Good evening.
Renee, could you please give the invocation?
Good evening, Mayor, City Council members.
May we bow our heads for prayer.
Father God, we worship you above all.
You are God, the absolute source of love and creation, Forgiveness.
As we gather here tonight we ask for your guidance and your wisdom.
We ask that you rain down your blessing on our local leaders with strength, integrity, patience, as they make important choices for the Freeport future.
Oh Lord, rain down protection on our first responders, our city workers, our neighbors, and our families.
Let us not forget that you are in control as we share a duty to care for one another and to build a safe, thriving community.
In our Savior's name, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Thank you.
Now we'll officially call this meeting to order.
Madam Clerk, would you please take the roll?
Mayor Miller?
Here.
Alder Persons, Klemm?
Here.
Johnson?
Here.
Simmons is absent.
Parker?
Here.
Stacy is absent.
Shadle?
Sanders is also absent and Sellers here and if you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Alderman Johnson.
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 liberty and justice for all.
Item number one is the Approval of the Agenda.
Is there such a motion?
So moved.
Second.
Moving motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Klemm.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
That motion passes.
Item number five is approval of the minutes from the Committee of the Whole meeting on July 13th, 2026.
Is there a motion to approve?
So moved.
Second.
Moving motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Johnson.
All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
That motion passes.
Madam Clerk, could you please note at 6.02 Alderman Simmons arrived.
Hi there.
Ben, do you want to join me?
I'm going to 9 of 6 right now.
All right.
So, on behalf of the city, I'd like to read the following proclamation for Ben Zobris Day.
Ben Zobris has distinguished himself as one of Major League Baseball's most respected athletes Gates, through his remarkable career, exceptional character, and unwavering commitment to serving others.
And whereas Ben Zobers played a pivotal role in leading the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series Championship in 108 years, earning the prestigious World Series Most Valuable Player Award after delivering clutch performances throughout the historic championship series.
And whereas, beyond his accomplishments on the baseball field, Ben Zobris has demonstrated an enduring commitment to philanthropy using his platform to create a mental health nonprofit Champion Forward to support young athletes and their families.
And whereas, Ben Zobris' dedication to youth, community, and the game of baseball is reflected in Mission with Little Cubs Field in Freeport, a Wrigley Field replica, an attraction within our city, and whereas a fundraiser is to be held on behalf of Zobrist and the Champion Forward on September 5th, 2026, where attendees can enjoy a free youth baseball clinic, book signing, autograph opportunities, and a home run derby with Zobrist as a participant.
Now, therefore, I, Jodi Miller, hereby declare September 5th, 2026 as Ben Zobar's Day and encourage every resident in Freeport to engage in this wonderful community event that shines such a bright spotlight on Freeport.
So, Denny, I'd like you to be able to talk to the council and public about this day.
Sure.
I'll try to limit my remarks to like an hour and 10 minutes or so, if that's okay, or maybe a minute 10 at the most.
So I didn't want to scare you, but this is a very unusual situation.
I ran into Ben about a month ago at the field, just a random thing.
I was over doing some routine maintenance.
He was there by himself.
He was coming from Field of Dreams where he did some signing, and he was setting up a camera to take some pictures and do a little report on it for his nonprofit.
He'd never heard of it until the day before.
And then he says, the first thing he said to me, we have to do something here.
I love this place.
And he went nuts for the next hour.
I pitched balls to him, these little stress balls.
He aged from 45 to 10 in about 10 seconds.
First pitch he hit about 250 feet and it's with a stress ball, the farthest I've seen one hit.
And I said, are you warmed up yet?
And he says, I think so.
So he wants to do that.
He wants to participate, interact with the kids.
He's not charging us.
This is unheard of.
This guy is well known as one of the nicest people in Major League Baseball in the last 20, 30 years.
He's going to be very approachable.
He's going to stick around Freeport for a little bit.
So if you can make this event, it's going to be a very positive, uplifting event.
