City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting of the Princeton City Council to order. Clear call. Roll.

Mayor Nagy.

Here.

Council Member Newman. Here. Gomez. Here. McCall. Here. And Pilecki.

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, and invisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we're going to go ahead now and go to public comment period. Public comment period is available for the public to speak to the council at the beginning of the meeting as well as at the end. We'd like to have you limit your comments to three minutes. We may not be responding. We may not have answers for you tonight. We certainly will need to have you speak if you're listening. So is there anyone who would like to speak to the council tonight in public comment? All you have to do is stand up to the podium and give your name. Last call? Okay, you'll have a chance at the end of the meeting as well. Now we're going to go on to our hometown consulting with Cole McDaniel. He's going to give us a council update as well as a public update on how we're doing our business development district. Please.

Outstanding. Good evening, everybody. That was quick. You got right to me. Appreciate it. A few things to cover tonight. I promise I won't keep you here until midnight, but anytime if you have questions as I'm going through this, please let me know. So the first thing I wanted to cover this evening is, which everybody should have a copy of, the Strategic Economic Development Action Plan. I'm actually going to share that up here on the screen just so everybody else will be able to see it. So in our first year with the city of Princeton, one of our ultimate goals as we get to the end of that first 12 months, beyond just business development district or any of the things we've been doing with the city to this point, is to create a strategic action plan. Not just a strategic plan. One of my biggest... pet peeves is seeing plans that get handed off and don't get implemented. That's a big part of what I do and my role and what we do for our client communities is helping them implement the actual strategies in which the community, the residents, the business owners want to see. So what you'll see in here is a lot of the things that were discussed not only as part of the business development district, And I'll dive into this a little bit here. Not only the business development district, but the things we've been discussing for the last four months, the things we've been discussing as an EDC group that meets monthly, the things that I talk to Michael or Teresa about on a weekly basis during our team meeting. These are a lot of the things that have come up. Now, what I'll say is I'm gonna go through this. I'll go through it decently quick. But to say, please take the next couple of weeks to review, take a look. If you have comments, questions, if you think there's something missing that needs to be in here, don't hesitate to reach out to me and let me know. This is the second draft, or first draft, we handled as an EDC. Has it been three, four weeks already? Three or four weeks ago, went through it, got some really great feedback, made some of those changes to the plan and some of those additions. Now I'd like the full council and staff to be able to take time to look at it and say, hey, we think this is something else that needs included in here or looks great. We'll make those changes or keep it as is so you have a final draft at your first meeting in October to formally adopt by resolution. So we want to make sure that final draft is what's attached to the resolution and what you're adopting. Beyond just this being a plan and some action items, councils change, elected officials, staff, things change. We want to make sure that what we're putting in the plan is something that's going to hold future generations, future staff, future elected officials to the foundation of what we've really been building over this last year, why the VDD was created, why we're doing the things we're doing, right? So we want to be able to tie it back to something very tangible. And this isn't just coming from Cole or Michael or elected officials. This is based off a community meeting we had where a lot of questions were answered. uh about bdd where there was over 90 people there and a lot of what was discussed in that meeting is a lot of what's in here too so just to kind of lay the framework for where we're at but this is a five-year plan um you're going to see a lot of in the strategic goals they're broad here but as they get a little bit farther in they get a lot more down in the weeds but number one obviously business growth and entrepreneurship one of the main ways that business grows in our community and that our community grows is through entrepreneurship it's through small business ownership, expansion, investment, again, another reason that correlates back to the BDD, downtown revitalization, our main corridors and historic buildings, industrial and site development, housing and neighborhood renewal, infrastructure, workforce, and family capacity, and then that last strategic building, visitor economy, marketing, and tourism. So, again, I'll buzz through some of this. This explains, it's a five-year plan. later here is broken down into what are we going to do in the next 12 months? Not, hey, here's the next five years and that's it. Here's what we're going to do in the next 12 months to get towards those goals of the five-year plan. And each year we want to renew that, update it, revise it so that every 12 months we're taking a look at this, we're seeing how far we got, what we accomplished, what we didn't, why or why not, and being able to hold folks like myself accountable on what's being delivered through the money that you do pay to us. Some terms and meanings, just to lay out what these different items mean. I use them all the time and I often forget that not everybody is using economic development words or talking about these things on a daily basis, so we just like to try and break it down and give the terms and the meaning for the things you may see throughout here. Story and regional role. A lot of information about the city of Princeton, your economic system, just in a nice visual there, your market context. So anything you see here, and this is cited later in the report, just to pull it out, when we talk about population, housing, regional workforce, any of this data that we're pulling, this is from ESRI or ArcGIS, it's gonna be Census Bureau, Department of Labor Statistics. I mean, there's all these national and federal agencies that pull this data together. These aren't guesses, but it's the information that's readily available to us through these different bureaus, and that's where that's coming from, including things like population trends. I get a lot of questions about that. I disagree. That's where we're going to be in five years. I disagree, too, but the data is just that, data, and we can't change it. You'll see some things on Council Decision Guide. I'll keep going through your strategic direction. You're gonna see a breakdown of the goals, strategies, and actions related to those. And the main thing I wanna get down to for this evening is Appendix B. So this is gonna be what I was talking about earlier, the 12-month work plan. So this is something that wasn't in the original draft of this plan because it's something that you'll see and something we're gonna talk about here in just a little bit. that's actually in the proposal and the work that we do from Hometown Consulting. So I often overlook this part because it's something we're presenting to you guys, hey, these are the things we're gonna implement, the deliverables we're gonna provide to the city and work on. But as we talked through it with the EDC, it was really important to lay this out so everybody can see it. Not just we know that's what we're doing and city council knows, but it's something we can share with the general public, with our business owners, with those involved in this process. about what we're doing, how we're doing it, when the timelines are, so everybody can see that and see that there's a lot that goes into, you know, we use the word economic development when relatively speaking is a small word. It's a very broad word, right? There's a lot that goes into economic development and the things that are done within that framework. So, I'd love for you to go through this as it relates specifically to business growth and entrepreneurship. So, number one, one of those things, we talked about it a couple times previously, but establish a system to track new businesses opening in Princeton. Who have we visited? What retention visits have we had with existing business