Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

And for the 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.

If the commission members can turn their microphones on so that the streaming can be heard, please. Just so everybody knows before the meeting starts, I'm going to treat this almost like two different meetings where we're going to cover the alley vacation first, and then we'll transition into the Noblesdorf tabled issue. So with that being said, do we have any public comment on the vacation of the alley? Okay.

Let me bring some pictures for you guys. I don't know what's going on. if you would please introduce yourself and then Alright, good evening. My name is Melanie Davis and I live at 217 West Florence and I'm here to speak in reference to the petition to vacate the alley that runs east of my property. I requested this vacation and property split exemption for several practical reasons. I purchased my home 13 years ago, and as long as I have lived in this property, no other vehicles have used the alleyway for access other than one time recently. The neighbor behind was building a shed, and the contractor used it to drop off lumbers and supplies. But other than that, it's an unused alleyway. On page one of the pictures I provided you is the first property on the east side of the alley, and that is owned by Ashley. As you can see, there are several trees that grow over into the alleyway, and it actually makes it inaccessible. So I personally went out and purchased a saw, and I maintain that tree line. In order to access my driveway, I have to pull into the alley, so I have to keep it clear. So I have been the sole and primary caretaker of the whole alley from the curb up to the school's fence line. I mow, weed, and shovel in the snow. The alley has not been maintained by the city and has not been re-graveled for over 13 years. Ashley, the lady of that first property, did reach out to me. She let me know she contacted the city and found out what I was petitioning for and that she has no objection at all and it's fine with her. I do have copies of her text if you guys would like to see that. Second, the requested vacation would not negatively affect public access or surrounding properties. My property is the only property served by the alleyway. There are no other driveways or residential entrances that depend on the alley access. On page two of those photos, it shows the other residential property on the rear. There's no driveway or rear entrance to that property. Access is actually obstructed by a brush pile and a shed, so there's no practical location for a driveway there. I've never met that homeowner, which seems weird because I've been there a long time. I know they got noticed, but I haven't heard anything. Third, regarding utilities, I contacted the utility companies, and on page three is the email. There are no conflicts for utilities in the alleyway. There is one utility pole back there, but it will not be blocked. There will be access to that pole completely. So when I began this process, I contacted a couple of attorneys. One told me he would charge $5,000 or $6,000. The other told me that it was too small of a case. They don't want to take it on. But he did give me some advice. He told me normally in an alley vacation, the property is split 50-50 down the middle. But in my case, because it would cause harm, I can request an exception to that, which I did in my petitions. He told me that section 11-91-1 of the Illinois Municipal Code explicitly grants the right to the city council to divide the alley in a different way. The council can choose to divide from the curb back to the school's property fence line to me and then from the school's fence line through the school's parking lot to the school. The statute explicitly states that a vacation ordinance may specify that title to the vacated land goes to the owner or owners of the property, how the city sees fit, as long as such fair market value or accrued benefit of the property. The council can charge either a flat processing fee or a fraction of the square foot assessed value, and I'm willing to pay that. He said, because I can show that it would cost just an immediate hardship, that this would be an allowable exception under the statute and law. So if the alley were maintained as an alley and made an actual alley, it would be a hardship because it goes through my garage and my driveway, proceeds through the school's fence and into the back area where the kids are when they are outside. Normally in the city of Oglesby, it states alleys are 20 feet wide and dead ends should be avoided unless there is a safe turnaround. This alley is only 12 feet wide, not counting the property that it sits on, which is mine. The alley dead ends into the school's fence. There is no safe turnaround. A car has to be back all the way out of the alley. My garage sits very close to it. But on page four is the GIS property map as well as what you have up there on the screen. You can see how the alley goes through the garage and through the school's property. And then on page four, I took a picture. It's kind of dark, but my son is standing on one end and my niece is on the other, and that's 20 feet. So that shows you that the alley is actually only 12 feet. The other eight feet goes into my garage, and it sits on there. The garage was built prior to the alley placement, so granting the full width of the alley up to the school property line would resolve this historical property line enroachment, protects my home's functional layout, and takes nothing away from the neighboring properties. It would also create a safer situation for the kids not having an alley go through the middle of their property. And splitting the alley down the middle will cause immediate and severe harm to my property due to it blocking access to my driveway and garage. On page five, you can see the entrance to the alley and my driveway. There's a water drainage grate directly in front of the curb, so I do not have direct access to my driveway or my garage. I have to pull into the alleyway and go right in order to get access to my property. When researching, I did see that that rare homeowner that I had spoken of earlier did apply previously to have the alley vacated. I was told that it was denied due to a normal 50-50 split not allowing me access. And then that proves that an exception is necessary for this vacation. And then lastly, page six. I just kind of wanted to show you a rough idea of what it is I'm wanting to do. Right now, my half of the driveway is cement and the alley is gravel. Because the gravel hasn't been replaced for over 13 years, it's very unlevel. And I've fallen a couple times, but that could just be me. But it's very unlevel, so it's kind of a tripping hazard. So what I would like to do is cement that whole area in. I want to expand my garage four feet east and four feet south. I will not be blocking any access at all to that utility pole. Right now, I actually have a trailer parked on the side of my garage because... was going to be doing electrical work so it has a lot of supplies in there but i had to wait for this hearing and permits before i can decide what i'm going to do so i do have a trailer sitting there that's going to be moved within the next couple of weeks but anyway i would like to thank you so much for your time and your consideration of this request um if you have any questions for me i'm happy to answer i did take a video but i wasn't sure how to share that with you guys but if that's something that's needed i can email that to you so

But if you have any questions or anything, I will... How close, on the back of your garage, how close is it to the fence, the school fence?

At least 15 feet. When I measured out 8 feet, it still had a good 6, 7 feet before I got to the school property fence line. Okay.

And that is your trailer in the picture you said? Yes. Yep.

That's the trailer. It's got all my electrical supplies and stuff from my garage that's sitting there. Okay. Just in case. I just haven't been able to do any work because I don't want to do anything without comments and permission and stuff like that. So, yes.

Any other questions from the council?

Thank you.

Are there any other public comments on the alley vacation? Yep.

Please introduce yourself in the microphone and then speak into the mic My name is Jennifer Donald I do live in the property that you can see there that has a mother-in-law house behind it and the property between the mother-in-law house and the school fence is wide enough where I can pull a car into that. Also, the area between the mother-in-law house and where the debris stuff is there can also have a car pulled into it. I've been trying to get the city to do something about this since 2018. I have been in my house since 2008, okay? And I have cut the grass on my end of the alley, which when I bought the house was originally graveled. But never did I see it re-graveled and grass start growing. So I started cutting. I am sick now and can't cut. I pay somebody to cut that back behind my property. It would cause a hardship for me. I have in the past rented out the mother-in-law house. That should be in the city records as well, because I paid to be able to do that. Sorry. And so if I do rent that property out, where are they going to park? I have a small driveway in the front of my house to where only one car can be parked there. You cannot park on the street in wintertime. That's where they would park. It's back there. Also, the utility poles do cause a concern. They do go to the back house. They do go to my house. They do go to Ashley's house, which is next door. So if something happens with those utility poles and their vehicles are parked there, how are the utility workers supposed to get back there? Now, I have been... contacting since 2018. I have emails that I have that I copied and a letter that was sent to you guys saying that that alley wasn't vacated and was still an alley. I have the mayor emailing since he was the commissioner. And I have that in there for you. Like I said, I've only had the ability to know about this for a week. Sorry, with the medications I'm on, my mouth gets shy. but that it would cause a problem for me and my future. I am sick. If I were to have to move into the mother-in-law house myself, I need access to my mother-in-law home. What's going to be done if the alley is vacated to her? What will be done so that I can get to easily and accessibly as handicapped to my back house. There's no driveway that goes there and I can't even put a driveway to the side of my house because surf internet was put in my yard. So I can't even dig up and put up a driveway that would go all the way through to the back. I can't even do that because of the decision the city has made. So I just ask that you guys think about the consequences, think about the access of my property. I'm not asking and I do see and I have seen that half of her garage or a quarter of it is in the alley, I'm not asking for that to be a problem. I want it to stay the same that it is and it'd be wonderful if the city took responsibility of maintaining it like I've been asking and have proof that I've been asking since 2018. So that vehicles can get back there. And yes, the other neighbor does have trees that grow up, but you can still get around them and get back there, especially if you have a smaller vehicle like I do. But we've even had trucks back there to do work. So we can get back there. And we can turn around and we can get down the alley. And it's just really important to my property's value that if I were to sell that property, That's a situation that somebody else is going to have to figure out as well. And I just really wish that you guys would look at that. And I mean, if you absolutely don't want to take care of the property and you want to sell the alley because you haven't taken care of it since 2008 when I bought the property, then... put it up for sale but don't just give it to somebody and block my property where I can't get to it thank you all right thank you is there any other public comment what I can attest for us

We've had a fence line there since I've been there.

So over 20 years and talking to my predecessors before that, they don't remember that ever not being a fence line there.

So when it comes to the end of the alley for us, it really doesn't make much of a difference. It's already grassed over. We cut it every day or every week. And the only thing I ask is if any decision is made, it's not to actually come on to our area. Because as Melanie said too, it would be impossible for somebody to turn around on that if that area is actually maintained properly. all the way into our area because it would just end halfway through our grass and so i suppose if it was refurbished and made into that way it would become a very much a hardship on the school but i probably just put a fence around the entire alleyway again just to kind of block that out just not have people try to make it all the way through and drive through the grass or something like that so really if things stayed the same If nobody touches anything on my side of the fence, it doesn't really bother us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi. I'm Jill Adams, and Jennifer is my daughter, and I help take care of her and some of her needs. She needs to help me out. Thank you. that that is important to her. If she can rent that house, that money is income that she needs. We have tried numerous times to come down the alley, and I talked to the mayor, I don't even know who he is, but I emailed him about not having access to the alley because there's always an automobile parked in the alley under a no parking sign. We had work done there, and yes, the man was able to go to that house and ask them to please move their automobile so he could get through there. Sometimes it was right away, sometimes he had to wait. This should be a city help. This shouldn't be somebody that you have to go and ask them to move their automobile from a no parking zone, you know? We talked to the police about it, and they said, well, just go and ask them to move. Okay, well, that's every time. Every time you want to get down there, there's an automobile there. So I hope that you consider what my daughter had said and realize the importance to her and for her financial future. Thank you.