And they put me in charge and his group said, anything you can think of for Ben to do, he'll do.
He's very You know, he's very interactive.
And I said, you don't know what you're getting yourself into.
So I've got some very unusual things that we're going to be doing.
They'll all be very positive.
And, um, and I look forward to seeing everybody's face there if you can make it.
Daddy, do you know the timeframe?
Yeah, he's going to be there from 10 AM That's Saturday, September 5th, till at least 4 PM That's six hours.
That's a long time for a baseball player to be at an event.
And he'll probably stick around a little bit longer if I know him if everybody hasn't gotten an autograph so come see what happens it'll be it'll be surprises Tim Connors will be there as my co-MC so you know anything could happen if you know Tim so thanks thank you thank you and there was no one signed up for public comments we'll move on to item number eight ma'am clerk could you please read for the record discussion regarding resolution approving a license agreement with Stephen Hasselman and Colton Asche for mowing hay production and weed thistle control at Albertus Airport.
Thank you.
Mr. Stiegel.
Yes, thank you.
It came to our attention over the last couple years that the city of Freeport has significant ground out around Albertus Airport.
We have been working on a solution to the ground and specifically getting it mowed and Maintained, and Thistle Control, along with fertilization of it.
Um, we, we have actually taken the task on right now with our own people, uh, due to the fact that we don't have anybody.
If, uh, council remembers earlier this year, we put the Haley's out to bid and we had no responders, so, um, we had to go out with a plan B. I reached out to some of the contacts that I've had, uh, throughout my life that do this kind of hay production.
Uh, usually they either have to be somebody that does custom, um, cropping, um, or field maintenance, or they actually have a large beef establishment that they feed a lot of grass hay.
Um, so we have had several people come to the airport and look at it.
And recently we had two people that, uh, came to me and offered us proposals to overtake the ground or to take over the maintenance of the ground.
Selfishly, I have had some requirements in it to benefit the city of Freeport.
So the first thing that we did was we made everybody submit to background checks, which the Freeport police ran the background checks for us based on a form that they gave us that we could.
We've got some really good people to come forward to take care of it.
There is hay ground out there currently.
It's not very good hay ground.
Huffines.
It's rough grass with a lot of thistles in it.
Usually people that have really large beef crowds, they look for very hardy grass, which this is not because it has not been well maintained for years.
So I wanted somebody that would take care of the ground and make sure that the land that we have is protected and it's getting fed fertilizer and nutrients and obviously as part of our agreements with rural USA as we need to keep the thistles down, right?
So I found a couple people that made us offers.
I believe that Mr. Hasselman and Mr. Asche have joined together and have the best offer of all parties.
The reason we're bringing this to council is to advise you of this at the next meeting because we didn't have any bidders at the last attempt.
The Council will have to have a two-thirds majority vote this 2 3rd majority vote this forward to move forward.
In my discussions with several of the candidates that looked at the ground, there's input cost and fertilizer that's very expensive that has to go on this ground.
So anybody that was looking to move forward with the ground implied that they would like to have at least five years if not a 10 year lease because by the time they get the crop or the area into good standing where they can actually We did a benefit cost analysis on which I like to do with everything on what it costs.
Cost us to maintain this 185 acres three times a year, right?
Because it doesn't have to be mowed like we mow our grass at home.
It just has to be maintained to keep it down to keep wildlife away from the runways.
So three applications a year with fuel and manpower for 185 acres came out to about 14 to $15,000.
I also got a quote out to do this because you can't you can't mow it with regular lawn Equipment, right?
You have to have field equipment to mow this area.
I've got a quote from a third party to do it for $16,000 a year.
So I think we're in the ballpark.
When I figured the benefit cost analysis, I figured in our employees' wages, benefits, everything per hour to make sure that we were factoring equal for equal, right?
So that being said, I've been in discussions with our airport manager, Jeff, Huff, Ever since we lost this ability and he's been mowing it along with our public works people just trying to keep it maintained.
