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this evening? No, no, that can't happen. Clerk is not here. Go ahead. She's not here. Until she gets back, then we'll start.

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Father God, thank you for the divine promises you have given to us in your word. Thank you that you have not

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We have not left us to fend for ourselves as we navigate through this sin-filled world, but that you have commanded us to ask for wisdom, knowledge, and common sense, which you will give generously to all, and so we do. Bestow upon the Freeport City Council members the ability to conduct themselves in a state-like manner towards Mayor Miller and themselves. Give the City Council members skills to apply wisdom, knowledge, and common sense.

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since when introducing and voting on legislation to create new laws for the city, negotiating and approving the city budget, ensuring proper allocation of resources, monitoring city agencies to ensure they effectively serve the community, representing constituents' interest in addressing community issues, and collaborating with other council members and local officials for effective

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Governance. And Lord, last but not least, help each city council member effectively execute the positions to

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which they were elected and you installed them by seeking wise counsel and by being prepared before

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council meetings so they can make informed decisions. All blessings, honor, glory, and power belong to you.

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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you. And now we'll officially call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk,

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could you please take the roll? Mayor Miller? Here. Alderpersons, Clemm? Here. Johnson? Here. Simmons? Here. Parker? Here. Stacy? Here. Shadle? Here. Sanders? Here. And Sellers? Here. And if you could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Alderman Sanders.

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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.

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Item number four is the approval of the agenda. Is there such a motion?

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So moved.

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Second.

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It will be a motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Sellers. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

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Aye.

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Opposed?

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Opposed? That motion passes. Item number five is approval of the minutes from the committee of the whole meeting held on August 11, 2025. Is there such a motion? So moved. Second. The motion made by Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Clem. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes. Public comments? We have one signed in. Ann, Annette, Mason? I'm not sure.

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did you want to speak beforehand okay okay thank you then we will move on to item number seven which is the presentation I'm sorry oh did you have something on the agenda you wanted to talk about please I'm Ryan Glick I live in Freeport um about in last year in July I found out about this whole

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Supplier Issue

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It took me from July

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to about December to get

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everything

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I reached out to

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the city

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Bryan Bridge

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contacted me

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I told them the issue

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when I tried to

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I got the paper from Nordic

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I called them

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to cancel it

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I got forced back in with the AEP when I wanted to go to ComEd and I finally got back with ComEd for on December 17th of last year. So that was a horrible six months I had to deal with with my ComEd bill being switched and it took almost six months to be back where I wanted.

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and I'm on low income so it's like okay so just want to bring that to you guys attention thank you thank you item number seven is a presentation regarding the maintenance of landscaping at city-owned lots um Lynette Williams with the pretzel gardeners hello council and city of freeport um I found something quite by

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accident that so perfectly aligns with the reason maybe that we're here today to even discuss community pride and somebody had asked about it on Facebook and this was this gentleman's reply and it fits perfectly. Building a sense of civic duty in a community is about inspiring people to feel ownership, responsibility, and pride in the well-being of the place they live. It requires a mix of

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of Education, Engagement, Culture Building, and Opportunities for Action. That hits our group square on the head. You want to dim the light so you can see the pictures that we took. I am Lynette Williams. I have lived here 50 years. Mayor Miller called me in July of 24, I think is when we started this, and she was looking to get the area

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cleaned up around city-owned lots within the community right before Tutty Baker days. And this is what it looked like. That might even be good in some instances because we've pulled a lot of stuff. Anyway, what happened in 24 was we pulled, I gathered this crew, let's see here, my senior lady's here behind me,

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and we pulled this whole lot or this whole area along the parking lot and we thought oh and you know we come back in 30 days and no such luck it looked just as bad as it had earlier so when we started out 25 we were a little bit better prepared first off we knew that we needed a new plan at least for this specific area and so we we gathered in

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in, what was it, February of 25, and I knew that we were going to need to do some deeper cleaning, at least for our particular area. So, with the help of the mayor and Greater Free Partnership, there were groups of people who were, I don't know whether they all volunteered or whether you, like, grabbed them by the neck and said, hey, come along, type of thing.

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But anyway, it ended up where the Tutty Crossing sign near the Pecatonica River, the city was going to do, the Lincoln Douglas Rock at Stevenson and Liberty in the parking lot, the Master Gardeners were going to do. I don't have any pictures of these areas. The landscape on State Street that was north and south borders on Main where Steve Schlamp was going to do, and his area has been featured this today, I think is the post from GFP.

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There was landscaping at the corner of Maine and Adams near the Raleigh building. That was assigned to the city. Walnut and spring landscaping. Trish Vandenberg from the Father's House took care of that along with anybody from her congregation. My pretzel gardeners took this municipal lot. And then the triangles at Locust in Maine and Locust in Lincoln, the Bangsburg Agna kids did.

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Hello. It was not, it was, it was one of those things you start, you started in on it and it was like, oh my gosh, it's just getting worse and worse and worse. We ended up, what we ended up doing, here is my crew. Linda Simler is from the Farmer's Market. Paula Skanezny is not here. Ann Mason is here. Sharon Cook is here. Kathy Perkins is not here. They are my fellow pretzel pickers.

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Lorenzo Allen down there.

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Lorenzo Allen, down there at the end, he, I became acquainted with him and he has come along and helped us on various days.

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Robin Dole, you have one lone bush that's on the city landscaping property. I don't know if there was more before, but there's only one left.

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Robin Dole took that upon herself to do the trimming on it. And my friend, Debbie Anderson, of 40 years, also helped us out.

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So anyway, we pulled weeds. We had to decide what was good, what we had. I am not a gardener. I have no idea. It's like, is this a weed? Is this not a weed? Milkweed. Milkweed was a huge discussion. Somebody has taken the liberty of sprinkling a lot of milkweed seeds or either that or we had pods at one point.

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made, yeah, or birds or whatever, but we've got a lot of milkweed over there. We decided that we would keep

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anything that was next to the fences, anything that was close to the sidewalk, we were going to pull.

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That still left us with a lot of milkweed out there. Let me think, where else am I at on my thought here?

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What we started doing was we started at the corner of Exchange and Van Buren in that corner where the steps come down and just started bringing the mulch back. Anyway, we eventually discovered that there's weed barrier underneath there. And I swear that weed barrier must have been there since Columbus came along because it was filled.

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filled with weeds, which is the reason that we couldn't get any place by just taking care of the top layer is because we had to get rid of the weed barrier, which is what we've done. We've pulled all that weed barrier up. We've laid down cardboard. We put mulch on top of that, compliments of the city. Trying to think. Oh, yes, we transplanted the corner at Van Buren and Douglas.

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was totally, looked like just a grassy knoll. And it's huge. It's absolutely huge. I asked Leslie if these kids would come along and help us. Between them and us, we did it in four hours, but they did most of the work because pulling up the weed barrier was horrible, absolutely horrible. Right now in that corner, we've got down cardboard and then just mulch on top of it.