Are there any other public comments? Jim would you come up and say something as the advisor please

The alley is really 16 foot wide. It's planted 16 foot wide, so it's a 16 foot wide street. One thing to know about GIS maps, if you look over here to the left, see this vertical line? You can see it's on the wrong side of the sidewalk. If you go to the other side of the block, you can see there's a big space between the line and the sidewalk. So that whole grid of line work is off. It needs to shift five or six foot to the east to be correct. that would probably move the garage out of the alley. So that's the big thing. The line work's not perfect, and the alley really sticks to the line. And I was aware of the request made several years ago about vacating the alley for this property on here, and it was denied because we did that and we wouldn't be able to get, this property owner wouldn't be able to get to their garage with what was left. Ms. Davis was right. Current ordinances require that if you do a residential alley, it has to be 20 foot wide. And if you do one, you can't get in. It has to have a turnaround. And the Land Valid Code actually discourages residential alleys altogether. So vacating this alley would make the area in compliance with the current Land Valid Code.

any questions comments so what sir I guess what our options as far as legally go as far as vacations go so you can recommend vacating the alley if you said nothing further

and the council were agreed to vacate it, they would vacate it and give half to each adjoining landowner on each side. There is a provision in the statute that the council can decide to vacate it to, in some proportion, maybe all of it to one adjoining landowner, and they're supposed to pay reasonable compensation for acquiring the alley in that event that it's not split between adjoining landowners. So I think your option is to vacate the alley, not vacate the alley, vacate the alley all to one landowner. In the case of the school, we get into an interesting question because the school owns both sides of this alley, which goes down here into the middle of their parking lot, their playground. If you do nothing else with regard to our request to vacate this strip and give that to the school who's on both sides of it to clean up that problem.

If we vacated that, would that cause any issues with the top half not having turnarounds in whatever the statutes say?

No, because they don't really have a turnaround there now.

It doesn't exist right now. So you don't have to establish it.

So they're not making it any worse. They're just shortening it and cleaning up what I think would have to be a problem for the school district moving forward at some point. You know, if they want to expand the school or something, they're not going to be able to put it over the alley, that's for sure.

So really, we're recommending or not recommending vacation or not vacation. We're not drawing lines here.

Well, you could make the recommendation to the council that you recommend they draw the line and, you know, split it between the neighbors or give it all the one or whatever you want. You could recommend not doing anything with the north part of the alley, but vacating the south part of the alley, south, south of the school fence so that that would go to the school. Um, technically if you just vacated it and didn't do anything else, this half would go to the school so i would think you'd want to recommend that the whole thing be vacated from that point south and and uh acquired by the school and that's a fence right there correct right yeah so just one more thing the power line runs from foreign street south to a pole

I think in this corner, and it provides service drops for some of the homes at the end. It's in that first corner.

Right here?

So it would have to have an easement.

You'd have to reserve that easement in the ordinance, yeah.

And I would recommend that easement be at least 10 foot wide so you can get there on the trucks.

how does the land development code come into play with the fact that ms donald has that

I have a lot of questions about that. So I need to know if it's currently being used as a mother-in-law house. I believe our ordinances prohibit that. I'd have to do some research, but I think it prohibits it. And typically, those who are grandfathered in, if they're still occupied since the land overcoat, but they've been vacated six months. They've been vacated six months since that land overcoat. That allowed use goes away.

Well, you know I think she could live in it she could live in both houses if she wanted to but if that house has been vacant and If that house has been vacant for more than six months and it has not been used as a rental or a grandmother's suite or whatever for six months, then that use of that to some other non-family member has...

But she could... She could live there. Okay.

But then somebody else couldn't live in the front house. You know, she'd have to use them both, which is really an ineffective use of...

And there's electricity and stuff going back there at this time.

I mean, it's a full house. Has it been rented in the last six? Has it been rented in the past? Has it been rented in the last six months is the question.

Not in the last six months.

Okay. Now, I have personally been using it in the last six months.

Okay. And you're allowed to use it. You're allowed to use both of them without incident.

So, but this being one parcel... And they have access here to the parcel. We're not, by vacating the alley, we're not limiting access to the parcel, correct? I mean, we're not landlocking them.

So if you move the east line of the alley on that drawing, we're not moving physically, but on the picture. Yeah. It gets so close to the house, you probably couldn't park the vehicle there anymore. Right, like along here. Like along there.

Yeah, we've even had a boat there, like a big boat.

Well, it may have been partly in the alley where we had it parked, is what I'm saying. So, because that photo is incorrect. That's a tough question.

And you guys don't make the final decision. You just make a recommendation to the city council.

So I've shared some legal descriptions with Pat. So we can vote on this as two separate entities. Okay. One, part of one of my description is the school property. You can vote to vacate that, make whatever recommendations you want to that property. And then parcel number two is the north one that is the length of this Davis' property. to me that the issue if we're going to break it up it to be

And if we make the decision, well, you'd have to offer both sides the same vacation or work that out themselves or whatever. Wouldn't you kind of have to do that in this piece here as well?

I think the city council can make that decision. It's a 28-foot length of that is what's left. From this corner... But this corner is 28 feet.

The way you have it broken up with the legals, it's from here down.

Here down, right. Now, the council could say that the East 8 foot of this, this 28 feet, could go to this property owner. Or they could say that it all goes to the school. If it did go to the property owner, then the school's fence would have to be on somebody else's property after relocating it.

And there would be no sense in leaving the east half of that 28 feet go to that property owner if you're going to vacate the alley north of it.

Correct. Right.

I think you ought to start with the school portion first and see if you want to recommend to the council that they vacate the alley from essentially where the school's fence is south. I thought it was sent to you all in your packets, Ange.

Isn't that the...

There's a hearing notice there. Is that what you're talking about? Here's the actual publication from the paper, if you want an answer.

Oh, there we go. I found it. Thank you.

Well, it was published to vacate the entire length of the alley, so yes, you can, Ann.

So what you're recommending, Pat, if I get this right, is the part of the alley where the school fence is, vacate that all the way down to the school?

To clean up that problem, since it's been published and noticed, and we're talking about vacating that alley. What you do with the north part, I can't make a recommendation on. But my recommendation, since the school uses it and it's surrounding that alley, that it makes no sense to leave it there. but that's up to you guys to make a recommendation to the council and they can make the final decision.

Let's break it up. I would suggest breaking it up like that first. So is there a motion to vacate the alley south of the fence line? South of the south line is lot two. South of the south line is lot two.

And to have it all go to the school? To the school.

There is a motion. I'll second. Second.

Roll call.

You don't need, no, and I'm always, and I'm last FYI as chairman, so yeah. I'm last vote as chairman. Okay. Just so you know.

Is that Linger? Yes.

Lindsey? All right. Partridge? No.

i have stained since i'm on the school board and involved the school and vinegar hi okay the motion passes all right is there another motion that anybody wants to make for the north half

I would say we either need to make a motion to vacate it in some fashion or not vacate or not recommend a vacation one of the two there's a second is there a discussion okay hearing none roll call

I all right so that motion passes to not vacate the alley which I believe closes the business that that portion of the meeting

Correct. And I will report the commission's motions and findings to the city council at its meeting on the 21st, I think. A week from next Monday. That's a Monday. Yeah. A week from next Monday. It's the 21st. Okay. Yeah, but that agenda has already been posted.

Okay, so I did skip over one item out of the agenda. It was approval of previous meeting minutes. We're deciding to table that because we're missing meeting minutes from January, our last meeting, and then the one that was last week. We're not probably prepared to vote on that yet. so we will move on to the Noblesdorf proposal so at this point in time I will have Noblesdorf make a presentation and then we will open it up to public comment that sound good

it's a hard last name

Thank you, Lindsey.

Never mind.

They don't have to share. I think that's what they're working on right now. That, when you push that button, it just shows this on the broadcast. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Just before you guys start just a message to the public let's let them finish their presentation there be ample time for everybody in the public to comment accordingly we will ask them yeah to speak their names and and what what organization you're representing yep take it away okay

It's up to you guys what you want to do, but if you want to share this slideshow on the live stream, like that screen, then they would have to plug in the laptop up here. If you don't want to do that and you just want the feed of you guys, then we can just...

I think you should share. Do you have an HDMI on the computer? I think that would probably be best. So do I need to push it again?

No, just leave it for now. Okay.

Okay. My name is Jacqueline McLaughlin. I'm the executive director of Evolve Foundation, which is a Midwest workforce development program. So I want to thank everyone for coming. I promise you're going to be listening to someone besides me for most of this. But before I turn it over to Lindsay, I want to speak for myself, and I want to issue an apology. I stood in front of several people in this building last week, and then I spoke to one person at length afterwards. Shout out, Jeff. But I realized the only thing that's more annoying than people yelling at you for two hours is when they're right about things. Jeff and others, you were right about the lack of information provided beforehand and how that lands. You were right that we should have provided clear information about this proposal at the meeting rather than trying to use the meeting as the place to explain it. We are introducing something new to this community and we should have been more intentional and careful about communicating what it is, what it isn't, and how it would operate in the community. I take responsibility for that and I know KE feels the same way. Again, I'm from Evolve Foundation. There were also some things raised here that were just simply misconceptions, and I want to separate those things from the legitimate concerns. One common refrain we heard over the past week is that the lack of information was intentional, that we were trying to sneak something through or prevent the community from having a say. Lindsay's going to walk through our timeline of work in this area, but I want to speak on one piece of it. As early as 2025, I was speaking with Illinois Valley Community College about how we could integrate into the existing workforce community here, create opportunity locally, and build reciprocal pathways between our programs and IVCC. We spoke again as early as this morning. I also began working last year with the Illinois Workforce Initiative areas. That's the designated Illinois workforce system to understand the workforce geography of this area, to register the program as a pre-apprenticeship, and to identify the existing clean energy workforce providers and CEJA hubs. We'll talk about what CEJA is, but it's the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. We received a letter of support for them in fall of this year. We've also worked alongside the IBEW. In Michigan, I work with them on Path to Power, but here we work with them through the IBEW Renewable Energy Fund to develop the structure of this program. And the IBEW Renewable Energy Fund represents the 18 locals around the state. The letter we have from them, which I have in my possession and somebody in the back might want to see, is that their goals align with ours and present a pathway for individuals into local unions. So no, we didn't arrive here overnight, and we didn't come in Oglesby intending to bypass the community. We were working through existing institutions and workforce pipelines that already serve this area. I am not a politician. I am in workforce development, vocational training, and career pathways. And that comes with a long history of seeing programs make progress Promises to communities and participants that they ultimately cannot keep. Programs that never get funded, never get permitted, or don't have the rigor and employer connections that they were promised. And that is why I'm cautious about broadly advertising a program before I can tell people exactly when it begins, how many people can participate, and what the pathway to employment looks like. When those pieces are established, my job is to go into the churches, high schools, nonprofits, and community organizations and say, here's an opportunity, here's what it looks like, and we want more people to participate. The work has not happened yet because we've been trying since early winter to establish the specifics necessary to make those promises responsibly. There's another misconception that I want to address directly. This is not a reentry program or it's not a halfway house. People with certain backgrounds may be eligible to participate under CEJA law, the Illinois law, but they are not required and eligibility does not equal acceptance. Our last cohort included graduating high school seniors, people who already own their own businesses and individuals with no involvement whatsoever in the criminal justice system. An equity eligible person, which is a defined term by law, is a person who meets eligibility criteria established under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. They include justice system involvement, or foster care history, or residence in designated communities, or participation in qualifying workforce programs. Meaning, if people are not equity eligible people in this community, but they come and attend the workforce program, they are considered equity eligible people because they've attended the program. It's a little bit of cyclical work that the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act there, but it makes them eligible just by attending the program. This is a state-defined category. That is not our own definition. And there's a reason that this program is structured the way it is. When we described the premise to several people at the police department yesterday, one of the police officers said, this kind of sounds like the police academy. And I thought that was actually a very good comparison. Because when you're preparing people to do difficult work, Structure matters. Clear authority matters. Accountability matters. Demanding schedules matter. Standards matter. This program has a structured referral process, meaningful acceptance standards, predetermined schedules, and clear expectations for participants. First of all, I've seen the math testing myself, and I can tell you that I would never make it into the program. There are many questions that we're going to answer directly in the slides that follow and we're gonna tell you what we know, be honest about what we don't know and listen to what you have to say. Last week we heard legitimate concerns about how we communicated this project and we took those concerns seriously. We changed how we're approaching this conversation and all of you should have more information about this. Tonight I hope we can do the same thing with the rest of this, to separate legitimate concerns from assumptions, to look together at the special use permit and the intended benefits to the community and the opportunity at hand. So thanks for having us back. I'm going to turn it over to Mike.

