We'll call the committee of the whole meeting for the Elgin City Council for January 14th, 2026 to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council members Alfaro.

Present.

Dixon?

Present.

Good.

Here.

Martinez?

Here.

Ortiz.

Here.

Powell.

Stefan?

Here.

Thorne.

Here.

Mayor Captain.

Here.

Approval of minutes of the previous meeting of December 17th.

So moved.

Second.

Move the second for approval.

Any corrections or additions.

Hearing none, Cork, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motions approved eight zero.

Oh, we have a few people that signed up for a public comment this evening.

First person Josh Brockway.

Thank you, Mayor.

Hopefully everybody's staying warm today.

I want to thank the mayor and the council and the staff for hosting the community forum and for the privilege of serving as its facilitator.

It was a humbling experience, especially as so many community members, I don't know if you felt this way, looked directly at me as they shared their anger, fears, and frustrations.

I'm not sure if you all are like me, but I'm still struggling to hold several of the stories, especially from the young people who were there.

Their nervous breathing, their tears, and their short direct sentences have stuck with me for days.

It's clear that you all have divided opinions about policy related to the immigration enforcement.

Yet you've all signaled at various points that what is happening in the community is both wrong and unlawful.

I recently heard that a polarized society overprioritizes agreement.

And if there is not agreement, the vitriol flies to discredit opponents.

So what do we do when we actually agree on the values but not on the policy?

To find a solution that brings together the best of our policy proposals while setting aside the negative and unintended consequences.

But might have another solution.

We're inundated with a kind of overworked rhetoric that's designed to entertain us with takedowns of the opposition and soundbite emotional releases.

Thanks.

Perhaps the best evidence of this is that when the neighbors so strenuously objected to the first site plan and the P and Z recommended against it in June of 2025.

Uh, the leadership of this uh Hindu temple did not elect to charge forward and come before the council, hoping that you would say something different.

Instead, they took what they heard from the neighbors in the P and Z to heart, and they directed their design team to prepare a greatly downsized proposal, involving a 63% smaller uh temple building and 225% increase in uh open in green space.

This should speak volumes as to the character of this petitioner and allay any concerns over the quality and the suitability of the project, particularly given that the land currently is zoned uh GI, general industrial, and could be developed today with industrial buildings with no public hearings.

And the the Hindu plan is much more aligned with your comprehensive plan.

Uh, we thank the staff for their work, thoughtful guidance and assistance over the past several years, and for their recommendation of support, and we very much appreciate the time that I know you have all spent in not only reading all of this but entertaining calls and reading emails.

The approval of this project will be a great credit to the city and clearly demonstrate what a welcoming place Elgin is.

Our team is present with me uh both here and will be at the 7 o'clock meeting to answer any questions.

Um, we're gonna try and keep it brief because we know it'll be a busy night.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chuck Hanlon Thank you, Chuck Hanlin with JSD Professional Services here on behalf of the same petition with uh with Peter.

Again, I'll try to keep it brief.

I just want to make a uh few comments.

Uh Elgin certainly, and I know you all know this has a uh history with the founding, the the original downtown, where religious institutions are embedded and certainly just part of residential neighborhoods, and that pattern uh continues on as Elgin has developed out east and west and on uh the west side certainly.

There's many examples of uh newer religious institutions being embedded again in residential neighborhoods in our newer uh development areas.

So the tradition that it starts in the downtown and you know most downtowns in the country start that way, has continued in Elgin to include these institutions embedded within residential neighborhoods.

Just speaking from uh from a land use uh standpoint.

Uh in this case, uh, as Peter uh mentioned, uh take into account the comments from the neighbors uh at the public hearing and other comments that we received.

There were significant uh changes to the plan, and I would agree uh with Peter.

We've both been in this business for a while and have had few clients that have honestly taken it that much to heart and made this magnitude of significant reductions and changes uh and some detail uh in the plan based on feedback and comments from the neighbors who live uh and some of those neighbors, of course, adjacent to uh the property at the common uh property line.

Uh we reduced the amount of townhomes by five units.

We are putting light kind residential two-story townhomes adjacent to the existing two-story townhomes that are on the west side of the existing neighborhood.

So we're putting light kind units to light kind units.

Uh their setbacks are required to be 30 feet for the rear yards.

Our first plan we included 40 feet.

We heard comments about concerns for wildlife.

Uh, we had included a six-foot tall continuous fence, uh, thinking that was a good idea.

They they did not really like that.

They were concerned about the movement of the wildlife and even the views of the fence and even the installation of a straight line fence would remove more trees, which is true.

So we've removed the idea of the fence, we pulled that out.

We also added 10 more feet to our rear yard setback, so there's our required at 30.

Most of their towns are a few feet beyond that.

Ours are minimum required at 50 feet.

So that's going to put 80 feet from you know back door to back door of the town hall, 30 on their side, roughly uh 50 on our side, at least from a minimum standpoint, uh, and a reduction of units.

We've uh greatly reduced the magnitude uh you know of the main generator of of the site, uh, which is the temple complex itself from 231,000 square feet down to 86,000 square feet, the 63 percent reduction in the total interior square footage of uh the temple complex uh building.

I mentioned I say it in terms of a complex that includes a uh prayer hall, dining facility, community hall, ancillary uses, office spaces, bathrooms, maintenance areas, and storage, and et cetera.

So it's it's entirety that's broken down into smaller uh components within the building itself.

The reductions uh to that, including the removal of a three-story condominium building that was in the original proposal, have significantly reduced the amount of parking uh from 1284 spaces uh down to just check my notes uh down to 536 spaces, 58% reduction in the total parking.

That reduction in that field of parking in the plan also allowed us to then insert a six-acre uh green space outdoor recreation area that was not previously in the original plan.

So we've we've taken that most of that uh benefit of the reduced parking and created us a solid rectangle for open space at the northern end of the plan, which actually further buffers some of the single family neighbors to the north and and to the north and west.

Uh so with that I could go on with some more detail, but I think I'll uh leave it at that.

The main point is uh we really feel like uh the client in this case listened and made significant changes, reductions to the project to hopefully fit in uh better with the neighbors' concerns.

Okay, thank you.

Lynn Means.

Hi.

Uh I did consultant for the project.

I didn't meet and speak in last year.

Uh you'll have a chance at the regular council meeting.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

Mr.

Manager.

Thank you, my mayor.

Item A is on both agendas.

This is a phase three engineering services agreement with Hampton Lanzini and Renwick for the Kimball Street Traffic Signal Interconnect project.

That project will be modernizing and coordinating traffic signals along Kimball Street from Dundee Avenue to North Grove Avenue.

The project is supported by a federal congestion mitigation and air quality, commonly known as CMAC grant, which funds 80% of the eligible project costs.

The engineering services agreement is similarly eligible for that same 80-20 split, meaning the city will be reimbursed almost 40,000 at the end of this project for this $50,000 contract.

HLR is being recommended to be hired as the city's engineering consultant.

It will be providing construction engineering services for the traffic signal project that include uh field inspections, design interpretation, administering the construction contract, and coordinating project activities to ensure the work is completed properly on schedule and in full compliance with federal and state requirements.

As I noted, this is on both agendas, so we can discuss the matter now, or you can push that over to the regular agenda.

Any questions at this time?

Okay.

Item B is a software subscription agreement with Box Incorporated for cloud-based data storage and business product for the cloud-based data storage and business productivity platform.

Rather than me providing the introduction to this initiative, I'm going to ask for Chief Technology Officer Aaron Cosantino to come to the podium and talk about one component of this initiative, the AI platform.

Mayor, I know that you talked about the desire to have the city become more engaged with the business community and AI and beating you to the punch.

Mr.

Cosentino brought this forward, this initiative for the agenda.

So we want to talk about what the city is planning to do as it relates to AI.

Thanks for being with us, Mr.

Cosantino.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Yes, purely coincidental that the state of the city address was yesterday, and uh this is on the agenda today.

Um it is it's it's really exciting.

So I wanted to thank you for letting me have the opportunity to come out here and talk a little bit about what this proposal is, um, and then also you know, give a chance to the city council and for the community to understand sort of the city's approach to AI because it can have a divisive sort of uh impact depending on the audience that you're talking to.

But it's exciting.

Uh, and AI means a lot.

Uh it means something different, I think, to everybody.

Some really like it, some really dislike it, and a lot of us are in between.

Um, but I think none of us can kind of deny the fact that it's here.

Uh it's a force to be reckoned with.

Um Time magazine's person of the year were a group of people who created something that is decidedly not a person.

Uh, so if that tells you how impactful AI has become but yeah, it's it's a huge force, and I think none of us can deny that it's it has a very large impact or can have a very large impact on sort of how we do work, how we get our day-to-day work done.

There's also a potential downside to AI.

Uh, and I wanted to provide you the background so that you and the community can uh be confident that the city's approach to AI tries to reap those benefits that AI can provide us while mitigating the risks that I think a lot of us may see with AI.

Um so we've been looking at AI for quite some time within the city within sort of how we can use it here to provide city services to the residents.

We conducted an AI survey internally for our sit for our staff.

Those respondents, the vast majority had used AI in some form or fashion.

Um they've likely they've used those tools like ChatGPT or name any other large language model that you like to go to.

Um, a lot of them hadn't received any formal AI training, and they also expressed some concern, most of them in fact, expressed concern about accuracy, about the ethics of using AI, about the security of using an AI tool, and then also about job impacts.

So what that survey tells us is that we have a lot of folks that responded to the survey at least, uh, that are using AI and are continuing to use it.

So the question for us really became how can we as the city administration, particularly IT, uh, how can we sorry, I'm gonna get this cord.

How can we meet that demand for our city staff and address those concerns at the same time?

So, fast forward to today with the the memo that you have in front of you and what we're looking at.

With when we're given these choices on which direction to go with quote unquote AI, there's a lot of directions.

All of our vendors are coming at us nowadays with AI this, AI that any number of tools that you can use.

And a lot of the tools are very helpful.

Uh, but after looking at the options that our that our cloud providers were providing us, um, looking at what we're doing internally already, what the appetite is within our staff, as well as what they can reasonably adopt without getting overloaded with technicalities or having it be overly technical to the point that they're not interested in using it.

Taking all of those into consideration is what led us to recommend moving forward with box AI.

Um, and I'm pretending as if box AI is the only thing that's at play here.

It is really not.

Box is foundational to the everyday work that the city does.

It is where I'll give you an over brief overview.

It's where we house all of our documents.

So all of the city's what's called unstructured data lives in box.

It's a cloud storage at its very core.

It's a cloud storage provider that allows the city to instead of a network drive, upload all of its documents into box.

The benefit there is those in those documents are available at any time, any place, as long as you're logged in and you properly you know put your credentials in.

Um you can access those documents.

It makes it easy to share documents, it makes it easy to uh provide sort of a centralized location.

You all use box on a bi weekly basis to access your agenda packets.

Um box has that very basic foundational usefulness to us.

They also have a number of other productivity apps that we use on a daily basis as well.

Box notes.

It's a place you can take notes with people alone by yourself, or um collaboratively, you can embed images, videos, links into those notes.

So it's a way to continually keep that.

It's like a a running Word document that you can share in real time.

Uh Box Canvas is a diagramming platform, diagramming solution for uh ideation and creating different workflows.

Box hubs is another piece of the platform that allows you to create centralized landing pages, which becomes very important in box AI, and then box sign is kind of like our docu-signed platform.

It allows us for those digital signatures.

So the box AI piece is just that one piece.

It's really important for this evening's uh upgrade, but but boxes actually much more than that, and the AI overlay, which we'll talk about, actually enhances all of those products and it enhances all of the way that we use box.

Um, again, fast forward to today, what are we talking about?

We're talking about upgrading box to a level that box offers called enterprise advanced.

So our current agreement with Box had been for five years.

It started in 2022, it goes through 2026 all the way to 2027.

We're looking to renew it early to lock ourselves in for a three-year commitment, the first year of which would be the same amount of money that we're paying last year that we that we're gonna pay this year, no no increase.

However, we get access to box AI right away.

And then in the next two years after that, we would see an increase for those remaining two years of the agreement, which uh we which we would also then have box AI.

So that is what this proposal is actually asking for.

Uh it's it's to renew our box uh relationship for an additional three years with the enhancement and the addition of box AI.

Um so what does Box AI actually get us?

Um right now, the way we use Box AI is largely conversational.

Uh the city council has access to it on box.

So uh if you go to box and you go to your agenda packet, there's that little squiggly atom looking sign, and you can click that and you can interact with the document that you're looking at, right?

So you can talk to, you can ask it questions, you can ask it to summarize uh the document, you can say, give me some speaking points on here.

Um you can interact with that singular document.

And that's and that's useful.

That's kind of not unlike interacting with an LLM uh on the internet, going to Chat GPT and just asking it some questions.

However, ChatGPT doesn't have that document, right?

So Box AI right now is really conversational.

The upgrade that we're talking about would give us the ability to create agents.

Um agents can mean a lot of things to different people, just like AI in general, but for for the way I'm sort of talking about agents is it's an LLM partner or helper that is highly tuned to doing something repetitive for you as an assistant that can be then shared with others and deployed in a scalable way.

So right now, I think if if you go to ChatGPT and you create an agent or uh they call them GPT, you go there, you if you have this level of Chat GPT, you go there, you can give it uh a name, and you can upload a bunch of documents for it to reference when it's at when it's helping you, when it's giving you those responses.

Um that uploading of the documents, that knowledge base that you're creating for your agent when you're doing it on Chat GPT, that's what we're trying to avoid having happen on a very wide level across the city.

We do not want people fragmenting their approach to AI, uploading all sorts of internal city documents to God knows what LLM, creating their agents that way, and doing it in an ad hoc way that the city has no oversight over.

We have no security uh restrictions around.

Um that's what we're trying to avoid with this.

And so with box AI, we do avoid those pitfalls in that the documents are already there, they're already bound within the security parameters box sets up for us.

Uh they have people have to identify who they are through our other identity engine Okta.

So we know that we're not getting intrusions uh from bad actors looking at this documentation.

So when you're setting an agent up in something like ChatGPT, you have to provide it that knowledge.

Um box AI already has that knowledge.

So when we're setting up agents in box AI, we can cultivate specifically where we want that agent to be able to look to gain that knowledge and to ground its its responses in very accurate and real documentation.

Our documents, the ones that we provide it.

The benefit there is that when you use other LLMs or you're creating other agents, they will reach out to the internet, the public internet, which is full of inaccuracies, and I mean that's where these hallucinations come from that you hear about.

It's reaching out to somewhere, it's grasping to give you a solid answer, and it's using all kinds of reference material that may or may not be accurate.

Um that is sort of where the accuracy piece comes in.

So box AI does not reach out to the internet at all.

It only utilizes the information that we provide it.

It utilizes the LLM.

The LLM is housed within Box's servers, and we choose from any number of LLMs, they list 20 or 30, um, that we can choose from that range from you know Claude Anthropics Claude or Gemini or you know, the the open AI's, you know, various models.

So we can choose which one, whichever you know is suited for the task that we're trying to build the agent for, but it it's using that LLM, not in like an internet way, but in a way that it's just reaching out to that, and and I think that's where Box really helps us in that it does all that back end infrastructure and it builds that connection and integration to literally any LLM we want without us having that overhead and that technological debt to continually need to maintain that.

I liken it to when my family and I went camping, we rented an RV.

Now I don't have to own the RV, I don't have to tow the RV.

The RV literally just ends up at the campsite.

They set all that stuff up for me.

I can just benefit from the use of the RV with my family in a very easy way.

It's easy to go and it's easy to leave.

So that's sort of what box AI gives us.

It sets up the parameters for us to take advantage of AI for our entire staff, even those that might even not even realize that they could benefit from an agent.

Uh it gives us the ability to set that up, scale it out, and make it available in an unlimited way.

We could create as many agents as we would want for our staff.

And box AI does that in a way that we can be very confident that we control the information, we control the accuracy, we control who sees it, and we control the lifespan of those agents.

They're not just proliferating out into the into the world.

So what are some examples then of like how we can use this?

How is this going to even benefit the staff?

I mean, this is where it can get fun and really long.

So I'm gonna be cognizant of the time.

But uh any topic or any function you're doing in your job that you find yourself doing often, you can find a way to have an agent augment that or do it completely.

Um I liken it like I use the example of a bid review in the in the memo.

So a bid review is a very standardized process, which makes it perfect for an agent to be able to help us with.

Because our proposals that we're receiving for bids, regardless of of what the project is, go through a standard standard process.

We know if bids are um what's the word?

I'm blanking on it, like responsive or not, right?

So and they're responsive if they hit all of these little check boxes.

As a human, it takes us a long time to review those documents.

But as an LLM in an agent built-in box, once we tell it what to look for, it does that vastly faster than we could ever do it as a human.

So literally, what could take our purchasing manager many hours to review a bid that has, I don't know, 12 responses, to know if even five of them are responsive, the agent will know what to look for and it'll say, this is responsive, this one's responsive.

This is not responsive because it doesn't have this.

That will go from an hour, let's say on the high end, you know, two hours to maybe five minutes.

Then the agent, we could use the same agent or a different agent, because they're an agent, you give them very detailed instructions to say, look for this, and then once you find that, ask this question, or then look for this.

So then once we do that, uh once he knows what's responsive, then the our purchasing manager could conceivably begin querying or talking to that agent about like, well, based on you know XYZ conditions or based on this constraint, which vendor um get give me a matrix of the of the vendor's responses based on this uh this you know quantity of X construction piece of equipment or what have you.

Like it it can kind of go through and do the rating for you, right?

Uh it would rate it in a way that would help you make a decision or get to a decision faster than you normally could.

You could use this in hiring, people will do it in hiring.

Uh and this is again, we talked about those downsides.

This is sort of where we get to some of the downsides potentially.

Um, but think about it evaluating for you know hiring.

You get a packet of 200 pages between CVs, resumes, attachments, affidavits, what have you, 500-page document easy.

You can have the agent look through those and say, based on these parameters, do you see any standout candidates?

Um those candidates can then you can obviously then review those yourself, and that's where the human in the loop piece comes in.

What we don't want to do is rely overly on AI and go straight from AI agent to publication without any human in the loop.

You want to have someone there, at least from an accountability standpoint.

Um, because there's research that'll tell you that sometimes human in the loop makes less of an optimal result than just straight up AI, but I think for government use cases, it makes a lot of sense to have human in loop, especially from that accountability standpoint.

Uh my my brain immediately goes to the police department who are already using draft one.

I mean, and their policy is very well written and thorough, and they're not just going from acts on draft one policy or police report to publication.

There's a lot of safeguards built into that that ensures that we're looking at that before it goes anywhere that's any anywhere that is of consequence.

So box AI gives us the ability to do just that.

It sort of preliminarily can go through, do these highly repetitive tasks that would normally take a really long time or a lot of effort in a very fast way, and it doesn't get tired, it doesn't complain, and you can really fine-tune those agents to be able to do exactly what you want in the tone that you would want.

So city council members, you will and can have an agent that looks through our agenda packet.

Lots of pages in those memos.

Very boring.

But what you can do is have the agent review those and say, and we can build this for you once we if we get this.

Um it would say, give me three bullet points on each memo, give me a pro and a con for it, and give me one question to ask staff.

The agent would go through and do just that for you.

So it becomes maybe what used to be several hours reviewing agenda materials, could be you call it a council meeting, a council prep agent.