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The other corner's got a tree, but of course the tree root, the tree is having its own ideas about how many extra sprouts it wants to come up, so we have to cut those back. We tried to replant as much as we could. Leslie came and took some irises. We took some of the irises and moved them along the edges. We had an opportunity to get lilies. No, I'm sorry. We transplanted the lilies. We got irises for free from a community member.

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and so we're trying to make it as look the best we can with the limited resources we had. We discovered that, well, yes, but what was the, what's, what's growing that's crazy? Morning Glory looks beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but it takes over everything, absolutely everything, which is part of the reason for the cardboard being down because we're trying to cut out

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and kill the weeds underneath it. I worked weekly with Pat Ingram from the street superintendent, he dropped us mulch, he picked, I would tell him how many bags we had, I would tell him that's landscape waste, white bags are trash, because we find people who, you know, the cup, the sucker wrapper, the cigarette,

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They're using it as an ashtray, you know, literally, they're using it and oh for their dogs, too, that was the other thing they're using it for, very much so. Anyway, I kept track of the hours that my crew did. My crew worked 134 hours on this, which is almost four weeks worth of work. Now, we did that in two and three hour increments because

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We're a group of seniors. We don't like the heat. We don't like the cold. But I'm figuring that we have saved the city somewhere around $2,700 by doing, by the manual labor. Obviously, right now, it takes us maybe an hour to go out there every other week because we're not fighting with the stuff that was underneath.

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I know that the parking lot is going to be improved at some point in the future and water accessibility, electricity, and maybe just some solid cement. You've got a sign in the one corner at the corner of Douglas and Van Buren that's been there since George Galrap was mayor. Maybe we don't need that anymore.

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Just ideas, just thoughts. Anyway, I could not have done it without these people, any of these people. I mean, this has just been fantastic. For those people who thought they had to give us advice, and we'd look at them and say, you want to help? Oh, no. They don't want to do that. But we had a lot of those kinds of people.

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So we tried to, I guess, be diplomatic in our comments and wanted to make sure that the city knew what this took. You're talking about your budget, so it would be nice for a little bit of money in it, you know, for lawn bags and plants. If you want something other than what we can scrounge from neighbors, you know, that's about what we're doing.

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We're sort of like scrounging from neighbors. Thank you for your time. I'm done talking. Leslie, would you like to introduce your kids?

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I'm Leslie Price. I'm the social worker at Banksburg Agna Educational Center. We represent Freeport School District. We are at the Students in Transitional Education Program, and we're a big service education program, so we like to give back to the community, and these are only a few of our gentlemen that helped.

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We had a lot of other students that assisted too. This is Jacarion Sanders, Floyd, Floyd Carter, and Christian Sago. Again, we had a lot of other students that helped as well, but they worked in that hundred degree weather week that we had. I think one day it was raining and we walk every time we go. So I just think that they deserve a little bit, a little bit of praise for the hard work that

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they did too so that's all we have well thank you Lynette to you and your entire crew hopefully your sense of community pride just continues to be catching on with other people so thank you for your service I would love to see other people you know I mean it would be not actually right now it's not too bad and I think that once we got at least that particular area tamed that's why it's not so bad right now all right thank you again thank you thank y'all

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We'll move on to item number eight, which is a presentation regarding the 2025 summer reading program.

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Amanda Myers. Good evening. Can you hit the lights again so we can see better? Thank you. My name is

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Amanda Myers, and I'm the Youth Services Administrator at the Freeport Public Library. So I'm here tonight

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to tell you a little bit about our summer reading club that we had. As you can see, our theme this year

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was Color Our World, which was a really fun theme to program around and decorate around. And as you'll see, we had a really fun summer at the library. We'll start off by talking about the reading part of summer reading. I kind of like to break it down into two parts, like reading and programming. So for the reading part, we had 523 kids who were birth through sixth grade sign up for summer reading, which is a 5% increase over last year.

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and of those who signed up 271 of them successfully completed the summer reading program which consists of reading either 20 hours if they're reading like longer books and independently or reading 60 books if they are being read to or if they're like an early reader and reading shorter books so it's easier to keep track by book for them so our for our finishing percentage this year was 51 percent which is down a little bit from last year but the

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That's okay. Usually I feel like most libraries are around like 20, 25 percent. So I'm very happy if it's over 50 percent.

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happy if it's over 50%. So next we'll talk about programming. I feel like Ashley kept telling me, like, it's okay if it's not better than last year, like, it's fine, don't worry. And this year we ended up with 8,232 people at our summer programs. That includes in-house programs, outreach programs, passive programs, and other programs we do throughout the summer, field trips that come in.

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So that was a 36% increase from last year's amount of 6,000. And we had 119 programs beginning in June through August 9th. And we offer numerous programs each week for children, community groups, outreaches. And as you can see, ever since we've come back from COVID, our numbers have just been increasing steadily each year, which, I mean, I feel like might possibly, it's going to be hard to beat this year, I feel like definitely.

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but somehow we always do it so maybe it will happen again next summer these are just a few of the programs we offer every year as you can see most of them the numbers went up this year the kickoff party was bigger slime making was definitely bigger we've been getting bigger storytime crowds all year so our average storytime kiddos for storytime and debate square was up to like 37 this year which for us as a small library is a lot and yeah they either stayed the same or just

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generally went up. So now we will talk about the fun programs we had. This is our Summer Reading Club kickoff party, which was on June 9th. And thankfully this year we had good weather so we could have it outside. I feel like the beginning of June is kind of hit or miss on the weather. So we have it inside a lot too. But we had 550 kids and adults come that day. We do like the registration is at like the Douglas Street entrance. And this year our line wrapped all

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all the way around to the Chicago Street entrance. It was like the longest we had ever seen it, and it was very steady the whole time. Like the line kept moving, but it just kept staying that long, so that was really good. We have lots of different games and activities for them to do. We always bring out our sensory table, and this year we actually dyed rice to put in since the theme was colors. It gave them something bright and colorful to play with, and we also made a little balloon arch inside, and those are some of our littles who were there for Monday morning story time.

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but they wanted to get in on the summer reading club action too and this is our collaborative art wall we made for the summer we do a different one every year and we try to keep it theme related so this year we decided to base it off the book the dot because it's like this girl doesn't know what to make and her teacher is just like everything starts from a dot and you can make your mark so we gave them dots at the kickoff party that they could decorate and we actually use like salad spinners and put some paint in them and so they got to like swirl it around and make really cool

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Art. So we put those up on the wall. And this is one of the things that actually helped our numbers increase

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a lot. We started doing scavenger hunts in the library like last November. And they had so much fun that when

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we didn't have one in December, they were like, where's the scavenger hunt? We want to do a scavenger

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hunt. So starting in January, we've been doing it every month. And these are a couple of the ones we

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did over the summer. So there's just 12 little pictures. You can see like the watermelon card

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there. That's what they're looking for. We hide them all over the youth services department, like by our

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posters, on the tree, on the shelves, like wherever. And they have to find six. And if they find six, they get a

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prize. So it's pretty simple. Like they just get a sucker or a pencil. It's not like a big prize or

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anything. But this summer from June 1st to August 9th, we did 1,804 scavenger hunts. Like this is like

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their favorite thing. I kid you not. Like every time they come in, they were doing it like multiple

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a couple times a week, too, even though we hadn't moved the pictures. They were just like, let us scavenger hunt again.

