City Council - Regular Meeting

I don't need it. I'll just keep doing the bathroom. All mics are live.

The chair will call the June 16th, 2026 meeting of the city council to order. Would you please rise for the pledge of allegiance?

Clerk Redpath, can you please call the roll?

Alderman Cox Alderman Gregory here. Alderman Williams here. Alderman Rockford here. Alderman Purchase here. Alderman Eterano here. Alderman Carlson here. Alderman Connolly present. Alderman Donland here. Alderman Hanauer here. Mayor Busher present. You have a quorum there.

Thank you. Can I get a motion for Alderman? Second. We have a motion and a second for Alderman Cox to join by phone. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Welcome Alderman Cox. You're welcome. The civility pledge in the interest of civility. I pledge to promote civility by listening, being respectful of others, acknowledging that we are all striving to support and improve our community, and understanding that we each may have different ideas for achieving that objective. This evening we have a couple presentations, so I'm going to come down to the podium, and I'm going to ask, we're going to recognize tonight the Yule Flip team from the Special Olympics gymnastics team, and I'm going to ask Coach Ann Wells to come up with me for a quick second before we bring the team up.

Good evening coach, how are you?

So tonight we are joined by the Yule Flip gymnastics team which competed in the Special Olympics for the state of Illinois. This is their coach and I would like coach Wells to give you a little bit of a background on what the team did. Coach, if you would please.

Hello, it's a pleasure to be here tonight. Yield Flip gymnastics team has been in place in Springfield for the last 15 years. And this year we had Three boys compete, and quite a few girls, as you can see. I believe the total was 12, and we all went down to southern Illinois, went to regionals, and every single person received a gold on one or more events to qualify to go to state. And some children chose soccer. Three of my boys chose soccer, and one of my girls chose soccer, and another one of my girls ended up on vacation on a west trip. But I did take six gymnasts, and they're here today, most of them, to state this past weekend. They had a wonderful time. We were in the Gossamer Arena, and it was a lot of fun. We had a great time, and they all enjoyed their experience with Special Olympics.

Now we would like to invite the Olympians to come up and join us at the podium. Can the Olympians come up and join us? I promise I won't ask you to speak. Good evening. This is Hannah.

Hi, Hannah.

So I have Hannah, and then who's next to Hannah?

Me. Andrea.

Andrea. I'm going to put them, because I have more certificates than Olympians, so I'm going to get these out. What's your name, sweetheart?

Princess.

Princess. Not sweetheart, but princess. Got it. And your name?

Marissa.

Marissa?

No.

Clarissa. Oh, Clarissa, because we do have a Marissa, too.

Gotcha. And what's her name? Lexi. Lexi. And there's Lexi.

And I'll give the extras to you, Coach, to take back with you if you're okay. So this evening, we're going to acknowledge the Olympians that were able to join us here this evening. And when I say your name, if you could raise it so the crowd knows that it's you. Hannah Anderson. Andrea Gerano. Princess Duckworth. Clarissa Ferry. Marissa DeHeave. and Lexi blank are joined with us here this evening. And tonight the mayor and the city council who will have come down and stand with you for a photo in a minute, want to recognize you for your hard work, your determination and your perseverance. You each earned one or more gold medals qualifying you for the 2026 special Olympic state competition. Your accomplishments in gymnastics earned you the opportunity to advance to the state games. Oh, it's okay. Where you chose to represent your community in Special Olympics soccer. Your dedication, your versatility, your sportsmanship are all something we all to admire from the community in your actions. So today we all proudly want to compliment you and congratulate you on your achievements. So can we all give them a round of applause. And Lex, congrats. Does the council want to come so we can take a photo? And ladies, I'm going to have you step back a little bit by these stairs. The council's going to be on the stairs. We'll just come back a little bit further. We're going to take a picture together. Parents come on up, take photos, whatever you want to do. Alright.

We got some high fives. Alright, ready? Everybody look right here. I'm going to push you up here so we're all in one.

Ready? Take a couple.

Back around. Can you turn that back on? Thanks. Some amazing work there. Now I would like to ask Chief Sumo to come up. Chief Sumo is going to have a little presentation about the events of last week. Chief Sumo from the Fire Department, please.

There you go, Chief. Thank you. Good evening, everyone.

Good evening, Chief.

So before we kind of go over the timeline from last Wednesday, I just wanted to kind of go over the criteria of the outdoor warning system. Uh, the Springfield activation criteria are as follows tornado warning issued by the national weather service for the city of Springfield reported sustained winds of 70 miles an hour or greater reported hail measuring 1.75 inches, which is basically golf ball size hail. or visual confirmation of a tornado by trained spotters and public safety personnel. Unfortunately, there is no national standard for the outdoor warning system activation criteria and it does vary greatly from community to community. Springfield's activation criteria has been in place since at least 2019 and it's generally consistent with practices used by many of the Illinois communities. When it comes to the decision-making, one important principle guideline is all siren activation decisions, they must be made using information available at the time of the event. Decisions are based on real-time conditions, National Weather Service information, and verified reports available at that moment, not information that may become available after the event has concluded. That principle is important because the information available during the involving weather event is often different from what is learned post-storm assessments. So with that framework in mind, I'd like to walk through the timeline of June 10th and the information available. So pre-storm monitoring. Springfield Fire Department staff chief, the staff chief assigned on-call duty officer was in communication with the city EOC supervisor on the severe weather developing in the region. Weather conditions, radar information, and national weather service products were actively monitored throughout the day and into the evening. The area had been identified by the Storm Prediction Center as being a level two slight risk for severe weather, indicating that scattered severe storms were possible. Based on the forecasted conditions and information available, at the time, the city's EOC was not activated. A similar assessment was made by the county emergency management agency, which also remained in a monitoring posture rather than activating its EOC. Monitoring remained continuous throughout the day and into the evening leading up to the events that I will discuss in greater detail. So the following timeline contains selected excerpts from the National Weather Service Central Illinois live chat system. It's our local public safety communications. The National Weather Service Central Illinois Live Chat serves as a primary real-time information sharing platform during significant weather events. Participants in the chat include the National Weather Service, IEMA, State Police, IDOT, County Emergency Management Agencies, 911 Centers, Fire Departments, Law Enforcement Agencies, Broadcast Meteorologists, and other public safety partners throughout Central Illinois. The live chat provides a common operating picture by allowing participants to share warnings, spotter reports, observed conditions, damage reports, and other critical information in real time. The timeline that follows reflects the information as it is being received and communicated through that system along with information documented through local public safety communication during the event. So June 10th, the weather event, I basically start at 1058. The National Weather Service in Lincoln issued a tornado warning for portions of Logan, Macon, Menard, and Sangamon counties. Some of you may have received a text alert, and just a show of hands and a curiosity, who received the first text alert at 1058 notifying that there was weather in the area? And I'd like to highlight that as the major problem that is very spotty. So text alerts were issued to cellular devices within portions of the monitoring area. At 1059, a minute later, information shared among weather monitoring personnel indicated that a tornado warning had been issued for small scale circulations near Athens, which is 15 miles north of Springfield. Additional information shared at that time indicated that the circulation near Athens was moving east, tracking towards Williamsville, also 15 miles from Springfield. At 1104, Five minutes later, Athens activated its outdoor warning sirens. 1109, five more minutes later, information is shared by WCIA meteorologists indicating multiple lower flashes towards Williamsville from the Elkhart area, also 15 miles away from Springfield, and that a tornado was visible. Additional information shared by WCIA indicated he was observing a tornado at that time. That was 1109. At 1112, the National Weather Service in Lincoln issues a tornado warning for portions of Christian, Logan, Macon, and Sangamon counties. This warning was generated a second wireless alert. I'm assuming the same people got that one at 1112. Information shared from the WCIA meteorologists at that time indicated additional flashes near the Elkhart exit and that a narrow funnel was visible. At 11.13, the Springfield Fire Department was dispatched for a structure fire at the Northfield Center. During radio communications for the response, dispatch advised responding crews that reports were beginning to come in that possible power lines were down along Sangamon Avenue. This was the first indication of reported storm-related damage within Springfield. 11.14 p.m., information shared from IEMA indicated reports of momentary power drop in Springfield. Information shared among weather monitoring personnel indicated the latest tornado warning had actually shifted to the Riverton area and was leaving a Riverton moving east out of the area National Weather Service and Lincoln issued a tornado warning indicating the radar showed that circulation leaving Riverton and moving east No, text alert was sent out 1121 The county sent their storm spotters out finally. 1121. 1124, Springfield Fire Department was dispatched to Tainter Road for lines down. Responding crews confirmed that there was damage at that location, at the APL. 1125, Sangamon County Emergency Management reported it had received no tornado reports within Sangamon County at that time. 1125 also, reports of wind damage and power outages were starting to be received. 1127, storm spotter reported a pull down on North 5th Street and started the rest of the evening where they started to sign in and report damage around Springfield, especially on the north end. 1132 also indicated power outage and Ameren had lost power to Riverton. That's just kind of a snapshot of how the time progressed. So the key findings. National Weather Service ultimately determined that post-storm damage assessments that an EF1 tornado had occurred within Springfield area and estimated the tornadic activity may have begun as early as 1104. The review also found that several indicators commonly associated with outdoor warning signing activations were not present during the event. At no time was there a tornado within Springfield that was identified and communicated to the National Weather Service. During the event, the storm was not identified and communicated as a tornadic threat until the circulation was reported near Riverton and moving east out of Riverton. No confirmed reports of tornadic activity within Springfield were received and communicated from storm spotters. No reports of sustained winds exceeding Springfield's 70 mph activation threshold were received. No reports of hail meeting or exceeding Springfield's 1.75 inch activation. Local television stations did not even interrupt regular programming to bring you any special information. Information in real time differed significantly from information developed through post-storm damage assessments conducted after the event. The timeline presented tonight reflects the information that was available and communicated as the event unfolded. Based on that information, the on-call chief officer evaluated the situation using the city's established outdoor warning system activation criteria and made decisions consistent with the information known at the time. Emergency decisions must often be made within minutes using information that is incomplete, rapidly changing, and sometimes conflicting. While post-event analysis provided a clearer picture of what had occurred, those findings were not available to the decision makers in real time. As part of the after action review process, the Springfield Fire Department is also looking into an automated siren activation system. While a specific system has not been selected, the concept would allow sirens to activate automatically when predetermined criteria are met. But as with any automated warning system, this approach may result in siren activations for storms that ultimately do not produce severe impacts within Springfield. That trade-off will be considered when all options are evaluated. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions.

Alderman Rockford.

Yeah. So what's, what's talk about your explanation to the news media about the same in County and Springfield. You said it, the sirens were for same in County, not for Springfield, Illinois and where Springfield, Illinois located.

What I had initially said was the, the first, the 10 58 text message that went out said for Sangamon County, It did not specifically indicate Springfield.

So still no sirens. So what were the sirens for Thursday night?

Winds in excess of 70 miles an hour, 70 mile an hour. We had reports of 85 mile an hour winds.

Nobody was looking at a radar on Wednesday night. Wednesday night, nobody was looking at a radar 1058, 1045, 11 o'clock. I'm sure the National Weather Service was. Like Larry Rockford was. And I seen a white spot on my radar. And yes, Channel 20 did cut into their television programming because I went to that once my telephone went off. So we spent a whole day listening to our sirens, testing our sirens. For what? For what? It did us no good. You're lucky nobody's dead. I said it the other night, and I'll say it again. You need to be put in a new position, Chief. And I'll continue to say that. You let us down. It's discouraging. It's disheartening. And still, you take no responsibility for what happened. You're in charge of this stuff.

I'm standing here representing the fire department. I am taking responsibility for everything. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Uh-huh. Alderman Gregory. You know, I... I share some sentiments. So in the timeline, you said at some point in time, it did go off in Athens and it did go off in Riverton, you know, and, and, you know, a part of that automatic siren thing or our thinking has to be that close to us that it could, you know, come our way. Any part of Springfield very quickly as tornadoes go, you can't really do that.

I believe the thought process was with the Athens that it was. I hear you chief. Yeah. Okay.

I'm talking about my thought process. Yep. Y'all's obviously was different. Um, so, so lost my train of thought. So those, those two things to me, I mean, you know, I, I know I said, we, we talked about the sirens working early, um, late April. They were tested in, in, in May. Cause one of my constituents on a storm felt like they didn't hear him when we had to put them off prior to that. Um, and we tested them and everybody heard them. Um, so they definitely work. Um, Obviously, we have to talk about solutions. Obviously, Mayor, you put out a statement about reviewing things. Obviously, we as a city feel that there's some things that we could do better to alert our citizens. I would rather a siren go off and it don't come and everybody's safe than nothing come. I don't know what our relationship or what our dependency is on the National Weather Service. I'm sure they're very good at their job, but that can't be our only indicators, especially when our surrounding communities get that knowing, you know, the North side, you know, that that's near Athens and things of that nature, those should have, you know, in my opinion, went off, you know, if that has to set off everyone in the city, you know, for those citizens. And then of course, you know, the next day we had some good wins throughout our entire city. So, so, you know, for me, I think, you know, solutions and making sure that this never happens again, right? We'll have some storms tomorrow. We need, you know, we, we have to be prepared. Our citizens have to be prepared. We talked about shelters, public shelters earlier, and you're not aware of any public shelters.

We've been looking into a little bit. Um, we don't have any pre storm. I know that we, we discussed like red cross and some people will set some up post storm, but, but the Springfield area that I'm aware of doesn't have any pre storm ones. And what's our plans for tomorrow? What's our plans? Yes. The EOC opens up, I think, at 5.30.

