret to getting ahead is .

Well, we do have other items, but I obviously want to give the council a chance to ask any questions. I particularly am happy that you're able to be here because was not with us last year and had a direct ask of us, which we If you recall, we did not include money for a social worker at the library. Cecilia is not here with an ask because part of it coming out of the pledge report is that the foundations, there are multiple foundations that could potentially be stepping up to take that lane, to fund that lane. Does that make sense?

Which means that we can look at what other things need to be funded or what other approaches we can take. So I just wanted to make sure everybody heard all that.

Are there any questions for you? Did you say that you work with that? We do, yeah. So do you also work with resources? We do.

How has the social worker programming going?

So the new social worker, I'll go back. Davenport social worker, the previous social worker, Served 8,000 people in three years. And people took incredible resources. We know that that funding then went away, which was unfortunate, because we have the proof point. We know it works. That new social worker actually just started a couple of weeks ago. And I actually had my first fair share in next to the best social worker so far. I'm assuming that it will go well. Again, we have a group of 29 people we know of works. As far as these millennials, that is also working beautifully. So what they are finding is that folks are coming in with unusual asks, things that they hadn't heard before, because they're more comfortable coming to someone who they know that that is what they're using on their social work. And I actually have a meeting next week with that social worker as well to look at potential partners that still might need to be involved in that process.

Thank you. Anything further? Yes, Mr. McHale.

So thanks for the presentation.

So you said family resources and SAL are coming on board. Subtransition to another, what was the other mental health agency?

So UnityPoint works with us as we hear from all.

Another non-profit.

So my question is, there's other non-profits working in that space. Why wouldn't they work with you? And then you had most of the school districts, but not all. Could you share why?

Yeah, so the biggest, there's a couple of flag that flag for organizations when a lot of it's sustainability, right? So we're a baby organization. We're in our sixth year. And so we haven't found our longevity yet. So the thought of switching to a formalized system scares them. What if the system goes away after they have been using it for three or five years and then the system goes away? Obviously the caveat of easier for us to make it sustainable. So that is one. And then what we often see, too, is because the system is so large, without having system champions that are going in and constantly massaging those relationships, we'll have staff turnover, staff change, whatever the case may be. And so then the system won't be utilized for a second until we get back into the agency. And so if that happens at an inopportune time, someone is trying to make a referral to that agency, then they may choose to go full-tool method with the phone.

Anything further? Thank you so much for joining us. We'll move to 7.2, Project Now Shelter Overview. Leah, is it boosted? Yeah. Okay, great. Step 2B, Leah.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Council members, city staff, and neighbors. My name is Project Now.

It is a privilege to join you tonight to provide a final report on the Lift Now overflow shelter operation. As we review this year's outcomes, I ask that we remember that every number represents a neighbor in our community. Many individuals we serve will not have the opportunity to share their stories in settings such as this, and I am grateful for the opportunity to put a voice to their needs and successes. So before discussing this year's outcomes, first I want to just give you a quick overview of the history of the Winter Overflow Shelter in the Quad Cities. So pre-2018, the Winter Overflow Shelter was operated by King's Harvest, Davenport, Iowa. They served approximately 60 to 80 individuals per night, with serving 400 deduplicated individuals in a two-year period. In 2018, it was announced that they would be closing in Davenport. took over the winter shelter by expanding their capacity during winter months from 88 to 130. So in their first year, or in 2023 to 2024, they served 144 extra individuals. So that would be on top of who they had been serving in shelter during normal operations. In 2020, December of 2024, it became apparent that there would not be an expanded capacity. So Project Now, we decided that we were going to try and take this on. And we had just moved from our administrative building at 418 19th Street in Rock Island. And so we very quickly converted it into a emergency shelter. We had a max occupancy of 37 people per night, and the outcomes from that shelter were that 13 individuals were permanently housed. Then, in October 2025, there was some ordinances passed, and that made our building at 418 19th Street not a viable option for the next victim. So with the City of Moline's help, Project Now opened the Live Now Center on January 21st of 2026 in the Bridgepoint 485 building. Due to space, we were only able to house single men and women in the building. These were put into hotels, and we partnered with Salvation Army and their family services to connect those families to services and permanent housing. During the four months, just under four months that we operated, we provided 4,182 shelter nights. Our max capacity was 60 individuals, 35 men and 15 women. We saw 302 de-duplicated individuals. And the average stay for a shelter guest was 14 nights. I think we had 1% that stayed every single night. We serve 219 males, 82 females.

Next, we'll look at who we serve.

So the data from this year's shelter show that people are experiencing homelessness at all stages of life. I know it's kind of hard to read, but our youngest guest was two months old. Our oldest was 81. The largest group being the middle age, 34 to 35. Many of the individuals that came through the shelter were also facing significant challenges. And you can see there are 42% reporting to us that they suffered from a mental health condition, 20% chronic health condition, 20% substance use. And being unsheltered often makes these conditions considerably worse. It's very hard to maintain treatments. and medication and appointments when you don't have stability in that same place to sleep each night. And as you can see, we also had a significant number, a little over one third of individuals that had experienced domestic violence, trafficking, dating violence, stalking, and sexual assault. So homelessness in itself is a very complex issue. It's not just economic hardship. A lot of times there's many barriers that a person will face that leads to an experience of homelessness. Okay. So one of the big questions that's been around is where do people come from? Where are people coming from? And So this year, we tried to be very intentional with the data that we collected. We really wanted to get data that was relevant and that showed what all of the service providers in housing do, but needed the data to back it up. So we started asking individuals on their first night at the shelter, where did you sleep last night? Specifically, which city and which state? And so we can see here, 34% had slept in Iowa the night before, 66% had slept in Illinois. And so that kind of confirmed what, like I said, service providers knew is that this was not a city issue or a specific city issue. This is a real issue. When individuals are trying to get their needs met, the bridges just serve as a link, not a boundary. We had been seeing that for a long time, but it was nice to finally see that, oh yes, our data does show that, and that individuals, they're just trying to get their needs met and get to a safe place for the night. So our first year hosting the emergency shelter, one of the things that we learned that the overflow shelter was not just a response, an emergency response to cold weather. It was a critical entry point for individuals experiencing homelessness. When folks are experiencing homelessness, keeping appointments consistency is very difficult. So a lot of times our street outreach workers and our case workers have a very difficult time connecting with them and getting them to the services that they need. So having a safe place for them to sleep also gave us access. And with that access, we decided we wanted to do some barrier reduction initiatives.

We gave monthly bus passes to every single individual.

