Community Relations Commission - Regular Meeting

Pastor Martin, did you see the email about the PowerPoint?

I did. I didn't see the attachment, though.

Before we start, you wanna just we can do it together. We'll just bounce back and forth. That's fine. Got it. We will go ahead and call the Community Relations Commission meeting to order.

We can start with a roll call. The first piece of business that we have is the acceptance of the journal. So the journal of proceedings for the Community Relations Commission held on 01/08/2026. Do we have a motion to approve? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

Is there any sort of discussion on those proceedings? And all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Those proceedings have been approved.

It does not appear that we have any public speakers tonight, so we'll move on to our information only section. We have the mayor with us tonight. So we wanted to have a conversation with you, mayor, and we'll kind of start off and kind of walk you through, some of the things that we talked about during our strategic planning, and then open it up for you if you have questions for the commission, and then for the commissioners, should they have questions for you. Sure. We wanted to start wanted to start with what the key accomplishments are, and we're kind of looking back as the commission started, looking at some of those accomplishments, looking at the focus areas for 2026, and then aligning those priorities.

These are our passion areas. You'll see that we wanna continue to be very welcoming. I think one of the things that we all saw as commissioners this last year was really opening the doors to our community and asking them to come in as part of those listening sessions and opportunities to speak back to us, really give us an opportunity to hear what's really happening in our community and be able to give you some feedback. And I know that you were just sent the other day our annual report, so that has some of that information. Obviously, equity and inclusion continue to be important.

One of the things that you'll hear all of us talk about is moving forward as a commission, we want to have measurable action. We've spent a lot of time listening in our and that that is very important. But we are now at a point where we wanna take some action. We want to start really making some change in the community and really advising you all, you and the council on on those changes. Pastor Martin, is there anything you wanna throw in there? You're good? K. Accomplishments. So, again, the expanded community engagement. You know from the beginning of of our time as a commission, the increased transparency around the body cameras and the use of force.

As a commission, we talked about those of us that have been around since the beginning, that's when we really felt like we were doing valuable work, is when you gave us something very specific and said, need you to solve this issue. And we worked together to make that happen. Some of our challenges is there's some communication gaps. Right? I think that things happen where community members will come to us, will express a concern.

We will then let city staff know we have a great team over here that that works with us. But sometimes getting that response back, there's a little bit of a delay. And I think it's hard then when we try to communicate to the community what's happening, we don't always have a place to send that. Right? So we're working on trying to improve that communication, making sure that if something comes up during a meeting that we're saving space for it on the next meeting agenda and pulling folks in on your team to get those answers to community quickly.

Can I ask questions now?

Absolutely can.

I guess thank you, chairman. One question is could you be maybe give me an example of one of those? It sounds like we need to do a better job closing the loop, and I think through reading the report, you mentioned some specific ones about maybe two residents or three residents who came to you with, like, drainage issues

Yes.

And you didn't hear back fast enough. Is that what you're referring to?

Examples like that. Right? So so I know, and and I think we know as a commission that city staff were on it, but we didn't hear until much later what the actual result So if those residents would have returned that next month, we didn't have an answer for them. Understood. Even though your team did exactly what they should have done and reached out and made sure it happened.

Understood. Thank you.

So, and then I think limited awareness of programs. I think that we hear a lot about what's happening at the city, but there are still things that we're kind of out of the loop on, right, or feel like we're out of the loop on right away. And the community does come to us and ask questions. So just making sure that we continue to stay aware of the programs. Strengthening the relationships with the aldermen.

I think we all, in our strategic planning conversations, felt like it might be time to reintroduce us to the aldermen and make sure that they understand the value of our commission and understand that that that's a partnership that we want. We want to work with them. We want them to be part of the process. And and just really needing them to to see the value in the work that we do and then continuing that consistent community networking. And I think we found the most value of this last year of having the community come talk to us.

Okay. So this addresses some of the challenges. We're looking towards having that one to three day response and how do we make sure that if someone does come out to us with an issue, we are responding to them, getting updates from staff when there are inquiries directed to the CRC. So you'll see later on in the agenda that we have, folks coming from your team to share with us some of the the things that they're working on related to some of those concerns that were brought to us, wanting to do some more roundtables and listening sessions, improving those updates. And then really, I think, for those of us who have been on the commission for a while and are getting to the point where we're getting ready to transition off, there's conversations around youth engagement.

And in two ways. One, how do we get youth around the table so that we can mentor them? But then also, what about those youth that already have the mentors that are ready to be part of this commission? How do we make sure that we create opportunities for them to be successful in those spaces? Focus areas, housing.

Housing continues to be a focus area for us. I would say for the last two years, we have heard, if not longer, we have heard from residents around housing and how those barriers exist for residents in our community. One of the things that they talked about some of the ordinances not necessarily being the best for housing. So we are open to reviewing those, looking at some pilot programs for affordable housing, getting regular updates from the housing authorities. We understand the role that they play, so wanting to make sure that we connect with them more regularly.

Workforce development, wanting to do some roundtables around that, exploring some pilot programs that have worked in some other communities, and again listening sessions about those barriers. I think before we can really make real headway in workforce development, what are the barriers? What are the things that are are stopping our residents from from being successful? Getting regular updates to staff, addressing that follow-up gap. And then also we talked about you know, we give you a yearly report.

We talked about expanding that to a more regular that way, as we're developing the relationships with the aldermen, they're not just hearing from us once a year. They're getting a regular report from us saying, here's what we worked on the last three months. Here's what we plan to work on moving forward. So I think expect to see more from us from that side, and then also just getting the aldermen to engage with us on that same level. So some of them, great, come in and they're part of the process, but we really want to speak with all of them.

So and there are some commissioners working on questions that will be sent to the aldermen so we can better understand the work that they're doing. And then youth engagement, again, really, we really recognize that our future leaders are already in this community, and this is a great spot for them to develop those skills, whether that means that we're mentoring them. And we talked about in our strategic planning meeting having a young person assigned to each one of us. And we also talked about if there's a young person who's ready to be on the commission, let's create space in the ordinance that allows them that access. And key priorities, increase access to community programs and services, strengthen that community participation.

I think we've seen the community here most when there's something that the community is passionate about. Right? Body cameras, community was here. When we started doing the listening sessions, once they they knew that they could come tell us anything, they were here. Right?

So more opportunities to engage with them, more opportunities to to really be the voice for them, and then turning that community input into an actual measurable action. So next steps, we're finalizing our action plan. We're assigning the initiative leads. We each have agreed to take on different initiatives that we're going to focus on and then launch those communication improvements and begin some more outreach. Is there anything from the commissioners that I missed that you all want to bring up to the mayor before we get into questions?

Could we back up the slide to the the last one? Okay. This one? Yes, please. Thank you for a second.

No problem.

I just had one one example cause the mayor asked for some examples of where the communication might I be sharpened a little think in terms of the regrow grant, the regrow program and how that impacts us as a commission, I felt like I was learning things from the news media and just kind of left to figure out how that impacted us and indeed whether the regrow program would continue and whether we continue doing that work. So Larry and Mikaela do a phenomenal job. I think it's just a matter of starting new habits in terms of having the commission perhaps learn things from city staff, from you, mayor, that would work. That was another you asked for example, so that was one of the ones where I felt myself that I was kind of guessing. Sure.

Anything else that we want to add or any questions that you all have for the mayor while he's here?

Can I go through a couple of the things? And then that may also spur some questions of me. So one, I just want to say thank you, for letting me be here and thank you for volunteering. Sincerely appreciate it. These may not be in the best order. And then I was also sent a couple of questions I want to make sure I address as well, happy to take any questions that you have. I really liked this update. Also really liked the report and the information that you provided, so thank you for that as well. This will be a little bit all over the place because I'm just going through based on that PowerPoint. I think communication, I think, can absolutely be improved.

I would say, starting with me, it should be improved. And I will commit to doing that. But I will also, at our department head meeting on Monday, I'm just going to reiterate to our department heads because truthfully, I don't think I've done that. Like, I mean, we've had a number of new department heads that were not here when this was created. They did not sit through the amazing and wonderful council meetings that this was created.

And I think they need to just be reminded of the importance of it and the importance of communicating to you and the importance of when they do get an item that comes from Makayla or Larry, that we need to make sure that we close that loop. And that is something I talk a lot about to our team on that closing the loop because they do amazing stuff. In their defense, I'll be full disclosure, we have less staff than our comparable cities. And so they're just done, and they're on to the next. Done, on to the next. And that one second of, hey, you know, 123 Main Street, we did take care of that drainage issue. Ms. Smith or Mr. Smith seems happy. That simple thing would be a big help.

And so I will make sure that I work to close that loop. I would also say I would be open. I don't know if it's with the chairman or with members or to have an open door policy at some point of just direct communication with me. If it's, you know, hey, quarterly, you know, in the Mayor's Office on the fourth Tuesday of the quarter, from four to five or four to six, you can stop in and share anything that you're hearing directly. I'll let you guys determine how you would want to do that, or if you would want to do that.

I would also say, I think there's varying levels of that communication. I think regrow is at a different level than maybe some of the other initiatives that may be coming out. We should, if you're not, get you added to some of the press releases that Laura is developing, if that is the press releases of the items that are, starting, but also, getting you into some of the information. She's been starting to do it on social media, and we're working hard this year. Goal is for me to do more videos and recaps, which I hate, and also for her to do more, committee and council meeting recaps, which I think are helpful.

And I think if you just got those, it's quick enough information, you know, a sentence about each program that if you had additional thoughts, you can always email me too directly. Like, hey, I saw this in the recap. What is this? I would like the flyer on this. Or is there a flyer? I'm getting contacted. I'd like to share that information. I had another thing on communication. I'm going to circle back to regrow, okay? Another item is youth engagement.

I would love that. I think we could put forward something. I guess a question don't need an answer today is, but with the number of commissioners we have now, do you want to use one of those commissioners? I'm just gonna pick on you, Chairman Brown. But if the chairman steps down, do you want that slot to be now a used spot? Or do you want to add a commissioner and have that be a used spot? I think you guys gotta think through that. I'm not fighting either way. I do think, we have an odd number, and typically odd numbers help in case there's a tie. I've had to break a couple of those.

And so that may be helpful. I will tell you, I think there's lots of different places that we could be looking. I mean, we do have a Mayor's and Chairman's Youth Advisory Council. It's a good group. Maybe there's someone that they select, and they're now the appointment. I don't know. I was also I will say at Roosevelt just this morning, and any one of those kids who ask questions, I mean, they ask incredibly thoughtful, deep questions. They are engaged. They are reading. They were following the news nationally and locally and statewide.