In the morning, a.m.?

Yep, 5.30 a.m. And we'll have people there monitoring. And we plan to really watch that and make sure that... As of right now, the storm system is at level four, so quite significant risk. So, yes, all department heads and the mayor and everybody will be there.

Okay. And if we could put our hands together, just, just in case it gets rough like that, we know we have, um, unsheltered people. I got a guy staying in a shed on Carpenter street. Those things need to be thought about. I don't want to have to think about it tomorrow. I want to think about it now before it happens. Thank you. I appreciate you.

Before I call an Alderman Donlin, Alderman Gregory, to your point that you just made about, um, citizens that you may know of that aren't in housing or take, uh, our shelter for like helping hands. If you have an address of places that you know people are choosing to just hang out under a roof or something, if you would get those to us, because we could send public work zone managers out quickly to check on them if something does happen. If you don't mind getting those addresses to us, that would be great for any alder person. Thank you. Alderman Donlon.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief, for coming up. I know that these weather events are extremely stressful. I appreciate the efforts of Public Works, Police, Fire, all those entities involved. You know, people did ask me, you know, because I represent some of the areas on the north end, like the airport, where there was some damage and so forth. Was there a tornado? It wasn't there and so forth. I think you've addressed that this evening. But you did touch upon something that is near and dear to my heart. I can't believe it's been 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, we were faced with a citywide tornado that damaged a significant portion of this community. The entire community, I believe, was out of power. It was ugly. And we had a strong... Emergency Operations Center at the time. I know we have one again, which is wonderful. The fact that that's in operation is the reason why we were able to get through. I know it doesn't seem that way to a lot of people that didn't have power because there were pocket areas that didn't have power even as recent as today. But we were able to get on those issues. And I know Public Works crews have been out and doing a tremendous job. But at that time, we learned that the administration at the time, Mary Davlin, learned that the alarm system, the siren system was 30 years old. And at that time, we initiated a dollar fee per CWLP customer and purchased a new system. And you alluded to another new system. I thought, well, how old are they? It's 20 years ago. Does the automated detection or alert system that you referenced, does that include replacing the actual units that are out throughout the community?

No, that would be more just the software that runs it. The software we have now has the ability to have that added in, Um, which would be the easiest way to do it. Um, there are other options out there that also include social media blast, text alerts, emails. Um, so it just kind of comes down to how deep we want to get into it.

If we choose to do that, I would bet even if we have that automated system in place, that the process that we have presently where an individual or individuals plural, are down in the EOC monitoring things, meaning there's still going to be a human component to this, needless to say, right? Even if we do that.

Yeah, absolutely. And you could still override the system, too, and do it manually if you so choose. So, yeah, I mean, there's always going to be a human element, whether it's on the National Weather Service end identifying something, a spotter's end of getting that information in in time, just kind of that lag that takes place. I would call the main human element.

Well, Chief, I've seen it in action in my career down in the EOC, wee hours of the night when the decisions had to have been made, and I know you take it seriously. You wouldn't be here tonight talking about it. I appreciate your willingness to improve things, always willing to improve things, because it sounds like there might be an opportunity for us, and whatever we can do as a council to help.

Thank you.

Alderwoman Conley.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Yeah, and I do, I also, I appreciate you coming in and speaking to this. I've also had people ask about, you know, what happened with the sirens. And Alderman Gregory, I, you know, One thing I want to tell you, because my day job deals a lot with emergency operations. We have that parallel paths. And the one thing that always gets that fine line you have to walk is notifying so everyone is safe and not over-notifying so people become numb and immune to those sirens. And that's my other concern. And I do appreciate it. I'll be honest, my office, my building was skipped by the tornado, but we had damage to part of DNR's property immediately adjacent to, you know, very close to APL. I understand that difficulty. I think... We also need to make sure that we're getting the word out to people, be aware, be careful. Those sirens aren't an automatic. I very rarely hear them at my house just because they're not everywhere. I do want to talk to you, and we've kind of discussed this before briefly in the past, and I think it's time for us to really reexamine as we're facing some very significant weather tomorrow. I mean, what we're seeing tomorrow is does not have the question marks or the hesitancy around what we had earlier earlier last week, um, the last call I was on before I came in today was they were getting more confident about the degree of risk. And I'm sure you know that too. Um, so it's a recovery. Um, I had, um, a lot of residents without power for quite a long time. Um, one of the things that we've talked about before, and I think it's time for us to maybe kind of after this week, um, re-examine is that citizens emergency response teams, those cert teams. that the Illinois emergency management agency supports those. We actually have a retired, um, Springfield firefighter who is a contact person for that. Um, it's, it's a way to give training and resources to residents so that we can also support each other. And I saw a lot of that this week. Um, I had, I had one guy who was putting caution tape up across the street where a branch had taken down some lines. He wasn't an official. He was just trying to keep people, give people another visual cue that there are, you know, don't come down this road. So I understand that fine line you walk. I would also, I think it's really important that we look at alternatives. I'm not opposed to an automatic system that triggers when we hit our criteria. As long as we do, like you said, keep that human element in there. One thing I don't trust are automatic warnings that we don't have people on the ground for. We can all make mistakes, and I know that. We understand that happens. I'm very grateful we didn't, I mean, it sounds like APL didn't even lose an animal, which is a blessing. If I can just real quickly right now, put a shout out to drastically and everyone who drove there for their sandwich yesterday, it was crazy getting in and out of work at lunchtime, but this community shows up for each other in times of need. And, and that's really impressive, but I think I'd like to see us have a discussion about formalizing that with actual training. So after the event, and again, before the event, I don't know how you prepare for a tornado other than again, Alderman Gregory, let's let's let people know who are unhoused. This is the time to be going to those shelters. This is not the time to be roughing it. Tomorrow night looks rough. Tomorrow looks bad. And it's two cells coming in with a very small break. So we need to make sure that people are aware today, charging things up, having those conversations, checking on your neighbors, checking on people who might be more fragile, and really having a more formalized response for after the fact. But thank you for coming in today. Again, I get complaints both ways. You put the sirens off too much, you put the sirens off not enough. We want to make sure that we have the biggest impact, and that is a very delicate balance. So thank you for coming in and for taking the time. And I know your team will be looking at this more closely. How do we improve? That should always be the situation after something like this. How do we improve better for the next event? Unfortunately, our next event may be tomorrow. Thank you.

And two things that you said. Alerting fatigue is a real thing. I mean, we think back to the whole Code Red incident that we went through a few years back with the news agencies and how that began to give a negative impact to the surrounding.

Well, it almost became a little bit of a joke.

Huh?

I mean, people were kind of laughing about, oh, it's a Code Red every time you turn around.

Unfortunately. So you do have to – there's a very delicate balance there. Another thing that you said that I want to kind of – Define or because it's a misconception is you said you can barely hear the sirens in your house. They're not designed to be heard in your house. They're designed to be outdoor warning sirens. They're designed to be heard while you're outdoors to notify you to take shelter. So a lot of people will say, you know, I didn't hear them, whatever, you know, whether it be the Tuesday that we're testing or whenever. They probably can't hear them in their houses. So that is something that's just kind of misunderstood, I think, with the system.

And I will say, actually, you pointed out something. So I checked. I didn't get any weather alerts, nothing at all. I went into my phone, and I actually didn't have those weather alerts enabled. So I'll just say, as a general kind of PSA, if you're probably smart, most people are smarter with their phones than I am. I will fully acknowledge that. But go in and enable those weather alerts, because when the phones go off, that's usually right next to you. And that, that, that will shake you out of bed.

You also need to have your GPS on location services. Yes.

Thank you. So, yeah, we got to do that too. Thank you, mayor. Absolutely. Alderman Rockford.

Yeah. So chief is, is there a cost when we run these sirens? Is there a cost? How does this work? You talk about sitting in this, this room, this space, you know, and you're monitoring these storms, how many people are involved? on when the EOC is activated? Yes. When you're monitoring, is there 50 people or 10 people? Is there, are we on fall phone calls?

It depends on the, the amount the EOC is open to. There's, there's like light activations where it would be like police fire, usually the mayor, CWLB.

There's gotta be somebody from national weather all the time, right?

No, that is a, like a chat room that we go on over the computer.

Okay. So, so what I'm saying is you, you, You're in communication with National Weather and... Correct. Okay. So the storms in Athens and in Elkhart, okay, moving to Williamsville, is that not enough to... My understanding, there was numerous tornadoes that night that were spotted. Now, this is just hearsay and probably very, very true hearsay. And so... So we get a tornado go through the north end of town. The phone goes off. Channel 20 has it on. But there's no sirens. So wouldn't it be better safe than sorry than to sit there and maybe poke a head outside a window and take a peek? Because I got video on a camera off my porch. It's crazy. And at 11 o'clock when I yelled up to my wife, you know, hey, I think something's going on, you know, and then it starts raining and blowing. You know, so I don't know why, you know, it takes the human element part. But we don't sound a siren, man. You could have looked outside and seen that something was going on on the north end of town. Now, maybe it wasn't wherever this room's at, you know. I just don't. I don't know. For the life of me, I can't understand how a siren didn't go off. And then the next day when I talk to you, not 15 minutes later without a tornado warning, the sirens go off. So I'm just, I'm confused, man. I don't know the process. And again, it's water under the bridge. I praise God that nobody was hurt, you know. And a protective. The people at the airport. The people, you know, who knows that didn't have power in the north end of town that was living on life support. Yeah, I don't know. But you know what? Hindsight's 20-20. But I just hope moving forward, moving forward for the next 10 months, as long as I'm still alderman, that it gets better. Because, you know, I tell you, it really sucked that night. Okay. It really did. And the next day trying to answer to people without knowing, I can't answer them questions. So again, you, you hear on, on media, some of the answers and the, it doesn't make any sense to me. Right. Thank you. Thank you, mayor.

Alderwoman no Triano.

Thank you, mayor. Um, uh, chief, I appreciate your explanation and your presentation. Um, I'm curious as to why, uh, your presentation isn't going to be followed up by director Rogers. to explain CWLP's response and preparedness for tomorrow. So I really have questions more for that side than you. But I would like to, in your defense, remind everybody that a year ago, more than that, when the leadership in Washington changed, they decided to cut severely National Weather Service personnel and resources. So you can be sure that we didn't get alerts because those trained spotters probably weren't in our area and they probably didn't see what you saw on your porch, Alderman Rockford.

Those people are trained. They're trained. Where a storm is going to occur, and this storm had been brewing for a day or two. So these trained spotters, they travel the country. They go where the action happened.

So if you want to go to Thursday. Alderwoman Notriano has the floor. I'm sorry, but it's her time. Mention my name, I'm going to respond.

Well, I mean, we wait our turns, Alderman. And this isn't a dig at you. I'm literally saying that our federal government has cut manpower to where there may have not been a spotter in our area. And we all need to realize that that's a potential problem. You had mentioned... that you didn't get the updates that you thought you would get from the National Weather Service. That's not your problem. That's not your fault. So would it be okay to have Director Rogers come up and?

We're not, later, we need to finish this part first. Okay, okay. Sure, yeah. Sorry.

No, you're fine, thank you. Yep. That was it.

Alderman Donlan.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I will be very, very brief with just one comment, Chief. Again, related to the upgrade of the system. Right. I know we have an agreement with nine fire protection districts. that have geographic boundaries outside the city of Springfield, and I would encourage any upgrades to the cost to be shared with those entities, and I will be an advocate of that. Thank you.

Okay.

Anything else, Alderman? No, ma'am. Okay. Alderman Hanauer.

Thank you. Chief, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the guys. I think it was Firehouse 12 We had four or six poles snap on Cocomel. One went down on a house, caught it on fire, and in the middle of all this, they were out.

Thursday night.

Was that Thursday night? Yeah, and they were able to get it put out and that. So that was the second time. So I appreciate that, and we, you know, you don't think about those guys having to go out in the middle of all that stuff. So I, uh, I just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Yeah.

The second night we actually ran about 120 calls in that three hour span. Um, that's more than three times our daily number. Usually, um, that included six fires and three structural collapses of some sort. Um, so yeah, we were quite busy for, for basically that whole three hour, we did not have one rig in service or, uh, available. They're all in service.

And, and I do want to mention that, that, you know, there are trained spotters that go out and I'm not sure. Um, and they're, they're, they're told to go to different parts of the county and you can hear them on the scanner a lot of times. And, um, you know, they're usually pretty good if, if, if there's something coming up, I mean, you know, I'm all for upgrading our system, but, but if we don't have something outside Springfield to see what's coming. it'd be like having a tsunami warning on, on shore. It doesn't, it doesn't do anything. We, we need something farther out and that's, you know, usually it's the train spotters that do it. I don't know what, what happened that night. And that's usually from Sangamon County as I think is, is the one that coordinates that. So I don't know what the story was with that. Did they not alert them or, or so?

I didn't get reports that the spotters were sent out until 1121, so 17 minutes after that tornado may have touched down.

Usually what happens is if you got the scanner on your phone when things start happening, you can hear them. They'll go out. They'll call for them to go out, and then and then they go to their places and they sit there and they watch. And then if something happens, then they will get on and they will report a possible funnel cloud in this location. And then that's usually when Sangamon County will alert, I guess, you guys and everything, and they set the sirens off. Like I said, I don't know.

That usually goes into that National Weather Service chat group, and then it comes back out as the text alerts.

Right, so I don't know why they were slow too. It just seemed like a whole miscommunication.