owners? What new businesses are opening? What types of businesses are they? A simple tracking method to understand what's happening. so we can reflect back on it in 12 months and say, hey, here's the things that have occurred, here's the things that have happened, and track that information and data. You know, a couple others, distribute and promote prints in new business startup guides. That was something we delivered earlier for you guys. I'm going to share a little bit on that here in a minute. Formalize the business retention expansion program. I put a complete at least 50 business visits. It should be more than that. Realistically, you can knock those out. pretty easily within a year. But we want to make sure we're touching base with everybody. I've found in my career the most important conversations or projects happen from simply going in and blocking a business owner's front door. Hey, how you doing? How are things going? What do you need help with? And before you know it, six months later, we're talking about an expansion project because they felt heard. They wanted to have a conversation about it, and they know you exist to come have that conversation with, and they know things like a BDD are there to support them. So that's an important part of what we're talking about, business growth and everything, too. I'll pause there and just say, you know, please review this, ask questions, pick it apart. You're not gonna hurt my feelings if you say I hate it and we think you should change everything. Hopefully that's not the case, so this has not been my job very well, but if there are things you want to see differently changed, please don't hesitate to let me know. We wanna make sure when this is adopted that A, you know, hey, this is a strong strategy, and we know what we're going to be doing, and we know what Cole and his team and our staff are going to be doing as it relates to these items. And most importantly, know, too, that something major comes up, there's a major project or initiative, this can also be amended. Ideally, we want to have as much in here as possible, but reactively, if we need to amend it or address a major project or a major initiative that ties back to a grant program, we want to be able to do that at any given time. So just like with any other plan that can be amended. So I'll pause there for a moment before I move on to the next item here and just ask if there's any questions related to this, anything I can touch on before we move on to the next piece here. Outstanding. All right. So first of all, I'd like to thank Teresa and Michael and Steven, who is your IT director, for helping to get access for us to the website and to Amanda on our team. She's currently making some changes. She did a website audit earlier this year and she's looking at links that may not work anymore or some things that need to be adjusted. And She had the access and all the access she needed last week and by the end of the month, she'll have this completely done here. So the next week to 10 days. But what's under business and industry, there's a lot more sections here. I've got Amanda with us. She's got a nice before and after of some of this and what I previously. She's already been making some updates. But one thing I want to share with you is when we reframe our business and industry or economic development pages, We want to be able to point people to the information they need right away. We don't want them to have to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out where they need to go. We want them to be able to get there, get there right away, and get the information they need, especially if it's a developer or site selector. Those guys are more impatient than I am, and they move on quickly. So we want to be able to get information in front of them. So to that point, as I'm continuing to build this out, one thing I want to start with is just like start or expand a business from someone visiting the website hey I want to start my business in Princeton I want to expand my business in Princeton you'll see more information put on here but earlier in the year we put together the new business startup guide which is your permitting But it's your permitting, your information about what incentives, contact information, business development district, TIF, enterprise zone, anything a new business owner or existing business owner may need to know about starting a business in Princeton. And all that information is in that package. We want to be able to hand that to someone and say, here it is. Most importantly, we don't want them to have to walk into City Hall or have to get ahold of Michael or myself or Teresa to get this information. We need it to be readily available and something we can click on and another item in here and I think is an important one and we got a fun chance to test it earlier Don put me on the spot and I was hoping it worked out correctly when he mentioned the property that was available and it did so that's that's good news so available properties and sites so when we talk about some of the things we did in this past year as it relates to GIS development so GIS geographic information systems mapping you guys use that already the county uses that for property tax information we at Hometown Consulting use it for economic development municipal administration available properties and sites and I just wanted to share with you this is now up on your website and we want to make it easy to access all the pins you see on here are your available properties and sites same with what's on the left hand side here so we can either Let's just say click on a site on the left-hand side. It's going to take us to that point on the map. It's going to give us the picture that it's listed for, the pin numbers, address, zoning, is it in the BDD, what's the cost, what's the size, what's the type, what can I do here? And then if it does have... Just lagging on a little bit. It'll pop up here in a second. If it does have a commercial listing, so if a realtor has it listed and it's on the BOOTNET or CREXY or any of the local agencies, we'll be able to link directly to that. It's pulled up on my screen, but it's not pulled up there yet. Link directly to that listing so people can see more information. In the same term, if it's someone that has it listed privately, we can also put together a PDF. So if you're seeing the contact field above it. But we need all this information out there so it's easy to see, easy to locate. and we can make sure that people are getting the correct information. So, this is really hard to do without my mouse, which I forgot is a very good thing. On this same map, just like with the other one I'll show you, it's got the red pins on there to where you can click on it and see what the property is, which one's available. It's also got your zoning, your districts, your boundaries, all the things, all the information someone may need when they're trying to make a decision about available properties. go to development incentives. So this is where you're gonna see this expanded on as it relates to business development district. We're getting close to receiving our first revenues for the BDD here in 10-ish days. And that'll be pretty exciting to see what that looks like from the month of July. But also as we get into 2027, the beginning of the year, hopefully we're inundated with applications and people interested in this. We want to be able to share as much information as possible. You can also view that on the GIS. What is a BDD? So the initial marketing and information we put together when we were first working on this with you guys. the application which is going to be fillable. We've also got information here related to your TIF district and your county enterprise zone. So you're going to see this continue to be built out. I just wanted to share with you the information that's being put on here, the mapping that's being done. We had a good chance to kind of go through some of this earlier at the EDC meeting and dive a little bit deeper. But as always, if you have a question about GIS, how to use it, you get on the website and you want to know more about it, call me. I'm happy to sit down and have an hour, three hour, however long you want to have. But walk through it, walk through how it works. walk through how changes are made and how we keep that up to date for not only administrative purposes, but also for economic development. I will pause there and ask if there's any questions related to website, anything like that. I think I'm good on that. I'll stop here for a moment. Yeah. Do I need to discuss... Is there a different agenda item? I'm going to grab an agenda. I think you're all under the same thing. All under the same thing?