They knew a lot. And so I would absolutely be supportive of getting that a youth member in some capacity. And I think you guys need to think of for as we draft any potential ordinance, do you want them to be a voting member? Do you not want them to be a voting member? Just an advisory like a learning member?

I know, when, me and former director Meyer were talking about, the creation of this, There are, I'm sorry, former now honorable Meyer. He just gave me a nasty look. I don't know if, like, we genuflect when we see you or what we do, but there you are. There are, truthfully, there's city councils across the nation that have youth members that aren't voting members, and we've talked about that in the past. I guess if you could put some thought in how you want that brought forward, you would find support from staff in doing that.

I think re educating people, I feel like doing the Jay Z of reintroducing yourself, to city council would be important. I think we can do that in a lot of different ways. I think having you ask them questions, that'll do it. I think this report will do it. I think as we bring forward any potential new member, a youth member, that will also be a great opportunity to do it. I don't think it should be like a forced thing at council, like, we now want to tell you that you don't know that you have this, but here it is. I think as we brought forward a youth member, it would be a really good opportunity for if the chairperson, whoever the the

streets

streets

and

as well. I will tell you, you have members of the city council and Democrat caucus, I'll say specifically at our last meeting, there was a very brief discussion on the CRC of making sure that they get more engaged with the CRC and you're more engaged with them. At the meeting prior to that, it was a much more lengthy conversation. And I think you have many members who want to be more engaged with you as well, from at least the Democrat caucus. One thing, and I don't know if it's a suggestion or just something to throw on the table and walk away, is I do like the listening sessions.

I do appreciate that you did that. I think one thing that may be beneficial is coming here is, for many members of our community, it's something a little intimidating to come to City Hall. I think maybe if your goal is to do two listening sessions this year or three, maybe you do one here and you, you know, go to West Gateway Coalition, and just ask them at their regularly scheduled meeting. Sorry, Jiriya is like, I'm sorry, Commissioner Krutov is like, Not that one. Or go to Rolling Green.

Go to these neighborhoods that already have kind of a built in audience and just get different parts of the city. And maybe, you know, this year you're going to do the West and the North or the West and the East, and next year you're going to do the North and the South. I don't know how you want to break that up, but I think even getting you out, letting people know and see you could be a benefit as well. Youth engagement. Another thing on that youth engagement. If it's mayor and chairmans or very other we're we're to

do that. And

I do like those areas the housing, the workforce, the communication, youth. And I think I would be most happy to help in all of those areas. Regrow. I should have communicated better with you from the beginning on that. And I will commit to doing so in the future.

Right now, we have and I don't know if I played a role in the confusion of it or if just communication out and the media played a role in it, but I think people are really confused on what is cannabis funding and what is regrow funding. Because I consistently be asked, and any question I get, it's people think they're one in strong

we we

the have

have a year. All of that a funding is in our existing budget. The funding that was utilized was the surplus funding that was left in that account. All of that funding could be used for regrow. We put forward maybe three or four weeks ago regrow funding, I believe at five hundred thousand dollars There was not a motion or a second to advance it.

And so it has, quote unquote, died. It doesn't mean it's dead. It means that attempt didn't move forward. I will tell you, I think our again, the Democrat caucus, and I'm not saying I'm favoring one caucus or another, that caucus meets regularly. That caucus has stated that they would like your thoughts on the regrow funding.

So I think if you wanted to provide those thoughts at least to that caucus, even before you provide them to the full council, I think it would be welcome. They typically, if you wanted to do it in writing initially, that would be fine. They typically meet, I believe it's the first committee Monday of the month? I believe yes. Alright.

Our parliamentarian says yes. So I believe it's the first committee Monday of the month our caucus will typically meet. Truthfully, would say putting it in writing initially just because it's a caucus, they can cancel that caucus right away, they can meet for five minutes, they can meet for five hours. It is up to the caucus to decide that. And so I think putting it in writing and then if they want some feedback, then taking your time to be there in person as opposed to showing up and maybe their meeting's two minutes and you spend an entire evening waiting on it.

One last thing, taking a step back. So getting a little bit into the weeds. So we and talking about regrowth, so there you go. There's a pun. We, several years ago, allowed our firefighters to participate in something called VIBA, Voluntary Employee Benefits.

I don't know if it's ACT, it's an A, which allows them to get employee benefits earlier through their retirement. It's something the employees wanted, something we supported. That comes up here in 2026 and in 2027. And so you will see more retirements from our firefighters in 2026 and in 2027. And so the last several years, if you've you probably haven't, most people haven't, but we have been hiring literally double the amount of firefighters at each one of

our

hiring selection processes. We've been doing that to prepare for a number of these employees to leave. So we've been carrying an additional cost. That additional cost is this one time cost to get us caught up in 2026 and I believe ultimately ends in 2027. That money from the regrow, obviously, you can't use a one time fund to balance a budget.

It was a one time fund to help balance this one time expense. Just I don't know if I've ever explained I know I haven't explained that to you, but just so you have a thought on that. I'm going to get to the use of force in a second. I had a couple of questions that were sent to me, and then I'll wrap up. Sorry if talk's so long.

There were really good questions. Based on priorities and vision for housing, where do you see the greatest opportunity for the CRC members to contribute as it relates to tangible housing solutions? And then another question, somewhat related, is are there areas in the city of Rockford that, in your opinion, would benefit from one or all of the following: a revitalization of current homes, alternative housing options, and that was stated there was a precursor in paragraph to that that you have heard a lot about, a top concern being housing from both staff as well as residents and how the market has increased. A couple of things. One, I think it would be it's really important that we have great staff.

I think Sarah Lies is really perfectly chosen at the perfect time. She has housing expertise, incredibly competent at a time that we have a housing crisis. I think making sure that this body is in lockstep with her department's efforts and work is really important. I think she has done a lot of efforts about talking to developers, talking to homebuilders about how is this possible. She's done listening sessions with them.

She just provided us report. I don't know if you have the report, but I'm sure we could get it to you if you haven't. One big thing that we are facing is labor cost is a big deal. Also, our values, although they've increased, they have not increased to the point that building in Rockford is as advantageous as someone, for an example, building in Janesville. We continue to hear from home builders that if I build a 2,000 square foot home or a 1,500 square foot home in Rockford, and I'm making these numbers up but it'll give you the idea, could be sold that property could be sold for $200,000 in Rockford.

In Janesville or other areas, it can be sold for $250,000 It's not the permits. It's not the kind of minutiae that we often go to. It is they can build the same thing. They can make money in Rockford. They just can make more money in other places because our values have not risen high enough yet.

I will tell you as it relates to that permitting process, we do our council has supported and we do have a consultant in, his name's Seth Summer, going through our entire building department and permitting efforts. We should have a report to council, I would say, in the next sixty days. I forget the exact date. I think it's sometime in March, actually, that his work should be coming to a completion of where can we streamline. I would say we're also going to have a host of work that we're, discussing now and trying to figure out what the best policies, one around zoning.

Right now, you are seeing our council really pick and choose which ones they like and which ones they don't like. Like should this be zoned, for, residential use or should it remain light industrial? I'm making that up. That's project by project. That does not give a lot of certainty or confidence to anyone who wants to come into the community because then they have to work at least seven or eight of the council members to say, yes, this is the project.

Yes, this area should be zoned residential. We have our team looking right now at where in the city that's not zoned residential could possibly be zoned residential so that we can bring forward an overarching policy to our council in saying I'm making this up. These 800, lots or these these 40 acres across our city now instead of being light commercial should be zoned residential. So now everyone knows this is these areas certainly are zoned residential. Kind of taking that away, from project by project specificity from our council and just saying, We need more housing.

If we have a good housing project, they can just do it in these areas. We also one of the things was mentioned in here tiny homes and that and I didn't read it all. We do not have any minimum square feet requirements. So if you want to build a tiny home today, you can. Now is that cost effective in Rockford?

That is up to you. But right now, you can do that. We also have and I think you've already had folks discuss it with you but Rockford, we have RCIF, which is really a community development financial institution that is taking these dilapidated structures and helping turning them into properties. And so if those neighborhoods who have one, two, three some have 10 properties that are really dilapidated and no one's living in them, you the goal is we've provided money to this community development financial institution, then we went to banks and we got some of their Community Reinvestment Act dollars, and they've invested in. So we provide local contractors the opportunity to get a loan so that they can pay for the property and they have the skill, they just don't have the capital to pay for the property, they can pay for that property, rehab that, and the goal is to get as many of those to be turned into single family owner occupied residences so that there's an incentive in their agreements to actually sell those to single family owner occupied residences.

They don't all sell them. Several are rental, but they've done more than two fifty of them in the city, and it's made a huge impact in those neighborhoods that they've invested in. And we could get you a map of all of the properties, and you will see it's touching everywhere in Rockford and a lot in the West Side Of Rockford. There was another question. Makes me a little nervous that someone went to the town hall and remembered what I said.

Just gonna be honest. I appreciate that, but I'm now nervous. What did I say? I said at that that we need three types of housing, the affordable to market rate and luxury. That is accurate.

We do need all three types. But wants to know, as research is being done from other cities really looking at best practices for comparable sized cities for approaches to their housing shortages, Would it be helpful it would be helpful to know what efforts are already underway by city staff and where the CRC can best assist and expand on those existing efforts. So there's a number of different efforts. Some I've already outlined. We're working on the zoning, going through the permitting process.

I think you will see next week, I believe the eighteenth or nineteenth, Governor Pritzker is outlining his state of the state and budget address all in one. You will see, unless something dramatically changes from talking to their staff, a whole host of pushes from the state, that not all municipalities and certainly not all residents will like. You will see, I participated on a task force with Governor Pritzker about middle housing, really filling that gap, because we're in desperate need. We have some of the we have low production of new housing in Rockford, but we have incredibly I think we're ranked in the bottom three or four in the country for new residential construction, the state of Illinois is. And so you will see him come out with a number of, I would say, pretty aggressive changes.

I can't outline what those are right now because I'm on video. But I believe there will be a number of very aggressive changes coming out next week. We are looking at reviewing our incentives. So right away, say if you want to build a single family or if you want to build a residential unit, we'll rebate your property taxes. Have been in we'll rebate your property taxes, waive your permit fees, waive your water connection fees, and waive your plan review for one or two family home, which makes us really unique in that stance.