So this is a huge, huge, huge advantage for people. If you have transportation, you can take care of the things that otherwise you wouldn't be able to. One of the stories I like to tell people that when I first started working at Project Now surprised me was for an individual to get an ID. They had to get first to our office, hope that a caseworker was available. They might have to wait a little bit. They receive a piece of paper, and we sign it and certify it. that they are experiencing homelessness, they take it to the DMV and they get a free ID. The bus trip from Project Now to the DMV generally is about, could be almost two hours. So by the time you've completed all that, you've spent a considerable amount of time. But if you would have to walk, Right? Or rely on a friend or rely on Uber. That costs money. So we really wanted to provide people with transportation to complete the tasks that they needed to complete.

Then we It worked to the third place.

So when the emergency shelter closed on the weekdays at 7 a.m., we had MetroLink come and pick everybody up, transport them to the bus depot, and that made life a little easier for everybody instead of walking from Bridge Point 485 all the way up to the bus depot. So especially when it's cold out, it's a huge difference. We partnered with Robert Young to get on-site mental health care. Again, when you don't have a stable place, appointments are hard to keep. And as we know, a lot of us know that mental health treatments, you need to be consistent for them to work. So it was really important to us to get mental health care on-site and reduce that period of transportation time. We offered rent and deposit assistance to any of the individuals who had income, had found a place, and were ready to move into permanent housing. Assistance obtaining vital records, so birth certificates, IDs, social security card, all things that individuals need to move into housing, to secure a job, all those things that we kind of take for granted. And they get lost or stolen. And then connecting to benefit access. So most of us know that Illinois offers a free bus pass for individuals that are disabled or elderly. And so if they came in and we gave them one of our bus passes and then we did some digging and found out, oh, you are old enough to get your free bus pass, then we would connect them with benefit access and then they would have that for two years until they need to reschedule. So this year, I'm proud to announce that 87 individuals who stayed at our shelter obtained permanent housing. So a reminder, last year was 13. So we saw a huge increase in success. And this picture here is a gentleman that's dated our actual picture of him opening his apartment door for the first time. And that's always a special moment to get to experience that and the joy and the pride that you can just feel that they finally have some place to fall home. These outcomes would not be possible without help from the community and from our partners. We asked, and you all showed up. Video Moline, that you helped us secure the building and have been a great help to us. The Third Place had care during the day for individuals that needed a safe place. MetroLink helped us with transportation. Salvation Army, we partnered with them for our families. UnityPoint, Robert Young for our mental health care. And Christian Care provides free meals and free showers, which we did not have shower facilities at Bridge Point 485. So that becomes a component of just keeping some for people to have dignity and a place to wash up and feel better after that. And then here is some pictures from the shelter and the donations. We asked, like I said, we asked, people showed up. That's the picture on the right was the first day that we posted we were open for donations. We were inundated and it was wonderful. In fact, we didn't even, it took us a few days to figure out where to even put everything, which is a good problem to have. We had businesses, churches, All kinds of people show up with anything that we put on Facebook and ask for. There's our flyer that we posted. We had people lining up at our doors. And so, you know, that is a critical component of this is that we cannot do this work alone. It's a regional problem, and it takes a community and great partners to make it all work. together. So it was great. And that is Dwayne there. He runs a kind of a street outreach program called Street Friends QC. So you may have heard them, but he would bring us blankets daily, daily. So he kept all of our folks very warm.

All right.

Okay. So the need that brought the Project Now Lift Center into existence last winter and especially this winter has not gone away. As we look ahead to winter 2026 to 2027, finding a facility remains our greatest challenge. Some needs are a shower and bathroom facility. We quickly realized that those are very important and Also, things you didn't think about now, such as plumbing capacity, right? So when you have that many individuals staying in the same building, the building needs to be equipped for housing that many individuals. We'd love to have an outdoor space, and then something that complies with local city ordinances. Actively searching for a facility, and we take any and all referrals for that. We remain committed working with all of you and we are a part of the pledge conversation with Cecilia and the rest of the flood cities. And we look forward to continuing to housing in our area. So thank you again for the opportunity to share the impact of the Project Now Lift Center. This past winter, we both saw the growing need for an emergency shelter and the incredible outcomes that can happen when community partners work together.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Questions from the council? That makes me angry.

Last season and this season, well, there was a few circles where families were bound for in-housing and didn't. What do you have to scale with that this year?

Sure. I think part of it was collaboration. I think it can't be understated how important it is to have daytime services as well. What we found in the first shelter was when people got housing, it was really exciting, but they were taken out of their community, right? And so they lost that connection. And third place has kind of bridged that gap for a lot of people. I know that many of the folks that we have housed still, they're still housed, but still go to the third place every day.

Um, so I think that we're partners this time.

Um, so working together, you know, to fulfill unique needs that come up. Um, we did have a larger capacity. Um, and I think that is part of it as well. Salvation Army helping us with the families was great. I think, I think that's a huge part of it.

Great. Well, yes.

Um, I've seen cities where they have either street doctors or nurses and shelters all go back over and close down. I know that's, so not just the appointments, but sometimes

And I'm sure that's a stress on your staff. Is that something in partnership? Would that be a need?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that we would welcome that. I think, just to be frank, when we're talking money, that is an expensive need or expensive grant. But that would be helpful because, yes, the bottom line is, going to happen when you put 60 people in a building together right that are experiencing tremendous stress they're in fight or flight um and so having medical staff on site would be a huge advantage it would to either handle that to handle kind of the situations that arise um but also to um you know kind of administer that mental health treatment throughout their stays um but also One other thing was that Robert Young came on the weekends because we were only open from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. So we were kind of in that emergency overflow. You're getting people right before bed and then right in the morning. And so it makes doing or providing service very difficult. And that's why we kept Robert Young to the weekends. But yes, I believe if you had... you know, more of a, if it was more of a permanent ongoing operation, I think that would be incredibly helpful.

And I'm also thinking about within that 42%, the percentage that have serious mental illness, if they have episodes, how challenging that can be for your staff.

Yes, yes. It's part of what will need to be discussed closely with the current conversation in Rock Island County. That next meeting is next Thursday. Administrators and mayors, I believe those are going very well. But all the number crunching will be important for solutions like that because we're just getting numbers back from our own EMS costs in our own fire department, right? And that kind of solution to take back to the group to say, If everyone's paying for onsite medical, then that reduces the burden on the municipality where a shelter is located for those EMS services. And that's very important. Absolutely. If a place is supporting a region, right, they shouldn't bear the complete brunt of all of the EMS calls in one city, which I think has probably been part of the problem for one city in the past is that they were footing that bill.

Other conversations are very much alive, better now than they've ever been in the last five years. I think everyone at the table is not just thinking about what it's going to cost, but how do we address

worth half a million dollars just on this side of the river, not counting anything that was going on at Third Place, anything that was going on at Christian Care.