Good evening, everybody. Mike Honecke with Pinnable Store Enterprises. So as Jacqueline stated, a lot of good questions last week, and our aim here with a lot of the presentation is really just to provide background and answer a lot of those questions. But at the end of the night, what we're really still asking for is a text change to zoning law to allow for a special use permit. So admittedly, a lot of the presentation and directly answer that question it's directly answering a lot of questions that were raised last week so that's what our that's what our aim is here so i'm going to try to move through these somewhat quickly answer the questions again as quickly as i can just for clarification too we are recommend it's a recommendation from the planning commission this is not a vote on if it's going to happen that's going to come from the council it's a recommendation on two issues the first is whether to change the zoning code

for an M1 district to allow for a boarding house, because that is a defined term in your code, to exist in an M1 district by special use permit. And then the second question, if you decide to recommend that, is whether you would recommend granting a special use permit for this proposed project.

I just want to clarify that so in case people here didn't understand like this isn't a vote of like it's going to happen.

And it's not the final vote because you only make a recommendation to the council who will take it up at their meeting on the 21st if a decision is made tonight.

I think it was a misunderstanding. Some people think that we're making the final vote and we don't.

All right. So just a quick agenda again. I'm not going to read every word. word by word here. Really just aiming to answer a lot of the questions that came up last week here. So just a little bit about KE. We've been around for about 35 years. Four divisions. I represent the energy division, so solar construction, ground-mount solar. We built hundreds of megawatts. Started working a lot in Illinois in 2024. So I've been here about three years building a ground mount solar and then recently opened the Oldsby office. I think we're about a year and a half in that location. Quick just kind of snapshot of our employees. Really what I'm trying to point out here is we've established pretty quickly in Illinois. We're doing well down here and we're looking to continue to grow, hire local talent down here. I think we've done a pretty good job of that so far. We have 10 folks who are directly working every single day in our Oglesby office. Over 100 Illinois residents. I know we have another large class of onboarding coming as energy consumption is at an all-time high and that business continues to grow. So more and more folks coming from Illinois, hopefully the local area, as we continue to grow. What I'm attempting here with these slides is we kind of got asked what's in it for KE last week. And we have traditionally done this type of stuff. And that's what I'm trying to point out here. And not only as we have a company, what I really want to highlight is equity-eligible persons who have went through programs who we have hired on have been part of this. They were at Lehigh Park Cleanup. They've been at several other park cleanups, Chicago and all around northern Illinois. When those tornadoes ravaged the Kankakee area, Grant Park, I was down there with them. That group of folks there, there's five or six folks that came through these programs that now work for us that were part of that cleanup. They were in people's yards, in people's houses, sweeping up broken glass, dealing with A ton of elderly folks in that Grant Park area, we just were going door to door asking what they needed done. It was weeks after the tornado and it was just such devastation up there. But folks who graduated these programs that worked for us were in people's homes doing this type of thing. Similar story, we went down for Hurricane Haleen. I lived in North Carolina for quite a while, had some attachment to that area. We sent down 35 employees. We stayed in a hostel. Again, folks who went through that program, I stayed in the hostel with them for a little over two weeks. We took 35 folks down there. Same thing. An absolutely devastated area. Folks who graduated these programs, the same kind of program we are booking to do, were in that hostel staying with us. We're in people's homes cleaning out mud under crawl spaces, all sorts of devastation down there. This is not something that we're not used to. And really, again, just trying to explain it is a varied background of people coming through this program. It's not just this one type of person. And then just in general, trades awareness and investing in the trades and trying to get more folks into the trades. This is something we've been doing for five years, Operation Trades Awareness. We talked a little bit about this last week, anything from You can see a picture up there of a story time reading to preschoolers. We take in the top, kind of the middle right there, a field trip out to a solar site. There's a sign-on day where the top picture and the bottom picture, those are graduating high school seniors. We need more people in the trades. I think anybody who's in the trades in this room can agree to that. There's a massive, massive shortage, especially in solar construction. We are trying to get more people in the trades, and that is what this program is aiming to do.

So my organization is Evolve Foundation. We were founded in 2023. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. In your pamphlet, you should have information about how we're funded. We have no funding outside of what you see there, but our information is publicly available. All you have to Google is Form 990 and Evolve Foundation. Anything, any 501c3 nonprofit, that's the case. You can see how they're funded, who they're funded by. We are a nonprofit, especially clean energy workforce development partner. We were funded after CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which passed in 2021. CEJA essentially says that by 2030, all energy here has to be clean energy, and it's a sliding scale, but by 2030, 30% of the workforce for clean energy has to be equity eligible people.

That is the law of the land in Illinois.

That was the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, and that's what it states. Again, equity eligible people are those four designations. So if someone, say, from Illinois Valley Community College decided to come and take our program, just by taking the program, they would then be designated an equity eligible person, and anybody could hire them, including unions, and meet their stipulations. Unions are also, must adhere to these stipulations. Unions are in, I don't wanna get specific, but in all projects for solar over five megawatts, there's a tri-trade agreement, which means three different types of unions build those projects. they still must adhere to those equity eligible stipulations. That's how it works. So just some basic stats on us. You guys can all read. We've graduated six cohorts. We have a very high completion and job placement rate. We consider our job placement rate anywhere within the clean energy industry. So if someone goes to a factory, we don't count that in our job placement rate, but people certainly do. We've actually graduated 137 total graduates, but my website wasn't up to date. And 100% of our students report a positive impact on their life and family. Again, we have in our program lower crime and recidivism rates, less than 1%, than the general public. That is because we have a huge diversity of backgrounds, a huge diversity of people that come through the program. This is you, right?

So how... KE and Evolve got together was simply just recognizing a like-minded partner. So I've been fairly involved since the end of 2023 to 2024 with just educating myself on Illinois Shines and just the so-called the Adjustable Block Program and just kind of the ecosystem that exists down here. I've worked with probably five or six other training programs. We've hired graduates from probably four of those met Jacqueline in late 2023. And we've just discovered a huge void in what is out there right now. And that is really what formed this partnership was not only solving barriers to employment, but also getting better training for more workforce ready folks. It's pretty much as simple as that. What's in it for KE was asked pretty pointedly last week and Again, I'm being as genuine as I can. It's more able-bodied workforce. That is it and that is all. We are not receiving any direct grant money, anything like that. KE has actually pledged a million dollars to get this thing going. This is not a money-making venture for us. Going to Kankakee was not a money-making venture. We are trying to be good stewards. We are trying to be good neighbors. We're down in Illinois working. We're trying to treat it just how we treat our home.