Yep.

All right. Well, I'll jump right in then. I'm back. I think our goal was to make sure you get your home sometimes. It's okay. It's been a good day.

Yeah, I'm all right. My wife will appreciate it, but I'll be okay.

As long as you guys don't go till midnight. um but yeah so our renewal contract with the city of princeton is also included in the packet that went out and a lot of what you see detailed in the work plan for the strategic action plan is directly tied to the work that we're going to do for the city of princeton and continue to do so year one's really about building out the resources building out the tools the foundation for how we're successful with economic development, with how we run our business development district, with how we program it and make decisions related to that. And I think it's been a really successful one. We've got a lot of great tools, resources. I think we've had a lot of... And it's still in process with a lot of fun and exciting projects that are kind of in the negotiation stage right now and continuing to help the city work on those. But what you see in the strategic plan is about what we're going to do proactively for the city. Here's the tools, the resources, the things we're going to get done that are going to help you be successful with economic development. as we move forward including making sure we are managing coordinating and helping to implement the business development district it could be three applications it could be 30 applications come january so we want to be there to help guide you through that process we do that in a lot of communities we work with the edc we help make those recommendations back to the board and drop those redevelopment agreements um you know so that's going to be a lot of the reactive or proactive piece of our contract and then As always, there's the reactive portion. We can leave here today, and we're still under contract because it's the end of the month, but we can leave here today, and there could be a project come up tomorrow, and Michael calls and says, hey, we're ready to go, and we need to figure these three or four things out. We're ready to jump on that. And that's the reactive part of our contract that is always going to be there because it needs to be. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or a week down the road or a year down the road, but we want to be able to be at the table and be part of that conversation with you as part of our existing scope of work. So some of that's built in there, too. You can see it laid out in there, but just to touch briefly on the year one implementation focus. Implement our work program, which is the strategic plan and the performance management. How are we doing? What are we doing? And making sure we're getting that feedback from council. BDD and incentive administration, I would say for the first six months of 2027, that is going to be a lot of focus. Just because you've got to get it squared away, you've got to become efficient, you've got to figure out how you want the process to work, how we...

deliver funds to those folks, and it's always a fun first six months of any new incentive district, so that'd be great.

The business retention expansion program, which I touched on earlier, making sure we're doing those business visits, we will have a standard questionnaire. We will ask the same 10, 12 questions in normal conversation to those business owners, because we don't want to identify consistencies. Are we successful with the same things? Are we struggling with the same things? And being able to take information from those business visits and those questions to tie it back to programs and how we use our BDD funds or the things we're investing in. We want to make sure that what we're hearing from our business community is how we're applying the things we're doing with our investments. Commercial property and housing inventories, we'll continue to keep those commercial properties available. Properties, building uses, all active, up-to-date, and relevant. So anybody looking for that information can find it and utilize it. Housing workforce, capacity analysis, this is more related to... site selection, major development projects, looking at workforce, making sure we're keeping up-to-date information on labor shed, your available workers. There's a couple projects that are being discussed right now that have some employment metrics associated with them. We want to make sure that we can provide the accurate information related to workforce, to housing, to all this information a major employer creating jobs is going to want to know. So we want to keep that stuff handy on a regular basis and be able to provide that to them. We'll continue to do the GIS marketing and analytics as it relates to all available property sites, buildings, and so on. And then the committee coordination and continued reporting. So we'll continue to meet with the EDC. I think we'll have to go from still having a monthly EDC meeting, but I do think we'll have to create a separate meeting specifically related to business development district implementation to where applications can be reviewed, discussed, and then recommendation can be made back to the council after those meetings. And then for at least a little while here, continuing to meet with Michael and Teresa on a weekly basis, as I find sometimes those meetings are some of the most important meetings of the week, just because we get information or can share information or can give examples of other projects or other things going on in other communities. All right, I didn't get shot clocked, so I appreciate that. I'm happy to answer any questions or provide additional detail. GIS is totally built out now. Nope, it's totally built out. So we will continue to add focus areas. So the main focus area is North Main all the way to the interstate. And now we've actually started on focus area two with Peru Street. So there's that cross section.

And just to be clear, the GSI is built out that it's more than just the properties that are available. It's mapped out everything that's in my district.

Oh yeah, yep. Everything in the entire, actually everything in the entire city is mapped out. Not every building has a building use identified in the focus area as they do. But yeah, every building is identified, ownership and number, just like you see from the county. I just wanted to be clear, there's more than just what's currently available. Oh sure, yep. When do you see the first applications coming in? Well, we're going to open applications January 1st of 2027. The idea was to let money come in first, work on the programs, the guidelines, and what that process looks like, which we've been doing up to this point and will continue to do really through the end of the year, and then open those up January 1 of 2027. We'll do it. A light marketing to let people know, hey, applications can be turned in on January 1st. Here's what the process looks like. Here's how they're evaluated, and go from there. It's always hard to guess how many you get right out of the jump. It could be a handful. It could be a whole lot. Well, it's going to be based on what pot of revenue you have available as well.

It would be, yep, yep. What have you normally seen when that first application process comes up in most cities? Is it a lot at once or is it just kind of all over the place depending on what city it's in?

I wish it was a little more consistent. I can tell you exactly. I'll give you an example. In Martinville, the first month it was open, we got three or four applications. Since then, it's been a steady two or three applications probably every month or two from that point. In Canton, and this has been five years ago and started a previous position for me, I think the first month we got 30 applications. 32, now getting a little bigger, 15,000 people, but they've also received 160 applications in the last four and a half or five years, which is great, right? There's activity, but yeah, it's just hard to tell.