I think there was just a very slow identification that anything was even taking place in Springfield.

Right, but I did want to thank the guys. I wanted to take that opportunity. Thank you.

Alderman Rockford. No. Okay. Alderman Carlson.

Yeah, quickly. Thanks chief. Um, I'm just trying to learn just the protocol and the whole thing. So you make the determination based on the best information you have. And as I understand it, it's driven by the national weather service. Is that sort of the packing order?

Correct. Okay. I mean, we have to have a, a, a standard to use and we use the national weather. So protocol essentially was followed. Yes.

And now, you know, obviously hindsight is 2020. We learned some other things, but, um, so thank you, Mary.

Yes. Um, older woman purchase.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, chief. And thank you to all the men and women who were proactive in this, as you know, what everyone's saying around the horseshoe that tomorrow we're in for a rude awakening again. Um, I know I have a lot of neighbors within my neighborhoods that don't have basements. I think while everyone is listening, what would be the advice that you would give to people as Alderman Gregory just brought up sheltering and we don't have public spaces for that, but I think it's just more education to go out to the community as you all are going to receive a ton of calls tomorrow.

Right. I mean, my best piece of advice would be don't wait till the last minute for whatever you end up doing. Um, whether it be you, you go to a structure that looks like it's more stable than what you live in or whatever, I would make plans early. And I would get there early. I wouldn't try to move while the storm is hitting us. I think that's probably like a misconception of, Oh, this is really bad. I better hurry. And by that time it's probably too late. Um, so whatever place you identify as being more stable than where you live, I would put that plan together. Now.

I just wanted to ask for educational purposes as we step into tomorrow. Thank you.

Go ahead. Alderman Cox. Do you have anything on this?

Okay. Um, while the chief is still here, Alderman Gregory, um, to bring up, um, your conversation from earlier, um, as the mayor, I did put out that we were looking at things, um, our processes because every situation is a learning process. In my, my personal opinion, you can always strive to get better. So some of the solutions, because you said hopefully we've come up with some solutions, and I see some people in this room that attended some of our, like Robert Frazier, I'm gonna pick on you, our community connections open houses that we had. So how many people, whether you're in the horseshoe or in the room, have seen the Real-Time Information Center or the Emergency Operations Center from the tour? There's a handful of people that came. So one of those, or a couple of those solutions, Alderman Gregory, That real-time information center is our cameras, like on our stoplights and that, is anytime we're now a level two of five, and as the chief pointed out, that Wednesday evening we're a level two of five for danger. Thursday night last week we were a level three of five for danger. Tomorrow night we're a level four of five for danger, to kind of put that out there for everyone. So that real-time information center with those cameras, I have said anytime we're a level two or above should be activated with weather people in there. so that we can turn cameras on across the community and try to see. I don't know that that would have helped here, but it would have been an opportunity to maybe see the storm. So that is gonna happen anytime we're a level two of five. So it's just one of the solutions that we've talked about adding in and layering in order to have more eyes out there. So I just want you to know that I had a debriefing meeting with the team on Wednesday before the storm hit Wednesday to talk about what did we learn, what could we have done better, and we're continuing those conversations. So thank you, Alderman. And thank you all of you. I first want to thank the men and women of the Springfield Fire Department and the Public Works crews and the City of BLP workers. We had three of our biggest entities out working very hard. I cannot forget Springfield Police because they make sure everybody's safe from the downed power lines and have to make sure that folks don't drive over those power lines or walk across them. But I just really want to thank all of you for all of your work. And Public Works, as you know, has been doing a lot of the cleanup right now. So thank you. Thank you, Chief. Is Scott Rogers here? I'm sorry, I saw Mike Gorsuch. I don't know if Scott's here. There he is. Scott, before we let Alders sign up to speak, do you want to address anything from the storm power outage response that City Water, Light, and Power had from both Wednesday and Thursday? And then what we can talk about, I think some of the questions were what we might be looking at for tomorrow.

Sure. So Wednesday with that initial storm, We did have crews out. I don't remember exactly what time they came out. It was probably closer to 1 o'clock. Our troubleshooters in the system operations, they're the first ones to go out, and they go out and triage what the damage is. We don't call crews out until we know what the damage is because at that point, the crews are just sitting there waiting because They can't load a truck with poles if they don't know where the poles are going or what size poles they need. All that information, cross arms, whatever it is. So typically we'll triage the situation. Usually that's two to three hours before we get enough reports to where we can start assembling crews. So on Wednesday we had crews coming in and then our guys came in. We had contract crews Wednesday night. That was a strategic decision because we knew The storm Wednesday was going to be there. We knew the storm Thursday was going to be worse. So the idea was get the contract crews in Thursday or Wednesday night and start. Then our guys come in Thursday morning. We held them over Thursday night because we knew that it was going to be bad. So that was kind of the premise on Wednesday. And I will say this. When you look at the storm Wednesday, we had everybody back on. before Thursday night with the exception of one pocket we were waiting on Amarant for. So that was 500 people, I think, at the peak, 500, 600. And we had all of them back on in less than 24 hours. So then you go to Thursday, and when that came in, we had guys on site. We split the crews up. So then Thursday there was crews that we sent home at 3.30, knowing they would come back later. And we scheduled a time, and I don't remember the exact time they came back. So we had them come back in. So we ended up staggering our shifts. So we had 24 seven coverage from basically Thursday morning all the way through Sunday at eight o'clock. And you look at that outage, we had 11,000 people out at the height of that storm. All them people were back on by around eight o'clock Sunday. So in less than 48 hours, we had 11,000 people back on. So I think our response was pretty good. It was, you look back at duration, that was a seven days, roughly 60,000 people out. But I think our, and, and, and I will say, you know, in, in, I was talking to dispatch this morning, one of the, or one of the, one of the clerks this morning, when you look at the outages versus Wednesday versus Thursday, Wednesday, it was like 30 locations, 25, And you can tell the difference between what kind of storm it was. On Thursday, we had 68 locations. So Wednesday was more isolated to the north end, indicative of a tornado, not straight-line winds broad. And then Thursday was indicative of straight-line winds because it was spread out across the entire city. If you look at our outage map at the peak, there was not a quadrant in the city that didn't have damage. So overall response, I think we did very well. Now. A lot of the complaints we've heard no different than a lot of the complaints we heard during derecho outage map. And so I'll touch on that briefly. And then if there's questions we can get into a deeper, the outage map, excuse me, what we use is primarily manual entry right now. Um, the system is basically a home built system that we built in house. I don't remember how many years ago it works for day to day outages. It does not work very well, as we've seen multiple times now, for big storms. Part of what we're doing, we have looked at it since duration. We have ideas of what we want to do. But to be able to get that done, we need the AMIs done first. So we are close with AMIs getting an ordinance to you. I know Corporation Council has been working on some final terms and conditions with the vendor. So I expect to see that coming soon to you. That project will be about a three-year project. but what I would hope to do, and I'll need support from the council, it's probably going to be a $2 to $3 million added to that to get the outage system that we want. That'll be coming. What I want to do is get the AMIs going so that's all in process. Then we'll start getting, I'll say, deeper into an outage management system that is more functional, automated to where we can we can take the voice record or all of our IVRs, our, our voice recording system. As long as the phone number's correct, when they call in to their account number, it can automatically put that information in. And also we will have direct information right off the meters. So we'll know if a meter's on or off kind of a quick summary there. And then I'm sure there's more questions.

So thank you for giving your summary. And I will say when the duration hit in 2023, it was the first time I was made aware being the mayor that we, when you lose your power as one of our customers, we wait for you to call us and tell us you don't have power. Um, and so you can imagine the phone lines with something like that. And I just couldn't believe that that was the system in 2023. So we worked very hard on looking for funding for AMI readers, which for those of you that don't know, it's a smart reader. on your home that will then tell us automatically you have no power. We do not have to wait for your phone call, which is definitely needed that technology. And if I'm not mistaken, we refinance some of your bonds for funding for those. So we had a savings when we refinance bonds and we're allowed to take that savings and buy those readers for our customers. Um, so I would appreciate the council support for that because it's desperately needed. Um, older woman, no Triano.

Thank you, mayor. Uh, That, uh, yeah. Thank you both. That's great to know. Um, because one of my, uh, big asks out of the duration was to have a map that better reflected, uh, facts on the ground. Um, and, uh, it's unfortunate that, uh, so soon we've come up on, um, potentially another disaster. Um, related to how cumbersome and, uh, labor intensive this could be, is there a way for you to call in workers for time on the weekend, time, overtime to get that data in the map? Um, if we have another thousands of people out.

So I will tell you this, we had all of our electrical crews were out Thursday. All of our support staff was in because of the volume of calls So a lot of times what's because like I said, that is a manual entry to populate the outage map and so are like in a normal storm or no actions a normal storm normal outage our System operators will do that. They'll be able to populate that so it's it's fairly quick But when you look at and I asked for the volume of calls, but I didn't have the they didn't give me the numbers yet and When you look at the volume of calls we get, just being able to look at the phone number, try to cross that to an account, and if the count, and this was something during the ratio that we learned also, and I used Doug Brown as an example then, I'll use him again today. When we were going through that, I told Doug, his house was out of power, I said, do me a favor, go to the outage map, let's put your information in, see if it shows up. It didn't. It didn't show up at all. And the reason was, I said, what was your landline number 20 years ago when you signed up for this? And he looked at me and I said, do you remember it? No. And so that's why a lot of that is tied. When you put your information in, it asks for your phone number. And that phone number is whatever's on your account at that time. And those of us that have lived in the city over 20 years, it's probably a landline that's the number on there. So you just have to call the commercial office and get your number updated. And so that's part of it, too. Um, even if it doesn't show up on a map that should work correctly. Now I did have some, I had some friends that called, they weren't on a map. So I asked them to do it and it didn't work still. And so that tells me we hadn't got through all the IVRs yet and getting that information on the map. And it's when you have 11,000 outages, 11,000 customers out, I should say getting 11,000 numbers off IVR and getting all that information in there. It's there in enough people. in the entire utility to be able to do that. I'll say that.

But as long as we know, you know, people are working overtime, people are doing what they can. It's all hands on deck.

Everybody. We had everybody in Thursday and continued all the way through. Like I said, I think it was around 8 p.m. Sunday by the time we had everything back on. Nice. So the response for two back-to-back storms. I thought it was really good on our, on our staff.

They did a great job to hear 48 hours. That does sound much better than what we were dealing with, uh, a few Julys ago. Um, so I have a couple more questions. Uh, I'll go with this one first. Can you help explain how the utility prioritizes who's getting turned on when? Because I've got a block, and I'm sure a lot of y'all do.

I know you do.

Where you know what I'm talking about. Across the street, they have lights. The other side of the street, they're out.

Yeah, so I'll start with priority. So this outage, we had what we call feeders, 13 feeders, which is our Primary backbone coming out of substations that feed all the circuits and then from there branches down to either three phase single phase distribution And then so our first response is to get all the feeders back in service. So we have 13 of those So when you look at a main feeder like that, it could be five miles seven miles So it takes a while to run them down and figure out. Okay, where's the where's the issue with that? So that's where we first start then we start we do it in I, we were in the EOC and it's very similar to what police and police has and kind of fire has for their calls. What we do is we prioritize it on the number of outages on a circuit. And then we start on those circuits. Um, at the same time, a lot of times we do this at night, we'll have two man crews from our service department. We also have some during the day, but a lot of times you'll see at night, we'll pick up a lot of people. And the reason is we go out at night when they're not trying to do isolations for the crews working on stuff. They'll go try to pick up those smaller areas, and we can pick up a lot of them at night. And so we kind of start there, and then we just work down the list. And then so part of it also depends on, for example, Rickard Road by the new firehouse. There was three poles down there. We actually started on that Thursday night because we knew that was going to be a long project. But you can't do all of them first or you get all these big ones and you don't get any of the small ones. So we kind of pick and choose where we're going to go and what we think we can get done in a timely manner versus what we know is going to take a long time. And some of those in your ward, in some of the older areas of town where you have alleys and all that's in an alley lined with trees, first thing we got to do is send tree crews in there. So then tree crews go in. and we can't call locates until the tree crew's out because there was one, I know there was one that we had a customer called and said, well, somebody was here, the tree crews came in, then the contract crews left, and they did. So they left because the tree crews got to clear the trees. Then once that's done, the supervisor calls for locates. So when that crew left, they went to go support another crew that had a big job, help them get that going. And then they came back later. So it, there's a lot of, a lot of the calls that we get as well. Somebody was here and they left. Usually that's somebody driving down the circuits and looking at them doing our triage, um, to your point of one side of the street versus the other. A lot of the older areas in town, again, for whatever reason, I don't know why, but for whatever reason, when they were originally built many years ago, it jumped streets. So you'll have a circuit behind houses in one alley. You go the next block over, it's a different circuit. You go the next block over, it's the same circuit that was over here. And it's just the way the circuits are laid out.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate, and it does create questions every time there's an outage. Well, they got their power on.

Yep.

It's more look at your neighbor, not across the street.

Yeah. Yeah.

Neighbor's got lights and you don't, you probably need to call.

Definitely. That's, that's a good tip. Uh, yeah, I feel bad for some streets because they're the usual suspects, but I know that's a larger problem that we have to talk about down the road. Um, and, and so, uh, talking about preparations for if, if tomorrow is as bad as expected, um, what have you been able to put in place learning from the duration that's going to help us tomorrow? Like, do we have enough polls? Do we have, you know, so on and so forth?

