City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting to the Princeton City Council to order. Clerk, call the roll.

Council Member Newman? Here. Gomez?

Here.

Selesky?

Here.

McCall? Here. And Mayor Mabry?

Here. Would you please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Now we're going to go to public comment. Public comment is available for the public to speak at the beginning of the meeting as well as at the end. They can actually speak at both those segments. We'd like to have you limit your time to three minutes if possible to address the council. If there's anyone here to speak to the council in public session now for public comment. Otherwise, we're going to go to our first article of business with Kent Parish. Is there anybody that would like to speak for public comment? Amen. If we could then, Kent, if you would, please come to the microphone. And I'd like to say when we start this, it's a little bit different segment. Kent has asked me to be on the agenda to speak. So with that said, we did a little research and the thought was to give a guideline of 15 minutes to speak. So that's what we're going to be using from now on if somebody does come and speak again to the council in this type of role. The goal is to get the public to be able to communicate to the council, not to cut them short on time. We will tonight be trying to adhere strongly to that 15-minute mark. So at 13 minutes, our deputy city clerk, Elizabeth Sandoval, filling in with Janet, they'll let me know on the two-minute warning, and we'll give that to Kent. And then at 15 minutes, we'll wrap things up. If you would then, Kent, with that said, you can go ahead and just state your name for the record. Sure.

Kent Parrish. I went away for the holiday weekend. I just got back, and I'm not feeling very well. So I would be able to get through this, but I think the sun has had an effect on me. But anyway, thank you for letting me speak. A lot of this has already been touched upon. I'd like to expand upon quite a bit, too. This is so concerning, the 512 South Church property, which is adjacent to my home, and also kind of a tale of two properties, the 526 North Chestnut property by comparison and contrast. Michael Ziering, back in July 10th, wrote a very severe demand letter to my neighbor. I'd like to read part of it. I think maybe I've already read part of it, but I'd like to read it again. The purpose of this letter is to inform you that a preliminary inspection of your property has revealed that you have unsafe or substandard conditions on your property. Potentially safe and substandard conditions include overgrowth of brush, grass, and weeds, deteriorating fence, unsanitary fountain containing weeds, and stagnant water. The State of Illinois Statute 511-311 requires you to repair your property to a safe condition within 15 days. If the property is not repaired to a safe condition or demolished in that time, then the city may apply to the circuit court to cause the repair or demolition. Ultimately, the city may petition the circuit court for the ability to move forward with the repair, demolition, or cleanup of the property if no action is taken on their part. Costs associated with these actions are the property owner's responsibility as long as sufficient warning and notice has been provided. If cooperation is not received and deadlines are ignored, then the city is prepared to take all steps allowed by law to address the situation. And then in 16 size font in bold. You have until July 26, 2025 to correct the conditions on the property. Now, I've spoken of this. Nothing did get done. No conditions were corrected. Today, the owner is late 346 days. We have an ordinance that I mentioned earlier that after two weeks, then the owner is in violation, and it's a $100 a day fine. And it doesn't say it may be. It says it shall be. So by that standard, which this council has approved, that owner owes the city $34,600. That's what you approved. I'm going to repeat some things that I read off three weeks ago. The Chestnut property had seven police department letters sent to the owner or the owner's son who was living there. 14 administrative ordinance hearing notices over a very long period of time. Sorry. Page turned. Three failure to pay final notices. One application for administrative warrant. Three notices to abate. 18 ordinance violation tickets. 18 from the police department. And those totaled, I've got that here, over $7,000. I'll find that. Finally, in December of last year, one notice of unsafe building ordered to repair or demolish. And 33 days later, in January, a petition for demolition order. Excuse me, the first one was in November and the second was in December. So we petitioned to demolish the property. That's a lot of activity.

Good for this council.

