We'll call a committee of the whole meeting for the Elgin City Council for September 24th, 2025 to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Zalcaro.

Here.

Dixon.

Present.

Good.

Here.

Martinez.

Here.

Ortiz?

Here.

Powell?

Here.

Stefan?

Here.

Thorne?

Here.

Mayor Captain.

Here.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting of September 10th.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move the second for approval.

Any corrections or additions.

No.

Hearing none, please call the rule.

Sorry.

Ms.

O'Farr.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Um, I just wanted to make two quick changes to the minutes on page five.

Um, when it's referring to the change to the resolution, if we could just say it was the whole section referring to Illinois House Bill 4486.

It just says remove references, but it was that whole wear as, just referring to that.

And then on page six, it's um national support Latino Business Day and not Hispanic Business Day.

So we could just change the Hispanic to Latino.

Got it.

Thank you.

Move for approval with the amendments.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Please call the vote.

Council Member Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion's approved 9-0.

Uh brings us to public comment.

Um we have a little change in order tonight to accommodate some scheduling for meetings.

Would uh Mike Bob Langalus meet me at the podium, please.

I think it's crop hunger walk.

Okay.

We're doing this.

Whereas healthy food is essential to thriving, to growth, and a prosperous long life, and those without land to give food uh to grow food or money to buy it, are likely to suffer from hunger and whereas 800 million people around the world are hungry, including the 11 to 12 percent of Americans.

33.3 million children die from hunger each year, and 66 million primary school age children around the world go school hungry, go to school hungry, with one in five of American school children risk going to school hungry.

And whereas the Crop Hunger Walk has been organizing the right cities and towns across America to fight hunger around the world and in their communities for 50 years, and Elgin has been a part of the Crop Hunger Walk since 1983, raising over 740,000 in the fight against hunger.

And whereas the 2025 Crop Hunger Walk honors two chairpersons, Vern Tepe, a Congregation Knesset Israel member, whose public service volunteer work and advocacy have supported efforts addressing hunger, homelessness, and mental health, and Robert Langolis, who has long led local and global relief efforts, building coalitions, securing resources, and championing programs such as Elgin soup kettles, food for greater Elgin, and the Crop Hunger Walk.

And whereas this court this year's Crop Hunger Walk is a walk to unite our community to raise funds and support Elgin's food pantries and soup kitchens, as well as church world service and drawing attention not only to the problems of hunger, but also to the solutions and improving the quality of life and supporting peace and security for all people.

Now, therefore, I David Captain, mayor of the city of Elgin, Illinois, to hereby proclaim Sunday, October 19, 2025, as Hunger Walk Day in Elgin, and encourage all citizens to support observations that raise public awareness concerning hunger and poverty, their causes, and their solutions.

Congratulations, General.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm deeply honored and humbled to stand before you today as the honorary chair of Elgin's 2025 Crop Walk.

When I first received the invitation, I was struck not only by the legacy of this event, but by the spirit and compassion and community that fuels it year after year.

The Crop Walk is more than just a fundraiser.

It's a movement.

It's a declaration that hunger, whether across the globe or right here in Elgin, is not acceptable.

And it's a promise that together we will do something about it.

To be chosen as honorary chair is a privilege, and I don't take it lightly.

I accept this role not for recognition, but as a call to action.

I've seen firsthand how food insecurity affects family, how it erodes dignity, how it stifles opportunity.

But I've also seen how powerful we can be when we walk together with purpose, with conviction, and with love.

I want to thank the organizers, volunteers, faith communities, and every single walker who looses up, who laces up their shoes for this cause.

You are the heartbeat of this effort.

Your steps echo far beyond the streets of Elgin.

They ripple across continents, bringing hope to those who need it most.

I also want to thank the city of Elgin and Mayor Captain for this proclamation.

The more we can work together to fight food insecurity and homelessness, the better we can make this world.

And let's all work together to combat the hate and violence that seems to have infected too many people in this world.

Helen Keller once said, alone we can do so little.

Together we can do so much.

Let's make this year's walk the most impactful yet.

Let's walk not just with our feet, but with our hearts.

Let's remind the world that Elgin stands for justice, for generosity, and for change.

Thank you for this incredible honor.

I'm proud to walk beside you.

Thank you, Vern.

And I appreciate the recognition for the hunger walk, and what I'm most proud of is that we do it as a community.

There's over 25 churches and organizations that participate.

So we do it as a community.

And for that I am very, very grateful.

So thank you much.

We have one person sign up for public comment this evening.

Cheryl Brumbach Heat.

Good evening to the mayor and city council and city staff.

My name is Cheryl Burnbach Haford.

I'm a resident of Elgin.

I want to speak to two things today.

First, I urge you to vote for the climate action plan.

I strongly support climate action by our city, and I appreciate all the things the city has been doing in the way of climate action and mitigation so far.

I appreciate the efforts to maintain a healthy environment for us all.

I really appreciate all the work that the Sustainability Commission and the Sustainability staff have put into creating this plan.

This plan is long overdue, and it is so good to see it finally come to your table for approval.

This plan makes a great start toward meeting our responsibilities.

Whenever you see the date 2050 in the plan, think to yourself that's way too far down the road.

Things have to happen before then.

I want to raise the question of what our city leaders can do as a public response to ICE attacks in our city.

And as a way to reassure our residents that you are with them all and that you stand beside them.

Elgin, our city, was chosen by Christine Noam to personally supervise a violent home invasion in which ICE used explosive to blow in the doors of a house on Chippewash Street.

If you've ever been to that area of the city, you know it's a quiet residential, nice middle class neighborhood.

But that's the place DHS chose to have.

Christy know I'm flying to attack personally.

People on the ground.

We must ask what does that mean.

What does that mean for Elgin?

That our military were on our streets and in our air last week.

Our city was violently broken into.

I snatched an ECC student on the college campus.

I stopped cars on Elgin streets to abduct people and more.

What does this mean?

I think it means that Algin has come under violent military-style attack by the federal government.

Algin has come under attack by the federal government.

Why Elgin?

One of the reasons I've heard expressed is that it is because we are a place of welcome.

And you all have made it a place of welcome with your leadership.

It is something we need to pay attention to that our place of welcome has now been violated.

And I would urge the city leaders to make some public action in response.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Manager, that brings us to items on both agendas.

Thank you, Mayor.

We have two this evening.

The first is the liability crime and workers' compensation insurance program renewals for the term beginning October 1st, 2025 and continuing through September 30th, 2026.

The city annually annually renews its liability and workers' compensation insurance policies.

The RICS risk management department, Kelly Wazlewski is in attendance, provides updated information to the city's insurance consultant and insurance carriers every year to gauge the market and estimate the annual insurance premiums for these coverages.

As the council knows, the work that Ms.

Wazluski and the corporation council have been doing are right down to the wire in terms of trying to secure the best premiums for the city.

Mr.

Beck has some information that was just obtained this evening that he's going to share for the council in the benefit of the public before the council ultimately votes on this on the regular agenda.

Thank you, Mr.

Manager.

Uh as city manager indicated, uh Kelly Waslewski of the risk manager, our risk manager for the city, uh was working with our insurance broker right up until uh the last minute to try to uh obtain the best possible insurance renewal premiums for the city.

Uh there was a memorandum that was sent out to all the mayors to the mayor and the members of council.

Uh it was sent about 450, so uh very late in the day.

I I did provide uh hard copies on uh at your places there so you can read it, but it contains the most updated uh premiums that we'll be uh recommending that the city council approve at the city council meeting later this evening.

Um as indicated in the committee of the whole memorandum and in this memo, um liability insurance for public entities all over in the city uh has become more difficult with the increased uh liability, the increased damages that uh many municipalities are exposed to when there is instances where they are either rightfully or wrongfully uh brought to court by people seeking damages.

Um travelers insurance has been our primary insurance carrier for years, and they used to carry all of our both primary general liability insurance and our excess uh umbrella liability insurance.

We used to have two million dollars of premium uh, or we still have two million dollars of primary liability insurance and then access liability up to 15 million dollars.

Uh travelers is no longer willing to carry all that insurance, so uh Ms.

Wazluski has had to go out to look for other uh insurers to provide that excess liability coverage, and that leads to getting multiple quotes from multiple different entities for the different layers of insurance and comparing those, so it can be quite complex.

Uh you have before you uh in this memo the final recommendation that you'll be asked to approve tonight.

Uh the memo primarily relates to the access liability coverage, which is this difficult layer that uh we need to secure.

So travelers will be writing the first five million dollars of the city's liability insurance, the two million dollars of primary coverage, and then the first three million dollars of excess liability coverage, the annual premium for the access liability coverage for travelers is 108,576.

A company called Public Risk Innovation Solutions and Management called PRISM are gonna provide the next five million dollars of excess liability coverage.

The premium for that coverage is 258,850, and then the final layer of five million dollars in coverage in excess of the first ten million is going to be provided by HDI Global for an annual premium of 156,382.

So the total uh insurance uh renewal uh I've also attached the premium schedule, which shows the total insurance premiums for the city's liability as well as automobile umbrella insurance crime and workers' compensation renewals that are all being uh asked to approve of this meeting is one hundred and one million seven hundred thousand seven hundred and ninety-one dollars.

Um that represents almost a 29% increase from last year's premiums.

Uh that amount is about 10,000 less than what was set forth in the committee of the whole memorandum.

And one last issue I did want to bring up with respect to PRISM.

This kind of goes to how much we're going up to you know, try to get responses that are um from the carriers.

PRISM was not able to provide a final um exact estimate for their coverage from the five million and twelve million dollar range.

So you're being asked to approve a premium and an amount not to exceed 258,850.

So the actual premium could be less than that amount, um, but it won't exceed that amount.

So I think if there's any questions, they'll be maybe addressed that they can be addressed now, or I'll set the city council meeting.

Any immediate questions?

Okay, moving on.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for respect.

The next item is a grant agreement with the Illinois Department of Transportation.

This is for the sustained traffic enforcement program, commonly referred to as STEP.

This is for occupant protection and impaired driving enforcement by the police department.

STEP grant provides funding for a variety of prevention and enforcement activities, including occupant protection checks and impaired driving enforcement.

The program's goal is to reduce motor vehicle crash fatalities and injuries, increase the use of occupant protection devices, and reduce impaired driving.

All costs associated with these efforts are reimbursed through the grant.

Move for approval.

Both agendas.

Any questions immediate for the manager?

Okay, moving on.

All right.

This is the big third item involves a presentation as well, and this is the City of Elgin's climate action and resiliency plan.

As we've heard, Elgin has a strong record of advancing sustainability, beginning with its early adoption of a sustainability action plan, completing a greenhouse gas inventory, and investing in staff like Ms.

Ifner and Jess, dedicated to this work.

The Climate Action Resiliency Plan builds on these foundational initiatives, providing a roadmap to guide future action, ensuring that Elgin continues to lead with strategies that protect public health, safeguard infrastructure, and support a high quality of life for residents.

The CAP that we'll be hearing about this evening has four overarching goals: achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, adopting to climate impacts, fostering collaboration with the community, and delivering social, environmental, and economic benefits equitably.

29 strategic actions are organized into six focus areas, addressing energy use in homes and businesses, transportation, resource consumption, biodiversity, and public health.

The plan prioritizes the include inclusion, excuse me, by ensuring that the needs and lived experiences of Elgin's most vulnerable populations are represented as part of this plan.

Implementation guidance that we'll hear from is also built into the plan.

Progress is going to be tracked through the city's strategic planning dashboard with regular updates shared with the community.

Early actions will expand education, outreach and partnerships, creating momentum for the long-term policies that reduce emissions and strengthen resiliency.

Adopting the climate action and resiliency plan requires no immediate funding commitment from the city today.

Initiatives with any cost will be presented to the city council for considerations of the regular approval process.

How are you this evening?

Good evening.

I'm doing well.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members.

Glad to be here tonight.

I'm very excited to be introducing to members from our consulting firm planning communities.

Also want to thank Cheryl for her comments earlier and her and her group's involvement.

Just also want to thank uh Leslie Porter.

She's part of our elegant sustainability commission and their work that was in this plan.

Uh the commission's played a key role in this process since we started in 2024.

Um actually, before I even started, they were working on recommendations for the RFP.

So that kind of was very helpful when I started.

Um, but they also um played a role in the engagement strategy as well as serving on the advisory committees that helped develop and shape this plan.

Um they were involved in reviewing drafts as well as um showing support for the final recommendations that are brought to you tonight.

Um actions in the plan are designed to be both ambitious but practical, um, and they are grounded with community input support and are focused on long-term lasting impact.

This plan builds on LGIN's long history of sustainability efforts.

Um, and by adopting this plan, this is just another step for this city to continue to be a transformative organization committed to fostering a vibrant community and preparing for the shifting climate impacts that we are already seeing today.

So I want to thank you guys for your time and consideration of this plan.

And with that, I would like to hand it over to Ann.

Thanks, Kristen, and thanks for having us present today to the council.

We are, as Kristen mentioned, planning communities, women-owned B Corp committed to social and environmental responsibility.

We've worked on climate action plans and zero emission fleet transition plans throughout the Midwest and from Oregon to Vermont.

And we've really enjoyed and been impressed with our work with the City of Elgin and city staff over the past year to develop this climate action and resiliency plan that you see today.

This work has been done in step with staff, city staff, Kristen and Jess Van Dyke as well, as well as our team member Elevate, who is a nonprofit that has done work in the region and supported the engagement on the plan.

And so throughout throughout the presentation, when we talk about we, we're really talking about that work of the collective team that's been working together over the past year.

So today we just wanted to go over as quickly as we can because there's a lot in this plan.

If you've taken a look at it and started to dig in, it was made available last week.

Today we'll cover sort of the plan and the process, a brief overview of the content, the main areas, including the key climate findings that supported the plan recommendations, as well as the community and stakeholder engagement, briefly highlighting those climate actions and an overview of the implementation strategy and approach and next steps.

Due to the content, even in this abbreviated format, if we could hold questions until the end, we've set aside time for questions, and some of those may be answered as we go through the presentation.

So first I'm going to talk a little bit about the climate action plan development process, including key technical data, the goal, the goals that were set in the plan, and stakeholder and public engagement, which played a key role in the development of the recommendations and the final plan.

The city, starting off, the city's baseline greenhouse gas inventory was actually completed in 2023, working with ICLE, and it was reviewed by our team in identifying needed climate actions.

Human activities, particularly the energy use in buildings and transportation, as you really can see from the chart, are the primary drivers of greenhouse gas emissions.

The other thing that you'll notice when you look at the data is that a lot of the emissions are coming from what we call community emissions, things that maybe are not directly within the city's control.

