Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

We are all here. Call this meeting to order. I will do the roll call, I guess, since we don't have a secretary yet. Greening?

Not here.

Carrico? Here. Arthur? Watson? Mendte? Here. Duttlinger? Here. Peters? Here. Partridge?

Here.

Zabso? Here. And I am here, Vidigar. Okay, let's stand and say a pledge. 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. All right, any comments on the agenda items only? Hearing none our first item tonight is the election of a secretary for this group so we have been asked by Commissioner Cullinan that we assign a secretary to take the minutes of our meetings who wants to volunteer somebody want to make a motion somebody want to make a motion to nominate somebody I nominate Angie we need a second second all right all right hearing no other nominations all those in favor all right let's let's do a roll call I guess greening oh I'm sorry Carrico Dellinger Partridge Alright our next item up is the KEI proposal is are there folks from the KEI that would like to step up to the microphone and kind of walk us through what you've been proposing here

Good evening. My name is Mike Honecke with Noble Surf Enterprises. I've been with the company about three and a half years. I'm the Senior Vice President of the Energy Division. Long story short, is in charge of the operations of building solar fields. I have a lot of work in the Illinois area, and we obviously will need that. So Mike Honecke, Senior Vice President of the Energy Division for Conomal Storm Enterprises. So what that means is the entire Energy Division, right around 380 folks, roll up to me. We have a ton of work down in Illinois, solar construction fields, all the ground-mounted solar fields you see on the rural areas. The things we're building, we're a full EPC contractor, so a general contractor for the fields. A while back, we obviously bought the facility over on Lewis Avenue. The reason we're here tonight is we are looking to make a training facility out of that facility. What we're really looking for is to differentiate from other training facilities that currently exist in the state. I can answer those questions if anybody has them. I won't get too far down into the Climate Equitable Jobs Act and all the funding apparatus and all of Illinois' adjustable block program. There's a whole bunch of stuff we could unravel there, if you have questions, I can certainly address those, but long story short is we have found a gap in training that currently exists, partnering with Evolve, who we have a rep here, Jacqueline McLaughlin here tonight with us, that can answer some questions on that partnership and what they're bringing to the table as far as recruitment of folks that go through the program and that, but what we're really aiming to do is a unique training facility that really doesn't exist right now and that is a residential style four days per week in person training folks to be working out on these solar fields there's a ton of jobs right now i'm sure many of you have heard of the just gigantic gap in skilled craft labor that exists not just in solar construction but in all all the trades so what we're trying to do is bring a training facility to our building that is training folks to get into solar construction, which is drastically undermanned right now. The things that differentiate what we're doing versus what is out there One is industrial solar versus residential solar. So there's many of these training programs that already exist, but they are focused heavily, heavily on residential solar. We are going to have, our proposal includes a ground mount solar facility. It would not be interconnected to anything. It would just be a training facility. So there'd be posts in the ground. We'd build racking, put modules, do electrical work, take it all down at the end of the cohort. So that would be a huge differentiator for us is actually training folks, not just on, The nuts and bolts construction, but having big enough of a training facility that can actually teach folks how to run crews efficiently, how to build teams, how to phase work. So that would be a big differentiator. Then the other one is the residential piece of that and bringing folks from different backgrounds together. mimicking a site. Most of these jobs are traveling. You're gone. So the majority of our guys, we probably have about 75% of them are regional travelers, so many from the state of Illinois that It's obviously a big state, so they're not home every night. They're three, four hours away from home, getting home on the weekends. So that residential facility, similar thing, where they're away from home three, four nights a week, it's similar to what they would be experiencing when they're on a solar site. They're away from home, they're with folks from different walks of life. That is what we're aiming to do here. Yeah, that's kind of the synopsis of it.

okay so just to kind of give you an in the in the public here an idea of what is being proposed you're suggesting an amendment change to the land development code to allow boarding houses in an m1 limited manufacturing district by special use permit and then if that's granted then you're going to ask for the special use permit to allow the boarding house correct Can you talk a little bit more on the members, the training, application process, the screening process, who you envision those candidates being?

So hi, my name is Jacqueline McLaughlin. I'm the executive director of Evolve Foundation. We're a workforce development organization. We already run cohorts. We don't run them in the residential style. Like Mike said, there's a big gap there. But we have a very strenuous referral and recruitment process. So initially, someone has to be referred through a community-based organization. So a church, a community college organization, a nonprofit, they initially are referred. They go through just an initial screening process, essentially making sure that we have no pending cases, we have no sort of things that would prevent individuals from being part of something like this, that the schedule would work, et cetera. Then they start going through an interview process. So the initial interview process is a single individual. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's the program director. They'll go through an initial interview process. We'll go through a TABE test, which is the adult basic education test to ensure we're at ninth grade math and reading level so that the academic rigor doesn't put people off. We'll go through sort of barrier mitigation. So sometimes people from very rural areas don't have transportation. or there's a custody arrangement that needs to be worked out, or there's a million different things that prevent people from being successful in skilled trades. So we try to work those out preliminarily. Then they'll go to a panel interview. So the panel interview is myself, two other individuals. So they pass that interview. If they've gone through all of those processes, we'll start a real onboarding process. Back to road checks. Background checks do not limit individuals from coming through. So some individuals do have backgrounds. I just want to give a quick understanding of what an EEP is. So an equity eligible person, as defined by CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which is the law of the land here, is a person who's either been to prison or jail, been through foster care, been through a workforce development program like ours, or lives in a very specific zip code. So for example, Nick here is an EEP. Nick lives in that specific zip code that registered him as an EEP, essentially. So it's not the entirety of people have a background or the entirety of people have been through foster care, the entirety of people are from poverty. There's a very mixed diversity of backgrounds. but a background check isn't going to eliminate someone. It's just why we have that super rigorous process when we bring people in. Secondarily, individuals are not, just to be clear, People are not coming here to live long-term or live for the full 10-week program. People are shuttled in Monday morning. This is the idea. We'll be shuttled in Monday morning. We'll have a very rigorous schedule from physical training at 6.30 in the morning to meals, to their labs, to their... Most people have been through pretty rigorous programming before they get to us. We are not a first-stop shop for people coming home. A lot of people have been through pre-construction training, another type of pre-apprenticeship. We are like a secondary... So they would be at the facility until Thursday evening, at which point they're shuttled back, if they're not local. We've also already worked out a letter of intent with Illinois Valley Community College to recruit from the community college, plan to talk to different churches, different community-based organizations here, as we want a variety of backgrounds and a variety of geographic locations. So we would very much prefer to have several candidates and several referrals from right here in the area, along with southern Illinois, different spots. We've had people from as far as Michigan, and of course there's lots of folks in the Chicagoland area that would participate as well. It isn't a single swath of individuals though, and our process over the course of four years has been developed, is pretty rigorous. We have trained over 100 people, we've had a less than 1% recidivism rate. So people don't just come out and commit crimes, just to be very clear, that's a much lower rate, crime rate, than the general public has. The general public has a much higher crime rate than 1%. Our individuals are much, much less likely to reoffend because they have intense structure built around them. And we are very, very intentional about who we bring in, who they're paired with, what the mentorship program looks like, et cetera. So I know that there are some ideas that there's just... folks that are going to be bused in straight from jail or something and then live here for the, that is not the case. We have lots of folks from lots of different backgrounds and have, you know, just a rigorous process pretty much from start to finish. But just to be clear about the residential piece, it's not that folks are moving here for 10 weeks or staying here and, you know, then are moving back or moving permanently. There will be, in addition to