I read the description of the property. And we know about the property. It was in terrible condition. One thing that we did do, though, was buy it. I mentioned this, too. You may have maybe acknowledged it. We bought it for a dollar from the owner. And then we paid $34,636.92 to what I'm going to call a lender. So it had a mortgage. I think that should have been made public. That was a major purchase. It was made public at a meeting. I learned this through FOIA. The minutes did read that we were going to buy it. The minutes did not read what we paid for it. To the public, we paid $34,636.92 for a nuisance, what I call a nuisance property. By comparison, the 512 South Church property has received nothing. It's in terrible condition. It's better now because Ray Mabry came and cleaned a lot of it up and hired somebody to help him. It took three days to do it, but it isn't finished. And it is four feet from my property. And it affects my property. And as I said before, it affects my life. And it has for years. It has caused so many difficulties that I won't even get into. I've already spoken of many of them. The amount of fines for the Chestnut property was $7,850. And the best I could ascertain was they paid $100. That's the best I could glean from the paperwork. As I said a couple, three meetings maybe ago, maybe it was even May 15th, I believe it was, I had written Teresa an email asking if anything had happened to enforce the ordinances on the South Church property. And as I already said, I didn't hear anything back. And it took 16 days. And then I sent the email again. And just a few minutes after I sent it again, she wrote me back. And she actually wrote an email to other principals here, I'm not sure exactly who, asking if anything had happened to that property with any violations. She eventually did that. She did write me back at first and she said that she couldn't find anything about it and I'll have to ask around myself. Incredible. A person who's paid $132,000 asking me to find out for myself. So she did send an email to other people here and this came up and it's not going to go away and it basically said I know there's other more important properties or more serious properties. I'm not quite remembering that phrase. But it's not going to go away. Well, I'd like to inform Mr. Wittenauer. This was very important. It's very important to me. And every citizen in this town is important. And I feel, and I think it's just pragmatically understandable, that my property value has lowered greatly because of the property next to me. And I think that Mr. Mabry would say the same thing, be it in real estate. So, I've spoken many times to Mr. Selecki about this. He's been very receptive. He's been very kind, very nice. He's been looking for solutions. He communicated some of these issues, correct me if I'm wrong, to Princeton Police Chief Tom Kammerer. Mr. Kammerer sent out an email, and it didn't get to me. It was supposed to come to me, and he sent copies to three or four or five other people, but he didn't send it to me. And as I talked to Mr. Selecki, 22 days later, after they had already received it, three weeks and one day later, We came over the phone, we came to a realization that I didn't get that email. And the email said, could I write down what the violations are so that the police department could address them. 22 days later after it was sent, and I didn't even get it. So I asked officer, police chief Cameron, how come I didn't get it? And he wrote back and he said it was unintentional. And I can address that maybe a little bit more maybe at the next meeting. So he asked me to write down the violation. So I went through and I found the ordinances. And I spent seven or eight days, truly, of writing down the ordinances and how she was in violation, the owner was in violation. And this is that document. And it's full. Anybody who knows me knows me pretty well. I'm pretty meticulous. And I cover everything that I can think of. And for anybody in public, I'll be glad to send you what these violations were, what the ordinances are, what the violations were. So a week or two later at one of these meetings, I asked Mr. Kammerer if she was ever, after this was received, if she was ever given a violation. He said he'd have to check on it. After all that work, he didn't know. And at the meeting three weeks ago, he didn't even act the courtesy to tell me one way or the other. I think it's pretty unfair. I'm not here to complain. I don't enjoy this. But I don't enjoy my property value going down thousands of dollars. And I don't like cleaning up the property that spills over onto mine. And it's not finished yet. There's a tree that's still hitting my garage. It's on the garage. There's another tree that needs to be taken down. If you drive by the property, again, it's full of weeds, high grass. And we have ordinances against that. But there's no ordinance. There's no violation that has ever been given. So we didn't enforce the demand letter. You heard most of it. Pretty serious. Very severe. We didn't enforce it. It's almost a year now. No ordinance violations have been issued. One of the problems, as you know, is that there was a water leak in February, early February, and the utility bill for that water was $973 for that month to the public. $973. And the taxpayers covered it. It wasn't an act of God. We paid it. The city decided to pay it. To be fair, I think it was one authority. I don't think the commissioners even knew that it was waived. So that's what I mean when I say we paid it. It was abated. Somebody had to pay it. Almost $1,000 or something that was probably, to my understanding, caused by the owner. According to the 2020 census, which is the last census that we have,

Kent, we're down to two minutes.