I believe this is a fair deal for the input of the cost.
It takes away any cost to the city to maintain the ground.
Yes, it is true that the farmer or Colton, Mr. Ashley and Mr. Hesseman will be able to sell these bales.
That was what was currently happening prior to this whole arrangement.
It was just that we weren't getting any fertilizer applications and it was getting more thistles, more weeds and more unmaintained.
We also want to retain ground out there to be able to spread our leaves.
The last two years we have been working towards compost permits to be able to spread our leaves annually on the fields out there to give us a zero input cost into leaves.
We weren't able to get the compost permits approved last year and so that's why were ended up kind of burning them because we need to get rid of them and but the year prior to that we had over two years of leaves piled up that we tried spreading out there and did but it just took a lot more time and effort.
So what I'm trying to do is take something that is an input cost to us every year and make it at least a zero input for us.
And yes, we tried to get bids to actually turn it into income.
We weren't able to do that.
Nobody's going to stick fertilizer and materials into that ground that they can't make any money off of.
That's very understandable.
And again, every suitor that came to us said, if I don't get a long term deal with this, then I'm not going to entertain it because I'm gonna have too much input costs, right?
And they didn't want us to just say, hey, I'll take it for five years.
I'll put all the fertilizer on it and then give it to somebody else.
Right?
So I didn't think that was fair.
So I think this is a reasonable solution.
Some of the questions people can ask.
It's all in the memo, but Mr. Zito helped me with this.
We're calling it a lease agreement, or sorry, license agreement.
We are not calling it a lease.
It's a license agreement.
The license agreement gives the city of Freeport more oversight instead of a lease.
They can't sublease it to anybody else.
They can't bring in other people to work the ground.
It has to be them.
There's indemnification, hold harmless, everything from a city aspect that the attorney and I would suggest that protects the city of Freeport and gets us a good person that's out there taking care and working with us on the property.
The idea here would be to right now, I believe there's only two clippings a year that have been going on prior to this year.
The idea is to get it fertilized that there'd be at least three clippings to keep it down.
And again, the reason we want to do this and not let it grow is because we don't want wildlife hanging around the tarmac and the airports getting, uh, strung out in the front of the airports, right?
It's reasonable to keep it down.
The area is all fenced in.
Um, these also suitors have said that any of the, um, ground that's around that we actually farm as dirt ground that they put crops in, they'd be interested in renting that as well.
If those properties turn over and people don't want to rent them, uh, moving forward as well.
So again, we, just as a recap, the ground at the airport isn't, I don't want to say it's not fertile ground.
It's not prime ground.
We're never going to get a lot of rent money for that ground.
And what we want to make sure is somebody's taking care of it.
Somebody's mowing it, maintaining it on our schedule, not theirs.
And that they're doing a good job and keeping the land good for us and clean and maintained.
And I think the these people that have gave us this proposal are being very fair about it and I believe it's the best proposal that we received.
So what I'm asking is to take this to council next week and I would ask to suspend the rules and we would entertain them as a 10-year license agreement that way they can get there and the reason I'm asking for suspension is I don't think we need not for a resolution oh I'm sorry uh I would like to get it passed at the next meeting then so you're bringing it to the next council meeting yeah uh they want to spray already in september in order to get something sprayed yet this year which based on the conditions out there and the thistle growth I think that's a great idea and so I'd like to get the this going yet this year that would probably get us one more mowing out there this year that our crews and city funds won't have to support Hurt.
I'll take any questions.
Do we need a motion to move that forward?
We've kind of bounced back and forth on that.
I think we've just been placing these on the agenda now.
Any questions, Council?
Then we will move on to item number nine.
Madam Clerk, could you please read this for the record?
Discussion regarding 2027 Road Program Planning for Walnut Avenue and Cottonwood Street.
Mr. Siegel.
Let's talk about our favorite subject in the Freeport Streets.
Rob and I have been kicking around the road program for several months.
We think the first two years have been very successful.