We'll save the public questions comments until they're done and then we'll turn it over the public for their comments and then we'll give them a chance to kind of cross cross-examine okay I mean it's up to you guys as far as what you want to propose

So what Evolve Foundation does, just to be clear, is provide very intensive wraparound support as well as life skills development. So what we see is for underemployed individuals, and that's for basically across the board, like Mike said, there's huge gaps in skilled trade work. It's not necessarily the technical training that makes people leave the job. You can teach people how to swing a hammer. It is having to navigate your life to be prepared for a utility-scale solar job. So like Mike said, a lot of people are gone five days, home for two. You have to navigate your budget. You have to navigate your family, your time, your additional life stuff that you have to do. And those are really difficult things, and one thing could derail you pretty easily. So we are the support system that essentially is working with people from that initial referral mitigating barriers, supporting people when they come through, and then we do very intensive life skills every day. So that's interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, budgeting, digital literacy, financial literacy. We do some like working with AI and working with new technologies. But we provide just essentially very intensive, this is how you have to, we try to teach people how to live so that they can work effectively in long-term careers. Some people need more help than others. So that's the support we provide while at the same time, KE is providing the technical training, the actual solar training, NAPCEP certification, it's the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners. and you know your standard like OSHA and CCR basic instruction training so both of those things together happen would be happening at that same facility and then we are what is your success rate of this or similar programs Sure, so our program has an 89% graduation rate and a 65% retention rate. So almost everybody that comes through actually get the job, but our 65% retention rate is almost double the industry average for people who are just coming off of, you know, into new construction jobs. Really, it's around 40% for people who are just coming straight off of, you know, work into skilled trades, especially for these utility-scale clean energy jobs. They're very hard jobs, and people need that additional... work to lead up to them basically um yes so um sorry it's nerve wreck stand up here okay um so we we provide a year of support post-graduation so post-graduation we're immediately going to start doing placement sometimes it's with ke sometimes it's with the unions my husband is an ibw union electrician I love the union. It's changed our entire life. A lot of our individuals want to go through the union pathway. This is not either a non-union pathway or a union pathway. A pre-apprenticeship is required for both. So if individuals want to move into the IBEW, we have contacts at the Joliet local. We have contacts at the Chicago locals working towards the path to get people into those jobs. KE has a ton of opportunities, obviously. There's about 300,000 jobs. There's about a 300,000 person deficit between now and 2030 of how many solar installers we actually need, which is what the impetus behind CEJA was. There's large pools of untapped talent for these jobs. These jobs are not getting filled because they're very difficult, so CEJA was the impetus to try to bring more pools of untapped talent into the work, basically. We provide the 12 month of alumni support in terms of you know emergency funding say you get the job the first day you're driving there the radiator blows you call us we would be able to fix that make sure we're getting in touch with your foreman and letting them know listen this is a real thing the car really did break down so we provide that additional sort of I guess what's the word legitimacy or sort of you know foundational support for people who might just be poor and can't get that car fixed before they get that first paycheck there's also We supported people through lots of different solar and clean energy jobs, including industrial wind, but there are a ton of skilled trades that have available positions as well. Laborers, pipefitters, carpenters, all of these both union and non-union pathways are open and hiring just because of the major workforce attrition and the fact that the last boomers are supposed to retire about 2033. So there's a big gap already we're trying to preload.

You mentioned that you could potentially solicit or have people accepted into this that are local I noticed like out on the interstate you have you know hiring now and you've got information out there so if somebody local is interested in this and they come to apply to you you also mentioned they have to be kind of referred by a community-based organization

so do you after somebody's applied or or sought interest do you point them in a certain direction um if they're not with a cbo already um you know a lot of people are members of churches or they're just members of you know they've been with the boy scouts or they've been we do that so we have a a an initial layer of foundation that this person is safe they're able to go through and complete a program they're responsible they're showing up they're you know so they've already sort of met those metrics first absolutely if somebody's coming from you know the community and it's like look I don't have a CBO or a church or something that's referring to me that doesn't you know we want to take those things on a case-by-case basis for sure it doesn't mean that somebody is just how okay go ahead correct yes We're designing, yeah, exactly. That's a gap that CJ was trying to fill. Obviously, there's lots of dollars. The idea of this project is already supported through the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, financially supported, just to try to uplift. And actually, the Department of Human Services came to look at the facility as well today. So there's definitely interest in... but that does not mean every person has to be an EEP, and certainly open to the general public who wants to have more support getting into a skilled trade like this.

How do the churches and community-based groups know about this?

We do a lot of outreach. So we have done a lot of outreach in southern Illinois, some in more northern Illinois, some closer to Wisconsin, some in Michigan, some in the Chicagoland area. obviously we've worked with folks from, you know, Carrie Fogan from the WOIA, so we can get on the approved trainers list, and that's where a lot of people find pre-apprenticeship programs. It's just the workforce, I'm sure you guys all know, but the workforce innovation opportunity area, they are the ones that, them and the Department of Labor designate whether a facility is a registered pre-apprenticeship program. So once that designation is applied, if all of these things go through, A lot of individuals find us through that. Otherwise, we will do direct outreach.

I would go to a church during sanctuary hours, or I would go to a community-based organization or a Boys and Girls Club.

We already, like I said, have a letter of intent with the Illinois Valley Community College. I've already been there and spoken with people in their workforce development arm. And it's really a matter of how much sort of energy we can put into the outreach in the locale. Okay.

How many individuals are going to be in each training session?

20. Yep. If we have women, fingers crossed, we can really do up to, like, 25. But hopefully the dorm area will be separate, so we keep that area separate. But 20 is about the cap. For an intensive program like this, that's about as many folks as you want to be able to do.

It's a 10-week program. Yes, sir. I read. So after 10 weeks, do you bring in another group, or is that it for the year?

No, we are hoping to have four cohorts a year. So there would be a group of 20, a small sort of gap, and then another group of 20. We will have an on-site residential director who will be there 24 hours a day. Part of that scheduling is to give that residential director a little bit of a break and time off before they come back to the facility.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

The residential director will be trained in the proper security protocols but yes individuals are free to leave however they have pretty rigorous schedules and you know we are shuttling folks in so

There's not a ton of opportunity to move around, but your schedule's pretty blocked from 6.30 in the morning until about 7 o'clock at night, and by the end of that, you're pretty tired. But this is not a secure facility. There most certainly will be people here who have never had any contact with law enforcement whatsoever, so we don't want to try to recreate a correctional facility or do anything like that in this state.

So all the work is on-site. It said something in here about meals will be catered in or prepared on-site and provided on-site to these individuals.

Yes. And as we do now in the facility, obviously utilizing local businesses for those meals and for catering and things like that, we're not positive how the meal stuff is going to work but so far everyone has been extremely intentional about you know we're catering from here we're not doing the Jimmy John's we're getting local businesses we're making sure we have you know that we are being good are there any other questions from the Commission before I will open it up to the public comment I have a question when you said that you installed these like the programs to learn how to install these solar

How many panels would that be when it is up?

So typically you're going to see about 2,200, generally about 2,000, about 2,200 modules per megawatt DC of solar. So what we're mimicking, again, it's not going to be a functional site. It's not going to be connected to the grid or anything. But about one megawatt of solar, which is roughly what we could fit over there, typically that's about four to five acres of land, can fit about 2,000 modules.

and then they get taken down at the end. That's part of this program, is learning how to decommission?