But we've seen good success. About three years largest homebuilder in Rockford was Habitat for Humanity. They're amazing, but no healthy community has Habitat as their number one homebuilder. And so we have changed fantastic, but they no longer are. We were getting fifteen, eight, thirteen, twenty one new homes being built each year.

At one point, we were seeing 800 new residential units in a year. So we were way, way down. Now we're over 100 permits being pulled for one and two family homes, which is a huge jump from where we were, but we still have a long way to go. I mean, the study Sarah outlined to you saying that we need 6,000 to 9,200 new residential units to keep up with the economic, it's real. We need them.

And that's rehabbing ones through the RCIF program I mentioned. That is partnering with And that new construction. Construction. To you follow the news, would staunchly disagree with senator Chesney that, taking illegal immigrants out will solve our home housing issue. That that will not we have just recently approved a letter of support for senior affordable housing on South Main Street and stated that we would provide up to $2,000,000 of assistance for that.

We have previously provided a similar letter for the Avon development. That is soon to be expiring. They will soon have to come before council. I bring that up because I think one big thing that you can do is advocate. You have learned a lot. You have talked to a lot of people. You know the need. Advocate to council members, but also don't underestimate your ability to advocate even on social media because council members will see those things. And I think you are anytime you have a new residential development coming, you're gonna have the NIMBYs. We need someone to step in and say, this is good.

This is needed. And, you know, this neighborhood can support it. It is zoned for that. This is a good use for it. We need that advocacy coming from all corners. So with your knowledge, that advocacy would help. I think I've answered those. Oh, the last thing was the use of force. That was remarkable. I would say it was incredibly helpful, but I also think in one aspect it may have hindered the Community Relations Commission because that was something we specifically gave you.

I would also say a big intent of the Community Relations Commission is to have you help drive the discussion of what you think after listening to residents, talking to experts, what you believe are those issues. So I really want to I mean, if you force me to, I would. But I really am hesitant to say this is the area I want you to spend the most time. Genuinely I mean, we have a diverse group of people on this commission for a reason. You're talking to all different folks in all different circles.

What are one or two common themes that you think you should focus on as a group that you continually hear in your, you know, social interactions, when you're at neighborhood meetings, whatever that is, and help drive that here as opposed to me saying, This is what I want. We drive a lot of the discussion at council, and our aldermen do. I would love to see you guys driving more. Like, if it's the workforce piece, you know, how are we getting more people into the trades that are reflective of our communities? Whatever that is, I would like you to help drive some of that as opposed to me coming here saying, this is what I want.

I'm a McNamara. I'd be happy to tell you everything I want, but I really do think it's important to hear from you about this is important to the community and to help drive that. Sorry. Commissioners, other than yeah.

You you would apologize for taking so long. We certainly appreciate your time.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be

here. So I wanna start with that. We've touched on several things, I'll try and encapsulate the questions I have. First off the bat, in our last strategic, planning meeting, we talked exactly about what our affirmation is and how this communication should work. So I think this needs to be developed as a protocol.

So we have to work together on that, and that's simply enough to say. Your last comment about advocating, I had a meeting yesterday with a significant developer in the area. And it's exactly what he said, was that if, you know, when people come out with negatives and the people that wanna be against something are the loudest voice and the people that are forward just kinda sit back. So we need to find out more of the things that we truly need to advocate for and we need to be that voice. So that's part of the protocol, I think, of working between this commission and the city and the council and and other players is what do we need to advocate for and what is on the table that we need to be aware of.

I think we're kind of sitting down here in a little black hole where we're not really aware of what else is going on. And to that issue, like I said, I'm gonna try and keep this very short. But you talked a lot about, development, building, affordable housing. Now one of my challenges and one of my charges is to to try and develop, where we should fit into the opportunities and obstacles in affordable housing and building in Rockford. And like I said, I had a meeting yesterday and I'm having meetings and I'm developing information.

But you've also mentioned a lot of things that I need to know more about. Mhmm. So where do I, not just as a commission, but so that I can report to this commission, where do I go to get the information about what the city is doing so I'm not being redundant in my efforts of developing the opportunities and obstacles? Yep. Who do I I mean, I know I was gonna talk to to Seth Summers about this, but, you know, I I need to know what my best connections are to communicate with the city on this issue.

Yeah. I would say there's a number of different channels, some easier than others. One, I do think Laura does a good job on our Facebook page to make people aware of what those areas are. That doesn't get you all of your answers. So I would say if it's housing or economic development, I would go direct to Sarah Lies. She is our director. She knows the importance of the commission. She's been before the commission. Right. You now have that relationship.

If it is you're hearing lots of concerns, well, why did they pick this road in the capital improvement plan? You have Scott director Scott Sanders to go direct to. I think, as commissioners, I would genuinely just or generally just go to the department head that that falls under. And if you ever have any concern, send me an email and say, hey. I wanna know about this rebate program. Who would I talk to? I'm most happy to get you in connection. It takes me two seconds. You're not bothering. That's why we have you and what we want done.

I would also say I look at, I mean, the loudest voice. It's really interesting. I mean, I don't ever suggest reading the comments, but go to a post and just look at the think of the likes and the comments. There'll be 14 comments that are opposed to it, and that's the only people who have commented. But there'll be 200 likes.

And they have been silently just, yep, I like this. And so I mean, truthfully, would not be elected based on comments. I mean, no elected official would if you look at their pages. I think turning some of those likes into a comment like, hey, this is good. Those elected officials are looking at it even in when they say they're not. They're looking at it.

Mister mayor.

Brother chair, just a couple of things, mister mayor. I know we talk about the housing crisis. We always lump it into one one thing, and you've you've hit on a couple of things. But I do know that the the senior housing crisis because Rockford is a aging community. So I know that's probably one of the things that's going to be looking, and I would I would love to see, if it's already in the work or not, like a three to five year plan on how the city is is moving forward for senior housing.

We look at affordable housing. We we kinda lump that in with low income. Those are two different ones. So I would like to see, how the plan is for senior housing, low income, and affordable housing. You referred to, one of the projects, I think it was a senior project. I think that's the one that's across on South Main from Smokehouse.

Mhmm.

That that so that's that's good. The the second thing, is, are you aware of the r three grant amendment that is now being, is pending, for that for the grant, and they're trying to expand it out. So I just want to

see The r three grant?

The r three grant, amendment. That's I think our state representative is probably one of the cosponsors of that and and how would that affect what what we're trying to do within in the city. The third thing would be the update on Barbara Coleman, the Barbara Coleman, project. And then, finally, the the regrow discussion. And, again, I met with you, and I appreciate your time then, and I also appreciate your time tonight.

But it was very hurting that the fight of doing it and then for it to die without a plan behind it, not from you, but from city council on how to kinda utilize those funds to move forward. It was kinda hurting and and how can we, since the funding is still there, utilize the funding to do, you know, other things?

Absolutely. Thank you. So I believe, and I will double check this. Do I call you like pastor, commissioner?

Yes, I'd have him.

Doctor, doctor. So pastor, I will I believe that the housing items should be outlined in the housing plan. But I will double check that and I will get something out. As for R3, I know a lot about R3. I spent I just got off the board of R3.

R3 is a restore, renew, reinvest, program where they take about, 25% of the state, tax from recreational cannabis and put it into a board group, and they send it out to organizations across the state. I am not aware of the amendment or how that would impact it. I hope it has something about mandating certain portions of the revenue go to certain parts of the state because a frustration I had as a board member was, the board is great. I think, lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton does a phenomenal job, with her efforts with r three, and it kind of flies on the radar. A frustration I have is a huge portion of those board members are from Chicago.

And they genuinely have no idea. I did bet half of that board has never been to Rockford. And as a board member, one of the reasons I got off is I couldn't advocate as hard as I wanted to publicly at their board meetings for Rockford items because it was a conflict. And I mean, at one point, they literally gave money to a Chicago company to come here and do what our Arts Council was already doing. And they didn't even communicate with the Arts Council. I was like, guys, what are you doing? But I got outvoted, and it's because it was a well known Chicago company or nonprofit. And so I don't know that amendment. If you have a bill number, I'd be happy to

I can send I can send you the amendment.

That'd be awesome. Thank you. As it relates to Barbara Coleman, next Tuesday, I believe yeah. Next Tuesday at nine a. M, there'll be a press conference regarding Barbara Coleman update.

I'll try to be not as specific as I want. They had a contractor, a general contractor called ENC. ENC was a general contractor for Barbara Coleman. And just so you're aware, Barbara Coleman was broken into Phase 1A, Phase 1B and Phase two. Phase 1A and Phase 1B would take care of all of the historic structures that are there.

Phase two would build more townhomes out front along South Main Street. Phase 1A, the general contractor, was E and C. Quite a bit of work actually was done, contrary to what some people believe, but a lot of work was done. It was all the buildings gutted out, as you can see now. And that contractor was not performing at what Jay Jeffers wanted them perform at.

They wanted to make changes. Obviously, E and C had a contract and was very upset with those changes and had many reasons why they thought they were delayed. And therefore, became a lot of liens on those properties. All of those liens, except for the E and C lien, so all of the local contractors have now been paid. All of the contractors have now been paid except for, in my understanding, E and C.

That is that went through federal mediation and is now scheduled for federal arbitration. That arbitration, I believe, will not be finalized. This is all guessing game at this point. My gut tells me is through this summer, it still will not be finalized, which is terribly frustrating. Meaning no work on that phase 1A.

Phase 1B, what I would call phase 1B, I think there's some incredibly exciting things that may or may not be announced in the coming days. They have switched contractors. They now have a local contractor. It's Ringling Johnson as a local contractor. That contractor is being aggressive, and I think we will see movement at the Barbara Coleman campus very soon.

And I would say I'd love to tell you every single thing if that camera wasn't on, that we're gonna say on Tuesday. So if any of one of you wanted additional information, I'm not I don't wanna hide it from you. But we have a press conference for a reason. And I'm excited about what is taking place. And I would also just wanna reiterate, I think Jay Jeffers, there's been, you know, questions. Well, are they still committed? They're gonna walk away? I'll tell you unequivocally, that is not happening. They are not walking away from this project. They love the project.

They will see this project through. It is everyone has asked me like, well, you must be worrying about this nonstop. I'm not. It is I I worry about a lot of stuff nonstop. Barbara Coleman getting back construction started and getting completed, I am upset and I worry about how long it has taken, but I do not worry, Will it be done? Regrow. We did bring regrow forward. Maybe it was too soon. I mean, obviously, there were some pretty passionate debate and concerns on all sides from good people. And maybe we brought it forward too soon.