We've really got a lot of streets done.
I just want to give you a recap of where we're at right now.
So South Street should be kicking off.
I don't know if it'll be in the next 30 days, but they should be getting South Street paved and there'll be some We have some more storm renovations that the state's required to do as part of that project.
Galena Avenue is the other really large project.
They're behind, they're having a kickoff meeting tomorrow.
I think you're going to see ADA ramps, there's 77 to do in that corridor.
They'll get done yet this year, but I think the mill and overlay of it will actually be done in the spring because I think it's going to get too late in the season.
And I think that's reasonable for the citizens of Freeport because we want the best product possible and you know, projects are really tough to do when you start getting towards the end of the year and they're calling for an early winter this year by the Farmers Almanac, right?
So we go back to our program and our program has been great, successful.
I think we've actually, we've overdone our program.
Every year we've been able to add streets that have not been on there.
And so, um, and thanks to our public works team who, uh, has worked, uh, in concert with, uh, our local contractors, Fishers, Helm and Kelsey, and we've got a lot of great work done.
I think the biggest problem that I've had is Walnut Avenue is probably our, our biggest problem with our largest traffic right now in Freeport.
And I think everybody in this room knows that I believe it's been Strohn, all over Facebook about when we're going to address Walnut.
Currently, we don't have reserve funds to meet the needs of Walnut.
It needs to be reconstructed from Main Street all the way to Empire.
And of course the Empire intersection has been our number one safety issue in town with the offset intersection, along with the amount of pedestrians that go through that intersection daily.
If you went and sat there during any school time, you're going to see and hundreds of kids walking through that intersection daily.
And it's not safe.
Uh, there's been numerous, uh, reports of accidents and then we paid ALTA to do that study.
And again, they came back saying that that was our, our largest, uh, safety issue in town with the amount of people walking through there.
So Rob and I kicked, kicked this around for hours, trying to figure out how we could come up with funding.
I have been chasing funding for Walnut Avenue for four years, trying to Find someone that would give us money, some project or some grant funding that could come up with it.
The only funding I could come up with was a federal grant that would require every house on the west side.
That would require every house on the west side of the street to be bought and demoed.
And I didn't think that was a good plan for Freeport.
That's the only one I could find.
And the reason is it's an older part of town and all of the intersections of that street and there's numerous ones are not built to federal standards.
So all of those would need to be widened which would require us to gain the properties to bring them up to state standards.
I don't think that that needs to be done.
I also believe that if we did that project it would probably be between seven and $8 million by the time we were done.
Um, so I went back and we ran a, an estimate of costs high level at this time.
I believe Walnut Avenue with the offshoot offset, um, of the intersection, all in water, sewer, storm, sidewalks, new curb, new street, and an undercut the entire way would cost around $5 million.
That's a high level number.
I might be high.
I do think the intersection, buying two houses that would be needed to bring the offset back, we kind of put a round number of about a million dollars in that.
That was also in the Alta plan as well of a design, right?
We talked about roundabouts, way too big, way too expensive for that area.
We talked about leaving it alone.
I don't think that's the right thing for Freeport long term.
It needs to be fixed.
And we know without a shadow of a doubt that every dollar that we spend on Walnut Avenue New, without reconstructing it is just throwing that dollar in the garbage right now.
Uh, every piece of pavement is alligator cracked.
There's potholes throughout the intersection of Carol and Walnut is almost not, not traversable at this point.
Um, I want to find a way to fix it.
The only way Rob and I could come up with it was to push the current year program a year and bring Walnut into the limelight of next year and try to get that problem fixed.
We don't have that additional funds.
I know when we laid out the original street program, we talked about having a, you know, trying to get a project in each ward as much as we could.
We have fulfilled that mission as much as possible.
Walnut's just one of these streets like Adams Avenue was that there's nothing left to fix and we're gonna have to go sidewalk to sidewalk to fix it.
An idea that I'll throw out there for Walnut, Warnett.
It won't be a popular one.