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So I'm like, okay. It's easy for them. Well, it's fun for them. It's easy for us. So these are some of our pictures at Storytime at Debate Square.

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I love summer because we get to do outside programming. And Wednesdays, actually, though, this year were very hit or miss on the weather.

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Some of them were very rainy and some of them were very nice. But we had good crowds all summer and everybody just kind of brings their blankets and they bring picnics.

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and we just kind of go outside and have a good time. We usually do like the sensory table or some sort of dance party or bubbles or things like that and this summer since our theme was colors I kind of broke out of my usual summer themes and we did a different color every week which was really fun and actually different to do so it was very fun and you can't have a good summer reading program without making slime a few times which is on our monthly program cycle anyway but in the summer it gets

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It's really, really big. We made some disco ball slime and firecracker slime using pop rocks, which actually make your slime pop and fizz and stuff. And then we also made some orange creamsicle slime to finish out the summer. And this year we had 493 people, including kids and adults, at our three slime days. So the popularity of slime is not slowing down at all.

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and these next few pictures are from our Make It Monday programs. I love Make It Monday because the kids just get to be they get to do whatever they want and be as creative as they want. So this week we made cardboard birds and as you can see they all had a different take on it. They just got a cardboard bird that was pre-cut and a white canvas and this is what happened and the little girl on the right she was finger painting and like blending her colors like nobody's business.

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and we were all just like oh what's that going to look like when it was done because it was kind of this

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weird greenish grayish for a while but it actually looks really good with her bird that's yellow and it

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just kind of looks like a darker sky and here we have our button art day we gave them the choice of having

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a pre like drawn out template so like the hearts and rainbows that you see those were all templates

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that we had drawn out for them or we just like gave them a canvas and they could make whatever and as you can see some of them even made very cool 3D sculptures with their buttons and this was from our last make it Monday which was melted crayon art which I will fully admit did not exactly go off as planned however everybody had a really good time they all finished their artwork it turns out no matter how big your building is you can't plug in like multiple hair dryers at a time that's

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just kind of overloads all the outlets. So lesson learned there. We still had, we let them all hot glue them and we were like, you know, you can just take it home and dry it. But actually they, we had two hair dryers that were still working by the end and most of them actually stayed and dried them there. Like they were in no rush to leave because they were picking out books. They were scavenger hunting while they waited. It was fine. And as you can see, the girl on the left, she's very excited to have her picture taken. So, I mean, it turned out fine and people were,

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were fine with it, even though it just didn't happen quite right. This is from our messy art day, which I will say was very, very messy, but you can't have a summer about color without having messy art. So we did like squeegee painting, we rigged up a pendulum that they could push back and forth and would drip paint, and we did the salad spinners again, and I feel like Aaron, my library assistant, and I spent probably more time cleaning the patio that day than our actual program was.

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was, which was an hour. So, but the patio is all nice and spotless now. And this is from our Bluey Bash. If you're not familiar with Bluey, he is a cartoon dog that's very, very popular with the Littles. So we had decided to have like a Bluey party this summer. And he appeals to kids of all ages. As you can see, we have like little Littles and then we have bigger kids. And we had 283 kids come that day. They played games.

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games like Peepy Uppy, which is the balloon game, and dressing up like grannies, which is apparently a bluey thing that you have to do, and they made some magic asparagus, which turns adults into animals. And this is one of our presentations this summer. It was Fantastic Foam and More from Absolute Science, and the kids loved it because they got to be a part of the show, and they made the exploding foam at the end, and everybody just had a really good time.

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We also had an animal presenter come this year. It was Incredible Bats, and they presented their Animals Around the World program, and they must have brought like 15 different animals with them, and they told us like a few facts about each animal, so they went through all of them in an hour, and then the parents helped hold the animals at the end, and then the kids got to pen them.

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so there was like a snake and a rabbit and an armadillo and a fox a fennec fox and a spider there also was a bat which I feel like everybody was a little bit afraid was gonna get like to start flying all over but that was fine and we had over 130 people at both of those shows so those were both really exciting we also hosted an outside library field day this year last year we did our first outside like kind of game day we had like 25 kids

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So I didn't know what to expect. And then this year we ended up with 68 kids. So that was very excellent. They ran relay races. You can see they did water balloon catching and they did the limbo. And about halfway through we divided up the littles and the bigs because we had a lot of teens too. So the teens played Capture the Flag.

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So the teens played Capture the Flag, and then the little kids played Hot Potato and Tag.

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And this summer we had a really fun new partnership with MacCamp, which is through Hope Wins.

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And we've kind of always, they've kind of always come to programs sometimes when they could.

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But this year they have a home-based location.

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So we decided that it would be easiest if I just went to them because they have like 50

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kids pretty much all summer.

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So each week I went and took some books and a craft and or a project. As you can see, we made slime. They actually came to the art plaza and we did tie dye with them because everybody loves to do tie dye. And like we talked about things like Juneteenth and we did service dogs when they had the police dogs come. So that was really, really fun. And that girl making her slime there, she was so excited that day. She was like, are we making slime today? And I'm like, yeah. And she like freaked out with excitement.

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excitement. She was so happy. And we also have a partnership kind of going on with the Stevenson

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County Fair. Usually I just go do story time, but this year we were asked to do Glow Bingo, and so Ashley and I went and did that, and it was really fun, a couple hours playing bingo with teens, adults, kids, everybody mostly was super competitive about it, but they all also went home a winner, so that was really fun.

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and these are some pictures of our end of the summer party our attendance for the end of the summer party was down just a little bit but it was a very very very hot afternoon and people usually people will stay like the whole three hours but I noticed this year there was a lot of like people coming and people going because it was just really hot but they all enjoyed their ice cream they did the bouncy houses they played games they got to dunk library staff in the dunk tank they got to play games

00:31:49.880 --> 00:32:16.880
and they just overall had a really good time. So next year I'm sure you're thinking what is going to happen. Next year we are doing dinosaurs. The theme is unearth a story. So I am super excited. I already have my list going. I actually already have my first performer booked. We have dinosaur people coming. So we're super excited about that. So that was our summer at the library.

00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:25.390
Thank you, Amanda

00:32:25.390 --> 00:32:35.430
We will move on to item number nine, which is the discussion regarding municipal electrical aggregation program, Mike Mudge

00:32:35.430 --> 00:32:49.250
Okay, we're going to do the electrical aggregation

00:32:49.250 --> 00:32:51.170
I'll read the other sheet first

00:32:51.170 --> 00:33:11.870
The third sheet I gave you

00:33:11.870 --> 00:33:58.990
Just a second, I just want to make sure I didn't give away my only sheet

00:33:58.990 --> 00:34:02.790
I have a question after that last presentation

00:34:02.790 --> 00:34:05.750
who would like to go back and be kids again?