Is the education process kind of an ongoing thing? Is that kind of something that you know you've got to keep telling the community out there that this is here and it's available and here's what we can do for you?

Yeah, that's a great question, Jerry, because we talked about this a little bit earlier today, too. We can do all the marketing in the world. We can take out TV ads. We can pay thousands of dollars on Facebook and everywhere else and tell everybody that the BDD is available and we have money and come apply. And lo and behold, 18 months from now, somebody will walk in that front door and say, didn't even know this existed and they've been paying into it for 18 months too um so yes it's an ongoing education it's an ongoing process like i've said before it's a challenge sure yeah yeah that's what i said i think the majority of you know what i the majority of my work kind of behind the scenes for you guys in that first six months of 2027 is really related to talking to business owners educating them on how it works what the eligible expenses are what the process is And that will be an ongoing thing, and it is in many communities. But you want to be able to, for lack of a better term, handhold. Because the ones that need that handholding the most are your small businesses and your entrepreneurs, your major employers. They know how to do it. They know how to get money from you. But we want to be able to help those businesses.

Cole, a couple things, and Michael jumped in here. So on the Economic Development Committee, let's refresh our memory. I know we have a council member who gave a call, been on this from day one, working on this. And then who else do we have on that committee, Michael?

Jenica Cole, if you have any, the Littles, Jeff Cecil, Teresa and myself.

Great. So we as a council appreciate your time. I heard just now that you had a two-hour meeting earlier this afternoon. So we appreciate your time and working on this from day one. So thank you for that. Cole, I enjoy watching you speak in a positive manner. I know you talk about the word intentional. I think intentional is a great word to utilize. I think about mentorship, how we need to work on mentoring our property owners as well as our business owners. Recently, we had the opportunity to go look at a building site that might be a possibility site for someone to... moved to Princeton with a business, but it was just a little bit rugged, the building site, and I thought, man, just a little mentoring with the property owner to get things cleaned up, the basics would be helpful. And maybe that's things we need to work on, too, as a committee and as a council, is to encourage these business owners. I also think about a recent business that opened in Princeton, and their signage was so... washed out and so hard to understand. I always, I'm not endorsing State Farm, but I always look at when the Hellmans moved their new State Farm office over across the street here and just down a block. A tremendous sign. I mean, it's just, it's scaled right for the community and says what it needs to say. SO I THINK MENTORSHIP IS SO CRITICAL FOR EXISTING BUSINESSES AS WELL AS NEW BUSINESSES. SO I APPRECIATE ALL THAT YOU'VE DONE. I ALSO WANTED TO MENTION, TO GO ALONG WITH THIS TONIGHT, I GET THE LASALLE PAPER, AND IN THE LASALLE PAPER A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, THE CITY APPROVED RIGHT NOW TONIGHT IS HAVING THEIR INITIAL MEETING WITH THEIR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT WITH THE PUBLIC TO GET THEIR INPUT. SO THEY'RE RIGHT BEHIND US WITH THEIR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT. SO WE WANT, RIGHT? Well, it's a nice group. They're good neighbors, you know what I'm saying? But you've got to keep hustling to stay out of the crew.

Exactly right. Mayor, to your point, just one last thing I'd like to mention is we talk about science. When you talk about education, A, tell people that we're having a BDD meeting and they can learn about how to get money, and then we can educate them why they're there, right? But in the same chunk, how we incentivize things, the types of programs we do, maybe it's a sign program. In that sign program, and my goal working with the city is to say, here are the parameters. Here's what it needs to look like. And we're happy to help fund a good chunk of that project. Because you're going to get a new sign out of it. We're going to get some things out of it that we want to see and that meet our guidelines and expectations for aesthetics in our downtown area. Those are the kind of things we want to use incentives for too. So not just to support businesses, that's a big chunk of it, but also to support businesses and secondarily give what we want to see out of it as a city and why we put this thing together.

Great. That's a good point. Recently the local McDonald's franchise in Princeton They had a yearly inspection at a corporate level. And it's fun to see a business like that. Even when they got their A game on, they still had to polish things up and be ready to go. And they do a good job out there. That McDonald's, that thing is just kicking out all the time. And those are people coming off the interstate seeing our community for the first time. So we appreciate that. Does Council have any more questions or comments from Cole? No, we're good.

I so much appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. With that said, now we're going to go on to the approval of the minutes, please.

I move that we approve the minutes for our regular council meeting on September 8, 2026. Second. Motion second.

Is there any questions or comments concerning those minutes? Seeing none, we're called roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez. Aye. McCall. Aye. Pilecki. Aye. And Mayor McGree.

Aye. Janet, before we move on, please, about the minutes, don't you know something we were going to just briefly talk about? You checked on a statue here. If you could just read that, please. I appreciate that. Concerning the minutes.

Under The minutes are required to include a summary of the discussion on matters proposed, deliberated, or decided, along with record of votes taken. The Illinois Open Meeting Act requires a summary of the discussion, not verbatim transcripts. We are required to accurately reflect what was discussed and decided, but we are not required to record every word spoken.

Janet, I appreciate that. At times we have people concerned about the minutes being accurate, and I just want to state very clearly that, as Janet said, it is a summary. Whether it's the Mayor's comments, whether it be if Cole was up there for the past 10 minutes giving his presentation, it's just a summary. It's not verbatim. The wonderful thing we have that started years back was the city records these meetings, and it's both audio and video. And within 24 hours, these are on our website for people to see. And as Jerry said earlier, that's golden. You get the wording word for word, but you also get the flavor of the meeting and the infliction of the voices, things like that. Totally different. It's like a verbal or a text. It's everything you ever wanted to know. There you go. Perfect. That's exactly right. We appreciate that. Thank you, Janet, for looking that up for us and working on that. Thank you. Now we're on to the invoices, please, with City Clerk Janet Henning.