I would love to get rid of the parking on Walnut Avenue the whole way and shift the sidewalk or excuse me, shift the curb out on one side and actually make a bike trail from downtown all the way to Carl Sandburg.
I like that idea.
It gives a lot of, it can clean up the neighborhood some, it can make the front yards a little bit bigger.
We need to replace all the curbs anyway.
We need to replace all the sidewalk We've been trying to find some type of a trailhead that we could push towards that side of town that could be the start of that trail that could also be connected up to south and maybe to the hisp eventually.
We've been, again, trying to find a corridor through there that we could do that.
We can't do it without taking the parking on one side of the street.
It would be absolutely impossible to do.
Hill, but I also think that walnut's a big enough problem that we need to talk about that.
And while we're having that conversation, we've already committed to cottonwood because of the water main issue, digging into cottonwood farther.
Cottonwood is going to end up being a full reconstruction as well.
There is storm sewer underneath there.
There's a 30 inch arch that is collapsing in several sections already.
We found that during topography studies.
I pulled some of the lids.
I had guys go down in there, the 30 inch arches, at least 50% full of rock and sediment and things like that, that are not going to be able to clean it out.
People couldn't even get in there on their bellies.
So that piping for all of cottonwood will have to be replaced, which was not planned, which is going to end up bringing us into a full reconstruction of sidewalks, curbs, things that we weren't planning on doing in that section.
But if we're going to do it, now's the time.
Another familiar problem that we have, that we've all seen, the intersection of Galena and the twin singles, which is Douglas and Clark, that's where Cottonwood drains.
Has anybody ever drove through there when it's raining extremely hard and there's water sitting there?
I'll tell you why.
Scott Wood area drains to that and there was a new arch that was installed many years ago from that point all the way to the back of First McNess, but it was never extended from First McNess out to the river.
So it becomes a bottleneck of storm water that that accentuates to that and then it starts coming up the inlets and up the manholes.
That's why the lids pop off.
So knowing that there was a study done in 1973 that said, Hey, the, the piping in this area is not big enough.
So the first leg of that was the piece from, uh, basically, uh, F S out to, uh, first McNess, well, this would be another leg of that.
And the other leg would be the outfall to the river.
Um, we've already committed to moving forward with cottonwood.
So I think it makes sense now to address all the issues in that corridor, it's going to be expensive.
Um, I think my estimate was about 2.8 million.
It's again I think it's on the high side for the neighborhood but until we really get into more design of the storm sewer and things like that I'm not gonna be able to narrow those costs down so again tonight's really about priorities from the council what do you want to see done we need to start moving towards design contracts and moving next year's program forward if we have any hope of getting Huffines, Chris, Curt, Don, Donald, Dovie, Greg, Gregory, Heimerdinger, Chris, Curt, Don, Donald, Dovie, Mayor Jodi, James, Jim, Gertrude, Greg, Just, just south of the Empire intersection, right?
Because we would be taking the at least two houses probably on the south side to offset that intersection back.
Questions, Council?
Um, one other thing I'd like to point out, I had a good question on this, and I probably didn't explain it well enough.
Where's the money coming from?
Okay, so we're working on budgets for next year.
We also have paving money of about a million dollars.
So that's been our annual program, a hot mix.
And then really the rest of the money would be funded through water utilities, because there's going to be new water main on both streets, end to end, which is going to be very expensive.
It's large main on those streets.
And then you've got sanitary sewer, we would be lining, and then each street needs a lot of storm work.
So the rest of the balance of that would be coming out of that.
Storm.
Alderman Johnson.
Yeah, I just kind of wondered on the streets that we had down originally for our program, the water and sewer issues on those street are not as in dire need as are they as the ones that you're talking about now.
Let me bring up that, Emma, real quick.
So Winnipeg, Garden, and Carthage, and Revere Weir all had water in them for next year and they're all need to be done, but they don't have near as many issues as Cottonwood did during our system.