00:34:05.870 --> 00:34:09.810
It looks like there's a lot of good stuff to do in the community.

00:34:12.550 --> 00:34:13.250
All right.

00:34:15.850 --> 00:34:20.050
I got a lot of good questions from Councilman Johnson.

00:34:21.190 --> 00:34:21.910
Thank you.

00:34:22.710 --> 00:34:24.290
And I'll address those questions.

00:34:25.350 --> 00:34:26.270
Two topics.

00:34:26.270 --> 00:34:32.490
We're doing item nine right now, and that's the electrical bids that we got for municipal aggregation.

00:34:32.490 --> 00:34:57.650
and I'll just do a recap while the heat's going to be coming up. We had a three-year contract that we secured last spring with, or last fall, with Nordic Energy and what happened was the capacity, if we can go to the bottom part of that sheet, that'd be great.

00:34:57.650 --> 00:35:31.080
There, that's perfect. Part of our energy rates comes from when we have an all-in rate. I'll just use nine cents as the all-in rate. About a fourth of that was used for capacity. And what capacity is, thank you, what capacity is is the money that's collected by ComEd and given to generators.

00:35:31.080 --> 00:36:01.060
operators, and we're part of the PJM grid which goes from our area, climate area, all the way out to the east coast and down to like Washington, D.C. It's the largest grid that operates in the country. FERC realized that, FERC is a federal agency that controls all the grid operators, that we weren't building enough generation plants across

00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:31.060
across the country, and they delayed PTMs doing auctions. We used to have an auction every year, and it would be a third for this year, a third for the next year, a third for the year afterwards. So suppliers always knew kind of what their costs were. If you look at the second to the right bar chart there, we went from 2024 to 2025, a very low capacity rate that was given to the generators to maintain their plants, but also encourage them to build new plants.

00:36:31.080 --> 00:36:56.800
to meet our demand. Why is our demand going out of sight since 2012 to 2020? Our energy prices were flat and our prices kept going down. Every time we did aggregation, we would get a lower rate. And that was due to conservation. More generation, that was supply and demand. In 2021, we started increasing our growth.

00:36:56.800 --> 00:37:26.800
more and more electric vehicles but also data centers started increasing the load and we weren't adding any new generation to speak of yes we were adding solar adding some wind but not not and the other thing we're doing we're retiring we were retiring coal-fired generating stations at an accelerated pace because the markets weren't supporting them and as soon as they shut them down the

00:37:26.800 --> 00:37:56.260
pretty well flattened just to get out from underneath a cost, the tax cost on it. So what happened, supply and demand again, when they opened up the bid, PTM was like two years behind getting the bids out. In July of 2024, we got the bids for this. This was after we had secured a rate with Nordic Energy. And they reneged on it, not only with

00:37:56.800 --> 00:38:05.140
the city of Freeport, but also with Joe Davies County and Riverwoods and Burke Township.

00:38:05.340 --> 00:38:07.580
We had four communities that they had the low bid.

00:38:07.680 --> 00:38:08.480
They won the bids.

00:38:09.980 --> 00:38:15.480
So saying all that, that's kind of the background of what happened to our market.

00:38:16.960 --> 00:38:22.960
ComEd's rate jumped up about three cents a kilowatt hour also, which started in June.

00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:30.680
not only did we have a lot of heat, we had com-ed rates going up, plus their delivery rates themselves went up.

00:38:32.500 --> 00:38:43.340
So this summer we started seeing some huge electric bills because of the weather, because of the capacity factors kicking in, and so on and so forth.

00:38:44.060 --> 00:38:52.840
But what we decided to do, I think as a consensus, was to have everyone go back to com-ed until we knew what the new com-ed rate was.

00:38:52.960 --> 00:39:00.760
That didn't happen until May, but then we decided to hold off on this a little while and see what happened.

00:39:01.140 --> 00:39:10.140
So now we're bringing the bids back to the board, to the council, to see if you're interested in securing a new rate.

00:39:10.680 --> 00:39:13.540
So if we could go back up to the top a little bit.

00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:16.560
Oh, one thing before we move.

00:39:16.560 --> 00:39:42.070
the new capacity rates for the following year from June 26 to 27 are even higher. So some of our bids are taking in that effect. So if we go back up to the top, these are the three bids that we have, and the ComEd rate we have on there is 10.229 cents.

00:39:42.070 --> 00:39:54.010
if you look at your summer bill you see it says 10.028 cents that's for the four summer months the eight the eight winter months is a little bit higher so the average

00:39:54.010 --> 00:40:21.980
is a little bit higher. So the average of the 12 months is 10.229 as it stands today. The two bids that we have from MC squared, they make sense. We're not saving a lot of money. We're not saving two, three, four cents like we had in the past. But that's about a penny, a half a cent. And if that chart's right, it may add another

00:40:21.980 --> 00:40:57.270
One of the questions that Mrs. Johnson had was, let me see, what does the average person, what would the average person save? If you move this forward to the council, I'll have fresh bids for you, because these bids were on August 26th, and we'll know then. The average customer, that's $600,000,

00:40:57.290 --> 00:41:27.030
134 kilowatt hours would say at half a cent, .005, $3.17 a month. Is that worthwhile? Well, if you look about, if you have 3,000 residents, that's about $9,500 a month. It stays in the community, you know? And I just threw that 3,000 out because at times we've had a lot more.

00:41:27.290 --> 00:41:38.910
people in the program than that. If it goes through a penny, then it's double that, about $6.25 or so savings.

00:41:39.750 --> 00:41:48.790
The key on the aggregation program is people can opt out anytime they want. There's no termination charge.

00:41:50.880 --> 00:41:58.800
When we roll out a program, if we decide to lock in a program, everyone gets sent a letter from the supplier

00:41:58.800 --> 00:42:04.480
at the supplier's expense on the city letterhead saying, here's what the community rate's going to be.

00:42:06.100 --> 00:42:15.860
After our decision was made on a contract, it's then their decision to decide, do I want to be on the community rate or do I want to go back to ComEd?

00:42:16.380 --> 00:42:27.080
They can make a choice then. Next up is the second choice. ComEd will send out a letter saying, you're going to be switched to this supplier on such and such a date.

00:42:27.080 --> 00:42:35.220
If you don't want to, call this number, comment number, or call the supplier number and ask to get out.

00:42:35.880 --> 00:42:45.100
So that's the way the program's been since the start. Sometimes we get somebody that kind of gets caught in or they didn't get mail or a different address or something like that.

00:42:45.100 --> 00:43:00.440
We're always open to taking the calls and helping customers out to find out, express what the program is and what their choices are and let them know the choice.

00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:23.700
So, ComEd's floating rate, if the Illinois Power Agency purchased the power for ComEd and Amron, the downstate utility, and they go through their costs and they set their rate, ComEd does not make any money on the power that they sell, and they break even on it.

00:43:23.700 --> 00:43:27.780
where ComEd makes their money is on their delivery fees.