Okay. The people in Princeton who... The households in Princeton... Try to find it here. I don't have my glasses. I forgot them. approximately $61,000 are earned annually by the household, one-person households in Princeton, I'm sorry, the families in Princeton, and approximately $56,000 are earned by the household, by the one-person households. But this owner owns two properties, and they have a total fair market value of $479,595.00. And this owner this year is paying taxes, and this is public information, is paying taxes on two properties, not one, of $8,749.54. And I think that that person probably could have paid their own utility bill when there was a water leak instead of having the public pay it. So... There was no expectation on the demand letter. We paid the utility bill. There's been no violations. And Mr. Mabry, you came in there and cleaned it up and you told me you weren't even going to charge her. Like the demand letter says. All these favors for someone who really seems to have the means to take care of themselves. When other people in this city are living on very modest incomes. Other taxpayers and non-taxpayers. And the city has handled this so poorly and has dropped the ball so many times. And my time is up and I could continue. And I will next time about the dog ordinance. Very good.

Thank you, Kent. Kent, can I just, one comment? I'll take your comment back. Could you provide us with a one-page summary of what you want the city to do regarding all these issues you have? You don't have to respond to that now, but just tell us exactly how we could solve these problems.

Mr. Newman, I've spent so much of my life doing this. I could tell you right now in person what I would like you to do.

Like I said, you're out of time. I'm assuming you're going to be back in a couple of weeks. Or if you want to email to us just that summary. Because if you want us to take action on your neighbor or if you want us to do something different, please be specific. Because we want to help. We're not sure where to start.

I have been specific and Mr. Mabry can inform you. I've spoken to him about it. If you want to comment on that, you're welcome to.

Very good. Jerry, thank you for asking those questions there. If I could, before we move on, I do want to tell the council that the yard was again mowed today. I talked with Joel Dickinson of Dickinson Lawn Care. He's been contracted by the person at 512 South Church to maintain the yard for the rest of the year on a regular basis. If you get a chance, if you haven't been over there, you can go over and walk in the backyard and see it. I think the yard looks pretty darn good. And there is one tree for sure that is hanging over the garage near Kent's garage property line. I think the property looks really pretty darn good right now. Okay, the point would be is she does have a contractor taking care of the mowing that's effective immediately. And that's good news. The other thing would be if you're interested in touring the 526 North Chestnut property with me, we'll just have you sign a waiver. If you were to walk through that property and see what that property's like, you'd far much rather have her with the red brick home as a neighbor than 526 North Chestnut. It's so embarrassing when you walk through there. It's just, I can't believe people live like that. And again, if you want to see that, I have a key to that property. All we do is just have you sign a waiver and I'll take you through as a flashlight.

Can I comment back on that?

Yes.

Just because one property is so bad, and I know it is because I read the whole description of it, and in some ways it is worse than this property as far as living in it, but that doesn't negate how bad this property is. That doesn't take away what should have happened to this property. And three weeks ago after the meeting, you asked me, Kent, what is more important, the content of what you say or the tone in how you say it? Remember that you asked me that. And I said the content. And the tone now is deserved. But the content is what the reality is. So I'm going to ask you a question, too. What is more important, to have ordinances, send a demand letter, and enforce them, and to find someone, or to do the same thing but not enforce them and not find someone, which is what this body has done? What is more important, Mayor Mabry?

I think that every day we make decisions on how we're going to react and respond to different situations. We could always look back and do better. Always could look back and do better. I would make a comment, I'm going to move on here, that when you said, as a realtor, do I agree that your property has been devalued, I guarantee you the property at 526 North Chestnut, all the neighbors around there, their property was devalued. Have you had one neighbor come to you and say they also felt their property was devalued? You're the only person that's come to complain about this church street property that's adjacent to you. You're the only neighbor.

Because I'm the only neighbor doesn't doesn't negate it.

It only takes one I would just say then go back to realtor. I would say your property values. It's not been Diminished and you could certainly talk to another real estate office. Not me. Let's go ahead. We'll move on everybody good One suggestion Agree with Jerry.

I think you could give us one page thing I think we have beaded that horse here long enough you continue to come meeting after meeting with the same thing and And personally, I don't think you need to come back to the next one, the dog ordinance. We went over this two years ago. You and I agreed to disagree. You were scared of the dog. You wanted the dog ordinance changed. You're claiming bats are in your house because of your neighbor's property, which is not true. And there's a lot of, there's 36, 37 pages that you have on here. We've got all the information in front of us. Come with the one page. Give us the one page. That would be my suggestion. I'm not going to comment anymore with you on it. I'm just going to tell you that I agree. I agree with Jerry here, and I think we need to kill this right now.

