Town Council - Regular Meeting

at the northwest corner of Parkside Road and West Hovey. And I'm required to ask that three times. Final ask, is there anyone here wishing to speak pertaining to the amendment to the annexation agreement regarding the property at the northwest corner of Parkside Road and West Hovey? Motion for adjournment, please. So moved.

Second. Please call the roll.

Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mayor Kuz?

Aye. Public hearing is adjourned, and we will start in about one minute on the regular meeting. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have no public comment at the beginning of the meeting. We do have two public commenters at the end of the meeting. So we move to the omnibus agenda items that will be taken with a single vote unless a council member would like to pull an item for discussion. And seeing no request, motion for approval, please.

So moved.

Second. Thank you. Items on this agenda are approval of the minutes of the regular council meeting of June 1st, 2026. a report to receive and file town of normal expenditures for payment as of June 10th, 2026, and a resolution to accept bids and award a contract to George Gildner Incorporated for the West College Avenue parking deck surface lot expansion project, and that's in the amount of $322,822.45. Please call the roll. Mr. Preston? Aye. Mr. Byers? Aye. Mr. Roberge? Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mayor Coos?

Aye. Those items are approved. We move to general orders. And the first issue on general orders is a resolution conditionally approving the Church of Christ subdivision by expedited process. And that's at 405 West Northtown Road. Move for approval. Second. Second. Discussion on this item. Please call the roll.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mayor Kuz?

Aye. That resolution is approved. Item 8 is on the same property, an ordinance conditionally vacating easements on Lot 30 and 31 of the 19th addition to the North Town subdivision, having to do with 405 West North Town Road and 2028 Eagle Road. Move for approval. Thank you. So we have a motion and a second. Was that you, Scott? Yeah. Thank you. Discussion on this item? Please call the roll.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mayor Kuz?

Aye. That item is approved. Item 9, same property. Ordinance of rezoning property in the town of Normal at 405 West North Town.

Move approval.

Second. Thank you.

Discussion? Please call the roll.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mayor Kuz?

Aye. That ordinance is approved. Item 10 is an ordinance amending various sections of the town normal zoning code having to do with battery energy storage systems.

Move for approval. Second.

Second. Discussion on this item? Ms. Smith?

I just raised the issue in an email earlier to staff asking whether or not there was any anticipation of tax revenue from storage development such as this. And if I could ask Ms. Reese to provide an answer.

Well, we are just unable to calculate that. We don't believe there's anything directly associated with potentially income tax for staff that support the use of that. There will be some maintenance costs potentially, but we just have no way of determining that.

Thank you.

Further on this item? Please call the roll.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers?

Abstain.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Mayor Coos? Aye. That ordinance is approved. Item 11 is a resolution approving an Amendment 1 to the annexation agreement regarding the 72-acre property at the northwest corner of Parkside Road and West Hovey, referred to as the Infinity Point subdivision.

Move approval. Second.

Second. Discussion on this item? I think it's a pretty straightforward request and a small change. So we'll move forward on that. Please call the roll.

Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mayor Coos? Aye.

Fine. That resolution is approved. Same property resolution conditionally approving the final plot of the infinity point subdivisions lot 28 and 29. Move for approval. Second. Discussion? Please call the roll.

Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mayor Kuz? Aye.