Um you do it on this agenda and it spits out exactly what you need for the meeting and you're prepared.

And then maybe you go into detail about one or another one memo or another if it kind of piques your interest, and you can ask it more, you know, more in-depth questions about that, and it'll respond.

Um privacy is a potential downside with with AI, right?

People get very share a lot with AI, and so there's a concern about what's kept, what's there, what's queryable for the admins, us, the city side of the house, what can we see?

Box AI doesn't let us see anything.

The interactions you have with an agent are completely unavailable to box as well as the administrators.

So the conversation you have with the agent or the output that it provides you, it exists only within that instance, that own that that one interaction you have with it.

Now, if you then copy and paste the outputs and then use it in a subsequent wherever, of course, then it's captured.

But for the overarching like privacy concerns you might have around how are these interactions being used, they're not.

Um they simply exist.

We benefit again from boxes investment in partnerships with all these LLMs, and that's also likely a reason that it's very expensive or more expensive than you may that you may be able to get commercially.

Um those partnerships are there, the integrations are there, we get to benefit from the millions of interactions that you all have and I have and we have with ChatGPT, as it trains on those responses and it trains on what everyone's feeding into these models every single day.

We get to use those models.

We're just not training it.

Um so we kind of reap the benefits of every LLM and all of the work that these tech conglomerates have put in, and we're able to use those for our own you know selfish purposes.

We have to pay for that privilege, which is the reason for the increase.

Um free LLMs are out there and they're really powerful, but they are using those interactions to fine-tune their models because they give you that little thumbs up or thumbs down.

Was this a good response or a bad response?

That is a hundred percent how they're refining their models over millions of interactions.

You know, they train it initially, and that's the big energy use, that's the big consume consumable, and that's the expensive part.

But then these millions of little interactions every day that these models have with you, that's where they're getting you know hyper-refined and and much better.

So because we can then tap into them on the back end, we we kind of reap that benefit for our enterprise use.

Uh and that's why you'll see other LLMs when they go to the enterprise level, it is not a free or a cheap endeavor because they're they're they're not getting the training data from us.

We're just literally benefiting from it.

Um so that kind of goes into the accuracy piece because we're not hitting the internet, it's only using those LLMs.

Um, it goes into the security part.

We're bound by the existing security that box has already for us.

Uh, and then the job impacts was another concern that some of our staff had.

Uh I think from our approach, every conversation I've had with the city manager, um, AI is not here to literally reduce to find ways to reduce our staff.

Um I think AI is a supplement and a complement to our staff to be able to focus on larger quality control, other customer service issues.

I don't think it's going to replace humans.

But I don't think it's going to be replacing anybody, so I don't think people need to have a huge uh concern about job impacts.

If anything, it'll just help you be a better whatever you are.

Better clerk, better attorney, better CTO, better city manager, better better council person.

It's a it's an assistant that never gets tired.

And I think that's a huge, huge benefit for us.

Um again, I think just overall, I'll wrap up here.

Several benefits with this proposal.

Um it's a centralized, very controllable and secure AI that we can scale across the entire organization and make available to all of our staff, not just a core group that is tech savvy enough to make their own chat GPT GPT.

Everyone's gonna be able to benefit from this because we can help them create these agents to help them undo those repetitive tasks they're sick of doing.

Um it prevents us from having that fragmented AI approach where everyone and every department's uploading knowledge bases into the internet, keeps our documents internal.

Um it allows us to benefit from all the different models that exist.

We're not locked into open AI, we're not locked into Google's Gemini, what have you?

We have our pick.

And then it also, like I said, because of the different platform and productivity apps that box gives us, this renewal prevents us from going and finding those additional apps that can do things like diagramming or do things like note taking or do things like DocuSign.

Um those are sort of the overall benefits of it.

And I would be very happy to take any questions, concerns you might have around that.

Okay, questions for uh Aaron.

We got a lot of them.

Okay, Mr.

Ortiz, go ahead.

I'll work my way around.

Uh, I appreciate you, Mr.

Constantino.

Uh I got a few, most of them are speech, so hopefully you have answers for them.

If not, no worries.

Uh so this is a three-year deal, but I think you mentioned that the current one we have ends at the end of this year, end of 2026.

Yep.

So are you gonna come back then?

Like why don't we merge these together so they both end and end and start at the same time instead of having overlapping contracts?

Well, this would replace the existing contract.

Okay.

Okay, so you so then you won't come back in 26 asking for more.

No.

Okay.

I won't be back till 2028.

Okay, that makes sense.

And then uh the cost of users and the memo said 370, so it's gonna go about up about nine dollars then once we they start charging us for it per user.

Yep.

And then uh about nine bucks.

Yeah, I know that business model because I just got the axon version of AI for the state's attorney's office, and that's how they sell it to you.

They'll give you quote unquote the first year free.

First year free to lock you in there.

Then uh I seen that we have 98 terabytes of storage in box.

Yes.

Is there a retention period on stuff like that?

Or does it is it like a running a runaway training where it just gets keeps getting loaded and loaded with more and more stuff?

Uh it's it's up to us.

We have so a lot of what is in box, like I said, is that unstructured data, so it's not necessarily bound by the retention schedules that Kim has and has to abide by with like correspondence or you know whatever.

Usually it's seven years, but we can pick.

I mean, we can let this continue to grow, uh, which is fine, or we can you know purge things if we want.

I mean, we can delete documentation, but the reason I asked is in one of your paragraphs that says it's like unfeasible and realistic to move to a different product because we have so much stuff in there.

And if we need an exit plan to download everything we uploaded, yeah.

If we it turns to a runaway training, it's gonna be a it's gonna be an impossible task, won't be able to have enough servers or disk space to start.

So yeah, and and that that sentence was speaking more towards like in the short term of like the the time we have between like now and when the contract ends, like we can't reasonably go to a new vendor.

Could we if could we extricate ourselves from box?

We absolutely can't.

I don't want it to seem like we're we're uh locked in with them for the forever future.

Um it's just files.

Um you can download them and put them wherever you want.

So this is a good this is a this is a piece we need to fully round out the AI policy that we want to do in the strategic plan for this year because I didn't have a good answer for how staff can utilize agentic AI.

This provides that good answer for that.

So what we can now definitively say is that if you're creating something using city knowledge and city internal documents you cannot use external tools like that like ChatGPT and upload them to that you need to use box AI for that.

But there is still a very useful place for those web-based LLMs because you know the way that we all kind of use them now is like tell me about this give me more information about this person this not person this vendor you know what have you research not on like a Google search there's still definitely a place for that not necessarily for the internal documents though.

That's what I'd like to avoid.

And then my last one is I think if I understood you right it's not a learning model where if I ask the same question over and over or learn that I'm asking that question so automatically surface that question.

So I gotta start the chat over every time I enter into the program.

Yeah because those persistent chats like the way that chat GPT has it's because they're storing that whole conversation.

Yeah a very nice thing with box AI I mean is it wipes that conversation so it doesn't have access to your previous chats.

So yes in some cases you would need to like ask that same question.

However that's maybe where the agent comes in and and then you can provide it a level of knowledge so that it references that document instead of having to look back at a pre at your previous conversation interactions with it to understand the context of the question.

Okay and then my last one is from your from your presentation or the packet it's the cost savings for staff and I have it written down we're trying to find the page here it is.

So it's uh so it shows like the clerks were saved the most money potentially of 74000 so how are you going to get the city manager's office and go go from neutral to actually save some money for us maybe that's a RIC question here.

I guess I'm like our city manager it's I want to pull that attachment up.

The city manager office has zero so would this not help them with their work processes?

So yeah it it will this is an example that as our conversations with box throughout the year we're just kind of brainstorming potential use cases for box AI right when we kind of get going here they then applied metrics for if this saves two hours a day across a standard rate of pay for a a department that's where those savings would be it's more in it's not necessarily like these departments won't benefit from it or this one will benefit the most just in our sort of examples we've gone through over the years or over this year that's sort of their estimate for what we could save.

Okay.

All right that's all I have to yeah I'm never going to be able to say like here's the 7400 estimate about I thought at least if we have a dollar in there like they predict that some kind of savings from this workflow would help them but all right it's just because we didn't identify any very specific use cases within the manager's office that box could point to for this document.

Okay.

Yeah it makes sense.

Aaron I thought you said you were going to create an agent to meet with council members for me.

You're right Mr.

Dixon you had your hand up yes thank you thank you for the presentation Aaron great job as always I really like let me first talk about what I really like.

So I I like box as it is right now.

It's it's really great.

I actually toyed around with some of the current AI tools that that are on there.

It does have its limitations but I'm sure that'll be you know updated here.

So I really um uh I really appreciate you providing the alternatives and the costs associated with those because some of the alternatives are significantly um more expensive and just wouldn't work for us uh as well.

So you talked a lot about what the this new system will be able to accomplish, what it'll be able to do.

Um but um in my experience with AI, like there's always some drawbacks, right?

Because it's it's not a perfect system.

Um it's always a work in progress.

So are there any limitations that maybe you've identified at this stage that you say, you know what, it's not perfect here or it's not great here, and you know, but this is a whole, and but we do have a workaround, or we're gonna figure this part out.

Yeah, so I think um there's there's I'll I'll talk about two.

Okay.

One is and this isn't a full contradiction of what I said before, but I do like web-enabled LLMs.

I think that's valuable.

Okay, and so I would I would like there to be an option within a certain part of box, like you know, have your like your web LLM.

So you don't have to leave box to query something that you kind of need the internet for.

Because I mean, there's still a very complimentary relationship between something like Chat GPT and internal box AI.

Like I'm still gonna be using Chat GPT for certain things.

It doesn't completely remove the ability and the need for me to go to the internet.

So that's one shortcoming.

Like, I think that there would be a benefit for box to have some in a different place within the platform, a web-enabled LLM.

I think that would be helpful.

Um a second one is part of this uh enterprise advanced tier gives us the ability to have forms, and so we can create forms and push them out into the web, and then it it collects those responses.

What it can't do is it can't then take those immediate responses uh and then plug that data into another workflow right away to use further down the line with the agents.

So, in another example, like what the agent provides and its output, it's box can't like take that excerpt of why a bid is not responsive and then put it right in a memo for you.

It can't like make that leap from the AI chat box to then the document generation piece of what box has.

It does require human intervention to take that output and use it in somewhere else you'd like to use.

Now, what it can do, which is cool, is that it can review a document and extract key metadata like vendor name, identified price, um, you know, check box that it you know hit the sexual harassment policy.

It can then put that somewhere in a matrix and say it hit all these things, but it can't then take that extraction and put it into a document and then give you a finished document.

So like in an ideal world, our purchasing manager could have an agent review the bids, extract the non-responsive bits from different um responsive responses, put that in a letter, and then have that letter formatted and ready for us to send out with a one click of a button so that we could reach out to those vendors that are non-responsive with a literal button press.

The way that it is today is it can review that it can review the bids, it can tell you what's not responsive.

He then has to take that information and insert it into either a template that we have or into like an email or what have you.

So it doesn't take it all the way.

There, but there's still that little bit of human, you know, cut and paste.

Okay, yes, it's not I it's not, you know, like you say, there's downsides and there's limitations.

Now, I've talked we're talking with Box about this, and this is one of the reasons that I think a three-year agreement is appropriate versus a five-year, because this landscape changes so fast.

I think it's more prudent for us to do a shorter agreement so that we can maybe pivot in three years when the world is totally different, and some other company comes out with some amazing thing that that could do all those things.

Yeah, and it's moving so fast, it may not even take three years to get there, it may be two years or even a year as quickly as it's moving.

So you're certainly um right about that.

Um the memory on the in the current iteration of box um isn't the best.

It re it forgets things really quickly as far as um marking documents or the things that you've asked or talked about inside of the chat.

Um the next iteration of it, um, I'm wondering, isn't it going to have a better memory since it's going to be since the information is going to be enclosed with just that that user?

So if you take an example of like a COM, if you're looking at a CalMemo and you ask it questions about that Calm memo, like it's always going to be referencing that CalMemo and derive its answers from that.

Now, the benefit with the upgrade is that we can now have it reference every Cal memo we've written in the last three years to be able to populate its answer and give you context and that answer.

So it's only gonna remember what it's like information from what it's looking at.

It's not gonna remember that you asked it this question a week ago.

Got it.

Because it doesn't store that conversation, which for us is actually a benefit because of the privacy concerns and you know the way that we interact with AI.

It's it's it's good that those interactions are sort of ephemeral.

Okay.

And my last question is concerning uh work product accountability, as we are thinking about the um our plans going forward and how we use AI and how we implement it and what our expectations are for city employees.

Um I'm not gonna put you on the spot with that.

I think that's like an ever-evolving thing, but that you know is one of the topics of concern as it pertains to AI being integrated into large systems, you know, which is what we have.

So just want to put that out there.

Yeah, and I think that human in the loop is a very important part, and then ultimately our AI policy will have a similar, if not the exact statement of you know, employees are responsible for the content that they produce, and they would take full responsibility for its accuracy.

So it's on us as people to say to actually read what the AI is writing and then decide whether or not it's it fits what we need and if it's accurate.

Yeah.

So it comes down to the people at the end of the day anyway, so yeah.

All right, great.

Thank you, I hear.

Okay, Madonna's way.

Steve.

Um Ms.

Powell?

You had your head.

Thank you.

Um a quick question, and thank you for the the thorough overview of um box and the AI functions.

Um my only question is if the app isn't storing the info that's being put into it uh with with the agents, how and we can't accept access it.

How do we ensure that employees are not violating rules and and using it ethically and and using it appropriately at work?

The when you create the agent, you give it its instructions.

And its instructions can be very explicit around what it can do, what it can't do, like what it should be answering, what it shouldn't be answering, topics it it can't talk about, topics it can talk about.

You can be very granular when it comes to this.

So that's why when you're interacting with Chat GPT, it's like you can't ask it about certain things.

And I'm not gonna go into details on that, but it will stop you, and those are those guardrails that you can put in place when you create that agent.

So we have ways to control that.

Yeah.

That was my only question.

Thank you.

Ms.

Paul?

Okay.

So far, I am here.

Thank you.

Um Barry and me, because I have eight questions.

Uh the first question is in the memo they had indicated that the AI AI policy is not done yet.

So I'm assuming the AI policy will be done depending on like what happens today, etc.

So I just want to confirm the AI policy will be completed and rolled out before this is implemented if this passes.

Uh not before it's implemented, no.

Because in reality, this will be done if all goes according to plan.

It'll be done on January 28th.

Um, we will then have access to all of the things that box AI offers us.

Now, end users can't create agents.

IT needs to create the agent.

So we can control like the agent creation, but the box AI and the new features outside box AI will be turned on the day that we issue the PO to the to box.

So we'll have access to everything on April or I'm sorry, January 29th, conceivably.

So my follow-up question is that when is the AA policy estimated to come out then?

Because people should know, going back to Consulwoman Powell's um question on ethics and how it should be utilized, etc.

Um, that should be indicated to staff.

And in addition, that ties into my second question.

What is the training for staff on this?

Uh so question one, question the first, the AI policy.

We have a draft.

Um so really it would just involve the the F level of effort between myself, senior staff, city manager's office, the legal department to say, yep, this this hits all our boxes.

Uh If it's all we worked on, it could be done relatively quickly, but I I don't I'm kind of cautious to give a like exact date, but it's I mean, I I don't know.

I don't really know.

I don't want to.

If that could be done soon, shortly afterwards.

Which it could.

Yeah.

Then then I'm okay with that because I understand timelines and this credit needs to be done sooner in the right.

Right.

So I get that.

As long as that policy also ties in a training program.

Yes, thank you for that.

So in addition to implementing that and the policy, there's there's definitely gonna need to be training.

I mean, we can't people need to understand what an agent is, people are gonna need to understand the policy in and of itself, what they can do, what they can't do at work.

So that had that that'll take the form of tutorials, in-person meetings, documentation that can be shared with end user staff, and then sort of like office hours or open forum type of times when people can just ask kind of any question they like type of thing.

So yeah, it this would be a sizable training effort.

Okay.

Yeah.

Uh my next question is so the info that's going into this AI agent, um, that's not being shared with not even with box.

The it like the the interactions that you're having, no, they can't, they don't see it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um we've and we've tried.

I've I've literally had to go through the process with box.

I'm like, I need to see what someone put in here, and then they didn't have it.

Yeah, but I'm at like box ownership is not seeing that either, right?

So okay.

So I just want to make sure like no one's having access to that.

No one has access to it.

Perfect.

Um so not all staff have the same level of accessibility to different forms and documents.

Correct.

So are there different agents being created for different levels?

So like if you're asking, like, write me a memo on something, and that there's a document where that person shouldn't have access to, that AI is not using that document to help them put that information together.

That's correct.

So there's gonna be different levels of yes.

Okay.

So it and that's the other nice thing.

We don't have to control that.

We don't have to set up those permissions for an AI to do it.

There's a commercial run around with Okta and AI, and they're like stopping the little bot from going in the conference room.

Like, we don't have to deal with any of that because box's permissions are already set.

It's only gonna access what you have access to, so there's gonna be all kinds of different agents.

And that's why we can create as many as we'd like.

Okay.

Um will someone be able to use the AI in Spanish?

It's a good question.

I don't know the answer to that question.

Okay.

Um my follow-up question to that was another question is box forms also gonna be allowed to be used in Spanish?

It'll be translated.

The box forms can be translated.

But it's just like if someone's thinking about like sensitivity, sometimes things should be created in Spanish versus an English first.

Um and so just seeing if staff could also use it the other way around, if they could be like, help me write this in Spanish.

Right.

Like I'm responding to this um community member in Spanish.

Can you help me draft this?

X, Y, and Z.

Um, so if we could if we could look into that, that would be great.

Um It does.

I just asked it, can you write in Spanish?

And it said si puede escribir en español, que tipo de contiendo, necesitas que redacte en español, una repuesta and un vendedor interesado o no entrasado, un correo formal, un resumen del documentant o algo a differente.

So thank you for that answer.

Sure.

Um and thank you for practicing your Spanish.

Is there has been research that showed that AI, depending on how AI is created, etc., it could be discriminatory and racist, etc.

So what kind of protocols are we putting in place into this AI agent to make sure that we are combating it from being racist or discriminatory against like potential candidates if it's doing staffing or um any other things?

Yes.

So one again, human in the loop.

Well, humans can be just if not, you know.

So I'll I'll table that piece.

But um that's another benefit because we use the LLMs that these large tech companies are continually refining to avoid those biases.

We don't have direct control over how the LLM may or may not have a bias.

But we have choice of many different LLMs.

I mean, and so a lot of them sort of have that built in.

However, we can also then in the instructions for the agent itself be very explicit around do not take candidate name into account when you're reviewing any sort of resume.

Do not um assume, you know, do not assume heritage based on uh location.

You know, we can say all of those kinds of things, and I think that frankly, AI would probably help us figure out which instructions and which things to steer it away from to help avoid those biases, more so than even I can think of, you know, sitting down over an hour.

So I think that there's a lot of ways that AI can help us avoid the downfalls of AI.

Thank you.

Those are my questions.

Okay.

Well, I I had a bunch of questions for for you, Aaron, um, but I think they all just got asked, and you and I have had some conversations prior to the meeting on some of the data and security and privacy, and I think I've had my questions answered.