I think our stance was, well, if you want to yell at us for not spending the money, I want to put it forward and say, let's spend the money. That was my thought. I think our council has had a lot of discussions. I mean, a big driver is gonna be the Democrat caucus. There are members of our city council who do not like regrow at all and wanna do away with regrow. Most cities put their cannabis fund into their general fund. That's just what most cities do. And we have members of our city council who are like, just put it into the general fund. This is nonsense. We shouldn't be in the business of doling out this money to nonprofits.

Just put it into the general fund. I still stand by supporting regrow. And so we are having conversations. I would say the difficulty that remains is the conversations that took place over the last two years. We have 14 aldermen. Probably 10 of them want regrow. And they all have really good ideas of what should be done with the regrow funds. The problem is those 10 ideas don't all align and are not all the same. And I need, as I've told them, I need at least seven of them to come to an agreement on what they want to spend those dollars on so that I can break the tie and get it moving. So I would love it.

I think there are a lot of worthy programs that exist, and I think there's some just in I've had good conversations with you, Bastard, about programs that should exist that these regrow funds could help kick start. But it's not dead. I would say if you have input on it as a group, a thoughtfully written communication to me and at least the Democrat caucus, I think would be a really good place to start. I think they are eager to hear your thoughts.

Just to clarify, that would be a public document, that email?

Anything anyone sends me is public.

Okay. Yeah.

Figured. Just wanted to clarify that.

Yep.

You know, spoken as a former journalist. Just throwing it out there.

Private documents to the mayor. Yeah.

Don't send me stuff you don't want public. We're FOIA ed all day long.

Any other questions or thoughts, commission?

Anything I could be doing to better assist you besides better communication and maybe more regular connections?

I appreciate the mayor that you're offering to meet with us maybe on a quarterly basis and scheduling out some blocking out some time to meet with all of us that I think would be I a big

think the one thing, and I I don't know the exact rule, but we could look into for those block times, it may have to be two or three at most. I I forget the I think we can't have a majority of you at it. So whatever the legal team tells me I can meet with, we may have to block them out based on that. So if two or three of you are really eager about housing or about some other topic, or just one on one is fine too.

Mayor, I just wanna touch on wanna go back to communication and and just give you a thought too. One of the things that we've noticed over the last year, especially as you've added new folks, we haven't always known that folks are being added to the commission.

That would be helpful.

It would. And we haven't always necessarily known who is on your desk as potential commissioners and where they are in that process. I I think we saw with, like, the last chair leaving, some of us were aware that that was happening. Some of us weren't. So I I think in addition to the other communication, that's just making sure that we know who you're working on and where they are in that process and and when they will be joining us? Because I know as the the current chair, I want to be able to reach out to them to say, you know, welcome to the commission. Yep. What do you need? Here is the information that we've been working on. If we don't know they're coming, they come in with without any of that background.

Yeah. No. That's my fault. You should have that. We have two, new members that'll join you. Today is February, February. So I think you will see them hopefully at your March meeting. They have to be approved, and then they also have to sign some documents. Those two members would be Zha Zha Johnson and Shamir Franklin Love. I know it's Shamir Love. I believe it's Shanklin. Thank you. I keep saying Franklin. Shamir Shaimir Love will be joining you. Both are, I think, exceptional and will be good members and active members.

Both really want to be part of it. How I get members typically is either community calls, and we do have a list of folks that we go through from that. I would say also I've been really trying to push aldermen to give me names. My thought there is, one, I want to make sure all the words can be reflected, but I also want some buy in from the aldermen. And if they have someone they appointed, I feel like they have a little bit more buy in.

We are weak in an area that if you know of people, I will take them. We need Republicans based on their voting records, Republicans. We historically, this commission has been light on Republicans, and it shouldn't be. It's, you know, 40 plus percent of our population, and it's an area that we'd need to do a better job representing, if I like it or not. We do. We do. They should be represented. It's hard. We have some on our city council, just so you're aware, I'm sure you've seen it, who will vote no on every appointment. And they'll state it's not because they don't like any of you.

They don't like that we have this commission. I mean, this commission, if you were not around, was not the smoothest thing to go through counsel.

Thank you for joining us. You're welcome anytime.

Thank you, guys.

Chairman, can I make just one one addition on the

Of course?

As far as additions to the CRC. Also departures. It would be really nice and I know we've talked about this before but I just want to reiterate, when people are getting ready to leave the commission, it would be great to do some sort of formal thank you, have an opportunity for that commissioner to reflect or whatever.

That's a really good idea. I'd be happy, as we know that there someone may be exiting, I'd be happy to come and personally thank them in front of you and live or and make sure people know that.

I want the key to the city when I can fall. Thank you, mister

Fully noted. Thank you, guys. Appreciate all that

you do. Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Commissioners, we will move to the next part of our agenda, and we will welcome director Sanders from the public works to give us an update.

It's always a joy to to follow-up the man. Always sets me up. Very good. Evening.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you to this commission. Thank you to everyone that's here, mister McMasters. I was gonna compliment the on the now apparently honorable mister Myers, but he snuck out with the mayor. My name is Scott Sanders. I am the director of public works for the city of Rockford. And real broadly, before we get into anything we wanna talk about, in case you don't know, a little bit about public works, a little bit about me. The public works department oversees three divisions. We have engineering, streets, and water. Sewer, as you guys probably know, is not a municipal utility. We have Four Rivers Sanitation Authority. We have a separate

describe it, and it's accurate. Everything that gets built publicly in

the city city of of Rockford. So, whether that is, at the granular, our our, citywide sidewalk improvement program, which is sort of an organizational masterpiece trying to track that and put that out. We have a running three year plan on that. To our ward development plans, each of the 14 aldermen have a certain amount of money that is assigned to them equally proportioned to spend within their ward at their discretion. We have additional ward money that's we call a priority allocation just in case they have a project that's so big it's gonna wipe out their budget.

We don't want that to happen. We don't want the rest of the ward to suffer. So we have another million and a half set aside as neighborhood priority allocation to help with larger projects. And then that gets us into our capital improvement plan, and that's all the big stuff. That's our our major roadway reconstructions, our bridge reconstructions, our water main replacement, building new wells, building new treatment facilities, all the big municipal public infrastructure projects.

As you guys probably know, we are in the midst once again. We we we track our capital improvement plan over over a multiyear plan. And each year this would be the last year when I can say this, but every year over the past few, we enter the largest public works plan we've ever had in the city's history. It approaches the plan itself over four years approaches half $1,000,000,000. This year alone, over a 100,000 $100,000,000 in improvements.

Now that's not all, certainly not all, City of Rockford money. You know, we never wanna spend we wanna leverage our money. We never wanna get a dollar's worth of value for a dollar we spend, so a lot of these projects are leveraged against state and federal grants or our MFT funds that come in sometimes or programs through IDOT and MFT where where hopefully, you know, we're getting $10 of work for $2 spent. Some of these are twenty eighty matches. Some of them are fifty fifty matches, But it's important to try to leverage and maximize the dollars we spent, especially in water, and I'll touch upon that a little bit later.

Engineering is in charge of everything that you see get built. And once it's built, then that becomes our streets department's kind of obligation to take care of and maintain. Streets department has the obligation to and the responsibility, I should say, to take care of all of our public roads, public bridges, public sidewalks. They're pothole patching. They are replacing sections of sidewalk that aren't gonna be replaced through a larger project.

The forestry department lives within streets department. So tree trimming and cleanup and vegetation cleanup, that's all in our streets department. And, of course, I think we'll talk a little bit more about this, snow removal is part of our streets department. To be honest, it expands beyond that because we need all hands on deck, so some of our employees in the water department also plow. But it falls generally under the direction and authority of our streets department. And then water is probably somewhat self explanatory. That is the what we call production. We don't really produce water, but for us, production is the wells and the treatment facilities. Facilities. Making sure we have safe, clean drinking water.

We have 24 well 26 well sites in the city, 24 active right now, and, 24 treatment facilities. So that water gets treated before it is dispersed through the water mains. When water itself is divided, it can get too complicated into three departments, the production. Then distribution, that's the entire infrastructure. 800 miles of water main and I don't know how many miles of lateral services, but 800 miles of public water main.

And then we have something called, field services, and that's everything on the private side. While while production and distribution are all within the public right of way, water mains out in our public rights of way. If your water doesn't go on when you turn your faucet on or if it's coming out discolored or something's or your bill is wackadoo compared to your your meter, that's services. Field services does everything on the private side. So they engage our residents, our water customer base.

And that's everything from a meter reading, enforcement, you know, payment enforcement, and exploring all issues on the private side of water. I can tell you, as director, it's been fascinating. I get emails every time our on call crews, which means that we work at generally speaking, the the the bulk of our department is working during the work hours. Now we're twenty four seven, obviously. So we have on call crews, and we have people that are stationed to monitor twenty four seven.

But I get to see how often we get called out in the night. And I will tell you, it's multiple there is multiple breaks, multiple issues every single night. There's not been a night that we haven't had people out dealing. And last two weeks ago, Wednesday, we had six water main breaks in one night. Six water main breaks. That was the night well, we're feeling the after effects now. That was the night of the the water main break at Parkview and Spring Creek. There was five others that same night. Wow. That's that is something.

So we have an on call crew. The on call crew has a supervisor, a foreman, an equipment operator, and two maintenance workers. You know, they're called to one, and then there's another one. So we have to, what we call, force back a crew, a crew that wasn't on call, that's home in their beds probably. We have to ask them to come back. And after that, we start calling in the private sector. And we had NTRAC come in. We had DPI come in. We had four crews, two of our own, two private out there working, and then some of them had to jump to second ones that same night. So it's it's humbling and fascinating to watch.

I I get baptized. I I I go out as often as I can. I like to go out at night and see what's going on. And last night, I was fresh on the scene to a water main break and maybe don't, I'm not as acutely aware of the risks of everyone, but I stepped on what I thought was solid ground next to a break, and my foot dropped through. And I went all the way up to my belt buckle into the one popped right back out, only one leg down, but it's it's it's awesome, it's inspiring, and I have a a whole new appreciation for what our men and women do out there all night long.

And it does not matter how cold it is. There's no I'm not gonna go, and they're out there working. A little bit about myself, just so you know who you'll be dealing with now and hopefully for the future. I come to the I've I've long I'm a lifelong Rockford resident. I come from the private design side. I am a landscape architect and civil engineer. So I worked private sector design for a long time, for the first twenty years of my career. And I did a lot of work for the city of Rockford, with the city of Rockford. But I've also been sort of a friend of the program for a long time. For the past thirty years, I've always been on some sort of board of commission.