No, we just have to deconstruct it so the next group can build it.

Okay, and then so does that include the post too?

The post would stay in the ground. The post would stay in the ground. So we would really just be describing to them up front what happens up to the point that they're starting to build, so we're not going to be pulling posts and redriving them. The post would always be in the ground. You can see racking modules go up over the course of a week, week and a half. Then ultimately, students would also take it down, but it's not really part of the training. We just have to take it down for the next folks.

Okay. And my other question, since she mentioned the union. So at the end of this program, I would assume that it's ideal that they would be hired on and stay employed with KEU. Is that the main objective, or is it just simply to get them this training? And I kind of think you mentioned if they are interested in pursuing a union or that, you'll support that?

Yeah, so that's something I want to touch on anyway. As you can tell from what Jacqueline is saying, she's got a ton of experience with this. This isn't an accidental partnership. I've been involved with numerous training organizations, kind of seen the gamut of them, called numbers that are listed on a website that have long since training organizations that have been defunct. I've seen what bad looks like. Evolve and KE partnership is not accidental in any way, shape or form. I first met Jacqueline October of 2023. They are an organization that is doing things the right way, that is providing continuous support for folks that are truly helping over hurdles. The reason KE is involved in this is simply because I have seen it done very poorly and I want to see it done correctly. So will they have an opportunity to work for us? Absolutely. We've hired many, many equity-eligible persons. Concern about them being in the community, all that. I can hold my phone right now. Every single one has my phone number. I have zero concerns whether they're out working on our sites right now. Zero concerns with the folks that are coming through. They are heavily, heavily, heavily vetted. They are here for a reason. They're trying to make a career out of it. But are they all going to be our employees? Some absolutely will be because we're already employing a lot of people and we're continuing to grow and there's a lot of construction to be had in the state. But they are free to apply anywhere, get any job. But they're still going to get the same support from Evolve regardless of where they're placed.

How did we come to the boarding system?

that's probably a Jim question good point Jim I'll probably turn it over to you before I want to say that the yeah sorry I want to say that the

It's a much more high-level theoretical thing, but giving people opportunities and giving them a chance, real viable chances, is the number one thing that prevents further crime. That's how it is. If we are worried about the backgrounds of individuals who are coming through here, the largest driver of all crime, violent and nonviolent, is poverty. It is a lack of opportunity and resources.

The individuals coming through our program have realized whatever they were doing before is actually not the way.

They've put in tons of time, often years of effort, to bring themselves into this space, and we are not a halfway house, we're not pulling people directly from prison or jail. My husband has a felony conviction from his youth. He's also an extremely successful IBW commercial inside Lineman, who supports his family and his two kids, and has not done anything wrong since then. I feel very personally close to this, obviously, but I think that there's an idea that all people who have ever been through the system are the same. And there's people very, very high up in our national government who have felony convictions that people are still very much supporting. We have to be clear about people not being the worst thing that they've ever done. They aren't. Or the worst thing that they've ever been accused and convicted of. That's my final thought.

You know what, I do have one. What do they get a certificate at the end of this? Is that right, Lindsay? Yes. And that's with what, the national?

The national, I'm sorry, North American Certified Board of Energy Practitioners. It's the sort of standard for solar.

Okay. In reading the information forward, I read that if the program ends, that you will turn the facility into a warehouse, possibly, or some other structure.

Yeah, I did want to touch on that a little bit. I'm sure Jim will get into this, but the first thing that we proposed was just not possible. So we have a big facility already, and we had a top floor that was unused. So my original thought was to literally wall that off, just put up basically a boarding-style house, a hostel, whatever you want to look at it as, in that top floor that's empty. That just wasn't possible with how it was zoned. So the boarding house idea, separate structure, was a result of that, and yes, the, and I believe. So if you look at that, if you look at kind of that design layout, the idea is you are building a big shed shell, and then within that you are lining it with rooms that can easily be taken out, and you still have that big shed shell with some tall doors that bucket trucks and those types of things can get into. The last thing I wanted to say just on the population again is we have a guy, won't use his name, call him Joe. Joe has never been in trouble his entire life. Joe went through three or four foster care homes. The day he turned 18, they put all his stuff in a plastic bag and said good luck. He's struggled for many years of his life dealing with a lot of that stuff. Came to work for us. came through a program, came to work for us. We hired him on. Still had issues. He had a complex about him. Left because he just couldn't figure out how to work with other people. Tried to go through some other programs. Not going to get into that too much, but basically car repossessed, bottom of the bottom, nowhere to go. I met with him for lunch. He's back working with us. He's seeking mental health treatment now to deal with the trauma from his past. And he is supporting the children he has. He's making well over six figures a year with his job. It's not just a halfway house. It's not this, that, or the other. Joe's never been in trouble his entire life. He is scared to death. of being in trouble because he knows what that role means. So it's not just one type of person that's coming through this program. There are people who literally just, in a game of life, got dealt a very bad hand that this program also benefits. So again, as Jacqueline stated, it's an array of people who are coming through. And again, I can show you my phone with... numerous numbers in there these are not people that i i work with them out on site i coach them out on site it's not people that i am nervous to be around in any way shape or form all right uh jim you want to come up as an advisor here

So several months ago, Lindsay approached the city with information on what they wanted to do, and I was given the task of trying to figure out if zoning allowed it. And what I found was that the housing part of this wasn't allowed. Something couldn't happen. So we met with them, discussed that, and we came up with an idea that we really don't have in our ordinance where boarding houses go. So essentially what they're doing is a boarding house. And we would make this a, with the text minutes you're gonna consider, we'd make this a special use inside M1 District. So somebody could come back and do one of these out behind GTI and Speedway and all that. So that's a possibility.

It by special use. I mean, they'd still have to come in and get approved to do it. It just wouldn't open up the floodgates for any board.

And then the other thing was in their packet was they showed that they would have these solar panels in an area that is north of their driveway and west of Lewis. and east of IAEA, well east of IAEA. They would need to come back. If you approve this. they would need to come back and get a special use approved for their solar field, in my opinion. Because if it looks like a duck or walks like a duck, it's a duck, whether it's connected to the grid or not. It's a solar field. It's a special use that would have to be approved by the Planning Commission and Council. They would also need to come back to this group for a site plan, showing where this residential would be at and how they would get from the residents to the building. One of the things I'd like the board to consider tonight is some direction to them as far as parking goes. They've talked about they'll shove them in and if somebody were to show up in their own car, they could park. I think anybody spending six, ten weeks, after a few weeks, they're like, no, I want my own car. I want to be able to get out and go and get a different type of meal type of thing. So I think there needs to be some parking that, whether we do require the full parking that the boarding house would require or residential would require, lodging, that would be one parking space. So their floor plan includes places for the...

where would they eat at in the main building where they eat in their residence yep the idea is that they'll eat in the main residence uh first are in our main office building they'll share their meals together but then they'll see on the boarding house design plan that there's a common room space too there'll be a small kitchenette if they want to eat a meal or have snacks a coffee cup, but that is mainly just a space for them in the evening so that they can study. They don't have to be in shut, I mean, you can see their rooms are not very large, so more of a communal space for them to be together in the evenings or studying groups. That'll be a big part. There's a very heavy curriculum with this program too, so it's not just about the technical stuff in the field, but also understanding building code for the solar field as well, so.