And again, my proposal would be, regardless of what happens, we're talking about a year in shift of getting it done, a priority, what's most important to the city.
So it's not that we would not or totally eliminate these streets, they would just, the entire program would get shifted back one year to bring these two into the priority.
If you guys don't feel like this is the priority, then we go ahead and we stay with the streets that are on this list.
I just know that I have been approached by many people about what we're doing about Walnut.
And honestly, this is the only option that I've been able to figure out.
I am really trying to find more road money, but it doesn't qualify for anything except for this federal STU money, which is going to require us taking down what 15 homes that but I just don't think Freeport has the pallet to do.
Thank you.
Pullman Sellers?
So you're saying to do Walnut and to do Cottonwood, it would probably be a total of probably about $8 million?
Give or take, yeah, a high level estimate.
I would say somewhere between seven and a half and eight.
And so that would be the entire road program next year because if everybody remembers, we take the MFT money, we take the 1% and then we're taking water, water, sewer, and store money from the utilities to pay for that infrastructure that's in those streets.
And, and, um, you know, again, we're at.
You know, again, we're at, you know, a 10,000 foot view right now.
I can't get a detailed down till I, I don't want to spend a lot of money in those directions, figuring out what the cost is if, if the council doesn't want to move that direction.
I really don't see an opportunity coming to fund wall in the street.
It's, it's while it's very heavily traveled for the city of Freeport.
It's, it doesn't really qualify for any of the assistant money that has been out there.
Klemm.
Yeah, I just want to reiterate a little bit on Cottonwood.
I think we all got to go back on the Cottonwood deal to think last year when we almost drained two towers.
So it's a big deal for the water system and that kind of stuff on it.
But everybody I've talked to has always been, you know, when you're going to do walnut, when you're going to do walnut, you know, it is a priority and it is a it is a very used road.
So, you know, I know one of the wards you mentioned is bad and is in my ward, Carthage, there's some places on it that are absolutely terrible, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
But looking at the amount of traffic, etc., I think the other two, without a doubt, would be a priority that we should really take a look at.
And like you say, there's no sense wasting a bunch of time until everybody says, yeah, this is what we're going to do.
Appreciate all your work.
You guys have done so far on it.
Alderman Shadle?
Definitely, whatever we're doing, we want to do it the right way.
Like you had mentioned.
We need to address that storm on Cottonwood and the water main after the issues earlier this year.
That's without a doubt in my mind where that needs to be dealt with.
Dealt with.
Walnut Street, again, I hear comments a lot about that.
I drive it occasionally and there's several in the 6th Ward that are on my list and they are bad, but I don't know if they're worse than Walnut.
They may be as bad, but the ones in my ward are not as heavily traveled as walnut either, and it's a main artery from the south into the downtown that, um, I was not initially a big fan of this by putting everything else off, but the more I'm thinking about it, the more I am a fan of just, let's bite the bullet on the rest of the program.
There's roads that are going to end up worse than walnut is now by waiting another year but those can become priorities in the 28th season.
Let's get this one done and move on.
A couple of questions I have.
The storm water, it was always my understanding that the bottleneck down towards the river was is due to an issue with getting a bigger culvert under the railroad.
And is that a possibility of getting done?
And then the other question I have that you can jump right to after that is, if we commit to this, both of these projects, is there enough time to get the engineering and everything done prior to construction season next year?
Okay.
Um, the storm question.
So Rob and I, um, on behalf of the city submitted a grant two years ago, um, and it has not been answered yet.
So it's still open for stormwater improvements in downtown Freeport.
The first maintenance outlet as we call it is on that, uh, list.
The current outfall needs to be lined.
It's old and it, it really can't handle the flow, but there also has to be additional Well, Pipe and put from there to the river, which is going to, it's going to require CN to agree to allow that to go under their tracks.
That's the biggest hurdle there.
Uh, I don't want to speak negatively with the railroads.
They're very difficult to work with.
Anything that happens within the railways, very, very tough to deal with.