I did six years and then three more, starting back in the nineties with our historic preservation commission. I was twelve years sitting, I think, at, commissioner Garwick's seat at, for our Zoning Board of Appeals and our Liquor Advisory Board. I made a weird little, mid career lane shift. I was doing consulting work for a number of smaller communities for land use planning and zoning administration. One of them was the village of Roscoe to our North.

And they, back in 2016, they offered me the position of their, village administrator, and they ended up taking that. So I made this shift into public administration, and I was honored, when the mayor asked if I'd be interested in and I never left Rockford. I was able to live in Rockford while I worked up there, but, it's been wonderful to come back and play a more official role in my hometown. There's no greater job. There's no greater job, I can tell you this, than being, a public works director in the city you grew up in and live in and be able to impact more aspects, more facets of community life than you ever thought that the job really touched upon.

I think you originally asked or reached out to talk about snow removal, and we can certainly do that. So I'll pause, though. I'll pause before I get into snow removal just to ask if there's any general comments or questions about public works and what we do and how we integrate with both the public and with with, a commission like like yours.

Director, what, lead pipe? Oh. We talk about that?

You're jumping right in.

I'm jumping right in.

But I heard you ask the mayor what are some things that you, I think, commissioner McDonnell, you asked, what are some things you could start to speak about, advocate for, be, fluent on? What jumped to my mind immediately when you said that is that we have just we have spearheaded and concluded the initial public engagement phase of a pedestrian safety task force cut and that lead to the implementation the adoption and implementation of a public pedestrian safety action plan. So we've had we had a couple months' worth of 14 meetings with a wonderful, unbelievable group of citizen led leaders like yourselves in all walks of life that had something to do in one way or the other with pedestrian, bicycle, vehicular safety. As we start to roll out recommendations, that's gonna be something that we would hope everyone will trumpet at every opportunity. Lead service line replacement.

LSLR, that's what we call it. Lead service line replacement. So there is a mandate that all public water entities replace all lead in their infrastructure, whether that's water main or lateral services. We talk about that being main to meter. So those lines that go from the tap on our water main, and those will then go to the the buff the the valve box you see by your sidewalk into the basement, into your house, which is critical to this, connecting to the the meter in your basement. Sometimes it's on an outside wall. I have a very old home. It's in the center of my basement. I haven't replaced mine yet. When we do, like, that's gonna be a project.

They're gonna have to get a new service line to the center of my basement. So there's been a couple different sets of regulations as to how this gets rolled out. And initially, the state of Illinois and the EPA in general, I should say, not just the state of Illinois, had a mandate that all these had to be replaced in thirty years. And these mandates all technically go into effect at the end of this year. We're all doing it already, but there's no point in waiting.

But from 01/01/2027 through 12/31/1936 of well, it was thirty years. You have thirty years to replace everything. Well, the federal government, and this is not administration based, it was enacted under a previous administration. It was affirmed under the current administration. Revise that to ten years.

So it's 01/01/2027, through December 3136. Ten years to replace all the lead service lines. The city of Rockford is second in the state of Illinois, a distant second behind Chicago, but we are second in the state of Illinois with lead service lines that need to replaced. We are still looking at 30,000 service lines that need to be replaced. To give you an idea of the pace we've been working at, we started doing this back in 2017, believe it or not.

We've ramped it up more aggressively the past couple years, but we have so far replaced about 4,100 lead service lines in this city. 4,000. A little over 4,000. 30,000 more to do. We have done this so far at zero cost to our to our ratepayers.

And I write and I and I think so far is an important part of that sentence. Most everything we have replaced so far has been done in one of two ways primarily, whether we can attach those lead service line replacements to another CIP project. You know we're working on 11th Street. We're working on Auburn Street. When we do these projects at that same time, and as part of that project and part of that budget, we replace every single lead service line.

So we last year, we tackled, 300 lead service lines through capital improvement projects. The rest of them we're doing through EPA grant funded initiatives right now. And those grants, we apply for various ones. We apply generally in groups of either $4,000,000 or $2,000,000. Takes about $10. It's not actually true. Takes about $10 to replace one. But just today, I was learning more about, the administrative costs with these and, all of the legwork, all of the coordination. And, you know, we're going into people's homes, we have to meet with them. We have to visit them.

We have to arrange a time. We often have to get easement documentation so that we can do this work. So really, it's it it gets more up to 14 or $15,000 apiece. So we're knocking off maybe 400 or 500 a year right now. This year, in in a ramp up to the mandate, we're gonna try to do 1,800.

And starting next year, we'll need to do 3,000 a year. We'll need to do 3,000 a year. So right now, this is being done through EPA grants that are either have principal forgiveness, meaning we don't have to pay it back at all. And about 50 and about 60% of our grants are principal forgiveness. That's great.

The other 40% we're able to pay back at a very, very, very minimal interest, sometimes maybe zero interest, and we can do that over forty years. Obligation. But I will tell you that EPA grant funding is only guaranteed through the end of this year. We don't know. We don't know starting next year if there'll be any EPA grant funding available.

We hope there will be, but we don't know. So again, in in in hoping for the best but planning for the worst, I said so far, there's been no cost share to our ratepayers at all so far. But if grant funding goes away, we will have to look at its impact on rates. Water utilities, not just in Rockford but across the state of Illinois, they are all called they are considered enterprise zones. They are siloed.

They can only operate under revenues generated by their ratepayers or EPA grants. We cannot push, general fund or CIP funding into the water department. It's not allowed. Water departments have to be self sufficient. The grants have played a big role in that.

If the grants dry up, we are starting the process right now with a consultant who did our last every we've been doing it every seven years. We'll see how much more frequently we do it now, but we do rate studies, and we make projections for the next seven years as to what we think rate increases need to be over the next seven years. We're doing that now. Had a kickoff meeting yesterday, And we have to look at that under a couple different models. We'll have to look at it under a model where we continue to get a proportionate level of funding from the EPA, and we have to look at it if we don't.

So it's an it's a mighty obligation. Another thing, just so you guys know, and this might become part of the public story about this, is that right now so when we apply for these grants, they are all consensus track driven, which is wonderful, and we're trying to apply these grants to sector of our community in the most need. But no one's obligated right now to to say yes. So we ask. We send out mailers to a whole track.

We say, you know, we we think we've identified that your property is lead. We're pretty sure based on we ask residents to every year, you probably get them. You we send out things in the mail that ask you to send something back that helps us understand if you have lead pipes for sure or not. But we can guess more often than not. But it's still completely dependent on people saying yes. And that's not automatic. I don't know. You know, you might think, yeah, sure. I'm gonna yes. Given the opportunity to have a free replacement, I'll do it.

That is not the case. It is a tough sell sometime. And it is relationship building. It's trust building. We have staff and we have consultants that will have multiple conversations and multiple site visits to build up a rapport with these residents that they feel safe to let a public entity come into their house. Because that's what it means, going into their basement. There's a lot of people my wife wouldn't want anyone in our basement right now.

I can

tell you that. And I'll have to do a lot of work if they're in that basement if we're gonna do this. But that may but there's a there's a cost to that, and that we're doing them one here, one here, one here, one here, one here. We might be we might do one at your house, but we don't and your we know your neighbor needs one, but we don't have their permission. So then we come back a year later and do that one. That starts to dovetail with our road resurfacing programs. We don't want to poke holes in new roads that we just paved. You've seen the squares in in the streets where these happen. We have 30,000 of those. That's they're turning our roads into Swiss cheese.

It's every problem is solvable. We've we're fighting to figure it out, but it's daunting. It's big. And that's why I said when you you said let's service, you you open Pandora's box there, commissioner Gerwig. I'm One thing we're gonna try to do is to enact ordinance or even a temporary, MOU, a memorandum of understanding or something that would allow us to kind of force it, to say we have we are targeting your block.

We need to do everybody. You have to say yes. You know, our only our only leverage would be that if you say no, we turn your water off. That's you know? So it's not perfect, but we're gonna to to to undertake a project of this magnitude, we can't just do one here, one here, one here, one here, one here. So that is something that we'll be talking about with the mayor and city council throughout the coming year. This again, this feels like a ramp up year. This is the year where we're starting to do a lot more, and we're gonna sort of, to use a water term, we're gonna pressure test ourselves. We're gonna find out how does this work? How does this work for our internal permitting?

How does this work for our utility locating? I don't have enough Julie locators to go out for these. I'm gonna have to either staff up or or contract more utility locators. How does this work for our customer service? How does this you know, orders of magnitude have a ripple effect.

And I think this year, we'll start to learn more about what that impact is on us and be in a better position, next year. Just so you know numbers, we're talking about going from a $4,000,000 program the past couple years to a $20,000,000 program this year to a 40 to $50,000,000 program over the next ten years. That's what we're talking about. So unless something gives, we are we are marching forward to comply. We don't know the consequences of noncompliance, but it's been whispered.

It's been more than whispered. It's been spoken unofficially that it could jeopardize your ability to get any future federal funding if you don't comply. We don't wanna find ourselves in that position.

Well, thank you, director,

for clarifying. That was a lot. Sorry. Yeah. It was a lot. It was a lot.

And just so you know, I don't have thirty years. And I'll I'll even chip in a couple bucks. Okay? I wanna change gears, though. Sure. Is the is public works responsible for bike lanes and bike paths?

We are. We are not it's funny you asked that. We are not responsible as a responsible is a tricky term. We are definitely responsible for what we call MUPs, multiuse paths. And it is not a sidewalk.

Right? If it's bitumen, if it's eight feet wide or wider, that's a multi use path and we are responsible for that. I'd say we're responsible for sidewalks too, but not in the same way. Like, we have a requirement on all developers that they put in sidewalks as part of their development. And we then have, like I referenced earlier, we have a multiyear sidewalk replacement plan where we're looking at both gaps in our citywide sidewalk network and sidewalks in poor condition more often than not from tree roots heaving pieces of sidewalk or spalling or broken.

We're also in a citywide ADA ramp compliance program, and and we are, putting forth extreme not significant efforts and significant monies and significant analysis to know what our where our compliance lies and and how we fund ramp replacement. But we're not responsible for clearing sidewalks. Everyone is responsible for clearing snow and debris off their own sidewalk. But on bike paths, we are. On bike paths, we have to clear them.

We remove the snow. We keep an eye on them. We repair them as necessary, on a more routine basis even. So once it's a once it's a multiuse path, and generally speaking, it's a difference between bituminous and concrete, and it's usually most of our silos are five feet. Multiuse paths are eight to 10 feet. Any of those are our are the city's asset and our responsibility.