So maybe back to this group for site plan review and for special use for solar array. And then Burton, the building inspector, and I would look at the actual building plans themselves. And we have to live up to our building plans. Some of the things we haven't talked about is something like this, you would have to provide ADA compliant areas. So are any of your students going to need that? Or how would we address it?

I don't think physical disability is

Yeah, yeah, sprinkler systems, Jim come to mind. We've talked about that.

Suites like that would probably require some system.

so a lot of what you're saying is a lot of the detail work we're tonight if anything we're making a motion on approving the concept of this and then by no means are we just like okay go for it and Build what you want.

My recommendation would be that you folks tonight make some sort of recommendation to them about things like parking and ask how they get to the residence to the building. Would they be transported by the bus from the residence to the building or would they walk? So you have to come up with some path that would be acceptable. Because what it is in here in February, right? But the night is not very nice. Yeah.

Right.

It's usually continual as long as they continue to use it. If they didn't use it for a period of six months, it evaporates, and they don't have the special use permit anymore. So if this facility closed down and it wasn't used as a boarding house for six months, somebody else wouldn't be able to come in and use it as a boarding house. They'd have to go through the whole process all over again.

My question is, if somebody else came to us and said, hey, we've got a boarding house and we want it, I think it would be, and we can make the special use permit particular to this venture. Any questions? Well, kind of.

I guess, so I did a lot of research on this. And so in the land development code, we make comments about like the adult cannabis use. It says it doesn't apply to vocational centers. Why can't we classify this as a vocational center with temporary housing or something?

It's a temporary housing. It's housing on site.

So it has to be board- It has to be a boarding house university or something like that correct so this would be i think it acts as more of a boarding house than i i would think it's acting more as a boarding house than a vocational center vocational center doesn't have housing necessarily well like the laborers and stuff they have on-site housing available um down south and is it mount uh sterling they have that huge done like don't know how many acres but they allow and it's a vocational center so I just feel like first of all I'm a huge advocate for workforce development and skilled trades and stuff and so there are a lot of skilled trades that do have on-site housing it's not necessarily in our immediate area I just felt like the boarding house seemed a little because this is obviously a city thing like a land development code what we're doing tonight is we need to update that so that is just how i felt and it doesn't match the restrictions that are noted in the land use development code that refer to um vocational centers and hold on i had this all highlighted and i made a mess

So it also says that business support service does allow a special use.

And in the business support service definition, that one says that, oh, trade schools, sorry, that was the other term. Yeah, and so our definition does say it includes business or trade schools. So that's just where I'm coming from. If we have to make this update.

The housing is the problem, Angie.

Right, but again, it doesn't match where we use the restrictions. other parts of the land use so that's why I'm saying if we already say like the adult use cannabis it doesn't what I'm saying is where you say it restricts it like a cannabis manufacturer cannot go near a trade school or vocational center but we don't actually have those two terms defined is what I'm saying.

I would say so and vocational schools may be defined in that in the ordinance that approved that cannabis facility because I'm sure those are probably talked about in there I guess I'm just OCD like why would we not match

those two things and then in when they come back with their request for this boarding and overnight accommodations that would be like our special use approval for them specifically so it's you know what I'm saying no sorry so the land development code has to be changed it has to be amended Correct.

That's why we're here.

To allow for this facility and that zoning district.

Allow overnight accommodations for their M1. Right. Right. So that's why I'm saying, like, why, you know what, it's okay. Boarding house is fine.

What do you want to call it? We can change it to.

I just don't understand why there's not the consistency. That's what I'm saying. Right here.

Is there a definition of boarding house, Jim, in the code? No.

No. so like when we say like adult use cannabis they can't put those facilities close to a learning center vocational or trade centers so if that's in the land development code as a plate like saying you can't put those next to them why can't this update we make use that terminology then when they come back with their special use request it would be with overnight accommodations

Where in that do you find that trade schools and vocational schools necessarily include overnight accommodations?

They do. They can. And also.

They can in an area where somebody has changed their language to include that language.

That's what we're doing.

and I came up with boarding house. Do you want to call it a trade school and then change the text to say that housing is allowed in trade schools?

And if we had to do that, then I think we would have to have the M1 use for to allow a vocational school in an M1 zone.

So that then falls under the business part that says they can apply for a special use permit.

In an M1?

Yes. In the business service part. So that's what I mean. Like, then it would qualify. Business support service.

Right.

It says M1. They're allowed special use permit.

So I would consider something like a business support service to be a repair shop. Okay. Or it could be manufactured someplace at a plant next door.

guess I'm still a little confused the primary use of this building is to reside in you're not doing the training right so so the building use is to just live it so like a dorm right okay so then The entire facility is acting as training grounds.

I understand, but I thought that this is due to the program as well. So that's okay. Maybe we can follow up with another meeting because I do think that we should review this because if you look at our definitions, I feel that they could have applied for this as they wanted to in their existing building is what I'm getting at. without having to build a separate building so we should really try to it sucks that it takes things like this that bring it to our attention and we find these things in researching but we should no when this originally started with you guys that was the original process

In the building. In the building. It was building a new structure. It was always building a new structure.

Top level, correct.

I don't recall that at all.

I don't recall that. I thought it was always an external structure. I don't recall us ever talking about that, Mike. Maybe that was your thought, but I don't think we ever discussed it at that meeting.

We did not necessarily discuss it in length at the March 31st meeting when we came down, because at that point we had already been advised that there was no way we were going to be allowed to have residential housing within a building that was zoned on that property because it was manufacturing a warehouse in space.

So, again, we're down to a residence in the M1. Either way So at this point it doesn't matter right like whether they do it in their building where they build the separate structure We're not we're deciding tonight, right? We're just allowing residential on an m1

amending the code to allow residential...

Whether it ends up being inside the building or outside. Correct.

Again, inside the building we have to revisit all the building codes and life safety issues associated with it. So the text change, we need one either way. And the special use, I don't know whether you want to approve that without a specific location and specific residential decision, or whether we address that. I'm not sure how we address that. If we don't do next building, we don't do site planning.

What is the most efficient streamlined way to allow this project to move forward one way or another My thoughts are to probably approve the concept of this boarding house allowed on the M1 by a special use I think maybe waiting for the special use when we see a site plan and we approve the special use based on that site plan I don't know it's it's sounding like we probably need two different meetings Well you know I don't know about that but you know you could approve the text amendment tonight to allow a boarding house and we'll have to define that in an M1 district

There's a second request for the special use permit tonight. The fastest way to get this done is to approve both of those, recommend them to the council, and let the council make a decision at their meeting next week. If you want to change your site plan, because there is a site plan in here, if you want to change the site plan from what you proposed to something else, then we'd have to have another hearing on moving the facility inside, upstairs, or whatever else you want to do. I think that that solves a lot of life safety issues by doing that I guess the site the site plan isn't a visual plan it's just a description is that correct yeah no there was a locating where the building was going to be located there's an exhibit

I know where it's at. I was just trying to make sure.