They have two separate buildings that have been doing this for over 100 years.

The question then becomes, is the facility, how large is the facility?

that we can have an answer. We don't want to do this again.

This was like, for your credit, now you guys stepped up and nobody else would. The city of Moline stepped up and the other city contributed, which was also valuable.

So it was not just about contributions, it was about sincerity and being at the table. Yes, we are. Yes.

Just a final thought.

So I'm glad the conversation. I'm glad that we'll be able to do this. I'm sure.

Yeah, I misspoke, actually, that meeting. The non-professor of philanthropy has been at the table. Yeah. I mean, talk to Cecilia about that. Yeah, just keep that in mind. There's the big clutch-related conversation happening, and there's the Rock Island County conversation happening. This is being driven by the fact that starting local... very small can be more nimble than waiting for the whole region to get their act together. And I always tell people my example for why I prefer this at the moment while the other bigger conversation goes on is because we saw what it took just to fund Visit Quad Cities from all the entities in the area.

It took way too long. And they still didn't get all the money that they needed, right?

They're doing incredible work without the funding that they actually need. And we need to We just, going nimble locally is my preferred pathway, but it's also, I just had a conversation today with BioCarter from downtown Davenport that was working on that pledge program, and that was a very good conversation. So just, I guess I'm glad you were able to give this report so we can continue to connect all these dots with the conversations, and I want to be able to know what's going on. Keep that going.

I appreciate the context and the skeptical of the ability to bring that together.

I just ask that our staff and our administration keep us well appraised of that scenario, because if we come to that point where we have to continue to lead, then I think we should. I believe a regional solution does make the most sense, but I just, I... That has been said for many years. And I think there has been a lot more positive movement there based on what I've heard and what I've spoken to with other entities involved, but not willing to take the stuff back just because that did not work out.

So a couple of things. When you talked about numbers, I think I told Mayor When Scott County did their research for the Austin building, they're talking about building funding surrounding this. Their top 17 utilizers in that county cost the county $17 million in five years. So we're talking 17 people costing the community a lot of money, a million dollars per person for five years. is vital. We ought to be able to do a better job than that by utilizing services that we already have in place. And then when we talk about the regional demands, I think we're all skeptical. Even those of us who are very involved, very heavily involved, and this is the work that we've been working on for... I started, you know, social services when I was two, so I've been working on this for 20 years. But we are also skeptical. But what I remind us is the regional plan is supposed to be built on building supports around the things that are already working. So we're not looking at grand, big, new solutions. We are looking at working together. So if the city of Moline is doing what the city of Moline is doing, It is unnecessary for us to stop them in their tracks. It is important that we know what they're doing, learn best practices, so that maybe we find that there's a funding solution that had a piece of land that we could duplicate in another community, or maybe we find this didn't work, and so we can start fresh somewhere else. So when we talk about the big guy, the regional plan, it's important to remember that that is, again, an idea of moving to together, but not together. We're still moving at our own pace. It's just that we have one goal in mind. And now instead of trying to recreate or restart the wheel a hundred times, we know that there are certain organizations that are already really good at what they do and what they need to support. And then we know there are other cities that are already good at what they do. And so they just need to be kept abreast and be brought in as partners as part of the plan. So the reason it's not

that big if we're breaking it down and all doing, staying in our lanes and doing what we do best.

Thank you so much. All right, we'll move to 7.3 in this discussion for Purchase and Prioritization. The promised conversation from last week. Thank you, Your Honor. And with us is Anthony Mazzelli. He is our financial advisor from Spear Financial, and we have used him in the past with several different I have been here and I know prior to that. And as we go through, we've got kind of four items we're going to discuss tonight. And we'll be kind of working back and forth together on our way through it. So just to get going, in conjunction with the purchase of the River Station, the city does need to secure permanent financing to cover the cost of acquisition as well as the improvements to the properties in an amount that we are estimating not to exceed $1,750,000. So tonight, like I said, I'd like to discuss, there's four main areas. Number one, we're gonna go through the draft of the bond issuance with you. So you've got local banks and some banks around the region. We're gonna talk about the draft ordinance prepared by our outside bond council that is working in conjunction our city attorney as well. But before we get started, I would like to say that prior to the bonding, and we passed the resolution this last council meeting, we do plan to cash flow the purchase of the property from reserves from our special CI with the bonds. And Anthony is going to kind of explain how we're going to do these types of bonds. We anticipate to close on the bonds on or before July 29th, and that closing on the bonds will then reimburse us, reimburse the special CIP. And currently, we have just under $3 million in our special CIP funds, so it is taking a good chunk of those dollars, but we do have that. We do need to have... secure permanent financing, because otherwise it would impact all of our plans for down on the river. But we're able to carry it here until we can get bonds issued. So the very first thing, we're going to run through it again. Anthony and I are going to kind of work back and forth. In your packets, we had a draft taxable bond issue. And I'd like you to turn to page two, if you have that in front of you. And... Oh, we didn't. We just had it on the agenda.

Okay. I'm sorry.

I thought you were bringing it up. Okay. Can everybody see one copy at least?

Yeah.

I'll share my copy. Okay. And I will certainly make this be available. And as we adopt the ordinance, next week, first reading, everything will be in your pockets. So I will just speak very, very broadly to that. Okay. It's a typical bond run, like what we have seen in the past. We're fine, go ahead. Sorry. You sound like we're spouting everything. That's all right. But Bob, Barry, and I have been working with Anthony on this, and we actually reviewed five or six different foundations, different terms, different scenarios, trying to find out what's the most flexible and the most financially feasible for the city. And what we have landed on is an issuance of $1,720,000 of taxable GO bonds. And we are because since we have for-profit tenants of the dentist that is in that, we have to have it be a taxable issue because we are receiving these payments. We have structured it with a 15-year term, which may sound very, very long. But we have structured it with a 15-year term with level payments of principal and interest over that period of time, roughly at $150,000 a year. And our lease payments currently are $250,000 a year. So $150,000 in our Required debt payments, we've come bringing in $250,000. We anticipate, Chris Parr had done a very lengthy look at what could our potential expenses be. And we anticipate those could be upwards of $100,000 a year. So the way we have structured this, if we would end up and hold the building right now, if we're able to retain the tenants and the leases, there would be no projected out-of-pocket costs to the state. over the life of the bonds. Yes. So that was very important to us. And that's, Anthony really helped us kind of get to that point. The bonds that you will see next week, they do have a three year call provision, meaning that they can be paid in full or refinanced at any time following the three years. And it's important to point out that if we would happen to sell those, sell the building prior to, to the call provision, we would simply hold those proceeds in an escrow. We would invest them and then wait until bonds are called and then we would pay them off. And so you don't have it in front of you, but if you look at the total interest that we project on those bonds, it does total up for those three years to be about $182,000. Most of that would go away with potential investment income that we would be receiving. DURING THAT TIME.