Aye. That resolution is approved. We have two items of new business tonight. The first is a resolution waiving the formal bidding process and authorizing the purchase of the flock drone as first responder system from flock safety in the amount of $50,000. Move for approval. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. And we have Ms. Reese.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I will ask Chief Petrilli and Detective Cleveland to come forward. Chief Petrilli and Detective Cleveland are going to share some information about this particular action item. The packet contained about 30 pages of materials associated with this action item. This is something that's budgeted, and we believe it was – It is going to be enhancing our service from the normal police department in terms of public safety services to our residents. And I think now's a great opportunity for chief and detective to explain what the value is of this system and what we're asking of council this evening, which pertains to basically a first pilot year of a drone as a first responder program. So, chief?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Houston. I appreciate the opportunity to come in and speak to everyone today. First off, introducing Detective John Cleveland. He's a 24-year veteran of our department and serves in our technology services and investigations unit. And John, if approved tonight, will be appointed by me as the program coordinator for this program. So John's here to kind of speak to some of the technical aspects if there's some questions that I can't answer. I don't want to be redundant, too redundant with what's actually in the council action report. I do want to say that this is an idea, an internal staff retreat. We had started having these discussions back in 2024. We decided to move forward with requesting this technology in our 2025 kind of budget prep for this year. So the funds were allocated and approved in the budget process last year and then became effective April 1st, obviously, of 2026 to move forward with the program. In the meantime, staff, myself included, has attended a lot of extensive training. I've attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police Technology Conference. John has attended and attained many of the trainings that go along with getting our FAA waivers for this type of program. So we've been doing a lot of work as staff in the background, not only with research, but as training, getting paperwork in order so that when we are ready to move forward with this program and bring it to council, that we are in a good spot to do so. So kind of an overview of the program. The way that this was kind of told to me, and this is oversimplification, but I think it kind of hits it right on the spot. The point of the DFR is get there, get there fast, and see things, right? And the whole point of that when we're looking at, number one, response times. We expect, you know, improved response times with the drone as first responder program. It allows us to see under the FLOC 911 software, we get to see calls coming in live in 911. and making a decision, the remote pilot in charge, which would be kind of John's position, is making that decision as the call's coming in. Hey, is this call applicable? Is this something that we want to deploy a drone on? So we're no longer having to wait for a dispatcher to take the information, get it entered into a computer, and then actually dispatching officers over the radio. There's a time component to that. In this scenario, we could recognize a call that would be applicable to the drone, and we can get it moving in that direction very quickly. Those response times apply not just to police, but I see this as a public safety initiative that we can use for police, fire, and disaster operations. Unfortunately, we've had too many of those here lately. A lot of storms and things that we've had in my time here, we've seen it all, right? Train derailments we've had we've had large pop-up gatherings. We've had large accident scenes. We've had large crime scenes These are a lot of some of the bigger ticket items that obviously a drone would be used for but when we talk about the types of calls that these drones would be utilized for I Think it's good to say when we're managing an active scene so I'll give you an example of that if we got a dispatch to a stolen bicycle report with no suspect There's not necessarily an urgency to get there quick on a report like that. That's not a call we're going to send a drone to. Now, if we got another call that we had an active burglary in progress where maybe we had a suspect on scene that was breaking into a car, you know, had committed an armed robbery at a business, something like that, absolutely. That's an active scene that we can now get there faster and start seeing things, right? And when I say seeing things, that allows us to start allocating resources from a public safety perspective. It allows advanced response times. allocating those resources effectively and one of the most important parts is that the officer safety you know depend upon what type of call it is firefighter safety officer safety in the way in which we approach these different scenes and we and we allocate resources to deal with what the problem that may exist so Outside of that, I've kind of already mentioned the applicability to disaster areas, large traffic accident scenes, you name it. Any large scene that we need to manage, a lot of times an aerial perspective is going to be better. We want to get there fast and we want to see things and be able to direct people to where they need to go. You also look at it from a force multiplier kind of positioning where there will be several calls if all the collaboration I've done with my peers and positions like mine across the country, we're going to start seeing calls where we can send a drone there and clear out a call without actually having to send a human being there, right, where we have maybe a call that comes in. For whatever reason, we dispatch a drone there and see that that call is something that we can clear out without actually having to send a police officer there. So there could be instances of that where we get kind of a force multiplication as it relates to staffing from that platform. Also, with the fact that we are already flock safety customers, we've been utilizing the ALPR technology and their operating system for over four years. This integrates seamlessly with that operating system and just allows us to continue to move forward with efficient public safety technologies that integrate with one another. So those are just some kind of high-level things. I also want to mention, too, The auditing piece and the state laws that go with this, like any technology that we adopt, the absolute privacy of our citizens is at the forefront, and the accountability and auditing piece for the folks that are using that technology. There are transparency portals built into this, where the community's gonna be able to see the flight paths of the drones, the type of calls that they're going on. We have internal auditing mechanisms to make sure the technology is being used properly like we do currently with all of our technologies. And then the state has good laws as it relates to the Freedom from Drone Surveillance Act and then the Drones First Responder Act that really kind of dial in on what we can do from a data retention to some of the requirements that are incumbent on us when using that technology. That's kind of just an overview of where this gets us. I think we're going to be one of the first departments downstate to take on this technology if approved tonight. I think it puts us on the cutting edge of technology and helps us deliver public safety services more effectively. And that's what my job is. That's what I've been tasked to do. And I think this is a good step in that direction.