Would you like to say anything, Brooke?

yeah that makes sense and that's why it's probably best most streamlined processes to

act on both of those push it to the council if they approve it then they can proceed with maybe more detailed site plan based on building permits and providing all the information you need right if if if the if this board doesn't approve it or if the council doesn't approve it then they're not wasting a lot of their resources developing a site plan for something that can be built make sense okay any other questions for jim before i open it up to the public

Jim, are you working for a KE? No, I'm the zoning administrator for the city of Baltimore. You have no affiliation with KE? None at all.

okay thanks Jim all right at this point in time I'll open it up to the public if you guys would walk up to the microphone in a one at a time state your name and then make your comment or question I won't have I don't think I'm gonna have kei like respond right away we're gonna walk through everybody's comments and then we'll have kei respond after everybody's done okay

Dan Fitzgerald, I just had a couple of questions to clarify to make sure I understood. KEI is currently doing this training. Do you currently provide this training, or is this a program that's in development?

Again, we'll have you ask the questions and comment, and then I think it's going to streamline things a little bit. Okay.

I'm not sure that I understand whether they are currently doing this training, and if they are doing it, where are they doing it? Are they doing it here? Is this a program that's being done only, that is only going to be done in Oldsbury? Have you done this in other locations? How is this program financed? Is this a tuition-based thing? Is this something that the CBO refers to you, do they pay? How is this financed? KEI benefit from this, I guess, is the right question. When you say that, I don't want to go too fast here. Who's ever recording the questions for later use? I don't want to go too fast, but.

I am.

Got them. All right. You're on. Okay. If a cohort is 20 to up to 25 people, I notice on your drawing here you have rooms for 32 people. And was there a toilet, a restroom with each unit or between two, shared between two? Shared between two. So this building is gonna be constructed there and will then have toilet facilities or restrooms, 16 restrooms, correct? Yeah, again, no answer to that, sorry. And what is the nature of IVCC's letter of intent? What will the relationship be? What will IVCC be providing to this effort? And I wonder, do you anticipate any other training programs? Is this the only training program? that you anticipate doing there now? And I know you don't know, can't tell the future, but I wonder down the road, will you do other training programs?

Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah, that's fine. Do you mean like other types of skilled trades other than solar installation?

I mean any type of training use. Are you using that? Would that facility be used for anything beyond the currently proposed training program? I missed, and again, this may have been my inability to hear all the conversation here. There are 32 rooms there, a cohort of 20 to 25 people. You mentioned, I thought I heard you mention one support person. How many other people will be staying on site with those 20 to 25 members of the cohort? This is a separate structure. You know, without all these questions, first of all, I should have said at the beginning here, I think this is a wonderful thing to provide, to offer training to people, particularly if you were re-entering the community for incarceration. I think that that's a sorely needed effort and it's a lot of it for KDI to do that, to be participating in that. I do ask, I wonder why, you know, I mean, why is this, you know, obviously you're not drilling it out of altruistic motives, you're a profit driven corporation, so there is obviously an ROI on this thing, that there's some money involved in this, and I'm curious how that benefits you. But then the converse question that I would also ask is, how does this benefit Oldsby? How does it benefit Oldsby, for the city of Oldsby and this community to do this, particularly when training participants are coming from Michigan, Wisconsin, Chicago, Southern Illinois, Iowa, wherever else. Although it has to be done somewhere, I get it. Okay. I'm gonna walk away here before I've covered it all. I believe I understood that you will not necessarily hire these employees. This provides, it expands the employee pool for your business. If you have been doing this training elsewhere, or have been doing it and have been doing it elsewhere, where have people been residing to this point? And then the last thing is just an editorial comment. If we do this, if this were something that we would do, what happens to that building if you no longer train people? You have a residence that has sleeping arrangements for up to 32 people and 16 toilets in it. What do you do with that building? And how long, if this ordinance were amended, our land development code were amended to provide for this. If there were a sunset provision in this to say that this we're going to do this for five years, three years, seven years, what's what's the outside limit to say, Well, if we get into this, and once you make an ordinance change, Going into the future, you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes you make changes and then later you thought, oh, I wish we could have said this. So it might be nice to have an opportunity to go back and make changes to that. We can always make changes to it. But if this were sunsetted, how long of a timeline would you look at?

If that's what we want to do, that's fine. I'm just trying to get out of here as fast as we possibly can. However, that's going to work.

I don't probably have these in the exact order. Jacqueline will hit on some that I don't. Are we currently doing this training? Yes and no. Part of this is that there is no program like it, and that's why this program is coming to fruition. So Jacqueline and Paul, they do life skills. They do mentorship. They already do this type of stuff. They are utilizing other training facilities, most of them in the Chicago area. Englewood Chamber of Commerce 548 Millennium Solar Academy. So that training already exists, but again, it is heavily residential solar. Where there is a huge need for jobs is ultimately in industrial solar. There is no training program right now that I know of in the state of Illinois that is actually training industrial solar. So the... Residential training is happening. We do not do that. Jacqueline is involved with some of those organizations that do the residential training. Evolve does the life skills, that type of training with it. This would be taking our federally recognized solar installer program. It's a labor program. that we have pieces of that. It's federally recognized, federally registered. Then we've overlaid solar curriculum on the top of it. It's completely built out already. We would be the technical trainers. Evolve would be doing the training they're already doing with life skills and those types of things.

Finance.

Yeah.

Some of our seed funding comes from solar developers. It is in their vested interest to expand the labor pool because most of the things that are delaying large-scale industrial solar projects is workforce. Sometimes it's permitting, sometimes it's other things. The vast majority are delayed because there's not enough people to build these projects. So solar developers like cultivate power, generate capital, they will invest sort of upstream in, you know, intensive programs like this the other uh super strong and robust financial support is from the department of commerce and economic opportunity so we you know wrote a grant for this concept received that grant we also have over a million and a half dollars in six grants out right now pending basically to you know support so it's philanthropically supported grant supported as well as corporate support through sort of upscale donor or upstream donors

Where the training has been done and where folks are currently staying. So as I mentioned, there's training programs throughout the state. Most of them are just training. I do not know of any place that is bringing people of different backgrounds together and doing something like this. So they are not staying there and getting there. They're getting there day to day, and that is a barrier for some of the organizations, for some of the training programs, because people don't have transportation. So Chicago's not as big of an issue because of public transportation, but a lot of the training programs that have been out of state have failed. They have not been able to keep people coming to it. People couldn't get to it, especially in some of the more impoverished areas. what happens to the building again that's that's why it's built the way it is it's a big shed with walls and interior to it you tear that all out and it's a giant shed with tall doors you can see it on the on the prints tall doors where you can get bucket trucks and other types of material uh in there that your other excuse me other types of equipment in there so that is that is the purpose of why that was built that way Nobody's really going to believe me, but I have personally invested a ton. I'm getting nothing out of this. I'm getting literally nothing out of being here tonight. I'm getting nothing out of partnering with Evolve. I'm getting nothing going into Chicago.

and you're getting a potential boost to your workforce I mean yeah if we hire people absolutely but I mean Carl has

committed a substantial amount of money to get this up and going. This is not in any way, shape, or form going to pay us back.

Carl is our CEO.

So I guess, yeah, I... How does it not go...

