Oh, I don't know, they just randomly tamed you They played yesterday Persons, Clem, here, Johnson, here, Simmons is absent, Parker, here, Stacy, here, Shadle, here, Sanders is absent, Sellers And we have a quorum Thank you If we could join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America And to the republic for which it stands One nation, under God, indivisible, with the liberty of justice for all Thank you And we need approval of the agenda if we could So moved. I second. Motion by Klemm, second by Johnson. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? And we need an approval of the minutes from October 20, 2025. Motion to approve. Second. Motion by Klemm, second by Johnson. All in favor? Aye. And opposed? That motion carries. We've got public comment. Is anybody signed?

I don't think so I don't think so Seeing none We will move on to item seven Discussion of the following budgets The water operating Sewer operating Storm operating Water capital Sewer capital Storm capital Fire pension And police pension Manager Boyer Thank you, Mr. Chair As we just discussed We'll be starting with the water operating budget Okay Just We'll start with revenue glasses on. Kind of hard to read without your glasses. So grant revenue, we have about $3.6 million budgeted for 2026. So that includes lead service line phase four and water service, or I'm sorry, water main replacement grant from Congressman Sorensen. Also our residential services, we are bringing in about $1.6 million there.

and that includes our CPI for our annual water rate increase. Moving down to capital improvement surcharge, $2.1 million will be revenue there and that's steady from last year. And then we have other revenue. We're bringing in an additional, we're budgeting to receive another $100,000 in PFAS Settlement to come in next year. Overall, net increase, or I'm sorry, interest income, we're lowering our projection from last year to $250,000. So that's our water revenue. Any questions on that? Okay. All right, moving on to the expense side. I'm not going to hit every single line item here. I'm just going to hit some of the main ones. We did some reorganization with the labor for water this year.

we've moved. So some of the staff was previously categorized as water strictly, but they actually do both. So we have made those adjustments. That's why you see an apparent decrease here in labor plant, but that's not actually a decrease. That's just reflecting the new, the way we organized it for 26, and we'll be going forward in the future in that way. In addition to that, obviously, we've got our standard withholdings and health insurance, life insurance, those various items. So those are a portion of our total labor.

Down at item 6170, that's contracted infrastructure repairs and maintenance. We're budgeting $2.9 million there and that includes the lead service line replacement program phase number three. Also we have some fencing scheduled to be installed around Carroll tank and we're also going to do a willow tank Inspection. Isn't that right? Yes. Yep. So with that, let's see here. Moving down here, we've got a few others. $6670,000 building supplies. We've got $75,000 budgeted for expansion of the Brick Street machine storage building. We're planning to expand on that. It's kind of a pole shed construction at the end of Brick Street.

Additionally, we've got $150,000 in for mains and manholes, and this includes five I-hydrants, is that correct?

Or is it ten?

I believe it was seven.

Seven, I'm sorry, seven I-hydrants.

So I-hydrants are the newer water hydrant or fire hydrants you've seen around town that have a little taller hat on them.

Those are the ones that communicate water pressure, acoustic information, and lead us to water main breaks when they occur.

and can also help us track back what caused them to begin with. Just skipping down to safety equipment, we're budgeting under 6735 under supply safety equipment. We're budgeting for some more barricades with all the road work we've been doing. We're at a minimum in terms of our barricades, although we bought some last year. There's just not enough to set up the construction zones appropriately. So we're budgeting to have some additional barricades added. I'd also like to move to 7010 machinery and equipment.

We're budgeting in this item for a pull-behind signboard. If you notice, we've had a, so several years ago, we invested in a signboard, and maybe it was in 2019.

There's been some issues with that one, and the circuitry and things have failed in it, so we'll be replacing that next year.

and then also we're looking at a 4,500 truck with crane and an additional aero board. So this is replacing some equipment, aging equipment and increasing capacity with another aero board. Any questions on the water budget?

What is bad debt?

Bad debt expense is where we have uncollectible water bills. So anything else?