And I just also wanted to say thank you for in the memo trying to break down kind of the a la carte, what would these would cost if we tried to buy different tools from different things and showing us that while it's a large it's a big ask, it's a big contract, but it's certainly worth it when you try to break those down and try to see what you would get if you try to get those individually.

So thank you.

Yeah, as I was writing the memo, I I kept thinking, well, this is a really good deal.

I'm like, and this is great.

Yeah.

Mr.

Good.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so appreciate all the questions from uh everybody up here.

They've been more than I expected.

Um so in terms of the convergence of the coincidence of this presentation and the state of the city, um, there's also another component with everything that was just set up here.

As we could tell, this is quickly evolving.

Um so a while back we reached out to an organization called U.S.

Digital Response.

Um they provide pro bono assistance to uh government entities.

And so we uh made contact with them uh recently in the end of 2025, and we'll be kicking off a relationship with them in 2026.

Again, that's of no charge to the city.

Um hats off to staff for proactively engaging with that organization.

Um and so they will be coming in to help us explore use cases, um, firm up best practice, uh offer policy um suggestions if we get to this point where we explore use cases and we find some that are bumping up against something that might not be uh responsible deployment of it.

And so um I this is what I do for a day job, and it's always interesting in talking to people because there's so many uh firm positions formed on this.

But essentially the way I look at it, this is like electricity.

Um there's a lot of ways we can use it, some of them are good, some of them are not good.

Um, you know, some of them you need a right size for the deployment, and so I really uh applaud this effort to get the organization into one ecosystem that we already have deployed to get training uh going for workers.

Um ultimately all the organizations in the private sector that are deploying this are saying the savvy winners will be the ones that upskill and see that they can do more with the staff that they currently have.

Um we've seen across the board though, there are problems, there are organizations that have gone, and you know, for me as a developer, they have just started slashing developers.

Um we've seen issues with certain models that um you know I have my bias.

I have a certain lab that I like, and that's because they do extensive research.

Um they try to call out the errors of models uh as proactively as they possibly can and put those guardrails in place.

And so I think as we go through this, uh you've already set the guardrails up for the ecosystem.

Um as we start testing, I'm assuming there's gonna be certain models that are better for certain use cases.

Um we'll be able to document that, share that.

Um we'll be able to refine the prompts that are specifically used within the organization, and so no matter what uh if the person's brand new or if they've been here for a year, they'll have access to the same expertise that was crafted by all the institutional knowledge that exists here.

So um I think this is setting the the ecosystem for US digital response to come in and help us uh stand up use cases and best practices.

So um, you know, this is a rare moment where I think things have converged um kind of organically, but also in this case, intentionally, Aaron.

So I appreciate all of the effort you've put into this.

Thank you.

No, I really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay, Mr.

Thorne.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks, Aaron.

Uh eye opening for me.

Uh learned a lot.

Basically, my questions that I initially had were asked and answered by you from uh uh Mr.

Dixon and Mr.

Ortiz.

Um curious uh how your plan is in your department of managing it.

So to know about our employees that maybe misuse it.

Well that's gonna be that's a more difficult one.

Because as they interact with it, we're not seeing those conversations.

The output of how they're using it potentially, that's where the policy will help guard against some of those misuses, but no policy is going to be bulletproof.

Um so there's gonna be probably some there's something will go wrong, you know, and uh then you need to adapt.

But yeah, I mean, as far as managing the the quantity of agents and what have you, and refining those results.

Like we have a we have staff that are gonna be very highly attuned at that.

Um we have our web developers, we have a process of improvement uh analysts, so we have we have staff that can do that.

But as far as like yeah, someone using an agent and then getting an output that was inaccurate or was used then in a way that maybe they shouldn't have that's something the policy can guard against, but probably not always prevent.

Part of that's gonna be a learning curve, I'm thinking yep, and yeah, there's always more to learn with AI as well.

So by no means are am I the expert on this?

So and with it being proprietary uh as you use this and we get near the end of the contract.

Should you choose to go another direction to a different company per se, all the information is obviously transferable and and the ease of you everything will be consistent.

And let's say we we find that open AI's GPT 5.2 mini is like really good LM for us to use for XY for most of our use cases.

We can use that LLM anywhere, and we can use that and we'll just take take the instructions we gave the agent and we can download those documents and put it wherever so it's fully transportable.

Great.

Thanks so much.

Okay, Rose, did you have anything?

Okay.

Um Mr.

Manager, I believe we need a motion.

Move a motion.

Move for approval.

Second, move and second for approval.

Clerk, please call a 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 90.

Item C is a design engineering services agreement with H.R.

Green Incorporated for the National Street Bridge Rehabilitation Project.

The bridge receives biennial inspections as part of the city's ongoing inspection program to ensure it maintains a structural and tragic integrity level sufficient for safe usage by the traveling public.

While the bridge meets the requirements for safe travel, a comparison of recent inspections indicates increased deterioration in the overall bridge's condition.

Staff is recommending a preventive rehabilitation of the structure will extend its that will extend its useful life 10 to 15 years, during which time planning efforts may begin for a future bridge replacement project.

This agreement allows for engineering analysis and design required to prepare construction plans in bid knock documents necessary to complete the rehabilitation in 2026.

Due to the bridge's proximity to the two railroad crossings between National Street Bridge and Illinois Route 31, State Street Intersection, staff will be using this opportunity to investigate concerns over rail crossing safety, pavement markings, and advanced driver notifications for those crossings.

Move for approval.

Second second.

Move the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, Clerk, please call a roll.

Council Member Zalharo?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, motions approved 9-0.

Item D is an honorary street name designation for Pastor Jose Luis Hidalgo.

This is on East Highland Avenue between Center Street and North Geneva Street.

The city received this application, which was endorsed by Councilmember Rosal Mia Rosso Rosamoteria Martinez to designate a segment of East Highland Avenue in honor of Pastor Jose Luis Hidalgo.

Pastor Hidalgo served as pastor of at Iglesia Paris Marica Puerta de Sion for nearly 40 years.

Starting his ministry in Elgin back in 1982.

The church was originally located on Villa Street before it moved to its current location at the southeast corner of Highland and Center Street in 2000.

Pastor Hidalgo built a network of local resources to help those in need.

Hundreds of people are better off today because of his efforts, which were previously recognized by a proclamation from former mayor Ed Schock in 2007.

This proposed segment of East Highland Avenue between Center Street and North Geneva Street comports with the provisions in Chapter 3.13.27 of the municipal code for honorary street name designations.

In addition to council member Martinez endorsing the application every property owner abutting the street supports it as well.

The city's application review group is similarly recommending approval.

And it's my understanding that representatives from the church are here in attendance.

Second move and second for approval Miss Martinez would like to introduce the members of the church.

Thank you, Mayor.

First I'd like to introduce uh Pastor Lily Sosa she's in the back here if you can please stand.

Thank you.

I I think this was important because uh Pastor Ivango because of him hundreds of people are are better off today here in Algen and uh it's because of his hard work his humbleness his truth and honesty that he willingly shared with his congreg congratulations congregation and community sorry.

Uh the only thing that I really regret is that um Pastor Hidalgo did pass away in March of twenty twenty four um suddenly but uh I wish he was here and um right now um the congregation is asking if they can please uh have an honorary street thank you we have a motion any uh further discussion 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 motions approved nine zero at this time I'll entertain a motion to adjourn and we'll reconvene the uh uh with a regular council meeting at about seven twenty five we have uh people uh everybody in from the uh hallway's there still people out there okay we'll build we'll reconvene at about seven twenty five um need a motion have a motion to adjourn so moved second moving a second to adjourn court please call a roll yes council members alparo yes Dixon yes good yes Martinez yes Ortiz yes Powell yes Stefan yes Thorne yes mayor captain yes we are conjure uh adjourned we'll reconvene at the regular council meeting at seven twenty five meeting for the Elgin City Council for January fourteenth twenty twenty six to order please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance

Meeting for the Elgin City Council for January 14th, 2026 to order.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance.

For which it stands.

One nation.

Under God, invisible liberty and justice for our nine people signed up.

I know.

Okay.

Yep.

Oh, yeah.

Will Clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro.

President Dixon.

Present.

Good.

Here.

Martinez.

Here.

Ortiz?

Here.

Powell?

Here.

Stefan?

Here.

Thorne?

Here.

Mayor Campton.

Here.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting of December 17th.

Move for approval.

Move and second for approval.

Any corrections or additions.

Hearing none, Clerk, please call a roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

The motions approved nine-zero.

Will uh Jamie McCutcheon join me at the appointment.

This is a pretty special uh year for the uh Martin Luther King event.

Uh there have been some major changes.

Uh we're going back to the way it was a few years ago.

Uh we had some changes after COVID and uh dropped some of the events.

We're bringing them all back this year, so it's been special.

Jamie and a number in the committee have been working on this uh all summer.

And it should be very special uh for the for the city of Elgin for this year.

So it's a great pleasure for me.

Whereas Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr., born in Atlanta, Georgia, attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and Crozer's Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, was a student thereafter at Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania, and who following his studies became a spiritual leader of his church.

And whereas Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

is a spiritual leader not only of his own congregation, but of millions throughout the world, espoused the philosophy of nonviolence to all mankind, and in recognition of his teachings was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

And whereas Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

in his campaign for civil rights extended his work for the benefit of all humanity and especially for the poor, and was a leader in the cause of world peace.

And whereas the city of Elgin is a blessed and compassionate city, priding itself on its diversity, welcoming its many immigrant groups and its many communities of faith.

And whereas the City of Elgin, through its Human Relations Commission and the Dr.

King Celebration Committee, has honored the legacy of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

for 41 years, reflecting our commitment to Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a nation committed to a non vi to nonviolence and love in our cities.

Now, therefore, I David Captain, mayor of the city of Elgin, Illinois, to hereby proclaim Saturday, January 17th, and Monday, January 19th, 2026, as days in honor of the memory of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Jamie?

Thank you very much.

Uh Mayor Captain.

On behalf of the MLK subcommittee, I would like to thank the City Council and all of those that made this possible.

Thank you very much.

Brings us to the portion of the council meeting where we recognize uh persons for up to three minutes to discuss issues that uh are uh of great importance to them.

And uh we have a number of people sign up.

I believe there are 27.

So I'm gonna hold you to the three minutes, and uh please be courteous and uh observe that uh time limit.

There's a timer up here for you to see.

We'll start out with uh on the agenda for items on the agenda.

Um let's do the items on not on the agenda first.

We'll start with that.

We have number about 20 people for on the agenda, Dennis Hicks.

Dennis Hicks.

Hello everyone.

Um I'm up here because I felt I was rushing for file by Algin Police.

Um I was stopped in my driveway in my home.

Um there was a search done on my car.

It was basically for a rolling stop, was the original call.

Then the canine using came and they said that was for a rolling stop.

Um I didn't consent to any of that at all, but I was embarrassed.

I was insulted because one three-year-old son's in his car.

Um, went on for about half an hour.

Um I did talk to the officers after that to uh find out why this was done, let them know how embarrassed I was and how insulted I was that my three-year-old son had to see all that and had to be taken out of the car in the code for something that was told there was a rolling stop.

Um, and that's why I want to be here to address that situation, see how we can make sure this is to happen to any other brown and black people.

I did have filed a complaint for the situation, so I do want to see how this goes.

And um, my friend won't uh meet Demetrius Smith.

Yes.

Um the racial profile with uh EPD um is guaranteed been proven here, and along with proven with me.

Um I was looking for Chief Anna Lally um years ago.

Same thing with me where they just see me go by them, jump behind me, say it in proper lane, usage um K9 units, same thing.

Um, but I wasn't with no child.

So um the officer's name is Jay Taylor.

I believe his bad numbers 469, and the way he called me about what happened with that situation, it's just the way he described it about how the officer locked eyes with him, and he said the officer that was behind him, he busted U-turn to get him.

But he said the way he locked eyes with him, he knew he was gonna get pulled over.

And the officers trailed and and chased him around Elgin so much that he couldn't catch them the first time when he went to turn to his friends how to return again.

Uh joystick or something, he told me.

The officer ended up coming by a few minutes later, saw him, turned around and waited for him, then followed him home and pulled them over.

It's the racial profiling of certain individuals.

I can't say the whole police department because when I said that last, I said it vaguely, and Jim Lally last item when he seen me, but there are officers that's still using his racial profile.

And what's it I don't remember his name?

Uh what was his name, Corey?

Vasquez, the one you made us meet with Sir Vasquez, whatever.

The point was the camera proved that he never there was no lanes to be in proper lane uses.

It was a side street.

Number one, two, he wrote many more tickets because I was going off on about him stopping me.

Anna Lally then reviewed the camera, threw all the tickets out because they agree that there's no improper lane uses because it was a side street uh with cars parked on both sides of the road.

Um, but it's just a racial profile, and that we bring in notice about Jay Taylor, bad number four um 469.

The humiliate the uh humiliation he calls for this guy.

I'm gonna make it my business, and I'm praying that you city council people address the complaint uh with this guy because I'm gonna follow his career for his entire career here in Elgin.

That's all we want to say.

Okay, thank you.

So I'm sure somebody will be in touch with you.

Oh, yeah, no.

Okay.

Okay.

Brings us to uh items that are on the agenda.

Uh Peter Bezos mayor and council members.

Good uh good evening.

Our team is here uh to answer any questions you might have about the Hindu petition, our land planner, our civil engineer, our traffic engineer.

Um if there are no questions, they they won't be addressing you.

Um the uh chairman of the Hindu temple, Dave Patel is also sitting over there, and um has elected not to come up and speak unless you have any questions about the churches up or the temple's operation out of respect of your busy schedule tonight.

Um 310 people have signed a petition in support of the petition, and that petition is in your packet.

Um the temple has worked very hard to gain your trust and support, uh, and we certainly hope you will welcome and invite this temple into the Elgin community.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Mr.

Hanel chose not to speak as well.

Okay.

Uh Jessica Aston.

Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council.

My name is Jessica Astrog, and I'm speaking tonight in opposition to the proposed development at 890 Gulf Boulevard.

890 is Gulf Boulevard is not the correct location for a development of this magnitude.

This development is continually compared to the Baths Temple in Bartlett that brings crowds of over 12,000 people per their social media and several local news outlets.

Umaya's own social media shows several events held outdoors with music and smoke flares.

The disruption to the everyday lives of Oak Ridge, Sherwood Oaks, Castle Creek, and every person that travels on Route 20 is astronomical.

I personally have spoken to IDOT.

Not only were they completely unaware of this project, they stated that this stretch of Route 20 is already a delicate infrastructure.

The Umaya group will be required to file a permit with IDOT, which at the very least will require them to pay for the reconstruction of the light at Route 20 and Lambert.

IDOT indicated this starts at half a million dollars.

Every aspect of the Umaya application states that builds happen when money is available.

What how can you allow for a rezoning of this size when funding isn't even present?

In their application, they're also asking for any other departures as may be necessary or desirable to construct the entire development.

By allowing this, you are setting a landmark precedent for all future developments as well as current developments.

I have also spoken with two individuals at the IDNR and the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers.

They have both confirmed, independent of one another, that based on aerial photography dating from the 1930s through today, that the northwest corner of this lot is wetlands.

The Umaya application includes a stormwater management plan that expired on November 20th of last year, and a Kane County stormwater management permit application, which begs the question why is King County any part of this development when the land per the assessor's office is located in Cook County, Hanover Township.

Your own planning and zoning commission has now denied and rejected this application without recommendation during two meetings, despite the changes made by the group.

You have petitions of your residents totaling over 220 signatures that still stand in opposition.

Your taxpaying constituents don't want this development built in this location.

Despite the Omaya group bringing forth a religious expert, we have stated time and time again that this opposition has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

This is an AI rendering from the perspective of a two-story home on Persimmon Lane using Umaya schematics.

It is the view from the street.

We all understand that the land is zoned light industrial, and we are all prepared for light industrial.

If you vote for the rezoning, you are telling us that our voices, Elgin's comprehensive plan, and the council's voices are of no matter in protecting your residents' quality of life.

When you were each sworn in, you took the oath to act for the benefits of Elgin's residents.

You are legally and ethically bound to listen and represent our concerns.

So please do so by voting in opposition.

Thank you.

Linda Searcy.

Since November of 2022, we have been told that it's in our best interest to rezone 890 Gulf Boulevard so that an exclusive community could be developed as opposed to another construction.

We said no to rezoning.

Two proposals have gone before planning and zoning with no recommendation to rezone.

They said no.

Now we respectfully come before you to decide this matter.

If a person is only as good as their word, their reputation and trustworthiness depend entirely on keeping those verbal affirmations.

Any breach severely damages trust.

We were told unequivocally in November of 2022 that the property would not be purchased if it was not rezoned first.

The temple group went ahead and purchased the land a year later without zoning changes, without the consent decree being amended, without any positive feedback from Sherwood Oaks, and without Oak Ridge residents knowing anything about it.

Were assurances somehow given or perceived?

In 2022, we were also told that hundreds of Chicago temple members wanted to move into this proposed exclusive community.

So why eliminate the multifamily building with its 81 residential units, amenities, and parking so easily?

If we believe that there will be so few visitors and even fewer celebrated holidays, then why the need for a temple of this size even after its revision?

Or will the current proposed green space be resurrected by way of that existing clause in their proposal, which allows for any departures they deem necessary and desirable, and thus the structures return without needing your future approval or knowledge.

Eldon's most upgraded growth plan, excuse me, Elgin's most updated growth plan, Section G entitled Growth Strategy and New Neighborhood Design Guidelines state in part that any zoning change made by an applicant may need to show that the zone change will not significantly impact traffic.

They have failed to do that.

We know that traffic information has been underreported.

IDOT will attest to this via the changes already made as well as future changes along the Route 20 corridor and Shales Parkway.

Ask anyone who lives in the Oak Ridge or Castle Creek subdivisions, ask anyone who has to travel down Route 20 or use Lambert or Hillard as an entrance or exit onto Route 20.

Traffic will be significantly impacted, and it will continue to cost individuals their lives and well-being.

Because misinformation has continued to show up in both of their printed documents and presentations, integrity and trust have been totally negated.

On behalf of your constituents here tonight and those unable to attend, know that we stand united and opposed to this rezoning and ask that you stand with us and vote no.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Paul Ochmark.

I believe it's Paul Ochmark.

Paul for short.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, Council members.

My name is Paul Achmonic as a matter of candor to the tribunal.

I'm not a constituent nor a resident of the resident communities next door to this development.

I'm a partner at the law firm of COVID Shift for Nesbitt.

We serve as corporation counsel to the Oak Ridge Towns Homeowners Association as well as the Oak Ridge Community Association.

These properties have been in existence for approximately 25 years.

There are in excess of a hundred homes at these two associations.

There are a number of residents and constituents that reside there daily.

This is their primary residences, and this is not heavily populated by apartments or landlord tenant usage.

The ownership objects to the application variance and plan going forward for the following reasons.

Number one, this is a nuisance.

This is not a matter of the residents moving to a nuisance, asking the nuisance to stop.

This is a matter of a nuisance moving to an established community.

There is significant light issues with the apartments being built so close to the neighboring townhomes.

And there was a representation from one of the applicants earlier during the initial 6 o'clock meeting that a fence was being removed.

The fence removal impacts the light significantly as well as the noise.