Some of them can be influenced through policy or regulation, and others require the city to really partner out on those climate actions.

There's additional breakdown and more detail on the greenhouse gases summarized in the climate action plan.

Other thing to notice on this slide is that the inventory was also accompanied by two targets that you see there on the screen for a nearly 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and emission carbon neutrality by 2050.

And these are science-based targets that came from Ickley through that work.

But then as we moved into the climate action and resiliency plan, that was building from the GHG inventory and incorporating other climate resilience equity and other priorities within the city.

And so the goals that you see here were developed for the CAP through that process.

And the key stakeholders who Alisa will talk about in more detail later, help develop these goals, which include reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and achieving the carbon neutrality, which we saw in the previous slide, but also adapting to and addressing the impacts of climate change as it is happening, as well as really fostering throughout the process a collaborative process and an engaged process as much of the climate actions need to happen out within the community and with partners.

And finally, delivering benefits to everyone within Elgin.

Environmental, social, and economic refer to those as co-benefits.

It's not just about reducing emissions, it's about achieving other goals.

So the plan process briefly highlighted here.

This shows a timeline of the development of the process, which did, as Kristen mentioned, start in spring of last year.

And our team then, as we came on last year, we worked with the city to kind of collect and compile the baseline information, establish that framework and the goals that you saw, identify potential climate actions, and develop implementation strategies.

Throughout this process, this was done with specific stakeholder engagement with a technical and advisory groups, community working group, and throughout the entire process that was incorporated to ensure the values and ideas were shaping the plan.

The sustainability commission was involved throughout giving that feedback originally to inform the RFP.

Our team as a whole with the city was meeting with the commission early in the planning process to share the timeline, the engagement strategy, and how they would be involved in the process.

And then there were commission members who participated in the community working group and the technical stakeholder committee meetings held last August and then in November and again in March.

And commissioners reviewed and gave gave feedback initially on the advisory committee members as well.

The commission was also given the opportunity to review and give input to the engagement strategy and given resources to help conducting outreach with the broader community and being invited to outreach, a lot of which was led by staff.

And finally, the commissioners reviewed the climate action blueprints in the spring and the draft climate action plan in the summer and supporting the final CAP draft in August to come to City Council.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Elisa to talk more about the engagement and what's included in the Climate Action Plan.

Thanks, Anne.

Wonderful to be with you all tonight.

So as has been mentioned, community engagement was a really important part of developing this plan.

We had some broad goals that were informed by Sustainability Commission members and city staff members.

The first was to build long-term partnerships with community partners, as was mentioned.

There are a lot of emissions that come not just from the city but from the community.

And so being able to reduce those emissions and implement actions that really benefit everyone in the community requires having strong community partnerships.

We also wanted to make sure that we were including historically underrepresented voices throughout the community engagement.

There are lots of different groups that fall into that, but in particular in Elgin, we wanted to focus on the Hispanic community, reaching out to community organizations who work with that community and providing engagement options in both English and Spanish to be more accessible.

The third goal was making participation accessible and engaging.

This is a community plan.

We wanted to make sure that people felt invested in it, and part of that is offering options for sharing ideas and becoming involved that are maybe a little more fun than some of our typical public meeting formats.

So that was another important part for us.

I'll first touch on the advisory groups.

We had our community working group, which was made up of residents, representatives from community organizations, not just ones that focus on climate, but that touch on all different parts of life in Elgin.

And then we also had our technical steering committee, which was made up of city staff, staff from local agencies and other organizations, as well as some local businesses and utility providers.

They were really there to help us with some of the more technical considerations that went into the plan to help hash out the implementation details.

As was mentioned, we had sustainability commission members on both of these to help us keep things in line with Sustainability Commission goals.

In addition to working with those advisory groups, we also hosted and attended many different community events and workshops.

Big shout out to the sustainability staff who were really great in reaching out, connecting with community members at about 25 different events across across this past year.

They collaborated with schools, colleges, universities, lots of collaboration with the library, in addition to some faith-based organizations and other cultural groups.

The list is far too long to go over in detail.

But we engaged with hundreds of stakeholders through tabling workshops, focus groups, and lots of other ways for them to participate.

So, in addition to that in-person engagement, we also wanted to make sure that people had an option to participate online since sometimes it's hard to get to an in-person event.

We had a few different options.

We did a community survey early on in the process, received a great number of responses where people were sharing their concerns and priorities for climate action in Elgin, in addition to suggesting potential actions that they would like to see the city take.

We also used a platform called Social Pinpoint, which offers some different engagement activities online.

The one you see here is the ideas map where people could drop a pin and share an experience of flooding or heat or a park that they liked, resources in the community, or share action ideas.

So we gathered a lot of different action ideas from that.

And then lastly, we had a social media presence and outreach.

Again, shout out to city staff and the communications department as well, who were really instrumental in getting those out.

But those were focused on educating people about the topics in the climate action plan and encouraging them to attend engagement events and participate online.

So building on all of that engagement, we wanted to make sure that we were also grounding this plan in science and data about what impacts from climate change are happening in Algin.

In order to really ground the community resilience in other equity considerations, we included some social vulnerability analysis as part of the plan.

According to the Cain County climate action, climate vulnerability assessment, they had highlighted some specific groups that we wanted to keep in mind when developing actions, including older adults, low-income residents, people who work outdoors, households without vehicles.

We wanted to make sure we were focusing on those groups in addition to other historically underrepresented groups in Elgin.

So considering social vulnerability was an important part of deciding what actions we wanted to include in the plan and what implementation steps would be needed to carry those out.

In terms of more physical climate impacts, one of the first and biggest that comes up is changes to precipitation and increased flooding risk.

So this map here shows flooding vulnerability throughout Elgin.

You can see that it's, you know, sort of throughout the city, and it's something we wanted to keep in mind.

Flooding risk and changes in precipitation also came up in engagement efforts.

Lots of residents were sharing experiences that they had had with flooding, and so we wanted to keep those front of mind and include strategies for flood mitigation, expanding green space, supporting green infrastructure, etc.

Another big climate impact is extreme heat.

Summers are getting hotter.

The number of days above 95 degrees is projected to increase, and this was again something that was reflected in engagement with community members who shared their experiences.

So similar with flooding, we wanted to make sure that this was reflected in the actions so that we could address this issue in Elgin through things like energy efficiency and reducing utility burdens, in addition to promoting parks in natural areas and tree cover, which can help reduce extreme heat.

So taking all of that data, all of the things that we had learned and heard throughout our engagement, we made sure to put together an extremely comprehensive list of over 200 climate actions initially.

And based on taking we took those 200 actions and narrowed them down based on quite a few different criteria.

So our team, in addition to city staff, input from our advisory groups and from commission members.

We used these in addition to some other factors like cost, timeline, level of effort to implement, and narrowed that list of about 200 actions down to 29.

So those 29 actions are organized into these six topic areas: commercial energy, residential energy, transportation and mobility, sustainable resource consumption, sequestration and biodiversity, public health and safety.

These are core areas that will help guide climate action.

Many of the actions sort of interrelate across these topic areas, but it's helpful to think of them in these groups.

And they help reflect some of the communities' priorities and long-term goals.

So part of that was creating and identifying some of the key characteristics of each of these actions.

The first you'll see here is implementation responsibility.

We've identified where actions fall within the jurisdiction of the city and where there will need to be partnership with other regional agencies, state government, community partners.

Again, because not all the emissions are directly under the control of the city and this is a community, we wanted to make sure to highlight where partnership would be important.

We also outlined co-benefits for each of these actions.

A transportation action might also improve social resilience or infrastructure resilience.

So we've got these different co-benefits to identify those cross-cutting themes across actions.

And then we also have some other considerations like cost and time frame for implementation.

So there are lots of actions, and I encourage you all to look at the plan for them in particular.

We're also happy to answer any questions about particular actions, but here is just an example of one of the summary tables showing some of those characteristics compared across actions.

And then in addition to having those overview tables, we also developed implementation blueprints for these actions, which really act as a guide for putting these plan strategies into action, implementing them.

The blueprints really help translate the climate goals into actionable steps for city for the city and their partners.

There are a few actions that don't have a blueprint, often because they're things that the city is really already doing very well and just needs to continue, or where they've been really highlighted and outlined in other city plans.

But some of the things that we wanted to make sure to call out in these implementation blueprints were what the action was, the cost and time frame, how the community supported it, and what some of the co-benefits were, and then importantly, to what extent the city has authority to implement this action versus needing to partner with others, who those key partners are.

We wanted to make sure those were identified to help continue engagement, identifying potential funding sources where possible.

Obviously, we want to be able to support this work and find other funding sources where possible.

As I think many have said, Elgin is already doing a lot of really great work.

So we wanted to make sure that we were highlighting and summarizing the work that has already been done so that when going to implement these actions, we can build off existing work, and then highlighting some action item implementation steps and key tracking metrics to help communicate progress on the plan.

And with that, I'm gonna pass it back to Ann to talk about some of the broader implementation themes from the Climate Action Plan.

And we'll just wrap up with kind of a final three slides around that.

Implementation is obviously you know essential and something that's already ongoing within LGIN, but we find that in our work in climate action plans, this is the really important part is to kind of set that structure for how these plans you all mentioned earlier as you adopt it, these are actions that will need to come before the council in the future or in future actions within the work that staff does.

And so there are three key elements that are included in the climate action plan.

There's a section on governance, partnerships and engagement and metrics and tracking.

The governance strategies are really about sort of making sure that climate action is sort of in it is thought about in all of the city's planning and strategic decisions.

Yes, everything that's in the plan, but just a thought process, kind of a mindset for planning and decision making.

And also that there is support and resources at the staff level for kind of then implementation activities as well as tracking and decisions around how you know frequently the city might want to update something like the GHG inventory or revisit climate actions.

Partnerships and engagement you know is such an emphasis because so much of the GHG emissions happens with these outside partners and not directly controlled by the city.

So continuing those great collaborations that have been started during this CAP process and before that with community organizations, educational institutions, and regional partners, and making sure that that's equitable engagement that's very accessible to youth, those with limited English proficiency, and that really community-based organizations and trusted leaders of the community are part of that communication and engagement that's maintained throughout implementation.

And again, much of that implementation may be happening with those community organizations.

And finally, metrics and tracking, finding accessible and feasible metrics to include and report on that grow over time, launching some sort of public-facing tracking dashboard, having annual CAP updates that can be reported on a website.

Those are things that will need resources and that will build over time.

But in addition to thinking about those three areas of implementation, there's that time frame for implementation.

And so, really getting started in the first two years at continuing to grow the partnerships, building on actions that are already in place, focusing on educational campaigns and community-focused programs.

And that will be the focus in those early years as you're gearing up for the bigger pieces in years three through five.

In years three through five, you really start making sure that policy-based changes, especially bigger policy-based changes can begin to happen and to promote and incentivize resilient development, and also that you're beginning to like outline and put those programs in place that will achieve bigger goals in years five and beyond your more major infrastructure investments or focus areas from the plan that may include things like electrification of municipal buildings or fleet transition or other infrastructure actions may need to be you know programmed in as capital items and be further out.

So the implementation strategy does a little bit of organizing the plan actions around that.

There's a lot of actions in there.

They can't all be done at once.

And so, you know, having a strategy that puts that out over time, and then as you get to years five and beyond, deciding, you know, how much momentum is there and how quickly can you make those changes in the fifth year and beyond as well.

So that's just a little bit of what's in the plan.

Um we do have time for questions.

We do just want to recognize how much Elgin has already done and has taken great strides, and how much we appreciate having the opportunity over the last year to kind of be part of that next steps in the process, and knowing too that Elgin now has you know even more in the plan to carry forward and on a lot of work out there in the future, but a lot of partners and a lot of internal resources for that.

So thank you, and we'll take any questions.

Thank you.

We'll open up for questions for the presenters.

Questions?

Mr.

Dixon.

Thank you.

Um we appreciate the presentation, it's very detailed, very thorough.

So thank you for spending your time with us this evening.

Uh special thank you to the Sustainability Commission and uh members of the community from like you know the ad hoc sustainability commission that have been rallying around this subject for years and years and years now.

So I'm happy to see this come to fruition.

Thank you to city staff for all the work that you've been doing behind the scenes uh over the years, and I know that this has been uh this has had a really large push, you know, especially over I think over the last five or six years for us to get here starting off in 2020, um, you know, when we had the climate emergency.

Um, and so um a couple of questions.

You know, this is a large document for those who are in the audience and haven't seen this document, it is huge.

Um, it's a lot of information, um, and so I have not digested it at yet, uh, but a couple of questions.

Um where do we even begin?

And let me frame that with the climate emergency uh the climate emergency plan that we did back in 2020, there was a lot in that too.

And we have not implemented much of that because it's very costly, right?

So the document itself is great, the idea is great, right?

But not being able to accomplish things in a action plan can be frustrating, right?

So I I guess I'm going to ask you guys as the SMEs on this subject, um, you know, from your expertise, where where's the best place to start from working in other organizations or the municipalities and things of that nature?

So I'll give that question.

Yeah, I think that there's a couple of things.

There's some tools in the plan itself, so looking at those tables and looking at what things are under the city's control and maybe have the lowest cost indicators as part, you know, and that fall in the category of the years one to two priorities of really focusing on continuation or expansion of existing efforts or campaigns or education.

So picking through the plan, and that's why those tables are helpful because they really organize and give you a quick visual to that information.

Um thinking about another example of a community in which we worked on a climate action plan where at the at the kind of at the last minute, everything was pulled back to like suggest or encourage or make you know, all the language was really softened because there was kind of a fear for implementation, and this happened right around the time the pandemic occurred city of City of Raleigh's climate action plan.

And they at the time didn't even want to have they didn't have um much, they had stakeholder engagement but not public engagement during the plan process, and they also did not necessarily have a plan to have public-facing reporting or metrics.

But as we, you know, a couple years, and that was in contrast to we were working with the town of Chapel Hill at the time, which was very, you know, at the forefront and everything very public and very active, and they were already um they were implementing a lot of maybe more even higher dollar items.

But we saw the city of Raleigh begin to be able to kind of pick and choose things that seemed more achievable, affordable, as we saw the reporting on that.

But we saw the city of Raleigh begin to be able to kind of pick and choose things that seemed more achievable affordable as we saw the reporting on that we weren't involved in the post reporting or the years one and two and three but they began to kind of identify what things could what things would maybe have the most community support that they could afford to do.

They focused on you know where they could collaborate you know if they already had plans around transit for example they would focus on bringing in the resources from their transit partners.