I just wanted to point out the arrow boards and the other arrows that we require, most of the water and sewer work that we do is in the right-of-way, in the streets, and through some safety audits that we've done, we've determined that those items are needed for our workers to have safe trespass out in the street during these construction projects that we're doing.

Okay, with that, I'd like to move on to the sewer fund. So first we'll discuss the revenue side. So right now, residential service, we're pulling in about $3 million per year. So that's the annual sewer rate. And that is increased by the CPI, as we mentioned, in the water budget. Same situation there.

In addition to that, we're transferring in, and this is down at the bottom at $49.60, we're transferring in $1.5 million from the Lamb Road TIF for the Walnut Street lift station that we plan to build next year. That will be helpful for a number of reasons, but that's planning to be constructed next year. Any questions on revenue?

Okay. Moving on to the expense side. We're budgeting for a little bit more chemical expense this year. We've raised it to $175,000. Chemicals keep going up in price. That'd be everything related to wastewater treatment. So that in some cases, that's polymer. In some cases, that's chlorine. But all the chemicals have been slowly increasing over the years.

Also we've got engineering that $200,000 and that would be assisting us with all the projects and things that we are working on next year related to sewer. We also have equipment building and plant outside services. Under that item we were projecting that we'll be doing a replacement of a boiler and pumping piping for the Wastewater Plant, also some building expenses related to upfitting some of the buildings and fixing them.

some of the buildings and fixing them. And then raw sewage or raw sludge pumps that essentially conveys the sludge from the treatment process to the digesters. And then we have the biologically activated filtration blower. We're scheduling to replace that blower number two next year, as well as the digester pump. Skipping down a little further to 6390. Oh, I'm sorry.

6425 lab testing. This is outside testing, so we're budgeting $20,000 this year for additional perfluorinated compound testing. The EPA is looking to start regulating what we send out into our receiving streams when it comes to the forever chemicals, and we had to budget for that additional testing for next year. And again, in this item, we're budgeting for some additional barricades. What we did this year was we basically took the needs of the utility and we divided them half over water, half over sewer. So we're budgeting $9,500 for additional safety equipment in the form of barricades. Any questions on the sewer operations budget? Okay. With that, I'd like to go over storm sewer. There's not a whole lot changing in the revenue on storm, the storm sewer fund. We have essentially the same revenue coming in this year as we did last.

So nothing really changing there. On the expense side, we're accounting for the wages related back to the new AFSCME contract. And if you go down to 6170, contracted infrastructure repair and maintenance, we're planning to spend about $300,000 repairing storm inlets. So we've identified multiple failing inlet structures throughout the town.

it certainly isn't all of them but it's targeting the worst ones and that's so that we don't have a cave-in and have it tear up the road and have more of an emergent situation. And then lastly we're budgeting on 7010 machinery and equipment. We're adding a ditching bucket for the storm fund here. This would be an attachment that goes on to our excavator. It's wider and it would allow someone to ditch efficiently.

along the side of the road. A couple of examples of ditching that needs to be done. We're working in the arcade right now, 18th Avenue. The ditches have basically silted in or been deliberately filled in.

And so when we go and do road work, and La Crest is another good example, whenever we go to do that type of work, we need to make sure that we have the right tools. In this particular case, a ditching bucket is the tool we need for our excavator. So any questions on storm sewer fund? I just have the 6170. Oh, I'm sorry.

No, go ahead.

The 6170 that you talked about.

Yes.

How many more of those?

I know you said we're looking to watch the breakage and all that.

How many?

How many inlets is that?

Yeah.

Well, they cost around $10,000 to $15,000 per inlet, thereabout.

So, you know, that's quite a few.

We're probably talking $20,000 to $30,000.

Oh.

Yep.

But you're not going to try to do them all that year.

I mean, it'll take over how long?

No, we're going to get these done in 20 seconds.

Oh, okay.

Was it more than that?

I'm sorry?

How many were we planning to do?

No, you're right on the amount.

Well, I wanted to point out one of the reasons that we don't have a ton of expense this year is we still have some projects that are in motion that are going to change from the $30,000 that we spent this year.