In the Department of Commerce and Finances, we have $154,750.31. Department of Streets and Public Improvement, $159,855.12. Department of Public Safety, $159,210.19.

And the Department of Public Property and Utilities, $1,087,147.97.

With a grand total of $1,560,963.59. Mayor, council members have confirmed the reviews of all the invoices and they're now submitted for disposition.

However, we approve the invoices as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any questions or comments from the council concerning those invoices? Seeing none, we'll call the roll.

Councilmember Newman?

Aye.

Gomez? Aye. McCall?

Aye.

Celestine? Aye. And Mayor Mabry?

Aye.

Next on the agenda, we have Resolution R-26-024, a resolution accepting the City of Princeton Transportation Master Plan.

okay oh no there's nothing no discussion on this well we are going to okay i move that we approve resolution r-26-024 so we have a motion and second on that before we vote on that we're going to go ahead and i believe michael zieringson gives an overview of that resolution my screen here too so um i was very pleased to work on this um our volunteer commissions here in town historic preservation bike and pedestrian Public Arts, Street Commission, they all do great things. One thing that I know the Bike and Pedestrian Commission is very tuned in on is safe pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, obviously, by the name. So I tasked them with coming up with a long-term strategy map to adopt to guide our sidewalk and multimodal path installations, bike lanes installations, and improved crossings. So I have this map available, happy to print it for anyone that's interested. If it gets adopted, we'll have it on the website as well. So I do have at least one member of the bike, two members of the Bike and Pedestrian Commission here tonight. Leo, did you want to say something? He was begging me before the meeting. Sure, why not? Why not?

My name is Leo Ortega. I'm with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee. And I believe that this should be adopted mainly because of safety. And you can be accessible all around town. for people that can't drive to get to Walmart, to get to Ace, to get everywhere. And I don't have any children, but I have an AC nephew. And my friends have kids. And it would be nice that they could get anywhere they want around town safely. So that's all I have to say.

But yeah, there's some main pillars of this plan would be connectivity, accessibility, transportation to necessary goods and services to work, and safety as well. So it includes, and recreation as well, I should say. It includes a nice big loop around town, and you'll see with the next agenda item, we have a resolution financial commitment for an ITEP grant. So I just wanted to highlight kind of where that ITEP grant is going to be. It would be this intersection here, Backbone and North Main by BEX. It'd be a small section of sidewalk to get you to Aldi. It'd be a connective point from the multimodal path that goes from Railroad Avenue to here. So we connect that to the multimodal path to Shell, so that's really just a connector piece there, enhanced crossing here, sidewalk on the west side, and then a route over to Ace Distribution. So again, the goal of that grant project, get people to where they need to go, major employers to acquire groceries, maybe it's a ruca, maybe it's a closet, things that people need to get to safely on foot. So a big part of applying for an ISEP grant is tying it back to a larger vision. So we thought it's a great time for us to adopt the Transportation Master Plan so that we could show that this grant we are asking for is part of a larger vision. So that's what you have in front of you. You should have a narrative as well that kind of explains the reasoning behind it, the ideals behind it, things like that. Happy to answer any questions.

Michael, what percentage of these Areas are already in place.

We know none of what you see here is going to be existing so all of these things here are going to be Connections like you'll see this here. This is just a little connection between where a sidewalk ends and the sidewalk starts Well, that's something that we want to fill in that's a smaller project that we can work on You'll see a lot of them are around schools or connecting from different residential neighborhoods to maybe your commercial quarters. So this is all brand new? All brand new. And it's a 20-year vision or so. Okay, thank you.

Questions? The plan mentions the ADA. I'm hoping that within this plan that everything is done intentionally with the thought of the ADA in mind. I know that many times exposed aggregate, stamped concrete, bricks and that sort of thing are an ambulatory nightmare. I hope within that plan that will be taken into consideration in areas there that will give access to people that are in need of it.

Certainly. Most of that will be on the state route, so it will be required. Correct. It should be required. I'm sorry.

That's required. Yeah, on the state route. You'll see on Route 6 now, you know, where we redo the street, it is required that we redo those crossings as well to be accessible. Correct.

Michael, we have a conventional sidewalk that can be five feet wide, and then the multi-purpose path usually is how wide is that? Ten feet. Ten feet. Gotcha. So like the North Euclid stretch that is desperately needed. I see a lot of people on their bikes walking on North Euclid. Holy smokes. Right. That would be a five-foot wide? Five-foot wide. Which is perfect. I mean, it gets them off the street, and it's safe for them. A lot of people from Freedom House and different places are walking that one out. It's a good investment. Any other questions or comments from the council concerning that and then are you ITEP grant on the next one resolution?

We kind of already discussed that I could show this as well. So actually last Wednesday we advertised a public information session Our engineer was here in town and he presented this documents as well as this one So if you kind of reorient yourself That way would be north. So here is Bex all the so you'll see here is Connection, crosswalk, sidewalk on the west side, multimodal path on the east side, and then you'll see this offshoot that would head down past Walmart to Ace, so that's reflected here. This would be Casey's, Heartland Bank, so better pedestrian crossing here, and as well as a sidewalk to get you to Walmart, Ace, Sullivan's, Culver's, et cetera.

That's an important thing to work on first. Absolutely. There's a lot of need right there. We see a lot of people walking up in that area.

Questions? And on that one, Michael, I know you've got Hutchinson working on that project, right? Correct. And they introduced themselves real quick, just the background of Hutchinson versus Chamlin, just briefly, what, just in a positive manner. Go ahead.

Hutchinson introduced us and said, you know, you have a great project and we think we can help you enhance your application. So they've gotten us a meeting with, well, we sat down with IDOT a few months ago, met with them. They did this public information session with us. So we really feel like we're really enhancing that application score, and I have a good chance he did in this grant. Great.