So one of the ways, and this will address the Illinois Valley Community College. So we have talked a lot with workforce development around this area, and what we are finding is a lot of places provide certifications and they don't provide actual pathways. So we believe that this really could be sort of a mecca of a training that brings people, that not just brings people who are actually going through the training, but... is a representative and scalable version of what it can look like when you are pouring into a training facility to the individuals and to the space that they're going to be. That said, financially, we would love to, we already do, but would love to order all our food locally. bring in individuals for different, for maintenance jobs, for custodial jobs, for other jobs that are actually onsite. That big facility there, with the big we're hiring sign, KE is always hiring, but a lot of these jobs are travel jobs. KE is a large scale industrial solar provider, they don't make buttons. And so lots of people who want to apply would not work at that building, but would rather, I just wanna make that clear too. there's absolutely opportunity for local jobs. The other thing which I hope will address the IVCC, IVCC has a really great workforce development program. It often sort of lacks the outlets and the substantial corporate partnerships that allow for people to move straight into pathways. So when we were talking with IVCC, they were essentially like, you know, we build up curriculums based on what individuals want to do. So if we have right next door a training facility that has lots of opportunities for individuals, we will actually structure curriculums based on your prerequisites. If they need math, if they need project management, et cetera, we would build a curriculum around that because their skilled trade workforce is modular. So just creating a pipeline that is reciprocal back and forth if individuals actually Maybe they don't like our training, but they would really like to attend a community college and see that this is a viable option somewhere next door. We would like to have a reciprocal pipeline, essentially. I'm not the business dollars person. I can't give you an estimated amount of how much would flow back into Oglesby, but I do think that a state-of-the-art and innovative thing that we're not doing anywhere else is certainly a boon to the economy as well as the I know no one's going to believe Mike, but as well as the altruism that is really running through KE. I'm going to say this, even though Mike probably doesn't want me to. Mike is a former Marine who has done a ton of work with individuals who have post-traumatic stress disorder. Seen a lot of individuals who would be great in skilled trades, but have trauma, mental health, or other difficulties in their background. And so he started with sort of bringing in veterans and other individuals who were suffering from PTSD, things like that, and working, that's where the altruism sort of developed. And as we look at untapped talent pools, veterans and people coming home absolutely are one, as well as foster care, returning citizens, people from poverty, et cetera. Sorry, that was long-winded.

One question. Why Olsby?

Well, we already had a building here.

Why not somewhere else? Why here?

The facility. We bought the facility. We have the acres around it. We have the warehouse space for the indoor training piece of it. We have a nice spot of land that doesn't have a ton of other use, but that solar training array would be good there because of terrain followers and other type of tracker systems that exist. It already kind of fits perfectly in that corner of the land we have, but the facility is the simple answer. uh one of dan's questions i think you previously answered how many personnel are staying on the site permanent like kind of permanently yeah so what the plan right now would be the residential program manager who is responsible for just kind of the entire functioning of it two additional technical trainers so that residential program manager would really not have responsibility for the technical training two technical trainers that would be full-time and we would have to bring in additional folks for the actual hands-on part of the solar array just to do that safely and then Jacqueline's team would have people in and out that are doing some of that life skills stuff Shared bathrooms and more I guess the question was you know you're saying 20 to 25 there was rooms up to 30 or 32 Yeah, that was simply when we built the shed, we wanted it sizable enough so if the building ever sunsetted, that was actually big enough to store equipment. So that was just the layout. We had extra rooms. It wouldn't really hurt to have them. It was not more complicated than that. The other programs... Nothing formal. I've had conversations with Carl about other stuff. He has kind of a passion for small businesses. Anybody who lives in a small community like this is no stranger to the guy that used to fix the lawnmower, the guy that used to work on small engines. They're disappearing. One of the things that he views as a barrier to that is people just not understanding insurance and different stuff like that. So again, there's nothing concrete about that. There has been other talks about what else could we do out of here, whether it's other trades or potentially more like small business. How do you start your own business type of stuff? There's nothing concrete with that, but there has been other conversations about if we have this facility set up and we're getting good at running this thing, what else can we do?

And I would think from our standpoint on a special use permit, we could make it specific enough where if we needed to re-approve it for another type of use, I already made a note about that.

I'll limit it to this particular customer for this particular specified use and also get a commitment to restore it to a warehouse if this program goes south, which you've pledged to do.

Okay. Mike. I kind of forgot I'm the secretary. So you said in addition to the cohort, it would be two technical trainers full time and how many other additional people on site?

So the residential program manager would be there 100% of the time. Two technical trainers would be kind of sharing the actual technical instruction when I'm saying that. I'm saying specifically the solar. we would have to bring in additional individuals. I would imagine you'd have probably about four to five during the actual hands-on piece of that. So we would be looking to bring KE employees from the field for that week of that hands-on training because you're going to have different stations that are going through different expertise because we have operators, we have... electricians we have the guys who are actually building the solar installers we have medium voltage technicians so that would be kind of shared curriculum so that's the anticipated extra beds extra rooms for them to stay here as well no our folks are folks that are coming in with problems we give them per diem we give them travel stipends i just want to make sure i understand thank you all right we'll invite the next member of the public up

to make a comment. And I have been on the other side of this, and I never really thought about it, but now looking at this as a residence, I wish that, I know that this, that when you have a special use income where you have to send out packets to anyone who is within 100 feet, I believe, of the proposed site. I wish that perhaps when you do look to make changes to land development code that in situations like this where the impact is a little bigger, but obviously there is a field in between my home and the facility that you would expand that notification period, not only to give people a chance to come here and express their concerns, but also to listen to what we've heard tonight and maybe have some of their fears eased because I don't feel like this was publicized very much. I don't remember it being talked about at the council meeting when it was referred here. And so if you were lucky enough to hear about it, it was probably because of gossip. I'm not sure how many people actually get the newspaper anymore. So I just felt like this could be better publicized and give more people an opportunity to listen. Obviously, we have the recording, so that's good. But that's my comment. And then really, Dan and I... Dan, you had a lot of my questions, so I hope I won't repeat them, but I did have some, and maybe some of these things you can't answer, but I know that in other instances, training facilities utilize local motels. I'm wondering if that was an option that you considered, and if you did consider why you decided to go to the expense of building this building. I'm also interested, I think Dan kind of asked about the cost to the persons. Do the participants who come for the training, are they actually paying something? Or is this all being subsidized by, I'm going to assume, the state and taxpayers and other solar companies? And then when you ask for a boarding house, Are you going to expect to abide by all of the zoning rules for that facility, such as the building code and site plan and things like that? And my last question is, I'm wondering how many local residents are actually, like Illinois Valley area, are actually employed at KEI now?

yeah let's just do the back and forth I guess I think that's probably the easiest

why not a local motel?

We actually absolutely discussed this, and honestly, it's a plan B. If this doesn't go through, there are local motels. It's not that we would just stop this training program altogether. We would utilize plan B's probably. The reason that we don't want to do that is because we want to recreate the experience of what it will be like to live out on site, and often what individuals do is share an Airbnb, or they share a short-term rented space, a Vrbo or something, They do that to save money, but also people are learning to commune and live together. They are in a space where they're on a campus-style facility, which takes away a lot of the distractions of being at home, takes away a lot of the sort of individualism that sometimes perpetuates disruptive behavior. It really is trying to train people how to work as a comprehensive team. And we believe that bringing people together in that space with common areas, food, recreation, et cetera, really perpetuates that ideal more than anything. individual hotel rooms that you return to. Oh, individuals do not pay, but this money is already earmarked. So this money is earmarked through CEJA. CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, created a massive pool of funding for exactly this, clean energy jobs because of the just huge gaps in our ability to build these projects. So that money, that CEJA money through the DCEO has already been earmarked for this training and because of that legislation cannot be used for anything else but training. So it's not being reclassified, subsidized by taxpayers in different ways, et cetera. All that money has already been pooled and earmarked and a lot of it comes from like the IRA basically.