Hi, everyone. My name is Lindsay Myers. For those of you that I haven't had the privilege of meeting yet, I'm going to walk through quite a bit of slides, so bear with me, but then we'll toss it back over to Mike and Jacqueline. I work in the Energy Division reporting up to Mike here, and I'm the Chief of Staff. So I have the privilege of working really closely with Jacqueline just to try to get some logistics planned behind this. One of the questions or concerns last meeting that Jacqueline started to address was the timeline of events or that we were working or trying to sneak anything by the community and that is by no means our intention. So I sincerely apologize if it's come off that way. As you can see by the very brief overview, we've been actually having quite a few conversations, had some things denied in the past. So we initially were advised to submit a variance. This was, I started with Katie in December of 2025. So kind of came into this project after some of the initial design plans were started and program structure was being put into place. We had submitted our variance to have several modular homes built on our property, which again is located at 345 North Lewis Avenue here in Oglesby. And again, it's currently zoned as M1 Limited Manufacturing District. After initially submitting the variance request in late January, after an informational meeting with Mayor Curran to just come to our facility and learn more about the program, it was determined that our request to have housing on KE's property may not be processed as a variance request per 14.11.090A of the land development code. We'd initially again submitted the variance. Our initial idea was to build several modular homes to still resemble that campus style housing. And this was initially thought to be on the north end of the property. Uh, we were advised as a result of that variance denial to request a pre application conference with the planning commission, um, per the normal procedure for a plan development to discuss possible housing options and what would be allowable per the land development code. We worked with the assistant city clerk Patty at the time to who sent our meeting requests off to the city attorney board chairman and the mayor. And the meeting was scheduled or confirmed on March 19th for March 31st at 6 p.m. at City Hall. We were notified via email to attend this meeting. On March 31st, Mike Honecke and I attended the pre-application conference here in Oglesby and met with several members for about two hours to kind of go through a wide variety of possible options of what could potentially happen, what could we do to potentially have housing for our students here in the city of Oglesby. Discussions involve subdividing one or more parcels to the north, creating an R3 general residential subdivision that would allow for single family dwellings on separate lots, or that would allow for planned development on a single lot. The issue with this became the additional need at that point to extend Lewis Avenue to the north, something in which we are in no way trying to do, despite what flyers posted around town may claim about this program or the property development. After discussions looking at zoning, land development code issues, no formal definitions for dormitories or boarding houses in the city code, different configurations where housing could be placed on the property, it was advised that KE would develop a site plan on the land we currently own instead of acquiring another piece of property. and provide building descriptions. Inspector Burton Lavins would be contacted by KE once those plans were developed to provide any advice on setbacks or any other requirements such as life safety requirements that might be needed in the dwelling of that size. We were also informed following this meeting that KE would apply for the special use permit for both the building and the solar training array and ask for boarding houses to be added to the M1 zoning area in the land development code because it is currently unlisted. We were advised again that this would still have to go in front of the planning commission, which may or may not approve the permit request, or sorry, may or may not support The permit request and land development code change. It will then move on to the city council for final determination. The city council can take advice of the committee and approve or deny any permits. We followed what we believed was correct protocol and were in no way promised anything by the city or the planning commission. Long story very short, that all happened at the end of March in that meeting. Throughout the month of April, KE internally worked to design the boarding house as we deemed it based on initial advice. May 13th, we officially sent our design plans off to Burton. And then throughout the month of May, June, and July, I had several conversations with Burton. At July 21st is when all paperwork was submitted for the special use permit. July 29th, we followed up with the city clerk's office because we hadn't heard a response. August 7th, I had even reached out to Burton because I still hadn't heard anything since submitting the special use permit request on July 21st. August 11th, I was desperate for information, so I watched the August 3rd city council meeting from the week prior trying to see if it had happened to be talked about, and it was briefly discussed at the very end. And then finally, we ended up getting last week's meeting on the books. So like I said, and like Jacqueline mentioned earlier, we sincerely apologize if in any way it's come off that we're trying to hide information or just kind of sweep things under the rug and get things passed. But that is by no means our intention. So briefly just summarizing a few of the points of kind of how we got here, some of the terms that we've been hearing. So boarding house, we honestly don't care what the housing facility is called. We were recommended to call it a boarding house since boarding house is already listed on the table, on the use table of the land development code, whereas student housing, dormitory, student apartments, anything along those lines is not. So that's why we're calling it a boarding house, but We honestly think of it more as a student dormitory, student housing. Why does the building look the way it does? I have some pictures and some later slides, but it was to address some concerns that were brought up at that pre-application conference meeting. Basically, that our facility, where it's located currently, is in limited manufacturing district, and so it should reflect the area which the building is going to be in. constructed and then oh i thought that was my phone sorry and then um also if and when let's say five ten years down the line this program ceases or moves to a different location or we open another facility and no longer need the use of this building for whatever reason ke is committed to renovating the interior of the building so we'd maintain that exterior structure and meet the needs of our our business still with that facility and changing it potentially to a more of a warehousing or a shop space. And then again, why do we not have formal site plan or engineer drawings at this point with the submission? We were advised from Burton to submit what we had at this point because they're fairly detailed. And then, of course, should this be recommended and we need to go through submitting an official site plan, we would, of course, follow all recommendations and get those signed by an architect or a structural engineer. But before dedicating additional time and resources and money to get those, we wanted to obviously take this first step as well. Okay, so a little bit more about the program structure. Your packets of information provide an in-depth look at the program. At the end of the day, this program will be the first of its kind within the state of Illinois. An intensive, hands-on, immersive technical training program that offers a semi-residential component for students and really focuses on the ground-mount solar array. Programs like this that are, Jacqueline has a map later that she'll kind of walk through, but programs like this that train individuals to become solar installers throughout the state of Illinois are really training individuals for that residential solar component. So how to install one or two or three solar panels on someone's home, not working on a large acreage, throwing up thousands of modules in a day, blaring sun, over repetitive technology, 10 hour work days. And so this is really where that utility scale mindset is coming into play because this work isn't going anywhere within this state of Illinois. Also want to just give a little bit of guidance or enlighten what the program actually looks like for our students. So our students are going to be on campus or on our property Monday through Thursday. They'll start bright and early on Monday morning, and then they'll leave and be able to travel home on the weekends, beginning Thursday afternoon or evening. and their daily schedule again this is just that rough outline but they're going to start at 6 a.m and have breakfast and morning huddle that morning huddle is how we kick off every single solar site you know you're getting together with your crews you're talking about what's going on for the day what your tasks are where your priorities should be at what your safety considerations are you're stretching and flexing and so we're going to start to model some of that schedule in what they're going to experience as well They're going to do strength and conditioning. They'll have a short break. They're going to have technical instruction in labs. They're going to have time out on the solar training array, getting that hands-on work. They're going to go through life skills curriculum, which Jacqueline will talk a little bit more about as well. They'll have dinner together. And then from 6.30 to 10.30 or 6 to 10.30 at night, they'll have personal time. So they'll be able to connect over the phone or Zoom or Skype with their families. They'll be studying because there are examinations throughout the program that are pretty rigorous. Like Jacqueline said, neither of us would probably be able to pass the math portion to even get into the program. And then don't even get me started on electrical theory or code. It's way over my head. So I commend these guys for taking that all in and understanding it. group tutoring etc and then they'll be required to be in the building lights out in their rooms at least by 10 30 just because again we want to instill those good habits because they're going to have those long 10 hour days on site they got to get in that habit of going to bed early and getting that good night's sleep so they're ready to be out in the field working again in the morning i'll be back up in a minute but i'm going to invite jacqueline to come up and just walk through a little bit more about sea job

I feel like we probably should have done this at the beginning because I keep saying these acronyms. And this law is like thousands of pages long, so it's really difficult to try to capture in a snippet. But it is a clean energy law enacted that essentially accelerates the transition to clean energy, and it embeds economic opportunity for different groups across the workforce, basically. Unfortunately, like folks have said, there are hundreds of thousands of positions that need to be filled. Our count right now is 300,000 positions in the state of Illinois for solar installers. We simply do not have enough, and programs are, I'm sorry, not programs, projects, are not breaking ground because there are not enough solar installers. I was on the phone with three different solar developers last week, national solar developers who continue to say we have about 15 to 20 projects waiting in the wings because we don't have enough manpower to build the projects. An equity eligible person, again, there's those four definitions, and I just wanna make a quick comment on something, on a question that came yesterday, which was essentially, why do you need to teach life skills if this is not a halfway house? To which I snarkily responded, have you met any teenagers lately? But the truth is, life skills training is not based on assumption that people have difficult life problems or personal problems. Employers just consistently tell us that technical ability is not enough alone to succeed on a work site. I'm sorry, that technical ability alone is not enough to succeed on a work site. That workers need help with time management, communication, financial decision making, professional expectations, and planning and long term stability. These challenges exist across the workforce. They're not just among system impacted people, not just among foster care youth, across the workforce. Someone can be excellent at conflict resolution and still go and buy a new truck with their second paycheck. The goal is to help people get the job, keep the job, succeed on the job site, and then build stability. We designed these supports in response to what employers tell us. It's not an intervention for justice-involved people. It's not that people don't know how to live. This is workforce development. So we have listened to actual employers tell us that people can have technical skills and still struggle if we don't do this workforce development portion.

Does that mean you're next?

Oh no, and then here, I just wanted to give a, again, CEJA is a very big, difficult thing. There are primers on the internet that you can see, but I wanted to give you a map of the workforce hub locations for CEJA. And as you can see, many of them are concentrated in one single area of the state. part of the reason that we want to be here is is that this is a huge opportunity that is not being served by other other workforce places around the state so the closest workforce development training program which i check that is not running right now is in joliet that's the that is the closest thing that that individuals from this area can access in terms of seja workforce development programs

Oh, ending again, okay.

And then again, this is a very rigorous process. Eligibility does not equal acceptance. We take recruitment and referrals from community-based organizations. So we don't take referrals from individuals and we don't take referrals from, You know, someone that is not connected in some way to a church, a community-based organization, a community college, or some other post-secondary program or some other pre-apprenticeship program. We take direct referrals from the directors of those programs, and then we give, again, you guys can read, initial eligibility reviews. So we go through, you know, do you have a high school diploma or a GED? Are you working towards that? What are your employment goals, etc. ? We give individual assessments. That includes safety assessments for each individual. We give verifications and screenings. People with sexually based offenses are not eligible for the program. We go through all of that. We give individualized support plans. So we receive plans connecting individuals, not just to training, but if they want to go to the union, we contact our union contacts. If they want to go to a merit-based shop, we contact individuals that might want to hire directly. And then we move into the training and employment connections. So again, the definition of equity eligible people, this is a state-defined definition through the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. We've sort of narrowed in on one definition of that, but there are lots and lots of folks who meet that definition, including, again, people who haven't had access to workforce in the past.