Great. Perfect.

Okay.

Okay. Any questions from the council?

Michael, then, we're good with those two?

We'll get you up here again on some more stuff here. I hope so. You're not going on yet. Okay. So go ahead, then. Where are we at with that resolution? Any questions or comments? Always clear call the roll on that resolution.

Council Member Neiman?

Aye.

Go ahead. Aye. McCall?

Aye.

Next on the agenda, we have Resolution R-26-025, Resolution of Financial Commitment for ITEP Grant.

I move that we approve Resolution R-26-025.

Motion second. Again, Michael's kind of described that to us. We know what's going on there. If you have any questions or concerns or comments, should they comment concerning that? This is an 80-20 thing, Michael.

20 would be maximum. It could be as low as 10 based on our demographic.

Thank you.

Good question, Jerry. Clerk, call the roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez.

Aye.

McCall. Aye. Selecci. Aye. And Mayor McRae.

Aye.

Next on the agenda, we have Ordinance O-26-018, Rezoning Real Estate Within the Corporate Limits of the City of Princeton, Illinois. This is the first reading.

I move that we advance Ordinance O-26-018 to the second reading.

Second.

Motion second.

And again, is that something that Michael, you're going to discuss?

Sure, please.

Yeah, I'm going to invite Brianna and Josh. Brianna and Josh, come up here with me. This is a rezone of property 2312 South Main from residential to agriculture. They have some big plans for this house that Brianna grew up in. I'll let her explain those.

Hello, I'm Brianna Schneider from Hilton Josh. Us together and then my brother and sister-in-law acquired a property that we both grew up on. So we're very excited to have it back. It's on South Main Street. We currently have a landscape company that we've been in process for 16 years or so. But we are planning on doing a small event animal experience property, if that makes sense. So like, say you want to have a little girl's birthday party with We have many Highland cows, and you want to take pictures with them. Or you want to have goat yoga. Oh, we have that too. I also have horses, Clydesdales, very unique different animals. So we could definitely do just regular, like a baby shower with no animals. Or if you want to incorporate a goat or two, that would be great too. But we are excited. We love Princeton. We've lived here our whole lives. We love investing in the community. It's a beautiful property on the South Main Street. We went to the zoning meetings the last two months and got that approved from them. So I think we're on the right track to getting it going.

What's your timeline on how to hit it?

We would love to be the soft opening would be for the Christmas walk. So people could come and it won't all be finished, but we've been working very hard to get it cleaned up and beautified again. But we would just like people to come and hang out and just see the property. And I would love to have Santa and Coco and animals and have like a family-based experience there. So that's what we're... Lynn, he's right. Lynn's daughter, Cassie, is my sister-in-law.

Did you see the BD, the business development district? I just heard about this. This is great. This is the start for you. Okay.

Now, the fact that you're going to your college, you're not planning on a lot of swine out there, are you?

Oh, no. No? No bird, Peter. That was also a question.

No pigs, no birds. Peter's a bang on that log. No, no, no.

There was two donkeys there, the previous owner had them, so they're loud enough. And they won't, I would say the animals, it's not going to be full-fledged like all these animals all the time. We live just a little bit down, and that's our working farm. So they'll come and go as needed. Sometimes they'll be the Highland Cows, sometimes they'll be horses. They'll go for you, however you want to do it. So it won't be like a continuous smelly manure farm, if that makes sense. Well, you do yoga, and then you have all these cute little goats around you, and they climb on you. But we just want to be, I want to eventually have this community, like, do pop-up events there. So, you know, have... stores come and maybe do art festival or different things there. Have a bakery come out and have an event or something like that.

So you can do a workout with a hiding house?

We can! Fred and Franny and Frank. Fred, Fran, and Frank.

They're currently available for renting out.

Any questions? Any additional questions for council? And that was moved forward by the planning and zoning on an unanimous vote? Yes. Okay. That says a lot. And you also said earlier in the meeting that the neighbors are all induced by this.

Yeah, most of the neighbors are the same as when I was a kid there. So they've already approached me, talked to me, super excited that we're back. Yeah, so everybody seems to be good. Excellent.

Perfect. With that said, we're going to go ahead and vote on this right now. Clerk calls the roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. So moved. Aye. McAuliffe. Aye. Velazquez.

Aye.

Hey, Mayor Nader.

Aye. Very good. Thank you.

Next on the agenda, we have Ordinance O-26-019 amending the City of Princeton Land Development Code to allow by special use the location of additional uses in an agricultural aid zone district. This is the first review.

I move that we advance Ordinance O-26-019 to the second reading. Second. I have a motion to second it. Michael, can I please?

Sure. So along with the project's Main Street Manor. They have a lot of different ideas. One of those is to grow and sell flowers on site. So to do that, that's not currently a compliant use in a agricultural district. So this ordinance was proposed to Planning and Zoning Commission to allow by special use retail sales. And they said, well, why don't we just think of all the different uses in our code that might be applicable for the agricultural district, get them all in there. So we have, you know, boarding house, residents above the ground floor, like if someone were to renovate above a barn or something, that would not be allowed. Retail sales and then any warehouse, so if someone wanted to have a small shipping operation or something like that, they could do that via special use. This is just another process to help them work towards compliance with zoning code.

And again, that's GNF's two on that part. Any additional questions or comments? Seeing none, we're called to roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez.

Aye.

McCall. Aye. Selecki. Aye. And Mayor Mayberry.

Aye.

Next on the agenda, we have Ordinance O-26-020, Amending the City of Princeton Accessory Dwelling Unit Codes of Ordinances. This is the first reading.

I move that we advance ordinance O-26-020 to the second reading. Second.

Motion second. Now Michael's going to jump in here again for us.