So I would say looking at those tables, identifying the areas where there's intersections with other work that the city is doing or the partners are doing looking at the lower cost items in there and kind of aligning them with those year one or two because you want to you want to show those small successes early too and be able to publicize that and get people excited you know people get excited about trees they get maybe excited about composting and what are the things that resonate with people and maybe they aren't the biggest greenhouse gas impact off the bat but they're drawing in partnerships or they're drawing in support as well so those are just a couple of tips.

Yeah and I think that what's huge in what you just said is the community partners of it all and we have tons of community partners and a great partner in LRS who we just hire to to take care of our trash and things of that nature around our city comed and and so we we have great partners that are there and we have everything that's at the table now it's just about executing and getting some wins and getting some things done so we can build the momentum to then go out there and for to afford to do even more things.

So I I just wanted to point that out I I have a second question about the equity and empowerment and I believe I know what equity is right but I think in this day and age it's been changed and so it everyone doesn't have the same definition of what equity is and then also with empowerment I'm assuming and correct me if I'm wrong you are referring to community empowerment and and empowering community members can you talk a little bit about you know how you envision equity in equity and empowerment working with the sustainability plan.

So on the I'll split it into two different pieces on the equity side I think that um the social vulnerability data that you have and the input from the public that you have gives you a foundation to to help this could be another criteria in deciding like how do you look at those early actions which one will which ones will be most impactful to the um where people are vulnerable and what they are vulnerable to so perhaps if you're talking about tree canopy or park infrastructure related it's looking at where socially vulnerable groups are vulnerable to heat impacts right looking at that all intersecting together.

But I think the empowerment is really important an example of of what we've done with that is developed training resources around climate action for community based organizations which the staff has a lot of partnership with community based organizations and allowing community based organizations to lead climate dialogue is another way you know it's it's actually that community based organization being equipped with information and resources and being able to then bring back their organization and say this is where our organization might be able to support activities or provide input or perspective on those equity impacts so like if there's an equity impact that really needs to be informed by that lived experience letting community based organizations and trusted community leaders maybe lead some of those conversations and pull that information in so those are the two strategies that we would do there and and I think we could probably benefit from that continued guidance because when it when it comes to um portions of our community who may be neighborhoods who are low income who feel disenfranchised you know getting that buy-in for that empowerment is really difficult when you are trying to struggle to put when you're struggling to put food on the table when you work in two or three jobs just to take care of your children is hard to get that engagement why why am I caring about that when I you know I need to keep the lights on so I so I I think that's some continued guidance and push and clarification in that area from what I've seen in the packet would probably do us some justice in the long run and I and I'll say this to you all and I'll say it to city staff too as well because I think that's a huge area of opportunity that we can tap into and not put all of the onus on the residents to make those changes knowing the battles that they face on a day to day basis.

So I could ask more but I'm gonna leave it there.

Great job with the presentation thank you city staff you did an excellent job with this and just a last mention on the community based organizations that's the co-benefits that were listed and when we do community based organization toolkits or trainings we focus on what is that organization care about what are the its constituents experience experiencing what are they doing and how is climate resilience relevant to them not necessarily going in just to say let's just bring a climate resilience message and get feedback it's how do we intersect that with the work that the community leaders are already doing in other areas and and develop those co benefits and wins that are joint.

What are the its constituents experience experiencing, what are they doing, and how is climate resilience relevant to them, not necessarily going in just to say, let's just bring a climate resilience message and get feedback.

It's how do we intersect that with the work that the community leaders are already doing in other areas and develop those co-benefits and wins that are joint.

Yeah, and what I often say the last thing, what I often say when it comes to things because I work in the social services field, um, we have to meet people where they're at.

Yeah, right.

We can have all the expectations we want, but everyone is at different levels, everyone is not ready, so we have to meet them at their door to provide them with the resources to empower them to do what we ultimately you know is best for us all.

So I'm I'm with you.

So thank you.

Any questions on this way?

Mr.

Steph.

I most I think this is for staff.

Thank you.

Anna and Elisa, this is very good, and Kristen and everybody in the sustainability committee.

But um, my question is this it's the item on the agenda is under special presentations and report, but then in the item itself it says adoption.

Are we moving to approve this today?

Are we supposed to take action?

Okay, we are okay.

I'll make the motion to approve the plan.

Second.

It's been moved to second to approve the plan.

Now we can further discussion.

So that's gonna be a good one.

Um I'll keep it short.

I just wanted to call out uh my thanks to everybody here.

Uh it's a very great presentation.

Thank you to staff.

Um, thank you to our King County colleagues here.

Um, something that we've seen, at least in my exposure to this topic over the past 15 years, is that there's so many different organizations working on this.

Um, and I really appreciate that this was taking a look at what's regionally being done and starting there as a base uh starting point.

So just shout out to King County um for kind of leading the way on what we started building on.

Um same goes out to the Chicago Regional Climate Action Plan.

Um, so as you highlighted, there's a lot of different areas where we're gonna have to prioritize aligned with our strategic plan and then align with our community needs, but just really appreciate this work, uh support this wholeheartedly.

Um it's been a long time coming and very honored to be sitting here tonight for this.

Okay, I think anything down this way.

So far.

Thank you.

Uh thank you for that presentation, and thank you for everyone that contributed to putting this together.

I do have several questions.

I do want to also thank that I like in the plan that you're there's an economic component to it, a utilizing vacant spaces, underutilized spaces, working with the DNA with their new incubator.

Shout out to the DNA for getting that incubator and the chamber.

And so that is really nice to see in here.

Um I have a couple of questions.

The first question, I know you spoke a little bit about um the enrollment of the sustainability commission on the advisory.

Um can there be some thought process of why the sustainability commission as itself was not one of the advisory councils.

Well, we did meet with the sustainability commission at several at several points in the process, and there were presentations, so there was that in addition to the advisory committees.

Um the commission exists as an entity, so we're bringing information to the commission to review and provide input, but also separately be able to be part of those more um intimate conversations with additional stakeholders and different groupings, and so that that's kind of the approach that that was taken because the sustainability commission also has kind of a more of a formality than those groups as well.

Okay, yeah, I think uh we have all these experts together, right?

And there's volunteers, I want to make sure we're utilizing them as much as possible.

And I do understand because you can't put more than two of them together, and then you get run into all these open meeting acts roles, and so um, but I do appreciate that they were involved in the process, they got to see it beforehand before we did and had a say to it.

So I do appreciate that.

I do think this is a good start to a lot more that we can be doing.

Uh, another question I had is in the plan, it does talk a lot about uh comed and utilizes some of the programs that Comet is using to help uh individuals that can't afford it.

Come on, commed rates have gone up dramatically.

Like I feel like I'm paying a car payment, right?

And so can you speak a little bit of do you think this plan will need to go further out to assist those individuals?

And if so, how do you foresee that being done?

I would say that what we've seen done in other areas is you know finding if there are nonprofit partners or grant programs such as states sometimes have to provide relief, if indeed, you know, and then you know, continuing to work with Kamed to see what they can create.

And I mean, utilities can create programs and provide some abatement and relief themselves.

So I think that I think it means more collaboration and identifying either current partners or additional partners who may be able to you know think creatively around that particular issue around affordability and uh rate impacts.

Yeah, I'm a little concerned on on that piece of how those in our community can continue affording the rates that they are right now, right?

Um, and one of the plans in here is to reduce the amount of energy that we're using and stuff like that, and so um, but one of the things I was stated in here is like how do we get cooling for those during the summer because we're expecting the 95 plus degree weather to continue to increase as stated in the plan, and so just trying to make sure how can we continue to support those that need that support and affordability of uh combat.

The additional question I I had is on page 144.

Oh, in the packet that I have, um, it had indicated continuing engagement, and you have a list of key groups that would be continually engaged.

Um, and I appreciate that the Hispanic community is listening there, youth, etc.

But what I don't see in here is um low-income community members, and the black population and the Asian population are 12% of the population of of Elgin, and they were not included in here either.

Is there a re reason why low income and the black and Asian community were not including the continued engagement?

I don't think we would encourage that that not happen.

I think on that page we were calling out some particular stakeholders that were really notable levels for Elgin, um, even in comparison to surrounding communities, but that's something that I mean can certainly be part of implementation and called out.

Yeah, I appreciate that that would be more included.

Um and the last thing as I was reading in this plan, um, anyone that knows a former councilwoman Carol Roschenberger, she was like in my head as reading this.

Um, and it all I kept thinking is she has all these complaints about artificial turf, and that's such an impact um to impacting climate change, and there was nothing in here about continuation of utilizing artificial turf.

Um, and so wanted to know why that was not in here, or even discussed in here into one of the key components into that dialogue come up and yeah, I think yeah, I I know that like uh lawns in general, but like that's always uh an issue that comes up when talking about sustainability.

Um, and we do like we did see in our engagement that like open spaces and recreation spaces were important to people.

Um, I think where we ended up shifting in part because of uh where what we heard in our engagement and with advisory committee members was thinking about green spaces and how we could start to incorporate more of the uh like native plantings and pollinator related things, that was a priority that really came up strongly.

So there's maybe a little more focus on some of those actions in the plan because that's something that we heard really strongly across lots of our engagement efforts.

Um that artificial turf question might be something to consider in some of those open space and green space related actions as they're being implemented.

Um, you know, the implementation plans are there to provide the guiding steps, um, but they're not meant to be like overly prescriptive.

So as there are particular like specific projects that come up or places that are being considered, I do think that will be an important consideration that balancing of artificial turf considerations, native planting, and other types of sort of green spaces.

Um but again, I think we we went sort of where the community engagement was leading us, but that's not to say that that's not something that will come up in conversation, um, and something that like staff and all of the experts on the sustainability commission, others can help sort of navigate there.

Thank you.

Okay, any further questions?

Ms.

Powell.

Thank you.

Thank you to the team, uh the sustainability commission staff, everyone involved with this.

Um a lot of the questions or comments that um I had have already been covered, uh, but to piggyback on uh some of councilwoman Alfaro's um uh statements and questions.

I think, and I understand what you're saying in terms of you know, throughout this process, you kind of went where the community was taking you doing the engagement.

Um but I think sometimes with issues that are uh pretty complex, like this.

A lot of times you don't know what you don't know, and so um, you know, like the artificial turf question, unless that was specifically brought up, I don't think people would necessarily think about that or bring that up.

Um, you know, because that's a real um issue.

Um, that's something real as we are expanding our our parks and recreation areas that we we we have decided to to move forward in in some cases with artificial turf, you know.

So it's it's a valid question, it's a valid thing to bring up.

But I I want to make sure as we continue throughout this engagement process that we are proactively bringing things to the table in these engagement opportunities with folks uh that they are not necessarily going to come up with on their own because they they wouldn't necessarily know that that's something that kind of ties into this, or that is tied to a city um a city project or anything like that.

So I I just want us to be cognizant of that, and uh thank you, um councilwoman Alfaro for pointing out um some of the other um minority groups in Elgin.

Um I was glad to see that you know the Lau organization was included, African American Coalition of Kane County and several others.

We want to make sure that we continue to have that engagement with those communities.

Um I think of um in particular, I know in the African American community, asthma is a big issue.

So when you know there's a um well, the ozone action days, those types of days disproportionately affect the black community.

So I just want us to be cognizant of that and making sure that we are um not only engaging those communities, but even speaking specifically to those types of of um impacts that affect those particular groups and and getting the feedback from them, but also bringing things to them, like I said before, that maybe folks aren't necessarily aware of or thinking of that that um that tie into this.

Um so thank you.

I'm glad to see this move forward.

I'm looking forward to um working with staff and seeing how we can incorporate this into our not only our strategic plan, but as we you know adopt and and and spend money um in it and uh approve different expenditures here at the the council level, how are we tying this into you know those purchases?

How are we tying that tying this into our RFP process, our bid process?

Um, so it's it's gotta be holistic.

I don't want this to be something that's just done and put on the shelf and and not really utilized.

I think this is really good work and there's definitely an opportunity for us to fully integrate this into our our practices.

So I I'm definitely interested in seeing and working with staff on that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anything else?

Steph, I I just have some final comments um and a question at the end.

Um trying to absorb this over the four or five days we've had it since it's been given to us, and three things that pop out to me is the education and communication.

I think you have emphasized that.

I think when I engage with people that this is an important issue too, I think they keep coming back to that.

The fact I've heard it described by other members of the council in other ways, but the way I describe it, there are people that don't care and you'll never reach them, and there's people that don't know to care because they just don't have the facts and the information, and those are the people that need to be approached to try to understand the scope of what we're dealing with here and how to combat it.

Um, the thing is resilience, and again, throughout the plan I see all the events, the weather events, the fires, the floods, the hurricanes that hit different parts of the country, and I know we have micro bursts here, we could have something like that happen, and so that's always on my mind is to make sure we try to stay ahead of that as much as we can to be ready if and when it happens, and then uh at the end of your of the of the massive report is the implementation and track implementation and tracking.

You are trying extra hard to make sure that things don't just get looked at and checked off and then set aside things are there's ways to actually make these happen, and we should be making sure that that happens and checking on them.

Um and then the last thing I'm looking at Kristen because I'm sure she's not gonna like this.

But I said this to several people, and now's the time I think to to point it out because I'm looking at your I don't know what page it is.

I have 77 on my screen, but it's towards the end of the report under implementation and next implementation and next steps.

One of the first bullet points is public officials should continue to prioritize climate action and resiliency and strategic planning efforts.

And my idea that I've thrown out, and I know it can't happen overnight, but I'd like to see us moving that direction is to have a sustainability review of anything that comes before planning and zoning.

We we do that with the fire department, we do that with the police department, neighborhood services, code.

We give everybody a chance to look that over.

I think a sustainability set of sustainability eyes looking at it and kind of reviewing it, I think would be great.

I think that's a way to hit that bullet point.

So those are my comments.

Thank you.

Okay.

To wrap up, um it's been a long time.

Uh councilman Stefan and I worked on the precursor to this uh number of years ago, and that was the uh uh Elgin sustainability plan.

And uh this grew out of that, and the commission uh was part of that uh plan.

Um for everybody, this is uh this document is uh on paper for us.

It's not written in stone, and it can't be because things change rapidly, they've changed more rapidly than we can imagine.

And uh to keep up, I really like the way you did it.

You kept it uh uh general enough that you can fill the gaps in.

It's not so specific that those are going to be outdated, and we have to change those things, and that is where you start to bob down.

Councilman Stefan touched on uh communication and education.

Uh, that is not a uh one and done.

I think that we need to spend uh uh at the and the council and the group uh putting this forward, need to spend the first months looking at funding and how we're gonna continue to do this and make this be an ongoing education process.