Um, yes. Um, so one of the first things we did Monday was start inventory count. Um, so we, we started replenishing our inventory. So then today, you know, we're prepping again. So one of the things they do, one of the last things that contract or our crews and contractors, we call, Our crews are taking their trucks, making sure the trucks are fully stocked. They've got everything on them. They're full of fuel, ready to go. We do call our contractors and mutual aid partners, make sure we know what their availability is, make sure we know where they're at. Are they in Champaign? If we go mutual aid, who's going to be able to respond to it, know how far they are so we know how much time before we call them, how much time before they get there. Operations went back to their storm schedule. So then we're, our operations center will be staffed 24 seven. Uh, there'll be at least at least two operators on the, on the table that are on the desk at every time or at all times. So yes, we've been going through that, um, just getting ready.

Okay. I'm happy to hear that.

I'm hoping it does skirt, not to the, not, not for our neighbors to the north, but I'm hoping it skirts the edge of us.

I bet you are, uh, fingers crossed. Thank you. Alderman Williams.

Yeah. Uh, thank you, mayor. And thank you director. Thank you for coming in and answering some of these questions. I really have reduced my questions from listening to the answer. So thank my colleagues for their questioning too, but the common one about a subdivision for subdivision living, and I can say the name Glen air subdivision in particular, the frustration that people have when they look across and there's lights and now I'm on day two and there's still no lights, you know, and they didn't lose lights even sometimes. Now I heard your answer and that is helpful, but Where I want to address is what happens, we're out of power, the storm has happened, and we've been out of power, and we call in and we get the robot, I shouldn't say robot, the automatic call or whatever it is, where it says, oh, leave your address and somebody will call you back. Now, my first question, should that happen between 8 and 5 on a weekday when everybody is at work and you're up and running?

If it's on a Thursday and we're in the middle of a storm, yes, it will happen. You will get the automated response. We don't have enough people to staff the phone because what we end up doing, most of the time those phones are answered by our clerks during the day. In the evening, it's answered by our system operators. So we had three clerks in working the storm. So they're not answering those calls. They, they, they're doing real time. Their desk sits kind of outside of op or on, on the outskirts of the operation center, but there is a window they can see through it. So they're, they're in constant communication with our system operators.

Yes.

And so, you know, as tickets come in, what we call tickets, work orders, whatever you wanna call them is they come in, they're putting them in a system. And then they are organizing them by quadrants. So we split the city up into four quadrants. And then when crews come available, like I was talking about either troubleshooters or the two man crews that we bring in, um, they split them up. So then we'll split those crews into those quadrants. We hand them a stack of tickets and then they still go out. They start going out and just working through the tickets.

So, so this is dealing with the way it's staffed and it sounds like it's staffing, but it gets to,

the clerks are so busy in the system operators, there's no way they can answer phone calls in the middle of all this kind of hit miss on, on.

Yeah.

So we, what we ended up doing, we put the IVR system in or we turned it on because normally it's off normal days. It's off. We turned it off and I don't remember what time they turned it off. They turned it off sometime on Thursday. And then, uh, I believe it was Friday at like four o'clock. They, they turned it back off. And then, or I, sorry, I should say they turned it on Thursday and then it was like four o'clock Friday. They turned it back off. They let Amber know. And part of her, part of her press release that time was if you don't have power call back in and then somebody would have at that point, they were answering phones again. We were caught up enough. They could answer the phones.

So then can you explain to me, um, your expectation on timeliness then. So this machine or automatic, whatever it is, that takes your address and says, and we'll call you back, then they call the automatic and say, well, I left that man, I ain't got to call back. So what is your ideal amount of time that goes by before you, or you just can't answer that because you're in the middle of an emergency?

We can't answer it because Like I said, all hands are on deck. There's nobody that's going to.

Because the next call we get or I get anyway is normally, hey, I did that a couple of times now.

Like I said, normally during the day, if it goes, if they're busy and they don't answer it, it would automatically revert to the IVR, and then they would call back. But in a storm response like that, 11,000 people out, there's no way we're going to make 11,000 calls.

I mean, you don't get to argue with me out of that.

I just want to add something real quick on that. If it wasn't clear, so if your phone number's up to date with your CWLP account and you call in, that IVR does have caller ID and helps populate the map and report the outage.

Yeah, I believe that because I'm doing it for some of my elders, and it keeps saying me as the location of being out, and I'm like, I'm not talking about where I'm at. And I couldn't get around that, so I hear what you're saying, Emma. So it works. It definitely works. I appreciate it. I was trying to give them the senior's address, you know, and to try to get them some response from you.

Like I said, we did have people that were doing nothing but rolling through IVR e-mail or voicemails. And even if you call in and it's got your number, if you say the address on that, we will get to it. Okay, and then it might be right away, but sooner or later they will get to all of them calls.

My final question would be with this social media event, and I call it an event because it didn't happen, but just stir up a bunch of more questions and phone calls. I'm quite sure you're aware of some of the comments. I don't know if they were your employees or ex employees or other city employees, but this thing about not all the linemen being called in, is there any truth to these type of things?

And there, there is truth. And all I can say is it is a arbitration here or it's arbitration that we cannot speak of right now.

Well, but it was, it wasn't punitive. I mean, we didn't suffer because you're in the middle of, no, like I said, and what,

what we did Wednesday with calling just contract crews, that was on purpose because we wanted to make sure we had our guys to be able to split up the next day and not, not waste a bunch of time. I shouldn't say a bunch of time, but not, not burn a bunch of hours for those guys and then have crews that were going to be tired the next day.

So no overtime issue or no overtime, but, or I'll leave you alone about it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Alderman Williams, I appreciate your comments, and I can just say that what we did was brought the crews in at their normal time at 7 a.m., and then half of them got to go home at their normal time at 3.30. The others worked 16 hours, and then we brought the ones back in that went home, and then we were on this 16-hour swing with them. So they did get overtime, but it was so that we would always have crews out. If we brought everybody in at the same time and let them all work 16 hours, we would have a time where there was nobody out. And I'm sure our citizens would not like seeing that. And we kind of do the same thing with snowplow crews. We have day crew, evening crew. So it's very similar to that response, if that makes sense a little bit.

Yeah, I was challenged to make sure I had, ask these questions, and I appreciate the responses. Absolutely, yeah. I'll see what I get from it. Thank you. You're welcome.

Alderwoman Conley. Thank you. I'm going to echo Alderman Williams. It's nice to have other people ask all the questions ahead of time. So, Scott, thank you. You've answered the majority, overwhelming majority of the issues I had. I just want to highlight again. So I had two neighborhoods specifically where I got multiple contacts saying they had called multiple times. Different neighbors did. And when they finally got a hold of someone was told, no, you have power when they were calling from a dark house. And they clearly didn't. And then another neighborhood where they said, no one knew you were out. And it was multiple homes. It was a big power line and trees down. So in those instances, and I know people called them in, is your best advice as we're getting ready, looking at tomorrow and looking at more of these storm events coming, go in and check your CWLP account and make sure what phone number is attached to it? Because I literally, that's the first time I've heard that and I didn't even think about it. I'm not quite sure what phone number I have on my account. So how does someone do that?

Call commercial office. They'll update it.

So keep your commercial office busy tomorrow.

Justin Stone's going to be mad at me tomorrow, but yes.

Right. So I just want to point out it would be great if someone has an online account. Like my stuff is all online. Can I go and make that change in my online account? Yep. Okay. So people need to check.

Not get your phone number on your online account.

I do that tonight when I go home. I want to point out the storm cells start tomorrow morning and go to early afternoon and then have an hour break and then they start again. So not a lot of room in there for people to be bothered calling your office. Right. I think that's pretty much it. I will tell you I am looking forward to getting these meter readers. We also need to, I would encourage, I know that CWP has put in grant applications in the past to do more studies or to do more buried lines to try and detangle some of, especially in our older neighborhoods, the way this grid has been worked out. None of those are cheap responses. We've talked about MacArthur Boulevard alone. I would just, I think we just need to make sure that people, again, are aware of this conversation. We had this conversation after the ratio. We're going to keep having this because you forget when the skies are blue, people are having a good time, you flip the lights on. I don't want to tell you how many times I walked into my dark bathroom, flipped the light on, like Pavlov. It's an instinct, and then it's not there. When it's there, people are very happy, and we don't think about these things. I wish we had a little more time between tonight and tomorrow for everyone to update their phone numbers. I will encourage all my constituents who have online accounts, anyone in the city with an online account, check your contact information tonight so that you can have that on because it was very concerning to me especially with people who said, I've called a number of times. I know my neighbors have called. We don't show up on the outage map. That outage map is the bane of my existence during these large events. And I know you feel it too. But just thank you for your explanations tonight.

I'll give a plug on a couple of things. No pun intended plug. Oh, I can do this with flooding too, by the way. a couple other things with the big events. I do want to point out too, that the public facing map is not what our electric operations refers to and uses. They have a very detailed map with more outages than you're going to see on the public facing map. And then also our, uh, social media and our web updates. We try to do big lists of where the large outages are and publicize those. So you say, okay, I saw Indian Hills. I saw my street listed. So then you don't have to call or repeat call and then make it, you know, the phones phone lines busier. So we try to have everybody look at that.

I will also, um, Amber, you forgot to mention the blog. Um, I do think that was very helpful. So, um, if people aren't following that, you should be again, we're looking for things to get two things.

One. Yes. Our, our public facing map does not show every house primarily for safety reason. I don't, you know, I don't want somebody knowing my house is out of power and I might not be there. That's one. And two, I understand people get frustrated. I understand they're going to make multiple phone calls. When they do that, if you call five times, that's five times we're going to have to have somebody listen to an IVR by the time they look at it and see, oh, it's already in there. we could be on three other calls by then.

And again, it's that balancing that we talked about with Chief Sumo. People want to make sure you know. Again, as the mayor pointed out, we're a self-reporting community, right? So we want to make sure that you know. And obviously, when you've got big things down, you know when your lights have gone off on your grid.

With the system we have, there is predictive modeling on it. So not the outage management, but some of our background system that the operators use. There's predictive modeling that does feed into that map, but it's not always accurate. It's really good, again, at small outages, but when you get into larger, full, big-scale outages, it's very difficult for that algorithm to work correctly. We could, and during the ratio, we tried tweaking it a couple of times and we made it worse. And so then we just said, no, we're done. We'll go back to where we were.

I will say if I could just also just as, as just sort of an FYI, like what you said tonight, just a little bit more of an explanation, um, on other platforms of there are different people that come through. You may, I mean, I heard so many times, I haven't seen a CWP truck here. and very concerned about that. So just as long as we continue to have these conversations and make people aware of what's going on, really, and again, another big shout-out to all of your staff, the people who work in the office and the people who are out, our linemen who are out doing that hands-on job.

Thank you. Our response, I was very proud of our response this time, these two back-to-back storms.

Yeah.

I think we did good.

You provide a service that everyone wants.

Can I say there's improvements to be made? Yes. But I think overall we did good.

always an opportunity to learn learners. Right. Thank you, mayor.

Yeah. And, uh, thank you for triggering my memory. Elder woman Conley. Um, I, Scott, could you briefly touch on the confusion that folks have when we tell them we're waiting on Ameren? Because I don't think customers realize, cause they're like, no, I pay my bill to you.

So I don't, I don't remember the number in town, but the one in question this week was one on, um, hedge lane off Sangamon Avenue. So that pole line is owned by Ameren. Uh, they have a three 45 line on the top. We have our 12, four or 12, five distribution underneath it. So that line came down when it came down and came down on top of our 12, five line. Um, all them conductors like that are bare. So it's shorted. It actually put 13, five onto our line. It fried our, uh, traffic cabinet at the corner of Piper and Sangamon. Um, there was a couple of houses in the area that also got damaged. And when we re-energize that some of that damage showed up, we didn't know about it until some of that dance until we re-energize it. Then we started seeing some of that damage.

But we actually have an agreement with Ameren.

Yeah, there's, there's, there's a lot of polls that we own at Ameren's on. There's a lot of polls Ameren own that we're on and there's, there's, um, attachment agreements that are in place for that. But we, because ours are underneath, we can't put ours back up until Ameren gets their line back up. And they were there Thursday, but it was a crew. I don't know where the crew was from. I don't know what time they started. But that crew, about 10 o'clock, ran out of their hours, and they had to go home. So they didn't come back until, you know, no fault of Ameren. I'm not blaming Ameren or anybody else. So we had to wait until they came back Friday morning. before we got that, that area back on.

Right. And that's that cycle we're trying to work through here is to not have that happen at the city.

Any, I will say mayor, and you point this out cycling, but we're cycling, um, our lineman, which is inherently can be a very dangerous job, 16 hour shifts.

Yeah. I mean, that is a long time. One other, one other thing. I don't have all the information. Uh, some of you just public notice, um, don't know all the information, but there was a, a lineman that was electrocuted in Decatur. preliminary information we got on that that we've heard was that was somebody with a generator, and I don't know if it was a portable generator, a whole house generator, but whatever it was, they didn't have their main breaker off or it's not interconnected, interlocked with their main breaker. And the preliminary information we've heard is it was back fed. and it was backfeeding the line he was working on.

And that's where we don't, and again, I understood a lot of the frustration that residents had. I was out all weekend, but we also need to make sure, I mean, 16 hours is a long day under any circumstances, doing a job like that, that inherently one mistake can be even more costly. So I appreciate it. cycling the crews and you know, yes, absolutely. Let's get our people out. Cause I'll tell you, everyone loves seeing those crews come by that. Those trucks are one of the, I mean, Santa Claus doesn't get as much of a welcome in a neighborhood as, as those guys do. Thank you, mayor.