Okay, so I presented a study by the state of Illinois to...

the plan commission that says right now the state of Illinois is currently about 100,000 housing units short of where they need to be. In the next 10 years, they need to build about 250,000 housing units. So to address that, a lot of municipalities are revitalizing or renewing their ADU codes, so accessory dwelling unit, which is a common way to create an extra dwelling unit on a single family zone to enhance your density. So we took a look at ours. There was a couple really restrictive things in there. One was that you have to be related to the person that owns the primary residence. Another was that it had to be 600 square feet or below. It had to be one bedroom. So actually over the course of the last four or five months, Land Commission's really gone through that code and loosened things up just a little bit. So we went from 600 to 900 square feet, one to two bedrooms. You're now allowed to have a relative or someone who you know live in one of those. in single-family zones, you have to, what's the terminology I'm looking for? You have to live in the house in order to have an accessory dwelling unit. So in multi-family zones, you could have rentals in the front and rentals in the back. So it would be a little different. You would share the same utilities as the main house, I take it? We did not decide to have that as part of this code. So they'd be required to get their own utility service? They could get their own meters or they could run it through the house. So, depending on what you trust your tenants. And postal address?

You have address. You have address. Okay. That's something I also had a question on. I was at the zoning meeting and I know that originally it was stated as that the utilities would be run through the main structure.

Did they really decide on that? Is it going to be that way or is it going to be either or? Yeah, either or. So they decided not to have any language regarding utilities in the code. They just thought it was going to be too restrictive when really the goal was to enhance people's abilities to have an extra billing unit. They also thought it would just be...

too much of a burden to try and you know have a tenant even if it's your son or cousin or whatever and try and make sure that they're you know being responsible with their utilities because that's going to reflect on your bill so my question on that and this is probably the one for john um as far as the water service can you run two meters with one buffalo box or is it two buffalo boxes two meters

You'd like each owner of each property to have their own shutoff. So in this situation, if you were to have two dwellings, same property, I would worry about could it ever be self-divided later and split up, and then we would have a problem with one service feeding two separate properties. So that would be my worry. I'm not sure if that's been addressed or if it's possible to not idealize what it sounds like.

You would never subdivide those. No, typically they'd be too small.

But that would require you cutting the street to get the service for one. To put another service in? A second service. Very possible, depending on where the water is. And as far as sewer, would it be two separate sewers run to the street, or could they be tied in? That I don't know.

I think you'd probably find that they would use the same sewer line. Because again, you've got one property owner that owns, in theory, he or she owns both those buildings on site, so it isn't really two separate owners in the sense that it would be one sewer line that would service both those.

So in the sense that you actually were to rent it out to, it wasn't your sign-up, but it was someone you knew, to whatever the lease agreement was, you could pretty much state in there that It will be the responsibility of the homeowner or the property. With that being said, this is how much the rent can be.

You can work it in.

And then my last question, I think, is that I think it states that you can have a dwelling back there that is separate as long as you do not have a detached garage. Correct. If you have a detached garage, you can add a second storage to the detached garage. Yep. Do you know what the ordinance is as far as the height on that?

The height, not off the top of my head. Usually our accessory code says 15 feet between the, so that's measured between the eaves and the peaks. So you usually end up getting a building, depending on the slope, like 18 to 22 feet tall. So, you know, not egregiously huge.

Okay. So it won't be, it won't be a basketball team wasn't it?

It probably was.

Any additional comments from the council? I just would make a quick comment on the realtor side of the house. The National Association of Realtors fully supports accessory dueling units. It's a big thing. The past five years they've been discussing it because it's an affordable housing option. Especially in California and other places that it's so expensive. So when people can take what we used to call mother-in-law quarters and make them into affordable housing, it does a couple of things. It allows the renter to have an affordable place to live, but it also allows the owner of the home to be able to afford the home now because they've got rent coming in to help pay that offset their mortgage. So it's a win-win-win, I think. So I'm very supportive of this thing. I think, you know, when we look back on our generation before us, affordable housing might have been the trailer parks, and there's three trailer parks in Princeton. Refreshing our memories, we've got the Hillview, and we've got the Maplewood Acres, and we've got the one out there at... This one out by the interstate grove. The grove? The grove. Okay. And, you know, we can see how critical it is to come up with some new ideas for affordable housing. And as we talked about, these mobile home parks are getting kind of tired. That's nothing personal against the folks that are living out there. Some of them are spotless, and there's others that, man, it's just we need another source of affordable housing as an option. So any other questions or comments from the council? Otherwise, we're going to vote on this.

I want your good idea. Good idea.

I move that we approve the variance recommendation from Michael Wendt.

Second. Motion and second.

And if we could, then our Michael's going to explain what's going on with that.

So, I mean, this was really pretty simple. Woody Wentz, Michael Wentz, sits on the planning commission, actually. I just want to say that he did recuse himself for the entirety of the discussion. So he has a garage currently on Euclid that is two feet off the property line code requires five feet. Given he is removing that entire structure and building a new one, he doesn't get to keep that two feet setback without a variance. So he applied for a variance. The notifications went out, went in the paper, all that. So the planning commission did pass it with six votes, one abstaining.

Anyone from two feet to three feet? Two feet to two feet. Oh, I'm sorry.

Three foot variance from the code.

Yes. All right. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the council? Go ahead.

Councilmember Newman. Aye. Doman.

Aye.

McCall. Aye. Silewski. Aye. And Mayor Mayberry. Aye.

Okay, great job everybody on that. Wow. Let's go ahead and now we'll go to the city manager report. Teresa, if you would please.