00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:30.460
That's the middle part of the bill.

00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:35.200
And at the bottom of the bill is taxes and fees.

00:43:36.720 --> 00:43:41.860
Part of that on the fees is a cost of a half a cent per kilowatt hour.

00:43:42.640 --> 00:43:45.920
I'll talk about that when we talk about community solar.

00:43:48.240 --> 00:43:48.880
Let's see.

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:52.460
Is there anything else that I might have missed?

00:43:53.700 --> 00:44:00.120
on this, on this bit. Alderman Johnson. Yeah, I just want to read the questions that I gave you so people

00:44:00.120 --> 00:44:07.900
know what I gave you. What is the rate that the city and most residents are paying now for electricity per

00:44:07.900 --> 00:44:18.560
kilowatt hour? 10.028 until, until October. In October through May, it's a little bit higher than the 10.2

00:44:18.560 --> 00:44:20.860
two cents that I mentioned.

00:44:21.240 --> 00:44:21.480
Okay.

00:44:23.040 --> 00:44:38.400
And also the, I'm not sure you pronounce that, is it Dynegy and the Direct Energy have a renewable green option, which is, which the green option would be the purchasing of electricity generated from renewable energy sources like wind or solar.

00:44:38.860 --> 00:44:40.760
Why are those rates higher?

00:44:41.820 --> 00:44:44.560
I'm just going to read all the questions and then you can answer them.

00:44:44.560 --> 00:45:14.560
and you explained a little bit what the floating rate means that how ComEd gets the money from that does ComEd still receive monies from the electric bills that would be the rate that you were talking about even though we have a different supplier and then you explained the last one based on 634 kilowatt month a month which is an average give an example of what a bill would cost and you kind of explained that how many cents higher that would be so I guess they

00:45:14.560 --> 00:45:24.420
answer I'd like to number two. The Dynegy and Direct Energy have renewable green options, so why are those rates higher if we do, if we go with a green option?

00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:31.900
Because the cost to build the solar, even with the subsidies and everything, it's a little more expensive, and the wind is a little more expensive.

00:45:32.820 --> 00:45:42.300
A one megawatt wind tower, windmill, costs like a million dollars. So, without the subsidies, so it's a little higher.

00:45:42.300 --> 00:45:49.380
Now, some communities along the Chicago area or suburban area, they wanted to be a 100% green community.

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.620
Out here, our communities as a whole pretty much wanted the lowest price.

00:45:55.180 --> 00:45:57.160
So what we do is we get lowest price.

00:45:57.900 --> 00:46:00.480
We do get that option from suppliers.

00:46:00.680 --> 00:46:05.280
If somebody wants to be 100% green, they can opt in and have that option.

00:46:07.370 --> 00:46:12.750
So if we go with MC squared, they don't offer that option.

00:46:12.750 --> 00:46:14.490
Okay, thank you

00:46:14.490 --> 00:46:17.990
Hopefully I'll address the rest for you

00:46:17.990 --> 00:46:19.010
Okay

00:46:19.010 --> 00:46:21.130
Any other discussion, counsel?

00:46:21.870 --> 00:46:22.710
Manager Boyer

00:46:22.710 --> 00:46:27.500
So, counsel, just at this time

00:46:27.500 --> 00:46:31.300
We're scheduled to bring this before you next Monday

00:46:31.300 --> 00:46:34.640
For the aggregation contract for the community

00:46:34.640 --> 00:46:37.680
So this is your time to ask any questions related to this

00:46:37.680 --> 00:46:43.160
And make some indication that you do want me to bring this aggregation contract next week

00:46:43.160 --> 00:47:16.260
so just wanted to point that out okay Alderman Johnson do you have something else can I ask manager Boyer sure okay so the lowest price on here is from MC squared which one year is 9.65 kilowatt per kilowatt hour and two years is 9.85 per kilowatt hour so that is lower than what ComEd would cost us if we just stay with straight ComEd is that correct that's correct thank you but I want to

00:47:16.260 --> 00:47:39.160
No, I was going to add next week, we're going to have different bids. So this is an example of today. Monday, when we come back to approve the aggregation contract, if that's what Council's desire is, those numbers will change based upon the conditions in the market at that time. Thank you.

00:47:39.160 --> 00:48:09.140
I'd just like to add that I've known Mr. Mudge for many years in the trade and also before being on the council and he's very knowledgeable about this and if you have any questions please ask him because I mean he'll tell you I know some of us went through some terrific electric bills this year and the way it looks in the future it isn't going to be

00:48:09.140 --> 00:48:32.480
would be any better. But where I was really surprised when I got looking into the bills was not necessarily how much per kilowatt hour you paid, it was some of the delivery fees and the taxes and so on and so forth that you went into it. But, you know, you're going to pay what it is, but thank you for your work on this, Mike. We appreciate it.

00:48:32.480 --> 00:49:02.480
City Manager you don't need a motion to move that to the next meeting right it's all good okay well then we will move on to item number 10 which is discussion regarding community solar with Illinois shines Mike okay what we're looking at on community solar and that's a long list of questions but I'm pleased that people are looking at this and going through the

00:49:02.480 --> 00:49:38.620
Community Solar of the Illinois Shines program, she, and community solar, so what is community solar, and why am I bringing it to your attention? Community solar is solar farms that are built out in different areas where it's being able to be connected to the grid at a lower cost with ComEd, but also it's land that

00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:43.620
The developer works with the owner and secures a long-term agreement.

00:49:44.940 --> 00:49:51.940
In Illinois, I mentioned that we're all paying 0.005 or a half a cent per kilowatt hour every rate.

00:49:51.940 --> 00:50:19.980
Kilowatter, every ratepayer is paying in to the state solar fund. And our governor, he wants to build more and more green power. This is the way that they're doing this. When the CJ Act was passed, that was the bill that pretty much kept Byron Station and addressed the nuclear stations online and continue to produce

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:48.780
produce power for us. For me, that was very, very important, because in extreme weather, whether it's hot or extremely cold, the nuclear plants just sit there and run, and they're our base load. When the sun's not shining, when there's natural gas restrictions for gas generation, keep homes from that, it's not that we don't have a lot of natural gas, it's just getting it to where it's needed on those critical days. And coal piles freeze up, things like that.

00:50:48.780 --> 00:51:00.100
So nuclear, in my mind, we needed it basically as a survival, which is very important when it's below zero for on that.

00:51:00.540 --> 00:51:06.280
But going back to community solar, why are we talking about that?

00:51:08.680 --> 00:51:10.800
I think I'll start into your questions.

00:51:10.800 --> 00:51:40.800
the community solar to be able to build be able to build them the developers need money to finance them what they do once they get these agreements and they think they want to build a field the next step is go out and get subscribers and the way the state statute set this up was your big companies like your hospitals like OSF and something like that they're called anchor tennis

00:51:40.800 --> 00:52:10.640
Walmart, they can lock in a certain amount of power. And then the state says, well, 40%, 45% have to be kept for solar for all, which means residents and stuff. So a certain amount of power on those fields are set aside for residents. What we have is a small sliver in the middle, which means our smaller commercial accounts, not all of our accounts here in the city,

00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:19.000
of Freeport. I'm talking about the municipal-owned accounts that are not free service, the ordinance from ComEd.