And I always use this as an example when I talk to people.

I really believe that Elgin changes its population at about 10% a year.

Those 10% of the people don't know this document exists over a period of six or seven years.

You're gonna have a lot of people that don't know it exists.

So, how do we keep those people informed, keep them up to date?

I work with Comet, I work with NICOR, uh, their programs to get it out to the communities that they're gonna serve is always a challenge.

And I think that uh uh uh the document itself is strong, but uh for us to make sure that this is going to be a successful uh process and a successful document, we need to make sure that communication is strong and well funded and ongoing.

And uh I think that should be the first challenge for uh uh the commission, the sustainability commission, and uh the council.

So uh at this time we have a motion, a call the vote.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Council members alfaro, yes.

Dixon, yes, good, yes, Martinez, yes, Ortiz, yes, Powell, yes, Stefan, yes, Thorne?

Yes, Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion's approved nine zero.

Congratulations.

Let's finish item D uh is a purchase agreement with absolute water pumps for bypass pumps.

Sewer Division currently has two six-inch portable pumps that it uses that it's been using for more than 20 years.

These pumps are mainly used in emergency situations to bypass a lift station while work is being performed.

Occasionally, other city departments will also use the pumps for various dewatering operations.

Over the past few years, the pumps have started failing more often and have become difficult to repair.

With this agreement, the sewer division will be purchasing two new pumps that will be providing reliable emergency pumping capabilities.

Move for approval second moved and second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, clerk, please call a roll.

Council members alfaro, yes, Dixon?

Yes, good, yes, Martinez, yes Ortiz?

Yes, Powell, yes, Stefan, yes, Thorne, yes, Mayor Captain.

Yes, motions approved nine zero announcements from the council.

Ms.

Alfaro.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I want to say thank you to everybody.

Um that came out for La Fiesta.

That was an amazing event.

Thank you to city staff, um, to all the artists that came out.

It was great to see the community uplift the Hispanic Latino community.

So thank you so much.

I also want to give a shout out to the Algin Short Film Festival.

I was able to attend this past weekend, and they did an amazing job at the Hemon.

So thank you to having that type of event here in Elgin.

In addition to that, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, meet Garassias.

The last couple of months have been really hard, and last week was extremely hard for a lot of members in our community.

Um it was stated during public comment a lot of what happened last week, and so I want to thank everyone that's out documenting ice, everyone that is helping their family members, friends, neighbors, dropping off groceries, dropping people off at school work, etc.

Donating money, anything that you're doing to support our community right now, because a lot of people are in pain and hurting, so thank you from the bottom of my heart, everything that you're doing to support our community.

In addition to that, I want to say to our members in the LGBTQI Plus community, I see you, I support you, and I support you to love the person that you want to love and your existence, and so I am happy that you're here in our community.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else?

Mr.

Thorne.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to remind everyone that uh this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, is uh Elgin's historic cemetery walk, and this is the thirty-ninth year, and it's held at Bluff City Cemetery, and uh both uh two different times, both Saturday and Sunday.

Granted, it's a hilly cemetery, and there is a tram offered to give you rides up and down.

Anything else from the council?

No, Mayor, thank you.

Entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second, move the second to adjourn.

Court, please call the roll.

Council members alfaro, yes, Dixon?

Yes, good, yes, Martinez, yes, Ortiz, yes, Powell?

Yes, Stefan?

Yes, Thorne?

Yes, Mayor Captain.

Yes, we are adjourned.

We'll reconvene at the regular council meeting at seven twenty-up.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the Republican One Nation under God for liberty and justice.

Councilmember Zalfaro.

Here.

Dixon.

Here.

Good.

Here.

Martinez.

Here.

Ortiz.

Here.

Powell.

Here.

Stefan.

Here.

Thorne?

Here.

Mayor Captain.

Here.

Approval of minutes of the previous meeting of September 10.

So moved.

Second.

Move and second for approval any corrections or additions.

Hearing none, court, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro.

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion is approved 9-0.

We have a couple of proclamations this evening.

Do the honors tonight.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Ortiz is coming.

Through the back, I think.

While we're waiting for Councilmember Ortiz, I want to say happy Hispanic Heritage Month to everybody.

Thank you for those that are here in person, those that are watching online.

Today for Hispanic Heritage Month, we would like to recognize two organizations.

The first organization is Centro de Información, who has over 50 years here in Elgin, who has services in public benefits, immigration services, a welcoming center, emergency food pantry, know your rights training, and many more programs.

Last year in 2024, they had 5,682 services provided.

That statistic is important.

They are supporting our most vulnerable economically individuals in our community.

So thank you, Central de Información, for everything that you're doing to support our community here.

The second organization we also want to recognize tonight in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month is Casa Mutrican, which is a newer organization to the area of Elgin with almost three years here in our area.

They have programs of financial literacy, mental health, art for youth, photography classes, ballet for the córico, immigration, and many more.

In their office in Elgin, they served last year 5,121 individuals.

But overall in 2024, Casa MutriCon Elgin served not only Elgin and the surrounding area, 36,238 people that they served.

Thank you, Castro Metrican, for all that you're doing.

And I'm gonna hand it off to Councilmember Ortiz, who will read the proclamation in English and then I will read it in Spanish.

Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated annually from September 15th to October 15th to honor his history and culture, beginning with the independence anniversaries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and September on September 15th, and followed by Mexico on September 16th, and Chile on September 18th.

And we're as Mexicans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Caribbean, Central American, and South American descent, comprised of the largest ethnic group in Kane County and the City of Algin.

Whereas United States Census Bureau estimates Hispanics represent the fastest growing demographic in the city of Elgin.

And whereas Hispanic and Latino Americans have enriched our community through family values, enduring work ethics, and remarkable achievements in the areas of society, including business, education, sports, and the arts.

And now I'll read the proclamation in Spanish.

And of course, also our staff behind me.

I also have our assistant directors, Neo Mi Rojas, Jimena Plazola, Julia Perez, and our community organizer Amairani Jarvis.

Okay, no, that's our team here for now.

Um and uh I know that they are also very strongly engaged in the community with each of you talking about things that are uh happening in our community these days.

Uh it is accurate to say that the Latino community is being attacked uh locally every day.

Um, and so uh the the community support is important now more than ever.

Um and you know you all know how to get a hold of me to um to ask questions about um about what happens to a family, for example, um if they have any questions about any upcam upcoming immigration hearings or um if if somebody someone in their family uh got deported um or if uh or if somebody even wants to travel abroad and visit, is it is it safe to do that now?

Um that's why we're here.

We're trusted organization with bilingual bicultural staff, um, and it is an honor and a privilege to serve as its director, so thank you so much for this honor.

And now we'll hear from Maggie Luco from Casa Michoan Elgin, who's the executive director of the Casa Michigan and Elgin.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for making this happen.

Um Casa Michocan, as I said earlier, it's a fairly new organization in the Elgin area, but throughout the state, we have four cases, four classes that are fully committed to building community and turning down all the bridges that constantly as our current political situation is establishing.

It's it's a block to success to leaving the American dream.

Casa Michocani and Elgin has been here establishing about three years, and we're tiny but mighty, right?

Um we're a binational organization that ensures that everyone not just comes and receives the services, but we build relationships through the programs.

We ensure that our community is fully fully empowered, not just by the um services that are available to them, but mainly to what their needs are to become successful and live and be incorporated into the American life, especially because you know, as as Ayanna said, Elgin has been it's a community that has been built generations by generations, and the little ones, as one of them is here, um, are looking up at all of our organizations and seeing what the future is, right?

So we want to be that bridge, bridges into our community to ensure that they know as well as we know that we have rights, that we are a community that is fully empowered by each and one of you through your mission and vision to sustain our communities to build better um futures.

So that is some of if not the main of our core value as as part of the community.

We serve and we do most of the things that Centro does, right?

But yet one of the aspects is our cultural way.

And be part of La Fiesta a couple of weekends ago showed the importance of keeping that culture in our communities, and that's one of our commitments.

Currently, we're always seeking for funding, but more than funding, as I said a couple of days ago, we're looking for bodies for volunteers that are willing to come out and do um door knocking to ensure that our community remains safe, to ensure that our communities have what they need, not what they want, but what we need, basic stuff, such as bringing the case of water, um checking in, ensuring that somebody picks up their kids or drops off their kids at school.

So we're heavily in need of that response from our community.

Something that we often say is we're not America is not built by itself.

America is built just as Elgin is built in partnership, in community, together.

And this is a time where as community, I call each and one of the people that are here, and each and one of the people that are um online to contact Casa Michoacan, to contact Central and other organizations within your local area and respond to the need.

Feel free to contact us.

There's many ways that you can connect.

There's many ways that you, as um council people, can connect and be fully committed and compromised to what our communities are in need of.org, or you can stop by at uh Bethlehem Lutheran Church where we're there.

Um responding to every need because I'm pretty sure that our staff knows that we are not here for our community to serve us, but we're here to serve our community to their needs.

Thank you for recognizing the work that we do and know that we're fully fully committed to ensure that our community knows that we're here for them.

Thank you.

We have one person signed up this evening.

Jennifer Estrug.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members.

My name is Jessica Astrog, and I'm a long time resident of Algen, having lived here since I was two, and currently live minutes from my childhood home where my mother still lives.

I am here today representing Oak Ridge, Sherwood Oaks, and Castle Creek neighborhoods in opposition of the proposed development at 890 Galt Boulevard.

At the June planning and zoning meeting, the board voted denying the approval of the development, citing traffic and the shared magnitude of the size of the development as part of their concerns.

Since that time, the attorney and the Umaya group have met with the city to downsize parts of the development.

I am here today because those changes they have made still do not address, let alone fix the safety concerns, nor do they fit within the realm of Algin's comprehensive plan adopted in 2018.

Per IDOT, the only stoplight intersection into our neighborhood and the proposed development is rated a five out of five critical status.

On average, there is an accident there almost every other week at the stoplight.

The proposed development is expected to bring thousands of people seven days a week to our neighborhood through the same critical status stop light.

There is no separate egress or ingress that can be used to access the proposed development.

Once IDOT begins and completes the reconfiguration of the stoplight at Shells and Route 20, the traffic is expected to grow as stated by IDOT during their April presentation.

The traffic generated by the proposed development will significantly impact both safety and neighborhood accessibility.

Visitors will inevitably park in the surrounding residential areas, further straining our streets.

Combined with a structure nearly the size of Buckingham Palace, attracting thousands of visitors every week.

The project poses a serious threat to our quality of life.

Community opposition is clear.

Two petitions from Oak Ridge and Sherwood Oaks currently have gathered more than 200 signatures against the development.

There are several goals set forth by within Elgin's comprehensive plan that this proposed development violates.

Residential goals, goals, environmental goals, abundant open space, new neighborhood design, and general growth strategy.

Page one of the introduction states, and I quote, the plan is a playbook for city leaders to provide guidance on desirable land use patterns, movement of vehicles, pedestrians, and all modes of transportation, the location of schools and community facilities, the protection of residential quality of life, and open space for today and well into the future.

Our residential quality of life will be detrimentally impacted if this build is allowed.

I implore you that when this matter does come forth to the city council meeting, please vote in opposition.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brings us to bids.

First item is bid number two five-zero four one.

Wells number four A and five rehabilitation.

Mr.

Mayor make the motion that we approve the bid, lowest responsible bidder, lane construction company of Aurora and the amount of one million one hundred and fifty-six thousand sixty-four dollars.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded and any discussion.

Mr.

Thorne.

Yes, I'd just like to let uh Mr.

Stefan know that it's Lane Christians Company, not Lane Construction.

Oh, it is.

Yep.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Court, please call a roll.

Okay.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Sorry.

I think John had his hand up.

I'm okay.

I I was just gonna point out something, but it's it's not necessary.

Does he need to change his motion to correctly identify the name?

I think it's just been clarified.

I think that's fine.

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, motions approved nine zero.

Item two is bid number two five-zero four seven Hemans Cultural Center Roof Replacement.

Yes, Mayor.

I think a motion to award a contract to Riddeford Ruffing Company and the amount of three thousand three hundred and fifty-two thousand one hundred and thirty-five dollars.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded any discussion.

Hearing none, Cork please call the rule.

Council Member Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez.

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, motions approved nine zero.

Excuse me.

Uh item three is bid number two five-zero four-nine of GAC filter media removal and replacement.

Uh GAC filter media removal and replacement.

Move to award the bid to all services contracting corp of Decatur, Illinois for GAC filter media removal and replacement in the amount of 146,308 dollars.

Second.

Move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, Court, please call roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Item four is a public works lunchroom renovation.

Job order contract.

Mr.

Mayor, I recommend that we award the contract to Leopardo Construction in the amount of 162,551 dollars.

Second.

Been moved and second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, court, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Item five is a police facility electrical cooling system, a joint purchasing uh program.

Uh Mayor, I'll move that we award this to your train technologies in the amount of 121,826 for the installation of cooling equipment in the electrical room at the police facility.

Second.

Then move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, Court, please call the rule.

Councilmember Zalfar Alfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

The motion is approved nine zero.

Item six is a roost rooftop HVAC replacement at Bose Creek Clubhouse, a joint purchasing program.

Move for approval.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, I recommend that we do this contract with train technologies and the amount uh at for the units at Bose Creek Country Club.

Second.

It's been moved in the second for approval.

Any discussion?

I have 208,143 dollars.

Clerk, please call a rule.

Council members alfarel?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorn?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Item seven is a power distribution equipment rental for nightmare on Chicago Street.

A partners cooperative agreement.

Mayor, I'll move that we award this to Sunbelt Rentals in the amount of 39,682 dollars.

Second.

Move and second for approval.

Any discussion?

Ms.

South Farrow.

I just have a question for staff.

The contract is um very outdated and the numbers are outdated.

It's just this the same kind of contract we're going to use, but we're just going to update the number, the amount, because the amount doesn't match right now, and the dates.

That's correct.

Oh, this is a prior contract of Sunbelt Ratzel three.

The legal department uh at the time that's not gone off this kind of because of the timing.

Uh had not finalized the contract, but yes, there will be a finalized contract with current numbers and dates.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anything else?

Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Item eight is a cradle point mobile power a wireless router replacement from CDS Technologies.

Source well cooperative purchasing.

Mr.

Mayor'll move that we award this bid to CDS Technologies for the 16 routers and the amount of 48,003.

Second.

Second.

Move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, Court, please call a roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Item nine is a Zole automated external defibrillator.

Uh Zole AED three replacement purchase of 22 devices.

State of Illinois contract with Chance Cardiac Solutions.