Um, everybody kind of knows the Benton outfall that we have that we already have, uh, you know, a bunch of liability and a bunch of issues.
Williams.
They don't want to see a huge underpass or anything tunnel like that under there.
So it's going to have to be addressed with multiple piping networks that are bored out to the river.
That's the only way we're ever going to overcome that.
Honestly, we're going to need those grants that we submitted to and their EPA grants for stormwater specifically.
We're going to need it to do those projects.
They're very expensive.
There was three main We have three main projects in downtown Freeport on those it was that outfall, the Benton outfall, and there's a completely plugged storm over here on Cherry that needs to be dealt with and has been that way ever since we moved into City Hall here so those were the three main projects that we need to address design time if you guys tell us that these are the projects that you want to get done, we will get them done.
I just can't wait till December to do it.
In September to make that happen.
I need to get Topol picked up as, as fast as possible and it's doable.
And, and, uh, I promise you, we will get it done.
Um, cottonwood, we already have the water main, uh, very far.
It's that we just been running into all these hurdles.
Um, the arch is actually made of stone.
It's not made of, uh, any type of piping material.
And I have this, uh, great fear that when we peel the street off of it, it's just to do.
Cottonwood has several utilities running through it now.
Um, so the water main actually has to go right back in the same hole that it's in because there's so many utilities, we can't get separation for them, right?
There's, there's actually two full sort of utilities running through the street.
There's a cable, there's electric, there's several other underground utilities that are in the section.
So it's a very tight and there's also two water mains currently.
When they put the larger water main in there, they actually didn't remove the old one because it was going to be too difficult to hook up to the side streets and they didn't want to dig through the arch.
So, yes, we will get it done if that's the priority for the city of Freeport.
Alderman Sellers?
I can agree on the on doing the program because understanding cottonwood and understanding that the walnut, how busy that is.
But I just want to make sure that you know I know we are changing and shifting to do these I don't want us next year when we start again with the projects that we push those other streets back again we find something else that's big I think we should get right back on our plan again and finish up these streets that the people have been waiting on to get done so I can say yeah but I also want to make sure that when we come back again that we start back into our Huffines.
I think that's the commitment that we're making to you is that if this is the plan that we want to move forward as a council, that's why we're talking about it, then it's just a year hiatus of this schedule and the schedule just goes back a year.
I drive the streets quite often in Freeport and I make, you know, mental notes and lists of streets that are poor.
I'm trying to come up with, um, some, some, I don't want to call it temporary patching, but, uh, some different types of creative engineering on some of these streets to buy five or 10 years.
Um, I, we don't really like spending money in that direction if we don't help it, but we have some streets that are just in too poor a shape that we're We're not, you know, we don't have enough money to address 30 streets in one year.
We're never going to have that money realistically, right?
So I'm trying to figure, um, years ago, they used to do some types of slurry seals or, or, uh, liquid fills or things like that that would buy you like five years.
And so I think some of these streets, we're going to have to creatively say, I'm going to pick a street that I don't believe is on the list, a pleasant street that is very, very poor that we're going to have to figure out, can we buy five with some kind of treatment or technique to get us to another day.
That's that's the realistic issue.
Okay we have a couple more Alderman yet.
Alderman Simmons did you have your hand up?
Thank you.
So my question is with the grant because it seems as though we can all agree that Juana Street is a very busy street.
It impacts pretty much everyone that drives or travels here.
So if there is a grant that that would pay for it and also cover the purchase of the homes.
Everyone on this floor laughed.
However, when that was the case within the third ward, you sought interest and you went for it.
So why not do the same with Walnut?
See if those homeowners are even interested in selling.
How much would the grant cover if you sought out that grant?
Good question.
So the federal process for those type of grants is 80-20, right?
So let's say it was $8 million.
We would expend engineering and then 20%.
So roughly a couple million dollars that we would end up having into that.
Generally speaking, we could go or look at that direction, getting that many homes for that long a distance is usually quite a problem.