And how do you know that the bats are not coming from that property? How do you know that? Ken, there are bats all over this town.

I never used to have them. And old houses. I never used to have them. So that's all I'm going to comment on. That's it.

Thank you. I know that bats migrate, and they go to homes or where there is a system where they can get into. being from public health. They do migrate. And just because you didn't have them 10 years ago does not mean you will not have them today.

Ever since Mayor Mabry cut down the dead trees, I haven't had them.

We're going to move on. Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember, thank you for your input. Appreciate that. Don, do you want to say something? Everybody else has jumped in there. I don't have too much to add. I guess one thing I would add is on the email that was inadvertently not sent by the Chiefs,

There is one email that you yourself, Kent, sent that had a misspelling that Mr. McCall did not receive. So it does happen?

It can happen?

It certainly can. It certainly can.

Thank you, council. Appreciate that. Now we're going to go ahead and go on to the approval of the minutes, please.

I move that we approve the minutes from our regular council meeting on June 15, 2026.

Second. Motion to second. Is there any questions or comments about those minutes? Seeing none, we're called to roll.

Council Member Newman? Aye. Gomez? Aye. McCall? Aye. Selesky? Aye. Mayor Mabry?

Aye. And before we go on, we do have our Deputy City Clerk working with us tonight, Elizabeth Sandoval. And so she's going to go ahead and go through the invoices, please.

In the Department of Accounts and Finances, $126,307.78. In the Department of Streets and Public Improvements, $161,450.47. In the Department of Public Safety, $379,778.18. In the Department of Public Property and Utilities, $423,813.25, with a grand total of $1,091,349.68. All council members present have confirmed their reviews of all invoices and are now submitted for disposition.

I move that we approve the invoices as presented.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Is there any questions or comments?

I have one. I would make a suggestion that any bills that are paid from the city that, with a credit card, that they should be an itemized, detailed bill, just for the protection of the city, to make sure that there is no alcoholic beverages that are actually spent on the card. Because I know there's one here for $90.29. It's not a lot of money, but it's just a credit card receipt. I would suggest that everybody gets an anonymized bill, or if you do something from someone had told me a long time ago, get an affidavit of what you actually purchased with it, or an explanation of what it was.

So it kind of protects everybody. That's something I could be working on. Very good. Okay, are we ready? Third call to roll.

Council Member Newman?

Aye.

Gomez? Aye. McCall? Aye. Selesky? Aye. And Mayor Mabry?

Aye.

Now to our ordinances, please. Ordinance O-26-015, amending the Bureau Putnam Area 2017 Enterprise Zone for the Marquis expansion in Hennepin, be approved.

I move that we approve ordinance O-26-015. Second. This is a second reading. Is there any questions from the council? Otherwise, we're going to wait and call the roll, please.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez. Aye. McCall. Aye. Selesky. Aye. And Mayor Mabry.

Aye. Now on to our city manager report with Teresa Wittenauer.

I have nothing on the mayor's report.

Thank you, Teresa. On the mayor's report, it was a busy weekend with celebrating 250 years, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, if you haven't seen it, they've got a plaque out as you just start to go up the steps in front of City Hall. Very well done. Very well done. It's not overwhelming. I give a lot of credit to Sue Stutzke. She spearheaded that project, and those ladies are very active in the Daughters of Market Revolution. We're thankful to have them. Give a chance to take a look at that plaque. Otherwise, we had a lot of good activities. You know, we fight the rain. They said that just north of Princeton, there was seven inches of rain the past three days. It just kept coming. And then the sun would shine, and we had more rain. Our lunch in the park went really well right up to the time that the rain arrived. And as I jokingly said, it was like you were going to give a baptism. They all bailed out on you. Anyway, with that said, on the old business, we passed on these things because we're still working on it. And so, Tom, on the e-bikes, I know we got some guidance from Steve in Illinois, right? I'm not signing by the governor yet. Okay. It's going to be interesting on that one to see how, okay, you're watching that. And the THC infused beverages?

Hasn't been signed by the governor.

So we have some direction on what to look at.