AND CAROL, CAN I JUMP IN REALLY QUICKLY? YES. JUST TO LET EVERYBODY KNOW, WE ACTUALLY HAVE RIGHT NOW STRUCTURED A TWO-YEAR CALL ON THAT. I HAVE IT. YEAH. SO WE'RE TRYING TO GET AWAY WITH A 2028 CALL PROVISION.

THAT'S GOOD. IT IS. I'M SAYING IT'S A LITTLE OVERTOOSE. YES. THANK YOU, ANTHONY. IT IS. WHICH IS WONDERFUL. THAT'S THE FLEXIBILITY WE WANT SO THAT WE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY If we want to get the bonds off or refinance, we have that option.

Carol, is that mechanism in place just to make sure investors, they're guaranteed something to pay out?

Absolutely. When that's part of it, and Anthony's going to speak to that, that's part of the challenge is he's trying to place that is to make it look appealing for the banks to be bidding.

Yeah, that's exactly it. The plan right now is we're trying to directly place this with a local or regional bank. And when you're looking at the types of investments that they want, we're on a little bit of the longer side.

And so we're stressing the call provision a little bit. We've just got to be careful in how we don't want to put an immediate call on there and then perhaps

We've got a few people that seem like they're committed.

That's good. Thank you, Anthony. And then lastly, on the bond runs, we are anticipating a projected true interest cost on the bond at about 5%, the taxable rate. That's pretty reasonable. And that's pretty much it for the bond runs. Do you have any questions for Anthony on what's that unreasonable rate? Nope. Well, sorry. I'll let Anthony speak to that.

I could jump in and that maybe is a segue into the next section, but the bond ordinance, which will allow the issuance of the bonds, that's what's called a parameter style ordinance.

So that will allow us to issue bonds so long as those bonds fit within certain parameters.

One of those parameters is that the bonds will not have an interest rate of about 6%. So if we do have an interest rate, if we do get bids and it council and have another ordinance passed. So it would be a discussion at that time. There's a little bit of discovery here in terms of what the rate's going to be. 5% was the estimate that I had come up with looking at some other transactions in the market. But it's a little bit different with the short call and the term length. You don't see a lot of direct placements with these exact terms. So it's a little bit of a guess.

Again, we're capped at that sixth per the ordinance.

This is going a little further from the board topic, but when we are estimating against our operating expenses, does that include any estimates we expect for repairs that will need to be put in the building?

I mean, obviously some always come up,

those.

So this money has seen accounts of being able to hit those right out of the gate, take care of them. So we don't have to include those as tenant allowances. And we can let it run straight into the property tax.

So whatever we lease, we have to pay property tax on those who don't.

Continue, please. And since we kind of led into the ordinance, we'll come back to the term sheet. And Anthony, if you kind of want to talk to I'll kind of lead it off here. The ordinance, as prepared by our bond council, it's pretty straightforward, standard language, but there are a couple of sections that Anthony and I would kind of like to touch on. Section 3C as well as section 12. Section 3C is the authorization of bonds. Anthony, do you want to kind of take a peek?

the ordinance um and then that that authority would rest with with the mayor uh or or the finance director or carol if delegated by the mayor so so that's how that would uh that authority would be granted to the board with the sale and then again the parameters specific to the bonds that have listed in the ordinance um that authority doesn't last forever it only lasts at least through i haven't circled here but through x the end of this year or next year really so it's not a

I think it's through 2027.

Yeah, that's what it is, 27. The other thing is, you know, we have tax levies because these are general obligation bonds. There's a section in here that will discuss the tax levy on the bonds. Now, it's common practice for home municipalities to issue general obligation bonds, and in situations like this, abate that. an outside revenue source.

And the key outside revenue source again would be those lease payments. Any questions on the ordinance? We'll have the first reading is going to come back to you on the 23rd and we can have further discussion if need be. Any more questions on the ordinance? Nope. then I'm going to have Anthony just kind of quickly take us through the term sheet that he's going to be distributing to banks.

Yep, absolutely. The term sheet is relatively straightforward. It just lists the expected repayment, principal repayment for the bonds, the security for the bonds being a general obligation, a brief description of the purchase and the tax status of the bond. So you can think about this as a really pared down version of a preliminary official statement that you might put together when you're doing your traditional bond issue. It gets pared down because we are directly soliciting banks and you just don't need the same amount of disclosures that you do in a transaction like this. OPTIONAL REDEMPTION PROVISION, WHICH IS THAT DECEMBER 2028 DATE THAT WE'RE TRYING TO PUSH FOR. AND THEN WE DO JUST ATTACH THE CITY'S LATEST AUDIT OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS TO THAT SO THEY CAN ESSENTIALLY THE BANKS CAN DO THEIR OWN CREDIT REVIEW. WE DO THESE PRETTY REGULARLY AND history or top taxpayers. That has happened at times and we have a good dialogue with the bidders so they can get that information in time.

Okay, and then lastly, just to give you kind of a heads up on the timing. So again, on June 23rd, we would have the adoption of the first reading of the bond ordinance. Then on the very next day, June 24th, Anthony and Spear will plan to finalize to local banks and various banks throughout the region. Bank bids will be received on July 14th. And on July 14th, we will finalize the sizing of the bond issue as well as award the bonds, unless we need to come back to council. But if the funds are within the parameters, it'll just move forward. And then we anticipate closing on...

Between now and then, when do the rates get out? Or do we just have to wait till that date?

All right, Anthony. The rates will be locked when we receive the bank bids. So those will be firm bids we receive.

And that's expected July 14th. Thank you.

Anything further? All right. Thank you so much for all the information. Thank you, Mr. Masali.

Thank you, Anthony. You're very welcome.

We can move to our final topic of the evening, ordinance update discussions. I know I had encouraged everyone to bring their thoughts ahead of time. If you could share anything with the council that you needed to, we got some of those at your place. It's section 4-3304 Class C package sales only. If you recall, some of you in 2021 in the fall inserted a requirement that Class Cs could not be less than 100 feet from each other. And that was to prevent the density of the same type of store. I'm aware of Mr. Macias is aware of a business that's having a really hard time selling right downtown on 19th street, a gas station, because it no longer has the ability to have a liquor license.

And that's because it's less than a hundred feet from some store I am.

debating how we can stop being in the way of commerce and improvement of that spot. The reason they don't have a liquor license is because they lost their food license because they had some major violations.

And then when you lose that, you lose your liquor license. And then we have this in place, and so they can't get it back.