I'm going to start with a question. I know we're in a pretty active fly wave with the airline traffic. Does that hinder or cause more issues for flying drones over this community?

It would. Traditionally, we've already been able to speak with FAA, including the Tower of Bloomington Regional, and we've got everything already squared away with respect to our certificate waiver, which allows us to fly in these areas. We're going to have a maximum ceiling of 200 feet, so we're not going to really interfere given our Location with the airport with it only being the Far East side We're not going to be encumbered in any of the landing patterns or anything like that and one thing we will monitor closely and we've already spoken with Carl Broman security and their their safety staff there about any incoming Life flight helicopter. So we'll be monitoring that we have that capability of seeing that real-time Miss Smith

Thank you for those clarifications you provided. When you're talking about the transparency portal, can you be more specific into if a member of the public wishes to locate that, what are the specific steps? Are they going to the town of Normal website? Does Normal Police have their own website? How does that work?

Yeah, so if approved, it would be very similar to the links that we have for our ALPR transparency portal.

Obviously the town the bigger town website houses the police department's website and those links would be available within there and and then when you're talking about Sharing information is it only the flight paths because I could see instances where if the drone is is sent in response to a 911 call and for an accident and you need to balance the HIPAA privacy of an individual that might be injured, and I know they oftentimes don't release the names until family has been notified. So what specifically can be shared in that portal?

Well, I know that they'll be heavily redacted as far as the actual exact addresses. It's probably going to be very similar to – our crime log portal that we have now up on our website that kind of shows, you can go in and look at our daily log of the types of incidents that we're responding to. This one's just going to be more specific to the actual incidents that we're utilizing the drone with. And there would be redaction of any type of video, any names, anything that would be, like you said, that would fall into that privacy area, that would be redacted and not available on that.

Yeah.

So the purpose of the drone is to provide a more rapid response to give more information to the first responders that are answering that call, not necessarily any documentation of any kind, but just to assist with the response itself.

So yes, when the drone is on the scene, it's going to be recording. It's equipped with cameras, and that's, so when we look at the data that may be collected on that, the interesting thing with the drone, when you launch the drone, I've seen some concerns, and this is a good place to address those, right, that the drone is not necessarily filming things that are happening in close proximity to the ground. So you're not going to be able to, the drone, when it takes off, it has the horizons. And it's in its view so when it when it launches it's looking ahead at the horizon It's not necessarily looking down until it gets to about point one miles from where the incident location is so if we had a Major accident at college and vets as it gets about point one miles from there The camera is going to start to adjust the pilot can then dial in on on the exact area that they need to gather that aerial footage from and then as far as data retention on that goes we would keep that information that recording for 30 days if it was not part of a criminal proceeding or any other type of you know and anything that had to do a criminal Nexus it would be automatically deleted so that's kind of how the retention happens on those two if it's if it's in relation to a crime we're going to keep it as evidence if it's not it's going to be deleted

So the 30 days is standard, but as with other pieces of information that the police department generates, if it's related to a case that may go to trial, that has to be preserved then.

As evidence, yes.

Yes. And then I think most of the comments that I've been seeing people writing about are concerned about privacy, but I don't think that that is pointing at normal police department but concerns more with the parent company flock. Can you address some of the ways in which normal PD works to ensure that the data we generate through their system we retain control over?