As far as the boarding house following building code, yeah, that's the idea. We're going to have to design it. We've been talking with Curtin, but again, we didn't go down putting it fully together into new plans because he needs to actually spend the money to do that.

So yeah, we're going to work with Jim, we're going to work with Curtin, we're going to do

what we need to do to make it up to the building code and i think the last one was how the employees of ke are from the local area so we have eight folks that are already in the elbow beach shop every single day and they're all they're all locals in the area the energy division alone has about 380 folks in my division roughly about 110 of them are illinois residents All right.

So my question is back to the why not use hotels and motels. I've been in a traveling role for work for over 25 years. We're talking about industrial solar installations, which are going to be primarily rural. There tends to be not a lot of Airbnbs and things like that for people to stay in. So you usually stay in cheap hotels. That's usually what you stay in. So if you're trying to simulate what it's like to be in the field, why wouldn't you? Because that would, one, have an economic benefit for the area, and two, it would be closer to real-life situations than what a dorm essentially would be. So why are we even talking about changing our zoning rules when they could just do that option and be done with it? I think making a special case for one company is probably questionable. The other point I'd like to make is I'd like to see who in writing, who the philanthropic donors are to evolve. I didn't know anything about this group until tonight. Okay, well, provide them then. Then the question becomes, and this is probably more a city council question, but the individuals coming, you're butting up to a neighborhood with a lot of children, sexual offenders, are there going to be those in the cohorts? Because you could run into some issues there. Any more questions? Okay.

the answer to your last question is no faculty presenters are not eligible for the program well it's certainly not a halfway house you can go back and forth if you want but it's certainly not a halfway house There's very, very clear definitions of what halfway houses are and clear definitions of what training programs are. Again, this has, we are attempting to recreate yes the experience of living off the site and also a communal campus experience of people who are being able to communicate work on conflict resolution work on you know individualized plans while being in a team and working like really directly to try to facilitate that team experience we find that individuals who are pulled away who are sort of shut off into their their different sections do not participate, engage, and sort of work the program and work the team. When we have to do this in different places where we can't have people living in the facility, we do lots and lots of different sort of team building experiences. Those, you know, it gets to be a lot of expense and it doesn't actually like recreate what it's like to like live and work with people you might be from different backgrounds from.

Also with the boarding house, the transportation is a barrier for a lot of these folks. So getting them there and then not having logistics of every single day running back and forth, they're getting paid to go through the program. They're starting to make money and save money. There's also some barrier mitigation funds at the end of it. So a lot of folks don't have transportation. Some of them actually don't have licenses, they've never driven. That's something that Evolve helps with. We're getting them back to training. They just grew up in downtown Chicago and use public transportation. As far as, again, I'll reiterate, this is not something new for me, new to me. These individuals are not in a jail. Not all of them even have a criminal background. Not all of them have been to jail. There are individuals that go through these programs. They're free to go. They're free individuals. They're not 100% of the time surveillance. So they are free to go. This is a heavily vetted organization that we're working with. It's a heavily vetted workforce. We have these folks currently working on our sites all the time. And yeah, some people stay in hotels. I can tell you a large majority of our crew stay in Airbnbs all throughout the state. They're literally everywhere.

Any other public comment or questions? All right any other questions or comments from the Commission or from KEI any last words or anything

you know, one thing, questions about what's in it for us. One thing, sorry, yeah, my name's Nick Olson, working in pre-construction for Ganey. One of the things Ganey's been doing for quite a while, and Mike will have to fact check me on this, is called Operation Trade Awareness. We've all addressed tonight that the skilled trades is an area that has kind of been stigmatized. There's been a lot of promotion of people going into post-secondary education. And now you're starting to see AI come in and disrupt that workforce. People with graphic design degrees, marketing degrees, communications, things of that nature. Those jobs are starting to disappear because of AI. Skilled trades are not going to have that impact nearly as quickly. And so operation trade awareness is something that KE identified, Carl, who's our president, didn't go to college. And so he came up through the field, and he kind of sees that as a tough road to travel for a lot of people. And so basically what OTA is is starting with kindergarteners going into classrooms, reading books about construction. going back when they're in middle school and working with those kids and maybe giving them a toolbox. Just trying to destigmatize that lifestyle because it's needed. We need those jobs. We need that infrastructure in this country. And then working with high school kids to see if they want to come on board as an intern or explore a job opportunity with KE. There is a clear, obvious benefit to us of helping to improve the candidate pool for the workforce of skilled laborers. But at the same time, it's just facing what we see, which is a shortage. We need people desperately in every different division at the company. So we're hiring, KUA.com. Please, if you know people that are looking for work, We've got a lot of office space in Oglesby as well. And so that's, I think, just the thing I want to add is, you know, it's really just trying to focus on how can we make it mutually beneficial. We're looking for ways to help the workforce, and this is a good opportunity.

Would you consider this an experimental program? I know you've done a lot of training in the past, so it sounds like this individual project you're doing now, would it be considered experimental? Sort of a naive question, but.

Yeah, I mean, I think yes and no. Like you mentioned how there's vocational schools that have places, residences where people can live while they're going through the training. So that's not new. I think it would be new. Illinois has a large incentive for these types of solar projects. They're all over the state. And to have a training facility, I think would be something that would be new. You know, I think we would be the first to really be offering something like that. That's very focused on the type of projects that we build, right? Like there's a lot of residential solar. What we're doing is a little bit more niche. So really helping to be able to train people specifically for that role. Because if you learn how to build solar on a rooftop, it's a little different going out and building it in these community solar gardens.

All right. Any other question? Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? Conversation? Before I guess I at this point in time, we entertain.

I think any one of our concerns, my name is Jim. I live in the neighborhood real close. And my wife and We have friends in the neighborhood that their wives go walking. Mine tends to go early in the morning with our dog. And you even said it yourself, these people are going to be strapped to those places. They don't know where to go.

They have no cars. So they'll be walking through our neighborhood. That's the chance of having them.

I think that's one of the concerns is you're going to have, correct, about 80 people every year. So 80 people that we don't know that could be possible to walk them through because they don't have cars. Like I said, I don't live very far. You know exactly where I live. Don't live very far from your facility. I think it's a concern of everyone's in our neighborhoods. about these strange people being here. We don't want to give them a chance, but it's on ours. It's on our properties. We're taking your chances, hoping things will work out. We hope for you too, but we have some nice hotels in here. I like that idea. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

first commission meeting, right? Here's my thought, right? So it is a new program, right? A new door area. Plan B is for possibly using hotels. I think initially that's probably what they should do and come back with a history of the program being done successfully and then come back and revisit it.

also point out that you know one benefit of the boarding you know facility is that they're they're staying close to where they're doing their training so we're keeping those people we're helping I understand that and you know I'm glad and there wouldn't be in a motel either I mean, I guess it's up to the community whether they want to be good partners with businesses. No, I mean, I think it's just, we're coming here.

This building that is also going up, I mean, a lot of us are in the construction industry, and here, that's the cheapest building that you can possibly throw up to house people. And do we have codes, and do we have, you know, say this doesn't get passed, and especially for...

And that could be put into the use permit. There would still need to be a building permit applied for and approved. So...

yeah we all kind of we have a they still have to follow code of it would be a residential which is part of the reason why we want a boarding house it'd be residential they'd have to follow a residential code and build it according to residential code we don't even know what they're proposing Jim do you have something to say and Luke I if you guys can come up and talk on the microphone this is being recorded so we when you record these meetings you can't hear anybody from the public and so this would be information that you know people that can't be here would be It would be useful.