So it's not selling. The property's not selling. It's for sale. I'm wondering if there's a way that council feels about creating an exception for gas stations, because if you think about it, every gas station just about that I'm aware of has a liquor license. They're selling liquor at the gas station. It is not quite the same package sales as it is for the central source. Package sales. Does that make sense? And I wondered what your thoughts were, given the context of that business. And Mr. Macias, I know I didn't talk to you about this ahead of time. I'm curious if you wanted to add anything.

Sure. I did meet with the owner, and that's when I learned about that rule. But it's a gas station in downtown Maryland. And I used to go to it way back in the day when they were open, before a lot of people would. You have to clear apartments. We have more people to come live there with the dispatch apartments. Just to simply have a gas station that can also make money selling beer. It would be good for that area. In fact, when I was there, a lady stopped by who was running out of gas and she asked them where the next gas station was. And she ended up coming back to thank them because she was close to running out of gas. And so That just proved like there's a need for a gas station and I would be willing to make an exception for this rule or, like you said, get out of the way.

And I also think there's a difference between the two businesses. The central store is very, it's almost like very unique craft beer, stuff that you're not going to get at this gas station.

So I think you can make the case that while it is liquor, they have their own clients.

Yeah, I was going to say the way that I'm envisioning it, of course, our legal counsel will have to massage it if we get a sense of our thumbs up kind of system about this idea. We could just say, make an exception, like except in the case of a gas station.

Yeah, I could word it so that it would apply in the case of at least one business as being gas stationed.

There you go. It's that I'm interested in. Yes.

I think, you know, as far as downtown is concerned, a decision can be made since BC is more than a neighborhood. So instead of a particular case, I think in general, it can can accept the fact that exception would be open for . What do you say ?

That's . Thank you. It is a little different than what I'm proposing, so you can debate it if it comes back to council. What I'm saying is every gas station just about, I mean, our clerks can tell us. have also liquor and so we have to make an exception for that type of business within the state versus that's my suggestion for staff to bring back an ordinance okay as opposed to just for this one to be tested but i hear what you're saying my fear is that this becomes a precedent and then every gas station has a liquor store right next to it which Oh, which destroys the density argument.

Right. So what if we just allow the variance system, and then they can come before the council, and the council convokes on them individually? We could lift this disinheritment on a case-by-case basis. Is that within the realms of good legal thought? It's going to be a little bit riskier if you take that approach. Because if you say for gas stations, we're going to take a different approach, then you're saying that that's only going to apply in case of gas stations. If you have an undefined when we think that it's appropriate, we can make an exception. That's not really giving credit. criteria, and any time you refuse someone, they're going to say, yeah, you refused me because I'm B, and you don't like me. And they've got a class of one legal protection claim, potentially. I think that actually was a gas station, though. The only case that they created the class of one legal protection. I'm supportive of expanding

I think this is a great example of where, but I think we would only want to let the exception apply to a gas station. Not even just if one of the businesses is a gas station, because that opens it up to the, well, the liquor store next to it. If there's a gas station, a liquor store wants to be there, go find a different place. More open to... If there's a liquor store. A gas station wants to come in next to a liquor store. I think... Is there different businesses, and part of our liquor and tobacco ordinances have always bothered me with how that impacts, say, a gas station, and how we think about the different kinds of businesses that get linked together.

And I could easily draft this so that it would only be for gas stations wanting to go in next to some other business, and it would not apply for another business wanting to go in next to a gas station.

OK.

let's take a few more comments thank you well i would make no claim to be an expert at a gas station economies but i did hear recently that you actually don't make any money off the gas you make money on what you sell inside so with this argument i would say it absolutely makes sense to allow any gas stations so i'm piggybacking off that i've seen a number of gas stations close

selling gas is not there, and they make all their money on convenience.

So we need to make sure that this isn't some backdoor into, well, I already have my license. And so I think that we need to keep that in mind. And I don't want six gas stations opening up next to each other with one pump. I mean, listen, people do crazy stuff, right? If we give them a way in, there's a lot of money to go in. I know it's not lightning. But what is a gas station?

All right. Well, we can have further debate when we go and bring something back.

Okay. All right.

So who has another idea they want to share? We've got two formal ideas shared with us. Timmy and I'm just waiting. Yeah.

Do you want me to go first? Or do you want me to go first? I don't want to. You go first. Transformation list.

i think i need your discussion um so i do not um this is really maybe a little of an ordinance uh met with city staff maybe it was a year ago i'm directing the start of the conversation around allowing mauling residents to have updated vegetation their yards in support of city uh work on the pollinator preservation Um, on a lot of these initiatives and, um, just really brief things for context. Um, you know, understanding lawns versus native vegetation, the history of lawns there came from England.

a lot of things where native vegetation really is in so many ways encouraging habitat.

We're going to have our lawns.

I'm not suggesting that we buy lawnmowers from the Oak Sands. I'm suggesting if someone wants to have a functional landscape that we allow and encourage that.

And we thought that the best route would and what we would be asking is for residents to sign up for this program um we create guidelines for the program so look at sent facts we can look at plant height all of this right so if you are in the program um then it is allowed but if you're not in the program you're still subject to enforcement um under our current so um chris you can

So the city of Davenport has a similar program like this. I don't know the exact name. One of the elements is they put an actual sign out there, right, so people know they're part of the program. We would be able to take these locations. We could put them into our GIS system so we know where they are. I think, you know, Brad obviously has concerns about this at first until he realizes that we wouldn't be changing the ordinances, and we'd have a way, I think, we'd carve these flights off from something that's going to be a business program. And the more I've learned with talking about native plants, we have some other initiatives with native plants right now, like requiring that in our landscaping code. You know, we have other people in the city that know about native plants as well. So we even have folks in our streets department that know about these things that's coming to talk to me about it. So I like the idea in terms of, you know, you don't have to change any ordinances when you have a debate about lawns and all these things. You can kind of just carve out something where city staff already knows that exists. And if we don't know it exists, right, then they are subject to our work as a delegate. mowing complaints that we deal with now.

Yeah, and we would project that

I want to compliment you on how you put this together for us to understand and the beliefs you've got about different aspects of the program and also the research. I did call a mayor called New Missouri, who Chris knows, I know, and we've referred to her work before. I called her just this afternoon and I said, how is Como Wild Yards going? Do you have any big problems with it? She's like, no, that isn't involved. other parts of the initiative for it. So I think it can be something positive. We've had residents come to us wanting to be able to plant more native plants in our yard, and we didn't have anyone to accommodate that person. So I personally think that they're on the right track if this council is interested in having something formal brought forward to a job. Yes, Ms. Sanders. So are the plans purchased by the residents or is there grant money?