Mr.

Mayor, I recommend that we award this contract of 22 ZOL AED threes at the cost of 35,151 dollars.

Second.

Move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, Clerk, please call the roll.

Council members alfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

The motion is approved 90.

Brings us to other business.

First item is a resolution accepting the proposals for the city's Elgin's City of Elgin's insurance program.

Move for approval.

Move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

I just want to add that to amend the motion to include the new numbers that um corporate council had given us earlier.

Maybe I could just clarify for the record exactly what will be approved with the motion, the amounts.

So we have those uh in the minutes in the record.

Uh so this would be approval of the insurance remove renewal program for October 1st, 2025 to September 30th, 2006, 26, and the associated insurance agreements.

Uh we'd be accepting the following proposals.

Uh travelers insurance renewal proposal for liability and crime insurance for an annual premium of 977,940 dollars.

Public risk innovation solutions and management Prism's proposal for excess liability insurance for an annual premium not to exceed 258,850.

HDI global specialty proposals for an additional layer of excess liability insurance for an annual premium of 156,382.

Safety nationals renewal proposal for excess workers' compensation insurance for an annual premium of $307,619, and align insurance services proposal for insurance consultant services for three-year term of 11,000 dollars.

Okay, it's been moved in the second for approval as amended.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, Cork, please call the roll.

Council members alfaro, yes, Dixon?

Yes, good, yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion is approved 90.

Item two is a resolution authorizing execution of a purchase of services agreement with the downtown neighborhood association of Elgin for economic development services.

Move for approval.

Second move the second for approval.

Mr.

Thorne.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I move to amend the proposed PSA to include milestones to the proposed SSA.

Those milestones should minimally include to hire a consultant by the end of this year and other milestones that will be achieved in 2026.

I don't have specific milestones, but the DNA working with the corporation council will develop some to present to the council.

As an additional part of my motion, I believe it's critical to have members of the ECVB and chamber to be board members, for they will offer insights to the SSA.

Second.

Correct.

Discussion.

So I I've got a couple of questions or concerns about about this.

Um two weeks ago when uh this was removed from the agenda by Councilman Thorin and I had inquired, you know, what exactly you know we were move taking this off for.

I didn't really get a clear indication of what this what the concern was.

I know you said um you had just had, I guess, a change of heart or something like that.

But I guess we my concern is that we have a signed agreement from the DNA right now.

The changes that are being proposed tonight have Councilman Thorne.

Have you talked to DNA about the proposed changes since this was removed from the agenda to see if they were in concurrence?

Um to see, you know, uh I if if there are if they're supposed to be our service partner, I would think that we would have that conversation with them before we do this, because I think they already indicated that they were not in concurrence with the with adding the board members that you're you're trying to add.

Um but the um the milestones, while I don't think that they probably would have a problem with it, if we have not had a conversation with them about that.

I I find it a little odd that we're adding this like this.

So have you had a conversation with them about this?

Mr.

Pinion said as long as they had three years, they would do the SSA.

Okay.

And the majority of the council per Diana El Faro's work with all of us included those board members.

So that's what I mentioned when I made my postponement at the last meeting.

It was because when I saw it on paper, it wasn't what I realized when it was presented by Mr.

Steppen.

That's it.

So understanding that they have agreed to the SSA.

Um adding the milestones, I think.

And again, I'm not saying I'm not in favor of having milestones.

I think that that's something we can work with them on outside of putting it into the contract.

But if we haven't had that conversation with them about specifically adding milestones to the contract, it just seems odd to add this now without having that conversation with them.

It was brought up at the last council meeting even by the mayor.

Yeah.

Okay.

Even though it was brought up by the mayor at the last council meeting, my point is have we had the conversation with the DNA about adding milestones to their specific agreement?

Or conversation was not made, I didn't feel that it needed to be made.

That's I've just made my point.

Yeah.

So you didn't think it would you didn't think that it would be important for us to have that conversation with the entity that we're doing business with and that we are partnering with to change a contract that they've already signed.

It's not signed by us.

And it was asked that this be uh uh postponed for a week so Mr.

Thorne could uh review this, and uh he's made his recommendation and uh to amend, and now it would go back and that would be the time for them once it's in writing and it's uh uh um I Mr.

Beck will have to include that as part of the agreement and the wording for that and have a discussion with them at that point, and then uh I would go back to them for discussion.

So it's all part of the uh of reviewing the contract, Mr.

Thorne, yeah.

Thank you, Mayor.

I want everyone to know that I love the DNA.

I love the history of Elgin, I love what they do downtown.

I want them to succeed.

Uh I believe in them.

Uh I think this is the best means for the DNA to succeed.

Um I'm I'm confident that they can do this SSA well and properly with these additions.

Um I just wanted to make that statement.

Okay.

Anything else?

We have Mr.

Mr.

Good.

Thank you.

Um, so just so I'm hearing this motion correctly.

Um you're asking that the milestones be established in conjunction with corporate council.

That were we we're not establishing milestones specifically right now, it's uh establishing the process of DNA the organization working with corporate council.

The the first milestone is to minimally include to hire a consultant by the end of this year.

Okay, and that's the specification as far as milestone.

Okay.

Um okay, so I just wanted to specify um what exactly was the motion that's being made and and to your comment.

I think we had talked about this two meetings prior, and the big component that's changed is going from two years to three years from the initial meeting.

But for the most part, the components about the board members and milestones from the initial meeting are in place.

Correct.

Okay.

I just wanted to get clarity on that.

Okay.

Anything else?

Um Mr.

Stephan.

Yeah, I'm uh as councilwoman Powell is I'm also struggling with this.

Um I thought we had a uh PSA hammered out two meetings ago.

Um the vote was five, three, and one abstention.

In that agreement, it wasn't what was presented to us, but it was amended in some ways so that some things that were requested from the city were included, some things that were requested were not included.

Um the reason that I'll get into the specifics.

I mean, there's an audit, even though technically uh uh organization of this size with this size budget isn't subject to this kind of an audit, but there was an agreement to do it.

There was an explanation, and again, an email that came sometime this week further explaining.

I'm talking about the board makeup specifically that what people seem to want to make part of a formal agreement is actually already happening.

There are people from the DNA on, for instance, the executive directors on the board at the EACVB, and there are as was explained, there are members of all three organizations that sit on each other's committees and subcommittees, as was explained.

The chamber and the DNA actually share office space with a common bathroom, common break rooms interacting by necessity because they are actually in the same building in the same office space.

And as was explained, that since they are a not-for-profit that you know obligations they've they've got agreements that they have ongoing, including for the um business incubator and some grants they've gotten for that that they've accepted under certain business organizations, and now we're trying to force them to change them, and that could jeopardize those as well as some of their standing with the Secretary of State and other organizations that or state um regulators that oversee not-for-profits.

Um I'm and then on the SSA deadlines, uh, the agreement that was agreed to two meetings ago had specific ahead of timeline, two dates in a timeline.

July 3rd, 2027 is when a proposal is to come, and then September 9th, 2027 is when we as the council have to move and adopt the ordinance.

And having explained that once again, it it raises something that I keep hearing people mischaracterize in the the DNA does not create an SSA.

That's going to be something that comes from the city.

We're the only entity that has the power to impose an SSA.

What they are asking for time for because all their experts are telling them and the people they're talking to that that work in the SSA areas, they doing it within a year is unrealistic, which is why the deadlines were pushed back a year in the agreement that was approved two meetings ago.

So I guess I'd stop my initial comments and just ask.

I guess I direct it to you, Steve, since you're the one that made the motion.

What is the data or the facts or the evidence that tells you we need to make these changes?

I I'm not seeing it.

Well, we're gonna if they're gonna have to do an SSA, they agreed to it for three years.

Turn your mic on.

Excuse me.

They agreed to do an SSA.

They said if we get three-year contract, we'll do an SSA.

But I think that uh some steps need should be taken to show to start that, and that's why I'm putting that in.

And uh so that's my feeling about it, and to achieve it.

You said yourself, they have agreements, they work with the other organizations.

One gets a grant, they are they're all on the same team.

They're all on the same team for the city of getting grants.

Uh they all work together for a common goal.

So to me, having those work together, they're on one board, but they can't be on their board.

I mean, it doesn't make sense.

Uh Jennifer Fucala's own program, own presentation said she has a great relationship with them.

Then why wouldn't they be on the board?

So that's why I feel that way, and that's where we're at.

Okay.

Miss Martinez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, I I don't understand this either, because the EAVCB, normally their prime more primary focus is not only Algin, but within 50 miles around Algin, and it also has other communities.

And the EDB, the um the chamber, what they have is the city and uh small business, big um big business, and then the downtown neighborhood, they have the downtown neighborhood.

And we're all team Algin.

I don't understand what the big deal is with this.

Um, you know, as uh councilman Thorne is saying, we're all team Algin.

That's what it's about.

And you know, when you work for an SSA, you know, it's property owners, business owners, and residents.

And um, just so that people understand it's this is a unique neighborhood from the other neighborhoods, because this is what you have in there, you know, the the property owners, business owners, and residents, where in other neighborhoods it's only residents, and if they have such a great um uh communication with the property owners, business owners, and residents, I don't understand what the big problem is with this.

Um, and you know, I'm I'm excited to see these milestones.

I think that right now we're in a point in Elgin where um we're turning where Algin is being uh looked at, uh I'd say almost scrutinized, and we're attracting good things that are happening in Algin, you know.

Um and I think that uh like the new businesses are coming downtown, you know.

When I said it before, when you have something like the Lodge that invests 2.6 million dollars in Algin in downtown, you know, that's nothing to sneeze about.

You know, we had and we have a combination of things, you know.

We have Lemon Chacana Paradise, you know, uh churros and chocolate, they could have opened anywhere.

Uh this is their second store.

And um, you know, and just um, you know, I'm excited that we're having milestones that things are being done, you know.

Um, that this uh PSA for the down uh DNA that um it will hire it's it's a soul, it's an expertise that's a consultant.

This is what the the only thing they're gonna do, um they'll have somebody done here by uh January 20, 2026 to guide them in good faith to you know go ahead and uh make the effort to complete the special service agreement, the SSA, and it's just to meet um with only property owners and generating a list of services and programs or or both for which the SSA can serve.

You know, what what's wrong with it?

I mean, uh that's their focus that they have.

Uh it's it's not a hard thing to do.

They'll be working with the city, yes.

Uh it's something that um I think uh they can do.

You know, the other thing, you know, I don't understand where it comes where um the size of this organization is not big enough for for an audit.

You know, anybody that we have a PSA with that we give money to, we have every right to ask for an audit.

You know, I I look for example, another PSA that we have is probably with Algin Public Museum, which is even smaller, you know, we get uh an audit from them.

Anybody that we have a PSA with, we we should have an order from them.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Um the other thing that I think is um, you know, I I don't understand.

It's it's uh purchase a service agreement, it's a agreement that the city is offering for somebody that works for us.

If they want to take it, fine, and if they don't, fine.

You know, these are the rules that we're implementing, and there is a city, and if they want to take it, okay, and if they don't, okay.

But these are the rules that we're offering.

Um so I don't I don't understand.

We moved it a little from two years to three years, okay.

That's fine.

But I'm telling you, the DNA has done a lot within the last six months that I've seen for a long time, you know.

Um so I I was really excited about this.

Uh I know other people want to say other things, so thank you, Mayor.

Okay.

Anything else?

Well, Mr.

Ortiz.

All right.

Uh it's uh Mrs.

Powell's point about speaking to the DNA.

I spoke to Miss Furcala multiple times about it, and we just agreed to disagree at the end because we had different points.

So I've had the conversation with her about it.

I think maybe with Miss Opinion I had it through email, and again we agreed to disagree, so it that's fine.

Everybody has their their stance because they're advocating for the DNA, which I appreciate, and then I'm advocating or believe I'm advocating for the city and the the people of Elgin.

So that's fine.

But when it comes to the board makeup and going to the SOS for their uh bylaws and articles incorporation and mission statement, they have it on their website.

And I've read it a few times, a mission statement or the purpose statement of purpose.

And if we add these other two organizations, or if this council decides to add these other two organizations to their board, it doesn't affect their purpose.

And then if you go to Article 3 of their board of directors section under section two item D, which they amended to add more people to their board, it says have a particular knowledge, training, or expertise, which is in a which would enable the director to provide assistance to the board of directors and the staff to redevelop, revitalize the properties and businesses of the central or the center city area.

I believe, and I think everyone's council believes that the chamber and the visitors bureau meet all three of those requirements when only one is required.

So it doesn't affect their bylaws besides having to change the number of members, and according to the website, they have 11, they have 10 members currently.

Their bylaws allow 11, so that the amend their bylaw to add one more person, and to amend their bylaws is not that hard.

You just you put the notice out, you call the board together, and then they vote to amend the bylaws.

So and I think the milestones would be a a decent thing to for corporation council and the leadership of the DNA to get together and work, but both sides, the city and the DNA need to hash that out and work that out together.

That's all I have.

Thanks.

Okay, Mr.

Mr.

Dixon.

Thank you.

Um a question about this board membership.

Wanting the chamber, the EACBB to be a part of the board is one thing, but you know, council members, colleagues, please let me know if any of you have talked to members of those organizations and they said yes they want to be on DNA's board.

I don't know the answer to that, but if you're so gun-ho about it, like have you talked to those organizations and ask them, you know, are they going to be the ones sitting on the board?

Please.

They're indifferent, they're fine.

There's nothing wrong with being on the board or not being on the board.

You know, if that's something that uh we say, do you mind being on the board?

No, I don't mind.

No, my my specific question is is have you or any of our colleagues asked a member of those organizations who are short staffed who are going to be asked to join a working board to participate in DNA's board of directors, not indifference, because according to the contract, indifference does not even exist.

They have to have members of those organizations on the board.

So have those conversations been had is my question.

The question I just asked is do you mind being on their board?

Will you be on their board?

Oh, not you specifically.

I was asking if any of my colleagues, so everyone has anyone talked to the chamber.

Has anyone talked to ACEACBB and asked them as you know their staff are you going to be the ones serving on DNA's board?

That's my question.

Please tell me about it.

I don't know.

That's why I'm asking.

I have talked to uh Carol Giske, and she's uh very much uh said that would not be a problem.

Okay.

Now that's one.

What about EACBB?

Convention and visitors bureau already has uh Ms.

Martinez is on there, and Ms.

Fucala serves on that board.

I don't think that reciprocity would be a problem for them.

Okay.

I I don't know that to be the case.

It's let me let me let me say something here as well.

Sure.