00:52:19.980 --> 00:52:29.540
So we look at the water treatment facilities, the wells, things like that, what accounts will fit under the guidelines.

00:52:29.940 --> 00:52:37.980
So that's what I'm looking at. If we can carve off a few dollars here or there, there's no investment on the city's part at all.

00:52:37.980 --> 00:52:42.960
These are plants that are out there being built and coming online.

00:52:44.300 --> 00:52:45.040
They're not built.

00:52:45.300 --> 00:52:48.120
The ones that are already built are already fully subscribed.

00:52:50.040 --> 00:52:51.580
So we're trying.

00:52:51.700 --> 00:52:54.020
We got one coming online in October.

00:52:54.260 --> 00:52:56.140
We got one coming online in January.

00:52:57.100 --> 00:53:00.880
I'm trying to get as many municipal accounts in there as possible.

00:53:00.880 --> 00:53:09.220
Community Solar usually gives 10% credits for the large customers in that.

00:53:10.440 --> 00:53:18.280
Since municipal accounts are investment grade, when these developers go out and borrow money from the market,

00:53:18.820 --> 00:53:26.860
they like to have good subscribers, and that lowers their borrowing cost.

00:53:26.860 --> 00:53:38.020
just like going for a mortgage on a home, the better your subscribers are, the better the tenants are, the better your rates are going to be.

00:53:38.520 --> 00:53:48.620
So it's important for them to pick up municipal accounts. So what I'm doing is I'm shotgunning out all of our communities and saying, who's interested in community solar?

00:53:48.620 --> 00:54:08.580
So tonight, I've got six of them doing presentations, but I'm here, because I've been talking with Rob for this since kind of last spring, and this one, we were involved in all the Muni Ag stuff, and that was all blowing up, and he said, Mike, just put it on the back table for a while.

00:54:09.400 --> 00:54:11.940
So now it's our time on this.

00:54:14.820 --> 00:54:16.620
Subscription costs zero.

00:54:17.120 --> 00:54:17.920
That's your question.

00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:18.400
What did you say?

00:54:18.620 --> 00:54:40.320
Cause what? Does energy come from solar farms that are already established? No. Those are already fully subscribed out and serving their customers. We are on a waiting list, and right now I've got a short waiting list, and we're able to, we negotiated up to get 15% credit instead of the standard 10.

00:54:40.320 --> 00:55:07.780
Where does this credit go? It goes to the accounts that are assigned. So I'm just going to say well number three uses a certain amount of power. That's got its own ComEd account. Whatever those panels that are assigned to that account produce, that's the solar credits that's going to show up on the ComEd bill for that specific account.

00:55:07.780 --> 00:55:17.360
So what we're doing right now isn't for the residents and it's not for the community just to sign up like community aid.

00:55:17.800 --> 00:55:22.060
This is just strictly the city accounts that we can get into the program.

00:55:23.100 --> 00:55:25.380
The city owned accounts, if you will.

00:55:28.980 --> 00:55:33.660
And I took off without my savings estimate sheet.

00:55:33.660 --> 00:56:04.930
But, Rob, do you remember about how much I estimated the savings was? Could be, could be maybe, I'm thinking six, six thousand dollars a year. It's not a lot of money, but we're kind of, in my terms, these are my terms, we're clawing back some of that RPS charges that we're all paying in, clawing some of it back and, and

00:56:04.930 --> 00:56:10.710
putting it back into the water and sewer fund, you might say, keeping those costs a little bit lower.

00:56:12.430 --> 00:56:27.450
Is that $6,000 estimate, whatever, nothing we're holding you to, is that per account? Can we have multiple accounts on there? Can we have multiple wells, multiple, you know, wastewater treatment plants, four or five accounts?

00:56:27.450 --> 00:56:54.970
They've got to be in the ComEd 0 to 100 KW classification and that's the total of all the counts that I was able to get. Like the treatment plan, if you didn't already have solar there, it would be too big. City of Rockford just signed theirs last week. They have like 40 some accounts and I think I got 17 of them in there.

00:56:54.970 --> 00:57:04.450
So, um, yeah, they are, it went through their finance committee and their council says, yes, let's, let's do it

00:57:04.450 --> 00:57:12.270
And I might have missed it, but I didn't hear you say the term, which I think I've seen in other presentations

00:57:12.270 --> 00:57:19.210
If, if you sign up and you're, and you're getting these things, they want to make sure you stay in it at least five years

00:57:19.210 --> 00:57:49.210
if for some reason you want to pull out something better comes along or something like that you have to make up that subscription unless we find somebody that wants to backfill in when I say we we are the solar developer wants to backfill that in but this 15% goes on until the life of the plant which is up to 20 years comment rates and it's not on our rate our rate for

00:57:49.210 --> 00:58:14.350
for our power, you know, like six, seven cents a kilowatt hour, the comrade rate is like 10 cents, so we're doing well on the accounts that we have under contract with the city, but this will come back on your budget, and I'll have all the specifics next week, if you move this on to the board, the council, I mean.

00:58:14.350 --> 00:58:34.570
The information on the flyers we were given to the states of Illinois Shines that is administered by Energy Solutions on behalf of the Illinois Power Agency, Independent Government Agency.

00:58:35.370 --> 00:58:43.670
Illinois Power Agency, as I mentioned earlier, buys the power for ComEd and Amron, puts it out there, and does the contracts and the agreements.

00:58:43.670 --> 00:58:53.750
so they're established to do that. Then the Illinois Shines program came underneath their jurisdiction also.

00:58:54.710 --> 00:59:06.030
They say they're an independent agency. The legislator wrote the laws and that under the State Utility Act.

00:59:06.030 --> 00:59:13.710
What? The IPA administers it. There's a lot of paperwork with it, but go ahead.

00:59:13.710 --> 00:59:22.150
Okay. So it says it's independent, but if it's a state government agency, it's not really independent.

00:59:22.990 --> 00:59:28.230
What does the state government benefit from this program? Does the state government regulate this

00:59:28.230 --> 00:59:33.190
program? What are the rules, policies, procedures from the government that regulate it? Does the

00:59:33.190 --> 00:59:49.670
government set the fees, the amount of credit a person can receive, etc., who determines how much a person saves if they save anything. So those are all the questions under there. Is it, it's government related somehow, right? Right. Illinois Power Agency was created because ComEd.

00:59:49.670 --> 00:59:53.680
created because ComEd was evolving where they didn't own any generation anymore.

00:59:54.440 --> 01:00:04.540
So they had to have an agency that says, okay, we've got to go out and purchase power on the grid or wherever from the generators to furnish the ComEd so people have power.

01:00:04.980 --> 01:00:11.080
That happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s when all that developed.

01:00:11.440 --> 01:00:13.640
That's how the Illinois Power Agency created.