OK, so a lot of this should be for closer look printed in the packets too, so hopefully you can see that, but the yellow lines here that you can see outline keys to properties that neighbor each other. Again, our main property with the buildings currently on it is that the 345 North Lewis Ave. So the red area is where we are hoping to have the solar training array, which realistically we will do this whole process over again with special use permit requests. That is neither here nor there. The idea is that we will have a ground mount solar training array about one megawatt on our property so that our guys or girls going through the program have the ability to go out into the field, air quotes their own field, and look at the racking system, throw the modules, do the electrical wire management over and over and over again for that repetitive nature of the work. without having that erase interconnected to the community or the utility at all. So it's really just there for training purposes. We'll use it once for the first cohort. We'll basically disassemble it and we'll use it again for the next cohort. The blue area is just our initial proposal of where the boarding house would be located on the property so that you can see that there. Again, going back to that exterior design choice, I realize it's hard to see, but our current building is basically a big gray cube, big gray square in the middle of the property. So it's not anything too beautiful to look at. So the idea is that the exterior design choice of the residential housing or of the boarding house on the property would mirror that. So if at the point we do need to renovate the building to become warehousing space, it would still match or meet, I mean, the vibes of the area, to put it as the kids say the inside of the building would be furbished with about 32 bedrooms like Jacqueline said earlier our ideal program size is about 20 to 25 individuals and then this would give the ability for any of our instructors and for our residential program manager to live on-site and then our instructors to choose to live there if they would like during the duration of the program You'll also see that top section has its own separate entrance and exit leading into that communal living space as well. That was sectioned off for about up to eight bedrooms should we have any female students in the cohort as well. Total building size is about 60 by 100. Living room space, study space, laundry room space so that they can do their laundry. They're getting dirty out in the fields. again, air quotes our own field, or at job sites potentially if we're taking a field trip out. But then in our actual building space, we will have our communal meals together. They will have access to additional classroom space, study areas in there too. Parking was a big question. Currently, our parking lot has about 144 spaces, 145 spaces, but some of our extended or larger spaces could be converted to smaller ones. So as needed, according to building code and city ordinances, KE will create a parking lot next to the housing facility to meet the needs of the requirements if it's determined that we will need one. Because reliable transportation is a potential barrier, we're prepared to coordinate transportation logistics for students to get to and from campus each week, regardless of where they're located in the state. So that might be coordinating one van to pick up some students from Chicago, one van to pick up students from maybe the Carbondale area, and so on and so forth. We really only anticipate that our local students from Illinois Valley will realistically drive to campus each week, but we're prepared to bus students to and from campus should they need transportation logistics. No vehicles will be parked along Lewis Avenue, and again, reiterating that we're not looking to extend Lewis Avenue in any way. Okay, so one of the questions that has been asked is why do we not house the students in a local hotel or motel? Why do we need housing at all? First and foremost would be continued logistics coordination with hotel staff, booking reservations, transporting students to and from the hotel if it's not at the Days Inn, which is walking distance, but everything else we would need to then provide transportation for our students four days out of the week at least two times a day versus just to campus on Monday morning and out of campus on Thursday afternoon. We'd also be tethered to a business where we don't control the environment or the destiny of our students. Yes, if it's at the Days Inn, students could potentially walk down Lewis Avenue to the hotel, but if we ever needed to get hotel rooms at another location for whatever reason, then we'd realistically again be looking at transportation logistics and costs for four days a week twice a day instead of just two days a week to and from campus. Access to funding. As you have access in the packets, as we've talked about, we don't have just a never-ending pool of funds, so we're realistically trying to be fiscally responsible to keep this program running for just more than two or three cohorts. For us, it's not economically feasible to house students in a hotel. Looking at the days in at the rates online, it'd be about $85 a night. And I understand that if we were to do this, we could potentially negotiate with those owners a smaller rate. But $85 a night at a minimum, 25 students times 30 nights in a cohort is roughly $63,000 for the cohort. And we're looking to do about four classes of students a year, which is equating to just about $252,000 per year. Going into some of the taxes of this, while the actual cost of the room would benefit the owner of the motel, it was brought to our attention or someone had asked the question of while the city would get that hotel or motel tax. So I am no means an expert in tax code. I've been doing a lot of reading over the last few days. According to Title III Revenue and Tax Chapter 28, Section 20, there is a levied and imposed upon use and privilege of renting a hotel or motel room within the city, tax of about 5% of the rental or leasing charge for the hotel room for each 24 hours for a portion thereof. So we just took our numbers based on that 5% tax. From what we understand, the city's hotel or motel tax ordinance is a part of the state's Hotel Operators Occupation Tax Act, where the tax revenue is deposited into the county's account and then used for local tourism promotion, economic development, or infrastructure promotions or projects. According to my math, which again, I'm by no means an expert, this would equate to roughly $12,600 per year if our students stayed at the Days Inn, assuming that we would do the 25 students at 30 nights in each cohort. Versus if we build a housing facility on our property, which we're estimating initial costs to be about $750,000, we're estimating an increase of about $20,000 to $25,000 per year in our property taxes, if not more. For perspective, this past year we paid approximately $74,000 in property taxes for our property on 345 North Lewis Avenue. building this housing facility on our property realistically means more money allocated to the township the school districts the library and the county and for that 20 to 25 000 increase in our property taxes versus the 12 000 that would potentially be generated from just the hotel tax Whew, that was a lot of information. Thank you for your time so far. I promise that we're through a majority of it, but I'm going to toss it back over to Mike. He's going to share just a few of our student profiles and why Oglesby, and then I promise we're done.

So real quick, I'm just going to go through, just kind of highlighting five of our current employees, all who have been through one of these programs, and what you're going to notice, the common theme amongst them was... Not only them, but parents, grandparents, just generations of kind of chronic underemployment or unemployment. And what going through a program like this, learning a trade, really did for these folks. And we have some personal testimonials in here as well. And one of them is actually here with us tonight, Nishan. But just a common theme of working two jobs, long periods of unemployment, not being able to provide, just a little bit of a sense of hopelessness that this really does change lives. The access to these programs, the access to these jobs really does change lives. All five of these guys I could not be more proud of with the resiliency. Deshawn, the The resiliencies he's showed in a week of his life is a lot more than a lot of people have done in a lifetime. Henry Armando, I mean, Henry's a grandfather, truck driver, this, that, and the other, and bouncing around careers and, again, what they've been able to do. I'm just going to get into the testimonials here. I'm not going to read them word for word. You know, Antoine was a kid that, you know, the other day on site, my director of construction showed up, and Antoine's just beaming from ear to ear with a switch gear he had just terminated. Like, a year ago, he would have never dreamed of being in that position. These guys are in the electrical apprenticeship program. They are building a life. They are building a career that, you know, was not, they never thought possible 12 months ago, 18 months ago. And Deshaun did not, so his public speaking isn't the best again, but his life story and what the hurdles he's had to overcome are pretty remarkable. And again, the opportunity to give folks an opportunity to change their life is really why I'm invested in this, is why Lindsay's invested in this, is why Jacqueline's invested in this.

We do have Deshaun's full testimony in the back.

So again, the biggest question, and I respect this, from the community, I'm from a small town myself. I live in the sticks in Minnesota, graduated with 40 people in my class, went to the military, moved back there. I'm a small town person. If you ask me, I think that's the way to live. I respect a quiet, peaceful community. Why we're choosing Oglesby, the number one obvious answer is We have a perfect facility for this. We have acreage to build a training array. We have classroom space, large classroom spaces. We have individual breakout rooms. We have warehouse space that we convert into indoor training. It is a perfect facility for this. It's also, as Jacqueline showed on the map, there is no current program servicing this area. And then the money side of it is a real thing. That facility, when you add up everything going into it, including fire suppression and plumbing and all that, it's going to be three-quarters of a million dollars, and that's probably at a minimum. I'm not Nobody's going to travel from states away to build this thing. This is a local contract that local contractors would be bidding on. Framing, concrete, plumbing, fire suppression, all those types of things. Cleaning rooms in between cohorts. That would be subcontracted out. We're estimating about $12,000 a year on that. Per cohort transportation, we're estimating about $20,000. That's another contract that's going out to somebody locally. Catering and groceries per cohort on a pretty Reasonable estimate $30,000 and also the increase in property taxes. There is real money that can flow in the community. Additionally, we are hoping this is just the beginning. We get a solar training array down here. I started to have some flexibility with enhanced orientation for our folks for operator certification courses that we desperately need for skid steers, those types of things. Again, we've only been in the community about 18 months. I understand that it's been, I think it's been a decent start, but we are trying to bring more and more down here, and this is just part of that journey. I think that is all we have for now.

All right before I open it up to the public for questions I do have a couple things I'd like to say regard and I've taken a lot of phone calls texts emails this week There is a misconception on Nobles Doors intent or trying to push this along under the cover of darkness we were asked about public involvement how can there not be public involvement up until this point that's what these meetings are for I mean that's that is what our role is is to involve the public at these meetings it can be said the notification of the last meeting it was subpar but i'm glad to see the turnout tonight so i hope you know at least the intent of noblesdorf that was not their their intent that was more at the city level the fault the shortfall there I did hear about misinformation out there regarding Lewis Avenue being extended up to Clark. That is not part of this proposal whatsoever. That was never discussed last week, and I have never seen anything like that as well.

And that would take another round of hearings.

And that would take another round. And just to, Sean, I think, Sean, you brought it up. any action tonight will then go to the city council for final approval with another round of public involvement so there's there's multiple levels here um so with that being said um any comments or any questions or anything from the commission before we open it up to the public i actually have one uh so tiff the tiff requirements this doesn't satisfy those correct from the employment

requirements in the TIF?

I would say no. I honestly hadn't thought about that or looked into it, but I would say no. Sean, off the top of my head, I would say no.

I can answer that. Because I was also wondering this, we had been advised that if this building were to be erected, then an addendum would need to be proposed, additional hearings would need to happen, but it would not initially satisfy that requirement. Yeah.

Okay, at this point in time, I would ask just to kind of orderly come up to the microphone, introduce yourself. There's a lot of people here, so keeping your comments as brief as possible, but get your questions out, get your comments out. So come on and start a single file line up to the podium, if you would. That's the other thing about the intent. Thank you, Angie. One more thing, sorry. Noblesdorf did not have to offer up what they were gonna use this boarding house for other than it's a training program. They were gonna bring in trainees to train them, to my knowledge. so they're they're being upfront and very open about this program and they obviously feel very passionate about it we're not deciding on the program to be clear the programs happening regardless right so I think that just needs to be out to the public programs happening regardless

whether they're in days in or there's a dormitory. I just think that needs to go up.

Okay. All right. Okay, Greg said, and my questions are about the building itself. There wasn't an elevation view. And since you're thinking about maybe it happened to have to disappear in five or 10 years because of funding probably disappearing. Is it going to be a crawl space that the plumbing goes through? And or are you going to put all the plumbing in the concrete? And or would they be modular rooms that come in on a fork truck and plant down on concrete and the plumbing is somehow rigged between like C-bands that look like bedrooms? The other one is, since it was brought up, it's going to happen anyway. CJ, are you getting money from the CJER program to put these kids up in your facility? could be put into their pockets to stay at Days Inn and Best Western. And the last question is, is there a plan B, kind of downsize this thing, since it's gonna happen anyway, and use the building that you already own and somehow do the training inside the building and then the kids are on their own, the trainees are on their own to house themselves

or could you put a living can you put the training space in the building that you are in and i guess as far as back and forth i mean i guess i think it's best to just have public comment um Let's limit the audience participation. There's a microphone up here. File a single file line and come on up.

I may have said it, but I want to make sure that it's crystal clear. We live on Clark Street, very west end, and I was concerned that that would be opened up to that facility or any other area there. I just don't want Clark Street opened up because it is a nice protection for our subdivision, one way in, one way out. We've got a ton of kids there.

and I want to be very clear, that is not part of this proposal at all. That is pure misinformation.

Okay, because that's what we got on our information sheet, and I just wanted to be crystal clear that they will not open up a park. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Just a reminder, state your name before you speak.

My name is Jeff Bell. I live on Clark Street, and I'm listening here, and along with my family, and my daughter and my son also live here, and I have my grandkids as well. So one of the confusing things I want to understand is how many people are actually employed through the program from Olmstead to South Korea?

Okay.