That virtually every uh community that has something uh like this with a downtown neighborhood association or a uh Aurora, for example, they have their convention and visitors bureau and their convention, uh their chamber also serve on those boards.

They they co-mingle.

So this is not a precedent here.

This is something that I never said common.

Yeah, but I never said that it was a precedent.

I'm just not I already see these organizations working together.

So I'm wondering, you know, why why the request even exists in the first place.

So that's that's one.

Um excuse me, can I just say one thing?

Sure.

It was also on uh the um it was also on the EABCB uh PSA.

It was on there for uh the chamber and the DNA to be put on in their PSA to be put on their board.

So then um when it was on the PSA, Chrissy Lee decided to put it on her bylaws, and it's in the bylaws for the EAVCB.

So now it's not in the PSA because it's in their bylaws.

It there's no necessary to put it, it's not necessary to put it in the PSA.

Yeah, and and that's my understanding that that that came out of something that transpired years ago before Christy Lee that that requirement was placed was.

No, she changed it, she's the one who changed it.

No, no, not the change that Chris Lee made about not removing it from the ESV from the from the PSA.

I'm talking about prior to her tenure in the board requirement of having different organizations represented on the board.

That's my understanding.

But I'll move on to the SSA.

Umly the city has the ultimate say on the SSA.

We don't, not we, but the DNA does not get to control the SSA, but there's a lot of work that goes into the SSA, a lot of time, a lot of money.

We're already asking them to do an audit, which I believe is fifteen thousand dollars in addition to the you know, it's fifteen thousand dollars.

They're already paying the for you know these services of the of the audit are about 2500, so we're increasing that, but we're not giving any extra money and helping them create uh an SSA that we would ultimately have control over.

So we're essentially asking them to do the work for something that we have control over, but we're not paying them to actually put it all together.

Does that seem fair?

Uh Ms.

Martinez.

With the other organizations that we have PSAs with, they pay the audits.

And some we don't give as much money as we do like we are giving the DNA.

Okay.

So if you're saying that we need to give them more money, are we going to give more money to the other PSAs?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

So I I think I don't yeah, you didn't understand what I said.

So I'm gonna say it again.

They are already, well, number one, let me even back up.

They're already meeting the requirement of what they should be doing financially as an organization.

Federal, state, local, whatever, like they're meeting all those financial requirements.

There I have not heard anything that would suggest that we should require them to do anything additional.

They said they would do it, but it's fifteen thousand dollars more to do it for an organization that does not have um have a lot of money uh to begin with.

What do you mean by that?

I just heard that they have a quarter of a million dollars uh in in their account.

And that's more than the PSA that uh Algin uh public museum has or more than the um EAVCB has, and you're saying it's not enough money?

I didn't say it's not enough, I said they don't have a lot.

Okay, two different things.

So they don't have enough, or they don't have a lot.

Well, let me let me let me let me finish.

You can you had your time, you spoke, I'm gonna speak, but I uh we can answer your questions at a later time.

But my point in bringing up the SSA.

Um my point in bringing up the SSA is that we're gonna be asking them to do more than what they're already doing, they're already stretched thin in resources as an organization, and asking them to do even to do our work that we ultimately will have control over when it does get to the point where we have to vote on the SSA as a body.

I think that's a problem.

I think that does set a bad precedent.

Um between to my point.

So between the increased costs in in auditing and the increase of cost and time that it's going to take to create the SSA.

We're not compensating them for this additional work of doing some of our work even for the for the SSA.

You know, I I just don't think it's right.

Now, I don't want to drag this out.

I think they want to get done with this.

I think we all want to get done with this, and so you know, we'll we'll we'll get there.

But I think that this contract and even the contract process has set a really terrible precedent that is going to come back and bite us in the butt at some point.

And you can have tunnel vision if you want to, but the ramifications of this is going to affect everybody up here one way or another.

So I'll leave it there.

Thanks.

Just a point of clarification here that uh um it was stated publicly uh that the DNA would not have a problem funding uh uh an SSA.

The conversation came up at the last council meeting about whether this could be used for TIFF money, and when it was uh presented to them, they said that that would not be a problem for them to fund it.

If the if the if the uh TIFF money was not available, so that's what I would go back to.

That's that's that's not true.

That's not accurate.

That's not true.

Excuse me.

That's not what the courier news printed was not accurate.

That your board chairman of your board said that was not a problem.

That they would be able to pay that.

That was it, that the career news was not correct.

Um a lot of times they are correct.

All that's all I'm telling you was in the career news.

So I assume that that would be correct.

But this document that's martinez.

This document that's signed right here.

If anybody wants to see the document that's signed, and anybody goes ahead and reads number 18, it says DNA shall hire at its sole expense, okay, a consultant to guide DNA in a good faith effort to complete all necessary actions for establishing a special service area SSA.

I mean, you can go ahead and read it, but it this I this was doc this was signed.

They agreed to it.

You know, I don't know why uh now it they're going back on it, but uh it was something that this isn't that they're signing.

Anyone else that has not spoken because we're getting redundant here.

Okay.

Okay, all right.

Uh Mr.

Ortiz and then Mr.

Good.

Yeah.

Uh so for the audit, the reason I support the audit back in June 18th, if you want to forward this email, June 18th at 9 32 p.m.

I was in Mexico and I had a conversation with Mr.

Pinion and uh City Manager was copied on on the email.

And number three of my email, bullet point three says, have you guys collect corrected all the issues you had with your old accountants?

So then Mr.

Pinion replied with Ms.

Simmons, and her this is why I I'm going with the audit, and I like that the audits in this contract.

Their previous our previous bookkeeper was not communicative, and as a result, uh we were actually underspending to ensure we did not go over our means.

The firm has since closed and management and booking keeper has retired, but the DNA did receive a refund for services that we paid.

All right, so what the background of that is is there was a point in time during the DNA over this last contract where bills weren't getting paid and things weren't getting done how they were supposed to, and uh the accountability went back to the accountant that they had on staff wasn't doing his job.

So this is why I'm supporting the audit.

So something that so he's oversights, his financial oversights are done by the city, so the city can see it and the council can see it, and then the DNA can hold their accountant accountable to make sure whoever they hire on is staffed to be an accountant gets the job done.

So that for uh somebody asked a question about why the audits in there, but this is why I'm supporting the audit.

Okay, Mr.

Good.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so like you had said, I think we're all ready to move forward.

Um we've been working through this process, it's been very public.

Um, but ultimately I feel like this is compromised in action.

Um we're seeing that there is uh objections to the previous contract that was brought forward.

Um there was things that were agreed to that when you saw it on paper, wanted them put back in.

Um I think it's all incumbent on us to understand that this contract represents over half a million dollars in public money.

Um, and a lot of the things that we know right, we know the relationships that you have with different organizations and people within the downtown, um, and we know the successes.

So there's no guarantee that the group that we're working with today, um you know you could get hired by a different firm.

Um and so I think it's responsible behavior when we're working with public money to put those foundations in place to make sure that regardless of the individuals who are involved, the structure itself, the organization has a formal structure in place.

Because right now, yeah, I do understand.

As I said before, I was a board member on DNA.

Um sat in the old office, sat in the new office, and it is very close to some of these other partner organizations.

Um but we don't know if that's always gonna be the case.

And so to I think use public funds um and trust on pre-existing relationships that those things are gonna always be around.

Um I don't think it would be responsible for us to do that.

So I think the addition of the board members formalizes that process so that regardless of who's serving on the board or who's serving as directors in any of the organizations, we have official uh representation, so that each of their agendas are being heard by each of the leadership in their organizations.

Um so I think that's just standard good practice.

Um and keep in mind that the city has in large uh or has largely taken our economic development and push this out to multiple organizations in the community.

Um, and so that was something that I was saying at the last the last time we talked about this was what we're asking of our organization when it comes to either strategic planning or budgeting is increased transparency, dynamic dashboards, so that we're seeing updates in real time as they're updated and not you know necessarily static information.

Um I know that's how things have been for a long time, but times are changing.

That's the expectation we're placing on our organization.

I don't think it's uh unrealistic to push that out to other organizations that we're working with, especially when it comes to our economic development, whether city or uh downtown or regionally.

Um so uh also on the point of the SSA, I know that's been a topic for a long time, so I'm not uh against putting some some milestones in place to make sure this process moves along.

Um it's uh uh councilman Dixon's point.

Um ultimately, yes, we are the ones that make the decision, but the folks who have the closest relationship with the stakeholders who'll be engaging in those conversations, um, I think that's where DNA's benefit and their success really shines through is because they have those existing relationships.

So having their team work with the stakeholders downtown is probably more effective than if anybody else in the city was trying to work with those business owners.

So um, I think we've heard correspondence from downtown business owners, you know, through correspondence through city email.

Um, I've had conversations with the previous attempt with this uh current uh consideration, and each one that I talk to is in favor of having structure and process in place because there's business owners and property owners who've been downtown and have heard these things before, and um whether it was they objected to it last time or they're um wanting to have more certainty this time.

I just think it's one of those items where again when dealing with public money, it's okay to put structure in place to make sure that you know our corporate council is keeping everybody abreast of uh what the the conversations are for the milestones and that so we can approach this relationship responsibly um while also making sure it's productive for everyone because we all we all stand to win um at the end of this contract, assuming we come to an understanding here, but uh I guess those are my my comments for now.

Okay, we have a motion uh to amend the existing uh Mr.

Mayor, can I can I make some Mr.

Stefan?

Sure.

I'll have to call the question.

I haven't had my second the rule Roberts rules of order said everybody gets two chances to speak.

I haven't had my second time.

And all the questiones that you had a chance to speak twice.

Yeah why wouldn't we let him speak twice?

That makes no sense.

Mr.

Steph, and now we're gonna call a vote.

Um thank you, Mayor.

Um, I will not be supporting the motion to amend.

Uh I will be supporting the original contract that was arrived at two meetings ago.

I have sat here, I've reached out to Councilman Thorne and I've sat here since I got no response listening for some reason why we need to do this, and I haven't heard any.

So let me try to drag this conversation back to where we should be, which is we've had a three-year PSA with this organization.

Have they met the milestones we had in that prior pre-PSA?

Yes, they have.

I think they have been performing as we want them to, they have been doing everything we asked them to.

I only brought up the audit to as an example of a compromise that was reached two meetings ago.

Unfortunately, now it's spun out to everybody having to defend why we need it, which wasn't the point.

I disagree with councilman dust.

Uh good.

This is not an example of compromise.

This is an example of us trying to make decisions based on vibes and good feelings and not on the facts and the evidence.

So I am not in favor of the amendment.

I am in favor of the original agreement, and that is the compromise that we should move forward on.

Thank you.

We have a motion on the table to amend and include milestones for the DNA working with Mr.

Beck to come up with those milestones and include the uh representation from the uh Elgin area chamber in commerce and the con elgin area convention and visitors bureau on the board.

Uh, would the clerk please call the rule?

Councilmember Zalfaro abstain.

Dixon?

No.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

No.

Stefan?

No.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

The motion is approved 5-3.

And one abstention.

Brings us to item three.

Is a resolution authorizing acceptance of Illinois Department of Transportation?

Mr.

Mayor?

Still being a motion of or we need to have a vote on the actual approval of the contract as amended.

Okay.

So actually, Mayor Campton.

So before we take this actual vote, um we have members of DNA in the audience.

If if they would be so inclined to speak.

I think it would be more appropriate when they come back when we get this finalized document and they have a conversation with Mr.

Beck.

I think I think that would be more appropriate.

Thank you, Ms.

Powell.

But I'm Mr.

Thank you, Ms.

Powell.

But Mayor, we've let people speak before.

I think it's more appropriate that they have an opportunity to see what the document looks like, and then they can come back and comment on it.

They've heard what the document is going to look like.

They need to see it in writing.

And they need to have that conversation with Mr.

Beck.

But we're voting on it.

We don't have it in, we don't have it here before exactly.

So why can't they speak?

Okay.

Right, but we're voting on it.

If it's going to come back, then we don't need to vote on the final document.

If if your intention, if the council's intention is to come back with the final document at a subsequent meeting, then we don't need to have a vote on the final document.

We can just uh move to postpone to the next meeting.

Um or else we can have a vote on the uh agreement as amended and in a form uh subject to the approval of the corporation council, and then it would not come back again.

So right now there's a motion on the table to approve, there's still the motion on the table to approve the agreement as amended by Mr.

Thorne's motion.

Okay so there's still a motion on the table to uh to approve Mr.

Thorne's amended correct okay, right.

Clerk please call the rule.

So it's best to let them speak because it's not in writing.

If we approve it now, that's just it.

Right?

It doesn't come back in writing, is what you were saying, correct?

It it would not come back at the present time.

It's approved.

Yes, it the agreement would be prepared in the form to be approved by the corporation council subject pursuant to the amendment that was just approved.

Okay, so it should be in writing before we approve it.

That's what I'm hearing.

No.

No.

That is what he's saying.

There are occasions uh, and it's not unusual where an agreement has not been prepared.

It's brought to the city council for final approval and a form to be approved by the corporation council, and that does not come back.

The agreement is just approved pursuant to the client uh to the city council's direction, and um it's up to my office to ensure that the final agreement conforms to the uh approval that was granted by the city council.

So it is um not uncommon that it's the case that the city council has not seen the final version of the agreement.

They approve um a proposed agreement, but the final agreement is still to be worked out.

So that would be what would be approved in this case uh if it's voted on and approved.

The final form of the agreement would not come back, so this amendment places it in the hands of Mr.

Beck.

Okay, so I mean, obviously this is really complex.

I mean, just listening to all the changes we're making.

I think it would behoove us to wait until we have a final agreement in front of us before we take a vote on this, just based on all the changes that have been made from the dais about what is being proposed.

I mean, we we've taken a vote regarding the amendments.

So yeah, I mean I'll make a motion to to postpone.

We have a we have already have one on the table.

Um this is amended.

And I've made a motion.

And then this is an amendment.

Uh which is appropriate to be heard.

I've made a motion to postpone the vote on this until we have a final agreement in front of us.

Second.

It's been moved and second to postpone this until we have a final agreement.

Uh clerk, please call a rule.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Abstain.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

No.

Martinez.

No.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

No.

Mayor Captain?

No.

Motion fails.

Okay.

Back to the amended.

And that would be Mr.

Beck's.

Mr.

Beck has recommended this will be a final vote.

Mr.

Beck will through his corporation corporate council office make the final document.

Is that correct, Mr.

Beck?

Yes, I'd prepare a final agreement pursuant to the amendments that were approved at the same time.

That's the motion.

Clerk, please call the rule.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Abstain.

Dixon.

Yes.

Good.