01:00:13.640 --> 01:00:45.070
They run it, they gotta run it underneath the law, but the legislators and no other agencies have a hand in it. And anything beyond that is over my head. Did that answer? Sort of. Sort of? Okay. Who determines how much a person saves if they save anything?

01:00:45.430 --> 01:01:09.830
If an individual person wants to sign up for community solar, they can. And my next step is once we get everything else to evolve that so we can get subscriptions of individuals if they want. If the subscription rate is 10%, they will get 10% credit, solar credit on the ComEd bill.

01:01:09.830 --> 01:01:39.550
The reason this didn't happen before was you could not be on third party supply and then turn around and have community solar. They changed that when they changed the seizure law. The other thing is you had to get billed from a third party for your subscription. If ComEd gave you $100 credit from what was produced on the field, then if you were getting 15 percent,

01:01:39.830 --> 01:02:09.550
you would get an $85 bill from a third party supplier. In June, ComEd started to set up so they now bill it. So you're going to see that credit right on the ComEd bill. Now I put my son on this solar thing, community solar three years ago. Because I actually have solar at my house because I wanted to go through that process so I could explain that to people, our home office. And it works.

01:02:09.830 --> 01:02:15.810
But I wanted to try it because I wasn't going to go advocate something that didn't work.

01:02:17.230 --> 01:02:28.290
So we'll get into the individual stuff possibly next year if the city and the city council wants to have a program.

01:02:28.450 --> 01:02:32.050
And that would mean like an opt-in, not an opt-out program.

01:02:34.130 --> 01:02:41.040
What does Energy Solutions Illinois Power Agency gain from this?

01:02:41.040 --> 01:03:06.040
Illinois Power Agency is tasked with doing the program, and again, the governor wants to build solar up in the state, and this is the way of doing it. The legislation says, are we going to pay for it? They already determined that. So we're all paying, like I said, we're all paying into this fund.

01:03:06.040 --> 01:03:43.490
I wrote down on my notes here after the questions it encourages solar development and we are adding more power to the grid more power that we're adding to the grid our overall costs are going to be kept down again we're going to supply more supply more demand just a matter of point about 50% of our power is generated by natural gas in our PGM grid

01:03:43.490 --> 01:04:15.890
about 19% from nuclear, coal's getting down to around 10%. Wind and solar is producing about 1% in the PGM grid. So it's growing, but not at the rate that the demand is. Who owns and controls the solar farms and the electricity they generate? The developers, the ones we're working with is U.S. Solar.

01:04:15.890 --> 01:04:20.990
One of the reasons we're working with them is because they were building a site about three miles from my home

01:04:20.990 --> 01:04:26.270
They have multiple sites. They had five this year. Three of them are full now

01:04:26.270 --> 01:04:33.930
They've got one coming in on October and one in January and then later on next year

01:04:33.930 --> 01:04:37.730
I like them because they're a vertical company

01:04:37.730 --> 01:04:40.770
They find the ground, they get the permits

01:04:40.770 --> 01:04:44.550
Then the next thing they do is they go out and they get the subscribers

01:04:44.550 --> 01:04:49.190
First, they get the financiers lined up, they get the subscribers, they bring it all together.

01:04:50.070 --> 01:04:51.830
They operate the fields.

01:04:52.950 --> 01:04:59.110
It's not to say that they may not sell it, but the subscriptions are part of that field.

01:04:59.610 --> 01:05:06.210
In other words, if you have a subscription, you're going to be on it until that field is finally closed or whatever.

01:05:08.850 --> 01:05:11.330
I'm kind of skipping around on your questions here.

01:05:11.330 --> 01:05:43.000
Does everyone have to buy into this community solar in order for it to work? No. What we're talking about tonight is strictly the city accounts. And do you have to put something on your house connected to community solar? No. But that brings up another topic. The only way to claw back some of our money from the state is put solar in to your home. That's not metering. You will get SRECs back.

01:05:44.340 --> 01:05:50.700
or subscribe to a community solar garden, and that's how we get, other people can get money back.

01:05:51.340 --> 01:05:53.960
You're not for profits, you're public entities.

01:05:55.600 --> 01:06:03.300
If you look at solar leases, I personally don't recommend a lease for anyone.

01:06:03.460 --> 01:06:05.280
I've not seen where it doesn't cost people.

01:06:06.360 --> 01:06:09.520
My opinion, it costs people more.

01:06:10.540 --> 01:06:13.160
They say free solar will come to your house, put free solar in.

01:06:13.160 --> 01:06:43.160
if you look at what that costs them, it might be negative and if ComEd rates keep going up in the future you may start to see savings down the road but not right now. Did I miss anything that you want me to look at? The one where does all the electricity go that is generated by the solar farms right now? Where does all the electricity go that's generated by the solar farms that are

01:06:43.160 --> 01:07:13.140
here right now. Where does it all go? It's going into the grid and ComEd is absorbing this power to distribute it out to other customers. For the customers that have a third-party supplier. And that was the hardest thing for me to kind of get my arms around like, wait a minute, we're getting power from a third-party supplier and we're going to get power from the solar farm, but we're only paying one bill and we're

01:07:13.140 --> 01:07:44.720
are getting a discount. How does it work? Well, Darren. I have a question, Mike. So the city's been approached by one of the solar developers that's putting the system on the south landfill and a very similar program, although it wasn't named quite the same, but they're as well offering credit rebates from that site. Is that different than the comment site?

01:07:44.740 --> 01:07:47.720
or just one of the facilities that they haven't brought on yet?

01:07:47.900 --> 01:07:52.100
And how does that affect the city's ability on this program?

01:07:52.880 --> 01:07:57.700
Each developer has their own program and their cost and fee structure.

01:07:59.660 --> 01:08:02.260
Typically, they're not going to move off of 10%.

01:08:02.260 --> 01:08:05.140
But you could ask them.

01:08:05.300 --> 01:08:06.840
And I'd be very interested in that.

01:08:07.280 --> 01:08:10.660
And I'm going to run out of capacity.

01:08:10.660 --> 01:08:19.860
we're we're we're getting tight now finishing out this year i want to find more so i would like to talk to

01:08:19.860 --> 01:08:27.140
them and find out what we can get and see if we can't get something negotiated up i guess my question is can

01:08:27.140 --> 01:08:37.620
we do both yeah attorney zito oh right mike so my question was exact same thing darren in the sense

01:08:37.620 --> 01:09:07.380
that we have certain city-owned sites, like, for example, our landfill or our wastewater treatment plant that all have solar panels, the solar fields there, that we then have an agreement with that particular solar developer that put those solar panels on those specific sites to which we, you know, are given a certain rate, you know, there. Can we, through this program, piggyback onto that, or is that an account that then can't be on this community solar program?

01:09:07.620 --> 01:09:21.440
say, hey, you guys are already part of a different program. You can't piggyback onto this community solar program with Illinois Shines then. So you can't have two programs running for the same account, so to speak.

01:09:22.020 --> 01:09:37.440
There can be, there can be, if I run out of room and we're going to put so many accounts, qualified accounts on, yes, you can put the other qualified accounts on that.