The noise being from first construction traffic for a number of years, then residential traffic moving about.

If the application was for the residents alone, would it be granted?

The owners object, and you'll hear from them later regarding their objections to the property as a whole, but what would be even worse for the city as well as the neighbors would be if the project started and then could not be completed.

Now you have a blight on the community, which is incomplete and potentially unsafe.

The owners and we offer that this development detracts from residential desirability.

This is not a plan in abstract nor a piece of paper.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this corridor, we invite you to visit the street and see how traffic, both construction trucks, heavy machinery that are laying concrete, rebar, plans and development, raising the ground to change the water.

I see my time is concluded.

May I briefly have one second to conclude?

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor Council.

Uh, for those reasons, the owners object, and we appreciate the council's time and attention to this matter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lynn Hutchins.

Good evening.

My name is Lynn Hutchins.

Over the past several months, residents of the Oak Ridge and Sherwood Oaks subdivisions have brought our concerns and objections to you on the egregious impact that the proposed temple complex at 890 Gulf Boulevard will have on us specifically and on the surrounding area.

We hope that you have listened carefully to what we've been saying, done as we urged, and took a few minutes to drive the area to see what we've been talking about.

The lawyer for the temple has stated that there would be no or minimal impact on traffic on either Lake Street or on the tiny access road that would be shared between Oak Ridge and the proposed temple.

He would have us believe that the several hundred to several thousand daily temple worshippers would all politely spread themselves across the entire day, and that there would be no time when a festival or any other event would have them descending on the area in large numbers.

We would have to be truly gullible to believe that uh at all.

You only need to search online to see the huge crowds that attend temple events.

There has been no consideration on the part of the temple to the impact on the people who would be their neighbors.

But then a huge walled and gated complex that we would not be allowed into exactly speak of neighborliness.

I truly feel sorry for the temple group because I feel that they were deceived when they were shown the property.

It was probably a bargain price considering how long it has been vacant.

I wonder if they were even warned about the consent degree covering the land.

But that still does not excuse the total lack of consideration or concern for what their project will do to those of us who have lived in the area for decades.

It is already difficult and dangerous to get in and out of the subdivision.

The increase in traffic caused by the temple will just exacerbate that.

It will also impact the resale value of our homes and even our ability to sell our homes because who is going to willingly buy a home next to a humongous, noisy, gated and walled complex that will cause so much disruption to the area.

And because we are concerned about the disruption this will cause to our lives.

We have been labeled religious and even racial bigots.

But this is not about religion or race.

This is about our desire to preserve our safety and our quality of life.

Please consider what this will do to those of us who live there and to the surrounding area and vote against the project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alison.

Hi, I'm Alison Ozog.

I live in Bartlett.

I'm right across from Lambert and Lake.

So I will be impacted by all of the traffic that is coming out of that intersection.

I'd like to start off and say the current proposal does not take into account IDOT's project to eliminate the proposed street.

The temple plans to use the service its traffic on days of worship.

They plan on doing these roundabouts and the first intersection that'll be available for a light will be at Lambert.

So that exit is no longer going to be there.

The elimination of the primary method of ingress and egress by IDOT leaves Lambert Lane to service the existing car wash, the residential home, and the temple.

Given the anticipated attendance on days of worship and traffic on non-worship days, an accident at the intersection of Lake and Lambert, which happens almost weekly, would be a significant and dangerous obstacle for emergency vehicles attempting to reach the homes.

Car wash or temple.

This is in addition to the inconvenience and congestion a non-emergency would have on the intersection.

The proposal states the surrounding roadways have adequate capacity to absorb the additional traffic even during the busiest times.

I would love to know what time of day that these studies were done.

The original proposal traffic study was done close to the COVID times when everybody was staying at home.

I walk my dog at all hours.

I hear accidents, I see traffic.

This statement is completely false.

If Lambert is the primary method of ingress and egress, a new traffic study would be commissioned to study the impact on the residents lining Lambert, including the Castle Creek townhomes and single family residences, the dog park, the children park, and the play field that is open to everybody to use.

Currently, patrons on the parks are permitted to park their vehicles along Lambert Road, which narrows the street down to one lane.

I have contacted Bartlett Police to try to get this change, and they cannot.

So I don't know how this is going to help with the traffic pattern coming out.

Additionally, the commercial recycling business at the intersection in Lambert and Spaulding that has an Eldrin address, parked its flatbed trailers on the street while they are waiting to pull into the yard.

This also narrows Lambert to one lane.

Recently, to yet another fire at this recycling plant.

Lambert was closed completely going north.

The traffic pattern is changing in the light of IDOT's project, and new traffic studies must be commissioned.

To do otherwise would be a reckless and will endanger and inconvenience the surrounding communities.

I hope you have taken the time to drive these intersections and see all the congestion that is already there.

Hence why I dot is IDOT is trying to change it.

If you have not, you should not be voting yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our house butts up against the retaining pond, which then hits Lake Street.

So we have a clear view of that intersection, and I can tell you I've lost count of how many times there's been accidents at night during the day.

There's been cars involved, there's been trucks involved, there's been property damage, they've taken out the stoplights a few times in the 20 years that we've lived at this location.

IDOT previously has declared that this is a dangerous intersection.

Today, I'd like to ask that you consider this with the temple proposal.

We already know this is a dangerous intersection.

It's been declared that by IDOT in the past.

To put a temple in there is going to add a lot more traffic and a lot more cars and a lot more people in that intersection.

Combined with there's discussion of adding a gas station right across the street from our home.

I'm fine with the gas station.

It's just extra traffic in the intersection.

So now we've got all these different sources for more traffic going into a dangerous intersection.

To make things safer, we need to address the intersection before we do these additional projects.

That's my opinion.

Kind of common sense that type of thing.

So I get that.

But that doesn't mean that we go and dump a bunch of more traffic in there until IDOT declares they're going to make a change.

So for me, it's a common sense thing.

If it's dangerous, don't put more traffic into it.

Get it fixed, and then you can add more traffic.

Barbara Conterno.

I didn't realize how short three minutes was, so I wrote way too much, so I'm sort of gonna wing it here a little bit.

But um my community here and I have been now to two zoning meetings and tonight's meetings to express all of our concerns about the proposed temple project, including safety concerns, which you've heard about the traffic, the impact of all the people, the all the celebrations throughout the year, the emergency access, the overcrowding of our neighborhood when the parking spaces for their thousands of people coming aren't enough, and the negative changes to the character of our neighborhood and the risk of declining property taxes.

I know that this board has the final decision making authority, but the zoning committee that we went to, the first meeting, we went well over midnight.

So many people were speaking, and the other one was about five hours, and the zoning committee voted it down two times.

The first time a four to one vote, and the second time at first, they didn't even want to make a motion, and then they made a motion, it was split.

A woman on the the board, the zoning board, even said, I used to take my car to the Toyota dealer right there.

I drive all the way to St.

Charles because I'm so scared to drive that close to where you guys are talking about it is that dangerous.

So the church had asked for the moon in the stars the first time when they went into the zoning board, and it was just way too big and way so many variances.

They scaled it down.

Now they're just asking for the stars.

It's still way too big, it's still way too impactful to our community.

So I just hope that you guys hear you what we're all saying, how it's going to impact our community, that you trust the zoning board and what their recommendations were.

And when you're deciding how you're going to vote, please take the concerns of our community into effect if you're facing those concerns where you live, how would you want to vote if it was about your home?

And if you're on the fence with it, err on the side of safety.

We don't need more people getting killed out on Lake Street.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Charlotte Miller.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members.

My name is Charlotte Miller, and I'm a resident of a subdivision located approximately 500 feet from the proposed Hindu temple site near Route 12, also known as Lake Street here in Algin.

I want to be clear from the beginning that this is not about religion or culture.

Our community respects religious freedom and diversity.

My comments tonight are strictly about zoning, traffic, safety, neighborhood compatibility, and fiscal impact.

The variants being requested would place a large assembly extremely close to an established residential subdivision using the same single entrance off Route 20 that residents already rely on.

Lake Street is already a heavily trafficked corridor, and many of us experience congestion and safety concerns, especially during peak hours.

A temple of this size will generate significant and reoccurring traffic, particularly on weekends, holidays, and during special events.

This raises concerns about congestion, emergency vehicle access, pedestrian safety, noise, and overall quality of life for nearby residents.

There is also a public safety concern related to the adjacent land use.

On the west side of the proposed site is a chemical facility, safety clean.

It is my understanding that some celebrations may involve fireworks or open flame activities.

If that is accurate, this proximity raises serious safety questions that deserve careful review.

Even if such activities are limited or restricted, placing a high occupancy gathering space next to an industrial chemical operation warrants a thorough safety and risk assessment before any variance is granted.

In addition, there is the financial impact to consider.

Religious institutions are exempt from property taxes, meaning this land would be removed from the city's tax base while requiring city services such as police, fire protection, traffic control, and road maintenance.

That ultimate that ultimate burden shifts to the taxpayers.

Zoning regulations exist to ensure compatible land uses and to protect residents and the city of its unintended consequences.

Granting a variance in this case could set a precedent that undermines that protection and permanently alters the character and safety of our neighborhood.

We are not saying no to a temple.

We are asking that the council consider whether this specific location, given its proximity to the homes, limited access, adjacent industrial use, and fiscal impact is appropriate.

Thank you for your time.

As elected officials of the city of Elgin, I trust that you will place the safety of the residents, taxpayers, and voters first as you consider the zoning variants.

Thank you.

Jocelyn Miller.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

I'm here tonight because the decisions made on this project will shape traffic, safety, and daily life for this neighborhood for decades.

My concerns are not speculative.

They're based on what has been presented, what has been omitted, and what residents already experience every day.

At the last zoning meeting, it was disclosed that the applicant intends to retain their existing temple while also constructing this new development.

This raises a fundamental question of how will access be managed if both facilities operate simultaneously.

It is not reasonable to assume that attendance will split and stay within the numbers that are being suggested.

More realistically, the site will draw more people given that it is the new bright and shiny location, significantly increasing traffic volumes beyond what is currently being represented.

The new proposed open space is being presented as an outdoor benefit, yet its location appears to be largely a result of where an apartment building was previously planned.

When viewed alongside the developer's blanket request for future approval of any use on this land, this raises legitimate concerns about future changes that may not align with today's representations.

At the informational meeting, residents were told there would be no events held outdoors.

However, public posts on the applicant's own social media show outdoor gatherings do take place.

This creates a credibility issue.

When statements made to residents conflict with publicly available information, it becomes difficult for the community to rely on assurances being offered as part of this approval process.

Again, there is a blanket request for future approval of any use on this land.

The council needs to think about what this will do to all future developments within Elgin.

Turning to traffic, while revised numbers have been referenced, a new traffic study was never produced despite the zoning board explicitly requesting one.

A new study would have accounted for the car wash being constructed after the original traffic study, as well as substantial residential growth west of this site, including Elgin, South Elgin, Pingree Grove, and Hampshire.

As a result, the traffic figures currently being used to justify this project are misleading.

Comparison to a residential complex the size of Oak Ridge understate the impact.

This development will generate more concentrated event-driven traffic than a standard residential development.

A nearby example is Westridge Community Church.

Despite having lower Sunday attendance than this development proposes, police traffic control is still required to maintain safety.

Why is this development proposing traffic control only for its largest holiday?

And what is the contingency plan when attendance exceeds projections?

On major holidays, will this development serve as the primary gathering location?

If so, we're no longer dealing with the reduced or redistributed attendance.

We are facing the originally estimated numbers of 4,000 plus visitors moving in and out over the course of those holidays.

Under those conditions, the scaled-down version of this project does not have the capacity to safely accommodate demand with only 536 parking spaces.

This raises additional concerns of how overflow parking will be handled.

Will the open field, which is currently protected by a conservation easement, be used for additional parking during peak events?

A conservation ease a conservation easement is meant to protect land, not to serve as overflow parking with no regard to it for its intended purpose or long-term preservation.

There's also serious operational concerns.

Growth must never come at the expense of transparency, safety of established transparency, safety of established neighborhoods.

And this council has both the authority and responsibility to ensure that this does not.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Arthur Hosanuski.

Good evening, Council.

Uh, just want to bring up, you know, there's a reason why zoning brief used this project two times already.

They studied the area, they checked the area, they looked at the area.

They found it not well suited for the plans.

If you ever visit the area, if you ever look at the area, you'll understand why.

That's kind of the main reason.

So just want to bring this up and thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sylvia Young.

Good evening.

I'm an Oak Ridge resident.

I just wanted to talk about the opposition for this project.

It's not only because of the traffic, but it's the safety.

My daughter's going to be driving soon, and I have already been trying to teach her how to we have to pause on Lambert before she has to cross because so many cars go back and forth.

Now with the Shales Light Parkway is going to be gone.

And we have a lot of semis that go through that light all the time now.

So I can't even imagine what's going to happen when Shales is gone.

So as just to reiterate reiterate, we are just very scared and worried about the traffic and all the um accidents that might be happening for our future children too.

And if we wanted to go across to the lake, that's impossible too without driving.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Jeremy Carlson.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the city council.

My name is Jeremy Carlson, and I reside about 50 feet from the proposed development in one of the single family homes to the northeast of the boundary of this project.

I want to ground my comments tonight in the City's own adopted comprehensive plan, which the council is obligated to use as a decision-making guide.

The plan is clear that development must one protect existing neighborhoods, two, ensure safe and efficient transportation.

Three, maintain adequate emergency access, and four, infrastructure capacity.

These are not aspirational goals, these are criteria for evaluating proposals.

There is no redundancy, there is no secondary outlet, there is no alternative emergency access route.

The proposed development materially increases the traffic volume, specifically surge traffic, which other types of facilities would not generate.

The traffic would be consistent.

It might be significant, but not surge traffic.

This is not a theoretical concern.

A single access neighborhood is by definition a single point of failure as well.

When congestion increases, emergency response slows.

When emergency response slows, risk increases.

That means safety issues must be resolved prior to approval, not deferred, not conditioned, and certainly not promised later.

I'm not asking the council to oppose development at this location.

I'm asking the city council to apply its own adopted policy faithfully.

No development should be approved if it knowingly reduces the safety margin of an existing neighborhood.

One of my closing thoughts is this.

Economic opportunity can always be revisited.

And when this plan was established, unemployment in Elgin was so poor it was compared to the Great Recession.

This would lock up 35 acres from ever generating new employment, and as mentioned, would take up half in uh eliminating taxation ability.

So what I'd also like to say is if safety concern were truly insignificant, it would not require mitigation at all.

And the fact that mitigation is promised isn't admitted is an admission that the risk already exists.

Mitigation promised after approval is not mitigation at all, it is damage control.

And public policy does not allow risk to be approved first and addressed later.

Please consider this in your evaluation tonight.

And again, I I suggest you vote in opposition to this project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, counsel.

I have nothing planned to say, but if I may approach you and pass out these photos.

And um just share it.

Um you've heard a lot about the traffic problems, and I thought maybe a visual of what we've been going through might help.

And I just printed a few instances of many that we have been going through.

One in particular was on this past Thanksgiving.

And the uh accident was so bad, it was a fatal accident.

And I was having my family and friends over for Thanksgiving, and a few of those people couldn't leave.

We couldn't get out of the our subdivision because of this accident.

And they were headed towards other celebrations for Thanksgiving.

So I just want to build upon what my neighbors have been saying about what we're going through.

And if you look at those pictures, that's without temple traffic coming out of that little street that they're proposed to build on.

If the temple was there, and that uh the accident that you see, the pictures there, they wouldn't be able to get out of the subdivision either.

So besides safety concerns, um the proposed building that they're gonna do does not fit our subdivision.

I've I've lived there since the beginning of the uh subdivision 2005, and traffic has increased so much on Lake Street.

When we first moved there, it was tolerable.

Now it is not tolerable.

And like many of our my neighbors had said the the uh the light at Lambert um cars are constantly cars and trucks constantly blowing the light, and we have to wait until we visually see that there are no cars going east or west that are gonna ram into us when we're trying to get on to Lake Street.

So um I'll make it short and sweet.

I hope that you look at those photos and see what we're going through.

And like some other of my neighbors have said, please come and see what we're dealing with.

Because if you don't see it in person, it's hard to describe if you don't live there.

If if you haven't experienced what we're going through, um, I I ask that you all come and see, and I hope that you all choose not to approve this project.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael Cronen.

Good evening, everyone.

I live at 824 Beach Drive.

I'm an original owner, built the property.

It backs right up to the proposed temple.

You guys have heard everything about the traffic.

I just want to bring out some other points that maybe we're not considering.

If you haven't been through our subdivision, it's all cul-de-sacks, it's dead end streets.

Our kids play in the streets, they ride their bikes in the streets.

We don't have a park when we built the subdivision and bought into it originally.

There was plans for a park.

There was plans for extending, you know, more townhomes where the temple property is.

There was supposed to be a park back there.

Our kids ride their bikes in the street, they play ball in the cul-de-sacks where there's dead ends.

It's a lot of project that's going to be six years in construction with bombers and heavy loading equipment and everything.

I'm in construction.

I did the bridges up and down Lake Street.

We all know how long 31 took to build.

Now we're now we're talking about Shells Parkway overpass.

That's gonna be an eight-year project from what I understand to coincide with the temples project.

And with their own numbers, 70% of their people are coming from the east, and they're gonna force them to exit west.

Where are they gonna turn around at?

They're gonna turn around at their first opportunity, which is gonna be in the middle of a construction zone at Shales Parkway.

When we head home tonight, we're gonna pass eight crosses, four from the Thanksgiving accident, and it took me 40 minutes to leave my subdivision.

And that's horrible for that family.

And then there's four more just east of that by the car wash, two on the north, two on the south.

This just repeat.

This ain't the place for this.

Our subdivision is landlocked.

We're a close-knit community.

Our families have been around quite a while, and this is gonna destroy our community.

Just having that type of construction project, this ain't the place for it.

So I hope you vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah Sadiq.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Sarah Siddiqui.

I've been an Elgin resident for almost 25 years.

For 20 years, I've lived at the Oak Ridge community at Lake Street and Hilliard.

Um I'm also an original owner, and I'm in opposition to the proposed temple on Galt.

At the entrance of this neighborhood, there's a temple that wants to be built, whose community is about 500 people, from what I understand, but on many occasions, they'll be bringing in thousands.

Our entrance cannot handle this load because this is our only entrance or exit to our entire subdivision.

Also, this entrance literally looks like a byway if you've driven through our neighborhood, known as Hilliard, which leads to Lake Street.

The three traffic lights that are immediately surrounding us, which are Naperville Road and Lake Street, Lambert and Lake and Shales Parkway and Lake are all very recently at the highest critical level given by IDOT.

This temple project will bring more traffic congestion and add to the danger of Lake Street.

And just as Sylvia had mentioned, I also have driving kids who are driving, and that was our number one thing is to make sure you stop and wait until everyone is stopped.

And I know everyone says that to their kids, but at our intersection, if you don't, you will be hit.

I mean, we've had neighbors whose kids were in accidents through the years.

Um the temple project was not approved by the Elgin Common Zoning Commission twice, and the members who voted not to approve this project have been in our neighborhood.

They said that they were familiar with our neighborhood, or they drive in the vicinity of this neighborhood and are familiar with the traffic concerns that are already dangerous.