Because if you look at the EEP map, Again, what we're going to limit the back and forth just so there's a few blocks in LaSalle that people are eligible. There's nobody from Spring Valley that's eligible to fuse eligible because they're a Superfund site. So they fall. So locally, you wouldn't be employing anyone through this program that lives in the West Bay. And then also, what risk does KE or all assume? I guess this is my question. What is their risk in doing this program? Because the community, they inherit all the risk, right? It's kind of similar to if you decide to drive a motorcycle, your risk level on a crash was the same thing here. You're bringing people from outside the area into this community. So who's at risk? The people that actually live in the community. And I had some questions about kind of what was relayed here. about kind of what's your denied entry into the program and who qualifies and who doesn't. So you're saying sex offenders at all don't qualify for this program? Do spouse abuse? My question is, like, does domestic battery people qualify for the program? Are they part of the program? I mean, what levels? Because according to the sieges, website, if you look at the requirements, every one of those things kind of fall into that eligibility requirement for the program. And they pull from our three communities defined, designated by the state due to historical disinvestment, high rates of gun violence, and high incarceration rates. So those are the people that predominantly qualified for that program. You automatically qualify if you were formerly incarcerated or have a criminal history in the legal system. You're more apt to be pulled in and eligible for this program. And one last point I guess I want to make as a resident of this city. You know, there was a representative I think last meeting that And I quote from KEE that says, it's up to the community if they want to be good partners with business. That was the statement. That statement kind of really bothered me because a strong partnership is a two-way street. The community is always ready to welcome partners who show a mutual commitment to local values, transparency, and investment. Partnership isn't just about what the community can do for you or the business, it's about what we can build together through shared responsibility. And it's worth that statement and the actions that KEE and Evolve have shown through not understanding the community needs that I do not support this project. And I ask the planning board and the city board not to approve this project. Thank you.

Hello, my name's Luke Wyden. I live on Hickory Street, right adjacent to the property. I think I'm uniquely qualified to talk about training academies, because I've built one this year. lot different though we're providing jobs locally to people we're not grant grabbing and through different smoke and mirrors when it appears it's evident to me after watching both of these meetings that there's a lot of lies going on for example they said there was eight people that worked at the building last week and now it's ten did anybody else catch that so We don't know what to believe at this point. And at the end of the day, with all the context aside, I'm sure they're trying to do right for people. But do we want to change the fundamental code of the M1 district and open up the doors for everybody else to do this? That's up to the committee. But I respect your decision tonight, and I hope that you think about the citizens and what risk, like Jeff said, we are taking on as a community. Thank you.

Jeff Moretzik, I live on Harbor Street. Just looking at the timeline, they started this proposal in January. That means they applied for grants significantly before that, and they were awarded significantly before that. It's been in the works for an awful, awful long time, and what community outreach have you done here? The answer is none. If you're trying to build a community partnership, you don't do this in the dark of night, and that's what they've done. I don't see how we can possibly support this just because of the fact that they've misled us multiple times. They didn't do, they chose specifically not to do any public outreach. I know they're not required to by law, But they chose not to do that. The public wasn't informed until the meeting last week about this, in one week. And what has changed since then? Well, now there's a radio ad. They talked to the community college this week. They talked to the police this week because they got caught. It has nothing more to do with than that. We can't trust them in this partnership because they haven't been truthful with the citizenry. They chose not to do the public outreach. The public wasn't informed. The only conclusion is they're trying to slip it through. I don't see any other possibility. I don't think it's a good precedent to rezone and rewrite ordinances for them again because what does that mean for the future for other potential businesses that want to come in and either build there in M1 Industrial and there's residents right next door potentially for any other businesses that want to come in and put boarding houses and different things up that want to do things that maybe we don't know about and we should. So that's, I kind of implore the board to vote no on this.

hi my name is jerry walter i live in victory um i agree with those gentlemen just got fun saying about the honesty of all this and i don't know you young lady but what was that it's going to happen anyways what was what comment was that because i was told it was going to happen regardless whether so what's going to happen they're still coming in and setting up the program whether there's a boarding house or not they'll be at the local hotels that's why i want people to be clear that it's the the program's still happening regardless

Either we allow them to have the dormitory or they're coming in a hotel. That's what I was saying.

Okay, thank you for that. So then they're telling us that their expense for the hotel is going to be, in three years, would be about three-quarters of a million dollars. And they're talking about this building costing over maybe a million dollars and something else. So why does the building have to be put up in that property and they not just go ahead and do that because... by 2030 they said that's all this is going to happen i wouldn't bet on it okay any other public comment

Brandy Day, I'm a resident here in Oglesby. A lot of great points made already. I'm just gonna bring up the one that I haven't heard discussed yet, and that's around my biggest concern, which is the solar array that's supposed to be installed on the property. What are the plans for that? How does that happen? How many panels? You guys did discuss it with us the last meeting. I was here for that one. But just for everybody who's here now, if we can get some information on that. Is there special permitting required for that or zoning changes? We shot down the radio station putting in a solar array in a very similar area. So what happens to this idea if it manages to go through and there's kickback on the solar side of it. So where does that all come together and how does that work and what's the process that we have planned for that? That's my thing to think about.

Good evening, Dan Fitzgerald. I just had a question. about the students, if I understand clarifying, they're coming Monday morning and leaving Thursday night. So essentially they're staying three nights. They're living on site just three nights of the week. And I'm not sure if you can clarify this, but the eligibility of individuals is not limited to ex-offenders, sex offenders, domestic badders. They are eligible, but they are not the only eligible people.

Sure.

Okay, I would just like to comment that sex offenders and domestic batterers, people who have been formerly incarcerated, are also eligible to apply and participate in educational programs at IDCC and any other training program that's offered in the area. The difference here is that these individuals would be staying three nights a week. This is kind of pie in the sky, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Did you consider the dual cost-benefit analysis of building houses? I don't know. That might be more expensive, but when you're done with that, you have an asset that's much more easily disposed of and that actually returns money rather than... just dismantling the three-quarters of a million dollar building that you have to return to its former use. I just wondered if you had done a cost-benefit analysis, because we do have a housing charge on it, and so that might add to it. It might be more expensive. It obviously would be more expensive. I just didn't know if you had looked at that, considered that at all.

I think that'll do.

Okay.

Hi, I'm Brad Reinhart. I live on Third Street. I guess the one question I'd really like to ask the board here is, it's a special use permit that they're requesting. Are you planning on making this an annual approval process so that the city actually has the ability to turn it off if we find something going south in other words you know if you just give this as a one-time thing without some sort of regular approval then you have no control no oversight if this program does not work out accordingly because it's a proof of concept program okay we're the first ones How do you know after you start it that, hey, this didn't work out the way it was supposed to? I've had that happen to me in my life a couple times, right? So if it's a proof of concept program, it seems it would make sense that if it's going to be an SUP, that you go ahead and make sure that it's an annual approval. Because at some point, if you find this isn't working out to the benefit of the city, you have the ability to say, you guys need to stop it. It's not working out for us. And then you can they can turn whatever the housing is to whatever they want to want it to be at that time. That's what I'd like to have the group strongly consider that this not just be a one and done.

Okay.

going once going twice okay are there uh questions or comments from the commission yeah i would like to go back to you i was only saying that so everybody had a clear understanding because i don't think people had a clear understanding that regardless the program was coming regardless of how we voted that's because these are questions i asked like if we vote didn't approve this they're questions i asked prior so i just wanted to be clear understanding to everybody in the audience that the program's coming regardless. That's all I was trying to get across.

Can you, if you have a question or a comment, can you please come up to the microphone?

It was just a question I asked ahead of time.

No, I can't keep my mouth shut. I'm Debbie Miller.

I live on Westwood Avenue. So my heart goes out to people. It really does. But if this is going to happen, if they're going to put your building up or they're going to go into a motel, why aren't we out here? Why aren't we here?

Basically decide if they get a dormitory or they stay in a motel.

So this was basically a done deal a week ago, months ago. This was a done deal.

the city has the city has nothing to do with the program the again the program is different than no we don't approve anything the city council does okay the city council but you're going to give the recommendation we never said that we haven't we haven't the program's happening we have nothing to do with that we don't want to assume anything at this point in time we just yeah

and even if you say no from what you're saying that's the way i understood it i could be wrong that's the way i understand it when i asked the person in the city council so again why aren't we all here this is just a waste of my time

But she keeps saying it's going to happen no matter what.

Okay. Okay.

we don't we're not making that decision no the city Oglesby is not making a decision on the program the program is we don't know that we can well We will take that on your advice. I have some questions, and that will be one of them. Okay. All right so I do have I do have some questions I guess that taking taking their feedback one of the questions was the risk to KE in this instance with this program what is you want to address the risk to Noblesworth I guess I'm not really sure how to define or what you're looking to define what i guess i'm assuming if something uh if trouble started with the trainees or you know something went sideways in the town caused by one of the trainees are you assuming risk or how how is that affecting as a good as a good partner yeah i mean that's what i would expect us to do that's what i would do is that

That's also a bit of a confused date. There's hotels here, correct? those those individuals aren't are they vetted in any way shape or form that's my knowledge so what can i take responsibility of every single thing that any person does know but i mean it's the same it's the same responsibility i have for any individual that works on any of our job sites across the state that we've hired numerous folks out of this these programs so i'm not really sure how to answer that i'm sure i'm not going to answer to anybody's satisfaction here but

I'm trying to think of the other ones that stood out to me I guess the last one here with is this would this program happen if this request was denied Some way shape or form we plan to bring a training program to life what again what we are asking is

to make it more economically viable for longer. We don't want this to be a flash in the pan. We don't want this to last for one, two years because we have an asset. I'm asking a business owner to invest a substantial amount of money. We still have an asset. If this goes six years, whatever it is, we hope it continues in perpetuity more than just a solar training program. I shared last week, and talks with the owner. We're hoping to get into more small business courses, and the future's unknown, but those are the types of things we want to do. But it is still an asset, and to remember all the gentleman's questions, but a slab-on-grade building, I'm not a builder, I'm not a designer by trade. We're going to have to work with the city building codes and what is allowable, but some way, shape, or form to still have a shell that is... That can be used, so it's high sidewall. I think, I don't know if the actual dimensions are all in there, but high sidewalls, high openings for garage doors to get things like bucket trucks and stuff. So the intent is to build what could then be used as equipment storage in the future. So slab on grade, all that plumbing just gets cemented back in, those types of things. But yeah, what we are really asking for is the variance to make it more of that communal space getting people from different backgrounds together, not have that week-to-week extra logistics and being tethered to another facility like a hotel that they book up for some reason or they have a burst pipe or something like that, then it's really not our decision on what's happening. We've got people all over town. It's a significant financial strain, year after year, paying a quarter million dollars hotel fees and we don't have an asset at that point the building is still our asset at that point if it stops in however many years Is the funding you're receiving for the program different if you do hotels versus you do a permanent building No