Alderman. Thank you. Um, Scott, how much, just off the top of your head, how many circuits do we have throughout the city? Is it, I mean, probably thousands, huh?

Yeah.

It's crazy. Well, one of the things I was thinking about is when we go to the EMRs, I think that would it make sense to try to, on each circuit, put one EMR toward like the end of the circuit, and then that way we know if that circuit's down, we would know, you know, and you've got to assume that if the far end, So once far ones down that it would, it would affect everything up.

So currently we have AMRs, they're automated meter reading.

Right.

And, and so currently what we do, the only thing we use them for, because they're not real time, we only collect meter reads once a month off of them.

Right.

The AMIs it's real time. Right. We can set that information. We can set it, I believe as low as five seconds or up to a minute, three minutes, five minutes where it's communicating. real-time information constantly. So once we go to that, we will have that. Then we will know if a meter's on or off automatically.

But my point is, as we start that project, to put one on each circuit first and then come back as you populate it, I mean, I realize it's better to have things in the crew right there, but if you did that, you might be able to... It just gives us a better feed, you know?

I understand your point, and I don't disagree. The problem we'll run into is when you start doing that, we won't do those ourselves. It'll be a contract as part of that. So when they bid that contract, they're bidding that we're going to go down this road. Yeah, they want to get it all. That's the cheapest way to do it. Yeah. We can try to do that, but it's probably going to end up costing us more, and I don't know what that cost would be. One of the biggest costs of this is the labor to install all of it.

We can look into it, though. Thank you, and good job.

Alderman Gregory. Well, let me say this because I never say it. All the employees, good job, for sure. This is management-level talks, and so, you know, just trying to make sure that we get things done. So, first of all, I'll say, you know, to our employees, he did, you know, post a Facebook post about, some things that's obviously in arbitration. So I'll say this, of course, right? We certainly have to tip our hats to the workers who, for whatever reason, was frustrated because they couldn't work. And, you know, on the other hand, we want to keep people safe, too, and not let them work too many hours. And, you know, because some people got big cars and they'll keep going. So I totally respect that, right? But those things are commendable because our guys and women, you know, who work linemen, it seems to me they wanted to get it on and get out here and help the community in which they're from. So I don't, you know, I hope that's not, you know, look down upon that gentleman and his family and things of that nature. I support, you know, good things in the contract. So moving right along, two of these. AMI readers, we've talked about this for some time. I think even when Doug was director, we've talked about these things. Just right now under this administration, we're three years in, and we're talking about we're about to start them. Like the outage map thing, it seems, I mean, y'all got some money, some cash on hand, some things. So I think, and I like to hear, I'm excited to hear that we're going to bring that outage system in. What I don't like is I'm not comfortable with, is when power goes out, if you're like me, your phone's almost half dead anyway, you don't got long. You don't got long. So I might have to go across the street and borrow my neighbor's. But that happens in my community, right? So that's going to be part of the confusion. So I'm excited, and I just hope it doesn't... tailored to the old way of matching up that thing. I think that's good. It gets you to your account quicker. But I just want to make sure that they have a way to voice that, even if they don't know. Like, you know, they may say it on IVR and leave a message and not realize that it's going through and it's going to be heard with that. I will say to Ms. Amber, she feeds the information to us well. She gets it to us quick, and I appreciate her. And, you know, I was sending her, you know, emails when I could in between my lunches and stuff. just a FYI, just in case we didn't know. And we caught a couple that we didn't know.

Something I didn't touch on, um, every day we would have at least three meetings. So we would have, I would have a zoom call with, it was Amber primarily getting Amber information with operations in construction and myself and Mike Gorsuch and Amber. We, we had zoom call at least three times a day. Same thing we did during the ratio. Um, but that way, we make sure Amber's got the information she needs to get all the information out as timely as we can.

Yeah. Yes, for sure. I appreciate that. Um, I think, I think inactive polls, um, cause us a little bit of problem cause cause here's the reality, right? Uh, when these type of things happen, people in these communities, they're going to try to get out and help their neighbors, right? They're going to try to get out and help seniors who may have a tree that fell and things. And I know, um, in autumn and no Toronto's ward, which we brought up right there on, um, ninth and Brown Myers, um, they had a, you know, a dead pole, an active pole in the back. Um, And it hadn't been cleared or not, you know, as far as I know. But they were really, really, really trying to get to the roof to put a tarp on it so they can save it as much as they could. So I think we have some areas of improvement there with inactive poles. I don't know if there's something we can put on it or that we normally do and that maybe we didn't. Because that's an alleyway. Like these older neighborhoods got alleyways. That's how people get in and out of their homes. And a lot of them, crazy enough as it sounds, so. You know, just all together, I just think those alleyways in these older neighborhoods have to be addressed first when we come with these AMI readers because those are the areas with the older trees, dead trees. I mean, I do that for a living. So you can cut a tree wrong, and within a couple years, it's going to be dead. It's going to have dead branches, and they're just susceptible to fall first. And I think we have a major opportunity to fix that in our inner core of our city. Some of these trees are just brittle. and they're just going down easy, easier than what they, in my opinion, some of them should, healthy ones. I don't want to be too long on that, but I'm really interested in the AMI readers and us knowing where the power are, especially in our owners, like this Fox Bridge area, that area from the tree work to the roads to power and getting it back on is really, really concerning to me. You know, it's hard to answer even For me and Jen, we got Cabbage Patch area. I don't know what to tell them because they're reaching out, you know, to the most visible people and the most active people that they see. So those things are important, and I just want to pass that along. Of course, good job to our line, and of course, good job to everybody that's out doing the work for sure. And I just like to see that, you know, sooner than later. All right, appreciate you.

Other woman purchase?

Thank you, and I'm last to sign up, so I'll be real brief. Um, Ms. Amber, you do such an amazing job with getting us information. So while I've been listening to everyone, I, oh, Donovan, I think he just did that on purpose. Um, can we want to put something out tonight where it can be a link for people to update their telephone number and as well as some of our seniors, I know I have a high population of high rises and they still receive their. Bills in the mail. can you do an insert like you do for the one, two, three steps that they can either fill out and bring in when they come in or just to notate as we're moving forward, um, and hoping not to see another storm like this coming tomorrow, but it gives it time. So people are not calling constantly every day. Now, a lot of people are not listening right now, but it'll be going on the news. But I really think that that'll help us. And it's a few steps that you can do. You need the call in, click this link below to make sure your information is updated. and to reassure, put something inside the bill. And I know you have something now that's in there that comes every month.

Yeah.

So can we please do that?

Yeah. I don't even have one plan for July yet, so. Okay. Well, good. Ding, ding, ding. Thank you.

Yes.

Alderman Donland.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. And, and, and I get to be last, I guess, uh, what, one of the unique, the system still fascinates me. One of the unique things that we have out West and it's not a great number of people, but we have CWLP customers. like an old Bradford's in place. And I've tried with your predecessors to get this resolved. We have CWLP customers that are actually supplied by Ameren. They do what is called wheeling. And they're very confused. And we have this conversation. They really just, quite frankly, they just want to be on CWLP. And I know that's a conversation, not for this room today, but, um, we gotta make it, uh, find a way to make it clear and easier for those individuals. Although again, there's not hundreds, but one's enough to know who to call and how to be. They do call me by the way, but anyway, I don't even really expect you to respond to that, but I just wanted to say it. So I didn't forget.

I will, I will give you an update. So we are trying to, we're, we're looking at that a little more. We do have, I think one customer in that area has reached out to us recently. So we are looking into that again to see what we can do. Without tipping my hat too much, I'll just leave it.

Fair enough. And I'm comfortable that we'll finally get there because being a new director, you want to make things anyway.

Alderman Cox, do you have a short, quick question you'd like to ask?

Hold on, let me get my book out. I've got more at the top. Thank you.

Thank you, Scott. And just to reiterate what's being shared on social by the city, the first round of storms tomorrow is expected to hit between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Our level four of five risk. The first round is 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Second round of risk is 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. So it's pretty much all day. Level four or five of risk for severe weather. Potential hazards are or could be tornadoes, possibly up to an EF three damaging winds gusts over 75 miles an hour and large hail greater than two inches. And just to remind everyone, when we had the duration on 2023, the evening of that storm, um, I did put out a curfew. It's the one and only curfew I put out as a mayor and people were really upset by that curfew. But the reason the curfew was put in place was there were so many live power lines on the ground. It was dangerous for people to be out in the community. So just have patience with us if that's required. Again, it's for your safety that we're doing that. So I just wanna make sure that everyone knows. So with that, we can go to the zoning portion of our meeting finally. Hi John, are you ready? Okay.

The next item on the agenda is docket number 2026-018 for the property located at 2512 East Laurel Street. The petitioner is William H. Whitener Jr.

Present zoning classification is R1 single family residence district section 155.015. The requested zoning relief is pursuant to section 155.212 general provisions variances and section 155.214 applications for amendments and variances for variations of sections 155.010A and one use regulations general provisions and 155.001 definitions, lot, and accessory building or accessory use. The Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning staff recommendation is approval of a use variance to allow an accessory building, storage building, garage, to be constructed on the subjected property without a residence on the lot with the following conditions. One, the building shall never be utilized for a commercial business, and two, the storage space shall not be rented out. The subject property is a larger parcel in the area where the construction of the proposed garage storage building as shown on the petition will not hinder the future construction of a single family residence on the property. The standards for a variation are met. The planning and zoning recommendation is approval to concur with the staff recommendation. The chair will now entertain a motion.

Madam Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission's recommendation. Second.

So we have a motion and a second to approve the Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation. Is there any questions from the Alders at this time? Seeing none, the voting will now be open. All those in favor of the motion will vote yes. All those opposed will vote no.

Alderman Cox, how do you vote?

So the motion passes with 10 voting yes, none voting no. The next item on the agenda is docket number 2026-019 for the property located at 3205 Clear Lake Avenue. Petitioners are the Lamar Companies, as we see by its attorneys, Brown, Hay, and Stevens, LLP, Daniel L. Hamilton of Council. Present zoning classification is B1, Highway Business Service District, section 155.033. The requested zoning relief is variance of sections 155.340I and J, and J, general provisions for off-premises advertising signs, and 155.341, height and site regulations for off-premises signs. Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning staff recommendation is approval of the relief requested in the petition with the following conditions. The height, dimensions, and the sign area of the proposed sign facing west shall not exceed the height, dimensions, and sign area of the existing sign no more than 40 feet in height with sign dimensions and no larger than 10.5 feet tall by 36 feet wide and with an area not to exceed 378 square feet. The new sign shall utilize technology such as but not limited to that described in paragraph number nine of the petition that limits brightness at night to the satisfaction of the zoning administrator. Three, the electronic display face of the west facing sign will display messages that do not change more frequently than the set eight to 10 second cycle mentioned in paragraph eight of the petition. And four, messages displayed shall be static images that do not include moving, scrolling, blinking, flashing, rotating, or animated graphics. The standards for variation are met. The Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation is approval to concur with the staff recommendation. The chair will now entertain a motion.

Mayor, I recommend that we approve the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation.

So we have a motion and a second to accept the Planning and Zoning recommendation. Any discussion from the Alders? Seeing none, the voting will now be open. All those in favor of the motion will vote yes. All those opposed will vote no. And the motion passes with 10 voting yes, none voting no. Thank you for your patience, Mr. Hamilton, this evening. This now concludes the zoning portion of the meeting. The chair will now, I'll hold for one minute.

The chair will now recognize Deputy Treasurer Ketchum for presentation of the financial report.

Thank you, Mayor Busher. Treasurer's Report Corporate Fund for the month of May, beginning balance $60,530,550. We took in total receipts of $16,454,791. We had disbursements in the month of May totaling $14,459,515, which left the corporate fund ending balance in the month of May at $62,525,826. The ending general fund balance includes $1,997,870, which is the May ending balance for ARPA money. That concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. The chair will entertain a motion to approve the financial report. So moved, Mayor.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the financial report? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The chair also recognizes the budget director Metzger for any questions on the OBM contract report. Are there any questions from the Alders? Seeing none, we will move forward with the meeting. The chair will entertain a motion to dispense with the reading of the minutes of the June 2nd, 2026 regular city council meeting and approve the minutes.

So moved.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The chair will entertain a motion to incorporate the pre-council first reading of ordinances into the record of this council meeting. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. The chair will entertain a motion to incorporate the pre-council reading of the consent agenda into the record of this council meeting.

So moved.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The chair will entertain a motion to place the consent agenda on final passage. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, voting will now be open. All those in favor of the motion, please vote yes. All those opposed will vote no.

Alderman Cox, how do you vote? Yes.

And the motion passes with 10 voting yes, none voting no. There are no items currently remaining tabled or in committee. The next item on the agenda is item number 2026-284, An ordinance amending the 1988 City of Springfield Code of Ordinances as amended by repealing Section 50.30 of Chapter 50 in its entirety pertaining to high load rate. The chair will entertain a motion to place agenda item number 2026-284 on final passage. We'll move.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Discussion from the Alders. Alderman Gregory.

Just real quick. Corporation Council, thank you for your explanation on the information that we had asked for. Um, on, on, on, I just, I just want to make it clear when we vote for this and this passes, I'm still able to, um, me and my colleague auto woman, no Toronto would still be able to entertain a moratorium on the type of data centers that we were referring to. Like, um, that just went out in the county. Am I correct in that?