Yeah, absolutely. And a good example of that would be the ALPR technology that we've been utilizing now for the last four years. Within that, we have internal controls on who can view that data, how that's audited. We do random audits every month that we have supervisors pulling people that have used the data, used the system to ensure that the integrity of the data is being used appropriately and by policy. We also went through an exercise with the state that maybe even Jason can speak to a little bit where last year we voluntarily entered into an audit with the state of Illinois to look at our usage of ALPR technology. And they went back, I believe, to the beginning of that and found absolutely no issues with the way that our system has been used. There had been no issues that came about of that audit. So we're always transparent with how we're using the system and we've got internal controls built to have accountability and transparency and to be able to make corrections if it's used inappropriately, we're gonna address that as well. And as far as the vendor goes, I can speak to that as well, that we've had a good relationship with Flock. I know that it's no secret that there's some people out there that are not big Flock fans, I get that. is that real is it perceived i don't know but my experience here locally with our vendor has has been a good experience they're they're responsive they're accountable and you know even with the state laws that we have um our our access to that technology i can say has been used appropriately um and any times that we found that you know a search or something may have occurred um that maybe didn't have the right criteria or something like that, we address that immediately and we make the correction, which is usually a training correction with the officer on how they're actually entering information. So I hope that answers your questions. We've got internal and external controls, and I think that we utilize those to ensure that there's accountability within the use.

That audit that was conducted, was that something that will be on an ongoing basis? Will it be scheduled? What are the thoughts of pursuing that on some kind of a regular schedule?

Jason I kind of defer to you on that if that's okay on how that all came sure yeah, so last fall the Illinois Secretary of State conducted audits of users of the flock system statewide And so they requested some information from normal and they had a pretty extensive look-back period of I think that audit itself was triggered by some of the headlines that the flock was in the news for last summer. And so I don't think that will be an ongoing recurring audit from the state. But nonetheless, as Chief Picholi said, the outcome of that audit was that the Secretary of State found no concerns with our data handling processes and how we've handled it so far.

Okay, so just to be clear, our state auditor was the one initiated and on its own the Norman Police Department carried through and did a more intensive audit of its own systems. Is that accurate?

We willingly gave them information for them to conduct their audit, but then internally we do audits every month on our own employees, and that's something that we've done since the onset of this technology when we took it on.

And the amount of the contract that we're looking at is covering the equipment and the training and the software, and that's for the one year?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, so you're only asking for this for one year with one drone?

So we approached this as a pilot program, was how we wanted to go in this. I want to see the ROI. I want to see proof of concept, right, on any technology, if it's not. I don't want to get into a long-term contract with technology if it's not effective. So I think this is a good opportunity to get into this space, see kind of what that ROI is, how often we use it, and what the benefits, what the positives, negatives, all those things that we do to evaluate new technology. And then that kind of gives us an ability to evaluate and then decide what we want to do moving forward. The way that this is set up right now, If approved tonight, we then get to jump into the planning process with FLOC and look at mapping and some other things that go into how we set this program up. Right now, they've got one drone quoted in that quote. They may be able to add a second drone for coverage and mapping issues at the same, it would be at the same price of that, but we haven't been able to get as detailed. We've got about a four to six week build out if this is approved tonight, and a lot of those logistics will be figured out in the next four to six weeks if approved.

And the success and the information from this, will that be shared with the fire department? And you're tied into the 911 call so that you're made aware of this at the same time an emergency call is made?

So I'll be getting monthly reports from my program coordinator as it relates to the DFR program. That'll be information that I'll be seeing monthly, if not daily, when we first started to see the efficacy of the program and how it's progressing.

Thank you very much. Mr. Roberge. Thank you very much.

So a lot of the concerns we've been seeing are about data security. And in particular, my concerns are how that data is managed once it's collected. So in that light, for any data that is collected, how is that actually stored? Is that a server that is owned by a town of normal that's stored internally? Or is it a cloud-based system that we manage? Or is there a third party that manages that information?