I can answer this question and the like, did you do funding outreach prior to community outreach? Yes. Like every single nonprofit and workforce development program, we cannot do community outreach, I tried to address this in the beginning, if we don't have anything to offer. I can't go into churches, I can't go into different buildings and say, hey, we've got this great program, I don't know when it's gonna start running, I don't know how many people are gonna be eligible, I don't know where you're exactly gonna be, but I promise this program is coming. but I have emails in my email from late 2024 coming into early 2025 with Illinois Valley Community College. Lots of different conversations with them. We were supposed to have an in-person meeting today. Unfortunately, we couldn't, but that's not a retrofit. There are longstanding conversations between us and Illinois Valley Community College. I have a letter from the IBEW here dated July 28th. I have a letter from Best Inc. dated August 25th, 2025. That's over a full year ago that essentially says they are the eligible body that designates pre-apprenticeship programs and coordinates workforce development in the area. they are the individual that we go to when we start doing community outreach because no broken promises are made here. They're allowing us to see who's in the area, are there workforce development issues being filled, is there extra capacity, are there any CEJA hubs here? And so we communicate with them who, you know, write us a letter of support that they want us in the community because it increases workforce development. So with the two major institutions that run workforce development here, the Workforce Development Arm through IVCC and BEST, we've been communicating for over a year. We were never trying to sneak in. We just have to have these conversations and do this part before we go and address the eligibility of the community. The other thing was there's a misconception that individuals from this community are ineligible because they haven't been through foster care, they're not in a specific zip code. The fourth bucket of eligibility of the EEP is whether they have been through a workforce development program. So you don't have to be an EEP before you are brought into the program. Going through the program gives you the designation of equity eligible person because you have fulfilled that fourth bucket of going through a workforce development program. So it's sort of a pathway for individuals who have not, you know, don't meet any of the criteria of the third bucket. But that means any graduating senior, anybody who's coming out of IVCC, anybody coming out of any church or nonprofit or community organization here is absolutely eligible and should apply and will be absolutely considered among everyone else if they meet eligibility requirements. We didn't designate these buckets. CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act designated these buckets. They are who decide this. And the four profiles that Mike gave you, there's not a single person among those four people who has committed a crime, not one. Not one of those people have a background. The biggest thing that's on anybody's background is driving without insurance from those five people. They've either been through foster care, been through abject poverty, been through a workforce development program. That includes Deshaun. It includes everyone else that has been listed here. There's a very narrow idea of who comes into these programs, and it's just not the case. There's a wide, wide range of people who come into it.

And just to address what you were saying, I understand you weren't –

trying to say anything snarky, you were just saying, the CEJA, the state of Illinois has designated hundreds of millions of dollars to clean energy workforce development training. Because of the stipulations they put in in CEJA about clean energy transition by 2030, they've then retrofitted lots of money to you know there's there was an issue of grant grabbing i mean we are workforce development and workforce development is funded through grants that is who your ivcc workforce development is funded through that's who we're funded through it's not tax dollars these this is money that is earmarked through particular legislation to go directly to this and nothing else so yes as a seizure recipient we will run a program because across the state of illinois they have designated hubs represented here by best that say they want workforce development in this area. It is a type of outreach that we've done, but we had to do this outreach to make sure we had specifics on what the program could offer before I go into a church. It's a different program to say, hey, there's gonna be housing, hey, there's gonna be this sort of eligibility. Otherwise, I will go to the church and say, hey, you're going to be living in a motel for three nights a week. It's just a different level of communication that I can do that I can't do until these specifics are designated. It's not because we're hiding. I'm not a good hider. I'm not a good liar. We're very upfront about what we're trying to do. We are.

Public comment is over.

I think the only, uh, to answer the solar, solar training array. So it's, it's not a functioning solar site. We're not going to apply with the utility for interconnection, anything like that. 99% of the time, what you're going to see is posts in the ground. So we all pile, they will be out in that grass. And then about a week out of those, out of that 10 week course, you will see it get built up to the point of modules. And then we would be tearing it back down to basically call it,

six seven weeks a year you would kind of be seeing that and that was discussed last week as well and it's still debatable whether we would have you apply for a special use permit for the solar field itself I had a couple I had a couple clarifications to make thank you for your responses appreciate that there was a comment opens the door up to every you know boarding house on every M1 use this is a special use permit so it would for any other M1 use or zoning area that requests this it would have to go through that same process Then as far as the special use permit goes on an annual approval like we can give kind of a recommendation as far as stipulations we set You could grant it for a specific period of time subject to review at the end of that time and continuation if

the board thought it was approvable. You can put stipulations on the special use permit. One of them is gonna be that it would be returned to warehouse space. I know that that was something that was discussed by the board. So I have that on my list, but yes, it could be limited to a period of time. It's hard for them to make this kind of an investment in the community and possibly see it go away in one or two years. That's something for the council to consider.

Jim, did you want to speak to what you put up on the screen?

This is what we've been going back. So the areas we're talking about are this color right here. So if we allow this... boarding house and M1 zoning. These are the areas that could potentially be impacted. This is M2 over here, and that's mostly Iden-Arkland anyway. So it's most of this area near the interstate. M2 are these hatched areas right here. So we're talking about this strip of land that would be M1. This is college right here. It's already here.

again it would be a special use that would go in each individual case would go through a hearing process all right yeah mark probably for Jacqueline I guess it goes back to what I believe was Jeff was up here speaking about the area like only so many streets in LaSalle are eligible It just seems a little weird, and I can see where the people are concerned because there's no consistent basis like, not for an example, but you have a property that's a squared area. But I did take a look at a map, I believe, and it just seems so weird how the state has included certain parts of a town. Again, I didn't look close enough. I don't know. Is Oglesby included in this, like Jeff may have mentioned, as far as?

Yeah, so neither Jacqueline or I can speak to how they drew lines, but again, that's one bucket. So that is just, you wouldn't have to go through the training to be an equity eligible person according to that map okay if your home address is there you are already an equity eligible person that is just one bucket and whatever label they put on it i mean typically it's just historically it's been kind of impoverished that's And you said you want to try to get the program going first quarter of 27 was that I believe I

I guess I want to ask you a question. Do you think there will be enough people in the local area when you start the program to just fill the program with locals? I know I can't pinpoint anything. I guess I was just trying to compare it to see if other projects you were on, if your time frame or if your ease of being able to find local people to fill the program.

I would love to know sort of how many people are interested, how many people, you know, from different, again, we only take referrals from community-based organizations to ensure another layer of security for us. We want to know that your church leader, your nonprofit leader, you know, whoever it is that you're being referred by has a secondary layer of, I know this person, they're ready to do this, and, you know, we can work with them on that.

I guess what I'm trying to say, and I'm trying to think out of the box here, and I don't know if this is legally or I don't know any stipulations, but What if we came up with a plan where you had your program started the first quarter of 2027, and I believe you said 20 to 25 people. I would think there would be enough local people in the area to at least get that first project going or module. I'm sorry, I can't remember the right term. What if you started with that? You mentioned a building, housing, and you're going to turn it into a warehouse when you're done. What if you just built the shell as a warehouse? Start your program using local people in the area to get things rolling to see how things will go. You're our experience in this. Obviously, a lot of our residents, it's new to us. So... what if you started your program with local people, just build your warehouse, use that for maybe a training area or a lunch area where we have local people come in, whether they drive, we have NCAT, whatever, and just to get the ball rolling to see how things would go. And then if down the road through your connecting with people, you see that they're, the pool in the area might be expired of possible people then come back and ask for the special permit to put the housing in theory

The issue is grants, funding gets audited. So there kind of lies the issue with that. So I'm no expert on this. I just know the amount of work she's had to put into it. All these things, especially grants, but if there's any state funding, anything like that, that is heavily, heavily audited. We really can't go in with a restrictive plan in the hope something happens because that's not going to work for obviously.

is there an opportunity when you're vetting vetting applicants to score or do you score them or is there like an emphasis placed on local or can there be an emphasis placed on local or they score higher than you know because they're local

And I guess what it meant by building your building, just a shell. And if it did come down the road, and I understand what you're saying, Mike, about the grants and the money and everything like that, but just put the shell up. And then if the time came when you needed to go and you desire that you needed to have boarding homes or whatever, then fill with the rooms there then. And I guess what I'm trying to find out is I'm, I'm trying to find the both for best for both sides and Obviously as a committee here. We have to look out for the citizens of the area So we don't we don't deny your desire to And you've just proven by your presentation and what you've said up here today and last week that it is a program where you highly recommend it for training people. I'm just trying to find a way to ease into it for both sides. I thought maybe if there was a way that the first module could go out and the people maybe could see how it's going. And I don't know. It's just outside the box, and it's just something I'm thinking of to try to help both people out. I mean, granted, again, locally, we want to see the local people do well. We want to see them hopefully get a chance to do this. And, I mean, that's just my idea brought up. Thank you, Mark. Karen?

Did I hear you say that this was done somewhere else, or is this, like, the first time that you've done this and had a building with, like, a dorm? Do you have one be somewhere else, I guess? No. So this is, like, the first time you've done this?

Any other questions for noble's door from the Commission I

okay so then I guess I would remind everybody here there's a couple requests so we'll try to separate them so the first request is really an amendment to the land development code to allow the boarding house which is in the land development code to be in an m1 unit or m1 designation by special use permit so do I hear a motion

I just want to say that I spoke about this at the last meeting and this is strongly where I come from. The simple fact that if a third party developer wanted to have housing for IVCC, this is exactly what they would have to ask for. And this is where I am coming from and being involved in the comprehensive plan. would like to speak to me I am happy to share with you my hours of research my comparisons and everything but I am making a motion to allow special use permit for the boarding house in NY is there second second mentee any discussion okay roll call

the motion is to basically allow the request so to amend the land development code to include boarding house in m1 by special use permit it was seconded by mentee I have to answer you can abstain no

no aye

So with that motion carrying this would then kick in the to allow a special use the special use permit for this particular location Or to recommend it technically to the City Council recommend and then there was also discussion of recommending with some stipulations so I heard returning to warehouse space if this use was discontinued yes

discontinued, it goes away after six months, so it would become an M1 use without a special use after six months of abandonment.

Okay.

I have a question to that, Jim.

We heard it from the state agency, the Alley Agency. Correct. If they continue to work people in there in any way or form, does that keep the six-month active training? Oh, sorry. I'm not sure. Randy day a question towards Jim statement of the the special use were to be eliminated they would have six months and then it would be fully inactive my question was if there were still uses in that facility would it still be considered active in light of the statement that we heard earlier about the alley vacancy having the similar situation with the six month carryover. So I just wanna know how that all ties together.

So I think if the special use permit was not being used within six months.

For a boarding house. For a continuous six month period, then the special use permit would no longer be active.