Um if you haven't come to our neighborhood, please make sure you see it before you do vote if you do think that this temple belongs here.

Um the maps don't represent the neighborhood correctly, and I would like to point out how Hilliard is not a road but a byway that leads our neighborhood to Lake Street or Galt, um, which is also called Lambert, and how the Lambert and Lake traffic light is dangerous, and that trucks on Lake Street run the red light constantly due to the curve of the road.

I honestly think they can't stop.

And because of that curvature, they end up having to go through it.

Um, and that's what I believe because I've seen it over, like I said, the past 20 years.

So please support your Elgin constituents who have who pay taxes and will continue to pay taxes in the Oak Ridge community.

I love living in our neighborhood.

As others have said, this is not about you know any kind of racism or not wanting a temple there.

It's if you I've lived in Elgin and I've stayed in Elgin because I love our community, and I love the acceptance that we have as a minority.

I can tell you that I've always felt accepted there.

And I don't think any of these people have that in mind when they're when they are speaking.

We are strictly thinking in terms of logistics and safety.

So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Tanya Saful uh Sufufo.

Hello, folks.

Thank you.

Hi, I just um I'm gonna keep this super short and sweet.

You've heard a lot, a lot about everything.

One people keep bringing up if you've never been there, and I gotta think that if you haven't, that would be the first thing that you'd want to do before voting for something so significant.

And second, or third or fourth or fifth, or sixth or seventh or eighth.

Um, I have no new news for you.

I can't believe we've gotten to the fourth meeting.

This is crazy.

The first one went till midnight, the second one went till 11.

And all of the same.

Oh, hi honey.

This is John.

He lives there too.

Okay.

So the development's not gonna benefit our economy in any way, shape, or form.

We have an outdated traffic study.

We've had multiple accidents, it's only January 14th.

You've heard enough about traffic, period.

Quality of life due to the inevitable overflow of that traffic is horrendous.

This morning in particular was treacherous.

A normal commute, which is normally 20 minutes, was an hour and 10.

So please, if you haven't come, come visit.

Um there's just so many more points, but I mean, lastly, if it goes through, we'll move.

And and that might not be a big deal to any of you.

And frankly, it's probably not a big deal to the community, but at the end of the day, there are people that cannot do that.

These are their homes.

They've been here for 25 years.

I've been here for four.

And to have them lose everything they've worked hard for, and for us to say, if this happens, we leave, is a tragedy.

And so, I mean the last thing I'll do before we move is vote.

And so that's what I'll continue to do.

Thank you.

John, is it okay if I speak, Sue?

Yeah, you're he's next on the docket.

Yeah, good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Council residents.

How are you today?

As you know, we live in Oak Ridge.

Uh, as everyone here is speaking of the proposal.

We are here not to support this temple.

I'm here to say, let's use some common sense.

With the fact that there's only one way in and one way out in this community.

Route 20 is a war zone.

There's so many accidents where we live.

Um I just want to say let's use some common sense and make sure we do for safety reasons and our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joe Agnello.

This is it.

Good evening, Council members and mayor.

I am a disabled veteran.

I moved here in 2004 for the peace and contentment I have sitting on my back porch.

I look off my back porch and I see the deer playing out in the field.

I see the coyotes barking with my dog.

I have so much fun sitting there that it takes the pain of my disability away.

Now I know there are veterans in this room, and I know plenty of veterans that have moved out here for the peace and contentment of living in a community where there's only one way in.

Now that little parcel of land where those animals live, they're beautiful animals.

There's no plan to eliminate the protected species, and there are two of them.

I don't see that anywhere in these notes.

And the bats.

Well, I know what one person is gonna do with the bats, but I'll tell you, we have to consider the beauty of this.

The only reason this temple is being planned to build there is because they got it for peanuts.

They got it cheap.

There's no other reason.

There's plenty of other spacious places that they could build on, but they're picking this place because it's cheap.

That parcel of land should have been donated to the county.

And if I'm not mistaken, it should have been Cook County Forest Preserve.

I believe it's Cook County, not Kane County, where that parcel exists.

I may be wrong about that.

But it should have been donated.

It should have been purchased by the county.

It shouldn't have been left for somebody to make a little profit by selling it and destroying the quality of our community.

These beautiful neighbors of mine, you can tell how many of them are elderly.

They live there because it's peaceful there.

This is gonna rip the peace right out of our hearts and right out of our homes.

It won't exist.

When the traffic studies were conducted, nowhere in any of them was it ever mentioned.

There's only one intersection that all the temple community and all the community where I live in Oak Ridge, all of it has to pass through one single intersection.

Now I know Jeremy mentioned it, but it's a big point.

All traffic.

Now that's not including the car wash.

That caused enough traffic out there as it is.

The stoplight did help a little bit, I'll admit that.

But when you get past that, when you get over by Hilliard and Gault, you'll see that all traffic has to go through one specific spot.

That's insanity.

It doesn't make any sense.

Why would anyone allow that to occur?

I propose that you I don't know.

I don't know what to say.

I I just feel I I know you listened to me because the last time I spoke, I said we should salute that flag.

I fought for that flag.

Under that flag, we served our country.

And tonight, you honored that request by having a pledge of allegiance.

I appreciate that you heard me the last time, and you honored me today, honestly.

I I'm grateful for that.

But honor me with this request.

Don't consider this temple being in our backyard.

It's 20 feet off my backport.

Start wrapping up your comments.

Thank you.

Samantha Parkhurst.

Samantha Parkhurst.

Don't run.

The one behind me is gonna speak first, and then I can sign.

Can you send this to me?

That's okay.

Hello, my name is Margaret.

I live in a Castle Creek subdivision.

And uh we are here to oppose the uh temple construction.

Um today, I as well as other residents of the Castle Creek subdivision are here to strongly oppose the proposed temple development on the north side of Lake Street at Lambert Road, next to the car wash, due to many safety concerns.

There have been numerous accidents on Lake Street in the in the recent months, almost on daily basis, one as recent as Thanksgiving Day, which resulted in fatality.

The speed at which the cars travel around the corner, either direction, disregard any and all speed limits, and many times completely disregard traffic lights at Lake Street and Lambert.

Shales Parkway redevelopment, eliminating lake and shales intersection intersection, plans for shales to go under upcoming Lake Street, excuse me.

Overpass, as most of you already know, making Lake and Lambert the first set of eastbound traffic lights for many miles of build-up speed that many motorists already ignore between the car wash and the proposed temple development with 536 plus additional cars planned on leaving and entering that intersection.

The congestion and accidents rate will um will only quadruple at the very least.

Again, something the residents of the Castle Creek were never prepared for.

Hi, I'm I'm Samantha Parkhurst, and I live in Amber Grove, which is the next subdivision um just south of Castle Creek.

And so Lambert will hit up as a T-bone to Spaulding.

Spaulding Road is seven-tenths of a mile.

I will run it from time to time.

It takes me long time, but I run.

And running that um has taught me how much traffic has gone through there to the point that when I am trying to get out of my subdivision with the current traffic that there is there right now, Spaulding then will come to a T or cross over um Neighborville Road.

Neighborville Road has collected more semis than you can count.

And those semis have found that as a quick way to get to the industrial section in Bartlett.

So I waited six minutes one day to get out of my subdivision to turn left to go north to be able to get to Lake Street to go on to where I was going.

Six minutes is outrageous.

So I called the village of Bartlett, and then I was put in touch with uh two people, Justin and I think Tom at the Cook County um commissioner for the the roads, and well, they they can't really help us out.

So I was like, well, we need something to fix this.

And now I learned that this temple wants to be bought there.

And they say build it and they'll come.

Well, they're gonna come, and that's fine, but the amount of traffic our neighborhood cannot absorb that.

And when we have to wait so long to now get out of our neighborhood because of semis that go up and down the the main road there in Naperville.

And if we have this extra traffic and they're gonna find ways to snake through, we've only got two entrances to our neighborhood, and we've got 250, I think, houses in our neighborhood.

So two to three cars per house.

You got 750 people traveling, and now you can have all the extra traffic.

We cannot afford that.

We can't we can't have it.

And the one thing that Tanya said struck a chord, and I just so happened to be wearing this is yeah, Alzheimer sucks.

My husband is 54 when he was diagnosed with it.

And so I'm not gonna be able to afford to move out of my house to you know to get anywhere.

And if I have to move out of my house to take care of him and wind up being in a smaller house or something more affordable, our neighborhood, if the if the um value of the neighborhoods go down, I lose.

And I'm not trying to win a race here, but it's gonna affect me.

It's gonna affect my husband, it's gonna affect everybody in our neighborhood.

So there's so many things that this is going to affect.

It's not just a temple coming in, but you know, like they said in that movie.

Um Field Dreams, build it and they'll come.

Somebody mentioned Hampshire.

Find a place in Hampshire, they have farmland out there.

Find blank space.

Don't take these little pieces of neighborhoods that might fit.

Find a place that you can grow, grow bigger, but get on bigger land where you have room.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Elizabeth.

Elizabeth.

Mr.

Maya and uh the council members.

I'm Elizabeth Shamanski, and I live in Oak subdivision from day the builder started digging the land.

So I'm the original owner, and everything has been said, all the details have been said today, so I'm not going to repeat all my pre-speakers.

I wanted to say one thing that it was just said uh second ago.

For this venue, this piece of land is not appropriate.

This is not the piece of land for such a huge project in a small, very locked subdivision.

We have one road.

It was it has been said so many times.

We have one tiny road that cannot handle any more traffic as we have now.

So please kindly save us against accidents, save our lives, and vote no for this project.

They can find much more wider, much better place for themselves with ingress and uh egress easily um affordable.

We cannot do it.

We we don't have place to build another road.

We wish we had the road, another road to Irving Park, but we don't have it.

We are landlocked so please consider our requests and our um we really ask you um consider our uh concerns and vote no against this project in this particular spot.

This is nothing about religion.

This is nothing about about whatever people say.

This is just safety, our lives, safety against save us against accident and save our lives.

This is what we're asking for.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Patel, Ricket Papella.

Hello everyone, my name is Rico Patel.

Um didn't really have a lot of prepared comments, but I will not repeat a lot of the stuff that's said, but just wanted to give you some insight on supporting the temple.

Traffic, parking, and noise will be managed using established event management practices already familiar to the community.

Similar to how traffic increased traffic is handled during events like 4th of July and other community events, higher attendance days will be planned in advance with traffic coordination, shuttle services, and on-site management.

And I know you guys had mentioned or we had mentioned um the Babbs Temple, BAPS, which is a similar religious and a spiritual congregation out in Bartlett.

Um they also it's a great example of how such facilities can successfully manage traffic and parking without ongoing neighborhood disruptions.

And other regular day-to-day traffic uh will occur outside of peak rush hours and remain minimal.

The other thing is um uh I've also gone to now I want to go off script here, just kind of tell you guys what's in my heart here.

I also go to other um non-Hindu congregations.

I know this is not about religion, like Willow Creek and South Barrington, and my friends always call me I'm a coconut, uh, brown on the outside, white on the inside.

I've been here pretty much all my life, raised here, born here, uh not born here.

And the other thing I want to just say is that this would be more of a place for you know for kids and for other generations, more of having community events and not just a religious place, um, just like how other community uh other churches uh have that.

And I'll just on a lighter note, because we're all into the whole uh bears kind of, you know, if Arlington Heights can consider having the Chicago Bears move in, and their games are limited to maybe eight plus a year, and whatever modifications that they have done.

Um the amount of traffic that I think is being overestimated for lack of better word.

Um that's all I would have to say that this would be more, it would gener it would operate far less frequently, and any major events, which is just a handful, would be managed via shuttle services and things like that.

Um, so to not have disruption uh in the community.

So that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tony, uh I believe it's Krakasell, Krekasel.

I apologize.

Either my uh your handwriting is not good or my eye say it's not too good.

Tony.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, counsel.

I'll make it brief.

You guys have heard a lot about traffic and safety.

I think it's super important.

I live at uh 800 Beach.

And really, I rise to really congratulate uh the opposition and our neighbors coming together and really devoting themselves to what is right for us.

Uh I I'd like to respond as well.

They mentioned BAPS.

BAPS is not planted next to a neighborhood.

They keep making these comparisons to other, there is no parallel.

There's not another temple plop next to a whole residential area.

So please keep that in mind.

I mean, the traffic is a real I mean we've beaten it to death.

I understand.

I think you guys get the point.

If you've all driven there, when they put the car wash in, it's gone exponentially higher.

By the way, the cycle time on that light, you're lucky if you get four cars through there.

So that would have to be addressed.

There's lots of questions that I don't think have been addressed.

So I would I rise in opposition and I hope uh that you uh see it our way.

We do appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mustafa thank you for having me.

Um I'll tell you a bit more about myself.

Um my name is Mustafa.

I just moved to this location five months ago from Michigan, and the first thing that I was really troubled with was um, and by the way, I live at 879 Oak Ridge, right?

So I'm a resident of this location.

I I big I'm an immigrant from Pakistan, but I became a citizen five years ago.

And one of the things that really attracted me was how uh welcoming the community of Elgin was my son goes here to school as well.

The first things that really bothered me was the someone mentioned right now the site the cycle time on the light as you turn left on Lambert, right?

And I think so I I just want to like just vehemently oppose this, right?

I've I've lived in many countries.

I've lived in Japan, I've been in Pakistan, I've lived in uh Hong Kong, I've lived in many states, Connecticut, Michigan, Atlanta.

I've lived so many places, right?

One of the things I really like about the US as I became a citizen was that I could come here and raise my voice and can talk about the issues that matter to me that matter to my family.

And so I really vehemently oppose, like I say, like everyone said, this is not about religion.

I am a religious Muslim.

If this was a mosque, I would still be thinking about the traffic patterns here.

I know there's a mosque adjacent to Shields Parkway.

When I go for my Friday prayers, I see Lake Street, how crowded that is.

That that when I go for exit on Lake Street and I turn right and I go to uh Bluff City Boulevard, the normal time is three minutes.

It sometimes takes me 15 minutes on Fridays when we have community prayers there.

So I know how difficult it's gonna be, especially with this temple coming in.

Someone said they'll move.

I will most likely move as well, but I don't want to do that.

This is the first time I've purchased my house five months ago, and I really want to establish my roots over here.

But the but this is going to be uh that's why like I have post thank you.

Thank you for it.

Thank you.

Okay, that ends the public comment.

It brings us to bids.

Um first item is bid number two five-059 hydrant sandblasting and painting.

Mr.

Mayor, I recommend that we award this to uh go painters not to exceed two hundred and sixty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.

Second.

I've been moved and seconded any discussion.

Hearing none, clerk please call a roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

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 uh city clerk's office renovation uh job order contract.

Move toward the bid uh Leo Park Leo Pardoff's about that said that right.

Companies inc, in the amount of 89,996 dollars for the remodeling of the city clerk's office space.

Second.

It's been moved and second in any discussion.

Miss Salfaro.

I had a I had a question.

Um is there a lobby or is that is the door now becomes a window?

And so people, if they are coming to the clerk's office, they stand in a line in the hallway.

I wasn't a hundred percent sure when I was looking at the plans I was trying.

I saw the window at the door, and it looked like that people come up to the door, they ask their questions or stuff.

There is more of a lobby space.

And it's gonna be more accessible.

Turn on your mic.

It's gonna create more of a lobby space uh for people to come up to the to a window.

So there'll be a lobby in the hallway?

No, it'll it's just creating more of a space that's already there.

It's kind of small, so they're gonna try to create a bigger space for people to come in to have that accessibility.

Oh, so you enter the clerk's correct space, and then that window is in there and there's a lobby.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anything else?

Clerk, please call a roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Paul?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, motions approved 90.

Brings us to item one is consideration of petitions 42-25 and 43-25, 890 Galt Boulevard.

Preliminary plat of subdivision and plan development is a map amendment to construct a religious and reset residential mixed-use development with an 86,000 square foot temple, 536 parking spaces, and 33 townhomes and five buildings.

Mr.

Mullot.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

The 34-acre property is located on the north side of U.S.

Route 20, west of Lambert Lane and Hilliard Drive.

Here is Route 20.

This is Lambert Lane.

And this is Hilliard.

This is the Sherwood Oaks residential subdivision in unincorporated Cook County.

This is the Oak Ridge subdivision in Elgin.

This is Ever Clean Car Wash, SD's Express Lines, trucking services, Copart Vehicle Auction Company, Safety Clean, and Regis Packaging, all of which are also in Elgin.

Umea Mataja Sashesta, Chicago Midwest.

Is requesting approval of a religious and residential development on the vacant property to better show the details of the proposal on the site over the next several slides.

We've turned the orientation so that north is to the right and U.S.

Route 20 is on the left.

The applicant proposes an 86,000 square foot temple with 536 parking spaces, 33 townhomes in five buildings, and an approximately six-acre private recreation field with one and a half to two acres of tree preservation area, buffering the single family homes in the Oak Ridge subdivision.

The detention facility at the north end of the property provides a similar buffer for single family homes in Sherwood Oaks.

The proposal has been substantially scaled back from a previous proposal reviewed by the planning zoning commission in June of last year.

That previous proposal called for a 231,000 square foot temple, a four-story multifamily building with 81 dwelling units, 823 parking spaces with an additional 461 parking spaces banked and 38 townhomes in six buildings.

The benefit to no longer providing the four-story multifamily building and reducing the size of the temple and decreasing the amount of required parking is an increase to the amount of open space for temple visitors and members.

A quick aside, the four-story multifamily building could not be later constructed without amending the planned development in the same manner as this application before you.

The public notice of an application, a public hearing at the planning and zoning commission, and a decision by city council.

The reduction to the size of the temple was not limited to just its floor area, but also its height.

Here is the front elevation of the temple as now proposed, and here is the former front elevation superimposed behind the show the difference.

The current temple would be at a height of 90 feet high with a five-foot flag.

The original height of the temple was 125 feet with a 25-foot high flag on top.

Here are the side elevations of the temple as proposed, and again, superimposed behind are the elevations of the previous temple.

The applicant prepared lines of sight exhibits from various vantage points about halfway along Oak Ridge Boulevard.

Oak Ridge Boulevard is here.

The temple is on the left.

The top exhibit is looking from the back of the westernmost townhouses, townhouses in Oak Ridge.

The bottom exhibit is looking from the second floor to the back of those same westernmost townhouses.

And this exhibit shows the line of sight also from Oak Ridge Boulevard from the second floor of the townhouses on the east side of that street.

Access to the development would be through the construction of Galt Boulevard as a private access road constructed to city standards, including sidewalks, street trees, and street lights.

The development would not have regular vehicular connection to Oak Ridge to the east or Sherwood Oaks to the north.

One gated emergency access would be available for police and fire at the end of persimmon lane.

The applicant submitted a traffic and parking study, and the study concludes that surrounding roadways can absorb the additional traffic from normal temple operations and will continue to function with an acceptable and desired ranges.

During special Sunday services, the nine-day Nuvati festival and the Hindu New Year celebration, the details of which are provided in your packet.

The applicant is proposing to implement a traffic and parking management plan.

The plan uses on-site volunteers assisted by Elgin police officers to guide the traffic and parking movement.

The exact nature of that assistance would be to be determined by the Elgin Police Department.

All outbound traffic from the temple would head west via a right turn only lane at Hilliard Drive and Route 20.