Well, just want to say that I use MUPs all the time. I've been all around the city MUPs and bike lanes. I love it. You're doing a great job. I commute. I run errands on my bike. I I'm always out on my bike on the MUPs and in the bike lanes.

They're great. You so much. Yes. Wonderful.

Thank you.

It's a it's a mission. It's a we're intentional about it. And every single capital improvement, every roadway reconstruction now includes multiuse paths. So 11th Street, multiuse paths. Madison, multiuse paths.

Auburn Street, multi and and often, and I like this balance, shifting the balance from automotive transport to multimodal transport. We're really big into road diets right now. We are more focused on getting people where they're going safely than we are on getting there quickly. And that ties into the pedestrian safety action plan as well. And and almost every complaint we get about some of our lane width reductions or road diets, every complaint we get is it's gonna take me longer to get somewhere.

And while I'm sympathetic to that, I'm okay with that complaint if we know that it's getting you there more safely and it's getting the people biking and walking to where they need to go more safely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the I'm gonna you know what? I will absolutely pass that along to our team because I don't hear enough compliments. Thank you. Good. Good.

So along those same lines, and just I I want to also highlight the work that your team is doing related to those ADA curb ramps. Oh, thank you, Charlie. And especially their commitment to prioritizing areas where folks with disabilities reach out to you Yep. And say that something is wrong. You all prioritize those.

We do.

I think that that is important to highlight and let the community know that if they are running into an issue to just reach out to you and express that and

Thank you, chairman. That is that's I'm glad you you I'm glad you said it instead of me because it is this this multi this sidewalk replacement plan we have is a three year rolling plan. And if an alderman comes to me and says, I need you know, we have some sidewalk issues on Cumberland, I'd say or Westchester or whatever. I'd say, well, if you want to do it immediately, we'll make it part of your award plan and your award money go to it. Otherwise, unless it's already on our list, it's probably a three year wait, and we have to be honest about that. Unless and if we do find out that there's someone with accessibility needs, if there's just any kind of extenuating circumstance that's there, that can go to the front of the list. And we will sometimes act on those almost immediately. Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. I've got yeah. We've got two subjects now, so I have a question on each one. I will back up momentarily to the lead pipe replacement. I'm copper, so you don't have to worry about me. Okay. Very good. Thank you. But I have a question about the the the process. Is there any significant cost difference between trenching versus push? Sure. Is there What's caught well, there

everything we do will at some point involve some kind of a push. So it's probably better to just push the whole way. It's I'm not in the end, I can't I don't know if I can make a a qualified statement about cost. Generally speaking, boring is more expensive than open trenching. But in these specific runs of main to meter, it's not necessarily the case because the trenching comes with so much restoration cost and time costs.

We can be out of there much more cleanly, much more quickly if we directionally bore than if we would open trench. Now there's no one size fits all, though. A lot of times we're fixing something that broke, and then we have to dig that up. We have to find it. So sometimes we end up trenching. But in the end, we are boring through your basement wall or beneath your basement and up through the floor. So that we don't wanna go dig up your basement. I'll I'll put it that way. We certainly don't wanna trench through the concrete floor of your basement. Right.

So boring will always play a role. But right now, if if these are scheduled replacements from the main to the cutoff box to your meter, we will almost entirely bore that. There'll be a bore there'll be a a hole dug in the road, usually 10 by 10 or 12 by 12, that we can get down and put a new saddle valve onto the main, abandon the old one, cut it off. We just do a side by side. We tap a new valve.

And then we will, from that hole, directionally bore under the yard into your house so that we try not to disturb the private property too much. So in the end, I bet it's cost comparable because of the restoration costs we'd face, but the time savings and the disturbance lead us towards boring whenever we can.

Alright. I'm sorry, I want to clarify. Boring is push? Is that what we're

Yeah.

So the boring process is you've seen you've all seen these like tractor robotic looking things. And what they do is they actually drill they have a drill head on them and they drill to the ground and you keep putting new segments of pipe, of steel pipe. So it's first thing it does is it just drills a hole and you stand there and you put, okay, here's another 10 feet. Here's another 10 feet. But you can you can GPS locate and with ground penetrating radar know exactly where that head is. So you could go up and down. You can bend a little bit if you know you have to get under. You'll see we almost always what we call pothole. We expose the gas line. They'll dig a hole to find the gas line because that's mission critical to not hit a gas line.

So we'll know how deep that is. And then once that cutting head gets to where it goes, we actually hook the new water surface on the other end of it and pull it back through as we extract that board head. So it's truthfully more of a pull than a push, I guess. But, yeah, that's how it works.

Great. Thank you. Then to the sidewalk question. Yeah. The sidewalk replacement program, for years and years and years and years, it was always if if I as a homeowner had an issue with my sidewalk, I could talk to the city about it, but it was a fifty fifty proposition to replace the sidewalk. What has changed there?

To my understanding, the fifty fifty program has not been in effect for at least ten years, maybe more. I can't speak to why. That's been that long since This is this is when I get to say I'm new. I know communities do have a fifty fifty. The city of Rockford just does not right now. And that's a larger conversation with maybe perhaps our elected officials, but we just when we replace, we bear the whole cost. But there's no longer a fiftyfifty matching program.

Great. Thank you. Yep.

Quick question about if I'm curious about something, for example, I did not know that what went on at Parkview and, Spring Creek was a water main issue. I saw it this morning. Didn't know. Best way is go to the website. What do I would I have a

Well, we I would website will have it. We always send out press releases. Now that goes to our media. Now I I know that last night, I did see on the news and, you know, that's right in our path of driving our kids to school in the morning. You know, that they they did put out word that with a big red line, this much of Spring Creek is gonna be shut down or reduced to one lane tomorrow. We hope to get that out through all of our print and video news outlets. The morning shows usually run with that. If you have any of the early morning shows on, we get them out in time that they can incorporate those. It is on the website. We have a news and events button or announcements button on the website.

And we also make sure we notify all of our aldermen. Not that they're gonna call everybody, but when in doubt, you can call them and say, what's going on here? But, again, the like I said, there was six in one night. There's some every night. Sometimes they're done before you wake up, and sometimes they're not.

And Spring Creek was a bad one. And that ended up with well, I will tell you, that one, not only in our efforts to fix it. After we had done all the JULI locates and JULI is if I if I use that term, I don't know if you're familiar with it, it's an acronym, Joint Utility Location Information for Excavators. That's what Julie stands for. Not tattling, but it's just a reality. NICCOR has pulled out of Julie. So NICCOR doesn't locate with Julie anymore. They're gonna do their own locates. And while they're trying to figure it out, they take a while. They're slowing us down.

It'll get better. It'll it'll get better. But on Spring Creek and Parkview, they missed a high pressure gas main, and we hit it. So that that's why that project has taken exceptionally long is that we had a high pressure gas main during the initial excavation repair work, and that took a couple days to repair. And now we are that was that was two weeks ago Wednesday. That was the twenty January twenty eighth, that night that that happened. And we did we we were able to stop the leak, but the repair work the the substantial repair work started late last night and will continue for several days this week.

You know, I actually have a question about that. So that is my neighborhood, and everybody's asking me. Yep. It looks like they're setting up for a pour. Are they actually gonna pour the, the holes rather than the usual lousy blacktop on top of it? Are they pouring the the repair?

I I I can't say specifically. Now we we run into all different road profiles. Lot of these roads in Spring Creek might be one of them will have a concrete base with a bituminous overlay. If that's the case, we'll replace it the same way. So maybe that if that's what you're seeing, if we're setting up for a pour, that's what that tells me, is that there was a concrete base course to that, and we'll match that. And we might still, right now, although it's getting warmer and warmer, then cold patch the top couple inches. In spring, when the hot mix plants open, we'll pull that cold patch out, and we'll hot mix pave that. We have cold mix patches all over town. They're lousy, but they're all we can do right now.

Yeah.

And we'll pull all those out and they'll all go back with hot mix asphalt when the plants open. In the interest of disclosure and honesty, I know that working on that intersection today, I'll say we because it all falls under us, we nicked, one of the signal control cables and the signals at Parkview and Highcrest went out. So we were in a stop on top of all of the lane reduction and all the headaches, we were in a stop sign condition for a good part of today. It's up and running again now. But if you can imagine, I know that my city engineer was trying to make it to an 8AM meeting this morning, and he was coming out of Spring Creek.

It was backed up from Anderson Gardens past Eisenhower. Past Eisenhower this morning. That's not I'm not proud of that, but that's what was happening this morning. So he was a half hour late.

That's that's why I asked the questions. I got some phone calls.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Let me talk about snow. We talked I know that that's on everyone's mind. Hopefully you know what? Maybe not anymore. Who knows? Maybe it's maybe we're done. I don't think we're done. We'll get another big one in March. But we got our butt kicked the the the weekend after Thanksgiving. We did. And I can just leave it at that and say we got our butt kicked a little bit.

I I wanted you know, in defense of my people and our contractors, I wanna tell the story of of how unique that event was, you know, that that that we went from warm summer like weather leading up to Thanksgiving to a blizzard, and that it happened to coincide with a major public event downtown with roads closed. And that people that we rely on in for our sub for our consulting crews to do that are all construction workers who do snow plowing in the off season, and they were probably laying concrete or asphalt the day before. Like, it just it was a massive event. It was a heavy, long snow. And I don't think the the consulting team, that we hire to do residential streets weren't ramped up to full force yet.

And you saw the result. Now I don't agree with every description of it. I know that the word epic fail made it into the media. That makes me feel great for my first snow event ever as a public works director. But it wasn't an epic. Epic fails if we don't go out. Epic fails if we don't respond. It was a failure in that we didn't have a level of service delivery that we all want and deserve. But I will tell you that that a normal so a little bit pull back, how we how we remove snow. City of Rockford employees, public works drivers, streets department, and then if we have to do a second shift, it'll be water department people.

They plow all of the arterials and collectors, all the major roads. It's all the big roads you'd think of, and then some that you might not think. I happen to live on Westchester. Westchester has enough traffic on it and because it hits a signal at High Crest, it's considered a collector. So there are some streets that might look like a residential street, but they have enough traffic volume on them, ADT, average daily traffic, that they that they're they're plowed by our city.