That's right. It would go through our planning and zoning process.

Can you touch on that a little bit? Why it has to go through that process? I'm, I'm just, trying to educate myself.

Sure. Uh, because it would be a change to our zoning code and, uh, or, or would touch on our zoning code. And because, um, uh, because we're impacting our zoning and our zoning designation and preventing a certain specific use for zoning, it, it goes through that process. Just like if we were to initiate a text amendment, um, to our code, we can't just change our zoning code. It has to go through planning and zoning, even though, even though the City Council can ultimately reject the recommendation from the Planning and Zoning Commission.

Thank you.

Any other questions, Alderman? No, ma'am. Any other discussion from the Alders at this time? Alderman Williams.

Yes, real quick. I don't know where the director is.

Scott to come up?

No, just real quick. Dr. Rogers?

Is that who you want? Yes.

Okay. So whatever you're trying to accomplish, does it require that the whole entire chapter be Eliminate it.

Yeah. If you, if you look at that whole chapter or not chapter, it's that whole section section. That whole section is pertaining to the high load factor rate.

Okay. So there's no way to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish without.

No. Cause if you take the high load factor out, you're still four and a half cents a kilowatt. That's unrealistic at this time. Okay. Thank you.

Any other discussion? Alderman Williams. That's it. Okay. Any discussion from any other alders? Thank you, director. Seeing none, we will now have citizens who have signed up in advance to speak.

Abby Martin. Abby Martin.

She's coming.

Hello.

Hello. Hi.

My name is Abigail Martin and I came here to speak on behalf of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in calling for a moratorium on all data centers and further discussion regarding their impact. And while I do support the repealing of this Chapter 50 section as it would remove lower price rates for tech projects, specifically data centers, and require capitalists to pay their fair share, I believe I speak on behalf of many community members as I express my concern about this decision, as it raises the possibility of further data centers in Springfield. As some of you may be aware, large swaths of the Springfield and Sangamon County community are strongly against the construction of data centers in the area for a variety of reasons, including negative environmental impacts, location, energy costs, and low benefit to the community. As is becoming widely documented, data centers nationwide come with varying negative environmental impacts, such as water, air, chemical, light, and noise pollution, which worsen living conditions for citizens and drive away wildlife, as well as increased temperatures surrounding the site, which come amidst already rising temperatures. Many citizens in cities containing data centers complain of water scarcity and poor quality water, as some data centers require large amounts of water to remain cool. Water aside, the high energy demands of data centers straying local energy grids impose higher costs on citizens and release carbon dioxide into the air, causing greater air pollution and acceleration of climate change. Not only do data centers harm ecosystems and resources, they also have proven to be a nuisance to communities, emitting light pollution and harsh noise pollution, which irritates those who live near the centers, including wildlife. Data centers are being sold to many cities as good economic investments, but in reality, they bring worse economic conditions for citizens while costing taxpayer money and using up valuable land. The proposed Cyrus 1 data center, which was recently approved for zoning by the county board, is planned to be constructed on farmland, rendering it useless for its intended purpose. And many other data centers nationwide are similarly taking up farmland in the midst of rising food prices and loosening of regulations, creating worry about nationwide food security. In addition, data centers are disproportionately constructed in and near black communities, leaving them to deal with the environmental and economic consequences most harshly as data center construction also decreases local property value. Not to mention that all of this will come with very little to no benefit for the average citizen. Companies building data centers have given little information about the function of said data centers, especially considering their enormous size. As such, it is unclear how many people a data center will employ in the long term, making them a risky and expensive investment which may not guarantee the jobs we hope it will. If these data centers are indeed used to train AI, it is also likely that said AI could be used to replace jobs which would further worsen conditions for working people. Although it would provide temporary construction jobs, It is not worth the cost to the community and the city should focus its effort towards other more community-focused construction projects for union workers. All things considered, data centers provide a net negative to the community and its people while serving outside technology corporations that seek their own wealth and growth over the wealth and growth of communities and the working class. They seek this growth through the theft of our land, our jobs, and our energy. I wish to take this opportunity to make these concerns known to you, the Springfield City Council, and urge you to take caution when considering any decision involving data centers. As such, due to the attention this ordinance's consideration brings to further data centers, the City Council must in the future pursue a moratorium on future data centers. Thank you very much.

Thank you, ma'am. Donald Hanrahan.

Repealing the generous electric rates for data centers makes sense. It was passed eight years ago to attract what then passed for data centers. Repeal is essential to protect city residents and their collectively owned utility from predatory data centers today. But massive data centers could still come despite taking this action. Why be concerned? When Batavia repealed a similar ordinance, a data center came knocking within days. Why no concern about this in 2018 when this passed? A great concern now. Data centers have been around for 30 years. What's the big deal? The answer is data centers are different today. Hyperscale data centers are different. In 2018, a data center was thought of as a central system like used by a hospital, a separate building where there's racks of servers and the IT infrastructure using one to five megawatts of power. Or a bigger internet data center for Cloud storage, which used 10, 15 megawatts, a big one. That's what people thought of, and they attracted IT jobs. Sound like a good idea. Dolman 4, running at full blast, can generate 200 megawatts. Nobody anticipated AI hyperscale data centers when that ordinance was passed. The one proposed and greenlit by Sangamon County is a continuous 630 megawatt data center, three dolmen fours. It hogs 1.8 million square feet. It's a colossus that has nothing to do with cloud storage or pics of your grandpa and your email backup or running the internet. It has to do with large language model artificial intelligence instead of CPU chips, they use graphics processing units that consume five times the electricity of a CPU, and they create intense heat, intense heat that has to be dissipated, and they can't be dissipated with cooling fans on the servers. They have to install a cooling system. Some use once-through cooling that consumes millions of gallons of water a day. But most today, including the one proposed here in Sangamon County, use what's called closed-loop cooling, like a radiator on your car. But they need big fans, huge fans, hundreds of huge fans. And they make a lot of noise, a lot of noise, so bad that you can hear it for a mile. And it's the source of much valid, angry opposition everywhere these things have been built. Almost all utilize diesel-powered backup generators. Sangamon County has 420 of these things, each the size of a semi-truck. Imagine that racket every time the power goes out. 7,000 gallons of diesel stored in each one of those 420 above ground. Is that what we want in the city of Springfield? Does that belong in Springfield? Does it belong in an unincorporated area that is right on the border of Springfield? Does the city's zoning really protect from this? Do we even know? I don't think it does. Are they B2? Are they light industrial? Are they heavy industrial? What are they? Shouldn't they be a whole category of their own? Maybe they should be excluded entirely. Are they subject to impact study before permitting? Are existing noise protection ordinances sufficient for a facility that generates a type of low frequency noise not contemplated by most municipal noise ordinances? Who is looking into this? I feel like, yeah, this ordinance needs to go, but we're waving a proverbial red flag in front of these tech bro billionaires that are coming looking for for data centers in central Illinois. If nobody's looking into this, well, then to paraphrase the famous astronaut Houston, we have a problem. This ordinance should be passed, but the city might not be ready for what happens next. It isn't CWLP's power that they want. It isn't enough anyway. It's only 200 megawatts. It's their grid hookups. That's what they're coming for. Look out. The tech bro billionaires are coming for Springfield and we better protect ourselves now. And a moratorium will give us the time to figure this out. Also, since I have 11 seconds, CWLP ought to include storm preparedness in its integrated resource plan because climate change is here. These storms are getting more frequent and more deadly and we have to plan for it. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Any other discussion from the Alders before we take a vote on the ordinance? Does any Alder have anything they want to bring up or discuss before the vote? Seeing none, the voting will now be open. All those in favor of the motion will vote yes. All those opposed will vote no.

Alderman Cox, how do you vote? Yes. 10-0, Mayor.

Not yet. We're waiting on that. So the motion passes with nine voting yes, one voting no. The next item on the agenda is 2026-293, an ordinance authorizing payment of $10,342.28 for a settlement of a demolition lien at 1021 East Phillips Avenue. The chair will entertain a motion to place agenda item number 2026-293 on final passage. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Alderman Gregory.

Yes. So real quick. So, um, we have some brief discussion. I will ask corporation council, um, this is a tough one to try to debate with my, my council members considering the, the, um, legal legalities around it. So I, I, I, uh, jotted down some notes and I will try to dance around those details, but, um, I'll say that, that I'm not arguing that the city didn't have to take down, um, this, this structure. It was dangerous. There's more dangerous ones. There's more dangerous ones just a few blocks away. However, this address at 1021 East Phillips is close to the railroad where we're trying to clear out those houses. And it appears, you know, after much discussion with the owners of that building that we took that down and took, you know, rather quickly, right? So it was a fire, right? a situation. We know we've had other situations in that area with these houses. So because we have to do our jobs or whatever, some of the fees is factored into this. We see that these demos can be anywhere from the low end to the high end. There's not a set fee for them. We've seen them very, very low, and we've seen them very, very high. This house sold in 2004 for $14,000. $14,000 is what this house sold for. Very small house, again, on the edge of that new railroad that's coming up there. So it wasn't a normal demolition. There were some things that we, um, as a city did, um, to, to take a look at some things that's, that's, you know, what taxpayers pay for and those things shouldn't always transfer on to the resident, um, or the owners of these homes. Um, so after, you know, months and months and months of discussion, with the owners of this property because I do understand the mayor's policy. I know her policy is against waving these fees are waving fines for people. But, um, there are situations as we've been through before where these things are necessary to do right by the residents. Um, and certainly half of the cost of what we're pushing for is fair, to remedy this issue so they can move on, and there's another house taken down in the area where we want all of those houses taken down. That's about the best debate that I can give without going into major details. However, one of the sticking points that I do want to press on this council is that there are other houses in my ward, and I'm sure in your ward, that is charred, one's right on 6th Street, right over behind Moto Mart, not too far, it's still there. It's one three blocks to the east from this block, half charred, needs to come down. A danger to the community as well, they're still up. We chose to take this one down for whatever reason. However, the charges I feel are a little unreasonable, and that's why I brought this ordinance forward on behalf of the people of Ward 2. Thank you.

Alderman Conley. Thank you, Mayor. Actually, I have a question for Alderman Gregory. Sure. Do you know what they intend to use the property where this house was for? Is there going to be a rebuild, or is that what's...

I don't know the answer to that, but I would highly doubt that it would be a rebuild because of its location that it's in. I mean, you know, that's part of the reason, you know, I feel like we tore it down rather quickly and had, you know, do some of the things that we did as the city to look into it. And I will say that these situations that this house was in many houses have been in, uh, in that area and we know why. Um, and, and those costs shouldn't, shouldn't transfer on to, to the resident and owners, in my opinion. Thank you.

Yeah. And, and we had a good conversation about this. Um, and, and, you know, and I, I, you know, at the time, you know, I kind of told you some of my concerns just sort of, and I, and I realized, you know, my concerns were around, obviously I have, I have a huge, um, building buildings in my ward that have significant fines that they're generating, um, right. Uh, on the belly Vaughn apartments. Um, I know that there has been interest in having those fines reduced at this point in time, because I've not seen any move towards coming into compliance on that property. I mean, finds, you know, these things serve a purpose. We, we want people to comply with building codes. We want people to do the right thing. Um, I think given that this is an area where we're looking to take down properties, there's a dual purpose to this. It wasn't an issue of fines and penalties where they had been negligent. At least we didn't get any of that information from legal. I just want you to know we had one conversation. I've really been mulling this one over and I appreciate your advocating for your residents. I do think it's important that we have flexibility as a city when it comes to residents, builders, developers who are trying to do better out of a bad situation. I would love for someone to do the right thing with those Ballybaun apartment buildings. If we got to a right place with that, we could have a conversation. We're not there. But you're saying with this situation, we have property owners who want to do more development, who want to bring housing stock back in and improve other homes, correct? Absolutely, yes. And so they're trying to reinvigorate our housing stock, and the cost of this demolition is the big kind of block for them right now.

Yes, in some ways, yes.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Alderman Donlan.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Alderman, for answering the questions and for the conversations we've had about this. You know, this isn't, and I think this is what you were alluding to, Alderman, this one in particular isn't about fines, it's about the costs that were involved in taking down the property. And I'm sympathetic to that, especially due to the fact that the owners are interested in developing another property. I, too, unfortunately, have a uh, terrible, terrible, uh, apartment complex, old town apartments in ward nine. And their, uh, city does have costs, uh, involved in, um, in demoing five of those structures, not all of them. There are, there were nearly 30 of them, uh, total. And, uh, you know, uh, I think that each individual, first of all, Mary, I should have said this. I appreciate the fact because this is the proper place for us to have the conversations about, whether or not we're going to waive a fee, in this case, a cost that's involved in a demo, because that should be a council decision. But I caution myself and all of you that each one should be treated independently, because the circumstances are so different. And I intend on voting for this, and I think I would just ask, and I'm not asking you to commit to anything on this council, but I'll just say it this way. There may be other projects coming forward where we have to consider these types of things, and I think we should continue to have an open mind, but treat them independently and look at the overall benefit of the city, not only the areas where these are located, but it's a citywide thing. We can't just say next time because we did it for 1021 East Phillips that we're going to do it the next time because each set of circumstances is different. We all have that prerogative anyway. I know I'm stating the obvious, but I just appreciate the way you've brought this forward, handle it, talk to us about it, and I intend to support it. Thank you.

Alderman Hanauer.

Thank you. This is for Corporation Counsel. Are we technically still in negotiation with these, or is the negotiation ended, or what are we?