Well, there's no plans today. Well, plans today would be for residents to purchase the plants. If the program could, in some cities and counties, have a cost share, if you wanted to put in a 500-square-foot named garden, then the city could opt. And I did talk to Dawn and we know that the River Advisory Council, they grant municipalities. And so it's like, my only concern is I'm writing the grant. I need to do a share for two years and here's the money. But that is.

Yes, Mr. Saad.

you're saying that people have come to the city to like say they're running into like a limitation is it because they're trying to put it in the front yard what is the like what barrier are they running into that's even more time because like zoning wise is that we're like we're running into like enforcement actions it's like i said if it's visible someone's front yard that's what we're talking about and that would like mostly be what would be curved by somewhere like this

you know so we would be crazy guys we need to be prescriptive about it yeah because right now there's no rules and it does leave the problem code enforcement kind of all have it all cut down i know it's because it gets really upset other residents happy because they call them in i need to go request to take them out um

So I'm just going to say people are seeking an underlying allowing by doing this. Yeah, and I think one of the cases that maybe Bob's referring to is, you know, I would see major grads going out on that call and the president saying, well, these are making plans. And then city works with them, well, I need you to sign up for this program. So if you're not in the program, then I think, I believe at this point, our discussion here will be more responsive earlier. So Mr. Timmons. So, I like throwing setbacks in there because of the visibility, especially around corners and some of the narrow alleyways. My concern is that we set the guidelines. They might be ignored. They might be not strictly adhered to. Then we come back later and ask them to move it or we cut it. Keep the power to get that done. I'm trying to avoid that.

I think

I mean, I'm not going to speak to Chris now, but I think we have an openness that we can go this out of the way. And that's like, I know you do a couple of these programs too, where you can have the phone holders submit a site, right? You can have them. And there's just a lot of different ways. So you can post a photo to our, you know, and show us where you're going to put the plans. And like I said, I think those that take a handful of steps to participate in the program

can't promise to all be good stewards but i think that's part of it is having that commitment to you know inciting all sharing i like chris has used the phrase finding a way to yes i feel like this is an example of the city trying to do that for those in the community that really do want to do it that way in their home property anything further it sounds like of this idea that staff can operationalize it. All right, other ideas from the council?

I'll take it. Oh, you can go with Bill. So the email I sent you, the three ideas are very connected. And the end result is, We need commercial in neighborhoods. And commercial can be a number of things. It can be grocery stores. It can be restaurants. It can be barbershops. It can be, gosh, any number of things. Imagine what used to be a confectionary. And it's no secret that I'm not a big fan of exclusionary zoning. And what we're seeing here is the result of exclusionary zoning. one type of business. I'm sorry, one type of building in single family residential. It was heard that, and we fixed this a few years ago, that there is a gas station 100 feet from me that is a house. It is zoned as a house because it used to be a gas station, but it's in a single family. I'm not advocating for gas stations in here, but we have buildings that have a purpose built. We recently said, hey, There was a duplex once before. We should allow it to always be a duplex. It doesn't default to single family. And I feel that way as well for some of these purpose-built buildings. But the bigger discussion is, do we want commercial bars, restaurants, all sorts of different things in neighborhoods? The benefits of this are, a lot of us here want walkable neighborhoods. If there's nothing to walk to, people don't walk. When people walk in neighborhoods, through parks, through stores, through restaurants, crime actually goes down. There are plenty of studies. Yards get taken care of. People take care of their houses. A lot of the degradation of neighborhoods is as a result of the fact that we go from our garage to work, to the grocery store. We never interact with others. And so I'm advocating that we find a way to restore what Moline once had. And here's some proposals. The obvious one is neighborhood corner stores, which I've kind of talked about in length. I'm happy to show you a Google Drive folder I have of all of the old neighborhood stores that used to be in Moline. Most of the buildings are still there, but they are now just... apartments or houses. There's a few that have turned into an upholstery shop or something like that. But for the most part, they've been converted into residential, and that's fine. But we need residential. But the point is, these things used to exist. It's a part of the fabric of mold. And so that's one idea. The other idea is a little bit more conventional, but it has been done before, which is called an accessible mold. just like an accessory dwelling unit, build a separate accessory building on your property, which you're allowed to do now and store things in.

But I'm advocating that why don't we allow you to sell things?

Set up a business on your property if you want. Imagine when I lived overseas, it was very common to have a front porch store. where you could sell things from your front porch, live in the back. It's probably not going to be a super popular thing that people will want to do, but I'm saying that we should allow for it, determine if there's a demand. And then, of course, I kind of want to stop there before we go to number three, because it's separate.

Yeah, I was thinking fast, fast goes to mind. I live there, a whole lot of floors. I'm sorry. So in some ways, we already allow it, I have a sense that some of these two are probably zoning, like in our comprehensive plan update, that can come back then. Because they're so unique and have repercussions or consequence, right, that the conversation through the comprehensive plan is probably where I see this coming back.

Right.

Alvaro, what was that? Was that in Carmody's jewelry? There's a building that was a store and it was a single family.

But because it was vacant over a year, they basically lost the ability to be grandfathered in. And the floor is in the neighborhood. It's a second work.

You see these buildings just about everywhere. My only thing is the reality of the Walmarts, the corridors. that exists, the shopping centers, and also online shopping and DoorDash. I love going to Mr. Fresh. Those are great. But I just think the market probably dictates this. We can go ahead.

And maybe not just the market, but the neighborhood, right? In your ward, you have these examples. And Jessica's or Hannah's, not going to be the same kind of situation.

But there is one related thing with these growing ordinances that also have to do with selling that maybe Mr. McVice could update us on at this time because it's similar.

But because it's more ag-related to land versus a building, it could be dealt with not in the comprehensive plan, but separate.

If I could discuss the market.

Okay.

And I might not, you might be right, 100%. But what I can tell you is that these stores have gone away because of zoning and ordinances, as well as marketplaces. Targets in Walmarts and Venture, the Ben Franklin's and the mom and pop shops. We also said, you can't come back in our zoning code. The exceptions are

I would add, not everywhere, not just in Moline, but whether it's African, Indian, or the Mexican stores that are going around.

A lot of people, because I don't know that we have a dessert or any food deserts here in Moline, but a lot of times people oversee those stores because they're ethnic.

Some people, that's like Julasco or whatever.

and they're a little more expensive. But we still have more than what people really think. We're not as used to it.

I would just argue if we are discussing market forces, we need to take our hand off the scale and allow the market to do what it's going to do. Because right now, we have just completely prevented these kinds of businesses.

I think I would be in favor of partially remove that.