And I'm very proud. Our we were ready. I think we other than some challenges downtown, again, with the lane closures and the street closures, we met the call on our arterials and collectors. For almost twenty years now, we have subbed out residential snowpowing. That is bid every few years, I think on a three or five year cycle. That is bid. And that has changed over the we're currently in a contract with a company called RSS, Residential Snow Services. They are headquartered out of their their ownership is based in St. Louis. They have a big office in Schaumburg.

All of their drivers are local. I've heard a couple public speakers at times say something, hey, let's use a let's not use a Schaumburg company, let's use a local company. The truth is the money is mature is is going mostly to the pockets of local residents who are driving plows around. There is no local company that bids on these. We put these out for public bids.

No one local has the organizational capacity or the bonding ability, the pay the the letter of credit ability to tackle these. There's a number of great all of our contractors, all of our general contractors, Stenstrom, down to Mani to every know, they're all, no no no services. They all do snow removal, but they're all they're busy. They have private contract. They have they're doing parking lots. They're doing banks. They're doing clinics. They have their own staff working. What what we get for a residential street removal is a company that could put a call out locally for drivers. And they're prequalified.

But we need to have a company that's big enough. These drivers, them all independent contractors. Consider we have a 150 independent contractors out driving the residential streets. Now they're working for a company, but they're all their own entity. They're all driving their own personal vehicle with a plow on it.

And you can imagine they don't wanna get paid right away. That's the way that works. They don't wanna wait a month to get paid. They're not gonna come out to if there's two snowfalls in a row, they're not gonna come back out. So one of the requirements we put on these companies to whom the the bid on these is that they have to have a letter of credit sufficient to pay their drivers immediately while they wait for the city of Rockford to do a post event evaluation, approve the invoices, get get approved through counsel, and pay them.

We don't want those drivers calling the city saying, I didn't get paid yet. So that's another burden put on the people to bid on that that not everyone can handle. Not like if I was gonna start a snowplow company, I'm not gonna be able to go get bonded for to pay out a million dollars or something. Just so you know order of magnitude, a general a routine two inch snow removal process generally costs the city $303,150,000 dollars every time we call it out. That's supposed to be done in fourteen to sixteen hours.

That snowfall after Thanksgiving, and and also in their contract, they're not required to work more than twenty four hours. We can't have a driver work more than twelve. They can they can they can have people out for twenty four hours. And it's not the same guys out guys and girls out the whole time. Some people show up at the start and drop off. Other people come in. People plow as they can. Catch as catch can, so to speak. After twenty four hours of that post Thanksgiving snowfall, they reached out saying, we we gotta stop. And even then, obviously, by that point so that was all day Sunday, all day, you know, well, Sunday afternoon into Monday afternoon.

And I was getting a lot of calls from aldermen and residents saying, haven't seen anyone yet, haven't been to my street yet. They did one side of my street, it doesn't look so great. And I knew that there were some we do have an interactive map on the website, and we should go to that. It shows a a a green yellow red status of all of our sub zones. The city is divided into 24 snow removal zones. 24 trans it corresponds to how many public works. We send 24 drivers out. Each one of those is split into four, so we have 96 residential sub zones. So at any time you look at this map, you can see 96 squares, and they'll be red, yellow, green. Red means they haven't touched it yet.

Yellow means they're working on it. Green means it's done. And we had far too many red zones after twenty four hours, and I asked, no. Like, had like, please clear up these remaining six red zones before you leave. And then I went out and drove to see if they were doing it. And so we had kept them for twenty seven hours. So a lot of people did a lot of hard work, and it still wasn't quite enough. It just wasn't. So what what that what happens is we go back, we look at the contract, we make sure, are you really supplying enough driver you know, the drivers you said you were gonna supply? When we know it's gonna be a storm big storm event, do you have enough people in reserve?

Are you calling people in from your contracts in Indiana or Iowa and say, hey, come to Rockford and help with this? So lessons learned. And, I'd like to think that, you know, I think we've answered the call since that event, and I think we'll be in a better position moving forward. And I will tell you that it's going out for bid this July again, and we'll, have a fresh chance to take a look at that contract and see if there's anything you wanna tweak. Yes,

sir. Mister director, thank you again for your time. The the question I have is for the individuals that are subcontracted out

Yep.

They're only required to push snow. So what's the process of salt?

That's 100% of us.

So so this so

City of Rockford handles all salting. We do not have it is not a component of the residential snow clearing to salt. We just want them plowing. So we salt all of our again, it's not a one size fits all answer. We will if it's a lot of snow, we will clear and salt all the arterials and collectors first. We will wait and sometimes follow in progress behind the residential snow clearing and salt the residential roads. If we don't think it's going we only call the residential people out at two inches of snow. Because that's something people should know too. If we get and of course, every snow prediction is one to three inches. So, like, what do we do?

Right. If we get a dusting, if we get an inch of snow, we don't again, that's $300,000 if I call them out. We don't do that for an inch of snow. But we will salt. If we do not call out the residential plows, we will salt every lane in the city, every road in the city of Rockford.

And if we think it's just gonna be an ice event, we think we have freezing rain, we'll salt every road in the City Of Bradford. It takes about 300 tons of salt to do all of our arterials and collectors and another 500 to 600 to do all the residential roads. If we go out if the city of Bradford is salting doing what we call a full salt, salting every road, that could be 700 to 800 tons of salt. And so, we've had some salt issues this year. It's not supply, but it's delivery issues.

And we've, we've even had to hire we'll get reimbursed for this through the contract, but we were having trouble with salt delivery and we were getting worried about our salt reserves. And we hired a trucking company to go into Palatine to bring 500 yards of salt, which is still 50 trucks. It's a lot. Mean, yeah, it's crazy. So it's a when I took this job, everyone asked me right away, people were asking how you like it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Everyone says, well wait till your first snow season. I get what they're saying, but I still love it.

But that's the the long the short answer to that very long answer, the short version is the city OfRide for public works trucks salt every road.

Thank you.

I I think yeah. In in lieu of all that you've told us, and then I'm I'm an advocate for the city and the the plowing process, but, one of the questions I get asked frequently is is there a protocol that these subcontractors are given? Because I'll go through some neighborhoods and I'll see where the intersections are are cleared and two lane passable. And I'll go through some neighborhoods where they just went straight through and they left a wedge at every intersection. Is there a protocol that these subcontractors should be held to?

There is. There is. And that's that's another area of emphasis that we're looking at. And it is up to us then to also go out. Well, fortunately, we do get a lot of comments if that happens, but we should have people all going and looking at Well, we expect all intersections to be pushed back fully cleared, but then it's both turning radiuses are clear and that no snow has been pushed up to provide a site obstruction to block oncoming traffic.

So intersections should all be fully cleared. If they're not, we'll either call them back out, as our contract allows, or we'll send trucks out and push back intersections ourselves. What's interest something to talk about, though, not to belabor the point, is, you know, we have an odd even parking ordinance. And we ask people, when we when we need to be plowing the streets to park on the odd side of the street if the date is an odd date even. I think the the the implication that people get is that, okay, they'll do that side of the street and then the next day they'll come do the other.

But that's not necessarily the case. That might be the case if it's a two day snow clearing event. But what it does, why we do that, is that we hope at least one side of the street can be clear, and we can get trucks removing snow all the way to the curb line on at least one side. But if I have these trucks out at $300,000 and they remove snow over fourteen hours, I'm not necessarily calling them back the next day when the cars move over. It's another three hundred thousand to have them clear the other side.

So if it goes overnight, if it's a multi day event, then yes, we take advantage of the fact that those cars move from one side of the street to the other if they comply, which is an issue. What that that rule is in place to allow us to clear as much of the street as possible and to not swerve around parked cars, to at least have one clear lane. And, if possible, we come back to the other side. If it's really bad, if snow is again, we have we do a lot of what we I wish there was a better term, but we do a lot of what we call complaint plowing. So if someone calls and says, there are piles of snow here where cars have been parked on the even side, we'll send the city truck out to get that.

But we don't it's not a matter of we do the entire odd side, and then the next day, we come back and do the entire even side. That's just not the protocol.

I think I will just offer up because I've lived in the community since 1988. And I would just say that this is probably an area you need to strengthen communication in because you're the first person who's ever that I've you know, who's ever said that and I understand it now. Okay. You know, it's taxpayer money, right? Correct.

It's a balancing act.

You know, it's the why, right? I mean, if people understand the why, they're they're more apt to, not complain, I think.

Yep. Can cannot dispute that at all.

And then also, is is there a, like, a supervisor that makes sure that the individual that's doing what they're supposed to do is done? Is there someone that comes around just

to Yeah.

That's a that that is

That that that's that's that's the question. That's the question that we're dealing with both with our consultants and internally. They're supposed to provide the RSS, the the company we contract with, is supposed to have supervisors, both present at multiple locations throughout the city for the drivers to check-in and check out. Hey. I'm starting to plow. Hey. I'm done plowing. And they're supposed to then drive around and monitor routes. I'm not I don't know if that's been done to the extent it should be. That's been something we've made sure that they need to be aware of.

And to that end, we we'll we'll prob we have and we'll continue to assign a little bit more staff ourselves to go out and check. It kinda stinks because most of those people already plow anyway. So we've had one already where I just had engineering department office staff all getting cars and go out and start driving around at the night and start looking, like all hands on deck. But there is, if it works right, supervisory obligations are on that contractor. But we always gotta check.

Thank you.

Commissioners, any other questions?

Chairman, do have any? I've been looking this way too much. I keep forgetting to look back.

Thank you

for joining us. Absolutely.

You are also welcome here anytime to share any

other Fantastic. Yeah. I'll make a point of it. I like

this. Thank

you, mister director.

Thank you very much. Any any thing else while you got me? Alright. Maybe next time. Save them

up. No. Alright.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank Alright.

Commission, we will now move to unfinished business and we'll continue our discussion on the 2026 action plan. Know that Mikaela has prepared for us a document, so have her kind of go over that with us and we'll take any questions from there.

I'll try to be brief. I combed through all of our notes. Larry helped me a lot by listening to different sections. He's still trying to put together the minutes from our strategic planning. But pulling out things for me are big sheets. I went through all of those and I developed the beginning of our action plan. I do think that we need to beef it out a little bit more, especially for the remainder of the year. But I just kind of wanted to provide a quick summary of my thought process on this because it looks different than what we've been doing. So the topic is going to be what we're doing. That's for the action calendar component.

That is going to be our what's on our agenda. That agenda item is what the action calendar is covering. And then the speaker, I think that's self explanatory who's speaking. The action item, I thought it would be important for you guys to know if it is it information only, is it discussion, is it a draft version of a report, is it a final, that sort of thing. Who's the lead for that item?