We have some big emergency work that's going out in the Sioux basement for some storm issues that we have.

and this 300,000 for storm inlets is desperately needed we're finding more and more we were able to include some of them into the project mix this year as we were doing water mains and streets but we're finding a lot more that are old structures that are falling apart and so we plan to do a program this year where we target maybe 50 of them and do a package at a time to have those replaced all at once to get it done much faster okay thank you okay with With that, I'd like to move on to our first capital budget. So this would be water projects. I would encourage you all to have a look at this. There's quite a bit going on here, but this is essentially our five-year capital plan for water. Next year, the projects that we're going, we're planning to work on, and I'm not going to discuss every project on here. I'm just going to stick with 26, but we have water main replacements for road projects. We're budgeting about $820,000 for those.

Viaduct improvements at Shawnee and Hancock we're hoping to that that project's going to carry through the year so we need to have a little bit in the budget for next year. The lead service line phase four as you can see $2.7 million and that is all 100% forgivable loans from the Illinois EPA. We have water structures phase three so that's well 12. So as you can see here we've got about 15 million budgeted for 2026 and another 16 million budgeted for 2027 and obviously that's adding up to about 31 million dollars and we're hoping to have final documentation here pretty in hand to demonstrate the funding mechanism on that. If you'll skip down to well eight we're gonna one of our goals is to install a backup generator at Carroll Tank and if you may not be aware but all of our remote sites so Carroll, Willow, a lot of the lift stations, they don't have their own backup generator capacity.

So if we ever had a major storm with a pretty serious power outage, we would be in a hurt locker trying to keep all those facilities up and running.

So we're starting with Carroll, we're adding a backup generator there.

And then we've got the Brick Street cold storage upgrades.

We have 67,000 in that.

and then also the Willow tank rehab. So we're budgeting about a million dollars. So that's the ground level storage tank over at Willow. It's time for us to get in there, clean it out. It hasn't been cleaned in many years. And so we're going to go in there, clean that out, install proper hatches and properly sized hatches as well for us to be able to maintain it in the future. So any questions on the Water Capital.

Alderman Stacy?

Water main phase four and five, it says pending loan.

Yes, yes.

So these are identifying that we're planning for water main replacements, where the funding is going to come from.

It could come from a number of sources.

One could be like we have had recently with Congressman Sorensen providing $900,000 in water main replacement.

If we don't have that, we'll look at what we can get in terms of loan forgiveness and also loans from the EPA. So that's the two main, it's either grants or it's going to be an EPA loan.

Are funds like that even available now?

Well, we've had pretty good luck here recently. So I'd say, I mean, even if it goes down a little bit, we're going to continue to seek outside funding for all this as often as possible.

Can I say something?

Although, Stacy, those are in the 27 and 28 lines, and so Congressman Sorensen's monies are appropriated in the fall or the wintertime of the previous, so we wouldn't know that until closer to those timeframes.

But in general, when we do roadway repair, we need to budget money for water main replacements because many of the roads we need to replace also need that water main replaced. Otherwise, we'll be setting ourselves up for future deterioration, accelerated deterioration with water main breaks. Any other questions on the water capital?

Greg, if I...

Olin McClum.

Nothing on Brick Street as far as demo or anything until after the new well's done?

Well...

Just a question, you know.

It is in here.

Let's see where.

It's water main.

It's water structures.

That's okay.

I just had the question over.

Okay.

There it is, about halfway down.

Phase seven, Brick Street.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Phase seven, and we pushed that.

It's scheduled for 27 right now.

Mm-hmm.

So.

Thank you.

Yep.

Okay.

Wastewater treatment plants for 26.

We're completing phase one.

We believe that's going to be an additional $30 million.

And that was budgeted for when we took on, when we started the project.

That's funded through EPA loan.

And we also received $5 million in loan forgiveness on that project.

We have the Park Street lift station and Galena lift station.

Both of those are scheduled with $500,000 for varying needs.

Some of them need upgraded pumps, motors, drivers, and controllers.