All traffic exiting Oak Ridge would be given priority over any temple traffic and directed to the signalized intersection at Lambert Lane and Route 20.

With the traffic and parking management plan, the traffic study establishes that the surrounding roadways have adequate capacity to accommodate the additional traffic even during the busy times.

The study also compared the projected traffic to that generated by a typical industrial development that could arguably be constructed in conformance with the existing zoning, and a mixed residential development, similar in unit type and density to the Oak Ridge subdivision.

The industrial development would generate substantially more traffic during the AM and P.M.

rush hours and on Sundays before temple servers would start, but less traffic on Sundays after service.

A residential development would also generate more traffic during the AM and P.M.

rush hours, but less on Sundays.

One of the recommended conditions is that the temple would make the improvements to the Route 20 and Lambert Lane intersection that were contemplated in October 2022 for a Thornton's gas station at the northeast corner of the intersection, in so long as someone else doesn't come along and make them first.

The owner of the Northeast Corner has advised staff that they're still hoping to attract another gas station, but nothing has materialized at this time.

Those improvements are also detailed in your report, but generally include dedicated turn lanes on Lambert Lane, protected left turns, and extended stacking space on Route 20.

IDOT is also preparing to make improvements along Route 20 at Shales Parkway.

Their plans include improvements to the Lambert Lane intersection as well as a barrier median in Route 20 from Lambert Lane West to Safety Clean.

The pros project meets the city's parking requirement.

518 parking spaces are required for the temple, and each townhouse must have four spaces.

The temple would have 536 parking spaces, and each townhome would have two garage spaces and two on the driveway.

The study also concluded that the amount of parking provided satisfies the unique parking demand generated by the proposed development.

Finally, the property is subject to a consent decree issued by the Circuit Court of Cook County in 1967.

Following litigation by the then residents of the Sherwood Oaks subdivision, the consent decree limits the type and intensity of a select number of light industrial uses on the property.

It also prohibits residential land uses.

In addition to this application before city council to rezone the property, the applicant must petition the court to either vacate or amend the consent decree to develop the property as proposed.

The applicant is present, should you have any questions, as it's been described before.

The planning and zoning commission recommended that the original proposal in June of 2025 be denied, and the applicant requested that the plan not proceed to city council so that they could respond to the concerns that were raised at the public hearing.

The planning and zoning commission reviewed the current proposal on December 8th, but has no recommendation.

A motion to recommend approval with conditions did not pass with three votes in favor of the motion and three against.

Staff recommends approval of the application, subject to conditions outlined within your packet.

Move for approval subject conditions.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded for approval.

Before we start discussion, I'm gonna call on Mr.

Beck to uh make some comments about uh uh the consent decree.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Just briefly, I just want to make sure the council record is clear as uh community development director Millot indicated and as set forth in the uh January 14th, 2026 development application review and elsewhere in your packet.

There is the subject property is subject to a consent decree that was entered in 1967 by the Circuit Court of Court Cook County in case number 66 CH5096.

So the motion to approve in addition to be subject to the conditions and departures set forth in the development application review, um, is also subject to either the modification or vacation of that 1967 dissent decree as that would allow such that it would allow the city to enact an ordinance or ordinances for final approval of the petition.

So that's also an express condition of the motion to approve.

I just want to make sure the record is clear on that.

Okay.

Mr.

Ortiz.

All right.

I'll uh take a crack at it first.

Um I have uh five questions.

So uh for the one of the speakers talked about unlimited departures.

So you have the five lists at the main five, and then in one of the pages it said that for the town hall, I think it was the hot town home development that they can have minor departures on staff approval, and doesn't it come back to the council?

What besides like moving the corral of a dumpster a foot to the left and a right, what other like small departures would you be allowed under this to just ride off and not ask the council again?

Sure.

The that guidance is actually provided in the zoning ordinance.

The development administrator is afforded a little bit of discretion in working in under the guidance of still substantially compliant with the overarching approved plans.

And the uh some of the things include uh the location of streets, parking lots, or buildings by 20 feet or less, decreases in density or floor area, increases in open space, landscaped area screening, and substitution of comparable plant materials in the landscaping plan or aesthetically compare or exterior building materials.

Those are spilled out in the zoning orders.

Okay, so a random billboard just won't pop up correctly.

They need that.

Okay.

Or a or a four-story uh condominium building.

Okay.

Uh you mentioned this in your opening, but I just want to this highlight it.

So the green space that's the north of the parcel.

That's gonna be like the uh the athletic fields.

They originally in the summer they wanted to put uh a condominium or an apartment building there.

Even if we approve this, how you said in your opening, they still have to go through the entire process all over again if they want that building back.

Yes, sir.

All right.

And for the those other questions from the public comments about the stormwater plan and the flood plan.

I'm assuming you guys went through the Cook County uh to do like the stormwater sewer maintenance to make sure everything flows correctly and doesn't go backwards.

So the city ordinance says that this the entirety of the city is regulated by the Kane County stormwater ordinance, right?

But you still call them and make sure everything worked perfectly.

I'm I'm almost positive you guys there's one say it.

And those are the five.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

Oh, wait.

I like your tie.

Thank you.

Who goes back?

All right.

I I like your tie.

Go bears.

Mr.

Thorne.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mark, for the presentation.

You know, I listened to all the people here in the audience.

But I think that uh one thing that is important, I want everyone to know that I did drive it.

I went over there, I looked at the neighborhood, I drove it.

Uh, and I tried to envision the issue of the traffic issues at that intersection at those intersections.

Hearing that IDOT even states it's a delicate infrastructure, which was more than obvious to me.

One way in, one way out.

Uh it's already a problem area for traffic, and I am not one to help a traffic problem get worse.

A few other points that I noted that Mr.

Bezos commented that 310 people signed in favor of it.

Where are they?

They're not here talking to us.

And I wonder how many of them live there.

These people live there.

One person made a comment in Ford and he makes your reference.

If Arlington Heights can have the Bears Stadium, look at what that traffic will do.

Well, there's roads are a little bit different, but it'll also bring millions and millions of dollars to this state that'll help you.

This is not gonna bring any money to help you.

The main thing is the traffic concern that that's my number one issue, and I will not be supporting it.

Okay, thanks.

Ms.

Alfaro.

Bear with me.

My list is pretty long.

There.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so I'm gonna start off here and then I'll work my way through.

Um so what is there's proposal for town homes, and I understand that the entity is a non-for-profit.

The town homes will not be covered under the nonprofit, so they would be paying property taxes, correct?

That's my understanding, correct.

So the the organization will not be trying to cover it at all.

That's my understanding, correct?

Um those town homes um have four parking spots, the garage and the two in the driveway.

Is parking gonna be allowed on the street?

Because people have visitors, people have parties at their homes, and so where are those additional cars going?

So most likely those will be allowed.

It's going it is going to be a private street, so ultimately that decision was.

Do you mind going to the edge of a second?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

One second.

There we go.

That's a good one.

So this stretch here is all going to be private street.

So the decision to as to whether or not they will allow parking on that street will be will be entirely up to them.

The reason why I asked is because it doesn't look necessary, it will be private because the parking is also off to the side, right?

There's the lawn parking, um, and then there's that additional parking that comes out.

And so if there's parking on the street, um, then it's gonna end up being like a one-way, right?

Um if there's all these cars parked on that street.

So unless you put the street large enough, right?

So I think it's a very good thing.

It will be designed to a residential street subdivision that would allow parking and the passage of vehicles.

So like three cars.

Yes.

Okay.

So if there's cars parked on both sides, and I and I don't have the exact number, but my recollection is that it's 30 feet back of curved tobacco curb.

Okay.

Um even in my subdivision, sometimes it gets backed up when people have parties.

Sure.

And then so I'm trying to figure that piece out there.

Okay.

Um shall we go down?

So there was questions.

Um, I think you you answered that already.

Chris answered that one.

Uh so somebody asked during the public comment, and I also wrote this.

Um the other proposal, the 81 dwell, like why isn't that no longer being proposed, just out of curiosity.

Uh let's have we can have the applicant come forward and they can talk about why they decided to take that particular element of the plan off the table.

The condominium building.

Yeah, if you want to come up.

Councilwoman Alfaro, the um the decision to not, as I think I said, charge ahead with the uh the larger plan after the uh negative recommendation by the PNZ on June 2nd was a decision by the temple not to try and fight their way into this community.

And they decided to they listened, they they listened, they they heard one of the council or no, sorry, uh one of the planning and zoning commissioners say words to the effect this feels like 10 pounds of development in a five-pound bag, and they decided to reduce the uh the size of the development and come back in a much more uh what they hope would be a much uh a much more accepted fashion based on the comments made by the plan commission and uh the objections of the neighbors.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Um it says it's gonna be open to the public.

Is there a potential cost that will be going for this for the public?

A cost for what?

To enter as a visitor, if they're not a member of the religious faith.

A cost to attend the temple?

Oh no.

No, no.

Okay.

And then bear with me.

So that was answered.

Um so someone brought up uh a comment during a public comment about it when accidents happen, it blocks a street, and then there's no other way.

If there is an accident on that street, um entering the the area of the development.

Let me get you a better site.

Thank you.

Sorry, hold on one second, bear with me.

Here we go.

Yeah, so um if there is an accident on um is that Galivard.

Um the other entrance to my understanding is only for um like police and fire.

Yes, ma'am.

And so is the traffic just gonna be held up so now the people can't get out until the cars are removed if there's a major accident.

So my understanding is that gate's not opening unless it's only for fire and police.

So that gate to my understanding won't open for no other reason.

Correct.

That's that's as for emergency access only in the event there was some circumstance that caused this access to before.

Like blocked for some reason.

And again, keep in mind, it's going to be a wide street, 30 feet at least.

Uh, but again, we always we never want to make assumptions, right?

In if that was to happen, then emergency responders would have the alternate route to come up Hilliard Oak Ridge to Persimen, and this gate would open and they could access whatever they needed to get to in here.

And and and similarly vice versa, if there was something in you know that was blocked up here, then alternate routes are are available.

So the those cars that are parked there that are trying to leave would have to wait.

Yes, ma'am.

And so it's cut um taken out.

Okay.

Um now I now I understand your question.

My apologies.

This if this was blocked because of some emergency, this wouldn't be opened to allow people to come out because no, this is this is expressly for the use of emergency vehicles only.

Okay.

Um during public comment, some people mentioned that certain street lights are being removed in the near future per IDOTs um planning.

Um the shell's parkway light was mentioned, uh, another light was mentioned.

Uh do we know if that's accurate or not?

Um I can uh if you'll bear with me, I do have an image of what IDOT is contemplating along this stretch.

This is the shales.

This is the uh the recommended improvements for shales, and there is a light, but uh let's see if I can blow this up uh present from current slide.

There we go, that's a little bigger.

Uh this is shales right here, and their current plan has Route 20 go over the shales, but there is still a light underneath there.

Uh the plans at Lambert still include a light, and to the best of my knowledge, although I wasn't paying as much attention further east.

My my understanding is there'll still be a light at Naperville Road.

Okay.

And then I think you're the person that's in charge of traffic, right?

Um so I I am very torn on this development, and the only reason why I am super torn is that one way in, one way out.

Like if there's an emergency in that area, everyone's is locked in if that if something goes wrong with that one way.

Um if this development had a second entrance to 20, I think I would be fine with it right away.

Just so can you give me more clarity on that piece because that's my major concern is that it is one way in, one way out, and if something happens, the entire community and that development is trapped.

Sure.

Um Lynn Means from BLA.

Um we did prepare the traffic study for this development.

Um so Galt Boulevard, that pink section in there is the typical in and out on your um during typical weekdays as well as okay, um additional time frame.

So that section there would be your your in and out.

Um they have access on typical weekdays to Hiller Drive as well as um the ability to come out, galt um and to Lambert to the signal.

So there's the two access points during typical weekday and Sunday operations.

It's only those very special occasions where we implement a traffic um management plan where we would have police control and have developed a plan which would direct most traffic out to Hillard Ums.

Sorry about that, just so um the impact wouldn't occur.

Um just to give you an idea again about what the trap typical traffic generates during your typical weekday morning and evening peak periods, it's minimal traffic from the temple development.

Um it's less than or approximately a one percent increase in traffic um to Route 20.

There's a negligible increase um to delays and to queuing along that roadway during your typical morning and PM peak periods.

Can I just ask a follow-up question before you continue?

Is that um just the temple itself, or is that including the people that live in the town homes?

Including the town homes as well, um, the proposed town homes.

Um, the increase in traffic.

Um Route 20 has the capacity, as I mentioned, um, to accommodate that additional traffic without delays during your typical weekday a.m.

and PM time frames.

The unique component of the temple is that it services its highest attendance is on Sunday when traffic along US Route 20 during the Sunday afternoon and to evening periods is about 35 to 50 percent less than your typical weekday time frames.

So you have significantly less traffic coming in and out during those time frames.

Um our traffic study um assumed um general growth within the area.

We projected out traffic 10 years um from when our traffic counts were conducted.

We coordinated with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, um, got their 2050 traffic projections and assumed a 0.8% per year compounded growth rate on US Route 20.

Um that is higher than historical IDOT traffic counts along US Route 20.

Um the count periods that we did comparably to um recent traffic counts um have were the highest that they've been as a traffic engineer.

I've done studies in this region um spanning multiple time frames, and for some reason historically that 2022 time frame in the Chicagoland area, those counts are higher than what I've seen during any other time frame.

Um we also, as part of our study, um, did include traffic from the Thornton's development, which may or may not occur.

Um we included traffic um generated from the car wash development.

Um we also compared what the applicant had provided from the car wash development and used higher ITE rates for it to be conservative.

Um so our traffic volumes are sound based on the projections.

We also considered, you know, safety is a huge component.

I am for a professional engineer and I do hold safety to the highest standards.

I have um professionally licensed um and have a certification as a road safety professional.

Um so as part of um my studies and my and my um work that I do, um I try to consider and do consider the safe system approach, um which looks at ways to um improve safety and understanding that humans make mistakes.

So we look at ways to um provide improvements, understanding that crashes may occur, but to try to find ways to mitigate those serious and fatal crashes.

That's part of IDOT study um with that raid separation with the interchange at Shales Parkway, um, as well as the improvements that were considered as part of the Thornton's development, which um we included as part of our study, and as part of the condition that those improvements be implemented as part of the study.

Um they are including protected left turns um from US Route 20 onto the signalized intersections, so that is at shale at um Lambert as well as intersections further to the east at Kneeperville Road and such.

Um those protected left turns help to mitigate the angle type collisions, which produce the highest levels of injuries.

Um also there's the great um the barrier median at Hillard, which helps to eliminate a lot of the crashes that are due to head-ons and to side swipe type collisions.

So I know I gave a lot more answers to the depth of the study.

Um there were like I said, it's there is Gault, um, but that intersection there has minimal amount of traffic right now, and they do have access to the signal at Lambert and to the access at Hillard.

But there's only one way in, one way out on Gilbert then.

On that pink section of Gault, yes, and then there's the emergency access, but that access to Gault um it is designed to accommodate that traffic, and we did observe um it three existing temples as we noted in our study, one of them being BAPS, which is a very larger development than this, and that temple has one access in and out onto Illinois Route 59.

I've been there, I've been there, I've been to the one in Bartlett, but the one in Bartlett, once you enter, there is nothing else.

It is the temple itself, right?

There is no subdivision or a residential area, right?

And so that this access to has then there is two access, then uh, you know, there is Galt is the one access, but then you have two access to Route 20.

You have the right in right out on Hillard, and as well as via Lambert.

Oh down Lambert and out to you.

So following up on that, um, when Mark, when you were talking, you showed like on certain days when it's really busy, they're gonna um have volunteers um directing traffic, right?

So everyone leaving the development would be asked to go to right.

Those that live in the subdivision have the option of going left, right?

Um how is that gonna like function?

Like, are there gonna be volunteers there at all times?

Um etc.

Because I've been to the temple in Bartley.

It is also brings in tourism, like we've had family come from other places to come see the temple in Bartlett, right?

It's a beautiful space, and so I'm trying to get a better picture of traffic because I am really concerned.

I know you're saying there's two entrances, but those both entrances also impact the subdivision, right?

There isn't one entrance straight into the temple.

Sure, and so that's where my concern is.

Right, and that the traffic was included as our base conditions and as our future conditions and in the analysis.

So that traffic was never removed and it was considered as part of our um analysis.

Um and then oh, go ahead.

I just want to add something.

Um, can you speak in the mic so people at home to hear?

Thank you.

Yeah, so there's a condition for approval in the in the uh draft in the staff report, the which we agree with, which says that on these particular days of high attendance, and they're not 4,000, by the way, but uh spread out over the day.

But on those days, we must engage with and and uh hire the Elgin police department to and I'm gonna have to step away from the mic to show you to give uh to direct our traffic down the right and right out and allow the uh residential oak ridge preference on either going straight or right in right out.

So the police would function here to force us here, and would if somebody wanted to go here from the residents, I mean they'll be let's say there are two or three cars and six or seven, they'll stop our cars and let these cars go through, or these residents can go up and go out to go all signalize intersection.

That won't be just volunteer.

Our volunteers will pretty much stay on site.

I mean they have no authority offset.

So are those volunteers on site then like all the time, or are they just there for those design dates?

Because in the packet it said those um designated dates.

Right.

So we're anticipating problems only, not problems, but traffic only on those designated days.

But if it turns out we would have no problem with the uh with the uh council stipulating this that if it turns out that there's traffic problems more than just on those days, we can hire the Elgin police department on more days, or on you know, I I think though what Lynn Mean said, and and and you know, for those of us that are not traffic professionals, me included, this traffic is spread out.

It's not all it's not like a movie theater or a bears game letting out, but we're prepared to have the uh the city uh zoning administrator instruct us if we need to have more police in attendance.

Um follow-up question is did you all meet with IDOT, the Illinois Department of Transportation to talk about potentially having another entrance of 20 that goes directly into the the development space versus going into a share space with the subdivision?

So unfortunately they're they have limited access onto Route 20, and it's very close proximity to the the railroad crossing there, which precludes um the ability to have another access.

Um if it was ideal conditions, all that they could have potentially would be a limited access to right in right out, just given um access requirements.

Um but unfortunately it the current conditions preclude the ability to construct an access in that location.

But did you talk to IDOT to confirm all that to make sure there isn't something that they might see that you don't see?

Um I haven't spoken directly with IDAP, but I know other staff members of our team have.

Okay.

Would you like would you like our civil engineer to address that question?

Yeah, if they've spoken to IDOT about potentially having another entrance.

Hi, probably's consulting in your own.

We did talk to IDO Jonathan, he's uh permit manager up there.

Because of uh licid way more debris, it's not an airport, so they won't have our other access.

Because great difference is too much.

So I doesn't know.

Okay.

Yeah, they says no.

All right, thank you for clarifying that.

Um something that the community keeps saying is the property values have uh will go uh potentially down.

And the work that you've done and and in the feedback that you received in both planning and zoning, has that something you've looked into to ensure that property values would not go down?

You chuck, you chuck.

So I I'd like Mr.

Hanlin, who's a land use expert to answer that.

But thank you.

In the in the context that there's industrial zoning there now.

So go ahead.

Um qualify on well, this works too, doesn't it?

So maybe it works better.

Thank you.

I'm certainly not an appraiser from that perspective, but just from the uh land use perspective.

Um I don't see why this would bring property values down.