This is tied directly to our discussions at the strategic planning. So any item that you guys volunteered for, you'll find your name in that column for those items and then the status. So if it's a speaker, I'm putting confirmed. If I've confirmed the speaker, I'm putting pending if that hasn't been confirmed yet or if it's a review draft, that sort of thing. Any questions about the action calendar portion?

And then we have the implementation, which is kind of similar. But as I was trying to break this out, I knew we needed something that kind of defined our action steps that was separate from our actual calendar of items. So that's what the implementation is. This is going to be a very fluid document. As things come onto or get removed off of our action plan, it's going to update our implementation plan as well.

But that's where you're going to find a little bit more information about those steps that need to be taken to make those things happen. So one of the things we talked about was that potential ordinance revision or adding items. One of those is that youth component that the mayor seemed in support of today. So that just kind of lines out. I put due dates in there and then who those leads were.

Again, you'll find your names there. If you have any questions about those items or any thoughts, please feel free to let us know. I'm happy to make any adjustments as far as that goes. Quick about the communication, we talked about the potential Facebook page. I met with our marketing director and her recommendation was to really kind of hone in on what the CRC is doing.

So I gave her a copy of our action plan. She's going to be making some posts about that. Her concern with starting a Facebook page is you have to do a lot of work to get a following for that page. It wasn't an immediate no, but she had some, I thought, really great ideas to really build a following for the CRC before we considered moving that route. So our action plan or our annual report that you all put together.

She's going be pulling out some pieces of that and start talking about what the CRC has been doing and then building up to what we're going be doing this year. So we're going to be doing more regular posts about the CRC. She's going to post for us when there's a meeting coming up and letting people know that there's a meeting coming up. We talked about potentially doing some press releases for meetings and things of that nature. So I think that those ideas that she had will be really helpful to start engaging the community more with the Community Relations Commission.

So that was the thought plan on that. If there's I think I gathered everything from our strategic planning and placed it on here. As you can see, February, March and April are pretty full. I did get director updates built out through the year. I tried to match them with what we did in 2025.

So it's not like you're getting an update from a director after we had one six months ago. So I tried to follow that flow plan a little bit. I added a workforce development roundtable to June, which is what we decided on our strategic planning. I added that biannual report that we discussed as well for June. The food and security panel discussion, we did not get a chance to discuss that at our strategic planning.

I placed that for August. I do need leads for that. And I know that Alderman Bell, that's a passion item of his. So I don't know if somebody would like to think about that if you'd like to volunteer for that now. But we do need a commission volunteer to kind of lead the charge on that. Pastor Martin. Okay, thank you. And Commissioner Bravo, thank you. Okay. All right.

So other than that, like I said, I've got all of those director updates, any departments, anything, any of our regular annual items that we have to have on here. So if there's anything else that you guys would like to add, please let me know and we can kind of plug and play as we go. But please review this and send me any notes, any emails, any recommendations that you guys have. So we make sure that this is a really solid working document going forward. Any questions?

Well, one thing I just want to emphasize, I would love as is just sort of a matter of course when our directors come and speak to us. I would love to know what they want from us. Okay. How how we can help them out in the community. Okay. What they think their biggest challenges are and how they would visualize or how they would envision the commissioners helping them.

Okay. Also, I just wanna thank you and Larry. You all do so much work, and we really appreciate what you all do.

Thank you.

Also, just with the communication. And I know I don't want, you know, too many more emails in my inbox. But even when, our director of public works was here and he was talking about the lead, you know, it's it's a lot of things that's going on around that we just we just don't know. And so just to have that level of communication. And I know that you all have a lot of different things that you are doing, but just so that we kinda get a heads up. So if if the whoever the department head is coming, if we just have, like, bullet points of what's going on before the discussion, so at least we we are kinda abreast of what's going on and being able handle.

Yeah. I've been kind of leaving that up to the individual director. Some really like PowerPoints and things of that nature. Some really enjoy speaking off the cuff. But if we'd like a more standard format, I think especially as we start getting these regular annual updates and I feel like it's been a lot of introductions. We've had some changeover with directors and things like that. So I'm happy to do that. I think that would be really great. We can always have that point. What do you need from the commission? Are there any items we can help with? And then some standard items or things like that, I think that's a great idea. Thank you.

And the reason why I say that is because many of the they're asking us to basically be their brand ambassadors or to speak up for different projects, But it's hard to speak up when we don't really kinda understand what's going on.

Agreed.

Thank you.

I I think on on top of that, pastor Barton, think you'd probably agree. I wonder if we can just get added to the press release emails. Right? Those go out from the city regularly. Do do we just get added to them? You're right. It adds extra emails for us. But at least then we are regularly informed when city staff are informed and when the aldermen are informed so that we can Absolutely.

If we could just find out from Laura Mayor how many go out. Okay. I mean, then at least we can set up our email so that they would go to, you know Another area. Another. Folder you'll look at regularly but because I think it's more than you think.

There's quite a few probably that go out. Okay.

I'll definitely ask that.

So

Alright. Commissioners, we have moved to commissioner's reports. Is there any commissioner that has a report they want to share?

One of my staff members was at District 1 on this week. I will be bringing it back some notes from them. She'll be back. They invited her back again next week. So, just things that they see in their area that they wanted. Just a couple bullet points of their biggest question was how can they help? So that is something that we probably could keep in mind. And they meet, I believe, every Wednesday, and we're definitely welcome to go. I think they go meet at 11AM. Thank you.

Oh, pastor. I would just like to say that, make everybody aware that this this week is the stone sculpting competition at Sunnysippi Park, which is a big deal for our park district. And, it's gonna be 55 degrees, so stone sculpting is gonna be a little difficult. But, if you feel like supporting it or any, input you have to have, we changed we changed the entire if you've ever been through stone sculpting, you're used to the fact that the last thirty nine years, the path has been the same, the blocks have been in the same place, and this year they changed everything. So if you have any input, even though there's probably gonna some pretty soggy looking sculptures, if you have any input about the, the new layout, if you've been part of the the previous, stone sculptures, please let us know.

Please let the park district know if you like or disliked the change in the, format.

Brother chair, I had a a great opportunity to meet with our mayor in regards to, of the regrow and and different ways of of how the communicate the community can, utilize the funds. I was excited today to hear that there's a possibility that we can actually, as a commission, bring some ideas back, forward. But I did send over just recently to the the mayor the r three grant amendment, and I can send it to you, and then we can dis disperse it how you how you feel. But it my concern is that the the amendment that's being proposed put us in the same similar situation with the regrow. It is so broad of what they're looking at trying to add.

And that's one of the reason why I asked the mayor, how does that look within the city? Because it's a lot of money, it's a lot of funding, but they're they're really expanding attempting to expand. It's pending right now. And so I look forward to hearing how that's going to work in if it's approved, if the amendment is passed.

Pastor Martin, do in light of what the mayor suggested, do we need to add additional group to work on giving some guidance to I think he said that the Democratic caucus was interested. Do we think, as a commission, we need to assign some folks to that priority over the next

Possibly. What the mayor said was was true. The the conversation literally came from Chicago. So I'm from Chicago. So there's it was a delegation of clergy, that met in Chicago, and they're looking at trying to come up to Rockford and actually, allowed me to bring Rockford clergy together, but looks like it's something that's already moving in Chicago, and they're trying to kinda get some more Rockfordians to to be a part of it.

But this new movement, I mean, it it it it goes back to, like, a 1963 thing. You know, it's a lot of moving parts, and I just my concern is just like the regrow, it was so broad that it might hurt more than help what they're trying to do. So but I will send it I will actually send it to you as three documents. Awesome. I'll send it to you, and then you disperse.

Do we do is there interest though in providing some feedback to regrow specifically? Because I think he also mentioned that the caucus, at least the Democratic caucus was interested. Mhmm. Are there a few of us that need to get together and start having that conversation?

There I think was chairman, there's two questions that I have about this. Number one, what are kind of the nuts and bolts to share anything with the Democratic caucus? Right. And then also, maybe I misunderstood what the mayor said, it would be nice. It's not always possible to find consensus. So maybe valuable if those of us who have opinions about the process would be able to just offer those on our own. Or maybe you're right, Chairman, and maybe we should come to consensus about it. I just don't know how long that process would be and

I I don't I don't either and I don't I don't know what the appropriate path is. I think both are potential. Do we submit something as the commission though with here are some ideas that the commission has or do we individually want to reach out to the caucus?

I was just gonna say maybe just a letter of recommendation. Something simple because we really don't know where it's going. But maybe that we've all come together, maybe we have everybody come with maybe a bullet point of what our thoughts are and do a letter of recommendation. Anybody else want to or

I I I think we're talking about this communication. There needs to be some sort of connecting link. So your question is to should there be a a, probably a group because more than one person. But there should there be a contact between the commission and the council and if if caucus is the place to do it, then that's the place to do it. But I think there needs to be something that goes and says, hey, here's what's being talked about. What do we think about it? Take it back. Here's what we thought about it. I think there needs to be some sort of mechanism there, whatever we decide it is.

So we would appoint somebody then, and then all our communication as individual commission members would go to that commissioner.

Or somebody's. Yeah.

Right. That that makes I that would be wonderful. I guess I didn't really understand.

Well, the caucus is an open session. And so we can all go to a caucus, to to to to see, you know, whether there might I mean, so I've met with two of the caucus, individuals that are for it, and there's some that think that it needs to be tweaked in the same caucus. There are some that wanna use money for other things, and then you have a whole another group that say we don't want the money for regrow, period. So I think that the mayor was was was saying that we could start with the Democratic caucus to kinda see where they are, then we can kinda glean from their discussion, bring it together, and then do a full recommendation to them because at least we have that. If we can get to seven because now we're playing a numbers game.

It's a voting game now. But at least we know kinda where their their minds are and and and come with something. Because right now, there's nothing present. It's just money there. There's nothing presented. And so maybe we can kinda help them with some level of a presentation.

Do we have someone that wants to be that point person? I mean, I'm happy to if if folks wanna send their thoughts, I'm happy to collect them and put them into a document. I also wonder though to your point, do we need someone from that caucus to come tell us what they're thinking so that we can help them?

I think if we go to their caucus because they all if they're there

Right.

And if, you know, and and if we have relationships with individual in the caucus to to have that as an an to discuss because the money has to go somewhere. And so we wanna try to just see where they are.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Okay. Any other commissioner reports or thoughts that we haven't expressed? We have reached adjournment. Do I have

a motion?

So move. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Wish they. See you all next month.