And so that's where that's coming from. Park is a pretty substantial lift station, so we need to make sure we're staying on top of the maintenance on that. We've also budgeted $500,000 for sewer lining, $50,000 for manhole.

$50,000 for manhole reconstruction or lining.

So I'm sorry, not reconstruction, it would be manhole lining.

And then we have about $250,000 we need a budget for maintenance of our clarifiers, the wastewater treatment plant.

And that could be anything from the rake drives to the skimmers.

Basically, we need to take them down and service them and get the gearboxes replaced and remanufactured.

also we have a we're planning to put in a lift station generator at Park in Galena looks like a fairly large amount 1.9 million but there's a fairly large lift station so we want to make sure that as I mentioned to you before if we have an extended power outage with a storm the last thing I want is my guys driving around in a truck with a big generator behind them running around from from site to site so we need to get as many of these set up with generators as possible. And then also the walnut lift station, we're budgeting $1.5 million in the capital budget for that. So that'll be moving forward here shortly. We've also got the wastewater treatment plant blower room boiler and piping. So new boilers required there. And then we have the Meadowbrook sewer expansion. So we're going ahead of budgeting $1.2 million for Meadowbrook.

Brook due to the fact that we've been waiting on unsewered communities grant for quite a while and at this point the road has deteriorated pretty substantially and we can't just replace the road unless we're putting sewer in so we need to go ahead and plan for that so that's what we're doing on that. And then we also have West Demeter sewer expansion. West Demeter is on our road replacement program for this year and we need to replace the sewer or add sewer when we go down West Demeter. So any questions on the wastewater? Yes. I just wanted to know the generator that's going to be on Park and Galena, where at will that be? Well, where would it be located? So, okay, Park and Galena is a little bit of a misdome. Are we talking about the big one right there on Galena? Right? Right off. Yeah. So did you have a answer for that one? Yeah. So Park is at the corner of Laurel and Park. That's the big lift station on the corner. And then the one on Galena, so it's actually two different stations, is the one that's out on Galena, West Galena, near Cherokee Hills.

Oh, okay. Thank you.

Yep. Okay. Now with that, I'd like to move on to stormwater projects. So we've got a handful of items here for 26.

Thanks. The largest one is, as we discussed, the storm inlet replacement program that we just briefly discussed. Also, we'll have some bills coming in on the viaduct at Hancock and Shawnee, so we'll need to be paying those bills as we wind down that project. And then we also have a downtown stormwater program, so this is basically to address the issue at Benton and Jackson.

There's a large stormwater inlet there, well, actually outfall to the river, and that is deteriorating. It needs to be repaired. So that and also behind the old McNess, there's another stormwater outfall that needs maintenance. So any questions on stormwater?

Okay So just to help give some definition to it those stormwater large projects for downtown Kiwanis Sioux those are all we've submitted for EPA forgivable grants for a certain portion of those and we have submitted been over a year ago but we've just kind of been held up in delay there we're expecting some of those to release in this next year Very good All right, I'd like to move on to vehicles We have, so this is for water, sewer, and storms So these would be water and sewer trucks We're budgeting for one 10-yard dump truck this year And one F-550 with crane Our existing crane Sometimes you need a crane when you're lifting large line shaft pumps out of their wet wells So this truck will be equipped with that. Any questions on the vehicles? Okay, coming down to the last little bit here, fire pension fund. So starting with revenue, we've got about $815,000. That's our annual contribution from the city. And then $360,000 is what we receive from our employees that contribute to the retirement fund.

And then unrealized gains or losses, we're budgeting about $4.5 million in invested proceeds to help with that.

Then on the expense side, the major ones here, now obviously you have the benefits to retirees at $3.9 million.

And then investment management fees, that is $64.15, and those are fees associated with the Firefighters Pension Investment Fund.

And then lastly, other professional services, that's Eamon Lauterbach for our bookkeeping fees. So that comes to about $60,000. Any questions on the fire pension fund? Okay. Both the fire and police pension quarterly meetings were rescheduled from last week to November 12th. There may be small changes when we get to the end of the budget process that we need to reflect going forward. Okay.