This is to approve the amended yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

No.

Stefan?

No.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

The motion is approved five uh three with one abstention.

Six two.

Six two.

Item six.

Six two.

Mr.

Dixon voted yes.

Also.

Mr.

Dixon voted yes.

Yes.

So it's two.

It's six two.

Six, two with one abstention.

Okay.

Brings us to item three is a resolution authorizing acceptance of Illinois Department of Transportation Substain Sustained Traffic and Enforcement Program Step Grant and authorizing the execution of a grant agreement.

Agreement number HS 26-0053.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move to the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Ms.

Martinez.

Mayor, um, I talked to corporate counsel.

Would I I'd like to add on this is uh an ordinance.

Um am I on the wrong one?

Oh.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, I am.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Clerk please call the roll.

Council members alfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion is approved.

90.

Item 4 is an ordinance amending chapter 2.08 of the Elder Municipal Code is amended and titled City Council.

And Title 3 of the LGA Municipal Code as amended and titled boards and commissions.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move and second for approval.

Any discussion.

Yes.

Ms.

Martinez.

I guess it would be like an ordinance or however we want to put it.

But I don't know how to state it, but it would be like to when we go ahead and we go to events and the city pays for our seats at events.

If we don't we say we're gonna go and we don't go, we should repay um for those seats.

Because what happens is we go ahead, we say we're gonna go, and sometimes I've seen where people don't show up, and you know, we spent money on those seats, and the city's paying for that, and I think that it it keeps on happening more and more, and I don't think that's right, because sometimes there's other people that would like to go and they weren't able to go because the event uh sometimes it's sold out.

Um I don't know uh if you understand what I'm trying to say or if somebody has something else to say about it.

Mayor, can you jump in?

Mr.

Faro, yeah.

Um just to tag on that.

So actually on Monday I met with city manager, and actually brought that up to the city manager that I was gonna bring it up that we add into the city council rules that if a city council member has a ticket purchase and they cannot attend and they don't attend, they should refund the city that price.

But if they can't attend and they know 48 hours ahead of time, they could tell the city so the city could give the ticket to another council member or to a staff member so the ticket doesn't go to waste.

Right.

So there is some legal or some wiggle room there.

Some of us have full-time jobs and we get called to travel for work and there's other things, family obligations pop up, there's an emergency.

So if you know you can't go as long as it's a 48-hour notice, you can hand the ticket back to the city, and the city would try to find someone else on city council or a city staff member to attend in their place.

So you would like um Mr.

Beck, this is something that uh would be relatively simple to add into the ordinance as just uh uh a separate portion of that.

Um a provision of the I don't know if it really fits in the rules of procedure, but uh yeah, so it would be a relatively simple amendment to the municipal code to add something to provide for that.

Okay.

Okay.

Mayor, can I continue?

I had two other things on my list if that's okay.

To uh to add to this council.

That's all right.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um the other two is uh well the first one I thought was brought up at the the city council meeting.

It's actually um councilwoman Powell's recommendation.

She had indicated that if someone from city council went on a trip and went to a conference that they would report back what they learned.

So we could have that information as well.

And I did not see that in this ordinance.

So if we could put that information in there, I would greatly appreciate it.

And the second thing also, councilwoman Powell has mentioned at other meetings, is if we could change the recommendations to commissions.

If we could rotate that right now, it's done by the most senior staff or most senior council member and the mayor.

If we could rotate that between council members, that is my recommendation.

Those are my three things for the council rolls.

Is that a motion?

Oh, I make a motion to add those three changes.

Do I need to list all three?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to add uh reimbursement for dinners, uh report back uh report back uh information from uh um educational trips that the uh city council has or the city has paid for, and to uh the last one is to rotate council members uh for appointments to serve on uh uh as a appointing uh recommendations that would come back to the city council uh for a service on commissions.

Is that correct?

Yeah, if we could just add that either the reimburse or they have to tell the city uh within 48 hours that they can't attend, so um the city can find someone else, another council member or staff member to attend.

Okay.

Okay, we have a mo uh motion and a second for that.

Mr.

Ortiz.

The I I agree with uh what Ms.

Lafar was saying, but the question I have is I brought that up in July about the boards of commissions, and this c the same exact council decided not to do that.

So why is there a change of heart now to revisit that same thing I brought up back in July?

And now it back then we decided to scrap that part of the idea.

That's why Mr.

Beck just presented what he presented, where we just only removed the liaisons, like the voting uh member liaisons off of everything except for uh Miss Powell's uh commission.

So I'm just want to know between July and now why there's a change, which we all change the minds all the time, isn't it?

That's not changing.

No, no, not that I'm talking about the rotation or having a council person liaison got I use the word liaison, which might be a pretty good.

So like a council member recommendation, yes, yeah.

Well, the last meeting where we all went at it because of the recommendations to the human relations commission.

That's my change of heart.

Okay, so yes, that's good.

That's a good idea.

This is just changing the this is not this is not uh changing people that serve as a liaison on the commission.

This is just uh rotating council members to s to help make the recommendation for new people.

It's not the it's not the creative layers.

Yeah, we will rotate between each other.

Okay, and then how do you plan on uh how do council members plan on picking which commission they want to if they want to volunteer to be uh an appointing council member to that commit particular commission?

No, no, they're not but they're not changing.

They're not they're not going to serve on the commission.

No, but she said for recommendation purposes to appoint somebody to the commission.

We I'm open to suggestions.

We could just rotate it so the next commission that's up, that's the one you get assigned.

If we go in alphabetical order, that would be me, right?

Or if we went in reverse order, I don't care about the order.

Um I'm open to this suggestions and how we could rotate it.

But are you seeing like um let's say um there comes a time where there's a recommendation for uh commission, any commission?

Since you were the last one to pick, then it would be councilman Dixon.

Yeah, and then we just go on that way.

And we'll just go that way.

That would be the easiest, unless we want to do it as a different way.

I think it gets hard if we start picking which commissions we want to do because a lot of us might be on the same one and then it gets a little backed up.

No, I think you have to rotate whatever and don't forget there are about 30.

So we have a we have a number that we don't talk about.

The mayor would say the same, but like let's say there's two commissions in that rotation.

Oh, definitely.

I just wanted to jump in because I I think this whole thing got to delay today because I missed the meeting where this conversation happened.

So I just wanted to say that I went back and watched the video and I think got myself caught up.

And I think um to answer councilman Ortiz's, I I agree with all the things that Deanna's proposing, everybody's proposed honestly, uh to get that out.

But the the thing that changed for me is that if we're not going to have liaisons to certain commissions, the practice was the senior person, which was me, and I don't need to have that.

I'm more than willing to allow that to be delegated.

But there was a sustainability commission, and and as long as uh I think councilwoman Powell's grandfathered in as long as she wants to serve on the Cultural Arts Commission.

The practice was that the if there was a liaison, that person would make the recommendation with the mayor.

And I want to back up too because I think this came out in some of the comments that were directed at me personally from public comments.

Everybody has to understand that the recommendation is just to get it to the council for consideration in a vote.

That's all it is.

It doesn't mean that you're appointed, it doesn't mean that you have cleared the hurdle and you're on.

It's just a way to get names to all of us so we can all look at them and make that vote.

So with having said all that, and I've got other ideas, but I don't think they have to happen today, and and I don't think they rise to changes in the rules, one of which Councilman Ortiz recommended, and I I agree with, but um so I just want to end there and say I I agree with all the comments that have been made.

But I think in this case, I think it is important that we get this drawn up and come back to us so we make sure that it says what everybody I think is trying to make sure they say.

Okay.

It actually reads right.

Can I throw back for a second?

I wasn't done.

Uh Mr.

Farr, you really didn't to negotiate on the 48 hours, because like today, Miss Lindsay sent the council an email about going to the EHN uh Thanksgiving dinner or lunch.

And then so the city usually gives us about a month and a half on average to say yes we want to go or no, we don't want to go.

Are you because I think 48 hours especially for like last minute for either a guy needs to go run a suit if they don't have a suit or a lady needs to get a dress or whatnot?

Would you be willing to do it like a week notice or maybe like five working days just so if so if I say on Saturday I can't go, Miss Lindsay's not gonna see it until Monday when she gets back in the office, so then she can put the word back out, a city manager's office put the word back out to the city staff or the other council members to give them a week's notice to that this thing can be coming up.

I think a week notice is is a little too long.

Like normally when I plan something, I know I'm going unless like a couple of days before, like a day or two before, right?

If something pops up, something's come up, family members getting sick, something like that.

So I think 48 hours.

We could also and be in good faith, we could help, right?

Like if I couldn't go, I could reach out to council member Dixon and be like, hey, I do you have a ticket to this event?

I have it, I can't go.

Can you take it and help city staff uh with that, right?

Because if it is a weekend, it gets a little bit more complicated.

I think a good way we could try to give it to each other as well.

Or sometimes uh like she the event might be a an uh month and a half away, but the cutoff might not be a month and a half away.

So maybe from the cutoff or something, yeah.

Ms.

Powell.

Yes, um the the appointments to the boards and commissions, just going back to that.

Um I I know you had a question about why it came back, and I think I don't think reason.

Yeah, and and I don't think people well, at least for me, I don't think well, at least I know I did have an issue with it.

What I did specifically ask for, since this was you know, we were making changes to our our city council rules.

Councilman Stefan wasn't here, so I just wanted to wait until we had a full board for us to vote on it.

So I I definitely was not against what you had proposed.

I think it made sense.

And I think mayor, you and in particular uh have said that you don't even have to be a part of that process.

So if if that's the case, then we could instruct our city clerk to rotate everyone except for the mayor in that appointment process if if you still feel that way.

Yeah.

Um but I I think we need to clarify what that process, what that process looks like, because there's there have been times that um you know the recommendations have been sent out to the council and it it it's lingered on for a pr period of time, or there's been feedback, and then there have been changes made or recommended because you know a certain number of people said that they didn't necessarily agree with the recommendations being made forward.

That's not the way that's supposed to work.

If you don't agree with the the recommendations, then you don't vote in favor of those people when it comes before the council.

I mean, that's we do not need to drag these processes on further.

I know that uh the city clerk has made some changes in how she sends those out and gives people deadlines to respond, and I think that that's helped to move this along a lot faster, and I appreciate that.

But I just want to make it clear to everybody that when she's sending that out, it's not for your feedback.

It's basically hey, here's the heads up, these are the recommendations that are going to be moving forward and be they they will show up on the next council agenda or whatever agenda um it's determined that they need to go on.

But I also feel that it is incumbent on whichever two council members that are in the rotation making those recommendations.

What's wrong with us reaching out to our colleagues and saying, hey, we're these are the ones that we're looking at.

Uh uh John and I talked or Anthony and I talked, and these are the two people we're looking at.

How do you feel about that?

It so I I want to make it clear that even though there are two people that are going to be kind of leading that process, that we should be leading that process with input from the rest of you with the rest of the people on this dais.

So that's that's what I would encourage.

Um but there have just been some inconsistencies that have happened that have made that process very cumbersome.

Um I'm in favor of everything that's been you know talked about tonight.

Um I'm glad that we're we're finalizing this.

Another aspect that I've brought up in years past um regarding council members going to um conferences or spending money.

Um, you know, it's been viewed different ways over the period over different periods of time, and I think one of the things that um you brought up, Deanna, that um I stated that if you are going to a conference, hey yes, report back on what you learned.

I I see that when I go to the school board meetings that you know, during their their comments, they will say, hey, I went to this conference, the you know, Illinois Education Association conference, this is what I learned, etc.

etc.

Um I would like for us not only to just report to report back, I think we need to set some guidelines and standards around spending so that we all know, hey, if there's a conference coming up, we know how much we can spend in terms of you know uh obviously we're you know we I think we need to set a reasonable guideline of of what a individual council member can spend to attend a conference or some type of training, um, because this has come up in the past, um, so that we don't end up in a situation where um you know someone is spending eight thousand dollars or you know, I I'm not saying that that's going to happen moving forward, but I think it's reasonable for someone to say, hey, they want to go to a National League of Cities Conference or they want to go to an IML, which is the Illinois Municipal League Conference was just in uh downtown Chicago.

Um I was there for that, but I was there in my other capacity.

So um, but I I I think we should try to set like an amount of money for hey, this is how much maximum um can be spent on in-state conferences and out of state conferences, and if you need to exceed that amount, it needs to come back before the council for approval.

Uh so you would like to add that as a fourth item here?

I would like to add that as a fourth item.

Okay.

So I have uh uh the uh the dinners and the we did we settle on 48 hours for that is the time the limit.

Okay.

Yes.

Uh report back uh uh info from uh uh going to uh conferences in a report on the city's uh rotate council members uh for selection of uh for commission members and to your appointment.

One of the things that we do is um if it comes out to you and um uh the clerk asks you to respond by Thursday or Friday, and if nobody responds and said there's a problem, then we would consider that would go automatically to consent agenda as unanimous approval.

So that makes it if somebody objects, then it would come back to the council meeting for clarification.

Is that we understand?

I think we just did that with the MLK yes.

So once you get that, then you don't have to come back to the council meeting and have another vote on it.

It goes automatically to consent agenda if nobody objects.

Okay.

Um I guess the suggestion would be make the can okay.

Go ahead, Mr.

Good, I'm sorry.

So I support, uh agree, ready to move forward.

I I did have some other items of my own, but I don't know if we want to keep adding to the list to compromise.

They're not totally revised.

I was just thinking about sending this back to Mr.

Beck.

Put it in and then send it back to us.

So in there, yeah, we might as well do them all at one time.

I would think would be the easiest.

The only thing I didn't add, um and and I'll think about this while um councilman uh good is talking.

We probably need to I'm I'm open to listening to some dollar amounts, like what is the dollar amount we want to set for um in-state um travel versus out of state travel.

Um, or if we want to maybe look at what some other communities have done, maybe we can you know we can do that outside of this, but I think we you know need to set those dollar amounts so that we're clear.

We we could maybe just put it in and say we'll spend we'll set dollar amounts and then we can review that and and research that at a later time if you want to do that.

Um Justin, in the course of reviewing this, I'll just bring to the council's attention.

There was a rule proposal back in 2019 addressing this issue, and what was proposed is whether the city council would adopt as its own rules the conference and seminar guidelines that apply to management employees and the employee manual.

Um I wasn't able to review the discussion that I couldn't locate the video of that, but in reviewing the minutes, that was tabled, so that never went forward.

So uh the employee manual and conference seminar guidelines, you know, the amount of that's discussing the budget preparation process, the amount that might be available for conferences and um seminars for management employees.