So we always have the option to negotiate. But I think at this point, both sides are apart. The owner wanted a reduction in the actual lien amounts that would go below what the city actually spent. And so since it would be waiving not just fees or fines or anything like that, but actual hard costs to the city, it's being presented to the city council.

Okay. And I would just say this. I think that Um, if we have homes that we didn't tear down, that it's up to the, my, my concern is if, if they, you know, if, if we're leaving it up to the owners, we should give them a deadline to tear it down or they should cut. I don't know if they're the homes that you've talked about. Uh, Alderman is, is in admin court or not, but if, if they own the house and they're responsible for tearing it down, Rather than us, you know, then we get into these situations where they stay up, you know, they last for a long time and they're an eyesore. So, I mean, from my standpoint, if these houses, and if you've got a list, they should be on admin court because if they're not going to fix them up, they need to be torn down. And, you know, I think that that's something that we need to look at. We should have a set time, and obviously on some, if they're still under investigation for like arson or something like that, insurance investigation or whatever, that's going to preclude it, but we should have a set time that if within a month of a fire, it's got to come down, and it's at the owner's expense. Otherwise, we're going to end up, you're going to see us dealing with more of these, and we don't want to take the expense. I understand that, that they don't, they don't like the cost, but the cost is the cost. And I don't know why it was more expensive. I read the, I read your, your, your, uh, uh, email today and I appreciate that. But, um, my concern is, you know, we can't, we just don't have the budget to continue to, to, you know, give away things that we don't, don't know that was going to happen. Um, And so I'm kind of torn here. I get what we're doing, but I just don't like the fact that we're, you know, and I understand, Jim, that you say that every case is an individual case, but if we do one for one and then the next guy we don't do it for, are we opening ourselves up for a lawsuit because we're giving somebody something that we're not giving another person? I mean, I don't know. You know, what are we opening ourselves up to? So, anyway, thank you.

Alderman Carlson.

Yeah, for me, you know, maybe when we have fines and violations, you know, I see that as maybe some more gray area where we maybe have a little latitude on those fines and violations. For here, you know, and Greg, I appreciate the email earlier, but, you know, Yeah, the cost is the cost. I mean, this is what it costs to tear this house down, and I just see that much different than fines and violations. So for that, I'll be a no vote. So thank you.

Alderman Gregory.

I just want to, the situation in this, though, Alderman Hanauer, you know, I know that Alderman Cost is not going to vote for this, but I do think I can talk with you. So the difference in this one, is that it wasn't a house that was burned down or anything like that or in danger or anything like that. It just caught fire up by the 11th Street tracks. There were some things that we had to do from the city side to make sure nobody was in there. I don't know if that's my fault as the property owner, right? I don't know if I should take on that type of cost because I ain't set it on fire. I didn't expect this to happen. Then we tore it down trying to put it out. Paused, sent notification as legally required. And in between there, between that of them getting a letter or whatever the case might be, we took action. We did what we needed to do. This resident has these charters. Um, they felt strongly that, that, um, had they received the letter or whatever in time, they could have took care of it themselves and save them $10,000 or more, you know, and, and, and sometimes we get in those situations and that's why this is here. Not to, um, not to, uh, uh, you know, take any responsibility or that we did something wrong. It's, you know, more so trying to help a citizen out in our city that had a piece of property that went into a bad situation. Move on, develop more property, be good citizens, you know, and try to help rebuild, especially, you know, Ward 2. And that's why I brought this. And it wasn't a light. I mean, I've been talking to these residents since November really looking at the facts talking with Murdoch No one knowing how the mayor feels on it not wanting to bring it. So You know, it was a tough thing to do and and and so I appreciate you Anything else alderman Gregory, okay alderman alderwoman no triana.

Oh

Thank you mayor. Um, quick question. So we, uh, the city of Springfield department of public works, um, the labor was furnished by us and the equipment costs. I'm a little bit confused.

Did we have to go out and like rent equipment or no, that's the, that's the operating costs that, that public works incurs for using that equipment for that amount of time.

I see. So when we're talking about the actual cost to the city here, um, it's really more of opportunity costs. Like our workers and that equipment couldn't be on a other project because it had to do this, right? I,

I wouldn't say it's that simple because the way the city operates, um, there's interdepartmental billing. So, so those charges would act if, if CWLP needed a public works crew, then public works would bill at that cost to CWLP. So it is the opportunity cost, but it's also what we pay each other to you, what different departments pay each other to use those crews.

Sure. Sure. Um, And I understand that, I do appreciate that. And I guess that makes me even more comfortable supporting a reduction in this cost as opposed to the full price. Yeah, I intend to support this. It's an unfortunate situation, but I think that when we're talking about money in the budget, we were going to spend this somehow, some way, um, pay those workers and so on and so forth. So, yeah. Thank you.

Any other discussion from the elders? Alderman Williams.

Yes, mayor. So, um, you know, I'm along, uh, with, um, all the Alderman Donlin a little bit that each case merits its own understanding. You know, when I first thought about this, I thought about my popular place, you know, over the years. Now, I don't know how many fires now Senator Turner had, but I know when I became alderman and popular place was still taken, similar to what you guys are going through with big complexes. I had four fires, four. And I can remember them being boarded up, and I'm like, that's dangerous, that's, well... Why I believe it's case by case, there was nobody in none of the units and in the whole development was empty. And the other piece of corporate council was federal money was involved. We was going through something, you know, with Ida and trying to get it. And it's beautiful today, but we had to live with those four units burnt up and boarded up and that kind of thing. And I just want us to remember, this is a single family home. And we can't get lost in comparing it with, with big apartment buildings and complex complexes and think, cause those are different. So I'm kind of like, I'm going to support it, but mostly because it's a single family home and a single owner dealing with this, not a corporation or a company. So that's all I want to say, Mary. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other discussion from the elders seeing none. Voting will now be open all those in favor the motion will vote. Yes, all those opposed will vote.

No Alderman Cox, how do you vote?

And the motion passes with seven voting yes three voting no From there we're going to go to unfinished business I would like to thank the city staff that worked at all of the four community connections events we had and all the community members that came out and saw our open houses and We finished them up last night with the water filtration facility, which was really cool, right, Robert? So thank you all for coming out. Any alders have any unfinished business? Alderwoman Purchase.

Thank you, Mayor. Director Fuchs. I thought he was going to get away today. So director, as everyone has echo, thank you to all of our employees for putting in a lot of man hours as we approach tomorrow. I did have a few residents that I just wanted you to educate and not, I'm sure this can be good for the entire council. So a tree that's in the easement from the sidewalk to the curb is considered the city property, right? And if the storm has knocked over, I call them the grandpa trees cause they're huge and they're so old, knocked it over, but it knocked it over into the residence yard is their responsibility. And if it knocked it over into the street, of course is our responsibility because traffic can't, you know, move as according. Correct.

Uh, I would, uh, if it goes into the street, absolutely. It's our responsibility and, uh, our standard practice, our policy since I've been here, if a city tree, Falls onto private property the process needs to begin with the property owner reaching out to their insurance company And then we proceed from there and the decision is made as to whether or not the city will remove it or a private contractor

Okay, yes, I had three residents, and I'm seeing more of this on social media and thought that it would just be a good forum for you to be able to just explain it. They are asking for a letter to be able to share that the city is saying it's okay for them to remove it and just the understanding for education purposes that when trees are in the city easement from the sidewalk to the curb, whose responsibility is it?

As I said, since I've been here, the policy is that if a city tree goes onto private property, the property owner should reach out to their insurance company and begin that process there. And then it goes into the realm of the attorneys and public works take a step back.

Got you. Thank you so much. And is there anything that you would like to share as we step into tomorrow? I know I've been sharing information about our crews coming out. helping my neighbors drag branches down to the street on 6th Street, so you're pretty heavily loaded over there and ready for pickup.

Well, it's been a very, very active week for Public Works, as it has for my colleagues at CWLP and the Police Department and the Fire Department as well. These are dangerous conditions when we have high winds and we begin to see limbs coming out of trees and trees coming down. It's really dangerous, and the forecast that we have for tomorrow is some very, very high winds. So I would suggest that folks, when the storm begins to show, seek a place of shelter and wait until the storm is over. We do our best to clear the public way, that is to, as we get the calls from the police department, the fire department, and from the public, we bring in a supervisor with the forestry unit They begin inspecting the calls that we get and prioritize them. Certainly if it's on the right of way, if it's on the pavement that takes priority, certainly we're concerned about limbs over the, over the sidewalks. And then we work back from there. So we brought crews in on Wednesday night. They worked all day on Thursday and we brought them again on Thursday night into Friday morning and late Friday. We brought head overtime crews over the weekend.

And we have worked overtime the last two days and we expect we'll be working overtime The next couple of days even bought even bought some new chainsaws And for those who don't know I heard the mayor saying the severe numbers severe for is four out of five four out of five yeah, I mean it's common sense to know you hit five you really extremely yeah, that's it's

We're in the season. Uh, uh, I saw something the other day, uh, that Illinois leads for the occurrence of tornadoes, uh, above all of the 50 States. We've had over a hundred since the first of the year.

We were number one last year. We were number one last year to Illinois. Um, the duration was a level three or five in case that puts that in perspective for you.

Yep. And just wanted the community to know. Thank you. Thank you, director.

Uh, Alderman Gregory, do you need director also?

you can stay around for a second. I might drift his way. But so, so I, I think that the tree on our, on our city thoroughway, whatever we want to call it, I think that presents us a real problem that we had to think about going forward. Right. Cause I, you know, there's, there's a citizen, a elder in our ward had a big, big tree fall her way. Now it didn't go through her window. It didn't damage the house. She did let her landlord know homeowner. No. Well, it went from Thursday to, And me and my constituent had to cut that tree up. He never, they never came in and did anything with it. Now we're back at another storm. If we leave that tree there, I mean, no telling what, what, what's going to happen, you know? So, so we were, we removed it for her safety and stuff like that, but it's our city tree. I just say that that process may work in some other areas, but that is a difficult, this ain't even for you. This is for Murdoch on the policy. and what we can do to change that because I think that we have to have a process where we're cutting through all this stuff for the sake of the residents and the sake of safety for people. We know we have bad landlords. We know we have bad, horrible property owners. People have left houses and things. And we plant these trees. We're all about it. I'm all about it. I've talked a lot about trees. But they're old and they're falling. And if they're going to fall in the people's yard, then I just feel it's our responsibility to come get them. We have to figure that. We can't just let... The mayor asked me earlier to send her a list of places that we need to check on or zone managers to check on. But a lot of the time, the people need action. They ain't calling for... a zone manager to come by and talk with them. They want somebody to come get this tree so they can get out. She's older, she uses a ramp, it's blocking the ramp. And going from Thursday until Monday like that, stuck in the house, is tough. It's tough for an 85-year-old person to do that. And so I have a real problem with that, particularly with property owners and landlords not giving immediate responses to their properties. And, yes, you're going to have to spend some money. Yes, you're going to have to do something. But we have to take care of our properties and help our constituents out when they stay in these rental properties. And that's what we're dealing with mostly. The community has to get out and go help people because their homeowners or their landlords are not responding quick enough. And we have to look at that and look at our policy and see how we can do some emergency things in the name of safety for the residents that we serve daily. I appreciate you, sir. Just because we're in new business, I just want to shout out.

We're still unfinished.

We're unfinished? All right. I'm sorry.

Anything else for anything else for unfinished Alderman? Okay. Alderwoman Conley.

Thank you. I'm actually going to kind of build on an old Alderman Gregory. I think we need to be very careful when we, as the city are saying, okay, this is our city tree. It fell into your yard instead of our street. My concern is we're preventing we're, we're providing a disincentive for people to plant trees. or to support trees being planted on that city property because, okay, fine. But now if this falls off, it doesn't hurt my house. It just landed in my yard. But again, I, I saw, I had trees like this all over my ward where they're huge branches. I wouldn't, I don't have, I don't have a chainsaw big enough to help people with that. And I'm clumsy. I'd probably cut something on myself. I think we really need to be careful when we're saying that's, that's your insurance first and then legal gets involved in it. Um, we do want to encourage tree planting. We want to encourage that as much as we can. One of our responses to what we're seeing with these changing climates, we want to, we want to be able to pull up those rain waters so that they don't overwhelm our storm sewers, which again, people, I mean, just say it, I'll say it a million times. If the, Water is over the road, turn around, don't drive through it. One of our responses to that though is, hey, let's plant more trees. Our urban tree movement has been vigorous. I support it. I think we all need to be. But when we then come on the other side of that and say, but it landed in your yard and we planted it, it's on our property, but now it's your problem. I understand where you're coming from with this, Dave, and I appreciate it, but I'm going to agree with Alderman Gregory. That's not even just for landlords and rentals. Yeah, there are low-income homeowners in town, and I think we need to be very careful that we're not setting up sort of a... Disincentive for do for us to do one thing that I know is very important to being part of that climate response so it's not a conversation to finish today, but I do think we need to start it and I'd certainly be interested in in ways that we can we can explore this and make sure that You know we're being fair and reasonable if it causes damage to the house. That's that's an easier you know if my neighbor's tree falls on another neighbor's house, the person who had the tree fall on them, they call their insurance. And that's kind of a straightforward. If it just lands in your yard but you're blocked and you can't get in and can't get out, I would be really careful that we're not creating more obstacles for people to want to have trees. in their neighborhood on the city's property, because that is a priority for us. We've been doing a great job with it. I appreciate it. Um, as long as they're not sweet gums, but, um, you know, I, I agree with ultimate Greg and we, that, that's not, that's not just a one part of the city issue. And I want to make sure that we, um, are very careful how we handle that. And I know you have a lot on your plate. I just want to add a little bit more to it so that you can commiserate with public works and CWLP.