On the police pension, similar to fire, so the annual contributions from the city is about $445,000 with about $370,000 coming from the policemen and then invested proceeds of about $4.5 million is budgeted for next year.

As I mentioned before, $64.15 investment management fees, we've got about $75,000, and those are fees associated with the Illinois Police Officers Pension Investment Fund. And then in addition, we have professional services with Lauterbach and Amen for bookkeeping, and that's $52,000. Any questions on the police or fire pensions? Okay. Well, with that, that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Manager, Boyer. Number, item eight is a discussion regarding tax abatement ordinances. We have no name on that.

No, we don't.

I can be.

Director.

I just want to point your attention to the memo that was attached to that line item. This is kind of an informational thing because we will be seeing ordinances to abate our bonds coming up at one of our future meetings. And this just kind of explains why we do that. I'll just go through the memo really quick. Thank you. Go. When general obligation bonds are issued, they are backed by the city's ability to levy and collect property taxes. Therefore, the county automatically levies the required annual debt service from City of Freeport property owners on their property tax bills.

The city has historically abated or canceled this amount on the property taxes. By passing an ordinance each year, the property taxes that would otherwise be collected from residents is abated. The city instead makes the debt service payments from other city revenues. On the memo is a list of our individual bond issues, the amount to be abated, and the source of the revenue that will be used to make the bond payment. We have also included the potential increased cost in property taxes on a $100,000 home if these bonds were not abated. Ordinances to abate these bonds will be on the council agenda tentatively November 17th of 2025 and then December 1st on 2025. So we have the 2013A bond that is paid through the Fire Improvement Fund, the 2014B bond that is a sewer bond that's paid through the sewer fund, the 2015A bond that is, it was a refunding bond so it had different pieces to it and so those individual pieces are paid by, I think it's Downtown TIF, the General Fund, and Stormwater Funds. The 2016 bond, which was, that was the bond that we did on this building, is paid by the General Fund. The 2018 bond is paid by Downtown TIF. The 2019A bond is paid by the Street Improvement Fund. The 2020 bond is also by the General Fund.

and that amount is the amount is the pension obligation bonds from 2020. 2021 series is also a street improvement bond and then the 2022 bonds are also paid out of fire improvement. That's just some background just so when we get to abating these bonds you know why we want to do it. Very good. Thank you. Is there any other budget discussion? Alderman Clown. Greg, and this is just as a reminder, to back up what Michelle said, it's a yearly thing, so it's nothing, it's anything new to us, it's something that we do yearly, so just keep that in mind, you know.

Yes, thank you.

Nothing further.

Item 10 is a motion that minutes of meetings shall be deemed approved when signed by the chair and the vice chair of the finance committee of the whole.

That's a request Oh, okay. Could you elaborate on that? Yes. This way I don't have to keep track of those minutes until we start the budgeting season next year. We missed this motion last year so I had to hold two sets of minutes over. This way it just keeps it for the end. It keeps it for the end. It keeps it all in the same year and when the chair and the vice chair sign them then they're considered approved versus going before the whole council at the finance.

September of the year.

Yes, exactly.

Thank you.

Do you need any motion?

We would need a motion and a second for that.

Okay.

I would make a motion that we provide those signatures for the paperwork needed.

Second.

Motion by Clemm.

Second by Parker.

Do we need a roll call?

I don't really know.

Do you want to do roll call just to be sure?

just yeah that's fine. Clem. Aye. Johnson. Aye. Simmons. It's still absent. My apologies. Parker. Here. Yes. Stacy. Aye. Shadle. Aye. Sanders. Aye. And Sellers. Aye. The motion passes seven to zero. We're down to item 11 public comments. Anybody in the audience have anything?

Seeing nothing, I would make a, take a motion for adjournment.

So move.

Second.

Motion by Sellers, second by Parker, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

And opposed.

And then we'll start in about, you know, 6 or 5.