Now, are we talking about recordings that would be held, are we talking about the drone specifically? Yes. Okay.

Well, and Flockmore in general, rather.

you want to take yes specifically to the drone itself what we're going to do in the measures that have already been set in place or integrated into evidence.com which is a cloud-based secure server that we use for all of our body warm cameras our squad car cameras interviews everything that there's an api that's going to be able to connect directly from flock so we can transfer the evidence right into evidence.com so it's not going to sit on any servers once the drone docks itself presuming it doesn't have to go back out immediately. It's going to offload anything that's recorded. And the data retention is very specific and very manageable with that. So we can set up automatic policies in that information to be able to make sure if that video that was collected on this date isn't earmarked as evidence in another investigation or for a specific purpose, then it's automatically going to be deleted from the system and deleted from the cloud just without any involvement whatsoever.

Who actually has access to that system? Is it only normal PD that can access anything that we have, or are there any other parties that would have access to that information?

So Evidence.com is maintained by the Axon Corporation. However, everything is siloed. It's just a cloud-based server. So everything that is normal PD specific will sit under normal PD.

And with that, too, I'll just add that evidence.com is what we use now for all evidence that we have, all digital evidence from our body cams, our in-car cameras, our evidence rooms. That is our housing. That is our warehousing area. Evidence.com is where everything goes.

So just for general education, under what circumstance would any evidence that you collect be used by another law enforcement entity?

So the only time that would happen is if there was a request by another law enforcement entity. We get those periodically. I'll have maybe other municipalities, state, county, federal, whatever it may be that may request body camera footage for official law enforcement purposes, and all those go through the chief of police on a case-by-case basis. So there's opportunities that I have that I may share body cam video. A perfect example, I got a request from, the state-wide terrorism intelligence center on a stop that some officers had had that had a nexus to that. They made a legitimate request for that. I reviewed it, I vetted it, and then I approved it. So that system would be the same system that we have all. Thank you.

Mr. Preston. Thanks. I have a question. I appreciate privacy being a topic of my prior colleagues over there, but I have a question switching gears from privacy on this. So walking through the logistics and how it relates to response times. So if a call comes in, it would be appropriate for a drone to be a first responder, too. The drone is sent presumably from NPD headquarters or somewhere would be sent to a location is a physical officer Also dispatched like in route just not getting there obviously as quick as the drone or they're gonna be scenarios where a drone goes out Takes time to get there you guys analyze what's going on and then send an officer thereafter Thus, you know providing extended timeline before anybody a physical officer is responding to a situation. I

I think you can see both of those scenarios happen, but the one I think that you're going to see more prevalent, some of the data that I had pulled just looking at arriving on scene first, 78% of the time in the majority of these programs that are out there now, the drone is getting there before an actual physical officer will. And that's where I think some of the advantages come in for officer safety, resource allocation, approaches, different routes, all the different safety things that can come in. There's so many different calls that we could go through on the advantages of this. But to answer your question, yes, I would say about 70% of the time or more, you're going to see a drone on scene before you do a physical officer. And then we'll allocate the type of response that we need from that point.

And you had mentioned once or twice a collaboration with a broader public safety lens. Is there any formal plan to utilize the drone program with fire as well?

Absolutely. I had talked at one of our public safety meetings. The city manager, myself, and Chief Humer discussed this technology. That's the intention, if this technology is approved, to make it a public safety initiative towards benefiting police fire and disaster operations.

Okay.

All right. Thanks.

Robert? Please call the roll.

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge? Aye.

Aye.

Miss Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mayor Coos?

Aye. That resolution is approved. We have a resolution in support of the Illinois America 250, 250th anniversary commemoration.

Move approval.

Second. Discussion? That's pretty straightforward on this one, I think.

Please. Just to clarify, the night for the joint Bloomington and Normal drone event, Exhibition is that July 1 or 2nd?