So I at this point I could bring back that proposal that was proposed in 2019 and provide some um at least if we want to council wants to engage in that discussion, and then maybe the actual dollar amounts are not going to be set out in the ordinance.

It could be something that is discussed in the budget process, but um at any rate that's that's what was proposed in 2019, and that's an option to consider.

I I would be fine with that.

Um because obviously per DM and all of that stuff, and in the same requirements that employees would have to produce receipts or not produce receipt, whatever um, I think should apply.

So I I would be fine with that.

Thank you, corporation council.

Okay, Mr.

Good.

So um just before I go into this, do you want us to open the discussion more on a couple of their items, or are we to the point where you want to send this?

No, if you've got it, let's load Mr.

Um so you know, it's this conversation uh was uh spooled up earlier this year, and so part of uh my commentary then um got me down the path of really diving into council security.

Um, I contribute to uh organization um through John Hopkins and GovX that is government people coming together to speak about emerging technologies, and so in part of this conversation about um the first item here about materials executive session, that led to other conversations about um, and I don't want to speak anything to into existence, but the technology for voice cloning, the barrier has dropped significantly.

Um and so what other municipalities are looking at and doing is reassessing their uh policies for remote meetings with basically a gradient of saying, are we going to continue to allow remote meetings?

If we do continue to allow remote meetings, are we doing any authentication for the device that's being used?

And then is there any requirements to have uh at a minimum the camera on?

Because there's been this has happened in the private sector where people you know they go they interview for a job and then they get the job, and then it's actually somebody else that's doing the job because they can work remote with a camera off.

Um that's something I wanted to bring to the council for consideration because the barrier is in incredibly low right now to we're all public officials, um, all of our voices for better or worse are out there.

Um so all of our voices can be clothed for less than two dollars.

Um so that's something I want to bring to the table is when we have remote meetings, do we just require to have the camera on is the first lowest barrier of what municipalities are starting to enact is just have the camera on, and or do we want to require or basically not allow remote meetings anymore?

Um so that's the first item I had that kind of spun out from our conversation on the first item here.

I'll leave this as just having the camera on, and we can go from there.

That's the easiest one because it's just a button.

Yeah, okay.

But it is something I do want to make us aware of is as this technology gets voice calling is the first thing they're already doing, you know.

Uh you may have heard of deep fakes.

You you can replicate to an alarming degree.

Um so that's something I want to bring to the table.

Um again, like I said, that stuff stemmed from uh this item here where we were discussing executive session and materials leaving executive session.

Um and so I think at that time we were having the conversation.

Uh uh council person is new.

Um was asking, you know, do we have any flexibility?

Um and at that time, I believe I had said, you know, potentially we have a process for taking materials out.

Um after all the conversations I've had with other uh individuals from municipalities and other organizations.

I I think that we keep what what's in executive session in executive session uh because those materials ultimately do reach the public eye.

Uh we discussed those items here uh in a public forum.

So uh those are the two items that I had related to council security.

All right.

Mr.

Beck, did you all have all those?

There's one more over there.

Okay, one more okay, Mr.

No, I would just say I I don't agree with the last one.

I agree with the first one with the the camera on.

I think that's fine.

I think we could try to figure out what some of the security of for using the city um laptops or not, or if we're using personal at the city would check the device or maybe the phone, uh they could come up with some kind of security.

Uh but I think we had a process to check out materials, and I think we should keep that so that's why I wanted to bring up do we want to have these all in one?

Because I don't want to bring one into the fold that you disagree with, and then you're left like well like X percentage of this proposal, but I don't like that one.

So I don't know how we want to we could do two motions if you want to break that up.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's a nice compromise of trying to get information.

We had a process to check out the information, you had to report it to corporate council.

So there is a record of who takes m materials out of the room.

Okay.

Mayor, I've taken detailed notes, and luckily I I think I'll be referring back to the video on this to just confirm that I have a Facebook.

Um let's let Mr.

Beck uh uh put this together for us and then uh bring it back at a at a that would be my suggestion and bring it back at uh another council meeting.

So we can see exactly what's maybe we should have a vote on whether I should bring it back with the checking out of the case.

Yeah, maybe you vote on the second session one.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I make a motion that um the earnings for city council rules keeps what's currently proposed of a checkout process if anyone's taking out materials from executive session and they have to report it to corporal council who keeps a record of who's taking materials out.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to a vote that uh uh uh approve the uh the approve the checkout uh uh items for executive session.

Uh clerk please call you vote on that one item.

On that one item only.

Well, I I I had an issue with the other one that he uh counciling good brought up too.

So I mean I I had a discussion point, but I you would kind of after we vote on this, I would like to vote on the second one, but I also had a comment or discussion.

Which second one?

The about the cameras and remote uh meetings.

Okay.

So I just wanted to talk about that.

And the votes that keep the checkout process, I asked for the corporation council is the custodian of the checkout.

Yes, what's in there currently?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, what's in the what's proposed?

Yeah, that's proposed right now in the document that we received.

Okay, clerk please call a roll.

This is the executive checkout.

Okay.

Council members Alfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

No.

Martinez?

No.

Ortiz?

No.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

No.

Mayor Captain.

Um motion fails.

Five-four.

Yes.

Okay.

Now back to Ms.

Powell.

Uh, this was about the remote camera.

Uh the zoom meeting, uh Zoom meetings and uh remote camera.

Yes.

So obviously this was originally put in place during COVID.

Um, we were doing a lot of remote meetings during that time, but also um recognizing that you know, I'm not gonna say all of us, but most of us have full-time jobs that sometimes require us to be out of town or not be able to come to meetings.

I I I honestly believe that everyone sitting up here really makes an effort to come to these meetings.

Um and and I appreciate that, and I'm sure the public appreciates that.

But there are times that we we can't for job reasons.

And I I just think it's kind of odd.

I mean, I know you're really into the whole AI thing, uh, Councilman Good.

It just doesn't occur to me that you know someone's gonna go to the extent of pretending that they're at a meeting and have some AI bot in place, um, speaking on their behalf.

I mean, for that matter, even if with the camera on, uh there could be an AI generated image, you know, that's not them as well.

I mean, so having the camera on, you know, based on what you're saying, your argument, it it it could not be them as well.

But I think so that's why I said the gradient is basically you either don't allow remote meetings, or you have authentication for the devices coming in, or you have camera on.

And so I already understand that the technology exists to replicate voice and image.

So that's why I was just throwing it out there.

That basically the the minimum that I'm seeing municipalities do that are approaching this is they just say, hey, just start off, just make sure the camera's on.

And and I've been at several other council meetings um for other municipalities and their cameras are not on.

No, I know.

And that's why I'm bringing it for us to consider for elegant for our policies.

But I I guess if someone doesn't have their camera on and I hear them and and we're listening to them interact with us, I I guess I'm fine with that for those very few times that I feel that people here on this dais invoke this that um that privilege of of being able to meet remotely.

I think that is going a little far.

Um and I I guess are we concerned that anyone that has been using remote meetings lately isn't who they say they are?

Not at all.

This is not a reactive approach, this is a proactive approach to make sure that we're handling technology appropriately responsibly, because it's evolving so incredibly quickly that again the barrier to entry, this has been doable for a long time, but it would require experts, uh expensive equipment, and now you can do it, you could download an app right now, and we you and I, I can show you how to do it in two minutes for less than two dollars.

And it's not just a voice recording, you can in real time type out what you're saying.

So again, I have no I'm under no impression that we've not been interacting with our colleagues.

This is proactive.

And we're we're approaching this next year officially uh through our strategic plan meeting that we just had is that we're gonna start talking more seriously about how we handle all data.

And so one of the things this is such a low-hanging fruit, it's the click of button to make sure your camera's on.

Because this is, I mean, uh, this is important, right?

We're we're making decisions that are are potentially 10 million dollar plan.

I'm not I'm not trying to go down a this nefarious path of things that could go wrong, but it's become incredibly easy for people to mimic other people.

And and I think the other part of of what you were proposing is um because I think you know, some people use maybe city-owned devices, some people are using their own personal devices.

And we're repeat that.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding what you're talking about in terms of having the city um check our devices or have some type of access to our personal devices.

Just to be clear, what we agreed upon just now in that quick assessment of the spectrum of options was that we would just agree on the button to have the camera on.

That's it.

Yes, that's that was what we were gonna officially vote on and add to this list of uh adjustments to what was proposed.

Um so again, the gradient that I'm seeing other municipalities talk about and consider is either ending remote meetings entirely.

If you can't make it, you can't make it, or they're going to the point of the most low-hanging fruit is just clicking the button to make sure your camera is on, just like some teachers do in classrooms and for but certain businesses, some do it, some don't.

Um, and then to have authentication for that connection.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be a personal or a compute or a city computer, but you need to have a record of the device, the IP address that's coming in.

You can even there's a lot of things that people can do to even manipulate that.

And so that's why some municipalities, as they're considering this, and they bring up everything you're saying.

Part-time elected officials sometimes need to remote in.

So that's why a lot of places are keeping that in place.

But they're getting to the point where they're so alarmed that oftentimes the easiest thing is just pull the plug and just say you have to be in person.

Because like what you're bringing up is complexity for an IT department, it's complexity for us who are not IT experts in most cases to handle authentication in to a call.

Let me money the water, isn't it legal of the state to uh telephone use a telephone to uh participate and we've done that?

So how do we how do we deal with that?

Um not allow that at all.

And again, so and I I didn't mean to muddy up the other proposals and and bring this into the frame.

Yeah, if it's causing people considering I don't want to come because everything else before it seemed like we had consensus agreement on.

But this is something that's it's very like in my opinion, uh a low effort decision that we can make to proactively ensure that we're at least considering it and and following what's now starting to be stood up as best practice.

Again, this is very new evolving field, but this is what's happening.

Mayor, can I jump in?

Uh so I just asked corporate counsel wood were the I only thought we could remote if it was work related, and he mentioned there's there's actually three uh if it's work related, if it's uh personal illness or disability, or because of a family or other emergency.

Um now thinking of what councilwoman Powell is indicating, like if I'm sick, I don't want to be on camera.

I look like a hot mess.

So just trying to figure out can there be or if there's in a family emergency, there's deaths in families, etc.

Don't need you see me looking like a sobering mess.

Is there a way for us to find that middle ground, right?

And I think for those, like if you're if you're working if you're working somewhere else, I think you should be able to turn on your camera.

Just turn on your camera.

But for those other two um reasons, can we find some kind of compromise to help those who might meet that, right?

In the sense of like what that might be, and maybe it's some more time we need to do some research to see what others are doing to address that.

Okay.

Mr.

Ortiz, then Mr.

Dixon.

Yeah, I think I've remoted in once since being on the council, maybe twice.

Once I did have my camera off, like during like the main meeting here, but then we went to executive session when we were when we still had Mr.

Doms as a consultant.

I turned my camera on just so the council knows I'm in the room by myself.

I'm in a secure place when no eavesdroppers uh listening to what we're talking about.

So uh I don't have the problem with the camera coming on.

It's to me it's that's uh if if you're sick, there's filters that tighten you up, which my daughter showed me, which I don't even know existed on Zoom, and that's a platform we use.

So I don't have a problem with the cameras coming on.

I've done it well, not in this meeting, which maybe now I regret not turning on during this meeting, but I did turn it on during executive when I zoomed in that one time.

So I don't have a problem with that.

Mr.

Dixon, yeah, I think that um we probably should move forward with the council rules, except for this one for now.

Um we can always add this on to it because there's so much discussion, there's so much unknown that we probably don't want to make this decision on a fly.

So how about we go ahead and approve everything?

Because I I don't disagree with the authentication because I mean there's ways to do that without the camera even being gone.

So there are internal ways for us to verify that the person who says they're on the other end is on the other end without there being a camera involved in that.

Um so I I think that we probably just need to flesh it out and then we can bring that back and add it once we're once we have reached a consensus.

So I'll go ahead and I'll um um I think we need a motion to approve.

So I'll make a motion to approve with all the I'm sorry, I'm just yes, we're okay.

Sure.

But I've just taken this this direction from the council.

We're gonna come back with the final ordinance, but are were you gonna make a motion for this one item or I'm sorry for I don't think all right?

So this is it's a discussion right now, so I don't think we need to make a motion to not include that item.

We'll just include all the other items except for the last item concerning authenticity and security.

That's the direction I feel like I'm getting unless we're gonna do some other direction.

All right, that's what we're doing there.

That's fine.

All right, Mr.

Good has to make the motion for an example, right?

Yeah, you can do it if you want.

You know, uh I think we're ready to have a vote here, but I I have to add this.

You know, up until uh six or seven years ago, this wouldn't have been a discussion.

Uh the city council got by without somebody not being here, and they can get by without me, and they can get I don't want to meet any of you, but the council will go on and the world will go on if you're not here.

So uh most of the time there are some important issues, and even those will go on because it takes a majority.

So we have a motion.

Um, and uh we don't we don't even need a motion, we're just gonna come back with this, Mr.

Back.

Come back, I think and uh we'll clean it up and send it back.

Okay, consent agenda.

We have to remove an item.

Uh Mr.

Mayor move that we move remove item number three for special clarification consideration.

Second and uh for uh later consideration.

So we have a vote on uh all items but uh number three this time.

I'll move that we approve items one, two, and four through twelve by consent.

Second move and second and any further discussion hearing none, uh clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro, yes, Dixon?

Yes, good, yes, Martinez, yes, Ortiz, yes, Powell, yes, Stefan?

Yes, Thorne?

Yes, Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion is approved nine zero.

Now we have to vote on uh Mr.

Mayor, I'll make the motion that we approve item three from the consent agenda by special uh motion with the clarification that has come in just this week that uh the name Planckrow Tap Room LLC will be replaced by Chip Shots payroll LLC in the proposed agreement it's been moved and second to replace uh tap room with chip shot any further discussion hearing none court please call the roll uh council members alfaro yes Dixon?

Yes, good yes, Martinez, yes, Ortiz, yes, Powell, yes, Stefan, yes, Thorne, yes, Mayor Camp.

Yes, motions approved nine zero miscellaneous business move for approval second move the second for approval any discussion hearing none clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes, Dixon?

Yes, good, yes Martinez, yes, Ortiz, yes, Powell, yes Stefan, yes, yes, Mayor Campton.

Yes, motions approved nine zero uh next committee of the whole meeting will be Wednesday, October 8th, 2025 at 6 p.m.

in the city council chambers.

The next regular meeting of the city council will be Wednesday, October 8th, 2025 at 7 p.m.

in the council chambers.

I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.

So move second move and second to adjourn.

Court, please call the role.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, we are adjourned.

Have a good evening.