I would say from a land use perspective, if this property is developed industrial, which it's currently zoned for, I would suspect that the property values could go down within with industrial development.

So I I also just want to point out that uh from a distance standpoint.

I don't know if you can bring that last exhibit up.

Uh one which last exhibit one that shows the whole site plan, the one that's got the sure the more colored site plan.

Uh uh comments were brought up earlier about views and other things that could be a negative impact.

Um the distance um from their subdivision.

Take the mic, take the mic, take the mic.

Yeah, just we want to make sure people are healthy here.

Thank you.

That's there's it's almost from the shakar or the tower, the height, the the taller part of the building.

It's near and since I guess the bears have come up a few times.

It's 580 feet from the center line of that residential roadway to the Shakara.

You know, that's nearly two football fields in length, which is why I'm pretty sure the bears again.

So almost two football fields of length between there, plus trees, buildings, their buildings, our buildings.

There would only be obscured and predominantly maybe in the winter when the leaves are gone.

Um there could be some other views in the summer, but the distance and the view of the temple is Shikara is not prominent at all.

It's it's really discrete through the trees and over the buildings, and the distance alone at almost 600 feet away.

So I just want to mention that since I've got the mic.

No, yeah, that makes sense.

And I'll just uh just a couple of quick things I've heard through public comment and other things.

Um fireworks.

I I watched the planning and zonings, both of them.

Um people were asking questions about fireworks.

They're not doing fireworks.

Well, they can't do fireworks unless they have permission with listeners.

Exactly.

They don't have to be able to do that.

So thank you.

I just want to debunk some stuff I heard, or just um provide another insight is fireworks I've heard come up a bunch of times.

Um economy and stuff like that.

Developments like this do bring tourism, um, and it brings people into the community, so that is something else, so there will be potentially a positive impact, maybe for the local economy.

Um, but I still have that major concern on the one way in, one way out, to be honest.

Um, you can't.

Um, I could go back to one of your one of your earlier questions on the parking for the town homes.

Oh, perfect, thank you.

Um, from that standpoint from the previous proposal to this proposal, we did widen the roadway to allow for parking on one side of the roadway.

Okay.

Uh something in this case, we only have townhomes on one side of the roadway or and driveway curve cuts on one side of the roadway, which means the entire length will park, we'll have the parking parallel parking on the opposite side of the roadway from the buildings and the driveways, which means the entire length of that roadway is open for parallel parking, which typically in a subdivision you have homes on both sides, and it's all chopped up by driveways.

Not to mention, I can't imagine it would be necessary, but somebody had a graduation party or something that you know got beyond.

They can certainly park in the temple parking lots as well.

I I can't imagine that'd be necessary with the length of that roadway all being parallel parking.

So it's one side parking.

It's one side parking opposite the homes without any interruption from driveways.

So continuous parking all along that roadway.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then I'll yield back.

I think I've taken enough time.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Ms.

Powell.

Uh thank you to staff, the petitioners, and thank you to all the residents that have come out tonight and have come out in the past for all the planning and zoning commission meetings.

Those meetings have been long.

Uh we've heard a lot of comments.

We've gotten um numerous emails.

I've spoken to um to residents um over the past few months about uh concerns that have been raised.

I personally travel this roadway at least uh uh Route 20 uh to and from work several times a week.

So I I I know how how busy it can be, especially in the in the evening during the week, uh trying to get home and trying to get to city council meetings on time.

So um uh a number of my questions have been answered or um addressed regarding the fireworks uh that have been um were mentioned by some of the folks um you know that would require a permit from the city, so that that is not something that the temple could arbitrarily do.

Um I think we address the issue of I think some folks were concerned about what could potentially happen with the open space.

Could the temple um or the applicant just arbitrarily build or put something there after um you know if if if this uh were approved tonight, I think the answer we heard was no, that would have to come back before the planning and zoning commission and ultimately come back before the city council, um, and that's important.

Um a couple questions that I have for staff.

Um there were some questions brought up before you go away.

Well, you want you want your pointer.

You might need that for my question.

Um my question um pertains to some of the sustainability and um environmental components of the proposed plan.

Sure.

Um I know that there's um uh a detention area that's planned.

Uh there's some trees that are planning to be removed, but some that are planning to stay for a buffer.

Can you kind of walk us through that?

Absolutely.

So at the northern end, and remember again to the right on your image here is north.

This is where the proposed stormwater management would go, and the cane county stormwater regulations would require uh the wetland plantings so to provide the national natural filtration of stormwater materials coming through, the appropriate release rates, and so again, that's all regulated by the Kane County storm rotter rags, and then any sort of tree line that is up against that would be preserved.

The area that is uh made a condition for approval is right along here, right along the single family homes, there is a stand of trees that are there that uh one of the recommended conditions requires those to be saved, which is why you see the path along the proposed recreation area and the recreation area kind of have that offset there.

There's a stand of trees that would be preserved in there.

And then as Mr.

Hanlon described uh earlier, by virtue of having the larger rear yard setbacks for the townhouses, they did that as a way to not provide then a fence, which was one of the original uh items in the development proposal, a fence that was almost all the way around the entirety of the of the development, but there is an existing tree line that is along that east property line, and as you know, trees and fences kind of when you jig and jog, don't necessarily align, and so by uh by providing a greater setback, they've taken the uh the fence out of the proposal, separated the buildings to a greater degree, and then that won't require any removal of those trees along that along that uh fence line there.

Providing like a natural fence line and and buffer.

Okay, that's helpful.

Um I heard I think uh a resident brought up some endangered species and wetlands on the site, but I didn't I I didn't see anything about aware of anything of anything like that either.

No endangered bats, raccoons, deer.

Or endangered deer, not turn out.

Okay, I just I just wanted to make sure.

Okay.

Umak Ridge subdivision was platted um according to the information that we have in 2005.

Um I think the only people that may have been on council during that time, uh perhaps mere captain in 2005.

So this so this was platted prior to any of us being here.

Um so but my question to staff is based on um our requirements and and regulations right now as they stand, would we build another subdivision similar to the way Oak Ridge subdivision was built with the one way in, one way out situation?

I'm not going to stand here before you and tell you that will never happen, but I can tell you we would make every effort to not lay out a subdivision like this again.

Okay.

It's it's simple it's i i if for this exact same reason that we've talked about is access, um, connecting neighborhood streets to to collector streets, collector streets to arterial streets, and having those that connectivity allows traffic to disperse, it creates for a greater network, and a greater network is ultimately safer.

Great.

That helps answer a question.

Um that had the question about whether about the emergency access being able to be accessed like if there was an accident, it looks like the question or the answer to that was no.

It's the it's the intent that that would be limited to emergency vehicles only because they're the only ones that are gonna have keys.

Right.

Um and I think there was I think we already answered the question in terms of was IDOT um consulted um and the traffic study, at least that it's dated uh November 10th of 2025, and the improvements are I saw somewhere in the the documents that all of the improvements are still subject to be approved by IDOT.

Correct.

Uh to make those improvements at Lambert Lane, they're gonna need a permit from IDOT, and so in as much as IDOT blessed the plans that were provided for Thornton's, I would certainly like to think that no positions would change, but they will have to go through the permit process with IDOT.

And and if I could go back to the question about the emergency access, sure.

I'm I'm standing here before you telling you what the intent of that access is.

I'm certainly not, however, going to be one that says if the police department says that they have to open that up for some other reason for some other emergency situation, I'm certainly not going to say that that that's inappropriate.

That would be a decision made by them as we have time.

They've got the key.

Got it.

Um I think the other only other question that I had or act or actually probably statement would be because I know that some folks um had a question about why wouldn't I allow like another access to this property?

And this has come up on a lot of different development projects, not just on um Route 20, but along Randall Road.

Um and for uh those of you are familiar with um Sammy's Mexican Grill, one of my favorite places to go.

Um on Route 20, um near uh what is that intersection?

Nestler Nestler, thank you, getting old.

Um but that is a unique access, trying to get in and out of that property, and I know people always ask me, well, why was that set up like that?

Why couldn't there be a way if you're heading westbound on 20 for you to just be able to turn left and get into Sammy's Mexican Grill and all of those other restaurants in that in that strip mall?

Kane County is very restrictive on allowing access and and that's not a that's not a city determination, that is a Kane County determination.

Another great example is Nick's Pizza at the corner of Bose and Randall.

Again, a very unique and rather odd configuration, being able to get in and out of that property.

They actually take you all the way through that neighborhood, which I I live not too far from there.

But that is a that is a Kane County um decision and determination.

So I just want to point out some other situations where it logically would have made sense probably to those of us who live in the area, drive the area to allow additional access, but it was denied by the county for any number of safety reasons, it's too close to an existing intersection, it's too close to, I think in this case uh they mentioned the the railroad or any number of different reasons why Kane County, who controls the uh several of these major intersections, including this one, um, would not allow that access, uh additional access and egress.

Um I hear the concerns and uh I hear the concerns about the the traffic.

I I definitely hear the concerns about the traffic.

I want to applaud the the applicant for going back after the initial proposal was done and listening to all of the feedback that came from residents that came from the planning and zoning commission and making some very substantial um modifications to the plan.

Personally, I would have loved to have seen the apartment complex stay.

Um because, well, for a number of reasons, there's a housing shortage in in our community and and throughout the whole region.

We we need those units.

But I I understand that removing that allowed for this the use of this property to be a little less intense, which was one of the the concerns that came from from residents.

Um I'm inclined to vote in favor of moving forward with the application.

Um but I I do have some concerns and I want to see um and understand well not understand because it's it's been explained, but I I really want to make sure that whatever traffic um modifications are going to be made by the applicant, like uh in the in the uh materials it says if uh the gas station comes later they have to make those those modifications, and obviously those are gonna be subject to IDOT.

Um I also want the assurance that the temple uh property is gonna be a good neighbor to the existing homeowners that are here because we've heard their concerns, they're concerned about um traffic and safety primarily.

I I hear what's being planned in terms of using um Elgin Police Department on very busy weekends or a couple of times a year.

Um and I understand that I think someone said that it's not like a movie theater where everyone gets out at the same time and comes in at the same time, it's it's it's it's more staggered.

I've I've been to Willow Creek Community Church when everyone's getting out and coming in at the same time.

It doesn't sound like it's the same situation.

Um again, another mass exeducts and mass entrance at the same time where we do have public safety officers out there helping to direct traffic.

Um so I I think that gives me more assurance around those very busy times.

Um but I still I want to make sure that IDOT in their future plans for this area do a better job around making sure that we improve the safety along Route 20 and managing the traffic around along Route 20, regardless if this gets approved or not, it's needed.

Thank you.

Well, let me jump in just one second, um Mr.

Malai.

You had a diagram uh showing uh uh the entrance and exit onto uh uh Route 20 with a yellow line showing the uh uh people going down Hilliard going to the right right own uh right out only.

Correct.

And so you uh redirect people uh from the subdivision uh from the subdivision will go to Lambert.

Correct.

And in the in the future plans, I I use that um uh the I don't know what the future is for IDOT.

You know, I don't know what their schedule is and they uh uh their schedule changes uh will provide a uh barrier in the middle of Route 20 all the way to Lambert.

So that means that people going eastbound on Route 20 will not be able to turn into that development, they have to go to Lambert.

People leaving the leaving the the temple uh at the end of service will have to go uh west on Route 20.

So it does change the traffic flow, and I think that one of the things that you hear it all the time, well, why doesn't I DOT fix that?

IDOT never uh fixes a road in an anticipation of a development.

I've been doing this for 20 years.

We're going through the same struggles out on Route 20 at Providence.

That subdivision and that development has been there for well over uh a decade.

And the traffic flows there has been bad.

Um I've had discussions with them with uh acceleration lanes to get people to be able to merge.

Uh a couple of issues that that always come up and we uh Mr.

Millet, just for a second.

Sure.

Give us five or six examples of what would be uh allowed here to be no sir of uh types of businesses that would be uh uh uh available to go here under uh uh uh uh sure just a general industrial sure.

I happen to have this.

And I know warehousing is one of them, and that's a big concern of warehouses are a concern of mine.

Uh public utility, electric distribution centers, printing establishments, supply centers, uh research laboratories, office, uh that's uh uh uh various electronics assembly businesses.

Uh and the reason is it's not subject to just entirely to the underlying zoning, but you also have the consent decree coming in, which also specifies those land uses.

So it's a light industrial manufacturing office types of of allowances that could go there as a right.

And they could just uh come in and say we want to build that, and there would be no uh restrictions from Cook County.

That uh uh all of those offer traffic.

The problems with the uh uh with the uh the entrance on Lambert and Hilliard would be the same.

Um I looked at I just looking at the schedule for the temple and their prayer services.

And primarily uh for the whole for the week, there will not be much traffic coming out of the temple.

It's gonna be on some for prayer services.

The people that live in the uh uh the homes that are there are gonna be there anyway.

They're gonna be there every day.

And uh so you're looking at a very, very small window of time that we're gonna have to have traffic control, and that will be up to the obligation of the uh the temple, uh the city with the police to provide that.

And I think uh IDOT will also take a look at that.

When the time comes for the final work to be done on Route 20, they'll take a look at that as well.

Uh I live near Randall and uh and uh I watched the church out there, I live off Royal Boulevard and watch the churches, Miss Powell pointed out.

Uh we have police there uh every had police there every Sunday to direct traffic.

Randall is as bad or worse than uh Route 20 is there.

There were numerous accidents there.

Uh they did light controls, those are things that uh uh they can uh uh monitor the uh the uh the lights.

I think these are issues that that can be dealt with.

Uh change is always difficult.

Uh we uh been uh looked at uh the number of uh places where we've had uh construction work done.

We always talk about construction.

You're gonna have construction on Route 20 that will last out there for two years when that happens, if if you're fortunate.

And uh we always have to deal with those kind of things.

We deal with that as a city council.

I we deal with that as a as human beings to see changes in our neighborhoods.

And uh we try to do the best that we can do.

So we modify it.

I want to tell you I'm gonna be supportive of this.

I'm gonna support this, uh, but it's up to the obligation.

It's an obligation of the city of Elgin.

It's an obligation of IDOT to make sure that we try to mitigate these problems.

And we'll do that.

And uh we'll try to do it as best as we can do.

And we'll work with uh uh I've I've seen the uh proposal from uh the temple.

I think they tried to mitigate when they made some uh really really dramatic changes in their original proposal.

So I think this is uh a use that is something uh special.

I think the neighbors would be uh uh I've had I've had developments come in when uh we put in apartment houses and uh uh a large residential, and the noise and the um traffic becomes much worse uh uh than what this is gonna be.

So I think that uh uh we work to we'll work to do uh the best we can do to make su that this is uh um a transition that is gonna be as uh uh if it does go from us, and I think that's one thing that we have to uh uh work with the Mr.

Mullat that this will come back uh to this council if it goes through the uh the through the uh through Cook County and is uh uh accepted by Cook County as a as a decision, it will come back to the city council again for final approval.

And that is something that we can all talk about this again, and we'll see things and maybe we'll discover things but in between that.

But for this, this is a zoning issue for me.

And it's accepting the zoning, it does not give you a final, it doesn't put paint colors on anything, it doesn't put final parking spots into anything.

We'll do that when we come back for the second time.

So at this point, I'm gonna I'm gonna vote in favor of uh uh the the zoning for this uh proposal.

So Mr.

Dixon.

Uh thank you.

Uh I want to say thank you to the community members for coming out on multiple occasions.

Um I was at the original planning and zoning uh meeting back in late September, early fall that went into midnight.

Um I also attended uh the community member, a meet community meeting at the Heritage Ballroom that was given by the applicant.

I also took the time to go into your neighborhood.

Um actually met with your residents.

I actually brought my family uh with me out there Friday night, Friday evening dinner and uh got a tour and was able to stand in the backyards facing where the development was or you know, is is trying to be.

Um so I I take this um I take I I don't take this decision lightly.

Um it is uh it does affect and it will affect um everyone's way of life in that entire area.

And I go up and down 20, you know, probably every other day.

Um I actually go in and out of that neighborhood.

I um frequent some of those businesses over there.

So um so again, so just thank you, and thank you to the applicant too as well for your patience and also you know making some revisions and and hearing everything that was that's being said.

Um so I have a few questions, and I'll just start with you, Mark.

Some of these may have been asked, so I hope I'm not being redundant at all, but I'll try I'll try not to be.

Um the the traffic study that was spoken of.

Can you confirm the time span in which that was completed?

Yeah.

Let's have if I could have the please, yeah.

Ms.

Means come forward and kind of go over that again.

Yeah.

Based on the materials, I see the year, but I'm just concerned about the time.

Yeah.

So the traffic study um was started um in 2022.

So we first compiled traffic counts at the study area intersections in 2022.

Um, and it was not I'm not sure on the exact date it was submitted um to the city for review, but it's gone through multiple iterations with the initial development being analyzed.

Um I believe before it went before the Plan Commission, the date of the study was in um March of 2025.

Um I believe before it went before the Plan Commission, the date of the study was in um March of 2025, um, and it has been constantly revised based on the development plan and its year of um opening and the future year development.

Um just as a briefly talked about what we analyzed, um we take the existing traffic conditions and then we project out to an anticipated opening year of the development.

So we coordinate with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency of Planning to determine um what the anticipated growth is on the adjacent roadways during that time frame so we can account for growth in the area from when you start the traffic counts to when um the development opens, and then um since it's an IDOT roadway, IDOT requires there to be five years beyond the opening year so you can get um the full anticipated design of um what the traffic would look like um after the project has opened, been opened for five years.

So we looked at 10 years beyond that opening year.

So yes, the traffic counts were done in 2022 that we um based then our future year projections on.

Um but as I mentioned, we considered um a general background growth rate, which considers growth um within that study area, so it can counts non-specific development growth.

Um then we coordinated with the city to account for what specific development traffic beyond the general area.

So we knew that the Thorntons may come in, and so we included traffic specific from them as well as the car wash was under construction, so again, we included traffic specific to that.

Um I don't know if that addresses your question, but we also then compared um you know why wasn't an additional you know count done.

Obviously, um it was you know an iterative process when we first started the project um going back and adjusting the development plan, and it's not uncommon for um the traffic counts to not occur in the same year as your development.

That's why you project out to the future.

Um to look to see, you know, the validity of those counts.

Um I compared the counts that we conducted to traffic counts that were done historically um before COVID conditions in 2019.

I compared them to traffic counts that were done after in 2023, and our 2022 volumes were higher.

Um why wouldn't I I wouldn't suggest counting even right now because I would need to from my perspective go and make adjustments because of the current road construction along US Route 20.

Um that during a time frame has impacted typical traffic operations.

I know residents had talked about folks seeking alternative routes due to construction patterns that happens.

Um so I would honestly, if I counted right now, I'd probably look at the 2022 volumes and make adjustments.

Um I company did a project um further west of here, um, west of Randall Road on Route 20, um, where we did count in 2024, just for a frame of reference.

Um comparing that 2024 volumes to 2023 IDOT numbers, so 2024 volumes were actually about a half percent lower just from a perspective.

So as a professional, I have confidence that the volumes and the projections that we've used in our analysis um are appropriate.

Okay, and the reason why one of the reasons why I asked that question because there was some misunderstanding about when the actual uh study took place and if it was if it accounted for the new construction that it eventually gets suited.

So the the short answer on that is the short answer, yeah.