I'm not sure I want to open it up and say, like, it's my right. I, and whether that's a restriction on the type of business you could put on your residential property, because I could solve that if it's, you know, preventing those

business titles that we think get more disruptive, or whether it's saying we can do it in some zones and not others. As we go to multiple, hopefully, multiple residential zoning types, I think that allows us to say where it works in a certain neighborhood versus where it doesn't. So there's opportunities there. I'm not opposed to the ideas. I hear what you're saying. and my feeling is that cities grow and change and adapt based on the needs of people and when we saran wrap it we prevent growth and a lot of times what zoning code becomes is that that taxidermy form of preservation where this works and we're just going to keep it like it is and we don't allow for that natural growth to happen to find out how things are going to be and think that Wildwood is going to have a grocery store open up inside. But if they want to, who am I to stop?

As that conversation continues, I would want Mr. Farr's economic lens on it. I would like to see an entrepreneur who's actually wanting this to happen because we knew about EDUs. We knew people wanted EDUs. Do we know that people want this kind of opportunity in the same way.

I know that about a year ago, Jennifer said that they regularly, CED regularly gets requests about opening businesses in neighborhoods. And she told me daily, I don't know if that's accurate. She's right there. I was looking over here for you. Jennifer, is this something that happens?

We do it occasionally, definitely not daily.

There is interest.

Do you want to compliment this with a

discussion because we did have this talk about this was a couple pictures because melania came out for this like we had a great compound meeting this this week with the consultant where these very things were discussed kind of like how keep in mind at the end of this you're going to get it you're going to get a plan that recommends certain neighborhoods for certain uses right at certain levels so we're talking about businesses and neighborhoods we're not going to get a plan that says zone all your you know, zone to these particular zoning districts. Secondly, that's going to be future land use. It's going to be talking about these things, identifying neighborhoods where these would work, where the gaps, right? So we are talking about that. I think we have a good discussion on it. But as far as the garden concept, I keep wanting to call it like urban gardening or residents. It's not bad, right? We're really talking about people being able to garden where they live, which is already allowed in the code. Cultivation is allowed now. What we identify as we get into it is there's a 20% limit. So you can only like 20% of your lives for gardening. I think that's probably something that we've got to look at.

May or may disagree with this, but it doesn't allow it in like the required front yard.

And so that's something that you look up to be like, if we start to allow people to sell, you know, that's not allowed. We know that's not allowed right now, but if we did start to allow people to say, grow their own food and sell it in a residential area, what are the limits that we want to put on that?

And that's where, right.

And so we did have some people in the K, Hey, I'd love to be able to sell right out of my front yard and have like a, um, you know, I want a refrigerator in my front yard. Right. So like we have to sort that out of zoning and kind of come back to the recommendation. But one thing I would say is talk to Lincoln, Nebraska, they have what's called a conditional use for this. So that means just like we today to use, it's very similar to how we today to use. It's like, check these off and you can go do it. Um, They don't have anybody come back to them and tell them if they did it or not. I think that's something we have to use was like, come to us, tell us about it so we can know where they are and the programs that you have there. There's a few things Lincoln didn't, like they didn't require a soil test. I think with our industrial history, we should require some kind of soil test and we should work with our partners to try and support the cost of it. And yeah, anyway, the main thing we would need is to change the code to allow the sales component area. That's something that we're going to have a memo on.

Yeah, at the end of this week. And that is brought to us this concern by the only president who owns her house and has a business. It's cottage industry and business based on, right? And and also some nonprofit partners that have community gardens, right? And they see the hunger data. They see the people that they're addressing. They're addressing access and affordability. And so it's all about entrepreneurship. It's all wrapped up together. I'm looking forward to your memo. Now you all know that that's coming and it's complementary to what you're talking about. So in some ways, maybe we try this as a separate thing because we know it's going to impact right away in a growing season. And then we get to the bigger, you know, another step.

Sorry, we will be proposing some barriers, right? And I would just ask you to kind of like, we'll have that discussion about what's appropriate, right? So we may have some things on there that you want to take some barriers off. We may have some that you want to add back in. So that'll be coming and we look forward to the discussion.

And I think that this kind of dovetails into the next conversation, which is municipal grocery stores. The basic idea is we notice that there are food deserts or there are neighborhoods that don't have access to food. And I'm not even gonna say fresh food or healthy food because I'm just saying food. I did attend the webinar this morning And it was the same woman that we met in D.C., Andrea Bautista. But we heard from cities, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta, that have started municipal groceries. And these are much larger cities, and I understand that. It came about because they first approached all of the local grocers and said, hey, we'll give you a building will give you land no property tax we're going to subsidize all your losses for five years and they all said no because they are more concerned about big profit margins than smaller which is the same reason people build in iowa not illinois until rivers edge but um so but they ended up putting out an rfp and they found partners that were willing to do this so it became a quasi private public partnership. And part of the deal was they did remove all property taxes from the lots because it is a public. And so there's a lot of conversations that have to happen about supply chain and how to make more affordable so that food can be lower price for the neighborhoods that definitely need it. Which is why I'm thinking there is a component where we can partner with local growers to sell food at like a farmer's market, but more, you know, established, you know, and then there's always the safety. Right. Great. Exactly. More brick and mortar. There is a, there's a market up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It's a tradition, but it's basically the acknowledgement that when, the private market fails to step forward and fix a need, then it is, I feel, the city government obligation to do something about that. And I think about my own neighborhood, a number of apartment buildings, and not a lot of food options nearby, affordable food options. We used to have an Aldi now, it's a dispensary. So they have to walk the high B, which is a bottom mile. That's quite the third. I think the intersection way out there. Sure, there's a Walmart kind of close, but there's no sidewalks. And so a lot of the places where we have the most density has the least amount of food. You think about all of downtown. I mean, there's Central Store. And so we can think about these areas that might have heat maps for food deserts in the city. It's just the idea that the city either directly runs it or we put out an RFQ and we find a partner that's going to run it with assistance with parameters.