And then you have to end up going into eminent domain with them.
And I'm not saying that that's not what we can do.
But it's a new heightened process when you bring federal money in because you have to do it to federal requirements and which usually ends up costing a lot more money.
That's the honest truth with it.
I think Darren touched on it when he said you have to build everything to federal standards when you use federal money.
And that was actually something we contemplated with Adams.
But federal standards would have required all those intersections on that.
I think there was about six of them that would have had to been roundabouts at every intersection.
So I think when you build something to federal standard, you use their money, you got to and St. Louis.
So, we've got a lot of people that have built it to their standards, and it usually means it's a drop in the bucket compared to the work that's required.
Oldman, Parker?
You're talking about that temporary fix in some roads.
Stewart going north from Stephenson would be a good place.
It needs it bad.
There's a lady that blew her tire on that road the other day.
But if it's that temporary fix, we could get four or five years out of it.
But it's something we definitely need to do.
Stewart's on this year's list, so it will be done this year.
Thank you.
Okay, so it looks to me like that the question is, does the majority of the council desire to move walnut and cottonwood as a priority in the 2027?
Yes.
I'd also like to mention that just because we do some alternating of this doesn't mean we still won't be chasing road grants for other roadwork.
It just means that we haven't found something that is advantageous for walnut.
I got a couple of nods.
Is everybody good with that?
Anybody not okay with that?
Looks like you've got your go ahead to work in that direction if your desire was September to start figuring that out.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Item number 10 is public comment.
Are there any public comments?
Tommy?
When I told Jodi Miller was doing a good job, and Don Parker, you did a good job doing it.
Thank you, Tommy.
And we want to know about that Eaton Beats coming up.
That's the end of the month.
End of the month.
I just want to know.
And Rob, what about that trash over by Whistler Drive?
Any other public comments this evening?
Go ahead.
Good evening.
I've never done this before, so bear with me.
And if I understand right, I can't ask questions.
Okay, so two, and I'm sorry, I don't know your name.
I have some concerns, but I'm not a yea or a nay, because I do live right around Empire and Walnut.
A couple of things, and I would love to speak with either you or Mr. Boyer afterwards, because I'm being right almost in the heart there.
This brings up some interesting, not red flags, but anyway, my concern, and again, I don't I'm not an expert I know so I'm just trying to learn but when you said something to the effect of doing the west side of Walnut and then cars would have to park over on the other side or on other side streets I've lived where I live for 18 years now it'll be 19 years in September and I think most of the and the council that knows the area will, I know the police chief will testify that we're not the safest area.
We have, matter of fact some of the police officers, I kind of keep joking with them saying you're around my area so much, I'm going to invite you for Thanksgiving dinner because I see you all the time.
We're not a safe area.
I'm concerned that if you start making people move and park their cars off on side streets, especially those who work second and third shift, they're going to be walking around the corners, I just see some that possible, I mean maybe you and Mr. Boyer have that worked out and God bless you if you do but that's one of the first red flags that comes up for me the other thing I wanted to ask and I know you can't answer maybe later you can tell me is I kept hearing what was it that you said take down a few of the homes I'm assuming you're me meaning physically take these homes down I'm hoping that's not going to be my house but you know as we've and Mr. Boyer are aware of is a lot of those houses on Walnut are rentals.
You're going to come up against a lot of opposition and from dealing with rentals years ago, you can't always find the landlord.
They live in Chicago or Texas or whatever and I'm assuming that you're aware of that kind of thing too.
But the safety is a little bit more of mine and my concern with that and if I could maybe speaking with you afterwards.
You are Mr. Boyer and you could give me some more information.
I would really love that because being that I'm kind of in the side center, I'd like to have more information on what's going on.
And can you please state your full name for the record?
Renee Blazeski.
Thank you.
Any other public comments this evening?
Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.
So moved.
Second.
We have a motion made by Alderman Sellers, seconded by Alderman and Shadle, all those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.