Yeah, just to respond, I guess, we're not debating the program, right? The training program we can do without any approval with the facility that we already have. We could use motels. We could buy homes in the community if we wanted to to house people, right? So I think this is for efficiency, right? It's setting up people for success. So, you know, that's what we're asking for is something that just makes sense from our perspective running the training program. Sure.

Because it's an industrial area, our thought when we met with them was make it look industrial so that it wouldn't, this residential facility wouldn't stand out as a house in the middle of a M1 district. And that's part of the things we did with our land development code, right? We got rid of the terminal zoning where you could build houses right up against a manufacturing facility. So what they complied with was let's make this look industrial so it looks like it fits in with what's there. And when the use went away, they had an industrial building that they could use for their additional use, material storage, whatever. So that's why it was industrial.

You want to address the code situation maybe, Jim?

So the city has building codes, and they would have to follow the plumbing code and fire protection codes and all those things. They would hire an architect, prepare a set of plans, and we would tell them what the building codes are for our community, and they would provide us with a set of plans that they believed met the code. We would review them, add to them, and send them off to an engineering firm that does mechanical, electrical type of stuff, and we would all get checked and verified as a safe facility. All right.

I'll open it one more time to public comment, I guess, at this point in time. Hearing none, there's a proposal in front of us. Is there a motion anybody wants to put out there?

So they have two requests. One is for amending the code to allow a boarding house type facility in an M1 district. Our code currently does not allow for that by special use permit. and then the second request is if that's granted they want to request that special use permit so they can move forward with their project and start making plans and talking to jim and burton about how this is going to be constructed we've also talked about recommendations

for the group to develop a site plan to come before us. What else was there? I thought you were taking this.

Yeah, limit any special use permit to this particular vendor for this particular type of training facility. So it can't be expanded into something else. And also a firm commitment for them to turn this into a warehouse when the approved use might stop. Okay that's fine so the motion if you want to make it Mark would be to approve or deny the request for the amendment to the code to allow for a boarding house in an M1 district by special use permit and then to approve or deny the request for a special use permit for this facility with those stipulations

I have a comment that I do want to make so it's on the record I think it's unfortunate that applications like this get presented to us and it brings up this type of topic and conversation but there is a clear need for us to visit adding something in the land use development code and where I come from saying that is because We recently updated our comprehensive plan And in that, on chapter 1210, we and Dr. Morris came and gave a lengthy presentation from IVCC that there is a need for housing for the students. And I understand that this is not apples to apples when it comes to a credentialed school, IVCC, and this program. But it does say that not only we want to encourage housing development, but we also want to encourage development of off-campus student housing. so in my opinion we have to address this in general and it yes this specific request has brought it to our attention so that's how i feel because i do think that the college you know they're always looking for the option for housing and stuff so how would we cover that like wouldn't that be the same thing again because of where they're zoned So that's where I'm coming from Correct I know but what I'm saying is I just feel like times have changed since the land development code was done it doesn't include I don't personally like the wording of boarding I'll be the boarding house I'd rather see something like dorm or I don't know Okay, then maybe this is and that's fine, but that's where I'm coming from with this I'm coming from taking in to Consideration our comprehensive plan which is available online. I also brought it with me tonight and just We're not covering those things in our land development code as it stands right now. So good point Ange I'm inclined to make a motion that we don't know how to say this we need to have further discussion to update the land use development code to incorporate this type of thing I don't feel like I want to make a motion towards their special use permit so we have that language identified because we really just don't know how it could fit.

So would your motion be to table this with further, I mean, with no proposal, plan commission to look at the land development code other than what's been published.

We can only take action on these two things tonight. We could table it and publish for a different matter if you wanted to but that's going to have to become clear.

Well I'm only one person on this board. As to what we want to do.

Should we not make this board public aware of them? I agree with that.

I think there should have been a lot more previous notice before this happened.

And having that discussion about the land use development code update would allow that opportunity.

But, again, that's not what's to take action on. You can make a motion to table this.

All right. I will make a motion to table both of their items.

there's a motion is there a second is there any discussion can we

plan to have a meeting like with the intention of us really visiting and is that our thing to visit the land development code or is that the it should come from the council yeah okay so we would have to establish another meeting for us to make that recommendation since it wasn't on tonight's agenda so that that's my discussion pieces that we can plan on having a meeting relatively as soon as we can if that's already been published right yeah so so this has to be published as well

Well, yes, if you want to do a text amendment to change the zoning code or the land development code, we would have to do a publication for that. But we could at least discuss it.

I was thinking it would be a discussion, let the public know.

To figure out what you might want to change so that we can publish and have a meeting to entertain that request.

I mean, I hate to put off and delay people's requests. I really do. But I feel like that's just... And the public came tonight, you know, and I want to be respectful of that. I think they need more time to see what others we need to love them.

Angie, I might suggest that you table this consideration until next week's meeting, where it can be brought up again and discussed without having to republish if... And we can notify the community if more people want to come. And then you could reconsider these requests next week and also discuss if you want to make other changes to the code at some later time. But at least it would keep this door open for next week.

So the publication is still good if we decided to take action next week. Right.

but that would allow more people to come if they want to come because we really couldn't table it until we change the code that will take forever so that's not a service to them I just want to make sure we can change the meeting even though it's been published to include this tabled item

okay that's that's like my updated to allow for more public comment i like the way you phrased it yeah and we'll see if anybody else shows up if not you'll know what they thought okay so again there is a motion there is a second is there any more discussion

We are tabling the proposal that was in front of us until next week at our meeting next week for further discussion and for any other interest from the public.

So for further discussion and any other interest? Yeah.

I don't have the roll call sheet, but I'll try to go by memory. So you just do the roll call for this time, and I'll catch up next meeting.

All right. So the motion second. Everybody's clear on the motion? Okay. Roll call. Carrico. Aye. Duttlinger. Aye. Partridge.

Aye.

Menti. Aye. Peters. Aye. Zanza. Aye. Vidigar. Aye. So the motion passes we will table this until the next week so our meeting which brings me to our next item future meeting is next Wednesday you should have all got received probably not you since you weren't on the email Packets for the vacation of an alley in the block to the west of here And then we will add this on to the agenda as well

Just to provide public updates and heads up on things coming. So Pat mentioned we had the alley vacation coming up next Wednesday. At Tuesday night's council meeting we'll receive two requests. One will be for another text amendment that would allow apartments in the business district toward the rear of the building. Right now Our ordinances say that you can't have an apartment on the first floor in the business district. So we have somebody requesting that they be allowed to have an apartment in the rear on the first floor. So that will be on the agenda for the city on Tuesday night to report to the plan commission. We also have a subdivision.

So we're clear that would require a publication for a different meeting date, not next Wednesday.

And then we also received a second request for a minor subdivision. that we presented and again it's in the business district of downtown moving some lot lines around events so you have that coming and then the zoning board of appeals has a request for a design variance on for home on Woodland Avenue so just everybody know what's coming up give me a heads up so the public knows okay all right is there any other public comment

hearing none I would entertain a motion to adjourn all those in favor stand up thank you everybody

I guess we need to tell Angie, look up the definition of boarding house, which is what you thought applied to this situation.