Sure, I don't have any items actually listed there, but a couple items I do want to touch on. As always, after Homestead, I send a huge thank you out to all of our departments. We've got a lot of compliments from residents as well as people from the outside of the community this year. Can't believe on a Monday when they go through town that we even had anything in town that weekend. It's just everything's cleaned up. Fantastic festival again this year. Concert was probably one of the biggest I've seen and pretty much uneventful weekend. So we'll say that's good too. But as always, I thank our city workers because it's not just the weekend, but it's the weeks leading up to it. It is taxing on everybody, but I appreciate it very, very, very much. Amongst all that happening, you probably noticed there are two new benches out in front of City Hall here. We have two new benches that match the ones that are downtown. And I love seeing people using them already. And the new trash receptacle is out there. But the one bench on the south side actually has a plaque on it in memory of Mayor Keith Cain. So if you see that, it looks very nice the way they did that. It all happened right before Homestead. Kind of pretty quick there. Update on the fire department project expansion. We are about, they did the final walkthrough punch list last week. They're wrapping up some plumbing right now and probably switching off the countertop because they put a white one in instead of a black one. But last few items and they'll probably start moving all of their items from the existing living quarters over probably in the next week and a half. So we're getting close. I think I did let Council know at some point they will do an open house. We're not sure on the exact date, but we're leaning towards that first weekend in October to go in with fire prevention. So we'll let everybody know when that's happening. But it's pretty much a done project. You walk through and it just blows their minds. A couple hiring updates. We wrapped up interviewing for the water position that was opened. Hopefully we'll have an announcement maybe by the end of the week on that one. And then the planning and zoning administrative position apps are due this Friday. And I've already started setting up some of those interviews.

So moving along. Great. Anything else, Teresa?

Nope, just dealing with union and contracts.

The entire department addition looks like it's always been there. It just blends in. We don't want Amanda sending us a notice.

Yeah, they did a great job. Really, really nice. Good deal.

Very good. Thank you, Teresa. And I'll echo what Teresa said about the city employees getting things tidied up weeks and weeks and weeks before. The guys, like for example, the street department going out and painting stripes and lines and all that kind of stuff. They did that weeks before and it really turned out nice and all the extras. And then when we have 5,000 people or 4,000 people downtown and the next morning there's not a piece of trash to be found, that's a great thing. All those little elves are working overnight to get all that picked up and it's work to chase all that trash. You know, we have people in our community that do some really neat things, and we were courting a possible business that was going to be, possibly coming to Princeton, and we won't dive into that and jinx this thing, but in the process of these folks coming to Princeton, the city put them up in the Knox Hotel. They had a great experience there, and then they were on their own one night for supper, and they came into the next morning into a meeting that was being hosted by the city, and And they said they had a wonderful meal. They went out to a place called Alexander. We said, okay, or a tavern, yep. And you know what? We just had a great meal. The woman that's one of the integral parts of the operation, our partners, she said we had a great meal. And she said we met the nicest people. She said, matter of fact, they bought our supper. And I want to really mean this on a true story. It's a great story. So Ernie Whittington and his wife, I believe her name was Michelle, they were out there having supper, and they struck up a conversation with these total strangers that came from out of state. And in the midst of the conversation, they just really had a great time meeting everybody. And they bought your supper. And these are people that, I mean, you couldn't ask for a better introduction to Princeton than go to Park Tavern and have somebody buy your supper. So we just want to say thank you to the Whittingtons for being a great ambassador to the city of Princeton. So thank you to them. I think also about, we think about businesses that really are a major impact to the city. And we think about Hornbaker Gardens. This past Saturday, they had our artisan market. Yeah, we had a little moisture out there. People were being baptized. But There was hundreds and hundreds of people that came out to the Artisan Market. And, of course, I like to visit with people. I did the good thing. My wife walked around, and I stood there patiently waiting. And there was another gentleman patiently waiting. I said, sir, I take you to your wife's shop. He said, yes. I said, where are you from? He said, Moline. He said, we love coming to Princeton. And so he gave his little spiel about Princeton and the Hornbakers and the artisan market. So those are all good stories. So we think about business development. We think about what has been said tonight by Cole. But really it relies on relationships. It relies on us as council members. It relies on the public to get out there and greet people and to really express how we feel about our community, which is we're glad to be here. So good for all of us. good for the community, and good for the Whittingtons for what they did for us. So with that said, we're going to go on now to old business. And I know we've got the Park Place Subway. We had a little glitch there. And John is going to tell us what we did.

Well, we have to follow the statute. Yes.

I was hoping to not have to. Go ahead, John. Go ahead, John.

that there has to be an engineering traffic investigation before you can reduce the speed limit as I would like to out in our place and we can only reduce it to 20 not 15 because of the statute so here's what it is I assume Tom Kammerer would know how to run a traffic count I assume that's what they're looking for so I think we have to jump through those hoops if you want an enforceable ordinance

So council, that gets us down to 20 miles an hour, and I guess if the people out there wanted 15, they're going to have to settle for 20, and we can get our in-house, get this traffic study done. I don't want to pay Chandler. I'm sorry, I don't want to pay anybody to have to do a traffic study for a subdivision that is one way in and out. How do you do that?

Is that with one of these machines that counts?

I think you put a stand on it to drive over.

How long do you have to do it for?

you know it doesn't say okay so either a week or a month or something whatever is reasonable okay i like the 30 minute idea okay okay so council be good with that the consensus is to continue moving forward with that 20 miles an hour on that speed limit okay we're good and then it's just oh it just annoys me that we got some bureaucracy going on here with the government on that higher government okay that said we'll go on to new business is there any new business for the council And on public comment, is there anyone who would like to speak to the council again? We do honor public comment and we hope that people will respect us too as council members and show us respect. If we don't get it right, they can let us know that, but we don't need to be bad here at the time. So I just want to say we're going to move forward now and hopefully we'll still be able to have our two public comment periods and not have them be abused.

With that said, are we ready to adjourn the meeting, Mayor? I move that we adjourn our regular council meeting this season and reconvene for our next council meeting on Monday, October 5, 2026, 6 p.m. at City Hall. All right. Who's in second? Clerk, call the roll.

Council Member Newman. Aye. Gomez. Aye. McCall. Aye. Kolecki. Aye. And Mayor Mayberry.

Aye. Thank you for coming. The meeting is adjourned.