State law on that. Okay, very good. January, is that when it was taken? I believe so. Right. And you might think it would be the same if he would get it signed in? Some director active July 1st. Okay.

is there there's an issue with I'm not signing or I think the enforcement part of it because you can't write a juvenile traffic ticket there's different ways that has to be addressed and so I think that might be sure okay now we want is there any new business for the council

Seeing none, is there any public comment from the public? We've got somebody in the back. We'll start with her in a good way. I've just got to give your name there, young lady.

Hi, my name is Peggy. I just want to say thank you guys for the city. Great job at the sidewalk for the high school. I did not know if anybody tried by to see it. working in this hot heat in the community the sidewalk is just i'm jealous because i see them every morning out there and i'm like look at my sidewalk but did you put your initials in there and another thing lunch in the park the veterans group is going to do that this friday Sorry, I can't remember who's doing the bank sale, though. But there'll be two great support groups out there. But please come out and support. So, and just to add on to the sidewalk there, they'll be redoing the entire street in the next couple weeks, and also curbing on your side. Yay. Thank you. So, yep. He kept it a secret. Much needed.

I do keep things to myself. I don't go telling everything that's going on. This is absolutely necessary. Okay, very good. First United Methodist Church is the one that are doing the big stuff.

Thank you, Dr. Okay, would you like to come back up and I'll state your name one more time? Sure.

Thank you. Can't perish. Thank you, Mr. McCall, for acknowledging that we spoke about this two years ago. It's been a long two years, and I have suffered through this, and I don't see that you have done anything to help alleviate this, nor hardly anybody here. So thank you for acknowledging that. I appreciate that. The average income for a person in Crimson, a head of a family, is $66,473. The average for a person who's a single householder, $51,844. Those are not great big amounts. And the owner of this property owns two homes that borders up close to $500,000, a half a million. Yet we waived, we abated her utility bill. I'd like to ask the mayor or anybody else, why is it that we didn't do anything after we sent the demand letter? It's been, what, 346 days. I'd like to have that answer. Anybody is welcome. I'd like to have the answer of why we paid for her utility bill, $973. I'd like to have that answer. I'd like to hear from Mr. Kammerer why no violations have ever been given and why I had to write them down when they were right in front of the entire public. I'd like to know, Mayor Mavry, why the city isn't going to charge her for the work that you have done and with the help of the high school student as described in the demand letter and as described in the violation in the city code book. I'd like to have answers to that. I'll wait for those answers. Mr. McCall, do you have any of those answers?

Public comment. We don't use answer back on public comments. But you don't have to not. You don't have to not answer back. I'll only say one thing when I said the two years was about your dog ordinance, not everything else, just so I'm clear about that.

That's all I have to say. The dog ordinance does have an indirect relationship to this. Counsel?

No answers? I would just say when we donate time, all the council members, we donate time to the community. So if you donate some time to try to solve a problem, I don't expect to get paid. These council members, when they donate time, they go over to Habitat for Humanity, work on the home, things like that. The things we do, we don't expect to get compensated. And so sometimes it benefits maybe one party, but sometimes it benefits the whole community by doing things like that.

When you are compensated, $6,000 each and may or may not be $12,000. That's what you're paid.

I don't think none of us are here for the money, that's for sure. I'm just saying, I'm just correcting what you said. It's for the betterment of the community. That's why I think that I'm going to finish this up. I know you're about out of time here, but I would say this. If the next day or two, if you want to take me up on walking through the home at 526 North Chestnut, again, walk through that and all of a sudden you'll see the effect that had on that whole neighborhood down there.

I'm sure I've read the description, but that does not negate 512 South Church.

There's no comparison between those two homes. Completely different.

Well, if you want to compare, then you can certainly do that, but it doesn't mean that 512 South Church is not a problematic nuisance property. It's a nuisance property. Live by the ordinances. Time's up.

Okay. Very good. All right, is there any other public comment? This is my first meeting. I just kind of have to assess everything. Okay, very good. Glad to have you. Thank you. You're welcome. With that all said, we're good. Ready now for closing the meeting, Jerry?

I move we adjourn our regular council meeting this evening and reconvene for our next city council meeting on Monday, July 20, 2026, 6 o'clock at City Hall.

Second. Motion is second. Clear call. Roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez. Aye. McCall. Aye. Selecki. Aye. Mayor Beaver.

Aye. This meeting is adjourned. Feel free to stick around and talk to your council person. Thank you.