It would expire. But I do think we would need, if we wanted this guaranteed to convert back to warehouse space, I think. And they've made that pledge so I see no reason not to seize that and put it in the recommendation And there's a difference between not using as a boarding house and clearing the rooms and you converting it to warehouse space so that's what we mean by warehouse space yeah um and then last week uh there was some um discussion about like a in a time period or a re-evaluation or uh um like i believe like for rental uh rental you a short-term rentals we did like a three strikes you're out kind of thing um so there's some kind of recommendation we can work into and and short-term rentals have to be renewed

every year I think they're renewed annually so you could say that you wanted this to be reviewed in a year two years or something when granting the special use permit and then you could take this up and see if there's any problems you know the question in my mind becomes whether they would be willing to make this investment in the community not knowing whether it's going to continue to exist for that period of time whatever you put in there

i i would think that's like their skin in the game mark kind of like i know how you were saying like do the warehouse first in this way i feel like this is like an opportunity to like hey you know you believe in this program you believe in the in the train trainees

um let's take a look at this for a year and and then you know is it working and and doing it i think that's a win or that's an opportunity to kind of satisfy both sides yeah that and that again that was my only goal on that i mean you know um obviously they have a lot in it a lot that's going to be invested in it and um i'm just trying to do what's hopefully best for both sides in the beginning And then we get to see everything. So, I mean, you know, hopefully no one on either side is offended with my answer or any other answers. We're just here to try our position, I believe, as commission is try to do what's best for the city. But we have an opportunity here for investment that could possibly help us, too. So that's, again, that was my thinking outside of the box. If there's some way that we could work that out, we wouldn't have to worry about the special permit right now. And that's the only way I can see that affecting my vote. I do have a couple things.

Since this is really our first chance to have this particular discussion, I don't know how you feel about actually, can we actually say it's limited to three-night stay, or three nights, right? so that unfortunately our trainers or our residential director okay so maybe whatever that occupancy the occupancy goes down to those individuals that ought to be 24 7 but i i received a lot of calls and questions as well and so i think it is important that we know that they can't just print this out potentially to somebody else while the student the trainees are not staying i think i think that would differ that would be a different use and that would kick the special use permit out anyway but by special use we're that's what i'm saying yeah like you're saying we can say or specifically for

Housing trainees. You could say that, Angie. Yes. I made a note of that.

Because somebody asked, like, oh, well, what if, you know, can the Airbnb enter? So I'm like, I know they can't. Would they be able to potentially allow other people to stay there when it's vacant over the weekend? Yeah. So can you do that? And then, so that would actually cover both points that I wanted to make. And... Are you going to put a cap daily that coincides with their suggested program for 10-week periods as well?

I didn't understand what you meant there, Angie.

Like, would you put a cap on the special use permit of the length of stay? Like, if, say, they decide they want to come and have a 16-week program, would that still fall under the same special use? Because it doesn't matter, right?

Yeah, I wouldn't know why that would make any difference.

I just wanted to clarify that the program itself.

It's their facility. I think they can use it, but you can limit it to trainees if you want to. We need a motion to recommend the special use permit if you want to or deny the request for special use permit to the City Council with restrictions that we have discussed which the City Council will need to take up in discussion Restrictions Okay. So one of them was that they would commit to restore the structure to warehouse space if the training program ever terminated. Another was to limit it to use for trainees only and staff only. Another was to maybe limit it for review in a year, two years. Do we have a timeframe that would accommodate your financing concerns and stuff? Just wondering, so the council will know when we discuss this.

If the council feels more comfortable with it being a year, we will work with whatever type of group.

And I think you can feel comfortable with this city that if there are no problems in that year or two-year period, they would have no hesitancy to renew it at that point.

Yeah, we have no problem with that stipulation.

Okay. So do you want to recommend one or two years?

Sir Pat, I have a quick comment. Sure. Instead of restricting it to warehouse, you should say warehouse or other typical industrial use.

Or other allowed uses in an M1 district. That's right.

I think two years initially makes sense. It's going to take them a while. If this vote were to, the special use were to, I'm just thinking realistically by the time something's built, by the time the program runs, like a two-year initial, one year thereafter.

two-year initial review and let them decide at the two-year mark what needs to be done thereafter whether it's a year whether it's two years whether it's five years because everything's rolling fine let the council decide at that time would be my recommendation Again I'll go back to my comments in the last meeting

I'm all for the program. I mean, under these, you know, EEP, I would actually be an EEP person from where I grew up. So I grew up in poverty. That being said, without any history of the program, that's why I voted no in the original. And honestly, I'll probably vote no in the second one because I just want to see some history of the program in this entire area.

think and again that's why i brought up my outside the box idea so i mean i recognize i realize what mike just said about the grants money and things like that but if there were just some way to just to get this program off the ground using local people and then give everybody a chance to see how it goes granted there's going to be a time if the program continues where there isn't going to be a lot of there may not be a lot of local people to fulfill the spots i'm just trying to make what's best for both either way either side is going to be mad walking out of here and obviously once again for the fourth time we just make a recommendation is all we're doing okay there's no reason why if this if it's not approved that kei can't come back to the city and say hey this is our proposal what do you think i guess for lack of better term we're doing some of the dirty work here But so please, don't be offended either way. And I'm just trying to do what's best for both sides.

I forgot one. I'm done after this, I swear. How did the conversation go with our police department? I'm sent to ask that. So there's a, like... Potentially there could be a safety plan in place, like they're allowed on the property, right? Yeah, absolutely.

We have no intention of restricting emergency services, the police department, to come onto the property or into the facility in any way, shape, or form. We're willing if... if hopefully one day we're able to open the housing for our students we're willing to work with them and hoping that to have collaboration and a partnership to make sure that our students are safe the community is safe they're trained on how the building is laid out as well because 32 rooms 16 bathrooms in a 60 by 100 foot shed is pretty intricate to move through as well so um yeah jacqueline and i met with the chief of police um a deputy chief and then another officer as well um for about a 35 minute phone call so We thought it went well.

I don't know if anyone has anything else to ask. If somebody from your program was to cause a disturbance, what does that look like to continue on in this? I know the program has no bearing on how we should vote.

We have a zero tolerance policy for any of our students. So if they're causing disruptions, issues, get into legal trouble within the town in any way, shape, or form, they will be exited from the program. and we take full responsibility of bringing them maybe back down to Carbondale or the Chicagoland area Rockford anywhere wherever they're coming to us from within the state of Illinois All right do we have any motions on the floor here I will make a motion to grant the social use permit with stipulations that we discussed yeah I'll report those to the council

hearing the motion is there a second there is a second any other discussion before voting what was the question Karen

It would be two years initially right and then after the two years it would be up to the council Right so those those three stipulations so they're clear for the minutes Angie are to require the building to be restored to any other approved M1 use if the program ever stops to approve the special use permit for two years with review by the city council thereafter as to whether it will continue and to limit the use of the facility for residences by trainees and staff only is that your motion and it was seconded as any other discussion okay roll call

to give a dissertation on my vote once again is what i um said earlier and for that reason i have to vote no aye okay motion passes

All right which brings us to our next item on the agenda any further public comment I just have a question because it was a little hard to hear the vote was 3-3 with one with Amy abstaining is that correct There were two abstained Karen abstained too and the abstains.

Don't count.

Do not count. Right. Okay. I am curious, and I don't want to put anybody on a spot, but this is a very important commission to the city, and you're sitting in seats that are, you know, that you're responsible for making decisions. I'd like to know why they abstained.

You don't have a right to know that, Becky. Okay. If you want to talk to them about it after, you can, but they're not required to make that statement to you publicly. I'm just curious.

Do either of you work for the college or? Not the college. Okay.

But you want my opinion, you can call me right now.

Okay.

And I'm glad we give it to you.

Okay.

But I'm not going to .

Okay, that's fine. And then the other thing, if there is a bright spot in this for the people, and most of them have left, is that KEI had already said that they were going to do this program no matter what. And one of the things that they said that they may look into is purchasing homes in the area. I personally think that if they are going to do this program, that it's much better to have them on their own property, really separated from our neighborhoods as much as they can be, And they're under their control of them 24 hours a day.

Becky, I wish you would have said that when that whole group was here, because I really don't know if people understood what this meeting actually was about, judging by the feedback from that gentleman there and that lady. I don't think they understood what they were here for, and she kept saying, well, why are we here?

Well, I wish that, you know, that I believe in... Oh, that's... I believe that they could have built or converted a home into a boarding house in an R3 district I believe yeah commercial right so I know how difficult it was for you guys but so I I think if you did make the right decision

um maybe not for the reasons that that you made them but i think for um i just wish everybody what you said that's exactly what they could have done they could have went about houses and i don't think everybody out in this that's what i was trying to get at when i said the decisions already made before public comment was like they're the program's coming so they as everybody's

doesn't want a dorm like they can buy a house right in your neighborhood for what everybody's scared like I just wish that kind of what it came earlier and people I don't think people had a clear understanding what this meeting was about and I wish that you would have taken the matter separately that that there would have been more discussion about actually whether it was in the best interest of the city to change and add a special use for the m1 taking kei completely out of the equation and talking about that because I didn't hear anyone really express any good reasons for doing that. And then looking at their thing once you made that decision. Those are just the two things that I would have liked to have seen as a resident.

Thank you.

Once again, I think it's a great program. I hope people understand that. One way I voted or the other way or however everybody may have voted or didn't vote or what have you, it was just, again, for the fifth time, eighth time, it was nothing against the program. It was just the boarding part.

Greg. Okay, Greg Sinegan, and my hand was up for, and it'll be to the council now, whether they want to include a stipulation around this perpetual construction zone, a beautification screening of some kind, which the radio stations, solar field, which I don't think is dead. I don't think they've withdrawn their proposal, and the planning commission of the county board disapproved it, but... dead. And they were required in that to put screening around their solar field out there. And as far as a buying a house and putting 20 to 25 students in, I don't think there's a building in this city, one building that could have done that. It sort of sounds like the Cantac House over in Ottawa.

No, he said they could buy five houses.

They could buy five houses and put four students in each house. Well, the Cantac House, which is Frederick Village over in Ottawa, is something similar to that. I think that's all I've got to say.

Okay. Thank you. Any other public comment?

I want to say thank you to everybody. No matter what the level of participation was, the resistance, the approval, the presentation, the having patience, and I feel like we've learned a lot, too, and I hope that we have some follow-up.

Well said. And I think there's some lessons learned of public notification, how we could do a better job as a city as a whole of public notification.

One more thing. I'm kind of in favor of this. That way, if the boarding house gets built, the tax base of the city increases, and the money goes to the city as a whole instead of two institutions, Best Western and KVM.

All right, no other public comment. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you all.