I know I gave a uh a lot more details, but yes, we um the traffic study that was done for Thornton's, um we had a copy of that and included their traffic volumes um specifically for that as well as as I mentioned the car wash and then general growth within the area.

Okay.

And Mark, do you have a uh a timeline?

And I know this is a shot in the dark almost, but do you have a timeline of when I dot's you know the plans of reconfiguring and making some changes, upgrades, etc.

etc.

is going to occur.

I can tell you that the study, the the imagery that I showed you for the study, that is part of their phase one engineering.

And they were intended to wrap that up late 2025.

That's the best I know.

But then you go into land acquisition, property acquisition, easement acquisition, uh securing the rights for for any necessary land, uh design construction, funding allocations, uh, councilman with you know, reasonably I it could be it could be five to seven years.

Okay.

All right.

Ms.

Mees, maybe in just add um while we don't have the definitive um date as those items are still in progress.

Um IDOT has a highway improvement project, and they allocate funds and scheduling of certain projects during certain time frames.

Um that project and its improvements um were part of the five-year 20, 25 to 2030 improvement projects.

You know, could it stretch longer?

Could it be done sooner?

You know, that's obviously, but it is it is um a project that's currently slated um within um a five-year design period.

Yeah, but it's a state, so it'd be 10 years from now.

And that, you know, and uh as noted, you know, um the improvements that Thornton had committed to that this development, you know, has also indicated that they're committed to while I dot may do them if the thor, you know, some other gas station come and may do ones at Lambert, otherwise, this development would need to do them.

That it's important for those um improvements to come in, and they are committed to as part of um this development project.

Okay, and my next set of questions is for Mr.

Bezos.

Mr.

Bezos, thank you for being here this evening again.

Um can you at the beginning you're open, you kind of went down you gave a very quick overview.

You didn't go into any great detail about the changes that were made after the first uh planning and zoning commission meeting.

Uh can you give a little bit more of a of a detailed history of what those exact changes were?

Yes, I can, and if if I miss anything, um development team let me know.

I'm going to Mr.

Bezos.

The image is behind you as well, too.

If you want to use your walking microphone and point to things, okay.

So from uh kind of a macro perspective, this 200 and wait.

Yeah, yeah.

This 21,000 31,000 square foot uh temple cultural and uh inside recreation center building was reduced down to 86,000.

Um this 81 unit four-story condominium building uh was completely eliminated and replaced with the green space.

Um the one, two, three, four, five, six town home buildings reduced down to five.

Um the three uh just preserved here.

Um what else?

Uh just go going back to um the setback that we had at 40 feet.

Again, the neighbors are 40 feet minute.

We had 40 feet.

We increased ours to 50 feet uh for a couple reasons by eliminating uh the other thing that's connected is a huge elimination of a larger field of parking, coincides with the reduction, obviously, of the temple uh complex as well as the elimination of the 81 units.

Uh and this field in particular and that building is completely almost turned into all green space now when this was all pulled out.

Um but that reduction also allowed us to move this road a little bit further away, which helped us get to the uh a larger setback in the rear yard to 50 feet.

We also widen that road.

It was not previously wide enough for the parking on one side opposite the driveways, but now it has been made wider.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the entire stretch of roadways available for parallel parking.

So it increased open space overall, created a larger town home existing to proposed town home rear yard combined setback of a minimum of 80 feet from where it would have been a lot for more parking, a lot for more green space.

So just I think in a nutshell that's that's the changes.

The Shikara, which is the Hindu name for the steeple, 125 feet in the first plan to 90, a 38% reduction.

Yeah.

I think we've hit I think we've hit them.

Okay.

And since the last planning and zoning commission meeting, um have there been any other additional changes?

No.

No, there have been no additional changes, just clarifications and discussions with staff that may have gone into their uh conditions for approval that were absolutely willing to and will hire L GD to direct traffic.

Um I can't think of anything else, Mark.

Can you?

Well, we talked about the improvements at Lambert Lane.

We talked about the traffic management plan.

Those are those are the big uh operational conditions uh recommended in the orbits.

Okay.

And that green space, is that designed to be accessible to the neighborhood?

No, so it's a it's a commu it's a Hindu con Hindu PUD park and it will be available for the can't reach that high, the town home residents in the Hindu temple um uh participants.

Um by the way, nobody's asked, maybe it but the these um townhomes will be offered for sale to anybody.

Um I guess uh tradition shows that where there are homes close to temples, uh most of them are often purchased by uh participants of that uh temple, but there's no requirement of that, and nobody will be turned away.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else?

Mr.

Stephanie.

Yeah, I I want to jump in.

I was letting other people go, and all my I hope all or most of my questions were answered.

Um I also want to thank everybody that the team, the development team, Mark and his staff, all the people from the residences that came out and went to other meetings.

Um it was a long weekend of digging through the 530 plus pages in the memo and all of the emails that came since uh this package came out, including this week.

Um I just want to touch a couple things because I think clearly from the comments and the questions and the explanations, traffic is seems to be the most important thing here.

Um I want to make sure I've got this right, and I think Mark, you and I have had this discussion, but I heard it tonight as well.

There are improvements that Thornton's was going to make to the intersection of Lambert and some of the other um Route 22.

Um if Thornton's doesn't go, those are going to be required.

That's a condition in this proposal that the temple is going to have to perform those or make those improvements to Lambert in Route 20, correct?

Because I I think that was uh something that I wrote down and uh noted um not only from Oak Ridge residents but Castle Creek across 20 and then the subdivision south of that down Spaulding Drive.

It seems that intersection really needs some improvements, and that's what is going to be required of this proposal if it gets approved.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay.

Um I think one of the things that I saw in there that really caught my eye, and it's a I what would you call it a term of art?

They're gonna increase the lane storage in the left turn lanes to so that there's more space for cars to get out of the travel links, yes, sir.

All right, stacking space.

I heard the mayor talk about IDOT now, they never move.

I'm gonna date myself, but um the entire of Route 20, the bypass, even through Elgin never had a median until a classmate of mine was killed on Route 20 by a driver that crossed the center line.

Uh he was at Illinois Park School when I was there, Mark Siaco, so I guess I call it the Marxiako median.

But that was IDOT moved uh at that time relatively quickly and put that median in the entire stretch of bypass 20 um from Villa Street to some point west of McLean Boulevard where it separates into with an eye with a median in the middle, a grass median.

Because I I point that out because uh that's what caught my eye in the memo, and I think you've been asked this question.

IDOT is supposed to put a median in the ro rest of Route 20 through this section, particularly at Hilliard or Hillard, sorry, because um currently it has a write out right write in only I call it the kidney, the island that forces people, you can't go, but the median would eliminate that anybody who thinks that they could try to you know overcome those directions and try to turn left out of Hillard or turn left off of 20 into Hillard if they're going eastbound.

So that would be important in my mind to have that happen.

Um I think all of my questions have been answered.

I I I appreciate I mean the thing that struck me in reading this memo and reading all the materials and all the comments is how this project was really the intensity was lowered.

It was as has just been described by their council and uh their engineer.

You know, condo buildings were eliminated, the whole building of the townhouses was eliminated, the street was wide, and green space was brought in, um, the fences removed.

I think I had that wrong when I read through the first time the fence is not going all the way around, it's just gonna be on the railroad side.

Um so I appreciate that.

So I guess I don't really have any questions.

I just wanted to make sure that those things uh that I had heard and had read were actually gonna happen, particularly with the intersection at Lambert, because that seems to be a huge concern of uh the residents uh on both sides of Route 20 trying to use that intersection.

So thank you.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Mr.

Good.

Thanks, Mayor.

Um I don't really have any questions.

I'll just provide some comments since I think am I the only one that hasn't spoken yet?

Okay, so just a couple of us.

Um first I guess compliments to everybody involved in this.

I mean, if you're into civics, it's been interesting.

Um from planning and zoning to the consent decree um to the organizing of the community to the work that uh city staff has done.

You know, we encourage staff to be creative and find a way to do infill, which this is in fill.

Um, so just across the board, it's been really impressive.

Um to date, I don't believe I've ever not taken guidance from planning and zoning.

Um I understand there's a lot of dynamics at play uh in those meetings as as they are here.

Um but when I was reviewing this, you know, it's I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody who bought a property in like 2017.

Because it's the 2018 plan is always being cited.

Um, you know, the consent decree was challenged in court in 1999 uh and and it lost.

And so the then the the group purchases the property, um, and as it stands, you know, the the strategy that's being taken is you know, they're bringing it to council to see if they can get a uh uh affirmative vote, then bring that to Cook County, which could happen in a few years.

Um, and then ultimately come back here.

Um I guess that that's one point I would like to call out is I think it's been said that you know, for the original plan, the four-story building, like that couldn't happen.

Like that I just wanted to clarify that could happen.

Because if this is being brought to council tonight, and if it's voted for in the affirmative, this is going forward to Cook County.

The Cook County could approve it, and then they could come back and it could happen again.

So there could be a four-story building here with that green patch being developed.

So I just want to say that's down the road.

Um all those things are theoretically possible, and we did just highlight that if we were to design this uh subdivision or design a subdivision, um, there's things that we would do differently with this design.

Um and so for me, somebody who yeah, I've grown up around here, uh similar experiences that people have shared here and in the community.

Uh it's a nightmare, right?

Like that part is just brutal.

Um so with with everything that's being said about traffic, uh, I I I just I don't know if I've heard enough tonight to skew me away from my uh I guess historic pattern of not voting in the affirmative of planning and zoning.

Um so I it sounds like a lot of my colleagues have thought this through deeply um and have made their positions, I think, known.

Um so uh yeah, again, I just wanted to I'm not I know I'm kind of like burying the lead here, but I just wanted to say thanks for everybody who contributed because it is impressive the way you've conducted yourself at the original plan, bringing it back staff.

So that's I'll leave my comments there.

Okay.

Okay, Ms.

Martinez.

Thank you, Mayor.

First, I'd like to go ahead and thank everybody.

It's after 10 o'clock and you're still here.

Um there's five of us that started at 4 30 with a liquor commission meeting, but I love the fact on how involved you are.

Um I'm similarly involved in my 11, almost 12 years that I've been on the council.

I have attended about a hundred and twenty um P and Z meetings, and I do that purposely because I want to sit over there and see your reaction is um the petitioners because even though they go ahead and they record them, we never see that part.

We only see this part over here.

And um I think out of all these meetings, um there's been three times that I can remember where the Planning and Zoning Commission went ahead and um went one way and then we went another, you know.

But um I just for perspective, uh there's a lot of things that were covered.

I I appreciate that.

This land that we're talking about is 34 acres.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, and the first houses that um were built in the Oak Ridge um sub in the subdivision, they started in 2005.

That's my understanding.

So on the west side, was there also initially gonna be more uh homes there or not really?

I've seen concept plans, but not no, but I can't find any formal petition that was ever submitted to through the plan commission at the time.

I you know it was kicked around, but nothing ever formalized.

Okay.

And initially the 2310 square feet, that was reduced.

We've already said to 86 square feet.

86,000.

Okay.

Um it sounds like all the concerns in the meetings prior to this in the planning and zoning, the petitioner, or I'm sorry, the um developer and their team really listened because they made a lot of changes.

And I know people don't like changes, especially in their subdivision, I get it.

But when we're talking about I-90 and Route 20, um, in my lifetime, I've seen more changes on Randall Road than I have on I-90 and 20.

Uh I'm not saying there isn't any changes, but there's been more.

And I get it because the difference is that I-90 and 20 are owned by the state, and that's been discussed on how slow they are.

And Randall Road, there's been a lot of changes because that's owned by the county.

And the changes have been made uh because there's more people, obviously.

Um let me see.

I see that um you listened by making um Gulp Boulevard a wider street, right?

And if you look at that street, it's really gonna be used more by the developer, the temple, more so than um the subdivision.

Okay.

Um the police, we've already discussed that if the police is hired, it's paid for by the temple.

Uh let me see.

Another thing I'd like to point out, there was one time where the planning and zoning went ahead because honestly, the the biggest problem that we're always talking about is traffic.

When planning and zoning went ahead and okayed a car wash on the corner of Lillian and McLean Boulevard, the um northwest, no northeast corner.

Okay.

After a couple of weeks of being open, it was a total nightmare.

There was a line on uh north and south, McLean.

There was a line on Lillian, and I was like, how could we be so off?

That was really like how could that happen?

Because you just can't undo it.

Thank God what happened was a car wash had free car washes.

Yes, they did.

And that's why everybody was going to take advantage of that.

Yes, they did.

And um, you you always get it right.

I mean, uh we've been lucky.

I know um staff you've been great about it.

Um this is gonna be really hard for me to um uh not go with uh with uh your recommendation.

Um I know some people are not gonna be happy, but um I think we have to do what's right.

So those are my comments.

I just wanted to point those uh few things out.

And um uh that's really about it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Everybody's had a chance.

Okay.

Just two quick questions.

I just want to follow up on something that was said during public comment.

Um Mr.

Rico Pratel mentioned a shuttle service during his public comment.

And so I wanted to give clarification on what you meant by civil service, or if if anyone from the temple could clarify what it means with the shuttle service, or if that was something that was not accurate from public comment.

Can I address that?

Yes, please, thank you.

Uh Ms.

Alfaro, the the shuttle service was discussed in the context of the bigger project in the event that the uh the traffic was uh that this was our first public hearing, and and everybody was saying it's gonna be overwhelming.

And and it's true that a a shuttle service could be arranged for, but that was back when we had 1200 plus parking spaces and a much larger expected Hindu new year attendance.

Uh and even then we didn't know if we would need it.

We simply said we'd do it if we have to.

That stands, we'll do it if we have to.

We don't think we'll have to at all.

Where would you do the shuttle service?

It would have to be arranged from some corporate facility somewhere up or down Route 20.

But it's not in the plan for now.

It's not okay.

And then um I had a question on regards to um why this space um when the entity was purchasing the property, did they look into zoning?

And did they were they aware that this wasn't zoned for the temple?

And then did they reach out to the city right away to have discussions?

We we were aware that it wasn't uh zoned properly.

We were also aware though that the city's comprehensive plan doesn't support what it currently is zoned, which is GI.

So we were optimistic that we could uh come up with a plan, in this case a transitional land use plan with industrial, that's west on the top, to an institutional use close to the railroad tracks, and then townhomes to town homes on the east.

Um so by the way, and I I I just think that you might find this interesting.

Uh please take the mic so those at home could hear you.

Thank you.

The gentleman that sold us this land, I mean, his entity named Jack Sorensen of U.S.

Shelter.

Um, he bought it from the people.

Well, there may have been intervening people back in 1967.

There was supposed to be gravel mining occurring here, and that's when the Sherwood Oaks residents went to court and got protection in the consent decree.

And that's consent degree still stands there today, but it's been amended more than a couple of times.

And in fact, Mr.

Sorenson had the consent decree amended so that he could plat and develop Oak Ridge.

So I just thought you might find that interesting.

It's uh but but as to your zoning point, I mean this seems to be a a site ripe for uh a change of zoning.

I'll just say like I'm I'm still very concerned with the what one entrance.

I I know some of my colleagues have mentioned that um you know they want some certain things in place to make sure that the traffic is um I live in the east side, I avoid 20 as much as I can um because the traffic is really bad over there.

Um and so with the one-way entrance in and out.

I'm super concerned.

If if that wasn't the case, I would I don't know.

But thank you for answering all my questions today.

Okay, anything else?

Okay, you have a motion.

Court please call a roll.

Council members Alfaro No Dixon.

Yes.

Good, no.

Martinez, yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

No.

Yes, motion uh is approved six three.

Okay.

Is a resolution authorizing execution of a local public agency engineering services agreement with Hampton, Lanzini, and Renwick for construction engineering services in connection with the Kimball Street traffic signal interconnection.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move and second floor 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.

Thorn?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved.

Nine zero.

Consent agenda.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move to the second for approval.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, court, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Powell?

Yes.

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Miscellaneous.

Move for approval.

Second.

Move and second for approval.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, court please call the rule.

Councilmember Zalfaro.

I'm sorry, what do we vote in?

Miscellaneous business?

Oh, miscellaneous.

Yeah, that was fine.

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorne?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes.

Motion's approved nine zero.

Announcements.

The next committee of the whole meeting will be Wednesday, January 28th, 2026 at 6 p.m.

in the city council chambers.

The next regular meeting of the Elgin City Council will be Wednesday, January 28th, 2026 at 7 in the City Council Chambers.

Entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Court, please call the roll.

Council Members Alfaro.

Yes.

Dixon.

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Storn?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, we are adjourned.

A motion to reconvene committee of the whole.

So moved.

Second.

Move and second to reconvene.

Court, please call the roll.

Councilmember Zalfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?

Yes.

Thorn?

Yes.

Mayor Captain.

Yes, we're back in session.

Mr.

Manager, I believe we're on item E.

I agree.

This is a site remedi site remediation program services for the city owned property at 96 through 122 South Grove Avenue.

City owns this property, commonly known as the Crocker Theater site.

It was formerly occupied by the Crocker Theater and a coin shop.

The buildings have since been demolished and the site is currently improved with a parking lot and is also that is being used for municipal parking.

City Council approved an agreement with Ramble, America's Engineering Solutions in April 2024, providing for environmental services related to the site remediation.

Ramble conducted additional remediation in 2024, but the IEPA disapproved of the supplemental site investigation remediated remediation objectives report due to the lack of recent soil samples.

This proposed change order includes tasks such as preparing phase one environmental site assessment, developing a work plan to collect soil samples, and further environmental investigations and reporting to the IEPA to advance towards attaining a no further remediation letter.

Move approval second move and second for approval.

Any discussion?

Mr.

Steph, so I I just want to make sure I got this clear.

We just kind of let this go too long now.

We got to get an update.

No.

No.

That's right.

We got a notice in 2023 that the property was going to be removed from the program from the IEPA.

So at that point we entered in this new agreement to uh resubmit and try to get the no further remediation letter.

Uh when our consultant submitted the report, uh the IPA uh unfortunately determined that our soil samples were not recent enough.

Um even though soil samples technically change over time when there's really been nothing done at the property, they're making us resemblance over and do some additional samples and we'll have to then uh take any further actions necessary to get the no further remediation, but the first step is to get do this further investigation.

Got it, thanks.

Please call the rule council members alfarro, yes.

Dixon?

Yes, good, yes, Martinez, yes, ortiz, yes, Powell, yes, Stefan, yes, Thorn, yes, Mayor Captain.

Yes, the motion is approved 9-0.

Items F and G are related matters relating to bulk road salt.

The first item is a purchase agreement with Morton Salt Incorporated encompass minerals for road salt for the 2025 through 26 season.

City Council in January of 2025 approved participating in the state of Illinois annual bulk road salt purchase program.

In early November, the state notified the city of the bid results for that season.

Elgin's salt allocation is split between these two vendors, Morton Salt and Compass Minerals.

The city may increase or decrease its order with each vendor to between 80 and 120% of the requested amount depending on its actual needs this year.

Move for approval second.

It's been moved and second and any discussion.

All right.

Is that moved for both items then?

It is.

Okay.

Any questions?

Please call the rule.

Council members Alfaro?

Yes.

Dixon?

Yes.

Good.

Yes.

Martinez?

Yes.

Ortiz?

Yes.

Powell?

Yes.

Stefan?