I'll meet with the director.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. And I don't know that that question had been posed from anyone from the Public Works to the Corporation Council, so thank you.

Yeah, we just need to kind of keep that open as an option. Thank you, Mayor.

Alderwoman Purchase.

Thank you. Director Fuchs, you had mentioned that if it did cross the sidewalk, because I have a homeowner, and it's $5,000 for him to get this tree removed because it's so old and big. Um, and he doesn't have anybody else to call. So he's working with the insurance company, but if it's covering the sidewalk, could we potentially help? Cause Eddie is, you know, dealing with people being able to walk.

We can take it off the sidewalk. That's our responsibility. Okay.

So I would, and then I would encourage what you just said all the woman kindly because he is totally discouraged from wanting a new tree and his property that he owns. Because he's like, what if this happens again and it grows over time? So I think that that is an issue and something that we should take a hard look at.

I stand at the ready to have a discussion with anybody about any issue.

Thank you. Thank you, Director. So that ends old business. Now we're on to new business. Alderman Gregory, do you have new business?

Yes, I just wanted to, well, I guess this was old business, but. Juneteenth, of course, is Friday, but over the weekend, Juneteenth, they did celebrate Juneteenth, and they'll finish it off Friday. It was a wonderful time. A little bit of rain here and there Saturday, but Sunday was supposed to be rain. You good to go, big bro. I don't want to do you like that. A little bit of rain was supposed to come Sunday, but, you know, as they had a good time with church, the rain held off Sunday, and it was beautiful. They did kick off the in-season tournament, so to speak, to the midnight basketball at Juneteenth, and it was really, really exciting to see not only former high school stars come back and play who've been on to college and not playing anymore, but just your common folks out there playing. It was a good time. Solid Ground Solutions did an excellent job with that, as well as the organizers of Juneteenth. and they will kick off their first official game Friday at 10 o'clock. The whole goal of this is to give 18- to 30-year-olds something to do, and each Friday we do plan to add things to that, like have Express come in and offer jobs and help professionals. And this is Men's Health Month, and information about prostate cancer and things of that nature come in each Friday night. as well as some food and some good things. So they'll do that eight weeks throughout the summer. They'll end it with a playoff and a championship similar, and hopefully we're able to add some surprises at the end of that. But it really, really was good to see that and see all the people who came to watch those young men. And it was a good night. So it'll continue, stop through. It'll be held at the Salvation Army. They've been gracious. You know ever since I've they've ever been in that building, but they continue to do that. So I appreciate your time Thank you.

Thank you any other new business?

All right citizens that have signed up to address the council Danielle Webster Danielle Webster Dr. Roxanne Casey

We are better together. Good evening, everyone. My name is Dr. Roxanne Casey. I'm here today as a community member. I am a community leader, but I stand this evening as a community member. I come to say we are better together. I often heard this phrase while growing up in a family of 17 in the inner city of Chicago. We are all we got. we are better together. As leaders, you all have seen the best and the worst approaches when community members have confronted you about the need for adequate assistance or immediate attention to address a community matter. I believe that when our voices are not heard and doors are slammed shut to adequate resources and help, it creates a disconnect and disunity with leadership and community. Currently, we have many community organizations that address concerns and meet the needs of our community. I ask that this administration develop a mayoral community organization roundtable. This is not to police the community organization, but give the mayor and the leadership of Springfield an opportunity to sit down with one or two leaders of each community organization to learn and Here, the progress, the setbacks, the areas that can be enhanced, and areas where each organization can partner with the mayor, her team, and other leaders for the common good for each member in Springfield. For example, there can be a quarterly meeting with the mayor community organization roundtable to discuss how the organizations can designate a person to work on establishing the Massey Commission 26 calls to action. Another example regarding safe housing and landlord licensing is for the organizations to collaborate on a housing booklet and one or two hour in-person class on basic home upkeep and management, which can be required of tenants to reinforce the importance of caring for their rental units. In order to better to In order to be better together and enjoy the peace and prosperity of Springfield, there must be an effective working relationship between those in authority and community organizations to meet the needs of our city. Because of this, I firmly believe that we are to pray for those who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. Also, I firmly believe in praying unto God for the peace and prosperity of the city of Springfield, because if it prosper, we too will prosper. We all know that there is a thin line between the church and the state that limits the churches from working with the governing body of the city of Springfield, or the state. But there is no controversy between the creator of heaven and earth, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. especially his people. The Ministerial Alliance has been fasting and praying seven days a week since 2024 for our city and for everyone who sits in the seats of authority. So again, I ask that the administration develop a mayoral community round table, not to police the community organization, but to come alongside to assist each organization in building and fortifying unity in the Springfield community.

Thank you very much. Triyona Johnson. Triyona Johnson. Rakesha Bright. Rakesha Bright. Kendra Bright. Tamika Seymour.

Tamika's here.

Good evening, everybody.

This is a statement and a question. I'm going to start off with safety. Y'all said something about last week about bicycles. Is that right? About bikes riding on sidewalks and they should be right on streets. The safety is something to speak about, not myself, but all bicycles. I ride my bike on the sidewalk too. And when I ride my e-bike, I ride it on the road. You have to look at people that be in them cars. When we sit up there and ride our bike, we can't look behind us. Some of us got mirrors on our bikes, some of us don't. And when people be sitting up there blowing their horns, we react to that. How many times you seen people get hit from the back? And the ones that get hit from the back, they never survive. They dies from trauma, brain hemorrhage, brain hemorrhage, brain. And then they don't stop. They run them over. Why you think we have to think about ourself When the police is not doing their job. When they're not controlling the streets where most of the bikes ride. The biggest crime rate in bikes. You got a kid got hit. Do you think where he got hit front, side, on the back? Because sometimes when I ride my bike, I take over in the middle of the road. And knowing that's illegal, we're supposed to be closer to the curb. When you got people flying across us, not scooting over like they need to, just come over just a little bit and then side swipe us. That's a danger. And we have to really look at the laws of the city for the bikes. Because every time I'm riding, people come past me, cuss me out, get on the sidewalk. People blows, instead of just honking once, they honk, they honk now. And I got to remember, If I hit my brake, what would happen? Why you think I ride my bike on the sidewalk? It's not a choice. It's about safety. Look at the laws. Come up with a better solution. And let the officers troll the streets. Because Salmon County, hard. Enos Park area, hard. I can tell you the exact time They come through there. Do you think the people come through there doing 20? They come through there doing 50, 60, 70 miles an hour on 8th Street, 7th Street, 6th, 5th, and 4th. Stevenson, Clear Lake, Wabash. Do you want me to go? I can go more streets than that because I just rode all of them. Let's think about and take a moment of silence when a little kid got hit over on his side.

Dr. Jim Applegate.

Good evening and thanks for your stick to it at this tonight I'm dr. Jim Applegate former executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and a member of the coalition for Springfield's utility future You should all have copies in my remarks and the references supporting them soon Springfield has wisely included in the last two years to create an ending funding to create an integrated resource plan and IRP which you've heard a lot about over the years and for Springfield's energy future, what adequate to projected needs, and most importantly, fair to all concerned. As the IRP process begins, the Coalition for Springfield's Utility Future urges CWLP, and we met with them earlier this week, and the council to include a strong public engagement plan that employs expertise to ensure broad public support for whatever plan we come up with. Springfield is not at the cutting edge of IRP development. Hundreds of communities across the country have plans in place to ensure that affordable, reliable, climate-friendly energy. Their work makes one thing very clear. One of the important components of effective plan development is meaningful public involvement at every step of plan development. It makes a difference between just a plan and an effective plan. Now fortunately, the strategies for ensuring meaningful public engagement in the development of an integrated resource plan are readily available. We have a reference list now. What is absolutely not a meaningful plan for engagement is hiring experts, developing a plan, and then at the final stage, posting it and asking for comments. Before I came to Illinois, I headed a large national foundation. We spent millions of dollars in communities across the country to engage communities in important conversations to improve the quality of life. And this is what that involved. It looks like this. Ensure public input at every stage of planned development from the selection of vendors to final implementation. Ensure adequate... Reach, and this is really important, with all impacted communities using multi-channel inclusive outreach to reach those communities. Too often, those most impacted by our public plans are not in the decision-making process. Create meaningful opportunities for collaboration that are interactive. Solicit opinions and insights from residents. Do not just ask for responses to pre-approved proposals. Systematically record input that can be then used to inform your decision making going forward as we develop that plan. Report out regularly on how the community input is being used in impacting decisions at every step of the process. People will not stay engaged if they feel like their suggestions are disappearing into the ethosphere. And maintain a transparent, organized record of outreach, participation, and follow up to build trust. The Coalition for Springfield's Utility Future, with its many organizations, is willing to work with CWLP to bring people to these meetings. However, I can tell you from past experience the hard work of setting up public meetings that engage diverse voices from across our community, assembling the input from those meetings into data for use in planned development, and sharing outcomes with the public will require an independent effort from people who know how to do this. One approach would be to include this work as a responsibility for the vendor that is selected for the IRP analysis. Another approach would be to use a small part of the funds to employ an independent firm. Either way, whatever it takes. However we do it, though, let's make sure as we develop this IRP that the people's voice is heard in the development of the people's plan for the people's energy future.

Thank you. Alderman Williams.

Yes, sir. You met with... Yeah, we had a meeting this week. Was there a timeline or any kind of time frame established on...

Well, it's our understanding from CWLP that they're moving forward with this, that their person is being put in charge of it. It's going to move forward. And what we discussed with them and what I'm saying to you is, you know, you have experts who do all this technical analysis, you know, of stuff. But that's not the plan. What that does is provides you with options for different ways to go for your energy. But then the plan is something that has to be developed, and it's got to be a 20-year plan with five-year interims where you're going to talk about what are we going to do in the first five years to move forward. And then after five years, you come back to it and say, well, what worked and what didn't? That's where you need the public input. Because we're talking this plan will have an effect on rates, this plan will have an effect on the climate in our community, this plan will have effects on people. And that's why, and you don't, not to be critical, but you don't want a situation like this where people just come up and spout, and then they go sit down and that's it. What you want are meetings where people get to come, talk about what they'd like to see in such a plan, talk about what they want, talk about what they care about and what they're concerned about, and feed that into the process of decision-making around how to develop the plan. That's what works. That's what gets the community engaged. And then you have support. You guys have the support of the people. It's not like it's something that was imposed upon them.

Well, you know, I agree with you 100%. I mean, engagement. You know, me and Director Brown had went around previously about he wanted to wait until some kind of bill was going on down at the state legislature, which delayed us with a lot of this. I'm so happy to hear that you have had a meeting. I am going to take the time to visit these links, because someone put a nice piece together here, and see what I can learn from the links and how we can apply it here in Springfield. So thank you for your efforts and your time, and hopefully we'll get this planned.

Developed I look forward to working and we want to work with you on this to get people engaged So there's someone else time for speaking on just one second Alderman Conley.

Thank you. No, I actually just wanted to I appreciate that you brought Links and and and I appreciate the copies if you could email this would it be possible?

No problem I will lose a piece of paper, but oh no bringing who should I mean I will find who do I need to get them to you guys Can you write down Tim's email for him?

Tim Griffin will send it out to all of us. We'll get it to you.

As I said, this community engagement stuff, it's not rocket science. I mean, the Institute for Local Governments, everybody's done that, and you really want that because you want people to support what you come up with.

Council Coordinator's Office is getting you a business card. She'll bring it out to you, okay? Okay. Thank you so much.

Appreciate your time, and again, thanks for your stamina.

Angela Young. Angela Young. Ken Pasha. Ken Pasha. Ken Pasha.

He's tired from Juneteenth.

Sorry, I heard my back move on one of those city trees.

Oh, Sean told me he looked you.

Thing was huge, man. My neighborhood's full of 75-year-old trees, so that happens quite often. But I digress. You know, we talk a lot about the idea of civility. I heard an interview with our mayor not too long ago with Mr. Madonia, where Sam at the end of his program noted that we here at City Council that speak may be engendering sympathy for the mayor with our rhetoric and our tone and our approach. And I have to question that. I really do. It seems odd to me that I, as an average citizen, should maintain my decorum at all times when we talk about the frequency of damage that's inflicted upon the communities in our city. I mean, I was pretty upset talking about a 14-year-old boy being tackled by the police last week, and I'm not really sure that that should engender sympathy for anyone that's on the receiving end of that. When you sit in silence while your police chief stands up here and justifies it and starts trying to tell us that teenagers need to know what Terry stops are, it starts to get a little frustrating that that civility seems almost like a false veneer. He doesn't have that civility for his citizens, so why do you have that civility for him? Why do we tolerate that from leadership? This idea that we should be nice about it all the time. Well, that quite honestly is for private debate. I had a great meeting Monday with somebody that I disagree ardently on a lot of things, and we sat down and we talked about it. But guess what? They're not in charge of a $63 million city fund right now. They don't get the right to deny services. They don't get to let police chiefs kick community stakeholders out.

We have a... War on racism. I mean, a war on... But y'all at least listen to me, and I appreciate you. Every one of you. Even those of you that don't like me.

And I know somebody don't like me on this council, but I don't... As they're saying, that will take real soft damage structures over...