I think I saw one date in the paper and then the drone show not related to drones as first responders that we just talked about but the drone show for entertainment value for the America 250 celebration is scheduled for Thursday July 2nd at Interstate Center and Each community is still going to have their fireworks displays on the 4th.

Correct. Okay Oh

Mr. Byers?

Aye.

Mr. Roberge?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mayor Kuz?

Aye. That resolution is approved. We have two public commenters tonight. The first is Ed Finney. Mr. Finney, are you in the audience? Then we'll move to our second commenter, Ron Ulmer.

Thank you for allowing me to address the council. I live at 1114 North Linden Street on the section of Linden that recently was repaved very nicely and had lots of lines put on it for bicycle and parking lanes. A few bicyclists rode on Linden Street in that area before the new bicycle lanes and the road reconstruction because the trail is a half block to the west. Well, after the bicycle lanes were put in, the same number of bicycles, very, very few, ride on Linden Street because, one, they're intelligent and avoid heavily traveled traffic street. Two, because the trail is much safer and connects with the trail system. However, the narrowing of the Linden Street driving lanes to one lane in each direction has caused the addition of the mostly unused bike lanes and parking lanes has created dangerous behaviors. Speeding vehicles now frequently pass moving vehicles or turning vehicles in the bicycle lanes or by, one day, a couple cars whipped by me over the double yellow line. Although I was traveling at 30 miles an hour last week, a car scared the blank out of me by speeding on the right, driving through the newly painted lanes, i.e. the bicycle and parking lanes. Additionally, the narrowed lanes also cause the through traffic to slow or stop for turning vehicles, thereby increasing congestion and pollution or illegally passing on the right. So if somebody's going to turn left, cars pass them on the right through an intersection like at Lincoln Street. Terribly safe, right? Not. The town should... totally failed to consider human behavior of one not using the bicycle lanes because the bicycle trays so nearby that was crazy and The bicyclists prefer the safety and aesthetics and appreciate the trail being nearby. The new parking and bike lanes have greatly made North Linden Street much less safe and added to vehicle congestion and pollution because cars are idling, waiting for cars to turn left into drives or right onto streets and into drives or slowing for those reasons. So I think the removal of the bicycle lanes would be a great thing Because they're not used and they've caused a lot of danger and people prefer the trail Thank you Before taking a motion for adjournment concerns Yeah, I just want to follow up on the public commenters remarks a second ago and I

Asked staff didn't have to be right now but asked staff to provide some kind of update into the Thinking because as I was as he was speaking and I was thinking about the stretch of Linden that was being referenced Both to the south I believe as far north as about Willow and then again once you reach Shelbourne Linden on both stretches is to or Fort Lane I guess I believe it's four lane in both directions. Anyway, and there's a stretch in between that is not, and so per the commenter's concerns about safety in that stretch, I would ask staff if we could get kind of a background as to why the decision was made to put the bike lanes and the parking in that stretch, and maybe if there have been safety concerns as documented, you know, with hard numbers that would be interesting to know and revisit if that still makes the most sense or, you know, converting that stretch into four lanes is a conversation worth having. Thanks. Ms. Smith?

I just wanted to say a loud thank you to all of the volunteers and all of the town staff who worked to make our Special Olympic athletes welcome. as they participated this weekend. Fortunately, we had good weather so that even the outside events were able to go forward. And if you were up here Saturday night, they were partying hard. So it was a wonderful experience and I really, am so appreciative of the welcome these athletes received. And shout out to the pantograph for putting the power lifting on the front page. Motion for adjournment.

Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Roberge. Go ahead.

Is that right? Thank you, Bear. Just wanted to, and you kind of reminded me of this, thank everybody who participated in the centennial celebration for Route 66. Heard nothing but good feedback on that. I know a lot of people had fun for the events that weren't rained out. So just wanted to give a thank you for everybody who organized that and made that happen.

Now I'll take a motion for adjournment.

Second.

Second. Please call the roll.

Mr. Robers?

Aye.

Ms. Smith? Aye. Mr. Preston?

Aye.

Mr. Byers? Aye. Mayor Koos?

Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.