Yeah, there are things that are happening at Tapestry Farms, things that are happening at Palomares. There's a number of groups we could partner with. I personally need an economic lens shared with me on the the benefits and detractions for both a municipal grocery store and some sort of co-op. Because I don't know if, Milena, if you were able to hear the conversation from the woman that represented the Kresge Foundation at our fellowship, but she brought up that part of Detroit's turnaround but it was due to a lot of this city planning and design work that they did, and one of the things that they sponsored was a Black woman-owned cooperative grocery store, right? And they did that because they went to the Whole Foods and different grocery stores and said, we need you in this neighborhood, and they wouldn't build there, right? And so then they asked the people in the neighborhood, what would you buy if there was a grocery store here? And so then that co-op specializes in what those people will eat, and they're doing great. They're still in existence. So I hear what you're saying. I did find a post today from the organization No Labels. It doesn't say that it's nonpartisan. It doesn't say that it's bipartisan. But they were not supportive of municipal grocery stores, and they had a couple different reasons why i want to digest that a little bit more but just in terms of reading a naysayer right to balance it with the pro municipal grocery stores but i i personally want to understand what could a co-op thing get us because that is something that i've thought about for a portion of the just city project on the pin button stand um versus municipal grocery but and i think

ranch property yeah all all those streets all those houses on that fifth avenue down there they're all multi-unit every single house it is a highly dense area with a lot of people with lesbians that are not going to track up to ivl or they're right there and so like there are there's I would, again, caution us to, as we digest and think about this and hopefully read some of these links, we shouldn't be motivated by profit as much as service. How much profit does the swimming pool bring or the library or the roads? If we are filling a need that the private market refuses to, then obviously we don't want to lose making neighborhoods better and more resilient. So I think that's really important. On this panel today, they all want to be self-sustaining. I think that is a good goal. But they gave it five or six years because there is a long runway for people to start changing habits and adapting. We need to change that. If this is something that we're interested in.

Yeah, just to mention the cooperative grocery stores. They're basically just like credit unions. You get your board of directors, you get your brother, and they're volunteering and they choose. But there is an element that you gotta have some financing to get a building, fix it up. And you also gotta hire somebody who knows how to basically run the grocery store and then staff. So it's a business, it's an enterprise, but then the profits get pumped back into it. And it's home by the people in the neighborhood. So in my opinion, that's what you want because or it's a financial investor, but we can certainly, I think, facilitate and help with that, too. So, again, they're cooperatives, just like in my industry, and I do have a contact with somebody at the National Cooperative Bank that basically works with the investment interest. I can facilitate a call.

And then, you know, there are state funds. I don't know if that program is still there. It was largely geared towards co-ops. And they did open a store in Cairo, I believe. Cairo. Sorry.

We don't pronounce things.

I'm from Milan.

Cairo.

Okay, so further discussion. I'm hearing the council say they're curious about some information. Added to the long list of things that we asked you guys to look into.

Anything else?

I've got one that I think is an old one that has gone, I'm not sure where it falls on an ordinance standpoint, but it's kind of, it's gone on and off. I think it might be time to revisit to see what the next steps may be. And that's thinking back around our objective of a one-stop shop and making it easier for people coming in, I mean, developers and big businesses as well as just the average I just with now that we have moved everything and we have the software solutions. I'd be curious at us taking that look and see are there changes we need to make? Can you down that path of making it easier or solidifying the process standpoint?

Or is the website meant to do a lot of pulling it together or not?

I mean, the website is constantly being reviewed now as opposed to that.

information there is up to date. It's useful and it's easier to access.

So that project is done, but it's always being reviewed, right? The one stock shop just got opened. The software system just went in place after a year of development. We don't even have the data yet to know how many online applications that we've been, you know, monthly.

I think one of the things we're doing just so you know is like we're now testing the system. We just put like, as we told you on paper, like how this works and looking at some ways to do it differently as far as development. So I should build a review process and maybe with all of them.

I think that is a little bit more of an update.

It is happening because it's a development process. I mean, yeah, Deborah is working with David right now to test like is everybody is the system working? No, and it may be the night to bring it up.

No, it's good, though.

It's good to, you know, remind her that that's what I'm looking for.

Thank you. Anything? Yes, I see your hand, and we're about to move to public comment, so you can come up to the podium and share your name, and you have three minutes. That's the rules for public comment.

Sorry, I don't have a big fancy PowerPoint joke. I'll pass this around so we can take a look at it.

Your name, sir?

Name is Dwayne Blank. I am a 52-year resident of the city of Lille. I live in Houston. Started out as Melvin in Lille. Lille Park First Edition that now, that warped in 1960, that warped into April in South Edition in August of 63, which consisted on 47 lots, 47-month development on 47th Street between 46th Avenue, the north, and 49th Avenue on the south. And why I would like to talk to you is about the resident across the street from me having his concrete poured in and dug out and poured in next to the driveway in his front yard. I saw this going on on Thursday. Thursday, May 14th, and I called down, talked to a, somebody down in, and apparently, Sean Foley came and asked, he said that they would need a variance because of a zoning issue, right? And that I was thanking him for doing that because they were going to move on there all the way because

pretty much think that once it put golf carts on, but at least neighborhood is trying to kind of turn into a golf cart sort of area.

But what would happen if you decided to use it for recreational use? Well, in the original covenants for the property, it states that No building or construction of any kind exclusive to the firm sidewalks, driveways, and fences shall be built or erected on any part of the lot, both subdivisions, whether it be the building line and the street. Now, those are covenances. I know they're not enforced by the city. But, you know, when he said that it might have something to do with medium to variance to get it done, well, I thought maybe it might not happen. On Sunday, I sent an email that Saturday morning on the 13th, about 10 minutes ago, and two individuals came out with motorized carts, wheelbarrows, and a cement truck and started pouring cement. I didn't know that anything had changed because I had not been notified of any request for a variance change. Now, yesterday I got a call from this person, Mr. Foley's boss, saying that he had been in touch with the property and that he felt that the way Mr. Foley interpreted it was not correct and that it would not stand up person wanted to take a word about it and all i said was is that if something needs to be more clarified in the ordinance of whatever it is clear that about what can be done thank you

I'm so sorry, and that would just have to be equitable with everyone's public comment, but for sure, your issue could be referring to Mr. Mathias and Mr. Atkins, our legal counsel, so they could get in touch with you.

Well, I just thought I'd come out and say something about it, you know, because, you know, the part being this, you know, there's a motorhome park, but, you know, do you want to have that thing talking about having two yards and two

Thank you very much. We'll make sure, our staff will make sure they talk to you. Thank you.

Yeah. Any further public comment in the audience? Yeah.

Chris, do you want to?

Well, I have time.

Oh, okay. Got you. Miscellaneous business. I have nothing.

Where are we, Mr. Silas? I have nothing. Thank you. Not this evening.

Yeah, just a quick thing. I'm going to send you out to save the day.

We have scheduled a volunteer appreciation picnic. It's going to be at the library garden again on September 19th.

So I'll send you guys out information on that. Yeah, it's two hours. Too early? We're flyers at CED. I believe next week is CED. And I think there is a bunch of events.

They just posted them on their Facebook page. Any other staff? Your office is almost ready, I see. Oh, finance will be in. This week?

Yes.

full-time, no turning back, Monday, Monday, Wednesday. Got it.

All right. There's no objection. Session signed. And motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn.

And second.

Second.

And Schmidt. I'm in. I'm in.