01:09:37.440 --> 01:09:48.040
it just depends when. They have the same criteria that they have to meet. The anchor tenants, that's prime. If they don't get their anchor tenants, they don't move.

01:09:48.040 --> 01:10:13.780
If they don't get their anchor tenants, they don't move forward. And some of these projects are a little bit smaller. That's why now they want to do like five megawatts, which takes about 30 acres, 25 or 30 acres. So you can look at this. You're not obligated tonight. Even if you pass the resolution next week,

01:10:13.780 --> 01:10:43.780
that gives you authority to go forward and get the best deal that you can don't have to be through me but then it's going to be up to Rob or the mayor or someone or yourself. Manager Boyer was there something you were looking for tonight? Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Rudge. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, okay. I'm

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football night. I didn't want to take real long for everybody, but thank you for, there's a lot to cover, lots to cover in a short time, and I appreciate everyone's time and attention, so. Thank you. We will move on to item number 10, which is a discussion regarding the implementation of live video cameras, etc. Chief Shenberger. Is that 11? 11. Thank you. Freeport Police Department has utilized vigilant Motorola LPR cameras at various locations in the city of

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Report, and Sound Thinking Gunshot Detection Sensors. The use of LPR cameras and Sound Thinking have significantly

01:11:24.680 --> 01:11:32.160
helped the PD staff with shots fired in investigations. LPR cameras have also benefited the PD staff with

01:11:32.160 --> 01:11:39.120
investigating other crimes, such as the recovery of stolen vehicles, serious felonies, and retail thefts.

01:11:39.120 --> 01:11:47.420
In early 2025, staff conducted a presentation on flock technology at a cow meeting. Later,

01:11:47.440 --> 01:11:59.360
During the year, staff applied for an organized retail crime grant, an ORC grant, and also worked with the lobbyists to request congressional funding to enhance the department's technological resources.

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Staff learned the city of Freeport was awarded $9,000 in ORC grant from the Office of the Attorney General Kwame Raul and $630,000 in fiscal year appropriations from U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's office.

01:12:14.600 --> 01:12:44.600
The requests for the appropriations were to purchase the following equipment $200,000 to fund two existing sound thinking shot spotter coverage areas for two years $60,000 to purchase sound thinking's resource router program for two years $69,200 to lease a live video camera trailer and a radar trailer equipped with the LPR $28,988 to purchase 20 additional body worn cameras $9,000

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$3,309.90 to purchase two additional squad video cameras and DVRs, $30,000 to purchase a Skydio X10 drone, $100,000 to lease additional OPRs for two years, and $130,000 for a mobile command trailer. Staff has been working with representatives from Flock with potentially expanding our technological resources that will allow officers to be more proactive and improve their response

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in response to criminal incidents. FLOC offers a three-prong approach, LPR cameras, live video, and gunshot detection. FLOC presented a quote utilizing $9,000 from the ORC grant and the $169,200 from the fiscal year 26 appropriations to add more LPR cameras, live video cameras, and trailer cameras. The funding for this project will be covered by the ORC grant and the fiscal year 26 appropriations.

01:13:44.600 --> 01:14:14.380
the agreement with FLOC would be contingent upon the passage of the appropriations bill so this is just something that you know I'm going to bring forward next week for a resolution like I said for it would cover two years of adding additional LPRs along with live video cameras and trailer cameras to help us out to help us do our job better so any questions chief

01:14:14.380 --> 01:14:22.500
But this is really contingent upon the 26 appropriations passing, so how do you bring that forward now when that hasn't happened yet?

01:14:23.840 --> 01:14:36.620
Well, the reason why we're bringing it forward now is because they would like to have, FLOC would like to have a resolution pass by the end of the month so they can start with everything that they need to do to get the LPRs started.

01:14:36.840 --> 01:14:38.840
So what if the appropriations doesn't pass?

01:14:38.840 --> 01:15:08.640
then it then it then we're not out anything the first payment is due December 1st and that's with the nine thousand dollars from the ORC grant and that's that we've been awarded that so that basically covers it brings us it gets us started one month earlier so that covers the first month in December and then the other payment will be will be due after the appropriations hopefully so if if we don't get that we're not locked in for the then we're yeah then we're just trying to get ahead of the game correct

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I just want to get the ball rolling so then we can get started as soon as we can.

01:15:12.460 --> 01:15:13.840
Any other questions for Chief?

01:15:16.500 --> 01:15:20.520
If it doesn't pass, then how will it be paid?

01:15:21.460 --> 01:15:27.300
If the appropriations bill does not pass, then we're not subject to anything.

01:15:27.540 --> 01:15:31.640
We'll have $9,000 to utilize, which will give us about two cameras.

01:15:31.640 --> 01:15:33.640
But if you already...

01:15:34.440 --> 01:15:39.180
The first payment's due December 1st, the $9,000 payment.

01:15:39.180 --> 01:15:43.600
If the appropriations bill, and I think was that sometime in December, I don't, I have no idea.

01:15:44.240 --> 01:15:54.080
If that, if that does not pass, I mean, I would say that it's going to, I mean, I would think that it's going to, but if it doesn't, then we haven't, we're out nothing.

01:15:54.300 --> 01:15:56.120
And then that's, it was in the contract.

01:15:56.580 --> 01:15:57.880
Yeah, I think you're right.

01:15:58.420 --> 01:15:59.960
The 9,000 that you put up.

01:16:00.380 --> 01:16:05.100
No, no, that the contract's contingent upon the appropriations bill passing.

01:16:05.640 --> 01:16:06.000
Right.

01:16:07.000 --> 01:16:08.640
City manager, do you have something?

01:16:08.720 --> 01:16:08.960
Okay.

01:16:09.180 --> 01:16:41.520
All right. Thanks, Chief. Thank you. Which will move us on to item number 12, which is public comment. Is there any public comments? Tommy? Chief, you do a good job working in that police station. And Jodi Miller, you do a good job with the mayor. We saw you at Final House on Saturday.

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Is there any other public comments this evening? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion. Second. A motion made by Alderman Shadle. Second. Oh, I'm sorry, Cecelia. Go ahead. As we open in prayer, I'd like to close in prayer. Father God, in the name of Jesus, your word in 2 Chronicles 7.14 says,

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if my people who are called by my name would humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their lands and also in James 1 and 12 blesses the man who remains steadfast under trial

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received the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. So, Father God, I continue to seek your face on the matters, concerns, and cares of this city. I continue to trust in you and your word that you will do exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think according to your riches in glory.

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continue to lead us and guide us Father God take control over this your city that we may reap the benefits that you have intended for us that victory is ours in Jesus name Amen Debbie Miss Leininger did you leave a letter here no no no that was that was from Alderman Parker yeah okay that's not to be read it

01:19:08.120 --> 01:19:16.460
No, that was just Alderman Parker. Okay, so we have a motion on the table for Alderman Shadle, seconded by Alderman Sellers for adjournment. All those in